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Snarling SarahCuda: MK (Mind Kontrolled) Ultra Monarch BETA Prog’md Sex Slave/Human Laptop on Auto-Pilot
MUST SEE!
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4shared PICS/VIDS Archives (*SUSPENDED*)
of Immoral Minority Palingates Why has Gryphen along w/kept this vital Intel from their readers by BANNING this blogger?
Sarah L. Palin posts generate such intense interest, this page was created to provide an outline for those seeking to unravel the mystery and see beyond the “fantasy narrative” of Alaska’s infamous MK’d Kitten “Caribou Barbie.” For a clear understanding of not who, but “WHAT“ Sarah Palin & family are, the reader MUST be familiar w/MK-Ultra Monarch Programming , which created the Palin phenomenon. This page focuses exclusively on: Palin’s MK-Ultra Monarch Programming, State of Alaska Power Structure, Occult-Masonic-Disney Themes, Palin Media Team & Palin Assets…
NO ONE COMES OUT OF NOWHERE!
Palin has been hand picked and groomed by Global Mgt. Team (“GMT”) before she was a child –this NSA-CIA “controlled asset” was hidden far away from the masses, in the tiny town of Wasilla. Palin was being trained (prog’md) by sadistic neurosurgeons, behavioral scientists, psychiatrists and psychologists working w/in Monarch Prog under aegis of NSA-CIA Military-Industrial-Apparatus and no expense was spared — Hollywood acting coaches, voice coaches and stylists were contracted to make the Alaskan MK’d Kitten sparkle! This was after years of “grooming” — first as Mrs. Wasilla, then runner -up in Mrs. Alaska pageant (worldwide pageant system functions as a smorgasbord of MK’s for GMT. Prog’mrs (quite possibly Dr. Ewen Cameron a.k.a. Dr. White) methodically and skillfully layered in her “alters” (mind files) IAW-SOP rape/torture/trauma, for use in Hollywood scripted fantasy narrative of “local hometown girl makes good” (front page copy), launching her meteoric rise in Alaskan political circles — then her grand entrance on natl. stage, to mesmerize electorate, capture hearts/minds of GOP evangelical base, as their first woman VP candidate, and current role as chief antagonist to Obama/ left-wing of phony political paradigm . As planned, she performed this “social alchemy” brilliantly. Palin’s unique blend of folksiness, brashness, quirky combativeness, stinging humor, “look-at-me” mannerisms and overt sexiness, knocked voters out! However, as one begins to pull the threads of her fictitious political resume, it quickly becomes clear, “the character” named Sarah L. Palin was carefully constructed to check off boxes on GOP candidate application – the attraction is pure cult of personality …
Sarah L. Palin has NEVER run anything !
As Mayor of tiny town (village) day-to-day decisions were given to “city administrator”– John Cramer
http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20080903/ARTICLE/809030376?Title=Where-Palin-sharpened-her-elbows-at-Wasilla-City-Hall as Governor, private emails released show snowmobiling hubby Todd did the heavy lifting , along w/skilled GOP Ops, administrators, handlers, and seasoned media pros i.e. Meg Stapleton (former KTUU reporter w/ties to GOP Op Fred Malek (infamous Nixon “Jew counter” ) & Kissinger agent and Palin Washington “handler” http://www.alaskajournal.com/stories/110506/mov_20061105036.shtmlnd Rebecca Mansour (founder, editor, writer of primary Palin propaganda blog Conservatives For Palin, C4P) — “Going Rogue” ghostwritten by Lynn Vincent Facebook missives are ghostwritten by consultants paid by SarahPac, her speeches, filled w/pseudo-evangelical, xenophobic, fear-based folksiness are written for her, and yes, most pols have speechwriters, ghostwritten books, but when speaking they don’t mangle the language, and you’re not tempted to grab some dressing to pour on the word salad — maybe she writes Tweetss…
Palingates (Alaskan blog) Analysis of Todd Palin “Shadow Gov” Emails:
Beyond his gov’t administrative role, Todd Palin is one of Sarah’s primary MK prog’mrs/handlers — see just how controlled and oblivious Palin is to events occuring within a few feet, as Todd engages in questionable behavior w/another woman — “Operational Tradecraft” used here is impressive — see “Alaskan Kitten Gets Spun on SNL & Finish Line “Kiss-N-Diss”
Palin Emails: MSNBC Searchable Database
“Super-Mom” Image Fictitious — although she has a large family, oldest daughter MK’d Bristol was surrogate Mom to younger sisters, along w/nannies on state payroll. Son Track is pure Manchurian (Delta Prog’mg) remains hidden under NSA-CIA guard while enlisted in U.S. Army. Down syndrome grandson Trig used as prop to beef up credentials w/ pro-life forces, and endear Sarah to parents of DS children. Palin’s hauled Trig about the country like a Neiman Marcus handbag on The Bigger The Hair, The Closer To God Tour —early 2012 campaign kick-off. The callous handling of a Down syndrome child is reprehensible, particularly by someone waving the banner of Christianity. Palin shows little if any emotional attachment to Trig, because he is NOT her child ! Numerous websites/blogs detail this farce w/pics and video, disproving absurd claims surrounding Trig’s birth.
The preposterous “wild ride story” told in “Going Rogue” chronicles her journey from Texas to Alaska, where at 44yrs old, family doctor Cathy Baldwin-Johnson (not an obstetrician) clears Palin in her 8th month of high-risk pregnancy, w/Downs syndrome baby, for 8hr flight w/stop-over — trained flight attendants don’t notice any signs of pregnancy (Bristol was conveniently out of school for 5mts. w/mono, usually 2wks, during this period) — this is total fantasy, and a fraud of immense proportions!
Dr. Cathy Baldwin-Johnson Letter
Any doctor that clears a 44yr old woman w/a history of (2) miscarriages, carrying a Downs syndrome baby, for an 8hr, 3,000 mile flight w/stopover — after her water has broken, should be listed on form below:
Official State of Alaska Form for filing Malpractice Complaint
“Baby-Gate” , “Ear-Gate” & “Tale of Two Babies”
The Downs syndrome baby showcased at RNC 2008, on “Going Rogue” tour, and public appearances to date, shows no such deformity! Alaskan bloggers have brought this Palin family sham to light. Ear, Nose & Throat specialists are on record , but a condition called “malformation of the helix” which the Trig we all know DOES NOT EXHIBIT — in fact, he has two perfectly shaped round ears. This raises a few questions (1) what became of the baby w/the malformed ear? (2) who is the mother of the Trig we’ve all seen? (3) Since Palin can’t be the mother of both Trigs, who’s SarahPac going to pay to “spin” this away? Finally, why haven’t you heard a whisper about this from MSM? Now do you see why there’s such secrecy surrounding Team Palin team? As I’ve shown in every prior post detailing Palin antics — the entire narrative surrounding this MK’d human robot is a complete LIE!
Tale of Two Babies
The Perfidy of Sarah L. Palin (VIDEO)
Previous posts on this blog establish that Sarah L. Heath-Palin is a fully-functional MK-Ultra Monarch Prog’md Mind Controlled Slave w/Beta-Sex (Kitten) Alters, displaying DID (formerly MPD) under strict control of Military-Industrial-Apparatus — following is a brief analysis of the power structure that created her…
State of Alaska Power Structure
Bloodline Dynasties: Rothschild & Rockefeller
Revenue: functions as a “welfare state” receives more federal dollars than any other state in U.S. funded by Big Oil, British Petroleum (BP) of Rothschild Dynasty — earth’s primary money lords via centuries of global looting schemes, and control of B.I.S.(Bank for Intl. Settlements) I.M.F. (Intl. Monetary Fund) World Bank & Central Banks of ea. nation ( Bank of England, Federal Reserve etc) Exxon-Mobil / Conoco of Rothschild agents Rockefeller Syndicate — headed by family patriarch, heir to Standard Oil fortune David Rockefeller, Sr. — controls J.P.Morgan/Chase, Bilderberg member, Co-founder w/Zbig Brzezinski of Trilateral Cmmsn, Council On Foreign Relations (CFR) member (American branch of Royal Institute of Intl. Affairs (RIIA), Council of 300 member and many other globalist councils. This Alaskan MK’d Kitten is well funded, connected, protected and marketed by Global Mgt. Team banksters, as a “controlled military asset ”…
Does any critically thinking person believe Sarah, Todd and their high school cronies outwitted these centuries-old geopolitical forces?
H.A.A.R.P. located at 11-3 Glenn Highway-Tok Cutoff, Gakona, AK 99586 (907) 822-3667— take a peek, copy/paste into Google Earth, give em’ a call, ask about this mysterious weapon hidden in nations remotest state — I’m sure they’ll be forthcoming regarding it’s purpose…
Missile Defense Systems: http://arcticcircle.uconn.edu/SEEJ/NMD/alaska/greely/index.htm
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PALIN Media Team: News Corp ; http://www.cjr.org/resources/index.php?c=viacom ; owned/controlled by Rothschild/Rockefeller’s fellowBilderberger Rupert Murdoch. NewsCorp properties incl. FOX News (Roger Ailes, CEO), Harper Collins (publisher of “Going Rogue”) Wall St. Journal, NY Post, Weekly Standard (rag of Bill Kristol; Palin’s on-air pimp) Rupert Murdoch promoted (33) state bus/private jet tour, amplifying Palin’s presence one hundred fold, while SarahPac, funded w/loot from deluded supporters picked up misc. expenses i.e. shrink wrap bus, nannies, assistants, handlers. NewsCorp works in tandem w/other global mgt. team media orgs, through Murdoch’s membership in Bilderberg group — see “Alaskan MK Kitten Controlled Asset”
Media Controlled by Six Corporations (combined revenues $312B as of 2009) General Electric (GE), Disney, News Corp., TimeWarner, Viacom and CBS — just (6) men, each members of Global Management Team. Media (so-called left and right) functions as”official mouthpiece” of Global Mgt. Team — dominated by (6) corporations via mega-mergers/acquisitions w/ concentrated control over what we see, hear and read, from cradle to grave! These giant companies are vertically integrated, controlling everything from initial production to final distribution — ” SPEAKING AS ONE VOICE” …
“A Star Is Born!”
All alphabet media unanimously declared that exact phrase, w/ all the “fracturing” or “splintering” of media w/in the last decade, how is that possible? Could it be that notwithstanding the multiplicity of platforms (network, cable, YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter etc.) all news orgs get their “scripts” from the same source — “newswires” Reuters and Associated Press (AP) Who owns them? Rothschild Dynasty, for over 200yrs ! Google “sarah palin a star is born” and “speaking w/one voice” from their approved scripts – Goebbels would be proud! Palin’s main ” on-air pimp” Bill Kristol of Weekly Standard, of News Corp, of Rupert Murdoch — “How were all those trips to Alaska to sample Sarah’s MK’d Beta-Moose Pie?Many editors of conservative rags took Alaskan Cruises to sample Sarah’s MK-d Beta “skills” , but of course you won’t hear that on FOX — home of the Murdoch/Ailes MK’d blonde, anchor-bots. see prototype — GHWB’s MK’d Kitten, CNN’s Robin Meade
FOX News/Ailes/Rove under orders from Kissinger-Murdoch are grooming ole Henry’s MK’d Tea Party Queen to assume her role as modern day Esther in a type of Palinized theocracy, w/deluded supporters (willing to camp out in mall parking lots, in the rain, cold and snow, for 20sec of face time) worshiping their phony populist heroine…
The media functions as a carnival — codified tablets of stone are handed down from Rothschild through Reuters/AP to these whores who would sell their own mothers for a bigger contract! I’d rather be in the mob outright! In acting class, everyone is reading the same script…how do you stand out? Give a better “performance”… what do you think the awards are for, certainly not journalism…
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Now that we’re finished with the appetizer, set the salad aside, let’s move on to the entrée and get into something we can really chew on — enough of that lettuce…
MK-Ultra Monarch Prog’mg: Wizard of Oz-Disney Themes
Palin Front Alters (mind files)— model/actress, beauty queen, outdoors woman, news/sports anchor, politician, evangelical Pentecostal Christian. Palin’s “alter” (mind file) as perpetual “home coming queen” is quite obvious – she’s frozen psychologically at preteen level, s ocially immature w/ “mean-girl persona” — reflexively childish. What Sarah wants, Sarah gets; if she wants something, it matters not if she’s qualified — I deserve it, because I want it! Please don’t’ think Palin is the only MK masquerading on the political stage. MK’s can have hundreds or thousands of alters (files) prog’md into their systems — more on Palin MK Prog’mg re-enforcement see “Palin, Beck, Fox News & Statue of Liberty”
http://www.vogue.com/magazine/article/sarah-palin-altered-state/
MARIONETTE (DOLL) Prog’mg as “Caribou Barbie” complete w/fantasy narrative provided by MSM, acting in concert w/Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp (esp. FOX News) burned image of Palin as “Caribou Barbie” into minds of electorate. Palin’s “DOLL-I-FICATION” was enhanced by Lisa A. Kline and directed by Henry Kissinger Op Gahl Hodges-Burt, who selected wardrobe (costumes) to re-enforce Palin’s “Marionette” (DOLL) Prog’mg. Gahl’s hubby (former U.S. Amb. to Germany 85-89) is Sr. Partner at Kissinger Assoc., Inc., 350 Park Ave, NY — Sarah L. Palin is an optical illusion, it’s all tricks, gimmicks and fabrications, skillfully executed behind the scenes. see “Kissinger, Palin, Mengele Pt.1 and Pt. 2
WIZARD of OZ (Dorothy) Prog’mg w/ Disney Themes: grand intro Dayton, Ohio wearing trademark Oz-Dorothy “ruby red slippers” w/Occult red/black combo, heavy media emphasis on sexy shoes, making sure members of Global Mgt. Team get the signal, this is our girl — see MK-Ultra Program Guide
Monarch Prog’mg Script: Intro Speech Dayton, Ohio
“Hillary put 18 million c-r-a-c-k-s (super-high pitched intonation) in highest, hardest glass ceiling in America, and we can shatter that glass ceiling once and for all!”
Three blatant coded references to Mind Kontrolle trauma/torture techniques that cause “mind fracturing” or “compartmentalization” or “splitting” which creates ALTERS (mind files) which is the foundation or core purpose of Monarch Prog’mg – to create DID (MPD) slaves! — alters (mind files) are used by Global Mgt. Team to serve their needs, this is what she’s referencing in one sentence! Palin minced onto “mirrored flooring“ at RNC convention 2008. MK’s are constantly surrounded w/imagery that re-enforces prog’mg; begin taking note of stage/set design to see how MK prog’mg is built (layered in) Palin lives on a frozen lake w/”Caribou Barbie” moniker, which re-enforces “Marionette” (doll) Prog’mg. These are all very recognizable code words/signs for Global Mgt. Team, who enjoy watching her prog’mg re-enforcement, like her appearance on SNL. The entire Tina Fey/Palin parody was a masterful display of “duality” or “mirroring”…a crucial component of MK prog’mg, w/ MSM as willing accomplices, suffering from collective vision impairment — how many times did we hear “I can’t tell them apart“- – this dramatically increased Palin’s exposure, while implanting images demonstrating her lack of intellectual capacity. Todd Palin (suitcase pimp) plays significant role in prog’mg/handling his MK’d wife and daughters, and heclearly enjoys using “his team” (agents) to run circles around Palin — see “Alaskan Kitten Gets Spun on SNL & Finish Line “Kiss-N-Diss…
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BETA Sexual (KITTEN) Prog’mg
These “ALTERS” (mind files) which remove ALL natural (moral) inhibitions and are called “cat” or “kitten” alters (files) which turn MK’s into fully functioning robots (pornstars) for the elites private use and underground black market porn business!
“ANYTHING, ANYTIME, ANYWHERE, w/ANYONE”
…who has access codes “triggers” to unlock areas of the brain (mind files) MK’s provide “talent” for Global Mgt. Team’s lucrative underground porn market, where children are preferred — we’re not talking garden variety porn folks, this is rough stuff (bestiality, necrophilia, kiddie porn, snuff films etc.) The average porn star would marvel at the sex acts MK’s perform in their “dissociative state. MK’s are trained from birth in sexual acts, training intensifys in teen years at “Charm Schools” throughout the country, where power elites get to sample the goodies… These alters are “layered in” deep within subconscious, and are the most powerful, constantly reinforced alters enjoyed by Global Mgt. Team players — see Kissinger, Palin, Mengele Pt. 1 & Pt. 2
During the very public fight between Dave Letterman and the Palin’s, it was stated that MK’d daughter Willow was at Yankee game…really? she doesn’t appear in any of the media photos or sat-ell images –where was she? According to MK’d survivor Brice Taylor, MK’s are regularly used during 7th inning stretches, halftimes and end of game orgies at college / pro level games, w/coaches directing the action, as incentives for players (children are regular participants) see MK Ultra Source Docs
MK’s always have many “black-out” periods or unexplained absences eg. Palin’s over 300 days (paid per diem) of a 2yr term! The disappearance for facial re-construction while “Going Rogue” was ghostwritten, and of course scheduled visits to update prog’mg (re-alignment) at select secure military bases in AK, along w/tightly controlled, equally traumatized MK’d daughters, displaying classic signs of dissociative behavior. Notice Palin is NEVER w/out (2) Blackberries, in Occult-MK base colors — black & red, for receiving commands from her prog’mr/handlers. Sarah plays traditional role in multi-generational MK family as “Mommy the presenter”…and tragically fathers (or male guardians) are ALWAYS first to inflict trauma via ritual rape/torture, causing “trauma- bonding” where the victim loves the abuser…
(above) Piper Palin, a minor (7-yrs) in four inch stilettos (not Mommy’s) being sexualized on national television — What does this say about the Momma Grizzly and Todd? Sarah’s MK Prog’mg explains her erratic, dissociative, almost schizophrenic behavior — clearly she has DID (formerly MPD) — which is sole purpose and foundation of Monarch Prog’mg! This also provides Prog’mrs/Handlers w/ convenient excuses when program’mg goes haywire e.g. Britney Spears…” oh she freaked out” The reader should be aware that MK’s have “photographic memories”…how else could they be uploaded w/coded intel? MK’s record everything they experience during performances, missions, private sessions in minute detail, then memory files are downloaded, analyzed by masters/handlers – don’t be fooled by Palin’s “aw shucks” routine, she performs exactly according to her prog’mg, if they wanted her to appear more intelligent, she would! — the same as an actress playing the “dumb blonde” role…is the actress stupid? No, that’s what “the script” calls for. A masterstroke of marketing (social alchemy) by fascist trinity of Murdoch/Ailes & Rove, using FOX network (home of the MK’d anchor-bots) to glamorize Alaskan MK’d Kitten, and mesmerize deluded fans who paid for Caribou Barbie’s new DreamCastle (w/in-home FOX studio) on Lake Lucille.
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MK Occultic Base Colors : Palin’s wardrobe (costumes) favor Occultic combos red/black and black/white, these color combos have been ingrained in the culture, and while quite attractive, have very distinct occult significance for MK’d subjects of SRA (Satanic Ritual Abuse), for identity, reinforcing trauma and power sources. These are occult power colors and were specifically selected by Kissinger Op Gahl Hodges Burt , sending signal to other occultists that Sarah is on their team.
Is everyone who wears black/red or white /black combos an occultist? Of course not, but for those who are, these are easily identifiable signs. It’s all about the combination of occult-Masonic motifs, and other signs layered in. There’s not one practicing occultist in the world who doesn’t recognize what team Palin’s playing for…
Masonic Coding/ Numerology & MK Prog’mg Re-enforcement : most are unfamiliar w/this topic and I realize this seems obscure, but it’s crucial to identify/decode players in the grips of Monarch Mind Control. Palin is multi-generational “bloodline” MK so events in her life her marked w/occult-Masonic symbolism. In Masonry the number “eleven” (and multiples thereof ) are powerful occult signs: Palin birthdate of 2-11-64 ; was (11th) governor; (44) yrs old debuted on natl. stage; high school jersey (22) ; Todd current snowmobile no. (22); contestant no. (8) Miss Wasilla Pageant; Todd’s snowmobile during Palin pageant days no. (8) Basic Masonic Numerology
Number Eight (8) for Palin & Army of MK’s Reinforces Marionette (DOLL) Prog’mg (GRAPHIC!)
fr: The Illuminati Formula Used To Create An Undetectable Total Mind Controlled Slave The child literally becomes a Marionette. An “alter system” is created as a child is physically shown that they are a marionette puppet. Their muscles are electro-shocked in such a way as to take advantage of the natural reflexes. When electro-shocked those ways, the victim’s body parts jerk out of our control at the whim of the programmer to prove to the victim that they are a puppet. At this time, the rules are given and rule number (8) is that the alters are their puppet . Illuminati programmer Dr. [Joseph] Mengele [Dr.Green] used puppets in a dollhouse as he programmed. He did skits with his puppets. “Dance Marionette dance,” he’d say in his thick German accent…you are puppets on a string. “ Dance Marionette dance. You are to speak only those words told to you, and to only speak those words when your string is pulled…”
This is triple re-enforcement via physical torture using electroshock, w/repetitive verbal commands, and visual reinforcement (seeing a puppet show when the mind is at is most pliant) — since this is a “FORMULA” THAT NEVER CHANGES, it helps us understand why the behavioral patterns are so similar between MK’s; there will ALWAYS be a history of early childhood molestation, usually some military connection, and Disney overlays! see MK-Ultra Prog Guide
“FORMULA” THAT NEVER CHANGES,
Palin is a frequent Baphomet (devil horn) flasher, there is also the constant Occult-Masonic “left-eye” winking–these are strong occult signs w/references to “all-seeing-eye” of Masonry. Palin constantly flashes Masonic “hand signs”…mostly “steeple” and “pyramid.” Palin’s wave is very unique, she “flashes” double Baphomet signs by folding down three fingers, leaving index and thumbs extended….
The lives of “bloodline” or “hierarchical” MK’s are planned from BEFORE their birth (some are traumatized in-utero) using occult calendars. Nothing in Palin’s life has been accidental, nor is she in any way “average” — this awareness is the source of her uncanny confidence. Palin is well aware of her “bloodline” status and purpose w/in Global Mgt. Team…
Palin and other members of Satanic Global Mgt. Team Flash Baphomet Sign— Mama was right…”birds of feather, flock together”…”show me your friends, and I’ll tell you about yourself”…
see @ (1:53) videographer Rhett Nielson of ANSI (CIA-asset) push in to capture Palin flashing double Baphomet (devil horn) Sign. Too bad we don’t have reverse angle, so we can see which of Palin’s handlers signaled her…Notice: when Rhett “pushes in”…Sarah’s not even at the podium!
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ASSETS:
Sarah Palin Legal Defense Fund — formerly Alaska Fund Trust (AFT) phony legal defense fund, run by childhood friend Kristan Cole. Here’s greed for you — during worst recession since the Great Depression, Palin grifting team was passing the “tin cup” while building a “chateau” on the plot next to their already huge home, that allegedly Todd and few of his buddies built” using his “magic hammer” — see — see Palin Family Piggy Banks
SarahPac unusually top-heavy in admin/consulting fees
SarahPac Disbursements: after hauling Trig around like a Neiman Marcus handbag, they could only manage a paltry $1,000 for Down syndrome charity…
News Corp (Harper Collins): “Going Rouge” $7M(est.) – ghostwritten drivel, casting Palin as wounded warrior, maligned by McCain staffers, increasing emotional bond w/deluded supporters…
FOX News Analyst/Contributor (reportedly $1M)
PieSky LLC (Services for Elderly & Disabled) filing docs faxed fr: “Rebound Sports & Orthopedic Physical Therapy, LLC; owned by Eric Steenburgh, Meg Stapelton’s husband slick way to funnel money to Meg while she remains out of public eye…
BSMP LLC – fresh out of high school, 19yr old Bristol Sheeran Marie Palin’s PR/lobbying firm “keep it in the family” obvious way to funnel donated funds from SarahPac to Bristol’s company…
Washington Speakers Bureau (WSB) $100K speaking fees; contract incl. Lear Jet 60 (or larger), SUV’s , luxury hotel suite plus 2 single rooms, and of course the infamous “bendy straws” for recitation of stale GOP talking points, pseudo-evangelical emotional triggers, and palm reading. The Sarah Palin “phenomenon” represents an unbroken chain between Military Industrial Complex, Unified Intel Agencies, Hollywood and Political realm, and has excellent return on investment — OPM “other people’s money” –see Palin financial team are masters at spending–see Palin Family Piggy Banks
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MK’d Britney Shout Out To MK’d Sarah
“All Eyes On Me In The Center of The Ring Just Like A Circus”
Why are the colors separated in song title? There are at least (5) layers of Monarch Prog’mg going on, see if you can figure them out — leave a comment …
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other Palin posts on this blog…
Kissinger, Palin, Mengele: How Deep Does The Rabbit Hole Go? Pt. 2 (expose on Palin, her master/controller HK and sadistic Nazi mind science wacko Joseph Mengele)
Jesse Jackson & Sarah Palin Hook Up @ Clinton Global Initiative Kissinger’s latest MK’d Sex Slave/Human Laptop making rounds in NY during “planned” economic collapse as Sheraton Hotel, New York
Alaskan Kitty Gets Spun on SNL & Finish Line “Kiss-N-Diss” analysis of MK trauma re-enforcement on Saturday Night Live (SNL) + Todd Palin (0.43 sec) Operational Tradecraft video getting very personal w/another woman…
Palin Family Piggybanks: Portrait of American Grifters Gone Hollywood analysis of team Palin financial assets (schemes)
Palin/Obama 2012: More Oz-Disney MK Mass Hypnosis see how GMT stage manages both these “controlled military assets” using them to prop up the phony left/right political paradigm
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PDF versions of MK-Ultra Monarch Program Survivors (Victims)
Illuminati Formula Used To Create An Undetectable Total Illuminati Mind Controlled Slave Vol. 2 — Cisco Wheeler (survivor) & Fritz Springmeier (now jailed on false charges) exhaustive treatise on horrors of NSA-CIA protected/Nazi inspired MK-Ultra Monarch Prog
Deeper Insights into the Illuminati Formula – Cisco Wheeler & Fritz Springmeier
Tranceformation of America – Cathy O’Brien & Mark Phillips (de-programmer)
Thanks For The Memories – (COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL) Brice Taylor, MK-Ultra Monarch Survivor (victim) for over 30yrs she was Heinz (Henry) Kissinger’s personal MK’d Sex-Slave & Personal Laptop used for prostitution, blackmail, courier of coded Intel, drug mule. As such she establishes a “modus operandi” and helps us to track Palin’s activities — Sarah L. Palin is Kissinger’s state-of-the-art Brice Taylor written in narrative form, she paints picture connecting dots between top-level players in Hollywood, Music Industry, Sports, Banking-Corp, Behavioral Sciences Industry, Military-Industrial-Apparatus, Political Realm, Religious leaders & Occult world engaging in abominable acts involving children for the sole purpose of creating DID (formerly MPD) human robots for elites…
WARNING! Brice’s account of our leaders off -camera behavior is sexually graphic, shocking and revolting. I’m ex-military, well traveled and thought I’d been desensitized — at times I could barely get through a page! this material is NOT for children, a nd should be treated accordingly…
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Mind Control is how Global Mgt. Team has been “herding” us into One World Rulership! STOP focusing on nonsense, I urge you to research this diabolical program kept secret under the banner of “National Security”
Moderator experience: Financial Controller; Mutual Funds/Insurance Sales; Corporate Law (SEC filings); also worked in Television News ; U.S. Army Retired
Thank You For Visiting & May His Countenance Always Shine Upon Thee…
Be Well & Stay Vigilant |
The longest ongoing rivalry in Saints history’s next match up might be determined by the team’s newest personnel and tactics on defense. While both the Saints (against the Bears) and the Steelers (against the Falcons) faced weakened receiver corps their strategy to negate their opponents effectiveness came from the ability to pressure the quarterback and force errant throws.
For the Saints, there has been a lack of identity all season. Last year the Saints were applauded for their use of the 3-safety set known as the 4-2-5 (Heavy Nickel). This year due to injuries, poor play and even supposed issues in defensive leadership the team has bounced around from scheme to scheme trying to find something that worked. We’ve seen instances where the Saints would open up in a 4-3 Under, and then immediately switch to a 3-4 with a full personnel change because Rob Ryan was having a difficult time fitting together pieces that simply didn’t mesh.
Oct 26, 2014; New Orleans, LA, USA; New Orleans Saints defensive coordinator Rob Ryan celebrates following a win over the Green Bay Packers in a game at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome. The Saints defeated Packers 44-23. Mandatory Credit: Derick E. Hingle-USA TODAY Sports
With the exception of the Carolina game in which the offense turned the ball over twice in the first three offensive plays, which in turn helped the Panthers go up 17-0 in the first quarter, the defensive has improved in recent weeks compared to earlier outings.
While the Chicago Bears are out of the playoff hunt they still presented the Saints with a challenge by having talent in both the backfield and the receiving unit. Two weeks before the Saints defense held strong against the Ben Roethlisberger led Steelers to help the Saints get a much needed road win.
How is all of this relevant for the Falcons? Recent additions and adjustments in the defensive secondary, as well as alterations in playcalling, might have finally found the winning formula the team has been looking for all season. For the first time in a long time last Monday the Saints stayed predominately in a 3-4 alignment. Kenny Vaccaro spent a majority of his time in the slot seeing 44 of the defenses 63 snaps. Pierre Warren (Free Safety) and Terrence Frederick (Cornerback) were the only Saints players to see every snap.
For the first time since last season the team was also able to generate heavy amounts of pressure by rushing only four as well as with the blitz. This left the Bears confused and unable to predict what was coming throughout the game. Let’s take a look at some of the fronts and alignments the Saints showed against Chicago. This is the first offensive play of the game for the Bears. The Saints come out prepare to stop the run by stacking the box.
Via NFL Rewind Via NFL Rewind
In this defense the Saints bring in Ramon Humber, David Hawthorne, Curtis Lofton and Parys Haralson as the line-backing unit. These four are all predominately run-stopping linebackers. Rob Ryan brings Jamarca Sanford down from his safety position to cover the weak side. There are simply too many defenders for the Bears to block and the play results in a short 2 yard gain.
Before a string of dramatic defeats at home, stopping the run was one of the few strong points of this defense this year. Blow-outs have a tendency to hurt your statistical standings. Forcing the Bears into distance situations helped the pass defense and allowed them to make more plays on the ball.
The next play is the Saints first time against the pass. They are going to show pressure up front, like they did against the run, but fall back into a basic Cover 2 zone defense while rushing four. Parys Haralson puts pressure on Jay Cutler leading to an errant throw.
Via NFL Rewind Via NFL Rewind
While the Saints were effective in both zone and man coverage schemes during the Bears game, it was the pass rush that allowed both of those coverages to have success. Pierre Warren‘s 2nd interception comes when Keenan Lewis has man coverage and Warren is able to come over the top to make the big play. Lets take a look at one more play and then we’ll venture down to Atlanta to see how the Steelers were about to force Matt Ryan into making mistakes that cost them the game.
Via NFL Rewind
This would become the theme for the entire night. New Orleans consistently brought both pressure and solid coverage to force the Bears into making mistakes. This is the kind of defense the Saints will need returning home to the Superdome if they plan to defeat their division rivals. The Steelers forced the Falcons into similar mistakes, though not as many, last Sunday.
Via NFL Rewind
Here the Falcons are running a designed play that will clear out the middle of the field to allow Harry Douglas an opportunity to make a catch in what should be an open zone. Pittsburgh is going to bring pressure from Matt Ryan‘s left side which forces the pass to come out quicker than he wants, and he misses his receiver. Like Cutler, Ryan can force throws when under pressure as seen here.
Via NFL Rewind Via NFL Rewind
Matt Ryan did not have a bad game against the Steelers. He finished 26/37 for 310 yards, 2TDs and 1 INT. The Steelers weren’t able to dominate the Falcons, but they did just enough to force Ryan into mistakes. Lets look at another play where the Steelers brought interior pressure and forced Ryan’s lone interception.
Via NFL Rewind Via NFL Rewind
William Gay is able to jump the route and return the interception for a touchdown. This proved to be a critical error and a momentum swing in the game that the Falcons were unable to recover from. Like Drew Brees, Matt Ryan is a quarterback who is almost impossible to completely stop. However, all the Saints need to do is limit his ability to create big plays. Forcing incompletions in key situations is equivalent to a turnover in these type of games.
After forcing 7 sacks against the Bears the Saints defense will look to repeat their performance against their nemesis. Cameron Jordan had 4 quarterback hurries Monday Night while Junior Galette managed to collect two sacks while on limited duty. David Hawthorne had the best night rushing the passer of his career while John Jenkins and Akiem Hicks both showed up in the interior pass rush.
It will be up to the defensive line and linebackers to get enough pressure on Matt Ryan to force him into mistakes that will then allow other players to capitalize. With all of the Falcons receivers expected to play the Saints should have their hands full this Sunday. Lucky for them, their new “no-name defense” might be just what they needed all along. Beating the Falcons should prove to be a tougher task than the weakened Bears were, but there is reason for optimism.
I encourage you to follow and interact with me via social media, and for that simply visit my bio. As always, I welcome your comments, critiques and all around banter. God bless, and Who Dat! |
By
In this short but dense episode of the Design a Game podcast, we talk with musician and developer Stefano Cecere @krur about audio in Unity. Listen carefully because if you are beginning to use audio in games here you can quickly get several hints. Here is the podcast:
Unity Audio: concepts and plugins–DAG pod 15
Stefano also presented his ambitious plan for a Unity audio plugin called Sinfonico that will include audio synthetizing capabilities, fine grained audio component classification and support algorithmically generated soundtracks. He actually already created the GitHub bucket – so we’ll keep an eye on him and try to make him release first drafts as soon as possible. A first instance of the plugin will be used for the audio and musical experiences of the game Genio.
Here are some of the links mentioned in the podcast:
You can subscribe to the Design a Game podcast on iTunes, simply search for “Design a Game” in the podcast app. |
Grover Norquist: A Tax Pledge Is Forever
Quote: “When you got married did your wife understand there was an expiration date on that promise? When you borrowed money to buy your house did you say, ‘Oh geez. That mortgage? That was 10 years ago. You’re still asking me for money?’ You make a commitment, you make a commitment,” says Norquist.
Grover, honey, give me my keys. It’s over. This isn’t easy for me, either, but times have changed. We’ve changed. Sure, you and your friends helped get me elected and I’ll always appreciate that. And, sure, we had a LOT of good times. The barbecues, the Tea Parties, the Fox and Friends appearances. And I know I made a “pledge” not to entertain the notion of raising taxes, but I took an OATH to the American people and the Constitution, and I’m afraid an OATH is a bigger deal than your two-bit pledge. I mean, I “pledged” allegiance to the Bay City Rollers in 1978 to “be a BCR fan for life.” But, you know, we grow up.
Oh. So now the pouting. And don’t go back upstairs with that, Grover, I need to load it. Grover? Fine. Keep it.
Look, Grover. The national debt is so big and growing so fast one would need to DROP ACID to expand one’s mind enough to even begin to ponder it. The deficit is, well, HUGE. Nobody wants to cut anything. Nobody seems to want to close any bases anywhere or stop building aircraft carriers–of which we already have, like, 15 times as many as the next “competitor” nation…I mean, who are we fighting? Martians?And the wars, Grover. The goddamn wars.
And then the programs. Shit, we’ve got so many “entitlements” that have become expected parts of American life that if we ever cut enough of them or cut them enough to make a difference (which, mathematically, is impossible), there would be rioting and civil unrest. Oh. Right. There’s the face of the angry prick I know and love. You wouldn’t give a fuck, would you, you impotent closet queer?
