Split (1)

train · 33.2M rows

text stringlengths 1 100k
Charisma Wooten, a singer and actor, had been a parishioner and lay leader at Refreshing Spring Church of God in Christ in Riverdale for more than 30 years when she was told moments before taking the pulpit for a Scripture reading one baking July Sunday a couple of years ago that she couldn’t because she didn’t have on pantyhose. Wooten said she was wearing a dress that nearly hit the floor, but Church of God in Christ is a formal denomination where ushers wear gloves and the handbook says that “dressing in a sensually provocative manner produces inclinations to evil desires.”
Another summer Sunday, Wooten was wearing a sleeveless black-and-white polka-dot dress and “my little matching shoes and hat,” when the pastor’s wife said sweetly: “Honey, aren’t you cold?” It took Wooten three days to realize she was likely being politely asked to cover her shoulders.
Wooten says she generally brushes it off when she’s been scolded for her church clothes, but the pantyhose incident led her to send a mass e-mail decrying the misplaced focus on rules and dogma.
“You can follow all these rules men set up and be on your way to hell,” she said.
Concepts of appropriate dress are, of course, a mix of denominational, regional, racial and ethnic components, and they are sometimes specific in unpredictable ways. Black churches are generally known for formal, modest and elaborate style, even in summer. Catholics stereotypically are dressed simply for Mass — full suits and hats are less common, as are plunging necklines.
Rainey Ray Segars, 26, grew up with a Southern Baptist pastor-father in Tennessee, where shorts were common around church but strapless dresses were not. At 24, she moved with her new youth-pastor-husband to Illinois and found out on the first warm week since their move that jeans and Packers jerseys were fine at church activities but shorts were not.
After coming to a choir practice in shorts, a congregant “sent by a group of offended people” told Segars that she had caused someone to be lustfully distracted — “That it was my fault,” Segars remembered.
“I said, ‘I’m interested to know if that person will seek out help for themselves,’ ’’ Segars said. “I don’t agree that a woman is to blame for lust someone feels towards her. My thought was to start a dialogue.”
Did she?
“It was like: ‘Yeah, that’s all fine, but please don’t wear shorts,’ ” she remembered.
The congregation she’s part of now, Segars said, includes a huge range of dress and cover.
“I think it shows a loveliness and a comfort: ‘I came just as I am, just looking to be known.’ It communicates a safety I think is really beautiful,” she said.
Conversations (and condemnations) on the issue of modest clothing and summer worship seem to focus on women. Monsignor Ed Filardi said he put the notice in the bulletin at Our Lady of Lourdes at the request of women reacting to the clothing of other women. Personally, he said, he doesn’t see a real problem, though after services Sunday morning one usher engaged the priest on the topic.
“You’re coming to see the Lord,” said Len Thompson, 65, recently retired from the Navy, and one of two men out of about 80 wearing a jacket at Mass. “What if I was going to see the Obamas? It seems skewed.”
Foundry United Methodist Church in Dupont has many gay men as members, and last Sunday many men present wore dress shorts and polo shirts.
“I’m not sure if my shins are distracting anyone in here,” one 39-year-old man, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said with a smile.
Discussions about possible sins of immodesty inevitably lead to discussions about another sin: judging.
“Jesus is most strong when he speaks about judging people,” said Johnnie Moore, youth pastor at the evangelical Liberty University, noting students have come to his services in pajamas. That said, he feels religious and secular Americans are joining forces over concern about an oversexualized youth culture. “Generally speaking, you shouldn’t come to church as you would to a club,” he said.
Northwest Washington image consultant Ketura Persellin has written about appropriate clothing for worship, down to the size of bag, jangly jewelry and skirt length. This is a woman who cares about clothes. But as her preteen children are getting older, Persellin finds herself less tolerant of clothing chatter at her synagogue, Adas Israel.
“I don’t want people talking about my kids like that,” she said. “I’ve definitely been trying to get down from my high horse.”
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel sentenced an Arab citizen to 30 months’ imprisonment on Monday for endangering national security by briefly joining Syrian rebels fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad.