Grover, I’m sorry. Don’t cry. That wasn’t fair. That wasn’t fair. It happens. I know it does. Don’t cry. Grover…no.
Grover. We are going to have to raise taxes to avoid this country being irreparably financially ruined for all time. Don’t you see? This is like an ATOMIC TIME BOMB ticking in our economy. We’re BORROWING money and spending it with absolutely no plan to repay it and no kind of real credit other than the fact that we are the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. And that just won’t be good enough much longer. We don’t PRODUCE, Grover, mostly because of tax-dodging idiots like you doing business overseas to avoid paying taxes!
We need to close the loopholes, cut the spending AND increase revenue. Billionaires have had a good run. What is it now? Almost 35 years? They’ll be fine.
Oh. So you’re going to “ruin me”? Real mature. I’ll just come running back now, won’t I? Pathetic. Oh. Attack ads? Really? Well, maybe my principles just kicked in, Grover, and I don’t care that much about hanging around in D.C. anymore. How much blow can I snort, anyway? Go ahead. Throw your tantrum and elect some asshole you can agree with. I don’t care. I’m leaving. Here. Take your ring. I signed up to be a REPUBLICAN, not a slave. Goodbye, Grover. And good luck.
Now get off my hood. |
On Saturday, June 27, 2015, I attended a fascinating Orthodox Women’s Conference held at the historic ROCOR Church of the Intercession of the Holy Virgin & St Sergius in Glen Cove, New York. Here are some pictures I took of the beautiful, small chapel.
The conference theme was “Living and Thinking Orthodoxy Yesterday and Today”. Dr. Nadieszda Kizenko, Associate Professor of History at SUNY Albany, moderated the discussions. It was a great joy to see my spiritual father Metropolitan Jonah, who spoke on the theme of “Sharing Orthodoxy with Teenagers”, as well as my godmother, who both came up from Washington, DC along with a dear friend Sister Eisodia. Several wonderful parishioners from St John the Baptist ROCOR Cathedral in DC were also present for the event, which was attended by probably 70 people, mostly laity. The very kind Fr. Demetrius Nicoloudakis and his daughter Anastasia visited from Pennsylvania, and it was a great joy to meet them. Metropolitan Jonah spoke first, and then sat through the second presentation before returning to DC with my godmother so that they could attend Vigil at St John’s for his name’s day the following day.
Dr Valerie Karras, Adjunct Lecturer in New Testament at Eden Theological Seminary and board member at the St Phoebe Center for the History of the Deaconess, spoke on “The Liturgical Roles of Women in the Early and Byzantine Church”. This presentation was especially fascinating, as she covered a topic of great interest to me, the institution of the female diaconate which existed from the apostolic age up to the twelfth century in Constantinople. Following this second lecture, a delicious lunch was served by the volunteers. After lunch, Sr. Dr. Vassa Larin, whose sister Natasha Fekula organized the conference, spoke on the question of “Does Tradition Change?”. Sister Vassa, Research Fellow at the Institute of Historical Studies at the University of Vienna, is the popular host of the YouTube channel “Coffee with Sister Vassa”. Following this fascinating lecture, Professor Kizenko moderated a series of question-and-answer with the audience. At the end of the conference, I asked Dr. Karras if she had time for a brief interview. She warmly responded ‘yes’, so below, please read for yourself the results of our interview.
Ryan Hunter: I’m with Dr Valerie Karras who just presented at the Orthodox Women’s Conference here in Glen Cove, New York on June 27, 2015. Dr Karras, where did you pursue your Master’s and your PhD?
Valerie Karras: I received my Master’s in Theological Studies from Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology which is the official seminary of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese. It’s located in Brookline, which is a suburb of Boston, Massachusetts. I then went to The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC and did all of my doctoral work there. I then went to Greece to start working on my dissertation, but I also enrolled in the doctoral program at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. I actually ended up finishing that doctorate, doing that dissertation, and completing that first. I then came back to the States and began teaching and finally finished my dissertation for Catholic University.
Ryan Hunter: What led you to become interested in the subject of the female diaconate in the early Church?
Valerie Karras: I had done some research on it and read about it during my Master’s, and some more during my doctoral work at Catholic University but actually it was really after I did my doctorate at Thessaloniki [that I became interested], because the topic of my doctoral dissertation at Thessaloniki was on patristic views of gender, the ontology of gender, looking at their exegeses, their interpretations of the creation accounts in Genesis. Initially I was planning on that to be the first chapter of a much larger work on Orthodox women, on women in the Orthodox Church, but there was so much there that that became my dissertation. So after I finished that and came back to the United States, I decided to just ditch all the research I had done before then for my initial topic, for my Catholic University dissertation, which was on monastic influence in the post-iconoclastic period, and instead I decided to look at what women were actually doing liturgically in the Byzantine Church.
Ryan Hunter: Who do you regard as some of your mentors, and how did they contribute to this field of study?
Valerie Karras: There are so many along the way. My parish priest actually, Father George Nikozises, who had been director of religious education before he came to our parish, suggested I go to the [Holy Cross Greek Orthodox] seminary. I had been planning on law school. Then I decided that I actually wanted to work with the Church, but what I was initially thinking of was doing administrative work dealing with our church choirs, I was very involved in the music of the Church. He said to me, “I think you need a stronger theological background”, so he suggested I go up there [to Brookline] to get my Master’s. I enrolled in the MTS [Master’s in Theological Studies] rather than the MA in Church Service because I was already doing the fieldwork so to speak, I was very involved with the National Forum of Greek Orthodox Church Musicians and the Diocesan Choir Federation, so I thought “I’ll just take as many theological classes as I can”, and then I fell in love with it, I just wanted to do Church history and theology.
At the seminary I had several professors who were supportive, in particular Father Ted Stylianopoulos and Archbishop Demetrios (Trakatellis), who at the time was Bishop Demetrios. Father Ted is the one in fact who suggested that I apply to Catholic University, I had not even heard of it. It was a perfect program for me, for what I wanted to do, and also where it was located in DC, because Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Library and Research Center is right there. Bishop Demetrios (at that time)– because I was debating about whether to switch to the MDiv program, which was a three year program– said to me, “You’re going on for a doctorate, you don’t need to do that.” One of his classmates was Elaine Pagels, now a professor at Princeton, and he said “She came right out of her undergraduate work. Just go on and do the doctoral program.” So I did. The other women who were at the seminary when I was there were important. Koula Fitzgerald, who had already graduated when I started as a student there, kind of mentored us together, and shared some of this material with us. Then over in Greece my dissertation chairman was very supportive even when I was doing stuff that he didn’t necessarily agree with, coming to conclusions, but he actually found one for me. At one point I had found all of this material from almost every Church Father I was looking at on how they don’t think that there will still be male and female, that the distinction literally will not exist in humanity in the eschaton, and we will no longer exist as male and female, as men and women. I found that in everybody except for Chrysostom, and he [my dissertation chairman] said to me “Oh no, Chrysostom has it too,go and look at his homilies on Matthew” where he deals with the Sadducees asking Jesus about what I like to call ‘one bride for seven brothers’, a take off of the musical. Sure enough, Chrysostom doesn’t say it in so many words, but there’s no other way to understand it, he says “notice that Christ does not say that they shall be like the angels insofar as they do not marry, but rather that they shall not marry because they shall be like the angels”. Well, the angels are sexless, genderless beings.
Zizioulas was really the most important one [at Thessaloniki], Metropolitan John of Pergamon, particularly when I first got there [Thessaloniki] because he was the only one of the three on my committee who spoke English. I spoke French with Fondoulis, who was the Liturgics professor there, for about two years until my Greek got good enough that I could carry on a conversation.
Ryan Hunter: Metropolitan John Zizioulas, the same one who the Ecumenical Patriarch just sent to comment on Pope Francis’ latest encyclical, Laudato Si, on the environment?
Valerie Karras: Yes, and he’s the one who’s also in charge of putting together the agenda for this Great and Holy Synod, the Council that’s going to be held. He’s probably the Constantinopolitan Patriarchate’s most important ecumenical officer. Metropolitan Kallistos (Ware) last night [at Fordham University] said that he [Zizioulas] is the most important and best Orthodox theologian in the world today. I was really excited that Zizioulas was willing to work with me, and it’s funny because when I first met with him about this topic, I said that what I was expecting to find was that the Fathers were products of their time, that there would be some sexism, but I thought that on the theological level, this was my own feeling on the theological level, that sexual differentiation is an intrinsic part of human nature and that is somehow a reflection of the divinity, that it’s part of being created in the image of God, and Zizioulas kind of gave me this small smile, he said “I don’t think that’s what you’re going to find, but you start doing the research.” I did, and once I started doing the research, it took awhile for the Fathers to convince me, but they did and my views changed 180 degrees, so then I was like “Oh no, nobody wants to hear what I have to say because it’s going to be the ‘kill the messenger’ syndrome'”, and I have gotten a fair amount of that, people who don’t want to accept that this is really what the Fathers are saying. I’m very big on intellectual honesty, and I just put it out there, that this is what they [the Fathers] have said. You don’t have to accept it, these are all theologoumena, they’re not essential for salvation, just as you don’t have to accept the idea of women being ordained today to the diaconate, so that’s an issue that the Church needs to determine today. But you have to recognize that this is what these people said and did. Those are historical facts, you don’t get to choose your facts. What you want to do with them and how you want to understand them today in our contemporary situation is a different issue.
Ryan Hunter: Your presentation earlier highlighted the variety of consecrated and liturgical roles filled by women in the early Church. These roles gradually fell into abeyance. Do you realistically see them being restored?
Valerie Karras: Some of them have been, and it’s weird how they’ve been restored in different ways. I’ve noticed that a number of parishes at least in the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese, I’m not sure about the other jurisdictions here, they now have these young girls serving as myrrh-bearers during Holy Week. Now I would actually like to see what the Church of Jerusalem did, because it’s interesting — those [myrrh-bearers] were women [grown women who anciently filled the role of myrrh-bearer] and I think that there is still this issue…we have to deal with this crazy issue that somehow menstruation makes you impure. I think that’s why we like to see these younger girls dressed all in white, it’s all this purity idea. My response to that is going all the way back to that Didascalia Apostolorum from around AD 250 and it says “What’s the matter with you, woman, do you think that you’re without the Holy Spirit during this period? If that’s the case, you really have lost the Holy Spirit”, and then it goes on to say none of these things, and it mentions things like nocturnal emissions– these are all basic bodily functions, God has made our bodies this way, none of this is impure. I think that just takes care of it.
Ryan Hunter: So you said some of the early roles held by women have been restored...
Valerie Karras: Yes, the female diaconate in different ways. I’ll first mention a couple of the non-Chalcedonian Churches, the Armenian Church and the Coptic Church have, in different ways [restored the female diaconate]. Inthe Armenian Church starting around the seventeenth century we start seeing occasional references to deaconesses. Then it really seems to ramp up in the nineteenth century, and these female deacons in the nineteenth and twentieth century–and I don’t know whether there are any left alive now, I’m not sure what’s happened now in this modern era why they’re not doing it, but they were at least up through the middle of the twentieth century…
Ryan Hunter: Even after the Genocide?
Valerie Karras: Right, yes there were many, in fact I gave a talk at the large Armenian church in Worcester, Massachusetts when I was a professor at Hellenic College/Holy Cross, and the priest there, who had grown up in Jerusalem, he remembered a female deacon at the church or the cathedral there — I’m not sure where exactly it was, and I don’t know, now I can’t remember whether this was something that he saw regularly, or whether she just happened to be visiting — because all of their female deacons in the nineteenth and twentieth century were nuns. He remembered her serving liturgically and that she did everything that the male deacon did, served identically, and in fact in that photograph that I showed [earlier at the conference] she [the Armenian deaconess] is vested identically to the male deacon.
Ryan Hunter: Yes, she has the orarion and everything…
Valerie Karras: Yes. A friend of mine, a colleague from another institution who’s of Armenian background, her family found a photograph of a great aunt who was a nun who was apparently also an ordained deacon. It’s a photograph of her with several of the other nuns who were deacons in this monastery, they’re all wearing the orarion. They’re not vested completely, but they’re wearing the orarion. It’s just amazing. Now the Coptic Church, as far as we can tell, there’s maybe some evidence that there were female deacons in the early Church, in the Church of Egypt, but not a lot.
Ryan Hunter: After the Chalcedonian schism, or?
Valerie Karras: No, it would have been before. They [the Coptic Church] have deaconesses today, they have a lot of them. They’re not ordained as a major clerical order, they’re consecrated.
Ryan Hunter: They’re considered a minor clerical order?
Valerie Karras: I’m not even sure it’s considered clergy, I think it’s more of a tonsuring and consecration. They’re doing all the kind of typical work that you would see of deaconesses in terms of social service and religious education and that sort of thing.
Ryan Hunter: What’s astonishing about what you just pointed out, the fact that it’s the Coptic Church that has resurrected and restored this practice–arguably this is one of the Churches that has suffered more in recent years than many of the others, so in times of crisis, in times of such turmoil, they’ve restored this ancient practice. Do you think there’s anything to be said for the argument that the first world Orthodoxy, so to speak — the United States, Canada, Britain, parts of Europe–they haven’t restored this practice because they haven’t encountered the kind of persecution that makes them want to restore that aspect of what the early Church did?
Valerie Karras: Maybe, but I think that it’s in these areas where we are seeing some of the strongest push for it [the restoration of the female diaconate]. I think that it’s because the Church in general is a minority and it’s in a new place , everything is sort of being rethought. You don’t just take for granted everything, but look at Russia. On the eve of the Bolshevik Revolution at the All-Russia Council, they were talking about it [instituting female deacons]. They didn’t really know a lot about it, but there were a number of prominent people, including among the royalty and the upper hierarchy [such as St Grand Duchess Elizabeth Romanova] who were talking about the need for a female diaconate. Now this would not be a restoration because the Russian Church never had it, and yet they knew about it and they thought that it was something that would be good for the Church. Of course, we’ll never know what would have happened if not for the Bolshevik Revolution, but there was this openness overall, it was like this breath of fresh air, the Patriarchate had just been restored, it was “let’s enliven Orthodoxy, what are we doing here?”
Ryan Hunter: Your presentation earlier suggested that many of the ancient vocations open to women in the Church — consecrated widows and ordained deaconesses for instance — could and should be revived. How do you see this being accomplished?
Valerie Karras: One way would be to do what Saint Nektarios [of Aegina] did. I think people forget that it has only been about a century — it’s really been less than a century — since we had a few female deacons in the Church of Greece ordained to the diaconate according to those euchologia (εὐχολόγιa) [prayer books with the services in them from the priest’s point of view]. So we’ve got Saint Nektarios doing this, and I think that’s a really important precedent that nobody said [this was impossible] even though there was some disagreement about what we had done. Nobody said it’s not legitimate, how could you say that when we have this long history? Presumably, all he did was use the rite, the service [of ordination] that’s right there in the older εὐχολόγιa.
Ryan Hunter: Were there any efforts by other hierarchs at the time to discipline him in certain ways for ordaining the women as deacons?
Valerie Karras: I think he was getting some sort of flak, because I think that’s why he wrote the letter to the Archbishop of Athens saying “well they were really ordained more like subdeacons” [a clever defense of his having ordained them at all]. But again, what’s the function? We have different functions for subdeacons and deacons. Subdeacons do not do petitions [during the Liturgy, e.g. “In peace let us pray to the Lord”] and these women did. I think that’s amazing because they [female deacons] didn’t do petitions even during the Byzantine period. The whole reason that he [St Nektarios] had ordained these women was because this was a women’s monastery [at Aegina] on this little island and they didn’t always have a priest, and he wanted them to have a fuller prayer life, a fuller liturgical life and cycle of services, their Liturgy of the Hours which is so central to monastic life. So it made a lot of sense, and I think that’s exactly why when the Synod of the Church of Greece decided that they would look at restoring the female diaconate, they wanted to restore it starting with these women’s monasteries, [they believed] that there was a real liturgical need there. Now I think that our parishes equally need them, not so much for liturgical reasons, although that can certainly help there too, but for pastoral reasons.
Ryan Hunter: You kind of touched on this before regarding certain Russian royalty that were active in this regard, but has any of your research touched on the role of Emperor St. Nicholas II or his sister-in-law Grand Duchess Elizabeth in supporting the institution of female diaconate in pre-revolutionary Russia?
Valerie Karras: No, I’m sorry to say that I only know a couple of things that I’ve read [in this area] because my own time periods of specialization are the Early Church and the Byzantine Church, so I don’t really deal with modern Church at all.
Ryan Hunter: I asked you this earlier, but I didn’t get it recorded, so I wonder if you could perhaps touch on this again. You mentioned that most Byzantine women were not public figures, but then we have the imperial consorts, the Augustae, the Empresses, and then we have some instances such as Irene of Athens of women who actually declared themselves as βασιλεύς, they declared themselves as emperors in their own right. Is there any evidence that you’ve come across that deaconesses, who would have been serving in the Byzantine Church at the time, were present at the coronation rites of Byzantine emperors or the empresses?
Valerie Karras: I haven’t seen that. but then I also just haven’t seen the rites described in a detailed way that would say “this is all the clergy that do it”. Because of your question, I do want to kind of look back at Constantine Porphyrogenitus’ De Cerimoniis to see if he’s got anything. Now, I had mentioned about the Empress Helena — I’m sorry I can’t remember whether she was married to, I think it was Emanuel II [Manuel II Palaiologos], I’m not absolutely certain, but it was one of the Palaiologoses, but this is the Late Byzantine period. She took the Eucharist, she took communion, at the door to the altar. Now by that period we know that there were no longer ordained female deacons. There seem to have still been female deacons, women who were styled female deacons but had not actually been ordained, but this may have been used as a monastic title. We know about that coronation, that enthronement, very well because of this Russian pilgrim who writes about it in detail. But it’s unfortunately in this period after female deacons.
Ryan Hunter: It’s interesting, when you mentioned that earlier in your presentation, that this empress as late as the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century was communing at the Royal Doors, at the entrance to the sanctuary, the Beautiful Gate, because that is where empress consorts of Russia, as well empresses regnant and all male emperors before the Pauline Succession Laws changed, received communion at their coronation rites. I don’t believe this was done at any other time, but at their coronation rites, they did receive communion at the Royal Doors. The emperor and I believe the empresses as well, if they were reigning in their own right, were anointed with the holy myron or chrism at the same spot
Valerie Karras: Presumably they were following Byzantine custom.
Ryan Hunter: All of the Russian coronation rites were based off of the available Byzantine service rites and customs.
Valerie Karras: So even though we only know this about Eleni, about Empress Helena, it probably was occurring with many or even all of the other empresses as well. Pulcheria’s situation is unusual because she was essentially reigning, particularly after her brother Theodosius II died [in AD 450]. She does take Marcion as her consort, but she’s the one who’s still running the show, because when she convokes the Fourth Ecumenical Council at Chalcedon [in 451] — I remember this because of the work I was doing on monasticism — she sent out an imperial letter demanding that all the monks stay in their monasteries and not be wandering around and showing up at the Council [and disrupt the Council proceedings] because that had been an issue two years earlier with what was called the Robbers’ Council of Ephesus in 449.
Ryan Hunter: So the Empress Pulcheria herself, in her own name, wrote this letter, issuing an imperial edict?
Valerie Karras: Right.
Ryan Hunter: One other question. I personally am not afraid of this happening, I don’t see it as a threat of any kind, but as Sister Dr. Vassa Larin said earlier, the Church does not exist in a vacuum. Keeping that in mind, do you have any fear that people both within and without the Orthodox Church would mistake the restoration of the historic female diaconate as opening the door for advocates of women to the presbyterate [priesthood] and even to the episcopacy? How would you address those concerns?
Valerie Karras: Well obviously people do have that fear, and that’s why you get some really bad theology and a failure to be honest about the historical record from somebody like Father Lawrence Farley, who then admits that his concern is that if we were to restore the female diaconate then a female priesthood will be not far behind. No, I don’t accept that, because there are two major differences here. One is that where we have a long and solid history of the female diaconate, we do not have that with women ordained to either the priesthood or the episcopacy. So it’s a completely different issue on that level because it’s not a question of restoring something that historically existed, it would be a question of changing the eligibility for those two offices in our faith. So I think that’s one major difference.
The other issue is that these are two very different offices [the priesthood and the diaconate]. It really concerns me particularly when clergy don’t seem to understand the difference between the diaconate and the priesthood. Now there’s a relationship between the priesthood and the episcopacy, in fact of course one of the titles for bishop is ἀρχιερεύς, chief priest, head priest. So [in the Liturgy] the priest is acting on behalf of the bishop, that’s what the bishop signs the antimension that the priest has on the altar, so the priest is able to celebrate the Divine Liturgy, the Eucharistic Liturgy, and the other sacraments on behalf of the bishop. The only sacrament that the bishop does that the priest cannot do is the ordination of higher clergy, or of clergy generally. In the case of the deacon, the deacon is kind of a liminal position. Even though the deacon is ranked as one of the three major orders of clergy — we see that from the early Church orders, there’s clearly a distinction in the ordination rite, and certainly that’s made explicit in some of Justinian’s legislation — even though the deacon is ranked with the priest and the bishop as part of the hierosyni or priesthood in the broader sense, one of the major orders of clergy, the diaconate is still kind of a liminal office. As I mentioned before, the priest doing all these sacraments, being able to celebrate the sacraments, the deacon cannot; the deacon cannot be the celebrant, the deacon cannot baptize, the deacon cannot celebrate the Eucharist; he assists in the celebration of the Eucharist but he is not himself the celebrant.
Deacons cannot marry; in the Roman Catholic Church where the theology is that it’s really the two people getting married who marry each other, the deacon can be the one overseeing this because he’s really just the witness, but in our Church we see the priest or bishop as actually the celebrant of the marriage, and therefore it cannot be a deacon doing it. So the deacon is very different from the priest and the bishop because the deacon does not celebrate the sacraments. The word ‘deacon’ comes from διάκονος (diakonos), diakonia, the Greek word that means ‘service’. We see from the New Testament on that their primary roles were to do what we would today call social service, and they also did administrative functions — archdeacons, that sort of thing, they did a lot of the administrative functions for the Church.
The second thing that shows this difference, I think, is, strangely, the funeral rite. A deacon is buried as a layman, it’s the same rite as we use for the laypeople. They do not have the rite that is done for priests.
Ryan Hunter: Is that uniform throughout Orthodoxy?
Valerie Karras: It should be.
Ryan Hunter: Interesting. So everything that you’re saying is underlining the fact that there is this clearly articulated distinction between the order of the presbyterate, the priesthood, and the diaconate?
Valerie Karras: Right.
Ryan Hunter: So you’re not concerned that there would be some sort of push — “well, women have the diaconate now, so let’s jump to the priesthood”?
Valerie Karras: No, I don’t think it works that way. Don’t take this to mean that I don’t think that women can or should be ordained to the priesthood or the episcopacy; I’m saying that it’s a completely different subject, it is not closely related to the diaconate for the reasons I just said.
Ryan Hunter: Thank you very much for your time, and it was a very interesting interview. Thank you as well for your earlier presentation.
Valerie Karras: You’re welcome! |
Actor Sarah Michelle Gellar has a black belt in taekwondo.
Sarah Michelle Gellar (born April 14, 1977) is an American actress and producer. After being found by an agent in a local restaurant in New York City, she had a role in the made-for-TV movie An Invasion of Privacy and went on to appear in shows like Spenser: For Hire. She originated the role of Kendall Hart on the ABC daytime soap opera All My Children, winning the 1995 Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Younger Actress in a Drama Series.
Gellar came into prominence in the late 1990s when she landed significant parts in the successful horror films I Know What You Did Last Summer and Scream 2 and played Buffy Summers on the WB/UPN hit television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, for which she won six Teen Choice Awards and the Saturn Award for Best Genre TV Actress and received a Golden Globe Award nomination. She found film critics praise for her performance in the teen drama Cruel Intentions (1999) and she subsequently appeared in the box office hits Scooby-Doo (2002), Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed (2004), and the American remake of Japanese horror film The Grudge (2004). Since then she has starred in limited released and straight-to-video films such as 2006's Southland Tales, 2007's Suburban Girl and 2008's The Air I Breathe. She also had the main role in the television series Ringer. |
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The city of Cleveland today suspended without pay 13 firefighters who were indicted last week by a Cuyahoga County grand jury on charges of theft in office.
(Read the indictment and other documents related to the case in the document viewer below).
All 13 waived their rights to pre-disciplinary hearings and accepted the suspensions, according to a news release from the city.
The suspensions will run until their criminal cases have been adjudicated.
The firefighters were taken off active duty last week after their indictments, prompting staffing adjustments to be made by Fire Chief Daryl McGinnis, according to the city.
The firefighters each face up to 18 months in prison and a $5,000 fine if convicted of the felony theft-in-office charge. They also have been charged with soliciting or receiving improper compensation, a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail, a $1,000 fine and a seven-year ban from public employment.
The firefighters are accused of illegally paying co-workers to cover most of their shifts, thereby allowing them to work other jobs while still collecting pay and benefits from the city.
County Prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty said last week that each of the indicted firefighters failed to work at least 2,000 hours – the equivalent of about one year – of their scheduled time.
"The public's trust was violated," McGinty said in the release. "In addition to not working and receiving full pay, these individuals abused the system and collected retirement, vacation, medical and other benefits. They caused other firefighters to work multiple days without rest. Fatigued firefighters put the safety of the people [they serve] at risk as well as their fellow firefighters."
The indictments were obtained after a series of internal audits of fire department payrolls. Former federal prosecutor Ronald Bakeman was hired to assist the Cleveland Police Department's internal affairs unit. |
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The annual snow-clearing budget is $32 million, but only $26.7 million is devoted to clearing snow from roads alone.
The city spent $40.6 million on snow-clearing from January to March, the quarterly financial status report shows.
In a series of financial reports published Friday, the city revealed it blew its entire snow-clearing budget for 2014 during the first three months of the year, racked up a $3.5-million tab for dealing with the frozen-pipe crisis and will incur up to $16 million in additional costs to complete a trio of major construction projects.
The confluence of a full moon and Friday the 13th brought all manner of unpleasant financial news to the City of Winnipeg, now facing its worst year-end deficit in a decade.
Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 13/6/2014 (1719 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 13/6/2014 (1719 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
The confluence of a full moon and Friday the 13th brought all manner of unpleasant financial news to the City of Winnipeg, now facing its worst year-end deficit in a decade.
In a series of financial reports published Friday, the city revealed it blew its entire snow-clearing budget for 2014 during the first three months of the year, racked up a $3.5-million tab for dealing with the frozen-pipe crisis and will incur up to $16 million in additional costs to complete a trio of major construction projects.
The city spent $40.6 million on snow-clearing from January to March, the quarterly financial status report shows.
The annual snow-clearing budget is $32 million, but only $26.7 million is devoted to clearing snow from roads alone.
The most severe winter in more than a century is to blame, controller Paul Olafson wrote in a report to the finance committee.
"The over-expenditures are the result of above-average snow accumulation of 103 centimetres versus a 30-year average of 52 cm; as well as an above-average number of days experiencing snow," Olafson wrote.
"Compounding this was the 45 cm of snow received in December 2013, resulting in significant snow-disposal costs in 2014."
The extreme cold in January and February made snow removal and ice-clearing especially challenging, boosting costs, the report said.
As a result of the additional spending on snow-clearing, the city is in position to record a $21.4-million deficit on its $968-million operating budget by the end of the year.
To prevent that from happening, the city will cut discretionary spending, said finance chairman Russ Wyatt (Transcona).
"There is no doubt it's going to be a challenge to do this by the end of the year. Departments have been told to reduce discretionary spending without affecting front-line services."
Early projections of year-end deficits regularly turn into surpluses by the end of the year. But the last time the city faced a potential deficit this large and this early was 2005, when the projected year-end deficit was $18 million in March.
The financial report pegged the cost of dealing with the frozen-pipe crisis at $3.5 million. Wyatt said the city hopes to recoup some of the cost through a disaster-financial-assistance claim.
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"We put in a DFA claim and we hope the province accepts it's a disaster," he said. "Unfortunately, the province has been indicating so far (it won't) recognize it as a disaster. How far down does the frost have to go for them? Does it have to be the coldest winter in 500 years? Does it have to go down 16 feet to their gas pipelines?"
If the claim is rejected, the costs will be absorbed by water-and-waste ratepayers.
Status reports for major capital projects contained more bad news. The $77-million twinning of Plessis Road will cost an additional $3 million even though it's not over budget, thanks to a one-year delay that negated the terms of a funding deal with Ottawa and Manitoba.
A new Polo Park road-improvement project has seen its budget increase to $45 million from $40 million, though most of that cost may be recouped from developers through deals that have yet to be negotiated.
And the long-delayed construction of new roads through Waverley West is up to $77.6 million, or $7.9 million more than the figure stated in this year's capital budget. This job was originally announced as a $54.3-million project in 2010.
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Helsinki photographer Kristo Vedenoja captures the colourful mix of architectural styles in Finland’s capital on Instagram, one square at a time
Kristo Vedenoja has lived in Helsinki for most of his life, and loves to walk around the city, camera in hand, capturing the details that catch his eye. A year ago he started a project looking only at the architectural facades of the city (@helsinkifacades).
“Helsinki’s not the best known city for its architecture and I wanted be able to change that – and showcase its beauty,” Kristo explains. “It’s a relatively young city but contains a wide variety of architectural styles from art nouveau gems (or Jugendstil as the style is known here), to modernist masterpieces by people like renowned Finnish architect Alvar Aalto, which help create a unique feeling in each urban district.”
Despite being known as “the White City of the North” owing to architect and city planner Carl Ludvig Engel’s neoclassical buildings peppering the city centre, Helsinki’s architecture boasts a wide range of hues which Kristo aims to capture in his photography.
Superdensity: the facades of Hong Kong – in pictures Read more
“Building facades and details are often overlooked as people are too busy to notice the little things around them,” Kristo adds, “but they reveal a lot about the history of the city and its architecture.” In fact, facades are somewhat of a fetish on Instagram, with closely-cropped symmetrical squares of building frontages gaining popularity with hashtags like #straightfacade and #facadesmood.
For more information about the specific buildings click on the images below. Follow @guardiancities on Instagram and tag your best city shots with #guardiancities.
Follow Guardian Cities on Twitter and Facebook to join the discussion, and explore our archive here |
Steve Jobs was so furious when he saw Android's "pinch to zoom" features during a trip to Google headquarters, he hid Apple's iPad development from Google CEO Eric Schmidt -- even though Schmidt was on the board of directors at the time.
That's according to Steven Levy's "In the Plex," a new book based on two years of research at the company.
Jobs was angry because he felt that Android was ripping off the key features of the iPhone, and wondered why Google was getting into the phone business when Apple didn't get into the search business.
Eventually, the increasing competition in mobile forced Schmidt to step down from Apple's board in August 2009. About six months later, Apple unveiled the first iPad.
Former Engadget editor Nilay Patel wonders if the story is a little more complicated. He notes that the first Android phone, the G1, actually shipped in September 2008 without "pinch to zoom." Google didn't add it until a software update to the Nexus One in February 2010. In the meantime, Android resellers like Motorola added the feature on their own.
Patel wonders if Apple actually threatened Google with a patent lawsuit, which forced Google to strip out the feature. He also wonders what changed so that Google felt it could finally add the feature without facing a lawsuit. |
ATHENS, Ga. -- When Kirby Smart steps inside the Georgia Dome on Sept. 3 to face North Carolina, there's a chance his best player won't be his old self.
In fact, there's a pretty good chance that Georgia running back Nick Chubb, a former Heisman Trophy candidate, won't be 100 percent. To expect him to be less than 12 months removed from a devastating knee injury that left multiple ligaments severed is pretty naive.
But maybe Chubb doesn't have to be 100 percent to be effective. The bullish back with more than 2,200 yards to his name has pushed through his rehab with the fervor of a superhero, according to his head coach and teammates. While Chubb, a junior, hasn't taken contact since the middle of the 2015 season, he started fall camp running and cutting like everyone around him. If Chubb isn't 100 percent, the people around him can barely tell.
“Nick has been doing for the last three months everything the team has done," Bulldogs coach Kirby Smart said on Monday. "He will continue to do that -- everything the team’s done. We’ll continue to monitor his progress. The big thing for Nick is putting a ball in his hand because that’s what he really hasn’t had outside of drill work.”
Nick Chubb isn't quite 100 percent, but his rehab from a severe knee injury seems well ahead of schedule. Dale Zanine, USA TODAY sports
That has to be so reassuring for Smart, who steps into his first year as the Bulldogs' head coach. His best player has battled through a rigorous rehab after his leg bent the wrong way back in October, and is now running around like a pup again.
“It doesn’t surprise me with Nick," center Brandon Kublanow said. "Nick works extremely hard, probably the hardest worker on this team.”
Smart is also right to be cautious with Chubb. He's the franchise player, and things will be much different for him once he takes his first hit. Those first few runs with the football and pads on will no doubt be a little awkward. And once he gets into a real game, everything will once again change.
Still, it's impressive that he was running, cutting and participating in every drill on Monday. Yeah, that knee brace might be a little cumbersome, but it's a precaution well worth Chubb's time. This day was kind of expected by those around the program. Word on the street is that no one was holding him back during his offseason workouts. Chubb was already sprinting on a treadmill back in February:
He was even cutting after spring break.
And, if you put your ear real close to the ground, you'll hear rumors that Chubb was squatting near 600 pounds before fall camp. That might be more than Smart and his coaches want, but my goodness, that's a lot for someone standing on two perfectly good legs.
“Man, unbelievable guy, right there," safety Dominick Sanders said of Chubb. "The things he does, unbelievable. He’s a very strong player -- strong, very strong, fast -- and he’s been doing a lot. His recovery’s been excellent.”
Chubb might be breaking the rehab mold, but his partner Sony Michel is still very much on the mend. After fracturing his left forearm in an ATV accident on July 3, Michel will be limited for the first part of camp and was seen wearing a brace in practice.
"There’s going to be things he can and can’t do," Smart said of Michel. "He’s going to really work hard on the conditioning aspect early on. Not comfortable with him right now if he were to have to fall or anything and brace himself. So he won’t be as involved.”
Time will tell if either will be ready for North Carolina, but Smart seemed irked at the idea that his offense, which could have a true freshman starting at quarterback, can't run without Chubb or Michel. He pointed to senior Brendan Douglas' experience (715 yards, five touchdowns in his career), the improvement of redshirt freshman Tae Crowder, and the arrival of freshmen Elijah Holyfield and Brian Herrien. After all, Douglas and Crowder impressed him during spring camp with Chubb and Michel sidelined.
“The rhythm can be built through those guys," Smart said. "Whoever’s the next man up has to step up and play.
“The timing should be there.”
It might be, but let's be real: Smart is praying that Chubb trots out for the first series against the Tar Heels. |
Footage taken inside French farms shows suffering on an almost unimaginable scale and has sparked a joint investigation by Viva! and French group L214. The footage is some of the most disturbing and heart-breaking we have seen in our 20 year history. Update: Gordon Ramsay has stopped using this supplier after a major exposé in the Daily Mirror, but continues to serve foie-gras from other producers. The main ingredient of foie-gras is suffering. Tell him to dump it all.
Watch the horrifying undercover footage
It proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that foie-gras production is so barbaric that it should have no place on British menus. Please contact Gordon Ramsay and ask him to stop serving foie-gras.
Torture in a tin
The footage filmed at farms belonging to his then supplier shows ducks filthy with dirt, yellow corn and vomit. Barely able to move, let alone preen; they were encased in metal cages little bigger than their bodies. All to facilitate the inevitable forced-feeding needed to produce foie-gras.
The film shows ducks that simply could not take this twice-daily torture. Some cages contained lifeless bodies lying on the cold wire mesh. In others, those that were still barely alive panted and feebly tried to escape. One duck was so weak that his head hung from the bottom of his cage, pitifully calling for a mother who would never come. In another one duck’s eyelids twitch as life slipped away from him. His torture finally over.
Really just ducklings, they are killed at just over three months old. For those that survive that long their pain and fear is unimaginable. There are ducks with bloody injuries, some with swollen eyes and those seemingly crippled under the weight of their grossly enlarged livers.
A hidden camera left in the sheds captured the depressingly regular forced feeding. A brutality meted out with a casualness that says little about the terror it inflicts time and time again.
Mr Ramsay: dump foie-gras!
This all seems a far cry from what Gordon Ramsay tells his customers. His British restaurants used to boast that the suppliers he used were an “… industry leader in terms of animal welfare”. They make much of the weeks that the birds have a free-range existence, but say nothing of the cages, the pneumatic pipe and abject suffering they suffer once the doors of the sheds shut for the final time.
Foie-gras companies often promote themselves with images of birds in fields. Yet what was found inside the walls of those six farms bore little resemblance to their promotional literature.
This is the reality of foie-gras production - and similar scenes happen across France at many other suppliers. Ramsay is a long-time apologist for one of the most heinous forms of animal suffering, but we hope that even he will not be able to justify what we found at one of his suppliers.
Tell Gordon Ramsay to dump foie-gras
Please keep all messages polite.
Email: [email protected]
Write: Gordon Ramsay Group, 1 Catherine Place, London, SW1E 6DX
Tel: 020 7592 1360
“Dear Mr Ramsay
I was horrified to learn of the treatment of ducks at farms in France at was until recently one of your preferred suppliers of foie-gras.
Whilst I am aware that you have long defended its use, I hope these recent revelations and undeniable suffering found at your ex-supplier will make you think again. It rubishes their claims to be “leaders in animal welfare”.
Whilst ducks raised for foie-gras will live free-range existence for the first few months of their lives, they spend the last fortnight tightly confined and force-fed. The footage obtained by Viva! shows filthy birds covered with feed and vomit. Some had bloody injuries and others were almost blinded. This is the reality of all foie-gras production. Dropping one supplier is one thing, but dumping all foie-gras is the only ethical response.
Please ban this very unBritish cruelty from your restaurants.”
[Don't forget to include you name and address!]
What else can I do?
DONATE. We can only be effective in the fight to make Britain foie-gras free with your help. Whatever you can donate will help
Get active for the foie-gras birds with Viva! |
I do not remember baseball before the DH. I was six years old when the designated hitter rule was implemented in the American league, and I have no memory at all of the discussion and fury that went with the rule change. The DH, for me, was just always there, like the sun or the Rolling Stones. But it’s more than that. Because I grew up in Cleveland and almost never saw National League baseball, I was only vaguely aware of pitchers hitting. When the World Series came around and pitchers hit, it felt almost exotic … like seeing barefoot kickers.
“Hmm,” I would think, “I wonder how this will turn out!”
It usually turned out with the pitcher striking out or bunting, of course, but as a full-blooded American Leaguer, the oddity of pitcher’s hitting was interesting enough in short spurts. And I guess this is the starting point: I grew up with pitcher’s hitting being the oddity, not the other way around. I kind of liked it for something different but make no mistake, for me and everyone I knew: Real baseball involved designated hitters.
Later, of course, I became much more aware of the game’s history, and I started to hear the arguments about why the designated hitter was an abomination and why National League baseball was purer, more strategic, baseball as God intended. I never really bought any of those arguments though. The strategy stuff always seemed like shaky logic to me. Yes, a manager has to double switch and make tricky decisions to avoid having their terrible-hitting pitchers come to the plate. But that’s not the sort of strategy that’s very interesting to me. It would be like, in football, being forced to play one person on the offensive line and defensive line who has never played football before. You would definitely need to employ intricate strategies to keep that person from messing up everything. But I don’t really want to see it.
Also, pitcher’s hitting means a lot more sacrifice bunting … and sacrifice bunting stinks. Last year there were 450 or so more sacrifice bunts in the National League than the American League. Pitchers hitting also means many more intentional walks. There were 350 more intentional walks in the NL. I don’t need to go over how much I despise the intentional walk. Blech.
The idea that baseball is “purer” with pitchers hitting is more gibberish to me. Pure baseball involves pitchers throwing underhand from a box 50 feet away from home plate, and the hitter saying “No, throw it a little higher.” The game is constantly evolving and, for my money, not fast enough. I thought Chris Rock’s epic takedown of baseball for alienating African Americans had numerous good points about the game’s stodginess and tendency to look backward.
Despite all of this, I still find myself oddly saddened by the new and increasing momentum to add DH in the National League. The momentum was sparked by the terrible news that St. Louis’ Adam Wainwright will miss the rest of the season because of a nasty achilles injury he suffered while running out a pop-up. In smaller letter news, Washington’s Max Scherzer also got hurt batting — he jammed his thumb, and he had his next start moved back. Both injuries were somewhat freak things, but with pitchers already getting hurt all the time, it’s sensible to ask whether or not pitchers should really be subjected to even a minor injury risk involving hitting and running.
The Wainwright injury, in particular, has given new weight to the argument that it’s time to add the DH to the National League. Throw in that Interleague Play is now year-round — making these DH rules seem capricious anyway — and tack on that run scoring is at 25-year lows, there’s definitely a new energy to the pro-DH arguments now. They … are … everywhere … and … they … are … ferocious. And for me, a lifelong DH guy, it’s pretty hard to make a compelling case for pitcher’s hitting based on the arguments that have been made.
But I can’t put away this feeling that we will be losing something if the National League starts using the DH. Maybe it’s something we already lost but … I still wonder.
Twenty or so years ago, I was somewhat against interleague play in baseball. Well, looking back, I see a column I wrote for The Cincinnati Post in 1996 under the headline, “Road to ruin: Interleague competition,” so I guess it was a little bit more against it than I remember.
“Understand,” I wrote, “this interleague play is a rotten, stupid, lousy idea. And this has nothing to do with the purity of the game … Would it be interesting to see the Indians and Reds play? Mets and Yankees? Cubs and White Sox? Sure. The first time. Maybe the second time. Then what? Then it will become another game.”
Here were are, 19 years later … and I would say that what I wrote then has turned out to be partly true. It is true that there is no mega buzz when the Royals and Cardinals or Cubs and White Sox or Yankees and Mets play … but, to be fair, those games are still a little bit special in their towns. Last year, when the Reds and Indians played, for instance, they drew about 20,00 or so per game in Cleveland (better than their typical Monday-Tuesday crowds). They drew 32,000 per game in Cincinnati (a little better than their typical Wednesday-Thursday crowds). I think my bigger point was on but let’s concede that some interleague games are slightly more interesting.
My concern about interleague play then was really bigger than that, even if I didn’t quite get it into words in 1996. I felt strongly that interleague player would fundamentally change the game from two distinct leagues into one mishmash of a league. And that HAS happened. And I think that has hurt the game.
The American and National Leagues used to be very different leagues. They, of course, began as rivals and competitors, with some very harsh feelings between them. Then there was an uneasy peace between them. But for more almost 100 years, they had different strategies. At times, they had different rules. More, they had different ways of playing baseball. It’s easy to forget that the American League began as a league to counter the stinginess and rough nature of the National League.
The National League was much faster to integrate, which led to it being more exciting league in the 1950s and into the ‘60s — the National League had Mays and Aaron and Clemente, Jackie and Frank Robinson, Gibson and Banks and Allen and Flood and Wills and so on. The American League, basically, had the Yankees.
Then, in the 1970s, the American League added the DH, and this led to seeing old hitting legends like Reggie Jackson and Harmon Killebrew and Yaz for a little longer, it led to the careers of Molitor and Baines and Frank Thomas and Big Papi and Edgar. When I was young, National League fans watched Craig Swan and Bob Shirley hit, and I watched Andre Thornton. I felt like I was getting the better of that deal.
Two distinct leagues added something to the game. Mystery. The All-Star game died when interleague play began … what was the point any more? The World Series got less interesting too. There was no mystery, no intrigue, no curiosity when the Kansas City Royals played the San Francisco Giants in the Series. Why would their be? They had played a three-game set in August.
I know most people don’t mourn this, and most people like interleague play (according to the polls I see) and maybe they’re right … but I liked having two leagues, completely separate, developing their own strategies and styles. That’s why I would love now to see a real World Series between the U.S. champion and the Japanese champion. That’s a clash of different ideas about the game. The World Series now is two teams from one league who happen to survive the playoff gauntlet.
Anyway, i have this dream — one I know will never come true — that baseball will realize the value of having different leagues with different philosophies about what baseball is all about. The last bastion of that is the DH. It’s the one thing that makes the National League and American League different.
And people feel strongly about it. Most of the National League fans I know don’t just like having pitchers hit, they love it. They love the rhythm of baseball with a pitcher hitting, how it breaks up the game, how it limits the chances a team has of scoring runs, how it demands that managers think ahead and make moves that they might not be entirely comfortable with making. Most of the National League fans I know have NO interest in just adding another pretty good hitter to the lineup rather than having the pitcher hit. Most of the National League fans I know despise the DH and view it as a crass 1970s gimmick that nobody ever bothered to stop, not unlike Billy Joel.*
*OK, no, stop, kidding, don’t send me those Billy Joel emails, I’m sorry, that was a cheap shot intended only for my pal Vac, who I am having a longstanding Billy Joel fight with. Billy Joel is not a gimmick, I’m sorry, really, I’m sorry.
That is to say, most National League fans I know are firmly opposed to the DH philosophically just as most American League fans I know think having pitchers hit is kind of dumb. Maybe young NL fans are different. Maybe the threat of injury is enough to change some minds. Maybe I just don’t know enough of those National League fans who crave the DH.
While people talk about the rightness of having baseball under one system, if I was commissioner, I would go in exactly the opposite direction. I’d try to eliminate Interleague play and make the two leagues 16 and 14 teams respectively (we can worry about the details later). I’d try, within reason (and with Player’s Association approval), to limit movement between the two leagues. I’d try to encourage the American and National League presidents to try different things to make their leagues fulfill the visions of their fans … maybe one league would experiment with ball-strike video technology, maybe one league would try a new extra-inning system, maybe one league would try innovative ways to speed up the game or discourage intentional walks or limit pitching changes or find ways to allow players to express their joy more. The game must respect and connect to its history. But it must evolve too.
In other words, I may not like pitcher’s hitting, I may not be willing to defend the logic of it, but I’d still like for pitchers to hit in the National League. I don’t have to like it. That’s a National League thing. And I am, from birth, an American League person. |
more like the only new stuff I made this year because I was so pumped for Breath of the Wild ;; Link is still left-handed in my mind
I, um, tend to suffer from...fatigue and social anxiety after being around huge crowds of people due to being an introvert (if not iron-deficient anemia)...and it usually takes me at least 3 weeks to 2 months to recover, so...I apologize if I take my precious time to reply to everyone QuQ It's not you, it's me QAQ;;; It's not a cheesy break-up line--just the weird way I am Q-Q;;
PREVIOUS ZELDA FANART:
Many apologies for just getting drained and not being able to progress on owed work for over 2 months, too Q-Q I'm really going to do my best to cut down my owed list (also including unlisted adopt extras from last year) as much as I can before and after 8/24.
I'm also selling my leftover buttons **HERE** if you would like to help out and buy some to support me and aid me in paying a few bills Any sale from the store actually helps me cut down on new commission work so I can focus on putting in extra for older owed works and have time to work on my personal projects QuQ (especially fanarts that never see the light of day; I have quite a few Zelda ones that I've never been able to finish because of commissions QuQ;; )--in addition to not worrying my elderly parents why I sit in front of the PC until 3 am trying to work on owed art every other day when I'm not studying or volunteering ;; - THE FIRST 10 PEOPLE THAT ORDER ALL 3 BUTTONS ACTUALLY GET A SMALL HEADSHOT SKETCH OF LINK WITH THEIR PURCHASE.
I also didn't forget 's b-day >u< I hope that you and :icontakku-no-tori: had an awesome time on your special day~! *still needs to finish work to finish their giftarts, ahhhh*
I still need to ship and 's gifts, too--I'll try to get to that within this month, too Q-Q;; I feel horrible for making everyone wait as the seasons and holidays just zip through.
As for extra elaboration on the owed work: It's not so much that I'm procrastinating on it, underpricing myself for the past 6 years has done some damage on my physical and mental health, so I apologize for being so slow. I *NEVER* have any intention of running off with anyone's hard-earned money. And I know that some commissions can take a few months to a few years because I feel that my skills are not up to par with what I want (it also doesn't help that my almost 7-y.o. tablet has been acting up and making it harder to finish my commissions, and not being able to draw makes me more depressed or vice-versa, when being depressed out of nowhere makes it harder to draw), but I promise that when you receive your commission, it will be as good or of better quality than the samples I had before.
HOWEVER, because I have so many commissions and adopt extras to finish, I will NOT be painting 'cell-CG' commissions like I did before, nor will I be drawing waist-downs or full-bodies in lieu of the original commission requests--gifts will only be reserved for people who have supported me time and time again--people who have gone far and beyond the business transaction of a commission and have been more than understanding and supportive during my various life situations--that is where a gift counts. It's a harsh reality, but I rarely-to-never get tipped for the time and effort I put into that extra work for strangers that don't know me beyond what I produce. My parents continuously see me work hard in that manner and my body, eyes especially, can no longer take that stress and pain for no extra pay.
People's happiness does matter to me, of course it's significant and remains a good reason why I want to continue volunteering at the hospital. But, to me, a commission is not only a 'pretty picture', but a chunk of my time and health that I can't get back. And to my parents who are well over 40-50 years older than me, seeing their only kid work on a piece of art for 4-7 hours for only $14-$20 probably hurts them as much as seeing the same kid trip on the ground and bleed before continuing to run.
I am just a lone individual, but as someone who had to underprice and has felt the harsh consequences of it, I feel like I have to speak out. I don't want other fellow artists, no matter how old or skilled, to go through the same pain I have.
I also want to thank the countless friends and clients I've had over the past few years who have stuck with me and encouraged me throughout this time. I can't always thank you individually, but I do very much appreciate your genuine, invaluable kindness not only in art, but also in life.
All of the new Zelda fanart-related stuffI made when I tabled at AX this year with (which was totally awesome--also got to see and I loved 's Zelda stickers and plethora of work, which you can check out **HERE** (when it opens again after her cons /////) |
[Dates/times may change. Check back for updates or follow @Daily_Dragon on Twitter.]
WEDNESDAY:
Wednesday Night Pre-Dragon Con Party
Wednesday is the new Thursday! Can’t wait for Dragon Con to start? You don’t have to! Don those costumes you’ve been waiting all year to put on and come hang out. Wed 8PM, Pulse Bar (Marriott).
THURSDAY:
The Aether Lounge
Need a place to rest your top hat before Dragon Con begins? Then join the crew of the Alternate History Track for a casual mixer and meet-and-greet with our regular at the Aether Lounge! Featuring music with DJ Doctor Q and a few surprise guests. Cash Bar will be on hand, so come on down, have a drink and mingle! Thu 8:30PM, Atlanta Ballroom (Westin).
The Sci-Fi Classic Track Party-Fest-O-Rama
The Dragon Con American Sci-Fi Classics Track is pleased to announce, in association with the Dragon Con Over 40 Club, the Sci-Fi Classic Track Party-Fest-O-Rama! There will be socializing, bad jokes, bad knees, good music, good people, and more! Open to all Dragon Con members, especially fans of the DC ASFCT! You don’t have to be over 40 to come, but if you’re not, you might get told to get off the lawn (and into the party)! Meet and be sociable with fellow geeks who are fans of classic Sci-Fi, or are classics themselves! If you want snacks, bring them and we’ll serve them! If you want beverages, bring them and we’ll serve them (don’t forget cups)! If you want booze…that’s what after-parties in people’s rooms are for, as the Dragon Con overlords have made drinking in the track rooms verboten. (Means no.) Come one! Come all! Sanctuary! Carousel! Oh Festival! Bring astro-turf! Plan for a great time! Thu 8:30PM, M303-M304 (Marriott).
The Annual Bunny Hutch Con Kick Off
Lady Bunnies and Gentle Hefs, Nerdi Gras is here! As per the tradition, we welcome all bunnies and playboys—from classic cocktail to crossover madness, we love you all (as long as you’re in ears and tails or a smoking jacket)! Your hostest with the mostest is once again Harley Bunny and her main squeeze, Joker Hefner, so look for them if the sea of ears hasn’t yet culminated. This is, as always, an open event, so please invite whomever you would like! All bunnies are welcome except bigot bunnies; there will be trans bunnies, queer bunnies, funny bunnies, grumpy bunnies, serious bunnies, silly bunnies, asexual bunnies, and every bunny bun bun you can imagine, so if you are not cool with that, kindly uninvite yourself. If any unaccepting bunnies do decide to crash, I will have security bounce you out on your closed minded bunny butt faster than you can say, “Boy, those bunnies are b*tches!” Thu 9PM, Pulse Bar (Marriott).
Convention Eve Zaniness with the New York Disco Villains
You are cordially invited to soothe those restless pre con jitters with the slightly askew sounds of the New York Disco Villains. A hyperactive performance certain to get you in the proper mindset for the impending mayhem of the weekend’s convention. An experience much like waiting for a hotel elevator, only slightly more pleasant. Thu 10PM, Centennial Ballroom (Hyatt).
FRIDAY:
DragonCon 101 Meetup
Connect with other Dragon Con newbies in this casual meet and greet! Fri 10AM, M301-M302 (M).
Game of Thrones Fan Meetup
If you want to connect with other fans that love the show, come to this casual meet and greet. This is an informal gathering. Fri 11:30AM, M301 (M).
Lost Girl Meetup
If you want to connect with other fans that love the show, come to this casual meet and greet. This is an informal gathering. Fri 1PM, M301 (M).
Legend of the Seeker Meetup
Join the largest “Legend of the Seeker” gathering in the world! Fri 4PM, M302 (Marriott).
Once Upon a Time Fan Meetup
If you want to connect with other fans that love the show, come to this casual meet and greet. This is an informal gathering. Fri 5:30PM, M301 (M).
Avengers Ball
The Whedonverse Track will be starting the night off with the ’40s. Some of the fabulous cosplayers at the convention will appear as Captain America and the USO Girls as well as the other Avengers. Time will gradually move forward toward modern time and modern music…like a musical time-lapse camera. The beginning of the night will be swing music and standards and we’ll close off the night with the Avengers dancing to everything from One Direction to Macklemore. Fri 8:30PM, Peachtree Ballroom A-F (Westin).
An Evening At Bree
Join the Tolkien Track for an annual Dragon Con and Tolkien tradition to dance and celebrate in suitable, Middle-earth festivities, costumes, and music. Fri 8:30PM, Centennial I (Hyatt).
Pinups by the Pool Party
Talloolah Love and her bevy of bathing beauties bring to you a poolside treat! Music, gorgeous ladies, and fun is what’s to be had at the poolside party at the fabulous Sheraton Hotel. Be sure to don your best poolside pinup attire for the shimmy contest, and for all of you more aquatically minded lovelies, we will be holding a mermaid competition. Points will be awarded for style, speed, and grace! Lovely prizes will be awarded and more at this sumptuous swimmer’s paradise. Cabana boys and equally tasty master of ceremonies, New Orleans John, will move the party along as Talloolah Love and her Burlesque Bombshells from Saturday night’s Glamour Geek Revue will party the night away in all of it’s enchanting glory! Fri 8:30PM, Sheraton pool.
Stargate Multiverse Charity Night Event
Presented by the Stargate Multiverse Track, games, pub trivia, green screen photos, and this year, the Ken Spivey Band! And don’t forget, you never know who will show up to party with us. Fri 8:30PM, Plaza Ballroom (Westin).
A Very Venture Brothers Party
Join us for a Venture celebration, with costume contest, cocktails, and live music! Fri 8:30PM, International South (Hyatt).
World of Warcraft Trivia & Fan Meetup
Drinking, Thinking, and World of Warcraft. What could go wrong? Match wits with your fellow WoW players for fun and prizes. Special prizes are available if you can beat the “Experts Table.” Fri 8:30PM, Grand Ballroom West (Hilton).
Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Ball
Calling all Whovians! The BritTrack is celebrating the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary with a Party! Join us for Dancing, Fun, Mingling, and a Doctor Who Costume Contest! Dress in your finest Whovian Garb, or just dress up for a night celebrating all things Doctor Who for this momentous and once-in-a-lifetime celebration! Fri 10PM, Imperial Ballroom (Marriott).
Revenge of the Nerds: A Dragon Con Homecoming Dance
Dragon Con is hosting its first ever Homecoming Dance. Dust off those poofy dresses and that white tux! Tease up your hair. Step back in time in your best geeky finery! Dance the night away to hits from the 80s. Showoff your sci-fi/fantasy themed gown or tuxedo as part of the Homecoming Court. Proceeds from the event go toward this year’s charities: Noah’s Ark, the Georgia Conservancy, and Marcus Autism Center. Fri 10PM, Regency VI-VII (Hyatt).
Zombie Prom
The lights are low, the music loud, and everywhere you look you just see… Zombies! It’s prom like you’ve never experienced it before. Join the Apocalypse Rising Track as we elect this year’s Zombie Prom King and Queen, have your prom picture taken by professionals, and enjoy what is sure to be the goriest prom since Carrie. Fri 10PM, Grand Ballroom A-F (Sheraton).
SATURDAY:
Pacific Rim Fan Meetup/Photoshoot!
Why? Because Pacific Rim is pretty much the best movie ever and we should all get together and geek out about it. Find out more on our Facebook group! Sat 2:30PM, Hilton Back Staircase #5.
Sherlock (all adaptations) Meet-up & Photoshoot
Casual gathering of Sherlock fans. Whether you’re a fan of the BBC adaption, Elementary, or prefer the Granada series, any and all lovers of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s legendary detective are invited to come. Informal discussion of the show is sure to take place and whatever else we can think up. Cosplaying of Sherlock-related characters is encouraged but not required. There will be a fun photoshoot for those that come costumed. For more information and updates, see the Facebook event page. Sat 5PM, 10th Floor Skyline (Marriott).
Furry Meet & Greet
Are tail and ears your thing? Have you always wanted to take it a step further and become your inner animal? Do you identify as furry, furry friendly, furcurious, otherkin, therians, lycanthrope, nekos, or anthropomorphic? Come join us for a furry/fursuit centric meetup, your chance to see fursuits up close and talk with people who make/own them. The furry fandom is exploding worldwide with conventions and online communities growing every year. Central to this fandom is “the fursuit.” Much more than your average mascot, come see the costumes and find out why this social phenomenon is exploding. Sat 8:30PM, Atlanta Ballroom (Sheraton).
Heroes and Villains Ball
Brought to you by the DCMMO (Heroes) and Dragon Con’s British Media Track (Villains). Join us for Dragon Con’s most insane track party! You never know who’s going to show up. DJ Jennocide will be spinning until 2AM, and fans in costumes go to the front of the line. We recommend that our guests be 18 or older. Sat 10PM, Grand Ballroom (Sheraton).
Ingress Cross-Faction Dragon Con Meetup
Ingress Agents of both the Resistance and Enlightened Factions are requested to come participate in Operation: Narwhal, a cross-faction meetup for swapping your best stories of your covert actions out in the field, and for putting faces to Agent names from the COMM channel. There are plans to distribute Agent gear shipped in from Niantic HQ, and Agent Amber Peace will be bringing home-baked cookies. Sat 10PM, Hilton Pool Deck (3rd floor).
Last Party on Alderaan
Dragon Con’s Premiere House/Dance/Pop Party phenomenon! Come see and be seen! Let’s dance and party like it’s the end of the world at the Star Wars Track party! Sat 10PM, Imperial Ballroom (Marriott).
Middle-earth Goes Retro Dance Party
Tolkien’s Middle-earth Track presents a totally awesome 80’s dance party! Come dressed in your finest 80’s or Middle-earth threads. Rad music by DJ Deathskiss. Be there or be square! Sat 10PM, East Grand Ballroom (Hilton).
Rainbow Flag Party
A party for the LGBTQI fans at Dragon Con, sponsored by the Costuming Track in conjunction with OutlantaCon. Come dance with us! Cash bar available. Costumes encouraged. State issued ID required. Sat 10PM, Atlanta Ballroom (Sheraton).
KISSNATION: The KISS Tribute Show Invades Dragon Con 2013
The hottest tribute band to the legendary KISS invades Dragon Con 2013! The Look, the Sound, the Spectacle! Whether you’re a diehard KISS fan, someone who just loves a great rock show, or someone anywhere in-between, don’t miss this explosive event and get ready to rock and roll all night with KISSNATION! Sat 11:59PM, Centennial Ballroom (Hyatt).
SUNDAY:
Furry Meetup
This is a meetup for furries who attend Furry Weekend Atlanta. It is also open to the public and anyone interested in furry fandom. Sun 3PM, Lower Lobby, right corner seating area (Westin).
A Gothic Vampire Pool Soiree
Join SecretRoom.net at for a Gothic Vampire Pool Soiree. Hosted by Endless Night of New Orleans and Paris France! Complete with a Gothic Fashion Show, full cash bar, and DJs, this event will take a bite out of the Sunday Night Blues! Sun 6PM, Indoor Pool and Oasis (Sheraton).
The Magic Puppet Tea Party
Puppets Only! This very special mixer is for people who brought puppets to Dragon Con. Don your party duds and join the fun! Puppet required to attend. Sun 8:30PM, A704 (Marriott).
The Mechanical Masquerade: The Retropolis
The Alternate History Track is proud to bring the Mechanical Masquerade, previously the annual Fall Celebration by the Artifice Club, to Dragon Con. This fantastic event will feature some of the best and brightest from any time period. Costumes or formal wear with a mask are encouraged, but all are welcomed. There will be live music, DJs, and a chance to waltz, swing, tango, and just move your feet to music from the past and the many possible futures that could have been and more! Sun 8:30PM, Peachtree Ballroom A-F (Westin).
World of Warcraft-Darkmoon Faire
Come and compete with your fellow WoW players in a series of contests based on popular pastimes in Azeroth.
Steam Tonk Battles
Stranglethorn Vale Fishing Contest
DPS Contest
Mini-quests (yes, you will actually have to talk to your fellow fans!)
Live-Action Arena PVP (No.. you will not actually get to kill your fellow fans.)
and the always popular… much more!
There will be live entertainment and appearances by special guests during the festivities. Sun 8:30PM, Grand Ballroom East (Hilton).
Yule Ball
The pleasure of your company is requested at the Yule Ball where students of Hogwarts will socialize with their “foreign” guests! Brought to you by the YA Lit Track, We will have a Wizard Rock band, the Blibbering Humdingers, for about an hour, then announce the costume contest winners, then a DJ’d dance for the rest of the evening. Costumes are welcome and encouraged, but definitely not required. This is an all ages event, but there is often alcohol served where adults are present. Please accompany your under-aged children, as with any event in a major metropolitan city at an evening event. Sun 8:30PM, Grand Ballroom (Sheraton).
MONDAY:
Bootie Dragon Con
The worldwide 100% all-mashup dance party comes to Dragon Con, with top mashup artists spinning only the finest in bootlegs and bastard pop. Featuring DJ BC (Mash Ave, The Beastles, Bootie ATL, Bootie Boston) and Pimpdaddysupreme (Mashville, National Pulbic Radio). Free Mashups CDs and tons of fun as we go late on the last night! More info. Mon 3AM, Atrium Ballroom (Marriott). |
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It’s not just graduate students who are crying foul over a House Republican plan to impose a massive new tax burden on them—some House Republicans are joining their cause.
In a letter to their party’s leaders in the House and Senate, 31 Republican House members criticized a provision in their chamber’s tax plan that imposes an income tax on graduate students’ tuition waivers, which give free or discounted enrollment to students who teach or perform research as part of their degree programs.
“A tax on graduate tuition waivers would be unfair, would undermine our competitive position, and would inhibit the economic growth that tax reform promises,” the letter states. It further notes that the policy undermines the goals of tax reform—“to fuel economic growth, create jobs, and raise wages”—contending that a well-educated workforce is necessary to do so.
Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas) led the effort, following office visits with graduate students and schools in his district who came to Washington to voice their concerns. House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Texas) said at the American Enterprise Institute last Tuesday that the tax on tuition waivers was part of an attempt to “go down to the bones of the tax code” and simplify it. All of the co-signers on Sessions’ letter voted in favor of the House tax bill last month.
According to the most recent data from the National Center for Education Statistics, 145,000 graduate students received tuition waivers in the 2011-2012 school year. By counting tuition waivers as income, the House plan would hike students’ tax bills by thousands of dollars. According to data provided by the National Association of Graduate-Professional Students, a typical student receiving a waiver for in-state tuition at the University of California, Berkeley, valued at around $24,000 per year as well as a teaching stipend would pay an additional $2,400 in taxes, while a student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where annual tuition runs more than $37,000, would owe an additional $10,000. The shift would present a hardship to these students, who, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, earn an average annual wage of only about $36,000.
The tuition waiver tax is just one of several proposals across the House and Senate tax plans that raise taxes on universities and their students. Both plans propose a tax on private universities’ investment earnings if they maintain funds above a certain per-student threshold. (The House plan affects schools with funds of more than $250,000 per student, while the Senate plan targets schools above $500,000.) The House bill also scraps a provision that allows individuals to deduct up to $2,500 of interest paid on student loans and eliminates two existing tuition tax credits. The American Council on Education, an advocacy organization that represents more than 1,800 colleges and universities, estimated that House bill would increase students’ total cost by more than $65 billion between 2018 and 2027.
The letter echoes arguments by university students, administrators, and advocates, who say the provision discourages scholarship and innovation that spur economic growth. Almost 50 higher education advocacy organizations joined the American Council of Education in a letter that described the tuition waivers as “critical to the research endeavor at major universities,” especially STEM fields, and called the tax plan “not in America’s national interest.” Graduate students across the country have expressed their outrage at rallies, walk-outs, and “grade-ins”—takeovers of university administrative buildings to grade papers and exams, a chief graduate student responsibility. On Tuesday, eight graduate students were arrested while demonstrating outside of House Speaker Paul Ryan’s office in the Capitol.
Both the House and Senate have passed their versions of tax reform, and as they come together to reconcile their differences in a joint committee, there’s reason to believe the tax on tuition waivers won’t make it into the final bill. In response to a question from a graduate student at last week’s American Enterprise Institute visit, Rep. Brady said he would reexamine the House language in light of colleagues’ concerns, a commitment he echoed during his regular press gaggle on Capitol Hill on Thursday. Senate Finance Committee press secretary Katie Niederee, in a statement to Inside Higher Ed, said that committee chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) remains committed to preserving the Senate’s language, which does not include the provision.
Read the full letter below: |
Despite the Supreme Court’s June ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is still trying to undo a lesbian couple’s February marriage.
Austinites Suzanne Bryant and Sarah Goodfriend, who’ve been together for more than 30 years, obtained a marriage license February 19 from the Travis County Clerk’s Office.
In part because Goodfriend had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer, state District Judge David Wahlberg barred the clerk’s office from enforcing Texas’ same-sex marriage ban, which he declared unconstitutional.
In granting the restraining order, Wahlberg wrote that Goodfriend’s “health condition strongly militates in favor of issuing immediate relief.”
After obtaining a stay of Wahlberg’s decision from the Texas Supreme Court, the AG’s office sought a ruling voiding the couple’s marriage, but the court hasn’t yet acted on that request.
“Since that case is pending, our public filings speak for themselves,” Paxton spokeswoman Cynthia Meyer wrote to the Observer last week in response to questions about why the AG’s office hasn’t dismissed the case after the Obergefell ruling.
Although it’s seeking to void the couple’s marriage, the AG’s office maintains in court filings that the case is about procedural issues, not a challenge to constitutional rights. For example, the AG argues that Wahlberg should have notified Paxton’s office before declaring the marriage ban unconstitutional, and that the couple failed to show “immediate and irreparable harm.”
“These clear abuses of discretion would not be vindicated or absolved by a ruling from the Court or the United States Supreme Court that same-sex marriage is a constitutional right,” the AG’s office wrote in May. “Silence or inaction from the Court will signal to the bench, bar, and public that Texas courts may be manipulated for political gain.”
In court filings, the couple’s attorneys — who declined comment for this piece — dispute the state’s procedural claims. They also argue the Texas Supreme Court lacks jurisdiction since the couple nonsuited the case immediately after the marriage license was issued.
In an e-mail to the Observer, Bryant said that she and her wife are currently “unable to focus our efforts on the Texas Supreme Court.” She continued: “We are married and that is the end of the story. Period. We expect the Texas Supreme Court and the Texas AG to follow the law of the land as laid down by [the Supreme Court]. That is the beauty of our democracy with checks and balances.”
The case is one of at least two in which the AG’s office has continued to oppose a same-sex marriage following the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in favor of marriage equality.
In August, the AG’s office sought to block a lesbian widow from inheriting her deceased partner’s estate. But a Travis County probate judge ruled against the state, upholding the couple’s common-law marriage.
Also in August, the state finally agreed to issue accurate birth and death certificates to same-sex couples after a federal district judge threatened to hold Ken Paxton in contempt. The gay widower who initiated that case, John Stone-Hoskins, died from cancer in October. |
BASHIR, Kirkuk – The mainly Shiite Hashd al-Shaabi forces have trained some 280 children since last year in the use of light and heavy weapons. Some may take part in fighting ISIS south of Kirkuk.
Commanders of the Hashd, also known as the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), are giving the military training in Bashir village, Kirkuk province, a Rudaw investigation revealed.
The children are under 18 years old. They are seen in military uniforms, receiving weapons training.
Those who are 15 or 16 years old are to take part in combat, if necessary.
The Iraqi parliament passed a law last year that recognizes the Shiite force as an official part of the Iraqi armed forces, subject to the laws of Iraq. Recruitment and use of child soldiers is prohibited internationally and under Iraqi law.
Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces and has said on more than an occasion that the Hashd are official forces of the Iraqi state.
A reported 100 child soldiers have graduated from three months of military training in Bashir village so far this year.
Last year, 180 child soldiers received training.
A representative of the Shiite authority in the village defended the decision to train children in using arms.
“These youngsters are taught martial arts and how to use weapons so that they can defend themselves and their areas,” said Sayyid Qambar Musawi, a Shiite cleric in Bashir.
“When ISIS attacked Bashir village, we suffered a lot of damage since nobody was trained to use weapons,” he continued.
The US-based Human Rights Watch has documented the prevalence of child soldiers by various armed groups in Iraq, including the Hashd al-Shaabi. In June it called on the US to return Iraq to the US’ list of governments who use child soldiers after it emerged that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had decided to remove Iraq.
Kirkuk Provincial Council has said they will form a committee to investigate the issue and call for action.
“[We call] on civil society organizations, security institutions, and the United Nations to bring this to an end,” Jwan Hassan, head of the Human Rights Committee of Kirkuk Council, told Rudaw.
“And also to put pressure on the central government so that the ministries of interior and defence respond and ensure that children under the age of 18 are not used in fighting or their rights violated in any shape or form,” she added.