Hikmat Massarwa (R), a member of Israel's Arab minority, attends a remand hearing at the Central District Court in Lod, near Tel Aviv April 25, 2013. REUTERS/Baz Ratner
Hikmat Massarwa’s case was unprecedented, and the relatively light penalty handed down to him as part of a plea bargain reflected Israel’s indecision about who - if anyone - to back in its northern neighbor’s civil war.
Massarwa was arrested on March 19 upon returning via Turkey from Syria, where he had spent a week at a rebel base. Israeli prosecutors accused him of undergoing small-arms training by radical Islamists there who asked him to carry out a suicide attack in Israel - although, by all accounts, he declined.
Those charges carried a maximum 15-year jail term. But prosecutors appeared unable, from the outset, to throw the book at Massarwa because of Israeli haziness about the Syria crisis.
“There’s no legal guidance regarding the rebel groups fighting in Syria,” Judge Avraham Yaakov said at a session of the trial at Lod district court, south of Tel Aviv, in May.
Massarwa, a 29-year-old baker, at first denied wrongdoing, saying he had gone to Syria to seek a brother missing since joining the insurgency. He also argued that the Western-backed anti-Assad rebels should not be regarded as a danger to Israel.
But, changing tack on Monday, Massarwa confessed to unlawfully travelling to a hostile state and meeting what prosecutors designated a “foreign agent”. In turn, they dropped the count against him of illicitly receiving military training.
Under the plea bargain, Massarwa acknowledged his actions “had potential to threaten the security of the state of Israel”.
Technically at war with Syria, Israel enjoyed decades of stable ceasefire while the Assad family ruled unchallenged in Syria. It fears that, if Damascus falls to the Islamist-dominated rebels, jihadis among them will have a Syrian springboard for striking at the Jewish state.
Such concern has been stoked in recent months by Syrian gunfire and shelling into the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, incidents in which Israel has routinely shot back. Israel took the Golan from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war.
Arabs, most of them Muslim, make up around 20 percent of Israel’s population. They seldom take up arms with its enemies.
Yet some Israeli officials privately described Massarwa’s trial as a bid to deter other Arab citizens from going to Syria and possibly acquiring the Islamist agenda and fighting savvy that could drive them to turn to violence once back home.
“The prosecution were definitely looking for a deterrent effect here, and they got it, even though they scaled down the penalty,” Massarwa’s lawyer, Helal Jaber, told Reuters.
But he added that Israeli Arab volunteerism for the Syrian civil war was “hardly a phenomenon. We are talking about two or three people - bad apples. The overwhelming majority of the community are loyal to the state of Israel”.
(This story is refiled to add dropped letter in penultimate paragraph quote)
The view from Mount Sunflower, Kansas’s highest elevation. (Image: CC0)
Geographer Jerry Dobson had barely started his new job at the University of Kansas when a realization hit. Whenever he told friends and colleagues about his gig, people would smile, congratulate him, the works. But then, almost inevitably, they’d make some crack about his new home state: specifically, how flat it was. Over his years-long tenure, this did not change.
“Everytime you meet someone, they say it—and it’s not true,” he says. “I always looked around and saw hills.”
But Dobson is a geographer, able to translate this frustration into motivation. A few years ago, he and his colleague Joshua Campbell—a born and raised Kansan—undertook a project. They set out to measure the flatness of every state in the union, using an algorithm designed to calculate how flat each one looks from different points in its interior—what Campbell calls “that feeling of total flatness.” When they got the results back, Kansas was in a respectable seventh, behind Delaware, North Dakota, and the clear winner, Florida. Since then, Dobson and Campbell have toured their results around, using them to argue against the flat-Kansas mythology.
Bluff along the Salt Fork of the Arkansas River. #gyphills Photo by @flinthillsboy Use #kansasaintflat to be featured A photo posted by Kansas (@kansasaintflat) on May 31, 2016 at 7:25pm PDT
So how did Kansas get this reputation? Andy Stuhl, a musician who recently moved there by car, bets it comes from East Coast road-trippers, who spill out onto the plain after miles and miles of woods. Sam Huneke, a historian who grew up in Lawrence, points to a lack of particularly large hills, but insists that “the day-to-day experience is not one of flatness.” What is clear is that, like Dobson, they don’t much like it. “Of course it affects our reputation,” says Kelli Hilliard of the Kansas Tourism Board, pointing towards efforts to change that, like a set of scenic, rolling byways, and an Instagram account called “kansasaintflat.”