The Hashd al-Shaabi now has more than 20 military units in Bashir village and Taza Khurmatu town, south of Kirkuk.
Bashir initially fell to ISIS in June 2014 as the extremist group gained large amounts of territory in Iraq and Syria. It was liberated in a joint operation of the Kurdish Peshmerga and the Hashd two years later.
The Peshmerga handed the village over to the Hashd after its liberation in an agreement that stipulated that Hashd forces return control to the Iraqi police in stages. |
For other ships with the same name, see USS Midway
USS St. Lo (AVG/ACV/CVE–63) was a Casablanca-class escort carrier of the United States Navy during World War II. On 25 October 1944, St. Lo became the first major warship to sink as the result of a kamikaze attack. The attack occurred during the Battle of Leyte Gulf.
Construction [ edit ]
St. Lo was laid down as Chapin Bay on 23 January 1943, under a Maritime Commission (MARCOM) contract, MC hull 1100; renamed Midway on 3 April 1943; launched on 17 August 1943; sponsored by Mrs. Howard Nixon Coulter; and commissioned on 23 October 1943, Captain Francis J. McKenna in command.
Service history [ edit ]
After shakedown on the west coast and two voyages to Pearl Harbor, and one to Australia, carrying replacement aircraft, Midway, with Composite Squadron 65 (VC-65) embarked, joined Rear Admiral Gerald F. Bogan's Carrier Support Group 1 in June, for the conquest of the Mariana Islands. She furnished air coverage for transports and participated in strikes on Saipan, on 15 June 1944. She fought off several air attacks but suffered no damage during her support of the Saipan campaign. VC-65′s FM-2 Wildcats shot down four and damaged one other Japanese plane[citation needed] during combat air patrol operations there.
On 13 July, she sailed for Eniwetok, for replenishment before joining the attack on Tinian, on 23 July. Furnishing air support for ground forces on the island and maintaining an anti-submarine patrol, Midway operated off Tinian, until she again headed out for supplies on 28 July.
Midway remained at anchor in Eniwetok Atoll, until she got under way on 9 August, for Seeadler Harbor, at Manus, Admiralty Islands, arriving on 13 August.
On 13 September, she sortied with Task Force 77 (TF 77) for the invasion of Morotai. Catapulting her first plane to support the landings on 15 September, she continued to assist American troops ashore and to provide cover for the transports through 22 September.
After a refueling period, Midway resumed air operations in the Palaus until returning to Seeadler Harbor 3 October. There, word arrived that the escort carrier had been renamed St. Lo, 10 October, to free the name Midway for a new attack carrier and to commemorate an important victory of American troops in France who had captured the strongly defended town of Saint-Lô, on 18 July 1944.
Battle of Leyte Gulf [ edit ]
St. Lo departed Seeadler Harbor on 12 October, to participate in the liberation of Leyte. Ordered to provide air coverage and close air support during the bombardment and amphibious landings, she arrived off Leyte, on 18 October. She launched air strikes in support of invasion operations at Tacloban, on the northeast coast of Leyte. Operating with Rear Admiral Clifton Sprague's escort carrier unit, "Taffy 3" (TU 77.4.3), which consisted of six escort carriers and a screen of three destroyers and four destroyer escorts, St. Lo steamed off the east coasts of Leyte and Samar, as her planes sortied from 18–24 October, destroying enemy installations and airfields on Leyte and Samar islands.
Steaming about 60 mi (52 nmi; 97 km) east of Samar, before dawn of 25 October, St. Lo launched a four-plane anti-submarine patrol while the remaining carriers of Taffy 3 prepared for the day's initial air strikes against the landing beaches. The Battle off Samar began at 06:47, when Ensign Bill Brooks—piloting one of the TBF Avengers from St. Lo—reported sighting a large Japanese force comprising four battleships, eight cruisers, and twelve destroyers approaching from the west-northwest, only 17 mi (15 nmi; 27 km) away. At the same time, lookouts on St. Lo spotted the characteristic pagoda-like superstructures of Japanese battleships on the horizon. Rear Admiral Sprague ordered Taffy 3 to turn south at flank speed. Vice Admiral Takeo Kurita's force steadily closed and by about 06:58 opened fire on the slow, outnumbered, and outgunned ships of Taffy 3.
St. Lo and the other five escort carriers dodged in and out of rain squalls and managed to launch all available fighter and torpedo planes with whatever armament they had handy (general purpose bombs and even depth charges). Pilots were ordered "to attack the Japanese task force and proceed to Tacloban airstrip, Leyte, to rearm and refuel". The carriers dodged salvos from enemy cruisers and battleships. As salvos fell "with disconcerting rapidity" increasingly nearer St. Lo, her planes, striking the enemy force with bombs, rockets, and gunfire, continued to harass the closing ships.
By 08:00, the enemy cruisers, approaching from St. Lo's port quarter, had closed to within 14,000 yd (13,000 m). St. Lo responded with rapid fire from her single 5 in (127 mm) gun, claiming three hits on a Tone-class cruiser.[citation needed]
For the next 90 minutes, Admiral Kurita's ships closed in on Taffy 3, with his nearest destroyers and cruisers firing from as close as 10,000 yd (9,100 m) on the port and starboard quarters of St. Lo. Many salvos straddled the ship, landed close aboard, or passed directly overhead. Throughout the running gun battle, the carriers and their escorts were laying a particularly effective smoke screen that Admiral Sprague credited with greatly degrading Japanese gunfire accuracy. Even more effective were the courageous attacks by the destroyers and destroyer escorts at point-blank range against the Japanese destroyers and cruisers. All the while, Kurita's force was under incessant attack by Taffy 3 aircraft and planes from the two other U.S. carrier units to the south.
Under heavy attack from the air and harassed by incessant fire from American destroyers and destroyer escorts, the enemy cruisers broke off action and turned north at 09:20. At 09:15, the enemy destroyers—which had been kept at bay by the daring exploits of USS Johnston, USS Hoel, and USS Samuel B. Roberts as well as the other units of Taffy 3—launched a premature torpedo attack from 10,500 yd (9,600 m). The torpedoes had nearly run out of fuel when they finally approached the escort carriers, broaching the surface. A St. Lo Avenger, piloted by Lieutenant, junior grade Tex Waldrop, strafed and exploded two torpedoes in the wake of USS Kalinin Bay.[citation needed]
Kamikaze [ edit ]
kamikaze strikes St. Lo, causing an enormous fireball strikes, causing an enormous fireball
At 10:50, the task unit came under a concentrated air attack by the Shikishima Special Attack Unit.[citation needed] During the forty-minute engagement with enemy kamikazes, all the escort carriers except USS Fanshaw Bay were damaged. One Mitsubishi A6M2 Zero—perhaps flown by Lieutenant Yukio Seki—crashed into the flight deck of St. Lo at 10:51. Its bomb penetrated the flight deck and exploded on the port side of the hangar deck, where aircraft were in the process of being refueled and rearmed. A gasoline fire erupted, followed by six secondary explosions, including detonations of the ship's torpedo and bomb magazine. St. Lo was engulfed in flame and sank 30 minutes later.
Of the 889 men aboard, 113 were killed or missing and approximately 30 others died of their wounds. The survivors were rescued from the water by USS Heermann, USS John C. Butler, USS Raymond and USS Dennis (which picked up 434 survivors).
Awards [ edit ]
St. Lo received the Presidential Unit Citation for the heroism of her crew in the Battle off Samar and four battle stars for her World War II service.
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Bibliography [ edit ]
Further reading [ edit ] |
Not sure I’ll make it to Defcon this year, bit i think it’s just as well.
It looks like flights from EBB to Las Vegas will be more than $4300. Combined with room and incidentals, that’s more than we’ve ever made fundraising at Defcon. It also looks like I won’t get a speaking slot despite rather heroic efforts from Defcon staff.
On top of that, I just got a bill for shipping charges on computer gear that was supposed to be used in the States. Now the gear is here and I’ll have to do my best to make it work. That bill is about $4500 so that tells the tale.. The exact amount I would have needed for Defcon.
Things have been going horribly lately, so this is just the icing on the cake. It’s one thing after another.
Our 501(c)3 is still stalled, the Ugandan government is nickel and diming us, those I trust turn on me no matter how mush I’ve poured into them and a couple weeks ago we got the biggest kick in the teeth yet. I’m still drafting the post on that one.
The whole thing just has me scratching my head..
You know, it really is (was) an insane concept and an even more insane move. I am obliterated and frankly I’m lacking the resources, stamina and heart to float the org any more.
“So ask for help,” you might say.
That’s good advice, but I’m terrible at delegating and have failed miserably at properly engaging the skills of the community. So it’s been the “Johnny show” for so long that now even the most basic requests seem to fall flat. I can’t blame anyone except myself.
So it’s probably best that I’m not going to make Defcon. I’ve got a lot of work to do. I have an f-ton of donated equipment I need to distribute and make the most of. I owe it to you, the donors, to stretch what you’ve given as far as possible before making any final decisions about the future.
It’s good timing for me to dig in with what we have because financially we can’t afford much more than that.
These words are sour for me to even read. Pre-Africa, in some previous revision of me, I’d like to think I would have been up in the face of these things, standing, fighting.
But right now I feel like I’m just fighting to make it through each day, to end up “on the right side of the grass” as my Shidoshi used to say, practically a lifetime ago. |
Like The Office (2005), sitcom Modern Family (2009) employs a faux-documentary approach to its storytelling. The characters frequently look directly at the camera as if to address the audience, and “confessional” cutaway moments in which the characters offer commentary to the viewer punctuate each scene. But unlike the setup of The Office, wherein the characters are knowingly being filmed by a documentary team for a TV show (which somehow takes 9 years to shoot), in Modern Family it’s unclear who the characters are talking to. There’s never any reference to a film or show being made about their lives, and they never address any of the documentarians by name.
The original concept of Modern Family included another character: a Dutch filmmaker who, 20 years earlier, had lived with the Pritchett family. Now working on a documentary about American families, he returned as an adult to film their lives. The working title for the series was “My American Family,” a title which referenced the Dutch character and made him a prominent part of the narrative.
Obviously, that’s not the route they ended up taking. Series creator Christopher Lloyd has directly stated the show has failed to explain why, in its final iteration, they kept the documentary style but jettisoned the documentarian. But he notes that breaking the fourth wall is not a new or jarring idea -- Christopher Guest and Albert Brooks did it for years in films, and even Ferris Bueller stopped to address the audience -- and Lloyd doesn’t really think it needs an explanation. The audience can create their own story as to why this family is being filmed and who’s doing it, which is good enough.
Of course, that’s exactly what people are doing. A number of fan theories exist about the style’s true nature, figuring there has to be more to it than a simple stylistic decision. In Reddit’s FanTheories subreddit, one fan elaborates on his conviction that the show is adult Luke’s (Nolan Gould) documentary, based on character evidence and the fact that we never hear the documentarian asking any questions. Another fan suggests they’re all talking to a therapist, and the scenes are flashbacks re-enacting the things they tell the therapist. If that were the case, the only “real” moments of the program would be those that break the fourth wall; the rest would be memories.
There’s also the theory that the whole show is a follow-up show to a previous documentary about Cam (Eric Stonestreet) and Mitchell (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) adopting Lily (Aubrey Anderson-Emmons), or the one that sumises it’s all a rich family’s way of creating a photo album only the 1% could afford.
The show’s creators would probably be fine with any of those interpretations.
The device hasn’t been entirely well-received. As Jaime Weinman of Maclean’s writes, “New Jersey Star-Ledger critic Alan Sepinwall wrote that the show needs to make up its mind whether the talking heads are real or fantasy, because 'the current approach is just distracting.' But [series co-creator Steven] Levitan has said the documentary is 'just our style of storytelling,' a device to reveal characters’ feelings.”
Modern Family is, at its core, a traditional, heartfelt, and at times saccharine sitcom. Its episodes often have moral messages and even, in the final minutes, tend to lead out with rising instrumentals overlaid with Bob Saget-esque syrupy dialogue encapsulating the episode’s feel-good takeaway. The documentary format is perhaps the characteristic that most sets it apart stylistically from the waves of positive family comedies that have come before. So while a handful of viewers may find its approach awkward, it’s likely a contributing factor to what has made the show such a great success. Many humorous moments are facilitated by the format, and it’s hard to imagine the show any other way. |
Winners have been announced for the 7th annual “CONFiDENCE AWARD DRAMA PRIZE”, the drama series eligible for the awards must have began airing in the Winter 2017 drama season. The awards are organized by a subsidiary of Oricon called “oriconME”, and sponsored by the popular weekly business magazine “confidence”. An esteemed and varied panel of judges consisting of university professors, columnists, writers, and consultants determine the winners.
TBS drama “Quartet” completely dominated the awards, nearly getting a full sweep. Out of the 7 categories Quartet won 5 of them, including “Best Drama”, “Best Script” and “Best Leading Actress”. “Quartet” is about four 30-something strangers who all have dreams unfulfilled. Through a chance meeting they all decide to live together in the small resort town Karuizawa, forming the musical group Doughnuts Hole. But naturally there’s a big secret behind this “chance” meeting.
The other drama series to win awards was Uso no Sensou, former SMAP member Tsuyoshi Kusanagi took home the prize for “Best Leading Actor”. Yuki Saitou won “Best Supporting Actress” for her role in “Okaasan, Musume wo yamete ii desuka?”
The full list if winners can be seen below.
Best Drama – Quartet
Best Leading Actor – Tsuyoshi Kusanagi (Uso no Sensou)
Best Leading Actress – Takako Matsu (Quartet)
Best Supporting Actor – Issei Takahashi (Quartet)
Best Supporting Actress – Yuki Saitou (Okaasan, Musume wo yamete ii desuka?
Best Script – Yuji Sakamoto (Quartet)
Best Newcomer – Riho Yoshioka (Quartet)
(via confidence) |
Even before David Cameron had opened his mouth, a Scottish friend of mine got in touch. "Today reminds me of an old joke," his email began, "about a pilot announcing that he'll have to make an emergency landing in the sea. Panicked passengers ask the flight attendant where the life vests are. 'Oh,' says the flight attendant, 'so now you're interested.'"
For Scots, especially those who have grappled with the question of home rule for 35 years or more, the British prime minister and the rest of the London political class have left it awfully late to start paying attention now. With just seven months to go till Scots vote yes or no to independence, the rest of the United Kingdom is like a husband whose wife has been threatening divorce for three decades – but waits till she's got a suitcase in her hand and her coat on before looking up from the couch to say: "Can't we talk about this?"
Cameron mentioned divorce in the speech – more a plea, really – that he delivered in the Olympic Park in London today, but this is not only about him. It's not even about the Westminster village, though it would be nice to dump all the blame there. We could throw in the media while we're at it (even the Guardian would not be exempt). But the truth is, the whole of non-Scottish Britain is implicated in this one. Wherever you look, the attention paid to Scotland's choice has been scant. And that's putting it nicely.
Cameron was right to say that the response of the country that could become rUK – the rump United Kingdom that will be left behind – on 19 September has consisted either of a two-fingered good riddance; a regretful sigh, resigned that there is nothing to be done; or else a neutral, unbothered shrug of the shoulders. The PM was surely right too that the first reaction – outright hostility – is rare. Lethargy and inaction dominate.
It's odd, this reaction. If France or the US were facing the possibility of losing a third of their landmass and a tenth of their people, you can bet they'd be at least curious. But here the apathy is deafening.
Some will say that's only because the prospect is not serious, given that polls show the no side comfortably ahead. If that's the explanation, it could be resting on a faulty premise. As the SNP leader, Alex Salmond, likes to point out, the last seven polls have tightened – in favour of yes.
More to the point, and as a series of conversations in Edinburgh and Glasgow this week demonstrated to me, previously hard ground is shifting in Scotland. Once solid unionists, including those from staunch Labour backgrounds, are at least considering voting for independence. Even activists for the save-the-union Better Together campaign admit that where there is movement, it is from no to yes: next to no one is moving in the other direction. Unionists also admit that in Salmond's SNP they face a rival that can summon deeper resources, more activists and greater enthusiasm, as well as a formidable on-the-ground operation.
But the shrug shown to Scotland by the rest of Britain is about more than a reading of the polls. There has also been a failure – and I include myself in this – to take seriously the motivation for independence. If London-based commentators like me have engaged in this debate at all, it's mainly been to make the case for the union and leave it at that. Too few of us have probed deeply into why so many Scots want to break away.
It's not about blue-faced loathing of Sassenachs. It's not about an easily patronised desire for passports, border fences and anthems. In fact, plenty of yes voters I spoke to understand that some of the traditional trappings of statehood won't be theirs anyway. The plan is to keep the pound and, as the governor of the Bank of England explained last week, that will mean "some ceding of national sovereignty", even a version of fiscal and political union. So this will not be independence in the classic, 19th century sense.
What's driving so many Scots to consider saying yes has less to do with their view of Scotland than what they believe has happened to Britain. Again and again, from people who would never describe themselves as nationalists, I heard the same story. Since 1979 Britain has been breaking away from what used to be called the postwar settlement. Led by an overdominant London and south-east, British politics has been tugged rightward. The prevailing ethos of the past 35 years has been one of turbo-capitalism, privatisation and a shrinking welfare state. Yes, the process was begun by Margaret Thatcher, but Tony Blair and Gordon Brown did little to stop it, and in some cases accelerated it. And Scotland wants no part of it.
Some have interpreted that as a claim to Scottish moral superiority. When we met in his Edinburgh front room, Alistair Darling, head of Better Together, condemned such "arrogance" along with the notion that somehow "the Scots are inherently better people". Perhaps some do conceal that belief in their talk of a distinct, Nordic-style culture of social democracy in Scotland. But the facts are the facts. And the facts say that, while UK politics can seem like a Dutch auction between the Conservatives and Ukip over who can bash Europe, repel immigrants or slash welfare with most vigour, Scottish politics is usually a competition for the terrain of the centre-left. This week the two main parties, Labour and the SNP, jostled over who has the best plan to scrap the bedroom tax. Meanwhile the SNP has a striking policy on immigrants: it wants more of them.
This, then, is what's driving so many Scots to consider making the break: a despairing fear that, given the way a few marginal seats in middle England can decide UK elections, Britain will never again return to the kind of social democratic values that still find a ready consensus in Scotland. It's not that the Scots are leaving Britain – it's that Britain has left them.
Viewed like this, the campaign for independence requires a different response from those outside Scotland. It is devilishly difficult, as Cameron's speech showed. That he delivered it in London highlighted the most obvious problem: that for the English to get involved immediately looks like hectoring from on high. When the case for the union is made by a southern English Tory public schoolboy, it simply reinforces everything yes voters want to get away from.
So perhaps the best approach for non-Scots minded to follow Cameron's advice, and phone a friend or relative north of the border, is to focus not on what the union should mean for them but what it does mean for us – to set out what we, not they, would lose if they voted yes.
The loss for Britain's progressives would be great indeed. Gone would be that tug leftward, that counterbalance to the politics of the overheated English south-east. This is not abstract. If Scotland goes, so too will 59 MPs for Scottish seats – only one of whom is currently a Conservative: the bloc that has made Labour governments possible. "No more Tory governments. Ever" is a current yes slogan. But a yes vote could mean the reverse for rUK: "Permanent Tory government. For ever." That will matter for an independent Scotland, especially one bound to this eternally Tory Westminster by a fiscal union. An independent Scotland might have less scope to be social democratic than it does now.
There will be another loss, too. "British" has become a capacious, even a generous, category. It hyphenates easily. Because it always stood for a plural, multinational identity, it is able, by definition, to accommodate difference: you could always be Welsh-British or Scottish-British, so now you can be Black British or Muslim British.
"Welsh" or "English" have not functioned the same way. That's not to say they can't. If the Scots leave the union, those left behind will have to make, say, "English" a looser, more inclusive category. But that is the work of at least a generation. And it will feel like building from scratch a house we built long ago.
So I no longer dismiss the Scottish yearning behind yes. If I were a Scot, I might well be leaning that way myself. But since I'm not, I can only plead with them to stay. I can see what they might gain by leaving. But it will be our loss.
Twitter: @Freedland |
Apple today seeded the third beta of OS X 10.10.2 Yosemite to developers, just over two weeks after seeing the second 10.10.2 beta and over a month after releasing OS X 10.10.1 to the public.The new beta, build 14C81f, is available through the Software Update mechanism in the Mac App Store and through the Mac Dev Center.Like OS X 10.10.1, as a minor update, OS X 10.10.2 is likely to bring bug fixes and performance improvements to the operating system. OS X 10.10.1 introduced several reliability enhancements, including improvements to Wi-Fi, but many users have still been reporting issues with Wi-Fi stability in Yosemite In the release notes for the third 10.10.2 beta, Apple asks developers to focus on Wi-Fi, indicating the update may fix some of the lingering Wi-Fi problems. Apple also asks developers to focus on Mail and VoiceOver. |
As I alluded to yesterday, Donald Trump’s interview with the Associated Press was deeply disturbing. It is tempting to throw up your hands and simply say, “the man is unhinged.” But if you have any interest in the particular way he is unhinged, this interview provided multiple examples of how he is delusional.
For example, he actually bragged about the “great chemistry” he has with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, when we all witnessed the exact opposite with our own eyes during their recent meeting. He went on to suggest that one of his great achievements will be the relationships he has established with foreign leaders.
I think I’ve established amazing relationships that will be used the four or eight years, whatever period of time I’m here. I think for that I would be getting very high marks because I’ve established great relationships with countries, as President el-Sissi has shown and others have shown. Well, if you look at the president of China, people said they’ve never seen anything like what’s going on right now. I really liked him a lot. I think he liked me. We have a great chemistry together. …
Here is how he described his about-face on labelling China as a currency manipulator.
But President Xi, from the time I took office, he has not, they have not been currency manipulators. Because there’s a certain respect because he knew I would do something or whatever… And the media, some of them get it, in all fairness. But you know some of them either don’t get it, in which case they’re very stupid people, or they just don’t want to say it. You know because of a couple of them said, “He didn’t call them a currency manipulator.” Well, for two reasons. Number One, he’s not, since my time. You know, very specific formula. You would think it’s like generalities, it’s not. They have — they’ve actually — their currency’s gone up. So it’s a very, very specific formula. And I said, “How badly have they been,” … they said, “Since you got to office they have not manipulated their currency.”
For a reality check, China has been propping up the yuan for the last couple of years — long before Trump even announced that he was going to run for president.
On the topic of his address to a joint session of Congress, Trump actually said, “A lot of the people have said that, some people said it was the single best speech ever made in that chamber.”
The list could go on as there were several other examples. But perhaps you get the point. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen these kinds of delusions from Trump. They started the first day he was in office with claims that his inaugural crowd was the biggest in history.
What we are witnessing is someone who needs to reshape reality to put himself in the center as “the greatest” of whatever standard is being measured. It is one thing for someone to brag constantly about their actual accomplishments. That can be annoying and selfish. But that isn’t what Trump does. He creates delusions to pretend he has accomplished great things. In that endeavor, he gets constant assists from right wing media – which creates a dangerous feedback loop.
The only remaining question about all of this is whether Trump actually believes these delusions or simply creates them in a calculated way. Based on what I’ve seen of his intelligence level and the immediacy with which he reacts delusionally, I’d guess it is the former. In a way, that is more dangerous because he wouldn’t even have the capacity to see reality. But either way, it is a disturbing trait for anyone in his position.
As we get closer to the president’s 100th day in office, I expect we’ll be hearing a whole host of delusional statements from him and his staff in an attempt to alter the reality of his failures so far. In other words, brace yourself for a constant barrage of reminders of just how unhinged our president is. |
Gay Times reports:
The former North Carolina governor received widespread backlash last year when he signed HB2, a discriminatory bill that banned transgender people from using bathrooms that match their gender identity.
The controversial law also prevented local governments from passing their own anti-discrimination protections for LGBT+ people, and led to a major loss of business, money and tourism for the state.
But the implications didn’t just end when McCrory lost his bid for another term as governor – during a guest appearance on Christian podcast Listening In, he revealed that employers won’t hire him over the law.
He said: “[HB2] has impacted me to this day, even after I left office. People are reluctant to hire me, because, ‘oh my gosh, he’s a bigot’ – which is the last thing I am.
“It’s almost Orwellian that if you disagree with the politically correct thought police on this new definition of gender, you’re a bigot, you’re the worst evil. It’s almost as if I broke the law.
“I do what I think is right, and yet these new thought police are doing the opposite… You see the same techniques being used against Trump right now.”
McCrory also claimed that “the left-wing is more intolerant than the right-wing”, referring to a time when he was chased down several blocks by a group shouting “shame on you” which left him “in fear for his safety”.
The North Carolina Democratic Party have since released a statement in response to McCrory’s current employment situation, with spokesman Mike Gwin throwing more than a little shade his way.
He said: “North Carolina has already lost hundreds of millions of dollars in economic activity and thousands of jobs as a direct result of House Bill 2, but I guess we can start adding Governor McCrory’s career to the total as well.” |
When news broke that Gal Gadot would play Wonder Woman in Zack Snyder's Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, the outrage was loud and swift. Some felt that the Israeli actress did not have the right body type (as in, she was too thin) to play the Amazonian warrior, but Gadot has hopefully proven all those haters wrong with her latest photos.
The website Tia Nerd has posted a photo of what appears to be Gadot's bulked up figure, and the actress looks primed and ready to play Wonder Woman. You can view the photos at the top of the page and judge for yourself.
News has been quiet on Batman v. Superman recently, but one of the persistent rumors has been thatJena Malone would have a role in the movie, possibly as a female Robin.
Moviefone asked the Hunger Games actress about that possibility in a recent interview.
"There have been rumors that you are in talks to join another sizable franchise for a director you've worked with before, as part of Zack Snyder's Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. Can you say anything?
Ummmm... no.
Would you say, hypothetically, that you would be excited to contribute a strong female role model to a genre that is somewhat bereft of them?
I don't think that it's bereft. I mean look at Hunger Games -- are you kidding me?
Yeah, but The Hunger Games isn't a comic book.
It doesn't matter. You're turning something into a film, you're creating a myth. What is a comic book but a written myth? I feel like there's so much negativity, but we create. We're still making things. It's not about having as much as they have, it's about continuing the conversation."
What do you think of the photo? Let us know in the comments section.
© 2019 Mstars News, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
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A new study by O.M. Aguilar, a graduate assistant in the Department of Horticultural Sciences at Texas A&M University, confirms what previous studies and parents know: Gardening with children makes them more sensitive to environmental issues. As reported in LOHAS, the study found:
Test results indicated that children that had any type of experience with gardening had more positive attitudes toward the environment when compared with students that had not gardened. The study showed that hands-on gardening activities are important to the development of environmentally concerned citizens, and that children’s involvement in informal gardening experiences has as much impact on their environmental outlook as involvement in formal school-based programs.
My children’s school unfortunately does not have a formal gardening program, yet the teacher uses the school’s garden for her own gardening needs. I try to involve my children in all aspects of home gardening, but sometimes this is challenging when they stomp on tender young plants or accidentally pull one out while weeding. Planting cover crops is an easy task even for the youngest toddler. Just grab a handful and toss the seeds; no need for straight rows or special spacing.
In the fall, I try to ready as much of my garden for next spring by planting cover crops. My favorite cover crop is crimson clover, even though we have to till the plant in before we get the showy display of red flowers for optimum benefit. Cover crops are called green manures, because they fix nitrogen in the soil and add organic matter. There are many benefits to planting cover crops, even in the smallest garden:
Erosion control: Cover crops help stabilize the soil and prevent runoff during winter storms. Adds organic matter: The roots and top growth add matter when tilled in providing seasonal nutrients. Weed control: This is one of the main reasons I plant cover crops. My thick, dense planting of clover chokes out many weeds, including invasive blackberries, that take hold while my garden is at rest. Increase beneficial insects: Cover crops provide habitat for beneficial insects and feed microbes that fight off disease. Add nutrients: Cover crops are a cheap method of adding nutrients into your garden soil. As Organic Gardening explains:
Cover crops cover the soil and prevent excess nitrogen from leaching. Plants take up excess soil nitrogen and return it to the soil when they are turned under. In addition, legumes, such as clover, fix atmospheric nitrogen in special nodules on their roots, in collaboration with Rhizobium bacteria. This nitrogen can be used by the next crop you grow. In this way, cover crops act as a bank account for nutrients, returning the investment with interest when you turn them under. A task for young children: As I mentioned previously, scattering cover crop seeds is fun and easy for young hands.
I can’t imagine live without an organic garden, and I think my children will always garden no matter where they live from the years on our homestead. There is nothing more wondrous to a child (and adult) than seeing a plant sprout or tasting food grown with your own two hands. Caring for the soil is important, and cover crops are an easy way to ensure gardening success and include your children in the process!
Image: Oklahoma Biological Survey |
Image copyright PA
Prisoners are being allowed to smoke e-cigarettes as part of a pilot scheme that could lead to a jail smoking ban.
BBC News has learned that a brand of disposable e-cigarettes has been on sale in three prisons for two months.
The Prison Service said last year it was committed to introducing a smoking ban across the prison estate in England and Wales to reduce health risks.
A spokesman said it was looking into whether disposable e-cigarettes were suitable for use in prisons.
The e-cigarette brand, Bull, is available in prison shops in the women's jail Eastwood Park in Gloucestershire and the men's prisons Preston in Lancashire and Stocken in Rutland.
Legal action
It is understood about 50 were bought in the men's prisons in the first week and weekly sales are now in single figures.
A ban is also being proposed because of legal action taken by prison officers and inmates who have complained about the effects of passive smoking.
Officials at the National Offender Management Service (Noms), which runs prisons, started the e-cigarette scheme as a way of preparing the ground for what they acknowledge would be a "major change".
An estimated 80% of prisoners currently smoke; which is allowed in prison cells but not in other parts of jails including exercise yards.
Noms is believed to have been impressed with the implementation of a smoking ban in Guernsey's Les Nicolles prison which came into effect last year.
But no date has been set for the ban to be introduced in England and Wales.
Public places
A Prison Service spokesman said: "We are looking into whether disposable e-cigarettes are suitable for use in prisons and are currently conducting a trial in three prisons."
The Prison Officers' Association (POA) began campaigning for a smoking ban in all UK prisons in 2007.
The POA had expressed concerns about staff and prisoners "forced to suffer the harmful effects of second-hand smoke".
It came after smoking bans were introduced across the UK, to protect people from the effects of second-hand smoke in workplaces and enclosed public spaces.
A ban came into effect in England in July 2007 following similar legislation in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The bans did not apply to prisoners as their cells were defined as "domestic premises", although non-smoking prisoners could not be made to share a cell with a smoker.
Guernsey and the Isle of Man were the first two European jurisdictions to introduce a blanket smoking ban in prison grounds.
A spokesman for the Prison Governors Association said "anything that could protect not only staff but other prisoners and visitors from second-hand smoke inhalation is obviously welcomed.
"We will be watching this trial with interest to see just how successful it is." |
That’s so great, thank you. I think that’s true; for people like your dad, probably, compared to what else was out there at the time we started, we were considered really appropriate -- stuff you could play for your kids. That was not intentional, and we kinda lucked out that it did lead eventually to making the kids’ records, with this idea of “we want to be entertaining for kids, maybe be something they can learn from, but not have it be some remedial thing that talks down to them.” Hopefully no kids have ever been forced to learn our songs.
So, you’ve decided to revive Dial-A-Song, the service that TMBG first launched in 1983 as a way to get music directly to people without it costing them (or you) very much by way of distribution. Not only that, you’re using it to put out one new song each week for an entire year. What made you decide to re-launch it? And what is wrong with you that you wanted to write 52 songs in one year?
[Laughs.] Yeah, the second question is more important. Well, first off, we’ve done other things under the Dial-A-Song moniker. It was just one of the very first things we came up with, the idea of a phone that you could call up and just listen to a song, and it still stands at the center of our philosophy, which is that we want people to feel like they’re the ones accessing us -- there’s something kind of personal about it. We’re not invading your space, or imposing ourselves on other people, you’re coming and asking us for a song. I think that’s part of why people feel like they have a kind of ownership of us, we are their personal choice; we are their band, and that’s a good relationship for an artist [to have with their fans].
I think that has led to the kind of cult following, the audiences that have been coming out for decades that I think would happily describe themselves as culty. I don’t think that’s a bad thing. It’s a good reflection on what the band signifies, that people feel like there’s something personal and meaningful about we’re doing. I mean, we’ve never been good at figuring out what people want, but we do know what we like, and most things we come up with as a band are based on the idea of what we would like to hear if we were consumers. That’s the only way that we can make decisions. Even if we could figure out what other people wanted from us, I think we’d be bad at trying to do it from that angle.
And the second question? What made you want to make 52 songs in one year?
This is exactly the kind of challenge that we’ve always been attracted to. We want to have a reason to work, and we work very well under deadline, and we’re also uptight enough that we’re not going to be sloppy. We actually started writing songs for this more than a year ago, and did a lot of work last year; we got a pretty solid backlog done. We’ll be back in the studio in June and hopefully after that will have more top-shelf material to add to the pile, but at this point we could make it through the year with what we have, if we needed to.
Between Dial-A-Song and a few other firsts -- you guys were the first to have an independent online store, for example -- it seems like you were pretty prescient in terms of the way the music industry would change going forward, the way people would consume music. Were you thinking about those issues back then?
Well, we were definitely into this notion of delivering music to people, but it’s true, Dial-A-Song was a completely weirdo idea in the early '80s, and now it's pretty normal. That’s how people buy music now, by sitting at home, so that was just lucky in a way. Back then it was like for shut-ins -- hey, you don’t want to leave your house? Great! Now that’s just normal. But we were never sure about what technology was coming next, and we’ve always been sort of open to whatever it took; we’ve never been stuck on any one particular method.
We probably are of a mindset that albums should have a Side One and a Side Two, but that’s just from being fogies. There’s lots of ways to deliver music. One early thing that we got wind of before we even made records, is we heard about these experimental, avant-garde rock bands who would do things like record their music onto one of those talking dolls, where you pull the string and it talks? That apparatus. So then you have the song and the player all in one, and we just thought that was so great.
That sounds terrifying. And also great. Do you approach digital streaming methods the same open way, do you have a stance on that aspect of the industry right now?
I mean... at the end of the day we need to pay for our, you know, very extravagant lifestyles. No, we need to make enough money to make records and tour, and we have to keep coming up with ways to do that. We have online stores, crowdsourcing-type things, and I think that for us is certainly where we’re at starting to head. Something like Spotify is not promising in terms of how we run. And I do imagine if we were starting out now, it would be much more of an uphill climb; we’re lucky that what used to be the music industry was really behind us, and promoting us. Now it seems a little bit harder to control — there still has to be a promotional machine, and even then you’re lucky just to have your video go viral. It’s just decidedly different [from how it used to be]; even for people at the top, it’s not a way to get rich.
You touched on this a bit, but you’re known for being both very prolific and kind of perfectionist about your music from a technical standpoint. How do you balance the time factor and also wanting songs to come out perfectly?
Well, I wouldn’t use the word "perfectly." I think we have to face up to the slightly deformed quality of our songs fairly often. You’re writing something and you go, "Oh, this is what it is." The song kinda leads you, you have an idea that you just follow wherever it takes you, and it may turn out to not be the most beautiful thing. For us, if we’re not happy with where a song is going, the best thing is just to start on something else.
You just did this whole tour and live album for the 25th anniversary of Flood, which of course had some of your biggest commercial hits on it [“Birdhouse In Your Soul,” “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)”]. How do you feel about music you wrote two-and-a-half decades ago?
To be horribly honest, some of the material from then speaks to me more directly than others. I don’t know if I can nail down certain songs, but there are definitely some where I’m going, “Hmm, I don’t really remember what I meant by this.” Some of them are kind of fun, though they maybe don’t seem as deep as they did 25 years ago. They were written by different people, really, with a little bit of a different outlook. There are songs that the audience really wants to hear, and for the most part I’m really happy when I’m singing the lyrics to a song like “Particle Man” or “Ana Ng.” I suppose “Don’t Let’s Start” is one where I honestly don’t even know what I meant by that. I don’t remember at all. Fortunately, we have a really, ridiculously big backlog.
Last question, and since my dad is the one who got me into you guys, I’ll ask his: How did you wind up playing the accordion? Because he was forced to play one as a kid and hated it.
Ah, yeah. Well, if someone had made me play it as a kid I might not have been interested in it either. But when [TMBG] started, we kind of felt like we were getting to redefine everything. We weren’t the Rolling Stones, so we could kind of act like, “Hey, this is whatever we want it to be.” In the late '70s, I think a lot of musicians felt like they were given license to play an instrument that they weren’t any good at, this punk ethos of “just do it, don’t worry about being a technical expert.” I felt like the accordion was interesting, and interesting-looking. |
One hundred years ago two days ago, the 25th of April 1915, the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps 3rd Infantry Brigade landed at a small cove on the Turkish Gallipoli peninsula. Backed by British support in the grand plan of the then First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill the Gallipoli campaign signified a decisive move take the straits of the Dardanelles that provided a sea route to the Russian Empire. With a small, but knowledgeable force, the Ottoman Turks, while failing to prevent the landing, managed to contain the attack close to the shore. The stalemate on the shores of what is now known as Anzac cove would begin a nine month long campaign that would later be described as the greatest victory in World War I of ‘the sick man of Europe.’ More decisively however, Ottoman victory signified a decisive point in the Turkish nationalism that would come with the rise of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, one of the commanding generals of the Turkish forces.
Australia mourns the loss of more than 8000 that died on the rocky shores of the Gallipoli peninsula; a memorable and commemorated number nonetheless overshadowed by the 87,000 Turks killed during the campaign. Despite the many dead – the campaign is seen as the most successful military work of a dying empire. The success of the Ottoman campaign brought about, lead by Ataturk, a new era and political attitude of populist secularism that would characterize Turkish politics for the years to follow. Today Turkey’s political secularism is under fire from contradictory political culture and deep polarization over the integration of religion into the public sphere. Is Turkey heading toward a neo-Ottoman state; and how is the rest of the world expected to react?
Ataturk’s influence was more than simply that of a charismatic political leader. As the “father of the Turks”, rather responsible for the ingraining of a political culture that saw the military as the “guardians of Turkish secularism” a duty that would see the armed forces as a political actor rather than an organ of the state. This is rather problematic, considering the current ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), a party, though officially characterized ideologically as “conservatively democratic” bears with it strong Islamist roots. Ataturk maintained a dream for a Turkey built on populism, embraced secularism, sovereignty and economic supremacy. A commendable dream – but a dream nonetheless. Though Turkey economically successfully weathered the 2008 Financial Crisis, its liberal structures are damaged in their democratic standing by institutional flaws and social cleavages that are too easily manipulated by political agenda. The military might be politically subject for now, but that’s not to say that the Kemalist dream is completely dead.
The issue with the Turkish political conflict is that it plays on a number of pre-existing divisions within Turkish politics. The AKP demonstrates significant democratic issues – Turkey is still not a liberal democracy despite years of reform on the part of institutions and liberties. The Kurdish challenges pose enduring implications to the direction of Turkish politics, but lacking in the organization to establish themselves as a formidable political force. Opposition parties to the AKP seem disorganized and divided by internal disputes. Future coalitions and alliances between Turkish parties attempting to set the country’s political direction will provide an interesting commentary – and a strong influence on the direction that Turkey’s neighbors and allies will take when dealing with the country swiftly building a hybrid model of political engagement.
It has now been one hundred years since the fall of Gallipoli – this new Turkey is an entirely new political beast to the one created by the mystical ethnic-nationalism of Ataturk. Turkey isn’t rebuilding the past, but rather facing conflicting political ideals about how to react to a rapidly changing system centred around the place of government in the public sphere. As the Australian Prime Minister articulated on his recent visit to commemorate the beginning of the end of Ottoman Turkey at Gallipoli, modern Turkey is “prosperous, its pluralist, it’s peaceful and it’s a stark contrast to the kind of things we see happening in Syria and Iraq right now.” A contrast it may be, but that doesn’t mean its not being watched just as closely. Turkey’s political -religious fusion is no longer an experiment – but a thinly veiled model to rest of the Arab world, despite the rhetoric modesty of the AKP. Needless to say, June’s election will be an important one.
Image Source: lifeofanarchitect.com |
Do you have an impressive profile picture on It might increase your chances of getting hired, a new study suggests.
Users' profile picture affects their callback chances about as strongly as the picture on their resume, researchers at Ghent University in Belgium have found.
Employers have very limited information when they make their first selection of applicants for their vacancies. One potential source of information is the social networking website Facebook, researchers said.
Researchers examined on a scientific basis whether employers actually use during a first screening. They sent fictitious application letters in response to genuine vacancies.
A total of 2,112 job applications were sent out in response to vacancies in various sectors of the Flemish labour market. For each job opening, a pair of male graduates with degrees in commerce, business administration, or applied economics was constructed.
The CVs and motivation letters differed in detail and layout but were similar in productivity-influencing characteristics. The only substantial difference was the candidate's name or picture.
These features were randomly assigned to the application pairs. The photos used were selected for their different scores in attractiveness and personality.
Entering the names of these fictitious job candidates in the Facebook search bar or in Google led exclusively to one of four fictitious Facebook profiles controlled by the research team.
Only the Facebook profile picture was publicly visible. The four photos used varied in terms of physical attractiveness and apparent personality traits.
Researchers then compared the chances of positive responses for applicants with different Facebook profiles. The respective picture was viewable on Facebook but not included in the application letter.
The candidate with the most favourable Facebook profile picture received approximately 21 per cent more positive responses compared to the candidate with the least favourable profile picture. The chances to get an immediate invitation to a job interview even differed by almost 40 per cent.
The results also show that highly educated applicants are more likely to be screened via Facebook than the less educated. Occupations with regular customer contact are not more prone to Facebook screening than others, researchers said.
"Given that these strong differences can be driven only by the Facebook profile picture, it is clear that many employers screen via Facebook," said Stijn Baert from Ghent University. |
Google’s AI AlphaGo has done it again: it’s defeated Ke Jie, the world’s number one Go player, in the first game of a three-part match. AlphaGo shot to prominence a little over a year ago after beating Korean legend Lee Se-dol 4-1 in one of the most potent demonstrations of the power of artificial intelligence to date. And its defeat of Ke shows that it was only getting started.
“I think everyone recognizes that Ke Jie is the strongest human player,” 9th-dan professional and commentator Michael Redmond said before the match. And despite defeat, Ke’s strategy suggested that the 19-year-old Chinese prodigy has actually learned from AlphaGo’s often unorthodox approach. “This is Master’s move,” said Redmond of one of Ke’s earliest plays, referring to the pseudonym that AlphaGo used for a recent series of online matches in which it racked up a 60-game winning streak.
Interesting that Ke Jie has decided to play an very early 3-3 point as he knows #AlphaGo likes to play there. — Demis Hassabis (@demishassabis) May 23, 2017
AlphaGo won by just half a point, the closest margin possible, but that’s characteristic of its playing style. The AI doesn’t appear to care about the margin of victory, instead choosing moves that it has determined are the most likely to lead to a win. The result was technically close, but AlphaGo looked like winning from a relatively early stage in the game.
“I think it was a really wonderful game,” DeepMind CEO and co-founder Demis Hassabis said at the post-game press conference. “Huge respect to Ke Jie for playing such a great game and pushing AlphaGo to its limits.”
Ke and AlphaGo are facing off as part of the Future of Go Summit being held by Google in Wuzhen, China, this week. The second game will be on Thursday (China time; Wednesday evening in the US) while the finale will be on Saturday. Friday will see AlphaGo further put to the test in two stipulation matches; one where it acts as a teammate to two Chinese pros playing each other, and another where it takes on five Chinese pros all at once. |
honestly before this trip i knew nothing about serbia. belgrade fell on our map for a few basic reasons – we wanted to go deeper into the balkans and came across an article claiming belgrade "might be the next berlin", which left us pretty intrigued. after doing a little more research, it seemed like a city that would be worth spending some time in, and we ended up staying for over a week [see our post on where to stay]. after a week here we agreed that it reminded us a lot of brooklyn or oakland, a ton of history and decayed in parts, but exploding with creativity.
serbia's capital city is full of charm – with extremely friendly locals, a thriving cafe & bar culture, talented local designers, wild nightlife, waterfront culture, gritty, unique architecture and low prices – it is absolutely worth a visit on an eastern european tour. after a few nights of touring the city on our own, 3 friends from london met up with us for the weekend. it was the perfect excuse to blend our trip of historical and artsy stops with a fair amount of vetting belgrade's party reputation. below we map out some of our favorite things in this unexpectedly hip town.
THE STREET SCENE: |
Following the ever-growing craze of Bitcoins, tech nerds are turning their gaming consoles into mining rigs. Take for example Singapore based Mr Deter Ng who along with his group of friends have recently joined the Bitcoin mining circle armed with powerful graphics processing unit. They are using their computers to perform complex mathematical algorithms to mine more and more cryptocurrencies. There are ample of options in the cryptocurrency world but as Bitcoin sits at the first position in top cryptocurrency list, everyone is trying to mine Bitcoin or purchase the same.
Bitcoin Price Reaches Record Figures
Bitcoin price reached record-breaking figures in November by crossing over the $7500 barrier on 8th of this month which surely is a great thing when compared to its $1000 price at the beginning of this fiscal. The growing popularity of Bitcoin has also helped accentuate the growth of corresponding cryptocurrencies such as Litecoin and Ethereum. This propelled Mr Nag and his friends to enter into the lucrative business of Bitcoin mining.
“Then we posted photos online, on Facebook, and people started asking how much is this and they wanted buy it off. So I sold it to people who queried on Facebook, and after a while, we started selling many on Facebook, so we decided to incorporate this company,” the 29-year-old said.
Mr Ng was delighted with the current hike in sales of rigs. His company is presently selling 100 rigs a month in comparison to the usual figure of 15 rigs monthly. “Customers come in and order 50 rigs on their own. Compared to last time, probably one person only buys one or two. Now we get customers who buy 10, 20 or even 50,” he added.
His company situated in Geylang Lorong 23 can house up to 45 rigs with its sprawling office space spread across 1100 square feet. Individual rigs can fetch anything in between S$5,000 to over S$6,500 in accordance with the processing power.
Also Read: Bitcoin More Valubale Than Fiat Currencies Like Singapore Dollar
Cryptocurrency Trading
Singapore based exchange Coinhako recently told Channel NewsAsia that users trading over its platform has completely doubled since the year’s beginning. Quoine, another exchange platform, also reported double digit growth statistics since the beginning of this fiscal. Mr Ian Chan, had purchased a rig three months back, and feels that certain factors need to be taken into account while crypto mining:
“calculating the percentage of return is one thing but what if this machine every day gives me issue, where I need to debug or whatever. Then to me, am I buying something that I need to work on every day? From that angle, if I start with buying 20 units, then my problem multiplied 20 times. So I start with one, try it out and if it is good, then I slowly increase my investment in that,” he added.
Mr Chan’s rig is presently mining a Zcash cryptocurrency . His earnings are redirected into a virtual wallet which can be encashed by him or stored with expectations of value hike in days to come. Mr Chan has reported a monthly earning of $300 from his rig mines and it would take him two years to reach the break-even point given the additional electricity cost of running the rig round the clock in his house. Ryu, his thirteen year old son is also the proud owner of a mining rig.
With the soaring price of Bitcoin, some are comparing it to with a bubble just waiting to burst. Mr McMahon, the founder of Cleer, a digital commodities platform built on blockchain architecture feels that, “if you look at it statistically, it’s actually probably still really cheap in terms of an asset class.”
Stanley Yong, a crypto research challenged McMahon’s philosophy by saying that, “the price going up is probably a bubble, given that it has reached more than US$7,000 per bitcoin. And the question for us is not whether it is a bubble. But how long this bubble will be there. And whether that speculation will result in a correction that will be painful and destructive versus a correction that is healthy.”
MAS Won’t Take Part In Crypto Regulation
The Monetary Authority of Singapore stated that it will not be a part of crypto regulation to Bloomberg last month. However, MAS was quick to add that it shall monitor its surrounding activities and decide on imposing regulations as per the inherent risk involved. Market watchers hold the view that there were various fuelling factors behind Bitcoin’s recent price hike and it surely is not entirely speculative. Economic fundamentals led people to believe that the blockchain architecture houses the potential of disrupting normal economy run by liquid cash. Mr McMahon pointed out that, “Blockchain itself is a revolutionary technology. It’s really a systemic shift.”
Also Read: Cryptocurrency Regulations Not Required Says Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS)
Blockchain actually refers to a chain of blocks each one of which contain a data set. Such blocks are stored by using the distributed ledger mechanism. There exists no authority over the Bitcoin working unlike other centralised operations. Rather every user can easily access the data stored in the network but cannot impart any changes to the same. Mr McMahon added that, “the ledger architecture that sits on the backbone of blockchain has an incredibly innate ability to create irrefutable, immutable retention of data in perpetuity.”
However, Mr Yong has also issued a word of caution regarding the malicious side of cryptocurrency world. He emphasized upon the point saying that, “not all of them are equal. Not all of them are based on new economic models. Even when a promoter of such cryptocurrencies is to point to something innovative, there is no sure win in many of these cases even when there is no intent to commit fraud, even when the people behind the cryptocurrency are sincere in their intentions, there is always a high chance of failure.” Investors are expected to do their homework before jumping onto the investment bandwagon termed as Bitcoin.
Also Read: Central Bank of Singapore Head Warns About Bitcoin Being a Much-Hyped Bubble
Get latest cryptocurrency news and updates on KryptoMoney.com
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"And I think it's gonna be a long, long, time
'Til touchdown brings me 'round again to find
I'm not the man they think I am at home
Ah, no no no
I'm a rocket man
Rocket man
Burnin' out this fuse
Up here alone"
- "Rocket Man" - Written by Elton John/Bernard Taupin - Performed by Elton John
Last Thursday, The Blacklist aired its season two finale, "Tom Connolly". I thought it an exceptional episode, which is what you want given how some other show's finales have been this TV season. It closed out most of the questions we were concerned with and paved the way for a season three that, based on that ending, will re-ignite my love for this series. I hope it does the same for other fans, as the ratings have dropped considerably. For a finale, you want more viewers than the premiere and last Thursday was over five million viewers short.
The events of the episode continued right where we left off from the previous one, 'Karakurt". Red informs Liz on her precarious situation as Tom Connolly discusses with Agent Cooper that he intends to arrest Liz. Liz is told she has been framed by the Cabal and after Connolly captures her she is interrogated by two agents who, of course, don't believe a word she says. They confirm her birth name as Masha Rostova (which was scheduled to be the finale's title, but changed before airing). Cooper stands up for Liz to Connolly before meeting with Red, where we learn his plan, facilitating Liz's escape from the "Post Office". I enjoyed this part of the episode as we see Red, once again, coming to Liz's rescue with the help of Agent Cooper, who knows the perfect way out of the building without getting caught - until Liz runs into Ressler. I, like many of you, predicted Ressler would let her go because a part of him believes every word she says is true (and he probably has a thing for her...maybe?). In any case, this was the first of the many high energy scenes The Blacklist gifted to us for the finale and it was extremely enjoyable to watch. Red's 'coolness' throughout was a great touch that we expect from his character in these situations and Cooper there to help was the icing on the cake.
Red's Quotes
Music from the Episode
Thoughts and Discussion
About the Author - Geo N Geo N is from Detroit, MI. His favorite shows include The Blacklist, Hell On Wheels, The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, LOST, The Leftovers, The Strain, Sons Of Anarchy, Sleepy Hollow and countless others. When he's not watching tons of TV, he enjoys reading, playing hockey, comic books, weightlifting, and writing. Thanks for checking out my post. All Reviews) Recent Reviews
Throughout much of season two of The Blacklist (mostly after the "Berlin-centric" episodes) we were shown how much Liz has been a beacon of light to Red; aof light to guide him out of the darkness. If you noticed in that scene, where Liz was escaping the "Post Office", Liz was in the dark and there was, literally, a 'red' light guiding her way to safety. He is as much her 'ray of light' as she is his.Liz spends most of the rest of the episode trying to clear her name. She goes back and forth with Tom, contemplating whether or not to flee with him on his boat or stay and collect evidence to prove her innocence in the murder of Senator Hawkins. She shares a nice heart-to-heart with Agent Cooper as he comes clean about his involvement with Connolly and also has time for an intimate moment with Tom. It was enjoyable to watch the car chase scene that erupted when Liz and Tom went looking for Andropov and I'm glad she ended up not fleeing with Tom in the end.It's at this point in the episode we get another incredible scene with Red explaining to Liz what he is capable of doing. He tells her he is a "Sin Eater", someone who absorbs the misdeeds of others. He goes on to say that he darkens his soul to keep the ones he is helping pure. As usual, Red quickly changes the subject whenever he doesn't like the line of questioning coming his way as Liz asks the most important question of the episode, "What sin of mine could you possibly have absorbed?". This question is answered before the finale is over. Many other questions are also answered, such as Agent Cooper and his terminal illness. Some of you have speculated that Cooper was never sick to begin with and it was all just a construct of the Cabal to get him to do their bidding. Although, he is now under arrest, I am glad his health is good shape.Red outing the Cabal by kidnapping investigative journalists and informing them of the contents of The Fulcrum was something you would expect only the 'Concierge of Crime' to pull off. It was brilliant how he conveyed the seriousness of it's contents with dangerous situation that accompanies its publishing. "The truth will out, not all of us will live to see that day, but the truth will out" is what he leaves them all with as he hopes their stories about The Fulcrums's contents will save his, but more importantly, Liz's life.The song "Rocket Man" is said to be based on a short story by Ray Bradbury titled "The Rocket Man". The story is about an astronaut who travels into space for three months at a time and comes back to Earth to visit with his wife and son. He wants to quit to spend more time with family. Despite making several attempts to quit, staying at home with his family and his constant absence has nearly destroyed his relationship with his wife. Before leaving for another three-month period, which the father intended to be his last mission as a Rocket Man, the father makes Doug, his son, promise he will never follow in his father's footsteps.The finale was an excellent episode that concluded the season perfectly. Many of our questions were answered, while leaving some for season three. The Cabal, and The Director, are still out there, but our heroes are a little scattered in the wake of finale's events. Liz is on the run with Red, her "Sin Eater", Agent Cooper has been arrested and Ressler is acting director of the Task Force. If there is still a Task Force in season three is something we will have to wait and see. Liz will most likely seek to get more information about her mother, from Red or other sources, but she is determined to know more. Season Three looks to be another great chapter for The Blacklist. Season Two's finale was most definitely a 'game-changer'.After Liz and Cooper meet up with Connolly in the final moments of the episode, Liz finally remembers the night of the famous fire from her youth. She now knows what Red was trying to make her forget. Liz realizes then that Red is her light as much as she is his. Red and Liz talk about that night at the end of the episode as he explains that he never wanted her to be like him. It was a special juncture in their sinuous relationship. After a season of Liz fluctuating and wavering back-and-forth between loving and hating Red it appears she has finally accepted his role in her life, whatever that may be. It doesn't matter if Red is Liz's father or not - like the 'Rocket Man', Red is 'not the man that we think he is at all'. What matters to Liz now, is the harmonious relationship they share; Red is her 'Sin Eater' and occasional guide through life and Liz is his ray of light and beacon of hope in a tumultuous world."Mars ain't the kind of placeTo raise your kidsIn fact, it's cold as hellAnd there's no one there to raise themIf you did"- "You're already in their hands. The only thing they haven't done is close their fist."Red to Liz- "In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king."Red to Cooper- "Black Eunuch" - AlgiersRed & Harold discuss the plan to extract Liz; Harold talks Liz through the escape until she runs into Ressler.- "Rocket Man (I Think It's Going to Be a Long Long Time)" - Elton JohnRed tells Liz he never wanted her to be like him; Ressler watches as Harold is arrested; Tom leaves on his boat; Liz's picture is put on the board for the FBI's Most Wanted List; Liz & Red head out of town.- I love the parallels that were drawn between Red and Liz's life this season. This is made even more apparent as Liz's photo is added right next to Red's on the FBI's Most Wanted List. Their relationship is truly a harmonious one and they are closer to each other than they (and we) think.- After the events of the finale, will Red still work with the Task Force (if there still is one?)- Will Agent Navabi still be on the Task Force as she was on loan from the Israeli government? Will she go back to her previous job? I like her character a lot so, I would love to see her stick around. Especially to see if anything comes of her and Aram.- What will become of Tom and his boat, 'Jene II'? In what capacity will we see him in Season Three? I enjoyed his character this season and look forward to whatever story arc they have in store for him next season.- Did you notice...Red's plan worked as The Director is seen staring at a newspaper with the headline indicating there is the existence of a shadow government.- I am not sure why they changed the title of the episode, but now we know Tom Connolly is number 11 on the blacklist. This means 'Masha Rostova' (Liz) could be a potential blacklister in the future. It also means that we do not know who is number '6' and below on the blacklist with Tom being the lowest known blacklister.- Did you notice...Liz shot Connolly with Tom's gun. She took it from his boat before she left. I wonder if this will play into the events of season three or if it's not going to be a big deal at all. Either way, I think it's neat so many of the people that care about her inadvertently helped her out in the finale.- Did you notice...In the episode, "Leonard Caul", Liz tells Red she wishes he would just lie and say 'Yes' sometimes to the questions she asks to make her feel better. In the finale last week, Red says 'Yeah' when asked about why he blocked her memories from the night of the fire - not to protect himself but to protect Liz. I noticed (as well as some of you - thank you Ashley) he took a lengthy pause before answering her, which makes me think he only said 'Yeah' to Liz to make her feel better even though it was a lie and there is probably a lot more to the events of that night that he wishes to share with Liz at this moment. Hopefully we find out more in Season Three.- What were your thoughts about the finale and the season as a whole? What do you look forward to in Season Three? |
257
8300 Bennington Ct
Vallejo , CA 94591
(707) 655-4808
Nearly speechless. Michael Warring's cooking is beyond words. The food taste, texture, color, smell, overall quality...absolutely riveting. Stupendous! The ambiance is a little sterile, not the most cozy. The bathroom is like a spa though! Pretty stones in the sink, a velvety smooth candle was lit, and it was warm. Dinner party reservation for 4. Seated right away. Michael's wife is so pleasant, polite, and sweet. Michael was very reserved, cold, nearly didn't say a word to anyone the whole night. I guess he speaks through his cooking and food, which is very bright and engaging! Had a total of 12 courses with the wine pairing (on the menu it shows 13 courses, but two of them, the steamed bun and dashi broth, were paired together). The wines were delectable, matched so incredibly well with the foods. Excellent job! Asian influence to many of his dishes. The bowls and plates are made for their restaurant, super unique. Everything Mr. Warring serves comes directly from his kitchen. He creates and cooks each creative item that you eat!
Party of 4; our 3x, guests 1x. Note: still open Wednesday through Sunday, dinner only, but now only TWO seatings: 6 p.m. and 7:15 p.m. NO WALK-INS, NO EXCEPTIONS--RESERVATION ONLY. 1 menu prix fixe per nite. Any allergies, specify when calling to make reservations, using a credit card. Note driving instructions to restaurant; most GPSs are incorrect once you enter the development where MW is. Food and service was fabulous as always. Our guests were wowed! Our menu was: - Stone Fruits: wood sorrel, apple sorbet, balsamic, shaved foie gras. - Fluke: bottarga, crispy parsley, hearts of palm, pickled radish. - Mushroom Agnolotti: hens yolk, dashi broth, black truffle shavings - Pork belly: chanterelle mushrooms, elderberry jus, sumac. - Cheese Cart: Brioche, two cheeses, plum jam. - Beignet: oatmeal streusel, salted caramel, peanut butter ice cream. Beer pairing: Saison Farmhouse ale, Hitachino Ginger Brew, Petrus Sour Pale Ale, North Coast Passion Fruit Peach Berliner, and a Doppelbock. Guest gave the pairing 5 stars in matching the food. Chef Warring is an amazing, creative chef and Allie (sorry I misspelled her name earlier!) is a wonderful sommelier. Dining room is serene and beautiful to match the elegant, exquisite food. The flavors are beautifully balanced; no overwrought glorified bar food to be found here! The price is rock-bottom. Make reservations NOW and go! HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!
We returned last night as an anniversary celebration and while this was our fourth visit each time has brought special surprises in what Chef Warring has brought to our table. For example, the first course last night was "kuri squash soup." So, you might ask, "What's so special about squash soup?" It was made special by the shaved foie gras and the persimmon sorbet that were a part of this dish. The chef is amazingly creative in his use of ingredients that I have never seen paired together! The following dish simply read "tuna" on the menu. The tuna was very shiny and fresh looking, and was diced into cubes and was served with brown butter powder, pork belly shavings (labeled snow) and crispy fine herbs. What an imagination and extensive knowledge of what works and what doesn't does Chef Warring possess! Ali, the hostess, server and interpreter of dishes smoothly "works the floor" making sure each table receives attention. She is upbeat, knowledgeable and quite the professional and she is a big part of why we choose this restaurant for the one in which we celebrate special occasions.
This was my very first time trying this type of a meal style and I had the most fabulous time!! There were ingredients that I've never tried before and never thought ever I would. Everything was a delight to my tastebuds and the wine pairings were on point! This is a small establishment, but is set up in a way to give optimal attention to detail & satisfaction. You are welcome to get up & watch the chef while he's doing his thing. You can ask questions, take pictures. And the couple that owns this place are so calm & charming. It was such a great experience shared with family, and I highly recommend them!!
Well don't get me wrong with the rating I've given the food was delicious. I thoroughly enjoyed each course that was served the squash soup with persimmon sorbet I was skeptical at first but it worked well. The tuna was a bit fishey tasting. And the pasta was awesome and the pork tenderloin was soft enough to cut with a fork best pork tenderloin I've ever had. But this type of meal I now realize isn't for me I'm not saying that that's the same for everyone but I would have rather gone to a high end steakhouse for the same price. Not knocking this restaurant one bit or the amazing chef. Just not my cup of tea (now I know).
Wow. It is SO GOOD. That's all I can say. You gotta try it. The owners are spectacular and the wine pairings are superb.
Hidden gem! Michael cooks right in front of you, he is kind and informative. The two in the restaurant really work at making the experience note worthy. We went for the first time last night, loved it, and made another reservation. Reservations can be made a couple weeks out. Seating can be at the counter for a nice view of Michael, or for a more secluded experience you can sit at the few tables in the restaurant. No flares, no staff, just the two of them taking care of the guests every needs. The food is out of this world, so many different textures, temperatures and flavors. Best experience in the Napa area so far! And yes, I've been to the French Laundry... The experience is so much more personal with Michael Warring
Chef Warring's little strip shop establishment has been on my list since right after it opened about 6 years ago. Upon a whim we were able to sneak in tonight for our anniversary. Both Chef Warring and His wife were sweet and welcoming and attentive. The meal was definitely well rehearsed but for our first visit, it was perfect. My wife only eats seafood so it was nice to have a tuna dish on the menu tonight. Everything came out promptly and exceeded expectations. I'm astonished there are folks that have previously cited that the menu did not offer enough food as my wife and I nearly needed to be wheeled out by the end of the cheese course All in All a 5 Star for expertly prepared food, a personalized service and proximity to home. Sounds like there will be a number of space improvements over the next couple of months so we are looking forward to what comes next!!
This was a truly amazing experience. We've dined at a few notable restaurants including the French Laundry and the value of Michael Warring is difficult to beat. This was the meal I wanted out of the French Laundry. 7 courses plus a wine pairing for around $100 sans tip is not something you find every day. I encourage anyone who can get here to get a reservation as quickly as possible. The menu is seasonal and perfectly executed with ingredients like foie gras, truffle, and tuna sourced from the famed Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo. Five stars is rare for me but we will certainly be back because the value for the meal is unmatched in this area. Amazing. Thankful.
Went here with my boyfriend who had been a couple of times before for work. He had really talked the place up, and it definitely didn't disappoint. The food was beyond good - the smells coming out of the open kitchen were drool-worthy themselves - and I'm almost heartbroken that I'll probably never have another lobster roll quite as delectable as the one I had that night. The experience itself of having so many courses in that kind of intimate setting was just so new to me, and now I want to recreate it every time I eat.
What a great hidden gem on the outskirts of Vallejo. It's nestled in the little shopping center in the HiddenBrooke community just off the 80 on the very edge of town. 5-star restaurant in Vallejo? Who knew! It's a small venue, pre-paid reservations required but well worth it. We had the food and wine pairing, they offer a beer tasting as well. Everything was farm to table fresh and Chef prepares for you in plain sight, almost like a show. His wife is a wonderful hostess and together they deliver a great dining experience. Different menu each time, we can't wait to go again and try something new.
Yum, slurp n gorge (gorge meant both ways)! Michael and his cute as a button wife/restaurant partner are a hidden dream team of class and gastronomic delight in Hiddenbrooke. You aren't a real foodie if you haven't been here.
What else can I say about this other than it's a culinary experience? If you're expecting large portions enough to take back as a doggie, this place is not for you. The setting showcases a quaint intimate kitchen in Vallejo, CA. Reservations are required and the menu switches regularly. I went with a party of 6 to this dinner. We had soup, starter, entree, cheese plate, dessert. Watching Chef Warring in this intimate setting where each dish was created in front of our eyes. Overall, it was quite different from the usual sit down restaurant where we could see a professional chef work their craft. The dishes provided an opportunity to taste the food. It was a feast for the eyes as well as to the pallet. Overall, it was a positive and memorable experience, I'd consider coming back again.
Honestly the best culinary experience I've ever had! Food was amazing and wine partings were spot on. We have been for the regular 6 course menu and now the 12 course tasting menu. The 12 course tasting menu is by far the way to go! It's a bit more expensive but worth every penny. Definitely have and hidden gem in Vallejo. We can't wait to go back again! Thank you for an amazing meal!
I absolutely loved my experience here. I went with girlfriends to enjoy some quality time and a good meal. I had heard about Michael Warring and was anxious to go see for myself. There are so many delightful flavors here. The meal consisted of six courses and we of course opted for the wine pairings. All of the flavors were surprising and new, with combinations I could never think of. And it's really fun to sit in this intimate restaurant where you get to watch the chef at work. Next time I'm going to sit at the bar and feel like I'm really in the kitchen. I will definitely be back!
This place is by far my favorite resturaunt in the "upscale" dining category. I've been to a few Michelin Star restaurants and I am surprised they do not already have one as it's definitely better than all the ones I've tried. They have a prix-fixe 5 course menu for $69, which is more than worth the price, as all the dishes have a good balance of flavors and creativity. The decor of the place is very simple and clean. They have an open kitchen so if you get a seat at the bar you can watch Michael make all your amazing food! The dining atmosphere is relatively intimates as there are probably only 5 tables, seats and the bar and you are served by the manager, who carefully explains eat dish. While it is out of the way in Vallejo, it's worth the trip (and not that far from Napa if you want to make a day trip of out it) and I definitely recommend it! Also please note, that you must make a reservation to dine here.
Amazing! What a culinary dream come true. Let me let you in on a little--no so secret--secret. My husband and I visited Michael Warring restaurant for the first time on our anniversary. We are total foodie snobs and are always looking for a new place to try. We are accustomed to finer dining experiences such as Cole's Chop House, Gary Danko and French Laundry. This time we wanted to stay close to home but were craving the fine food and interaction of Napa-- so we tried Michael Warring. We were taken back by the somewhat modest exterior and location but once inside you are whisked away to another place and time. The interior is minimal yet modern and the focus is totally on the food, wine and dining experience. Reservations are limited and seating's are twice a night so the focus stays on the experience. Both the chef and the host were fabulous. Attention was paid to every detail. We did a tasting with our meals and each time wine was presented, the appropriate glassware was provided and the wine was thoroughly explained. I may be partial but this is one of our favorite aspects of eating out in fine dining establishments-- trying new wine and finding new favorites. The multi course meals were perfectly timed out and each came with its own intimate touch of care from the chef. It was perfection on a plate. Each course was sensationally flavored and unique in its own way. We especially love the open kitchen concept and seeing the chef work his magic all while indulging in the wine and meal courses in front of us. This place is more than just a restaurant, it's a destination! If you are looking for a one of a kind dining experience that holds its own against the best in Napa and San Francisco, look no further than Michael Warring. Be sure to make your reservation well in advance. You will love it!
Fantastic tasting experience! Michael Warring and his wife run a very efficient and warm establishment. The portions were small and delicious. I didn't feel as if I had to slow down so I wouldn't get full. I did slow down just to savor all the complex and well thought out flavors. The menu was very sophisticated, the wine pairing spot on and a pleasure to see something like this in Vallejo. Finally people are going to start appreciating what a gorgeous place this is.
I am not one that is easily impressed but within a small strip mall was hidden gem. The food was creative and innovative, but also delicious! Every course was fantastic and left us discussing our meal on the ride home. I will be recommending this restaurant to all, as it is affordable and memorable. |
The latest astronomy milestone lasted only a matter of milliseconds. A team of scientists led by Emily Petroff of Swinburne University of Technology revealed in the most recent issue of “Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society” it had observed a “fast radio burst” in real time in May using the Parkes Radio Telescope in eastern Australia.
“We’re the first to catch one in real time,” Petroff, a doctoral candidate, told Science Blog. “These bursts were generally discovered weeks or months or even more than a decade after they happened!”
"This is a major breakthrough," Duncan Lorimer of West Virginia University told New Scientist.
Fast Radio Bursts, also known as FRBs, consist of incredibly brief and intense bursts of radio energy that seem to originate from remote parts of space. The team that observed this most recent burst said it believes the burst came from a point 5.5 billion light-years away though it has no idea what caused it. Previously detected FRBs have come from twice as far away.
John Mulchaey, acting director of Carnegie Observatories, part of the team of scientists that observed this particular FRB, has described the phenomenon as “one of the great mysteries of the Universe.” And since FRBs were first observed in 2007, theories about what causes them have proliferated. Some say they are the result of celestial collisions, or of starquakes occurring on extremely powerful neutron stars. Still others contend they are messages sent by intelligent beings directly to Earth.
To study them more closely, a team of Australian scientists working with the Parkes Radio Telescope developed a technique that could be used to detect the bursts in real time. Swinburne University’s Petroff was using that technique when her team made its historic discovery. |
POLITICIANS do love a morality tale. Just ask the Greeks. American political leaders, in common with so many around the world, relish casting Grecian agonies as an Aesop’s fable for modern times (pitting northern European ants against Mediterranean grasshoppers). That makes it striking—and revealing—that mainland political bosses seem reluctant to sermonise about a debt crisis much closer to home, in the autonomous American territory of Puerto Rico.