But Branden Rishel, a Washington-based cartographer, has a different, more radical idea: If everyone already thinks Kansas is flat, why not lean in? Why not just make it flat—totally, completely flat?
Rishel is very familiar with the Kansas flatness question. He was a student of Mark Fonstad, a Texas State geographer who, in 2003, set out with some colleagues and a laser microscope to determine which was flatter: Kansas or an IHOP pancake. The resulting study, titled “Kansas Is Flatter Than a Pancake,” likely added to the public misconceptions that rankle Dobson and Campbell. (They also point out that, if you use the particular mathematical approach of Fonstad et al, “there is no place on Earth that is not flatter than a pancake.”)
Despite his academic parentage, Rishel doesn’t disagree with Dobson and Campbell—“if Kansas is a sloped and hummocky lawn, Florida is a parking lot,” he says. He also agrees that perceived flatness is probably bad for the state’s reputation. He just thinks the best solution involves less fact-checking and more literal digging. “Kansans should reclaim and celebrate flatness,” Rishel says. “Kansas should become more flat than flat.”
Kansas, in Rishel’s ideal future. (Image: Branden Rishel)
About a year ago, Rishel posted a mocked-up map of Totally Flat Kansas on his blog, Cartographers Without Borders, along with a skeleton of his plan. The image, in which a smooth, sleek Kansas sits embedded in the bumpy continent like a tooth in a gum, is immediately appealing. It gives the sense of a state that has taken charge of its own destiny and has ended up several thousand years ahead of the rest of us, in a state of David Bowie-esque aesthetic precision. It makes Kansas look cool.
The plan, which he elaborated for me, goes as follows: Start in the middle of the state and dig west, towards Colorado. Send that excavated dirt due east, and lay it out as you go, filling in all possible nooks, crannies, valleys, etc. By the end, you will have moved 5,501 cubic miles of soil—over 9 billion Olympic swimming pools’ worth, Rishel points out. To even begin to do this, you’d need a whole lot of technology that hasn’t been invented yet (moveable pipelines, huge nuclear-powered mining machines, all that jazz). But the state would end up flat enough to test a level on, separated from its neighbors by enormous cliffs.
Rishel is a great evangelist for this plan. Besides the obvious recreational benefits—interstate cliff diving, endless ice skating in wet winters—total flatness would make Kansas a geographically fascinating spot, he says. There would be new plant life under the giant cliffs, which wouldn’t see the sun until noon. The Arkansas River would plunge down from Colorado, free-falling into the western edge of the state. “Tourists could take an elevator into Kansas and play bocce,” Rishel imagines, his enthusiasm palpable. “The region would turn into a giant puddle after storms… Visitors would discover that flat is never boring.”
A northeast view of Lawrence from the top of Mt. Oread. (Image: New York Public Library/Public Domain)
I’m sold. But I’m not from Kansas—and, like so many aspirational developers, neither is Rishel. Even if flattening is the sincerest form of flattery, Dobson, Campbell, and the other real Kansans I talked to would be sad to lose their hills, which help them take advantage of the good parts of being on the level. From the top of Lawrence’s Mount Oread, for example, “the view reaches far enough to fade away,” says Stuhl. “It’s awe-inspiring to stand on top of one of our hills and see a squall line moving in,” adds Sam Huneke, a history student who grew up in the state.
That is, until the mining machines roll by, bringing the future with them. Then, you’ll just want to get out of the way.
This article is over 7 years old
Major rights holders claim search engines make it 'difficult' for people to find legal music and films online
Google and Bing accused of directing users to illegal copies of music
Google and other search engines "overwhelmingly" direct music fans to illegal copies of copyrighted tracks online, a coalition of entertainment industry groups has told the government.
In a confidential document obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, lobbying groups for the major rights holders claimed Google and Microsoft's Bing are making it "much more difficult" for people to find legal music and films online.
The private document, obtained by the free speech campaigners Open Rights Group and shared with the Guardian, urges the government to introduce a voluntary body that would remove rogue websites from internet search results.