The island’s governor, Alejandro García Padilla, last month conceded that public debts of $72 billion are “not payable”. For politicians on the right, Puerto Rico’s fall looks like a ready-made parable. It is a tale of big government and policies that look kindly but instead trap the poor in listless dependence. To take just one measure, the island’s workforce-participation rate is a dismal 40%, thanks in part to rigid labour laws and welfare schemes that too often pay better than taking a job. For those on the left, this is a chance to preach against investment funds which piled into Puerto Rican bonds in search of high returns, and now want islanders to take the pain after that gamble went wrong. Republicans and Democrats hardly held their tongues when similar debt crises broke in Europe, or in such American cities as Detroit.
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Yet among mainland political leaders, debate about Puerto Rico has been distinctly cautious and technocratic—when bigwigs discuss the island at all—and centres on such questions as the island’s bankruptcy laws, which are in the hands of Congress in Washington. On July 7th Hillary Clinton, the Democratic front-runner in the 2016 presidential contest, ended days of equivocation and called for Congress to grant Puerto Rico the same access to federal bankruptcy protections that the 50 states enjoy when trying to save indebted municipalities or public services. Some conservative groups call that approach a “taxpayer bail-out”, and accuse Democrats of plotting to let Puerto Rico walk away from its debts like Argentina, Venezuela or other leftist scofflaws. Those critics would be on stronger political ground if Mrs Clinton’s ideas were not almost a carbon copy of a proposal by one of her main Republican rivals, Jeb Bush. Mr Bush, a former governor of Florida, argues that Puerto Rico should be granted the same bankruptcy rights as the 50 states—not least because he thinks the island should one day become state number 51.
In part, this bipartisan mood of caution is explained by a crude calculation: Puerto Ricans have become too important to offend. Though the 3.5m inhabitants of Puerto Rico cannot vote in presidential elections and only send a non-voting delegate to Congress, they are American citizens and enjoy full voting rights if they move to one of the 50 states. For decades, the votes of the Puerto Rican diaspora hardly swayed national elections, because most lived in New York or New Jersey where Democrats romp home in presidential contests. But since 1990 legions of Nuyoricans, or Puerto Ricans living in New York and the north-east, have migrated to the battleground state of Florida, drawn by sunshine, cheap homes and jobs. In the past decade they have been joined by hundreds of thousands of islanders fleeing economic stagnation and high crime. There are about 5m Puerto Ricans on the mainland now, a fifth of them in Florida. One last quirk gives these new arrivals extra influence. In Puerto Rico, political parties are organised around such local issues as statehood, and match up imperfectly with America’s partisan camps—though leftists are in general more sceptical of statehood, possibly because the island’s bloated public sector would have to shrink and taxes fall to converge with mainland norms. In Floridian elections, this makes many Puerto Ricans that rarest of animals: true swing voters, willing to elect both moderate Republicans (especially if they are Puerto Rican) and Democrats.
Darren Soto, a Democratic state senator from central Florida, represents a sprawling suburban district that 20 years ago was cow pastures and orange groves. Though a quarter of his constituents are Puerto Rican, he has not heard one of them advocate a federal bail-out for the island. His voters include educated workers who yearn for institutional changes on the island. They do not want federal tax dollars “thrown at the crisis”, says Mr Soto.
Colonial guilt
Alongside electoral maths, there is another reason why mainland politicians may be reluctant to talk too much about Puerto Rico. It involves guilt. America is proud to be a superpower that never built an empire. But Puerto Rico was, in essence, grabbed as a colony in 1898, after a brief war ended four centuries of rule by Spain (islanders went from being “fervently Spanish” to “enthusiastically American” within 24 hours, grumbled one of the vanquished Spanish commanders at the time).
To this day goods must be shipped between the mainland and Puerto Rico on expensive American-flagged vessels, under a law of 1920 that Congress declines to repeal. Under Rexford Guy Tugwell, appointed governor by Franklin Roosevelt in 1941, the island was one large experiment in central planning, down to the creation of favoured industries, from tuna canning to pharmaceuticals. The island was further subsidised during the cold war as a counter-example to Cuba, but never became competitive.
Luis Fortuño, a conservative who tried to boost growth by cutting taxes and public payrolls as the island’s elected governor in 2009-13, says he often felt he was “fighting Tugwell’s phantom”. Today, some on the American right want Congress to create a “financial control board” with powers to impose reforms on debt-ridden Puerto Rico, as was done to Washington, DC in the 1990s. That sounds unblushingly colonial, and is no way to craft reforms that might stick.
Small wonder that many American politicians prefer to ignore Puerto Rico. Alas for them, the debt crisis is muscling into the 2016 race. Sooner or later, this tale will need a moral ending. |
Bring on your App dev and design skills, build a video application, present it to 1,200 attendees and win $50,000 prize!
Join us June 13-15 in NYC or ONLINE and show your dev and design skills... Build video experiences using Kaltura, and win twice - Participating teams will get a chance to visit Kaltura Connect and present their applications to leading media companies, universities, educational organizations and Fortune 500 corporations around the world. The winners will take home a $50,000 prize!
How to Participate?
Sign up for your free Kaltura Developer Account. Join the ChallengePost challenge (click Join to the right on this page). Build a Kaltura based video experience - and submit to the first round of judging on Sunday at 5pm!
Participating On Site in NYC - 5 Union Square W, New York, NY 10003.
We will have lots of food, soft drinks, and coffee served throughout the weekend to keep everyone energized.
At the venue we will have Kaltura, VoiceBase and Rackspace experts who will be there as mentors to help you get started quickly and learn the APIs and SDKs.
We will be running wifi based on AT&T LTE network. It should be enough bandwidth to serve everyone, but if you have your own hotspot – feel free to bring it for your own dedicated internet connection.
Participating Online – NEW!
If you couldn’t make it to NYC this week – you can still participate at the Hackathon!
We will be Live Streaming the opening keynote, the API presentations and the first round of judging on Sunday evening. The URL to watch the Live Stream is http://connect.kaltura.com/livehackathon.
Developers who finish their apps by Sunday will be invited to present their application via video to the judges during Sunday evening’s first round of screening.
Mentors from Kaltura, VoiceBase and Rackspace will be hanging out over at the IRC #kaltura channel on freenode.net for online assistance with the APIs and SDKs.
The Schedule Highlights
We will meet on Friday, June 13, at 4pm for gathering and networking, the presentations and Live Stream will begin at 5:30pm.
Application hacking will officially begin at 9pm on Friday and last until Sunday at 4pm.
On Sunday at 5pm we will have the first round of judging, where the finalists will be chosen.
The finalists will be chosen based on meeting all "Judging Criteria”: is the application original, fully functional, based on Kaltura, and can be presented publicly.
On Sunday, we will also open for public voting by the community and Kaltura Connect attendees – so make sure your app is presentable and accessible online!
Finalists will be invited to Kaltura Connect at Jazz at Lincoln Center, to present their apps at the closing keynote on June 18th where the final judging will take place, and the winners will be announced!
The Weekend Agenda:
Friday (June 13)
4:00pm - 5:30pm: Registrations and social drinks!
5:30pm - 6:00pm: Welcome keynote.
6:30pm - 7:30pm: Presenting the APIs and SDKs
7:30pm - 9:00pm: Food and Group Formation
9:00pm: Let the hacking begin!
Saturday (June 14)
Hacking, Coffee, Food and Drinks through the day!
Sunday (June 15)
4:00pm: Get ready for presentations!
5:00pm - 7:00pm: Presentations and Guidance
Monday through Wednesday - Kaltura Connect (June 16-18)
Teams that have submitted apps, will recieve FREE tickets to attend Kaltura Connect - The Video Experience Conference.
And special discounted tickets for the pre-conference workshops!
During the conference there will be a period of public crowd voting.
At the closing keynote (June 18)
Final judging and announcing the winners!
View full rules |
An Avianca airlines Fokker 100 aircraft, flight number AV6393, is seen after making an emergency landing at the Juscelino Kubitschek international airport in Brasilia March 28, 2014. The flight departed from Petrolina in the state of Pernambuco, northeastern Brazil and was bound for Brasilia. REUTERS/Ueslei Marcelino
BRASILIA (Reuters) - An Avianca Airlines passenger jet safely made an emergency landing in Brasilia on Friday after its front landing gear failed to deploy, authorities said.
None of the 49 passengers and crew of five on the Fokker 100 jet were injured when the plane landed on its rear wheels before lowering the nose onto the runway, the Brazilian Air Force said. Airport fire crews foamed the plane to prevent fire.
The pilot calmly declared an emergency and circled the Brazilian capital to shed fuel and lower the weight of the aircraft, according to a recording of his conversation with the control tower played on Globo News television channel.
“The plane suffered a hydraulic problem and the front landing gear did not open, so the pilot did a belly landing,” an Air Force spokesman said.
Avianca Brazil, which has grown rapidly in the Brazilian market by opening regional routes, is owned by the Synergy Group controlled by Brazilian airline entrepreneur German Efromovich.
Efromovich also owns Colombian airline Avianca, which has joined Taca of El Salvador to form conglomerate AviancaTaca, one of Latin America’s leading carriers.
The emergency landing closed one of Brasilia’s two runways, delaying flights into Brazil’s fourth largest airport. |
Stephen Curry has become one of the most popular players in the NBA over these past three years. His immense talent and work ethic is surely the reason why. Being something that the NBA has never seen before has put all eyes on his game. Superb ball-handling and immaculate shooting from almost half-court is a combination that we’ve never seen before. His game is one to love and it’s been something that NBA fans all over the world have gravitated towards. With so much relativity on and off the court, Stephen Curry is fully aware of the influence that he possesses (via Complex).
“…But I think most of it is because the way I play is something that most people can try to emulate. I’m not a high-flyer going above the rim or anything. For the average basketball player, no matter what level you are or what age you are, everybody loves to shoot, and they love to shoot from way out. I’m pretty sure that has a little bit to do with it. How much fun I have on the court when I’m playing is some of it too. I like to play the game with a smile and that’s genuinely how much I appreciate the game.”
Curry is 100% correct in his assessment. His style of play and how much fun he has glues your eyes to the TV. As a fan of the game, he’s one of the most enjoyable players to watch in the NBA. For those of us who like to play as well, we feel that influence when we take the court. Watching Stephen Curry play, you find yourself taking deeper shots on the court. You try the double behind-the-back pull-up from 30 feet out to see if you got it like Curry does. It’s fun to watch and it’s fun to do.
However, the Curry influence is a gift and a curse. It’s a curse due to the influence on the little kids out there trying to become better basketball players. They see number 30 take deep threes and try to do the same thing in the gym. Not realizing how much perfection it takes in his mechanics and how much work he puts into it.
To be able to shoot like Stephen Curry does from that deep, it took practice to perfect the mid-range shot and gradually move out from there. Everybody wants the instant gratification without putting in the work and that applies here. The kids watch Steph and they try to do what he does, without putting the work in and perfecting their inside game first. It’s not his fault because he’s just playing his game. However, it’s important that the kids who are trying to emulate his game understand how much hard work went into it. |
BEIJING (Caixin Online) — Shanghai investor Wang Weihua’s final microblog post Oct. 12 was brief and ominous: “The police are coming.”
Three days later, Wang’s family said he’d been taken into custody by police officers who traveled more than 3,600 kilometers (2,200 miles) to Wang’s Shanghai home from Urumqi, a city in China’s far west.
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Police gave the family a document saying Wang was detained on charges of fabricating and disseminating false information about securities and futures trading activity. They gave no additional information.
Authorities in Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, have yet to release details of the case against Wang. The law says they have until Nov. 11 to decide whether to file formal charges, or have him released.
Wang, 42, may have crossed a legal line by writing and publicizing investment analyses about Guanghui Energy Co. 600256, +0.00% an Urumqi-based conglomerate, shares of which are traded on the Shanghai Stock Exchange.
In blog postings and articles published online over nearly a year starting in October 2012, Wang said Guanghui executives had played accounting tricks, inflated profits in financial reports and used back-door transactions to manipulate stock prices.
Guanghui officials denied Wang’s accusations. They filed a police report saying their company had been illegally maligned by negative — and fabricated — information.
Wang has stood by his story, however. Through his attorney, Liu Jianghua, he has said that all analyses were based on publicly available material. He has also said he was not financially positioned to gain from any bad publicity about the company.
Guanghui officials have declined to comment. But the investment community is buzzing about the believability of the dirt Wang says he dug up on Guanghui, and the chilling effect that his and similar cases in recent years have had on investment research in the country.
Raising doubts
Wang had just finished an engineering doctorate degree at Australia’s University of Melbourne and landed a job in academia when police arrived at his home.
In a 2012 post, he said that to attract investors, Guanghui executives exaggerated the profit potential of a liquefied-natural-gas project launched by the company. They also committed financial fraud by making the company appear more profitable than it was, he said, which in turn helped to convince investors to push share prices higher.
Reuters
Wang also charged that Guanghui’s parent, Xinjiang Guanghui Industry Investment Group, stood to benefit from higher stock prices. In fact, he said, the group used more than 70% of its equity in the subsidiary as loan collateral.
Wang raised a variety of doubts about Guanghui’s financials, operations and profitability. And in August, he called investor attention to entrusted loans Guanghui made to two companies that are controlled by its fourth-largest individual shareholder. He said the loans were related-party transactions — a charge the company denied and cited in its report to police as an example of Wang’s maliciousness.
Wang also said the money may have been used to buy Guanghui stock on the secondary market, and reported his findings to the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), which in turn demanded an explanation from Guanghui.
Wang said his intent was not to short-sell Guanghui shares, in part because “the 8% charge for borrowing securities for short selling is too expensive.”
Rather, Wang said he initially started investigating Guanghui because he believes in the value of investment research. “My personal interest in investment leads me to research companies to seek facts and truth,” he said.
His suspicions concerning Guanghui stemmed from the fact that securities analysts had been overwhelmingly positive about the company as an investment target. Analyst reports had contributed to share-price-to-earnings ratios for Guanghui that were on average four times better than those of the company’s peers, he said.
Neither did the campaign against Guanghui have a dark side, Wang said. His attorney said he neither tried to blackmail Guanghui nor collaborated for ill gain with any media outlet. In China, media companies have been known to strong-arm firms to pay a reporter under the table or risk becoming a target of negative publicity.
“All of Wang’s challenges against Guanghui were openly published on his personal blogs, and he never authorized any media outlet to reprint his views,” Liu said.
Investor fears
Not all in the investment community are buying Wang’s conclusions, but many say they are concerned about how authorities are reacting. Indeed, they say they are watching to see how authorities handle the matter — especially if Wang goes to jail — because it may weigh into future decisions by analysts who have the ability to find fault with and publicize problems at domestically listed companies.
For example, investment researchers who do not want to risk a surprise visit by police from a far-away city may decide to only report sunny skies at firms they study.
So far, the criminal case against Wang has not progressed much. Police have not said what the problem with his writings is. Nor will they say why his writings warranted apprehension by officers trekking across the country.
Fabricating and disseminating false information about securities and futures trading is a crime that carries a maximum five years in prison.
Normally, police need to conduct a preliminary investigation and find reasonable evidence pointing to a crime before taking a person into custody, said Zhang Yuanzhong, a lawyer at the firm Wen Tian in Beijing.
The charges being considered against Wang would only lead to a detention under normal circumstances if “it’s proven that the information is untrue, or that a deduction is obviously flawed, or that the materials on which he based a judgment were completely fabricated,” Zhang said.
If those standards were strictly enforced, the case against Wang may never have been opened, said a lawyer familiar with Wang’s situation, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Some investors, in comments posted online, said they are angry because Wang’s is not the first case of a public company critic in China being arrested on shaky grounds. They also wonder whether he was targeted due to strong ties between Guanghui’s executives, whose company is a major taxpayer in Urumqi, and the city’s bureaucrats.
Some investors say the stock market’s status as a transparent investment channel has been tarnished by authorities chasing people like Wang simply because they find problems at listed companies.
Indeed, Wang is only the latest investment-research muckraker to find himself on the firing line. Business journalist Chen Yongzhou, of the New Express newspaper in Guangzhou, was detained by police in Changsha, in the central province of Hunan, on Oct. 18 for allegedly damaging the reputation of Zoomlion Heavy Industry Science & Technology Development Co. 000157, -0.71% 1157, -0.56% ZLIOF, -13.95% The latter is manufacturer of construction equipment based in Changsha.
Chen admitted on national television he took money from an unnamed party in exchange for a series of articles bashing Zoomlion for financial fraud. Despite his admission, many in the investment community have continued to question Changsha police for what seemed to be a decision to protect a local business. Chen’s articles mentioned such protection of Zoomlion.
Meanwhile, a recent Wall Street Journal report says authorities in Luoyang, in the central province of Henan, have been illegally holding Canadian stock analyst Huang Kun for more than a year on suspicion of criminally defaming Silvercorp SVM, -1.13% SVM, -1.49% a Vancouver-based mining company that has mines in China.
The allegations against Huang and other investment analysts are at odds with decisions by the Supreme People’s Court, the nation’s top court, that a precondition for defamation claims in civil cases is an intention to fabricate information, Zhang said. This precondition should be considered “more so in criminal” cases, he said.
Moreover, Zhang said, intention should be at the heart of any defamation charge filed against a person if the case involves a publicly listed company. That is because a listed company “ought to be subject to the public’s supervision and questioning,” he said.
Wang said his analyses of Guanghui’s financial performance were based on the company’s regular statements. The entrusted loan, for example, was reported as a “related-party transaction” in last year’s annual report, he said.
Wang said his related claims, including an analysis questioning the company’s estimates of future oil-extraction prospects, were based on publicly accessible data and information from other researchers.
Meanwhile, Wang’s report to the CSRC is still in the pipeline. Without being specific, commission sources said Oct. 18 that they have started looking into the Guanghui matter.
Read this report on Caixin Online. Follow Caixin on Twitter @caixin.
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Eight to 10 Republican U.S. senators have serious concerns about Republican healthcare legislation to roll back Obamacare, moderate Republican Senator Susan Collins, who opposes the bill, said on Sunday.
U.S. Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) talks to reporters as she leaves a meeting of the Senate Republican caucus to unveiling of Senate Republicans' revamped proposal to replace Obamacare health care legislation at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S. July 13, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
The Senate, which is delaying its consideration of the bill while Arizona Republican Senator John McCain recuperates from surgery to remove a blood clot, will take it up as soon as all senators are available, Senator John Cornyn, the second-ranking Republican senator, said.
McCain’s absence casts doubt on whether the Senate would be able to pass legislation to repeal parts of the Affordable Care Act, Democratic former President Barack Obama’s signature legislative achievement, commonly known as Obamacare.
Collins is one of two Republican senators who have already said that they would not even vote to open debate on the latest version of the bill released on Thursday, meaning one more defection from the Republican ranks could kill it..
Republicans control the Senate by a 52-48 margin. With the Democrats solidly opposed to the legislation, the Republicans can only pass the bill if all their other members back it and if Republican Vice President Mike Pence casts his tie-breaking vote in favor.
A Washington Post-ABC News poll published on Sunday showed Americans preferred Obamacare by a 2-1 margin. Approaching six months in office, Trump’s overall approval rating has dropped to 36 percent from 42 percent in April.
While Collins said that she did not know if the legislation would ultimately pass, she said as many as 10 Republicans have doubts about it.
BAD STRATEGY
“There are about eight to 10 Republican senators who have serious concerns about this bill,” Collins told CNN’s “State of the Union” program, faulting the bill for its major cuts to the Medicaid government health insurance program for the poor, which she said would harm rural hospitals and nursing homes.
“I don’t know whether it will pass, but I do know this, we should not be making fundamental changes in a vital safety net program that’s been on the books for 50 years - the Medicaid program - without having a single hearing to evaluate what the consequences are going to be,” she added.
Republican Senator Rand Paul also reiterated his opposition to the bill, which he described as “terrible” because it retained many of the Obamacare taxes and subsidies.
“The current system is terrible,” Paul said on Fox News Sunday. “I don’t think Republicans should put their name on this. It is a bad political strategy and it will not fix the problem.”
The bill unwinds Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion over three years, from 2021 to 2024. But it goes beyond repealing Obamacare by imposing drastic cuts to Medicaid that deepen in 2025.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated the bill would cut Medicaid by nearly $800 billion by 2026, and would cut Medicaid 35 percent come 2036.
McCain, who plans to stay in Arizona this week after a procedure to remove a 2-inch (5-cm) blood clot from above his left eye, has expressed concern about the healthcare bill but has not said how he would vote.
“We need Senator McCain in more ways than one. As soon as we have a full contingent of senators we will have that vote,” Cornyn, of Texas, told NBC’s “Meet the Press” program. |
A.
The active ingredient in household bleach is sodium hypochlorite, which is derived from salt. In fact, Clorox is headquartered in Oakland, California because we started making bleach here by running electricity through salt water from San Francisco Bay! So household bleach begins and ends as salt and water. During the laundering process, about 95 to 98 percent of household bleach quickly breaks down into oxidized salt and biodegradables, which is the primary reaction that makes it environmentally friendly.
Variations on this question about the make-up of our laundry and cleaning products come up a lot for my readers. I can see that more and more people (myself included) want to be informed shoppers choosing products based on their back story and ingredients. It’s with this in mind that I’m thrilled to announce the launch of Clorox’s Ingredients Inside App and mobile website. This cutting-edge free iPhone app allows you to know exactly which ingredients make up any of our household and commercial disinfecting, cleaning and laundry products in the U.S. and Canada, anytime you need it. All you have to do is scan the Clorox product with your iPhone camera and the product ingredient list will appear along with an explanation of each ingredient. Check out a video of the Ingredients Inside app in action here.
Readers, do you read the ingredients on your laundry and cleaning products? |
Long involvement in Canada's tar sands has been central to Koch Industries' evolution and positions the billionaire brothers for a new oil boom.
By David Sassoon, InsideClimate News
Over the last decade, Charles and David Koch have emerged into public view as billionaire philanthropists pushing a libertarian brand of political activism that presses a large footprint on energy and climate issues. They have created and supported non-profit organizations, think tanks and political groups that work to undermine climate science, environmental regulation and clean energy. They are also top donors to politicians, most of them Republicans, who support the oil industry and deny any human role in global warming.
What is less well documented are the many Koch businesses that benefit from the brothers’ efforts to push the center of American political discourse rightward, closer to their own convictions. At the top of the list are the Koch family’s long and deep investments in Canada’s heavy oil industry, which have been central to the company’s initial growth and subsequent diversification since 1959.
Because Koch Industries is a privately held company, the public has little access to information about the depth and diversity of its Canadian oil sands holdings. Over the past several months, however, InsideClimate News has pieced together a rough picture of the company’s involvement in the industry, using published reports from the National Energy Board of Canada; documents and data extracted from the website of Canada’s Energy Resource Conservation Board; securities disclosures and filings of Koch businesses in Canada; court documents from an inheritance battle that pitted Charles and David Koch against their two other brothers; Canadian and U.S. media reports; company newsletters and press releases; and two books, one written by Charles Koch and the other the autobiography of a long-time Koch company director.
These sources reveal that Koch Industries has touched virtually every aspect of the tar sands industry since the company established a toehold in Canada more than 50 years ago. It has been involved in mining bitumen, the hydrocarbon resin found in the oil sands; in pipeline systems to collect and transport Canadian crude; in exporting the heavy oils to the U.S.; in refining the sulfurous, low-grade feedstock; and in the subsequent distribution and sale of a variety of finished products, from jet fuel to asphalt. The company has also created or collaborated with other companies that have become leading players in the development of Alberta’s oil resources.
Koch Industries declined to answer any questions for this story.
Bitumen from Canada’s tar sands is dirtier and thicker than conventional oil. Extracting and processing this unconventional fossil fuel creates far more greenhouse gases than drilling for the light, sweet oil most Americans are familiar with. Environmentalists, supported by many scientists, want tighter regulations imposed on this crude to minimize its role in the U.S. economy as part of a larger effort to move beyond petroleum.
The oil industry is fighting these efforts in court, in public and behind the scenes. A turn toward clean fuels, or the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions, or the adoption of a tax on carbon would diminish sales and profits for the major players in the oil sands, including the Kochs. Most of Canada’s oil exports end up in the United States.
The Kochs are also active in Canadian politics.
Their company recently added another lobbyist in Alberta to lobby the provincial government about energy and resource development issues. The Kochs have also been longtime contributors to the Fraser Institute, an influential policy shop closely allied with Prime Minister Stephen Harper and as bullish as he is on the development and export of oil sands crude to global markets. They contributed $500,000 between 2007 and 2010 alone.
Today Koch Industries has both upstream and downstream interests:
• The company is one Canada’s largest crude oil purchasers, shippers and exporters, with more than 130 crude oil customers.
• It is among the largest U.S. refiners of oil sands crude, responsible for about 25 percent of imports.
• It is one of the largest holders of mineral leases in Alberta, where most of Canada’s tar sands deposits are located.
• It has its name attached to hundreds of well sites across Alberta tracked by Canadian regulators.
• It owns pipelines in Minnesota and Wisconsin that import western Canadian crude to U.S. refineries and also distribute finished products to customers.
• It owns and operates a 675,000 barrel oil terminal in Hardisty, Alberta, a major tar sands export hub.
• And this year it kicked off a 10,000 barrel-a-day mining project in Alberta that could be the seed of a much larger project.
Analysts say that Koch Industries, alongside ExxonMobil, BP, ConocoPhillips, Total and other industry titans, stands to profit handsomely as pipelines that connect Alberta’s landlocked oil to global markets come online, either through new construction or flow reversals. Plans have been floated to build more than 10,000 miles of pipeline over the next five years to carry more than 3.1 million additional barrels a day out of Alberta. That includes the Keystone XL pipeline, which has become a political flashpoint in America.
“The winners will be the companies upstream in the production end in Canada, the pipeline builders, and the mid-continent refiners all the way down to the Gulf coast,” said Jan Stuart, head of energy research at Credit Suisse. “It will grow at a measured pace and remain an important part of the oil landscape.”
Kochs are Silent
Koch Industries has always placed great value on its ability to do its business in private.
“We do not publish figures and bare our souls regularly through filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the New York Stock Exchange, and other public bodies,” J. Howard Marshall, the late company director and family loyalist wrote in his autobiography. “Most of the major oil companies court publicity, but all Koch worries about is serving its customers and reinvesting the proceeds, which is the way the capitalistic system is supposed to work.”
The company has been especially tight lipped about its substantial achievements in developing Canada’s heavy oil resources, even with its own employees.
The phrase “oil sands” appears nowhere in Charles Koch’s 2007 book, The Science of Success. Koch corporate publications, facts sheets and websites are similarly silent. Although many smaller tentacles of the company’s sprawling interests are detailed in the employee newsletter Discovery, the issues available online (2007-2012) don’t contain a single overt mention of the company’s oil sands activities.
The names of the two subsidiaries currently at the heart of the company’s Canadian oil sands development activities—Koch Exploration Canada L.P. and Koch Oil Sands Operating G.P.—are also absent from Discovery’s pages.
Only once is there a hint that Canadian oil might be of importance to the company. A map in the January 2008 issue of Discovery shows “highlights of recent international acquisitions, expansions and investments” of the company’s global operations. A small purple dot marks a spot in Western Canada, annotated in small type with the words: “One million acres of property, mostly in Alberta.”
Last year, during Congressional hearings on the Keystone XL pipeline, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) tried to persuade the House Committee on Energy and Commerce to invite the Koch brothers to testify to learn more.
“This pipeline and the legislation that supports it will enable the oil companies to charge American consumers more for their gasoline, while increasing carbon pollution and endangering precious water supplies,” Waxman said during an Energy and Power Subcommittee hearing. “We know who will lose. We also need to find out who will benefit.”
Waxman’s request was turned down by Fred Upton (R-MI), the committee chairman, and Ed Whitfield (R- KY), chair of the Subcommittee on Energy and Power.
According to an article last year in the Los Angeles Times, Koch Industries and its employees were the largest oil and gas industry donors to the committee’s members, contributing $279,500 to 22 of 31 Republicans, including Upton and Whitfield, and $32,000 to five Democrats. The paper also reported that nine of the 12 new Republicans on the panel signed a pledge distributed by a Koch-founded and funded advocacy group, Americans for Prosperity, to oppose regulation of greenhouse gases.
Koch Industries has repeatedly denied any connection to the Keystone XL.
“Koch Industries has no financial stake in the Keystone pipeline and we are not party to its design or construction,” Phillip Ellender, the company’s head of government affairs, said last year, after InsideClimate News reported that the company was well-positioned to benefit financially from the pipeline. “We are not a proposed shipper or customer of oil delivered by this pipeline.”
Heavy Oil Heritage
Heavy oil is part of the Koch family heritage. The career of the company’s patriarch, Fred Koch, was defined by a discovery he made in 1927, five years after graduating as a chemical engineer from MIT: an improved thermal cracking process for converting heavy oil into gasoline.
A consortium of larger oil companies sued Koch for patent infringement and blocked him from selling his process in the United States. He then turned to the Soviet Union, where he helped Joseph Stalin build 15 refineries. David Koch has said that his father had no idea who the Bolsheviks were when they arrived at his west Texas office asking for his help.
After some of Fred Koch’s Russian associates died at the hands of Stalin, Koch became a lifelong opponent of communism. In 1958 he helped found the John Birch Society, and in 1960 he self-published a 40-page anti-communist screed called A Businessman Looks at Communism that he sold for 25 cents a copy.
In 1952, Fred Koch won the last of the dozens of lawsuits the oil industry filed over his thermal cracking process and secured a $1.5 million settlement. He went on to build a modest fortune around pipelines and refineries within an entity finally called Rock Island Oil and Refining Company.
After Koch died in 1967, the company was renamed in his honor by the four grateful sons who inherited it. Charles Koch, then 32 years old, became chairman and CEO. The company’s annual revenues at the time were $177 million, less than two one-thousandths of what they are today.
One of Fred Koch’s acquisitions had been a one-third ownership interest in the Pine Bend refinery, then known as the Great Northern Oil Company. It had been built in 1955 in Rosemount, Minn. by his old friend, a storied oilman named J. Howard Marshall II. It was designed to refine heavy, sour Canadian crude oil and when it opened it could handle 25,000 barrels a day.
“I remarked to the Koch people that at Great Northern, we could run the lousiest crude in the world and make high-quality products,” Marshall wrote in his autobiography, Done in Oil.
In court papers, feuding Koch family members refer to the feedstock for the Pine Bend refinery as “garbage crudes” from Canada whose value lay in their ability to deliver high margins.
In 2001, Moody’s Investors Services gave the Koch subsidiary that owns Pine Bend an A1 rating, citing the group’s “strong capitalization and strategic importance to Koch Industries” and its refinery that can “process low-grade crude into higher value products.”
Charles Koch secured a controlling interest in Pine Bend in 1969. In his 2007 book he called that acquisition “one of the most significant events in the evolution of our company.” The refinery was a doorway that permitted Koch Industries “to enter chemicals and, more recently, fibers and polymers,” he said.
By the turn of the century Pine Bend was refining 285,000 barrels a day and its thirst for Canadian oil had made Koch Industries the world’s number one exporter of oil out of Canada, ahead of Mobil and Amoco.
In 1997, Steve Kromer, then president of Koch Exploration, told Canada NewsWire that “Koch is committed to the Canadian heavy oil industry… As the demand for heavy crude continues to grow at Koch’s Minnesota refinery, we intend to meet that demand with heavy crude from Canada.”
Today Pine Bend receives up to 320,000 barrels a day of heavy oil from western Canada. The facility covers 1,000 acres and has 10 miles of its own roads, as well as thousands of miles of pipe. This single Koch refinery is now responsible for an estimated 25 percent of the 1.2 million barrels of oil the U.S. imports each day from Canada’s tar sands territories.
Figures published in 1997 by Canada’s National Energy Board show that Koch wasn’t permanently displaced as Canada’s number one exporter until 2001, after Exxon and Mobil merged and took the top spot. The company dropped to number three in 2003, after Conoco and Phillips Petroleum merged.
In 2006 the National Energy Board stopped releasing company-specific information, but in a 2011 newsletter Koch told its employees that the Pine Bend refinery had had a record year. On the website of Flint Hills Resources, a Canadian subsidiary of Koch Industries that now handles its Canadian oil export business and owns the Pine Bend refinery, Koch still claims to be “among the largest processors of Canadian crude in the United States.”
Tracing Koch Leaseholdings Difficult
The Kochs’ heavy oil strategy isn’t limited to refining.
InsideClimate News’ research shows that Koch Industries has been buying and selling mineral leases for large holdings in Western Canada’s tar sands region since the late 1960s. It is difficult to piece together the full extent of the company’s holdings because most Canadian land sales records aren’t publicly available, and because land agents commonly make purchases on behalf of oil companies without revealing the companies’ names.
Court documents from the Koch family dispute in the 1980s show that at that time the company held 50,000 acres of leases in the Cold Lake area of Alberta, making it the sixth largest landholder there. In 1983, the company acquired an additional 44,000 acres in shallower zones thought to contain gas reserves that could be used to develop its oil sands leaseholds.
Periodic government announcements of some Alberta land sales, available online beginning with the year 1997, show that Koch has bought about 10,000 acres in its own name over the last 15 years. The most recent purchase was in January of this year, about 2,500 acres sold to Koch Oil Sands Operating ULC.
In 2006, Koch put up for sale more than 374,000 acres “with 47 billion barrels of oil resource estimated to be in place,” according to a sale announcement released by Koch Exploration Canada Corporation. That year the company also embarked on a buying spree. Geologist Ryan Morrison, who left Koch Exploration Canada in 2011, has written that he was directly involved in helping the company purchase two million acres of leases in Alberta’s three primary oil sands regions of Athabasca, Cold Lake and Peace River between 2006 and 2008. He also wrote that Koch is one of the largest holders of oil sands assets in Alberta.
Koch has made efforts to develop some of its leaseholdings. Canada’s Energy Resource Conservation Board maintains various lists, each hundreds of pages long, of well pads and other facilities that have been established on leaseholds in the oil sands region. InsideClimate News found that almost 500 well sites and facilities tracked by regulators under the Koch name are scattered across the oil sands regions.
Pipelines and Terminals
One of Koch Industries’ fundamental business capabilities has been transporting oil, ever since its founding as Rock Island Oil and Refining, which was built around oil gathering assets. Over the span of four decades in Canada the company came to own four “feeder” pipeline systems, three in Alberta and one in Saskatchewan that by the late 1990s had a throughput of more than 300,000 barrels per day.
In 1997, Koch Industries formed Koch Pipelines, a publicly traded company, and bundled these pipeline assets together into a sale that netted $375 million (Canadian) on the Toronto stock exchange. Koch retained almost half the shares and maintained control as the general partner.
As a publicly traded company, Koch Pipelines had to conduct business with transparency unusual for the private company. The company’s first annual report made rare public disclosures about its energy-related interests in Canada.
“Koch is directly involved in crude oil exploration and production, oil and gas trading, and providing risk management services to the energy sector,” the report said. “In fact, Koch has grown to become the largest exporter and one of the largest refiners of Canadian crude oil.”
Koch expanded its feeder system and increased Canadian oil exports to Montana refineries, rewarding shareholders with tens of millions of dollars in annual distributions. But throughput on the system remained flat and Koch sold its interests in 2002. Koch Pipelines was renamed Inter Pipeline, which today can handle more than 600,000 barrels of oil sands crude a day.
In 1998, Koch also established a presence in Hardisty, Alberta, an oil transport hub. It built five storage tanks with a combined total capacity of 670,000 barrels for blending feedstock for the refinery in Pine Bend. The regulator who granted the permit noted that “the flexibility and confidentiality afforded by the operation of its own facility was of the utmost importance” to Koch Industries.