The proposals were made to the culture minister Ed Vaizey as part of a series of consultations on internet piracy between rights holders, search giants and the government in November last year. The nine-page document was submitted on behalf of the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), the UK body for the music majors, the Motion Picture Association (MPA), the Premier League, the Publishers Association and the Pact, the film and TV independent producers' trade body.
Privately, rights holders said there is a "spirit of optimism" between the entertainment groups and search engines as they attempt to usher in more legal media sites, including Google's own fledgling music service.
Google has in the past year stepped up efforts to remove copyright-infringing content, launching a fast-track removal requests form and filtering terms "associated with infringement". However, the rights holders claim in the document that "as time goes on, the situation is getting worse rather than better".
"Consumers rely on search engines to find and access entertainment content and they play a vital role in the UK digital economy," the rights holders state.
"At present, consumer searching for digital copies of copyright entertainment content are directed overwhelmingly to illegal sites and services."
The entertainment groups want Google to "continuously review key search words" and "effectively screen" mobile apps on Android smartphones in an effort to combat illicit sharing.
The document claims that 16 of the first 20 Google search results for chart singles link to "known illegal sites", according to searches by the BPI in September. In an attempt to persuade the government to clamp down on search engines, the groups claim that 41% of Google's first-page results for bestselling books in April last year were "non-legal links" to websites.
"Much of the illegal activity in the digital economy is facilitated and encouraged by money-making rogue sites," the document claimed.
"Intermediaries, unwittingly or by wilfully turning a blind eye (or in some cases, by encouraging such activity), play a key role in enabling content theft and often even profit from it. Only a comprehensive approach can address this issue."
The entertainment bodies call for search engines to:
• Assign lower rankings to sites that "repeatedly" make available copyright-infringing material
• Prioritise sites that "obtain certification as a licensed site" for music and film downloading
• Stop indexing sites that are subject to court orders
• Stop indexing "substantially infringing websites"
• Improve "notice and takedown" system
• Ensure that users are not directed to illicit filesharing sites through suggested search
• Ensure search engines do not advertise around unlawful sites or sell keywords associated with piracy or sell mobile apps "which facilitate infringement"
The chief executive of BPI, Geoff Taylor, said on Thursday: "The vast majority of consumers want search engines to direct them to legal sources of entertainment rather than the online black market.
"As search engines roll out high-quality content services, like Google Music, we want to build a constructive partnership that supports a legal online economy. We hope that Google and other search engines will respond positively."
A spokeswoman for the Motion Picture Association added: "If you look for film or music via a search engine you usually find websites providing access to pirated films or music at the top of the list of results.
"This is confusing for consumers, damages the legal market and legitimises copyright theft. We are in dialogue with search engines, ISPs [internet service providers], advertising networks and payment processors about a code to deal with the escalating problem of online copyright theft which threatens the growth of the entire creative industries sector. This paper is a result of that dialogue and we appreciate government's continuing efforts to help bring about a more responsible internet".
A spokesman for Google said: "Google takes the fight against online piracy very seriously. Last year, we removed over five million infringing items from Google Search. We have made industry-leading efforts in this field, investing over $50m (£32m) in fighting bad advertisements and over $30m on Content ID software, giving rights holders control over their YouTube content.
"We continue to work in close partnership with rights holders to help them combat piracy and protect their property."
Peter Bradwell, campaigner for the Open Rights Group, said the proposal contained "some dangerous ideas". He said: "It's another plan to take on far too much power over what we're allowed to look at and do online."
Less than three months ago, Facebook Live experienced its first verifiable viral hit when more than 800,000 people tuned in to watch two BuzzFeed employees burst a watermelon using only rubber bands. But explosive fruit was just the beginning. Now, Facebook has reportedly inked well over 100 deals with a wide array of partners ranging from digital publishing outfits to celebrities, 17 of which come with million-dollar price tags.
Facebook Live, the live-video service that began rolling out to users in the fall of last year, is the centerpiece of C.E.O. Mark Zuckerberg’s vision for the future of Facebook. (Earlier this month, Facebook executive Nicola Mendelsohn predicted that within five years, the social network could be “all video.”) And paying high-profile content-creators to make video that people actually want to watch is the crux of that plan. According to a document obtained by The Wall Street Journal, Facebook will pay almost 140 parties to create live video for the burgeoning service. The list of partners includes a number of media companies, including CNN, The New York Times, Vox, Tastemade, Mashable, and The Huffington Post. (Condé Nast, Vanity Fair‘s parent company, has ongoing partnerships with Facebook that include a number of different business and revenue models.) Kevin Hart, Gordon Ramsay, Deepak Chopra, and Russell Wilson are among the celebrities that have signed on, the Journal reports.