Koch said its facility would handle custom-blended products “involving unconventional diluents and heavy oils,” as well as 85,000 barrels a day from various sources, including 30,000 barrels from Suncor through a 10-year supply contract. Suncor was the first company to start commercial oil sands production in Alberta, and the contract with Koch, its largest to that point, was an important milestone in Suncor’s growth.
Today the flow of oil to Pine Bend begins at the Hardisty transport hub, where Enbridge pipelines take it across Canada and into Enbridge’s Lakehead system in the United States. At Clearbrook, Minn. it is moved into a pipeline system owned by Koch Industries and Marathon Oil. It is then taken to Pine Bend.
The Kochs also own a 537-mile pipeline system that distributes products from Pine Bend to regional customers. Pine Bend is responsible for a large percentage of the jet fuel used at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, as well as about 40 percent of Wisconsin’s transportation fuel. It also supplies gasoline to the Kwik Trip convenience store chain, which has hundreds of outlets in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa.
Pine Bend has allowed Koch to develop other profitable lines of business. A barrel of bitumen yields only about 15 percent of the gasoline that a conventional barrel of oil does, but Koch turns the “bottoms” in each barrel into products, like asphalt, that boost its returns. In 2001 the company was granted a permit to build two storage tanks for asphalt cement with a combined capacity of 4.2 million gallons at a facility it owns in Marshall, Minn. that already had 40 storage tanks on site.
How big Koch’s asphalt business became is indicated by two transactions the company concluded in the last decade. In 2005 Koch sold 47 asphalt terminals in the U.S. and 13 in Mexico, plus other related assets, to SemGroup, a Mexican company. The price wasn’t disclosed. The following year, Koch sold asphalt interests it had developed in China to Royal Dutch Shell. Shell highlighted the acquisition of asphalt resources, also called “bitumen,” in its annual report.
“The deal increases Shell’s bitumen production—more than doubling it in China to 6,600 tonnes per day, which represents around 20% of Shell Bitumen global volume,” the report said.
Even after these divestitures, Koch was still in the asphalt business. The company announced it was retaining facilities in North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa and Nebraska to receive asphalt produced at Pine Bend.
Burned by Kyoto
Less than 10 years ago Koch Industries made an abrupt and attention-getting exit from one of the biggest oil sands mines under development in Alberta at the time.
Its TrueNorth Energy Corp held a 78 percent stake in what is known as the Fort Hills project, estimated to contain 2.8 billion barrels of recoverable oil. But in 2003, after investing years of effort and $125 million, Koch decided to indefinitely defer development of the project, closed its offices and terminated its staff, citing “general uncertainty regarding the potential impacts of the Kyoto Accord” as one of the reasons.
Kyoto is the international agreement that in its first phase imposed modest emissions reductions on participating industrial nations. Canada ratified the agreement in 2002 and set aside money to begin reducing greenhouse gas emissions. When the Kochs pulled out of Fort Hills, Canadian media reports described it as the first casualty of Kyoto in Alberta’s oil patch. Koch eventually sold its interest in the project.
In hindsight, the oil industry regards the sale as a missed business opportunity for the Kochs. Today Fort Hills is owned by Total, the French energy giant, and is one of the biggest oil sands mines in Alberta.
The Harper government pulled Canada out of the Kyoto agreement last year and has been moving swiftly and aggressively to remove environmental and regulatory obstacles that could stand in the way of exporting western Canadian oil to global markets.
Now, the Kochs are more visibly re-entering the oil production business. In November, Alberta’s Energy Resource Conservation Board published a notice for a Feb. 22 hearing on the company’s application to begin an oil sands project in the Cold Lake area. Named Gemini, the project would produce 10,000 barrels of oil a day using a recovery process known as Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage, or SAGD (pronounced sag-dee).
Cold Lake, population 13,839, is in the middle of the Canadian wilderness, about 400 miles north of the U.S. border where Alberta touches Saskatchewan. The Koch Gemini project will occupy about 90 acres of land next to a pristine body of water called Angling Lake.
From well pads located about 400 yards from shore, the project will drill down and horizontally to reach bitumen deposits directly beneath the lake. Using the SAGD process, drillers will then inject steam to liquefy the bitumen and pump it out. This will continue for as long as the well produces, probably about 30 years.
“The 10,000 barrel a day figure is a legally important limit,” said Bill McElhanney, a lawyer based in Edmonton, the capital city of Alberta, in a telephone interview with InsideClimate News. “It allows producers to avoid a comprehensive environmental assessment, which is only required of projects producing more than 10,000 barrels a day.”
Once a project gets going, McElhanney explained, it can be expanded easily, and continue to enjoy the advantage of avoiding a comprehensive federal review.
McElhanney is a partner with Ackroyd LLP, Barristers and Solicitors, a firm that specializes in representing aboriginals, landowners and ranchers. He negotiated with Koch Exploration Canada on behalf of landowners near the Gemini project, who fear it will pollute the air or contaminate their water. Some filed official complaints with the government.
McElhanney said that in Alberta most oil developments are approved, and there was only so much he could do for his clients. In this case, he was able to persuade Koch to pay for an independent environmental review, which was used as the basis for negotiating confidential agreements with the landowners, who then withdrew their complaints. As a result, the public hearing in Cold Lake was cancelled, and the project is quietly moving forward.
Researcher Lisa Schwartz contributed to this report. See Also: Koch Brothers Positioned To Be Big Winners If Keystone XL Pipeline Is Approved Koch Subsidiary Told Regulators It Has 'Direct and Substantial Interest' in Keystone XL Rep. Waxman Again Requests Investigation of Koch Connection to Keystone XL Pipeline Exclusive Map: The Tar Sands Pipeline Boom |
Cameron John Espitia, 31, was arrested in the fatal shooting of Jennifer Espitia, 29, who was pronounced dead at Harborview Medical Center early Sunday. He was booked into King County Jail for investigation of homicide.
A man accused of shooting his wife in the head while they were riding in an Uber car through Queen Anne early Sunday told police he didn’t remember anything from the time they were waiting for the car until he awoke later in some bushes, according to court documents filed Monday.
Cameron John Espitia, 31, was arrested in the fatal shooting of Jennifer Espitia, 29, who was pronounced dead at Harborview Medical Center. He was booked into the King County Jail for investigation of homicide.
A judge Monday set bail at $3 million. Prosecutors haven’t yet filed formal charges against Espitia, who was being held on probable cause of one count of second-degree murder.
The couple got into an Uber car for a ride shortly after midnight Sunday, according to probable-cause documents. The driver said Jennifer Espitia sat in the front passenger seat and Cameron Espitia sat behind the driver.
The two started arguing, and the driver heard a loud boom, which he said he first thought was a tire blowing but realized it was a gunshot. He looked over and saw Jennifer Espitia’s head slumped forward. Thinking he would be shot next, the driver asked Cameron Espitia where he would like to be taken, to which he responded to just drive, according to court documents.
The suspect told the driver to stop near Second Avenue West and West McGraw Place, and then got out. The driver called police.
Police found Cameron Espitia shortly before 2 a.m. walking about six blocks away from where he got out of the car. He had a small, semi-automatic pistol in an ankle holster.
“When asked how he was, Cameron said he was not having a good night with his wife,” the court documents say.
Espitia told officers he had been drinking alcohol and didn’t remember what had happened between the time he and his wife were looking for a car and when he later woke up in some bushes, according to the documents.
Jennifer Espitia graduated from Mercer Island High School and was on the rowing team at Saint Mary’s College in California, according to a college-athletics biography. She won a community-service award for her work as a peer educator at Planned Parenthood, working at a day care and building homes in Mexico. She most recently worked in employee benefits at the risk-prevention/insurance-needs firm Marsh & McLennan Agency, according to her Facebook page.
Court records say Cameron Espitia worked for the U.S. Coast Guard.
On Monday, prosecutor David Glindmeyer told King County District Court Judge Mark Chow a factor in asking for $3 million bail was an email the prosecutor received from the King County Medical Examiner’s Office. The email, he said, referred to the killing as an execution.
Coast Guardsman Elliot Felix told Chow he’s known Espitia for five years and believes he isn’t capable of committing such a crime. He pleaded with the judge to consider a lesser-bail amount.
“I would not in a million years think he would do something like this,” Felix said.
Defense attorney Kristen Gestaut cited Espitia’s lack of criminal history and strong ties to his Coast Guard community as deterrence that he’d flee. She asked the judge to consider $500,000 bail.
Near the couple’s South Seattle home in Hillman City, neighbors of the Espitias said the couple had lived in the neighborhood for about a year but didn’t socialize much with others.
Espitia’s next court appearance is scheduled for Thursday. |
Big Bang Theory star Mayim Bialik has a big problem with grown women being referred to as 'girls'.
The 41-year-old Ph.D.-holding actress said in a new video that she doesn't necessarily think people who use the word have bad or sexist intentions — but she does think the language is ingrained in our society in such a way that it is harmful.
In the clip, the star speaks frankly about her feelings, offering a detailed argument for why people might want to rethink their choice of words when speaking about the female sex.
Scroll down for video
Choose your words wisely: Mayim Bialik released a new video in which she explains the problem with calling grown women 'girls'
Video courtesy of Mayim Bialik
'I'm gonna be annoying right now, because I want to talk about something that a lot of people don't want to talk about,' she says at the start of the video, which she shared on YouTube and Facebook last week.
She sets the scene with an anecdote, recalling being at a bar recently with two male friends, both of whom are about her age.
'One of them said to the other, "Oh my god, dude, look at that girl sitting at the bar. She's beautiful,"' Mayim remembers.
'And I start looking around wondering why they would let a child into a bar. Then I realized that when he said girl, he meant woman. But since she's in that super narrow age range between five years old and 55 years old, we just don't know what to call her, so we call her a girl.'
This is clearly something that has bothered Mayim for some time, and she says so plainly.
Thinking it through: The Big Bang Theory star said even when there are no negative intentions, there are negative consequences to such language
'We have to stop calling women girls,' she says. 'Why? Because it matters what we call people. Language matters. Words have meaning. And the way we use words changes the way we frame things in our mind.'
She directs viewers to Google the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis — a theory that says, according to Dictionary.com, that the 'structure of a language determines or greatly influences the modes of thought and behavior characteristic of the culture in which it is spoken.'
She explains: 'So when we use words to describe adult women that are typically used to describe children, it changes the way we view women, even unconsciously, so that we don't equate them with adult men. In fact, it implies that they're inferior to men.'
She knows that many people who refer to grown women as girls aren't trying to diminish them — but ultimately, she says, collectively using that language just does that.
The 41-year-old added that people rarely refer to men as 'boys' because it would be considered degrating
'Even if that's not what most people intend, words have an impact on our unconscious,' she says.
Mayim notes that the situation is rarely reversed, and almost no one would call a grown man a boy because it would be 'demeaning' and 'emasculating'.
'Are there women who don't mind being seen as diminutive because they think that men should be in charge and that they should be tender and delicate? Of course,' she admits. But to these women, she has a message.
'There is a thing that happens when we grow up in the kind of male-centered culture that we live in,' she says. 'We start to believe that the way things are is the way they have to be. We start taking on the biases and judgments of women which have been in place since an historical time when women were respected or even allowed into the public sphere.
Setting the record straight: She said she often corrects people with a smile
'The terms we're using for women are outdated and insensitive and they assume a structure of power where men are on the top and women are on the bottom.'
As for the people who call women girls, she says: 'I know your intentions are probably good, but I hope you can learn to see the unintended and negative impact.
'The thing we need to start doing as women ... is to consistently, gently, kindly, and politely correct people when they call women girls.'
Here, Mayim jokes that she has found ways to do this that make people seem receptive — at least to her face, though she admits they may hate her when she walks away
'I'll sometimes say things like, 'She's got a full-time job and a 150 people on payroll. I'm pretty sure she's a woman", and I'll smile.'
Backing it up: Mayim also references a scientific theory about the impact language has on perceptions
'Language sets expectations,' she concludes Let's set ourselves up to have women behave like mature, responsible women. In this way we encourage women to keep being the complicated, wonderful, unique, gifted beings that they are.'
Comments on the video have been full of debate. Many people have applauded her for speaking so succinctly about the issue, though a few have accused her of making an issue out of nothing. Interestingly, many of those critics called her a 'girl' in their comments — either consciously or unconsciously proving her point.
'Relax, Girls!!! Girl doesn't mean you're six years old. It's just a word, is it that insulting? Mayim I love you but try to stop over thinking,' wrote one man — who another commenter soon accused of mansplaining.
A woman who told her that there are bigger issues to tackle added: 'I'm a lot older than you and to me you are a sweet, very intelligent, talented girl.' |
A few weeks later, Peters was invited to attend Smith's Chasing Amy premiere as a special guest. According to Kevin, Peters didn't really seem to enjoy watching the movie very much, but he did really like the gay black guy in it. He liked his voice and wanted it in the movie as a little robot sidekick to Brainiac. He actually is quoted as saying he wanted "a gay R2D2 with attitude." At this point in 1997, the original Star Wars trilogy was in re-release and had opened up tremendously the previous weekend. If he couldn't have the little robot, Peters was also open to having a cute dog following Brainiac around. He just wanted something else he could make toys and merchandise out of and sell to kids. It was pretty obvious at this point that Jon Peters slept with a George Lucas bedspread.
Not long after the premiere ended, Tim Burton signed on to direct and Nicolas Cage signed on to play the Man of Steel. Both were inked to very large "pay or play" contracts, which meant that if the movie was made or not, they would still get paid. Cage made $20 million and Burton was set to pocket $5 million. Burton decided he wanted to scrap Smith's script and get his own people to write one, even though it would retain a lot of the ideas Peters and Smith wrote together. But of course, this is Burton's new movie...presumably one where Superman has scissors for hands.
An Attempt At Making A Movie
Casting was beginning to take shape. Along with life-long comic fan Cage, Kevin Spacey was approached to play Clark Kent's nemesis, Lex Luthor. Tim Allen claims to this day he was in talks to play Brainiac...I guess with more power . A studio writer, who ended up penning the script for Burton wrote the role for Jim Carrey, but he turned it down after just playing The Riddler in Batman Forever . Casting for Lois Lane was reportedly between Cameron Diaz and Courtney Cox. Unbelievably, Chris Rock was the only one being considered for the role of Jimmy Olson, the nerdy photographer for The Daily Planet newspaper. I can't really see Rock wearing a bow-tie and saying "Mr. Kent." This is only a rumor that I've read, but Tim Burton wanted Hulk Hogan to play Doomsday. At the time, Hogan was a huge moneymaker for World Championship Wrestling with the New World Order storyline. It's a shame, this could have been the worst movie ever made.
There were a couple smaller redeeming qualities, but I doubt it would have made a huge difference. Michael Keaton was supposed to make a cameo as Bruce Wayne, possibly setting up a sequel where we would see Superman and Batman either fighting alongside, or against, each other. Also, Industrial Light & Magic was signed to provide all the visual effects for the movie.
Warner Brothers and Tim Burton may have been pushing forward and trying to make it happen, but ever since Kevin Smith was fired from the project, ideas only seemed to go downhill. In the chopping up and constant script changing, Lex Luthor and Brainiac somehow became melded together to create "Lexiac." The sun was being blocked out by a metal disk to weaken the solar-powered Superman straight out of an episode of The Simpsons when Mr. Burns did it to make money. My god, can anyone in Hollywood have an original idea! |
los angeles (jta) | A California jury found a psychology professor guilty of perpetrating a hate-crime hoax by vandalizing her own car with racist and anti-Semitic graffiti.
On Aug. 19, a Los Angeles County Superior Court jury in Pomona found Kerri Dunn, then an assistant visiting professor at Claremont McKenna College, guilty of filing a false police report and attempted insurance fraud, which is punishable by up to 3½ years in prison.
When the apparent hate crime was initially reported on March 9, the Claremont McKenna campus and Jewish communities reacted with outrage, staging day-long sit-ins, teach-ins, forums and rallies.
During the trial, the jury was not asked to decide whether Dunn had vandalized her own car, but rather if she had filed false reports with the police and her insurance company.
After the guilty verdict, Gary Lincenberg, Dunn’s attorney, said that he intended to appeal the verdict because the judge had barred crucial evidence. Sentencing is set for Sept. 17.
As student president of the Hillel Council, D’ror Chankin-Gould, 20, had been one of the organizers of the early anti-racism protests.
Dunn’s conviction, he said, “doesn’t change the fact that we did the right thing. We responded vigorously to an anti-Semitic slur and we can be proud of that.”
Amanda Susskind, the regional Anti-Defamation League director, noted that “Fake hate crimes undercut what we do, they represent a kind of secondary victimization. We did get some letters saying, ‘You Jews made it all up.’
“But did we overreact? No, we had to react. And we are pleased that law enforcement took this very seriously, first after the incident itself and then in prosecuting Dunn.” |
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In 2012, the Conservatives ended the 70-year monopoly seller status of the Canadian Wheat Board, one of the world's largest and most successful "state trading enterprises."
The government decision came without a vote among prairie grain farmers, required by the Canadian Wheat Board Act, and despite a 2011 plebiscite in which a majority of farmers voted to maintain the Board's status. The matter is now before the courts, but the Board cannot simply be revived after having been dismantled. Instead, a coalition of farmer groups has launched a class action suit against the government seeking billions of dollars in compensation.
Despite giving hundreds of millions of dollars each year in subsidies to tar sands companies, to cite just one example, the Conservative government fashions itself as libertarian, opposed to state intervention, and has long virulently opposed the Board, favouring the interests of giant agribusiness and anti-Board grain farmers.
The future of the Board has long been tenuous in the face of declining numbers of smaller farms, the rise of ever-larger ones, and the global expansion of giant transnational corporations that dominate the world's food system. It is estimated that between 70 and 90 per cent of the entire global grain trade is controlled by just four corporations: the "ABCD group," composed of ADM, Bunge, Cargill, and (Louis) Dreyfus. These giant grain traders have been rubbing their hands in anticipation of seizing control of the multi-billion dollar market once managed by the Board.
Against these odds, the persistence and long history of the Board is all that more remarkable. In the first half of the twentieth century, poor prairie farmers mobilized against powerful corporate rail, banking, and elevator monopolies, driving a tide of radical agrarian reform that, amidst the chaos and uncertainty of the Great Depression and the Second World War, led to the decision by the federal government in 1943 to authorize the Canadian Wheat Board to act as the "single-desk seller" for all Western Canadian wheat, durum, and barley sold internationally and for human consumption domestically.
Although originally envisioned as a temporary measure, the Board proved to be highly successful and popular, and was continually renewed and expanded over the next several decades, frequently receiving support from all major federal parties. During this time, Canada emerged as a leader in the international grain trade and today accounts for around 14 per cent of the world's wheat.
The Board's main activities centered on collectively managing prairie wheat, resulting in higher and steadier prices due to price pooling, stringent quality controls, and the ability of the Board to use its immense weight to offer coveted large contracts to major wheat importing nations for an additional price premium. The Board also offered farmers indirect benefits, promoting new innovations and acting as a representative of farmers in disputes with powerful corporate interests. For example, the Board played a central role in blocking the introduction of Monsanto GM modified wheat in 2004, and in recent years initiated an organic program that has made Canada one of the world's top growers of organic grain.
Throughout its history, the Board has brought countless gains to prairie farmers and served as a model example of effective collective marketing in action, defending the livelihoods of smaller grain farmers against the relentless tide of "free trade" rhetoric, which frames corporate monopolies as "market freedom."
This is no small feat in a world where libertarian fantasies so often rule the day (in rhetoric, not in practice as the recent trillion dollar Wall Street bailout so powerfully reveals). Against the preponderance of a political culture that celebrates individualism and selfishness, the moral force and cooperative ethos of the Wheat Board will be missed.
Gavin Fridell is a Canada Research Chair at Saint Mary's University and author of the forthcoming book, Alternative Trade (2013), which features a chapter on the Wheat Board.
This article was originally published in Watershed Sentinel and is reprinted here with permission. |
Mercedes-AMG driver Nico Rosberg saw more than 215 mph as he nabbed pole position at the 2016 European Grand Prix. His 1:42.758 qualifying lap was nearly a second faster than Force India's Sergio Perez, the next-fastest qualifier.
You'd think that turning such a quick, clean lap would require absolute concentration on the ABCs—acceleration, braking, and cornering. But this annotated cockpit video shows a different scene: Rosberg constantly fiddling with the myriad adjustment dials and buttons on his steering wheel.
It's mind-boggling. This video, uploaded to Vimeo by user "Mark4211," highlights every tiny adjustment Rosberg makes as he hurtles around Baku City Circuit. He's opening and closing the drag-reduction flap (DRS), which diverts air around the rear wing to increase straight-line speed. He's tweaking the Brake Migration (BMIG) setup, adjusting how the car's brake-by-wire system adjusts front-rear braking balance on the fly. He's making microscopic adjustments to brake balance (BBal), portioning out left-right braking strength perfectly for every turn.
Oh, and he's upshifting and downshifting, steering and braking, nailing apexes and braking zones, and generally making it all look easy.
Keeping track of this many car adjustments, at that speed, requires superhuman concentration and brain power. Makes you realize how stupid we look when we drift out of our lanes while playing with our radios.
Here's another video from Mark4211 showing Fernando Alonso's steering wheel adjustments at the Australian GP in 2013.
via Digg |
The Gulf Stream’s impact on climate is well known, keeping Iceland and Scotland comfortable in winter compared to the deep-freeze of Labrador at the same latitude. That cyclones tend to spawn over the Gulf Stream has also been known for some time. A new study reveals that the Gulf Stream anchors a precipitation band with upward motions and cloud formations that can reach 7 miles high and penetrate the upper troposphere. The discovery, announced by a Japan–US team of scientists, shows that the Gulf Stream has a pathway by which to directly affect weather and climate patterns over the whole Northern Hemisphere, and perhaps even world wide.
“Our findings gain even more significance by the fact that the Gulf Stream is the upper limb of the Atlantic portion of the ocean conveyor belt that drives the global ocean circulation,” says co-author Shang-Ping Xie, a research team leader at the International Pacific Research Center in the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, and professor of meteorology at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa. “The conveyor belt is predicted to slow down with global warming, which implies that changes in the Gulf Stream will modulate spatial patterns of future climate change.”
Xie has been curious for some time about the response of the atmosphere to warm currents flowing within cold ocean water, such as the Gulf Stream or its Pacific counterpart, the Kuroshio. Xie says, “It has been a challenging task to isolate the climatic influence of the Gulf Stream from energetic weather variations by using conventional observations, which are spatially and temporally sporadic. Our findings were only possible because of the availability of high-resolution satellite data, an operational weather analysis, and an atmospheric circulation model.”
The first hint that these warm ocean currents have a significant effect on the atmosphere came from high-resolution NASA satellite data. These images show a narrow rain band hovering frequently over the warm flank of the currents; wind accelerates and converges over the warm flank and diverges and decelerates on the cold flank.
The satellite images, however, do not allow accurate measurements of upward motions and divergence of air in the upper troposphere, which are necessary to understand the link between the current and large-scale climate. This is where the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) analysis provided the missing data. “It is remarkable to see how the diverging winds 7 miles high show a structure similar to the converging winds and the rain clouds, all meandering with the Gulf Stream,” says lead author Shoshiro Minobe, a professor at the Division of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Hokkaido University.
The upward wind velocity is strongest about the first mile above the surface, but the Gulf Stream-following structure is clearly visible at 4 miles and still discernible at 7 miles and above. The band of diverging winds in the upper troposphere follows the meandering Gulf Stream front.
The findings from the operational weather analysis pointed to the warm flank of the Gulf Stream as the cause of the strong upward winds. “We wanted more evidence, though,” says team member Akira Kuwano-Yoshida of the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC), “and turned to the high-resolution Atmospheric Model for the Earth Simulator (AGCM) at JAMSTEC. We drove the model first with the actual Gulf Stream temperatures. The model successfully captured the rain band and the signature in the upper troposphere. Then we removed the sharp sea surface gradient from the Gulf Stream front by smoothing the temperature in the model. The narrow rain band disappeared.”
Finally, the team used outgoing longwave radiation satellite data to measure the cloud top temperatures. The narrow cloud band, associated with lightning, extends 7 miles high above the Gulf Stream meanders and has temperatures below freezing. All this is further evidence that the Gulf Stream influence on the atmosphere extends far above the lower atmosphere.
The Gulf Stream’s strength has changed markedly in the past as Earth has switched between warm periods and ice ages. Closely linked to these changes have been climate changes around the globe—not only in the Atlantic, but also in the Pacific and even in the Southern Hemisphere. Scientists have been puzzled at how the changes in the Atlantic thermohaline circulation (the conveyor belt) lead to climate anomalies in other regions in the Northern Hemisphere. The new study discovers a direct pathway, the Gulf Stream’s deep heating of the atmosphere. This heating generates planetary waves that can induce quite rapid changes in Earth’s atmospheric circulation and alter climate over Europe and beyond by riding on the westerly jet stream in the upper troposphere.
Journal reference: Minobe, S., A. Kuwano-Yoshida, N. Komori, S.-P. Xie, and R.J. Small, 2008: Influence of the Gulf Stream on the troposphere. Nature. March 13, 2008. |
The Stone is a forum for contemporary philosophers and other thinkers on issues both timely and timeless.
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I.
Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) is having a moment, albeit one marked by crucial ambiguities.
Cognoscenti including Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk and Bill Gates, among others, have recently weighed in on its potential and perils. After reading Nick Bostrom’s book “Superintelligence,” Musk even wondered aloud if A.I. may be “our biggest existential threat.”
Our popular conception of artificial intelligence is distorted by an anthropocentric fallacy.
Positions on A.I. are split, and not just on its dangers. Some insist that “hard A.I.” (with human-level intelligence) can never exist, while others conclude that it is inevitable. But in many cases these debates may be missing the real point of what it means to live and think with forms of synthetic intelligence very different from our own.
That point, in short, is that a mature A.I. is not necessarily a humanlike intelligence, or one that is at our disposal. If we look for A.I. in the wrong ways, it may emerge in forms that are needlessly difficult to recognize, amplifying its risks and retarding its benefits.
This is not just a concern for the future. A.I. is already out of the lab and deep into the fabric of things. “Soft A.I.,” such as Apple’s Siri and Amazon recommendation engines, along with infrastructural A.I., such as high-speed algorithmic trading, smart vehicles and industrial robotics, are increasingly a part of everyday life — part of how our tools work, how our cities move and how our economy builds and trades things.
Unfortunately, the popular conception of A.I., at least as depicted in countless movies, games and books, still seems to assume that humanlike characteristics (anger, jealousy, confusion, avarice, pride, desire, not to mention cold alienation) are the most important ones to be on the lookout for. This anthropocentric fallacy may contradict the implications of contemporary A.I. research, but it is still a prism through which much of our culture views an encounter with advanced synthetic cognition.
The little boy robot in Steven Spielberg’s 2001 film “A.I. Artificial Intelligence” wants to be a real boy with all his little metal heart, while Skynet in the “Terminator” movies is obsessed with the genocide of humans. We automatically presume that the Monoliths in Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke’s 1968 film, “2001: A Space Odyssey,” want to talk to the human protagonist Dave, and not to his spaceship’s A.I., HAL 9000.
I argue that we should abandon the conceit that a “true” Artificial Intelligence must care deeply about humanity — us specifically — as its focus and motivation. Perhaps what we really fear, even more than a Big Machine that wants to kill us, is one that sees us as irrelevant. Worse than being seen as an enemy is not being seen at all.
Unless we assume that humanlike intelligence represents all possible forms of intelligence – a whopper of an assumption – why define an advanced A.I. by its resemblance to ours? After all, “intelligence” is notoriously difficult to define, and human intelligence simply can’t exhaust the possibilities. Granted, doing so may at times have practical value in the laboratory, but in cultural terms it is self-defeating, unethical and perhaps even dangerous.
We need a popular culture of A.I. that is less parochial and narcissistic, one that is based on more than simply looking for a machine version of our own reflection. As a basis for staging encounters between various A.I.s and humans, that would be a deeply flawed precondition for communication. Needless to say, our historical track record with “first contacts,” even among ourselves, does not provide clear comfort that we are well-prepared.
II.
The idea of measuring A.I. by its ability to “pass” as a human – dramatized in countless sci-fi films, from Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner” to Spike Jonze’s “Her” – is actually as old as modern A.I. research itself. It is traceable at least to 1950 when the British mathematician Alan Turing published “Computing Machinery and Intelligence,” a paper in which he described what we now call the “Turing Test,” and which he referred to as the “imitation game.” There are different versions of the test, all of which are revealing as to why our approach to the culture and ethics of A.I. is what it is, for good and bad. For the most familiar version, a human interrogator asks questions of two hidden contestants, one a human and the other a computer. Turing suggests that if the interrogator usually cannot tell which is which, and if the computer can successfully pass as human, then can we not conclude, for practical purposes, that the computer is “intelligent”?
There is a correspondence between asking an A.I. to “pass” the test in order to qualify as intelligent — to “pass” as a human intelligence — with Turing’s own need to hide his homosexuality and to “pass” as a straight man.
More people “know” Turing’s foundational text than have actually read it. This is unfortunate because the text is marvelous, strange and surprising. Turing introduces his test as a variation on a popular parlor game in which two hidden contestants, a woman (player A) and a man (player B) try to convince a third that he or she is a woman by their written responses to leading questions. To win, one of the players must convincingly be who they really are, whereas the other must try to pass as another gender. Turing describes his own variation as one where “a computer takes the place of player A,” and so a literal reading would suggest that in his version the computer is not just pretending to be a human, but pretending to be a woman. It must pass as a she.
Other versions had it that player B could be either a man or a woman. It would seem a very different kind of game if only one player is faking, or if both are, or if neither of them are. Now that we give the computer a seat, we may have it pretending to be a woman along with a man pretending to be a woman, both trying to trick the interrogator into figuring out which is a man and which is a woman. Or perhaps a computer pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman, along with a man pretending to be a woman, or even a computer pretending to be a woman pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman! In the real world, of course, we already have all of the above.
“The Imitation Game,” Morten Tyldum’s Oscar-winning 2014 film about Turing, reminds us that the mathematician himself also had to “pass” — in his case as straight man in a society that criminalized homosexuality. Upon discovery that he was not what he appeared to be, he was forced to undergo horrific medical treatments known as “chemical castration.” Ultimately the physical and emotional pain was too great and he committed suicide. The episode was grotesque tribute to a man whose contribution to defeating Hitler’s military was still at that time a state secret. Turing was only recently given posthumous pardon, but the tens of thousands of other British men sentenced under similar laws have not.
Related More From The Stone Read previous contributions to this series.
One notes the sour ironic correspondence between asking an A.I. to “pass” the test in order to qualify as intelligent — to “pass” as a human intelligence — with Turing’s own need to hide his homosexuality and to “pass” as a straight man. The demands of both bluffs are unnecessary and profoundly unfair.
Passing as a person, as a white or black person, or as a man or woman, for example, comes down to what others see and interpret. Because everyone else is already willing to read others according to conventional cues (of race, sex, gender, species, etc.) the complicity between whoever (or whatever) is passing and those among which he or she or it performs is what allows passing to succeed. Whether or not an A.I. is trying to pass as a human or is merely in drag as a human is another matter. Is the ruse all just a game or, as for some people who are compelled to pass in their daily lives, an essential camouflage? Either way, “passing” may say more about the audience than about the performers.
We would do better to presume that in our universe, “thinking” is much more diverse, even alien, than our own particular case. The real philosophical lessons of A.I. will have less to do with humans teaching machines how to think than with machines teaching humans a fuller and truer range of what thinking can be (and for that matter, what being human can be).
III.
That we would wish to define the very existence of A.I. in relation to its ability to mimic how humans think that humans think will be looked back upon as a weird sort of speciesism. The legacy of that conceit helped to steer some older A.I. research down disappointingly fruitless paths, hoping to recreate human minds from available parts. It just doesn’t work that way. Contemporary A.I. research suggests instead that the threshold by which any particular arrangement of matter can be said to be “intelligent” doesn’t have much to do with how it reflects humanness back at us. As Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig (now director of research at Google) suggest in their essential A.I. textbook, biomorphic imitation is not how we design complex technology. Airplanes don’t fly like birds fly, and we certainly don’t try to trick birds into thinking that airplanes are birds in order to test whether those planes “really” are flying machines. Why do it for A.I. then? Today’s serious A.I. research does not focus on the Turing Test as an objective criterion of success, and yet in our popular culture of A.I., the test’s anthropocentrism holds such durable conceptual importance. Like the animals who talk like teenagers in a Disney movie, other minds are conceivable mostly by way of puerile ventriloquism.
One could argue that the anthropomorphic precondition for A.I. is a “pre-Copernican” attitude.
Where is the real injury in this? If we want everyday A.I. to be congenial in a humane sort of way, so what? The answer is that we have much to gain from a more sincere and disenchanted relationship to synthetic intelligences, and much to lose by keeping illusions on life support. Some philosophers write about the possible ethical “rights” of A.I. as sentient entities, but that’s not my point here. Rather, the truer perspective is also the better one for us as thinking technical creatures.
Musk, Gates and Hawking made headlines by speaking to the dangers that A.I. may pose. Their points are important, but I fear were largely misunderstood by many readers. Relying on efforts to program A.I. not to “harm humans” (inspired by on Isaac Asimov’s “three laws” of robotics from 1942) makes sense only when an A.I. knows what humans are and what harming them might mean. There are many ways that an A.I. might harm us that that have nothing to do with its malevolence toward us, and chief among these is exactly following our well-meaning instructions to an idiotic and catastrophic extreme. Instead of mechanical failure or a transgression of moral code, the A.I. may pose an existential risk because it is both powerfully intelligent and disinterested in humans. To the extent that we recognize A.I. by its anthropomorphic qualities, or presume its preoccupation with us, we are vulnerable to those eventualities.
Whether or not “hard A.I.” ever appears, the harm is also in the loss of all that we prevent ourselves from discovering and understanding when we insist on protecting beliefs we know to be false. In the 1950 essay, Turing offers several rebuttals to his speculative A.I., including a striking comparison with earlier objections to Copernican astronomy. Copernican traumas that abolish the false centrality and absolute specialness of human thought and species-being are priceless accomplishments. They allow for human culture based on how the world actually is more than on how it appears to us from our limited vantage point. Turing referred to these as “theological objections,” but one could argue that the anthropomorphic precondition for A.I. is a “pre-Copernican” attitude as well, however secular it may appear. The advent of robust inhuman A.I. may let us achieve another disenchantment, one that should enable a more reality-based understanding of ourselves, our situation, and a fuller and more complex understanding of what “intelligence” is and is not. From there we can hopefully make our world with a greater confidence that our models are good approximations of what’s out there (always a helpful thing.)
Lastly, the harm is in perpetuating a relationship to technology that has brought us to the precipice of a Sixth Great Extinction. Arguably the Anthropocene itself is due less to technology run amok than to the humanist legacy that understands the world as having been given for our needs and created in our image. We hear this in the words of thought leaders who evangelize the superiority of a world where machines are subservient to the needs and wishes of humanity. If you think so, Google “pig decapitating machine” (actually, just don’t) and then let’s talk about inventing worlds in which machines are wholly subservient to humans’ wishes.
One wonders whether it is only from a society that once gave theological and legislative comfort to chattel slavery that this particular affirmation could still be offered in 2015 with such satisfied naïveté? This is the sentiment — this philosophy of technology exactly — that is the basic algorithm of the Anthropocenic predicament, and consenting to it would also foreclose adequate encounters with A.I. It is time to move on. This pretentious folklore is too expensive.