While the total price tag for the deals tops $50 million, the partnerships differ widely in value. Buzzfeed, which saw early success with its watermelon-exploding video, landed the biggest contract among its publishing competitors with a $3.05 million contract to create live video between March 2016 and March 2017. The New York Times nabbed second place, with a $3.03 million 12-month contract, and CNN rounded out the podium players with a $2.5 million deal, the Journal reports. The outlet did not report how much individual celebrities will pocket by partnering with Facebook for the initiative.
Zuckerberg and friends are reportedly still figuring out how to monetize Facebook Live—pre-roll ads, presumably, are in our future—but by landing high-profile names to create its content, Facebook is undoubtedly one step closer to a sustainable live-video revenue model. During a Facebook town hall at the end of February, Zuckerberg said that live video was one of the things he was “most excited about.” This newest report makes it clear he sees it as a moneymaker, too.
0 SHARES Facebook Twitter Google Whatsapp Pinterest Print Mail Flipboard
Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr released a statement today criticizing the bungled police raid of the mayor’s home in Berwyn Heights, Maryland. He said that no knock raids are unconstitutional, and that law enforcement has become arrogant and less accountable.
The case Barr is referring to involves a bungled raid on Mayor Cheye Calvo ‘s home that resulted in the mayor and his mother in law being hand cuffed and his two dogs killed. The mayor had been victimized by drug smugglers, but law enforcement never bothered to take the time to actually investigate and gather the facts.
“Absent exigent circumstances, not present here, so-called no-knock raids are an affront to the Constitution. So is a shoot first, ask questions later philosophy by the police. Yet the Prince George’s police have done this before—last fall they invaded a house at the wrong address and shot the family dog. All Americans are at risk when the police behave this way. Just ask yourself what might happen if a suspicious package is delivered to your home and the cops bust in,” Barr said.
His bigger point is that law enforcement needs to be able to do their job while protecting people’s liberties, “But there is an even larger point. Law enforcement agencies have become more arrogant and less accountable in cases other than those involving drugs. Most people are aware of well-publicized examples like Waco and Ruby Ridge, but similar abuses are common across the country, though they usually receive little or no public notice. We all want police to do their jobs well, but part of doing their job well is respecting the people’s constitutional liberties.”
Barr knows what he is talking about. Before serving in the House of Representatives, he was a U.S. attorney, and before that he worked at the CIA. For lack of a better term, I think that some law enforcement agencies have gotten lazy. We see people getting shot or tasered too often without cause, but seems like if some law enforcement officers don’t want to deal with a situation, they skip right to using force. This attitude comes from the top down. It can be traced to the example set by the Bush administration after 9/11. This anything goes attitude needs to stop which is another reason why the neo-cons have to go.
If you’re ready to read more from the unbossed and unbought Politicus team, sign up for our newsletter here! Email address: Leave this field empty if you're human:
Porter Airlines confirmed today it plans to buy up to 30 CS100 jets from Montreal-based Bombardier, which would expand the regional carrier's reach from coast to coast, and take direct aim at Air Canada and WestJet.
"We believe it is time to spread our wings," president and CEO Bob Deluce said at a news conference at Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport, where Porter is based. "And so I present to you our vision for the future of Porter Airlines — a vision with service to destinations across North America, from Calgary and Vancouver, to Los Angeles, Miami and Orlando."
The move pushes Porter into direct competition with Air Canada and WestJet as a national carrier, while setting up a potential political standoff over expansion of the island airport in downtown Toronto.
The conditional deal is to buy 12 Bombardier CS100s, with options on 18 more.
The deal also includes purchase rights for six of Bombardier's Q400 turboprop aircraft, currently the mainstay of the Porter fleet.
The total purchase could reach $2.29 billion US if all the options and purchase rights are exercised.
Delivery of the first jet, which has seating for 107 passengers, is expected in 2016.

Subsets and Splits

No community queries yet

The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.