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Benjamin H. Bratton (@bratton) is an associate professor of visual arts at the University of California, San Diego. His next book, “The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty,” will be published this fall by the MIT Press. |
Via Free Beacon:
Iran’s defense minister said on Tuesday that the recent firing of two ballistic missiles was a shot across the bow to the Obama administration, which continues to maintain that the “military option” against Tehran is still on the table.
While Iran is permitted to fire these missiles under the recently signed interim nuclear deal, the White House told the Washington Free Beacon on Tuesday that “Iran’s missile program continues to pose a dangerous threat to region.”
Iranian Defense Minister Hossein Dehqan said the ballistic missile test was aimed at sending a “firm response” to the White House.
“Testing the missiles was a clear response to the U.S. officials’ worn-out phrase ‘the military option is on the table,’” Dehqan was quoted as telling the state-run Fars News Agency on Tuesday.
Keep reading… |
MINNEAPOLIS -- More than 15,000 fans walked into Target Center on Sunday night, hoping that the Minnesota Lynx could give them a little relief from the sports abyss the Twin Cities sit in at the moment.
They waved white pom-poms and hollered at the top of their lungs, and Rebekkah Brunson and Co. made sure they didn't go home disappointed.
Brunson had 26 points and 11 rebounds and Seimone Augustus added 22 points to lead the Lynx to an 88-74 victory over the Atlanta Dream in Game 1 of the WNBA finals.
"It was amazing," Brunson said of the charged-up atmosphere. "The city's been excited about this team from the beginning of the season and everybody keeps jumping on and jumping on and we love it. We love the fact we can come in here and play in front of a crowd like this."
Lindsay Whalen added 15 points and six assists and the Lynx turned a close game into a runaway with a 13-0 run to open the fourth quarter. Taj McWilliams-Franklin added eight points and 10 boards while battling an illness.
Angel McCoughtry scored 19 of her 33 points in the third quarter and Lindsey Harding scored 20 points for the Dream.
Atlanta led by 12 points midway through the second quarter, but the Lynx kept them off the board for the first 4:34 of the fourth quarter to take control. With starting center Erika de Souza missing the game while playing for Brazil in an Olympic qualifying tournament, the Dream were outrebounded 40-28 and outscored in the paint 52-30.
"Look at the rebounds," Harding said. "We needed her."
De Souza will be back for Game 2 of the best-of-five series, which is Wednesday night in Minneapolis.
For those who say the women's game lacks everything that makes the sport great -- athleticism, shot-making and competitive fire -- Game 1 will not help them make their case.
Maya Moore's sensational reverse layup, a scoop shot that started from clear on the other side of the rim, got the Lynx started on a third-quarter surge that got them back into the game. Brunson finished a three-point play and Augustus' no-look pass was finished by Whalen's reverse layup to cap a 9-0 run that gave them a 51-49 lead.
"We've got some athletes up in here!" Brunson boasted.
On the other end, McCoughtry was simply unstoppable, hitting a incredible array of jumpers from odd angles all over the floor, blocking shots and forcing steals to keep her team from faltering. She scored all but four of Atlanta's 23 points in the third and the game was tied at 62 heading into the fourth.
Whalen started the deciding surge with a three-point play and a shooter's roll jumper and the Lynx turned up the pressure on the defensive end to get two fast break layups to take a 75-62 lead with 5:45 to play.
"We knew our run would come at some point," Whalen said.
The Lynx blocked a WNBA finals record 11 shots and held Atlanta to 37 percent shooting in their first finals game in franchise history.
"We couldn't find the rim for about four minutes," Dream coach Marynell Meadors said. "And everything we did resulted in points for Minnesota."
After 12 largely anonymous and often wretched seasons of existence, the Lynx finally broke through this year in a major way. With Augustus healthy for the first time in three years and Moore coming from UConn with the No. 1 overall pick, the Lynx blew the doors off the rest of the league, finishing 27-7, six games better than the second-best team.
The Twins and Timberwolves both finished in last place and the Vikings are off to an 0-4 start, leaving Minnesota's sporting public desperate for someone to cheer for.
The fired-up crowd of 15,258 -- the second-largest in franchise history -- was treated to a nerve-racking start.
The Dream just seemed a step quicker than the Lynx in the early going, with Harding running circles around Whalen and the rest of the Lynx in the first 13 minutes. They forced six turnovers and Harding hit two 3s as they jumped out to a 29-17 lead early in the second quarter.
The Dream are playing in the finals for the second year in a row after losing to Seattle last year. Not bad for a franchise that just started four years ago. They dispatched top-seeded Indiana in the Eastern Conference finals to get here, winning on the road in Game 3 to advance.
"The crowd energizes them and it just weighs you down," McCoughtry said. "It's good to know that we were the ones that kind of messed ourselves up. That's a good thing for us because we can adjust that." |
Hey, remember when the Alamo Drafthouse announced a screening of Wonder Woman open only to people who identified as female, and some very fragile dudes on the internet freaked out about it, as if there weren’t literally thousands of other screenings of the film open to them at theaters across the nation (including at the Alamo Drafthouse itself)? Well, now the theater is taking the rhetorical knots these utterly rational and not at all sexist contrarians tied themselves into protesting the Wonder Woman screening, and turning them into balloon animals. In other words, The Alamo Drafthouse Mueller in Austin is hosting a clowns-only screening of It.
The screening, for which “all attendees should arrive dressed as a clown in order to attend,” will feature face painting, a photo booth, raffles, and “other terrifying merriment.” The screening, which appears to have been inspired by one breathtakingly convoluted attempt an a “well, actually” on the Drafthouse’s Facebook page (see below), asks attendees to “please arrive in your own Pennywise best and be ready to float with us.” Smug “but what about mimes, huh?!” comments are expected to appear on the theater’s social media platforms shortly.
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Update, August 25: Two more “clowns-only” screenings have been added to the Alamo Drafthouse’s Austin schedule, according to Alamo-adjacent movie site Birth.Movies.Death. One will take place at the theater chain’s Lakeline location, and one at the Slaughter location, just for a little extra pizzazz. |
If you need some downtime, you could do worse than heading toward the darkest blue regions on this map. The image shows how the loudness of sound varies across the country, based on 1.5 million hours of acoustical monitoring.
Freshly presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science's annual meeting, the map uses recordings take from the quietest and loudest places in the country—from Dinosaur National Monument to New York City. The recordings were used as a representative samples to model sound across the entire surface of the U.S., using algorithms that rolled in measurements like air quality and street traffic volume to improve the predictions.
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The quietest places on the map—which include Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming and the Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado—have ambient sound levels of below 20 decibels. Science suggests that's as quiet as before the European colonization of the country. Now, the National Park Service is using the results to identify places where human kind is disrupting wildlife. [Science] |
Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA) , who has called the Obama administration “one of the most corrupt” in history, has been working overtime in recent weeks in an attempt to prove his charge, even if it means he has to manipulate the evidence to do so.
Issa chairs the powerful House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and as such has been the GOP point man on the IRS scandal that has been making news in recent weeks. In case you have been away, here’s a summary: An IRS Inspector General report revealed last month that the agency had improperly targeted conservative groups for extra scrutiny when they applied for tax exempt status if they had political sounding names, such as “Tea Party,” or “Patriot.” Republicans in congress were immediately convinced that this scrutiny was ordered by the White House, and they set out to prove they were correct.
After interviewing various IRS officials involved, Chairman Issa began a “death by a thousand cuts” strategy, releasing selected portions of the transcripts that he felt proved that the operation was directed, or at least ordered, by someone connected to the White House. This cherry picking of the record angered Representative Elijah Cummings (D-MD), the ranking Democrat on the committee, who called for Issa to release the entire transcripts. After allowing Issa to ignore his request for several days, yesterday Cummings released over 200 pages of interview transcripts himself.
Cummings explained his decision in a letter to Chairman Issa:
Although I fundamentally disagree with the unsubstantiated claims you have made about the IRS matter being driven by the White House to attack the President’s political enemies, I wanted to give you appropriate deference in conducting Committee investigations. I hoped we could focus on a bipartisan approach that maximizes transparency and accuracy, but your staff refused several follow-up requests to meet with my staff on this issue.
Issa, who has repeatedly tried without success to implicate the White House in some sort of wrongdoing, responded by saying in a statement
After unsuccessfully trying to convince the American people that IRS officials in Washington did not play a role in inappropriate scrutiny of Tea Party groups and declaring on national television that the case of IRS targeting was ‘solved’ and Congress should ‘move on,’ this looks like flailing. Americans who think Congress should investigate IRS misconduct should be outraged by Mr. Cummings’ efforts to obstruct needed oversight.
In the transcripts released by Cummings the IRS employee who indicates that the targeting started with low-level employees in the Cincinnati IRS office also identifies himself as a conservative Republican. He also testified that no one in Washington or at the White House directed the investigation. From page 141 of Cummings’ transcripts:
Q: Do you have any reason to believe that anyone in the White House was involved in the decision to screen Tea Party cases? A: I have no reason to believe that. Q: Do you have any reason to believe that anyone in the White House was involved in the decision to centralize the review of Tea Party cases? A: I have no reason to believe that.
Once again we witness the slow death of another Republican manufactured “scandal.” Issa claims that the release of the full transcripts will permit IRS employees to figure out ways to “navigate investigative interviews” with congress in the future. But in reality his anger is likely due to the fact that the transcripts prove that there is no substance to his charges against the Obama administration, and that he has manipulated the information that the public has been allowed to see in order to further his political witch hunt.
The full text of the transcripts can be found here and here. |
Random Dungeons in Diablo 3 have a certain chance of spawning in a specific zone. If you cannot find the dungeon in its zone at first, log out of the game and back in, then go to the zone again, repeat until you find the dungeon.
Random Dungeons Sorted Alphabetically [ edit ]
Abandoned Cellar
Abandoned Mineworks
Abandoned Servant House
Alcarnus Cellar
Ancient Cave
Battlefield Stores
Blessed Chancel
Blood Cellar
Bridge Stores
Cave of Burrowing Horror
Cave of the Moon Clan Caverns of Frost
Chamber of the Lost Idol
Cryder's Outpost
Damp Cellar
Dank Cellar
Dark Cellar
Decaying Crypt
Den of the Fallen
Deserted Cellar
Farmer's Cellar
Fuad's Cellar
Flooded Cave
Fortified Bunker
Hadi's Claim Mine
Highlands Cave
Holy Sanctum
House of Curios
Icefall Caves
Lost Mine
Mass Grave
Musty Cellar
Mysterious Cave
Old Fisherman's Cellar
Radiant Chapel
Ransacked Cellar
Rotting Cellar
Sacellum of Virtue
Sandy Cellar
Scavenger's Den
Sirocco Caverns
Storage Cellar
Storm Cellar
Swampy Cellar
The Barracks
The Cave Under the Well
The Crumbling Vault
The Forward Barracks
The Foundry
The Fowl Lair
The Lyceum
The Ruins
The Underbridge
The Veiled Treasure
Tinker's Hovel
Tomb of Khan Dakab
Tomb of Sardar
Town Cellar
Tunnels of the Rockworm
Vile Cavern
Watch Tower
Random Dungeons Sorted by Act [ edit ]
Act I [1]
Abandoned Servant House
Cave of the Moon Clan
Damp Cellar
Dank Cellar
Dark Cellar
Decaying Crypt
Den of the Fallen
Farmer's Cellar
Highlands Cave
House of Curios
Lost Mine
Mass Grave
Musty Cellar
Scavenger's Den
The Cave Under the Well
The Lyceum
Tinker's Hovel
Watch Tower
Act II [2] [3]
Abandoned Cellar
Abandoned Mineworks
Alcarnus Cellar
Ancient Cave
Blood Cellar
Cave of Burrowing Horror
Chamber of the Lost Idol
Deserted Cellar
Fuad's Cellar
Flooded Cave
Hadi's Claim Mine
Mysterious Cave
Old Fisherman's Cellar
Ransacked Cellar
Rotting Cellar
Sandy Cellar
Sirocco Caverns
Storage Cellar
Storm Cellar
Swampy Cellar
The Crumbling Vault
The Fowl Lair
The Ruins
The Veiled Treasure
Tomb of Khan Dakab
Tomb of Sardar
Town Cellar
Tunnels of the Rockworm
Vile Cavern
Act III[4]
Battlefield Stores
Bridge Stores
Caverns of Frost
Cryder's Outpost
Fortified Bunker
Icefall Caves
The Barracks
The Forward Barracks
The Foundry
The Underbridge
Act IV[5]
Blessed Chancel
Holy Sanctum
Radiant Chapel
Sacellum of Virtue
Random Dungeons Sorted by Area [ edit ]
Alcarnus Cellar - Alcarnus
Sandy Cellar - Alcarnus
Town Cellar - Alcarnus
Blood Cellar - Black Canyon Mines
Deserted Cellar - Black Canyon Mines
Tunnels of the Rockworm - Black Canyon Mines
Ancient Cave - Dahlgur Oasis
Flooded Cave - Dahlgur Oasis
Mysterious Cave - Dahlgur Oasis
Old Fisherman's Cellar - Dahlgur Oasis
Ransacked Cellar - Dahlgur Oasis
Rotting Cellar - Dahlgur Oasis
Storage Cellar - Dahlgur Oasis
Storm Cellar - Dahlgur Oasis
Swampy Cellar - Dahlgur Oasis
Tomb of Khan Dakab - Dahlgur Oasis
Tomb of Sardar - Dahlgur Oasis
Cave of Burrowing Horror - Desolate Sands
Vile Cavern - Desolate Sands
The Veiled Treasure - Desolate Sands
The Fowl Lair - Desolate Sands
Decaying Crypt - Fields of Misery
House of Curios - Fields of Misery
Lost Mine - Fields of Misery
Scavenger's Den - Fields of Misery
Tinker's Hovel - Fields of Misery
Farmer's Cellar - Fields of Misery
Caverns of Frost - Fields of Slaughter
Icefall Caves - Fields of Slaughter
Blessed Chancel - Gardens of Hope 2nd Tier
Holy Sanctum - Gardens of Hope 2nd Tier
Radiant Chapel - Gardens of Hope 2nd Tier
Sacellum of Virtue - Gardens of Hope 2nd Tier
Abandoned Mineworks - Howling Plateau
Fuad's Cellar - Howling Plateau
Sirocco Caverns - Howling Plateau
Highlands Cave - Leoric's Hunting Ground
Watch Tower - Northern Highlands
The Cave Under the Well - Old Tristram Road
Damp Cellar - Old Tristram Road
Dank Cellar - Old Tristram Road
Mass Grave - Old Tristram Road
Musty Cellar - Old Tristram Road
Bridge Stores - Rakkis Crossing
The Underbridge - Rakkis Crossing
Abandoned Servant House - Southern Highlands
Cave of the Moon Clan - Southern Highlands
The Lyceum - Southern Highlands
The Crumbling Vault - Stinging Winds
Hadi's Claim Mine - Stinging Winds
The Ruins - Stinging Winds
Chamber of the Lost Idol - Stinging Winds
Abandoned Cellar - Stinging Winds
Fortified Bunker - The Arreat Gate
The Barracks - The Arreat Gate
Battlefield Stores - The Battlefields
The Foundry - The Battlefields
Cryder's Outpost - The Battlefields
The Forward Barracks - The Battlefields
Dark Cellar - The Old Ruins
Den of the Fallen - The Weeping Hollow |
Reducing global oil demand would drive down prices and free up funds for oil importing countries to spend on other areas of the economy, report finds
A switch to low-carbon transport such as electric cars would save countries including the UK billions of pounds a year, a report has suggested.
Global policies to cut greenhouse gas emissions from the transport sector would reduce demand for oil, driving down prices and cutting global spending on the fossil fuel by £232bn a year worldwide between 2020 and 2030.
Cheaper oil for importing countries could free up billions of pounds which could be spent in other parts of the economy, the analysis led by Cambridge Econometrics said.
The report also warns that the era of ultra-cheap oil – with prices currently around $40 (£27) a barrel – will be limited, and without action to address climate change prices could rise to $130 a barrel by 2050.
If governments implement policies to cut carbon emissions from transport, which could see a significant uptake in hybrid and electric vehicles as the costs of battery technology falls rapidly, the reduction in demand in oil could keep prices lower.
Uptake of low-carbon transport could reduce prices by 15% in 2020 and 29% in 2040, and could see prices limited to $83-87 a barrel by mid-century.
Research by Cambridge Econometrics has also suggested that moving to low-carbon transport would be good for oil importing countries such as the UK.
In 2014, the UK imported 38% of its oil, which could translate to a £13bn a year saving by 2030 with a switch to clean transport, the research found, although imports dropped to 28% in 2015 as domestic production grew.
Increased spending on domestically-produced electricity or hydrogen fuel to power low-carbon vehicles and on innovative technology could boost the UK economy to the tune of between £2.4bn and £5bn and create thousands of jobs.
The report is being released ahead of the official opening for signing of the Paris agreement, the international climate deal agreed at the end of last year, which aims to shift countries on to a low-carbon path to curb rising temperatures.
Philip Summerton, director at Cambridge Econometrics and lead author of the report, said: “Without any further policy changes, oil prices are likely to recover in the long-term, driven by global economic growth and increasing demand for mobility.
“In a world where climate policies are being implemented to drive investment in low-carbon technologies - as governments agreed in Paris - demand for oil will be curbed, and ultimately reduced, leading to lower oil prices than would otherwise be the case.
“Through policy support and technological innovation, we can expect the global economy to be using 11m fewer barrels of oil per day by 2030 than we would without significant changes to transport technologies.
“Lower oil prices would benefit oil-importing regions such as Europe by reducing inflationary pressures on consumers, increasing real incomes, and shifting spending towards other goods and services that deliver more value for Europe.” |
By Dr. Mercola
If you’re sick and tired of Monsanto’s scheming to monopolize the food supply with patented crops, and their insistence on poisoning your family and the planet as a matter of business, you’re far from alone. Last month, the Center for Biological Diversity’s annual “Dodo Award” went to Monsanto for its reckless peddling of glyphosate, a carcinogen that's driving loss of wildlife and diversity around the globe. Earlier this year, dozens of food, farming, and environmental justice groups announced they will put Monsanto on trial for “crimes against nature and humanity” on October 16, 2016 (World Food Day), in The Hague, Netherlands. The steering committee1 for the Monsanto Tribunal includes Vandana Shiva, Corinne Lepage (former environment minister of France), Gilles-Éric Séralini (toxicologist researching toxicities of GMOs and glyphosate), and Olivier De Schutter (former UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food), among others. As noted by Andre Leu, president of the International Foundation for Organic Agriculture (IFOAM):2 “Monsanto is able to ignore the human and environmental damage caused by its products, and maintain its devastating activities through a strategy of systemic concealment: By lobbying regulatory agencies and governments, by resorting to lying and corruption, by financing fraudulent scientific studies, by pressuring independent scientists, and by manipulating the press and media. Monsanto’s history reads like a text-book case of impunity, benefiting transnational corporations and their executives, whose activities contribute to climate and biosphere crises and threaten the safety of the planet.” To raise the €1 million needed to finance the trial, the Monsanto Tribunal Foundation is using online crowd funding. You can make a donation on MonsantoTribunal.org’s website.3
Monsanto CEO Hides Behind Same Old Lame Talking Points
CBS This Morning4 recently interviewed Monsanto CEO Hugh Grant about the lack of transparency when it comes to foods containing genetically engineered (GE) ingredients, and why the company spent $10 million to defeat GMO labeling in Colorado and Oregon alone. Grant was noncommittal, clinging to vague and already well-refuted talking points, including the idea that GMO labeling will increase costs and cause more confusion than it resolves, were individual states permitted to enact their own labeling laws.
They didn't have time to address why Monsanto uses paid shills to launch attacks against 14-year-old girls. He also denied that Roundup, Monsanto’s top-selling herbicide, which all of their Roundup Ready seeds are engineered to withstand, is at all hazardous to health, saying he’s “very comfortable” with Roundup’s safety. Those in agreement with that sentiment are getting fewer, however. In March 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), which is the research arm of the World Health Organization (WHO), determined glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, to be a “probable carcinogen” (Class 2A). Since then, several lawsuits have been filed against Monsanto by agricultural workers claiming their cancers were caused by exposure to Roundup. According to other recent research, glyphosate may also promote antibiotic resistance by disrupting gut bacteria and dysregulating manganese utilization; manganese accumulation in bile acids allows Salmonella to gain a stronghold there. To say that we “require” tools like patented GE seeds and carcinogenic, soil-wrecking chemicals to feed the world in coming decades is beyond disingenuous!
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Actor Calls Monsanto Chief on His Nonsense
While that CBS interview was taking place, “Hulk” actor and environmental activist Mark Ruffalo was waiting behind the scenes, preparing for his own appearance on the CBS morning show. As Grant came into the Green Room after his segment, Ruffalo grabbed the opportunity to give Grant a piece of his mind. In his blog, Ruffalo recounts the events of that chance meeting:5 “... Approaching someone like this isn’t really my thing. But, being so well behaved all the time doesn’t seem to be helping people. It made me really uncomfortable to do it ... [But we] must act out of our comfort zones for things to change. We must call out the people who are doing horrible things when they do them. Hugh Grant must be made to feel uncomfortable for what he allows his company to do in the world ... He came through the Green Room door ready to do high fives with his press agent and I simply told him this: ‘You are wrong. You are engaged in monopolizing food. You are poisoning people. You are killing small farms. You are killing bees. What you are doing is dead wrong.’ A bead of sweat broke out on his head. ’Well, what I think we are doing is good’ ... When people get paid the kind of money he gets paid, their thinking becomes incredibly clouded, and the first thing to go is their morality. He says Monsanto needs to do a better job with their messaging. Hugh, it’s not your messaging that makes you and your company horrible. It’s the horrible stuff you guys do that makes you and your company horrible ... No matter how much jumping around you do on morning shows (where no one can really nail you down for the horrible stuff you do) you will still always be horrible, and people will always greet you the way I did, when you go around trying to cover up the fact that you are horrible.”
Monsanto Pays Scientists to Support Roundup Safety
On the list of “horrible” things Monsanto does on a regular basis: paying scientists to develop support for its toxins. When the IARC concluded that glyphosate is a probable carcinogen, Monsanto was quick to demand a retraction, charging the internationally recognized experts with conducting “junk science.” This time the charge didn’t stick, however — probably because the IARC is considered the global gold standard for carcinogenicity studies. Soon thereafter, the company hired the “one-stop shop” consulting firm Intertek Scientific & Regulatory Consultancy6,7 to assemble a panel of scientists to refute the IARC’s determination. Ten of the 16 scientists on the panel have worked as consultants for Monsanto in the past, and two are former Monsanto employees. Needless to say, the outcome of this panel’s “investigation” was clearly foreseeable right from the start. As reported by Reuters:8 “The group said that the WHO's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) misinterpreted or incorrectly weighted some of the data it reviewed and ignored other data before classifying glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen, according to an abstract of its findings.‘Thus, none of the results from a very large database, using different methodologies, provides evidence of, or a potential mechanism for, human carcinogenesis,’ the abstract said.”
90 Percent of Americans Want to Know If Their Food Is GE
According to the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA), 80 percent of the foods on your grocery store’s shelves contain GMOs (now referred to as GEs by the FD),9 but virtually none of them are labeled. As concerns about pesticide toxicity and other potential health hazards associated with GE foods grow, more and more people want to know what’s in the food they buy. According to a December 2015 poll,10 9 out of 10 Americans now want mandatory labeling for GE foods. Moreover, nearly the same amount of people (88 percent) want that information to be clearly listed on the food label, rather than having to use a smartphone to scan a QR code11,12 to find the information — a completely unworkable situation when you have a cart full of food packages to scan through! But, inconvenience isn’t the only drawback with using QR codes, which are promoted as a “compromise” in lieu of mandatory GE labeling. In a recent blog post,13 the Environmental Working Group (EWG) lists a total of 10 reasons why the Smart Label proposal can’t work and must be rejected. First of all, the Smart Label would have no rules governing what constitutes a GE ingredient. The program is also completely voluntary, so food companies can elect to include a QR code on the package or not. And, they can elect to reveal whether the product contains GE ingredients or not on the product’s Website. There’s also no enforcement, so you have no way of knowing whether the company’s Website is providing you with accurate and full disclosure. Moreover, there’s no deadline for when companies would have to provide QR codes on their food packages. As noted by Lisa Archer, Food and Technology Program Director at Friends of the Earth: “GMO labeling via QR code technology is unworkable, threatens privacy, and is discriminatory since more than a third of Americans, many of which are low-income, or live in rural areas with poor internet access, don’t own smartphones. FDA’s approval of GMO salmon makes it all the more urgent that Congress require mandatory, universally accessible GMO labeling that any consumer can read on the package when they’re choosing what to feed their families.”
Please Contact Your Senators to Oppose DARK Act Policy Rider |
The Patriots set up a double-score vs. the Colts on Oct. 18 when they won the coin toss and elected to kick off, then scored immediately before and after halftime.
It’s a staple of the Patriots lexicon: The double-score.
At times this season, it seemed as if New England owned a trademark on the formula of winning a coin flip, electing to defer, scoring in the final seconds of the first half, and then turning the opening kickoff of the second half into more points. The Patriots followed that script with notable frequency.
The Patriots had four instances this season where they scored in the final 30 seconds of the first half, then took the kickoff to open the third quarter and marched down the field for more points. Their record in those contests was 4-0.
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The game-changing ability to bookend halftime with a pair of scoring plays ranked among the top showings by a football team in recent years. Not since 2011, when the Patriots had five double-scores, had a team accumulated more in one season.
Most double-scores, 2011-2015 Team Double-scores Record Patriots 12 12-0 Broncos 8 8-0 Packers 7 5-2 Saints 9 6-3 Chargers 8 7-1 SOURCE : Alex Speier
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Of course, the Patriots were likewise in position to record more double scores than any other team in the NFL this season. Thanks to their longstanding preference to defer rather than receive the opening kickoff when winning the pregame coin flip, New England received the second-half kickoff 13 times in 2015, most in the NFL.
This year marked the second straight in which New England led the league in second-half kickoffs received — the Patriots opened the second half with the ball 13 times in the 2014 season, tied for the most in the NFL.
Still, the amount of separation isn’t as gaping as one might anticipate. The Browns, for instance, have received the second-half kickoff 25 times over the last two years. In 2013, the Bills received the second-half kickoff in 15 of 16 games, most since at least 2008.
In other words, New England is far from alone in its desire to come out of halftime with the ball in pursuit of a double-score. That said, the Patriots’ long-term commitment to opening the second half with the ball becomes apparent over a broader timespan. Over the last five years, the Patriots have received the ball to open the second half 60 times (out of a possible 80), an average of exactly 12 per season. No other team has opened the second half with the ball more than 53 times in that period.
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Of course, it’s one thing to create opportunities to double-score. It’s another thing to do it. The Buccaneers, after all, have opened the second half with the ball 53 times since 2011. They’ve followed a score in the final minute of the first half with a scoring drive to open the second just twice.
The contrast with the Patriots is noteworthy. New England has 12 double-scores since 2011. No other team has more than nine. Given their success in converting double-scoring opportunities into a pair of scoring drives, and their perfect 12-0 record when doing so, the Patriots’ interest in opening the second half with the ball seems self-apparent.
Most double-scores in a season, 2011-2015 Year Team Double-Scores Record 2011 Patriots 5 5-0 2015 Patriots 4 4-0 2015 Giants 4 0-4 2013 Broncos 4 4-0 SOURCE :
Yet even when they fail to convert a double-score, New England’s record when “single-scoring” (posting points either in the final minute of the first half or the opening drive of the second) is still better than its mark when kicking off to open the third quarter. Over the last five years, the Patriots are 22-5 (.815) in games where they a) have the first possession of the second half and b) score either just before the end of the first half or when marching down the field after halftime.
They’re 14-6 (.700) in all games where they receive the game-opening kickoff and then have to send their defense onto the field for the start the second half.
Patriots record when ... Situation Record Receiving second half kickoff 47-13 (.783) Double-scoring 12-0 (1.000) Single-scoring 22-5 (.815) Start 3rd quarter by scoring 12-3 (.800) End 2nd quarter by scoring 10-2 (.833) Not scoring in double-score situation 13-8 (.619) Not receiving second half kickoff 14-6 (.700) SOURCE : Alex Speier
The reasons for the relationship between double-scoring and winning are likely obvious. If a team is moving the ball well enough to score in consecutive possessions in the middle of the game, even after halftime adjustments, it’s a likely harbinger of game-long success. Receiving the ball to open the second half also has the potential additional benefit of a longer break for the defense coming out of halftime, thus providing some theoretical benefit to slowing opposing offenses in the second half.
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The 2015 Patriots gave hints of both traits. In games where they double-scored, their offense dominated both halves, averaging 17.5 points in the first half and 18.0 points in the second half. The defense, meanwhile, allowed 30 percent fewer points in the second half (5.8) than the first (8.3) in double-score games.
In games where the Patriots did not double-score, somewhat surprisingly, their offensive performance remained relatively unaltered before and after halftime, averaging 13.8 points in the first half and 13.2 points in the second half.
But perhaps owing to a less substantial break surrounding halftime, the defense saw its second-half performances nosedive when the offense did not end the second quarter and start the third with scoring drives. The Patriots gave up just 7.8 points per game in the first half of contests where they did not double-score – but then yielded 13.8 points per game (a 78 percent increase) after halftime.
It’s hard to say exactly what related to double-scores is cause and what is effect. Nonetheless, there’s a fairly obvious conclusion to be drawn that when the Patriots score on both sides of the halftime intermission, they’re exceedingly difficult to beat.
This season’s Patriots managed the trick just once in the final 11 weeks of the season, a marker of how the team’s offensive infrastructure had crumbled. The sputtering conclusion of the first half of the Jets game on Dec. 27, for instance, when the Patriots seemed content to run out the clock on a drive that started with 1:53 left, pointed to an offense that was a shell of itself.
If looking for evidence of whether the Patriots offense is back at something approximating full strength against the Chiefs in the division playoff game on Saturday, the minutes immediately before and after halftime may tell a nearly complete story.
Follow Alex Speier on Twitter at @alexspeier |
BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraqi troops inched ahead in their battle to retake the northern city of Mosul from the Islamic State group on Friday, as the U.N. revealed fresh evidence that the extremists have used chemical weapons.
Exchanging small arms and mortar fire with IS positions, the special forces entered Mosul’s Qadisiya neighborhood, advancing slowly to avoid killing civilians and trying to avoid being surprised by suicide car bombers, said Brig. Gen. Haider Fadhil.
Regular army troops control 90 percent of the Intisar neighborhood, said one officer, but progress had slowed because “the streets are too narrow for our tanks.” He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief reporters.
Iraqi troops are converging from several fronts on Mosul, the second-largest city and the last major IS holdout in Iraq. Kurdish peshmerga forces are holding a line north of the city, while Iraqi army and militarized police units approach from the south, and government-sanctioned Shiite militias guard western approaches.
The offensive has slowed recently as the special forces - the troops that have advanced the farthest - push into more densely populated areas of eastern Mosul, where they cannot rely as much on airstrikes and shelling because of the risk to civilians who have been told to stay in their homes.
To the northeast of Mosul, in the formerly IS-held town of Bashiqa, the Kurdish commander responsible for military operations said his forces are still working to secure the northern Iraqi town but that booby traps were holding up the advance.
Gen. Hamid Effendi told The Associated Press that he estimates more than a thousand unexploded bombs could remain buried. Over 100 IS fighters have been killed in combat, he added, but injured fighters likely remain in defensive tunnels built by the militants.
To the south, some 20 kilometers from Mosul, Iraqi forces paused their advance to prepare for a push to take Mosul airport on the city’s southern edge. Advancing from Qayara air base over the past month, Iraq’s army and federal police have cleared tens of villages along the Tigris river valley and in Nineveh desert.
Now, Iraqi forces say they are preparing for an assault on the southern edge of the city itself, which is likely to yield stiff IS resistance comparable to what Iraqi forces faced in Mosul’s east earlier this month.
Federal Police Brig. Gen. Shaker Alwan al-Kafaj said that when his men retook the town of Hamam al-Alil, some 20 kilometers south of Mosul, they uncovered what Iraqi officials say is a mass grave.
“The most powerful resistance for us was here,” he said of the fight for the last town to Mosul’s south.
Meanwhile, the U.N. human rights office cited new details on Thursday as proof that IS is using chemical weapons, which many fear the extremist group has and is saving for an even more brutal endgame should they be cornered or about to lose the city, still home to more than a million people.
Amid concerns about IS’ use of human shields in the city, rights office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said four people died from inhaling fumes after IS shelled and set fires to the al-Mishrag Sulfur Gas Factory in Mosul on Oct. 23.
Speaking to reporters in Geneva, Shamdasani said reports indicated IS has stockpiled “large quantities” of ammonia and sulfur that have been placed in the same areas as civilians. “We can only speculate how they intend to use this,” she said, “We are simply raising the alarm that this is happening, that this is being stockpiled.”
Shamdasani said the rights office did not know how IS intended to use the chemicals, but pointed to the requirement under international humanitarian law to protect civilians located near them.
U.N. officials say about 48,000 people have now fled Mosul since the government campaign began on Oct. 17.
___
Associated Press writers Susannah George in Qayara, Iraq, and Jamey Keaten in Geneva contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. |
by Luigi Marco Bassani, Mises.org
It is astonishing that Jeffersonian scholars have paid so little attention to the states’-rights aspect of Jefferson’s thought. If one reads the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, Jefferson appears to be the father of the Confederate States of America much more that of the United States. Here, Jefferson sought to provide a constitutional interpretation that would at least in principle prevent the union from “consolidating.” He wanted to keep a system of loose federalism very similar to the one embodied in the Articles of Confederation.
Jefferson took advantage of the first opportunity in which the federalists openly disregarded the Constitution to address problems concerning the relationship between the federal government and the states, and his interpretation placed further limitations to federal power on the grounds that the U.S. were established as a republic based on states’ as well as individual rights.
The occasion was the approval of two acts that posed a serious threat to the system of American liberties. The Alien and Sedition Laws were approved in 1798 (under this law, you could be sent to prison for criticizing the president). The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, drawn respectively by Madison and Jefferson, were the opposition answer to those laws.
For the first time in American history, Jefferson outlined the political and juridical doctrine of the “State rights school” that became the standard way of viewing relations between States and Nation in the Southern states during the 19th century, up to the end of the War for Southern Independence.
Revived and perfected by John C. Calhoun, this doctrine became the heart of the controversy between the two sections of the country. Jefferson asserted that the States had created a federal government as a simple agent, subordinate to them, for limited and well-defined functions, and that the federal government did not have any right to expand its own authority.
Each individual State, as far as the controversies regarding the Constitution were concerned, had the right to determine when the compact had been breached, and what measures were most appropriate to restore the violated order and redress the wrong. Thus, it was a right (explicitly called by Jefferson “natural,” therefore sacred) of each State to pronounce the illegitimacy of an act of Congress contrary to the constitutional compact.
Jefferson’s account of the nature of the Union–a voluntary contract among free and independent States in order to establish a common caretaker for few and enumerated things–contains a great deal of common sense. In a nutshell, the idea behind the Resolutions is as follows: the States are the ultimate judges of the constitutionality of federal legislation. This requires a rigorously voluntary framework.
But the Supreme Court, a branch of the federal government, at the time was already becoming what it is now, that is to say the arbiter of conflicts between the States and the federal government. In this case, the constitutional framework is threatened, since the federal government, not the Constitution, becomes the judge of its own expansion. More generally, if the States are expected to obey any federal law, regardless of whether the act had been issued according to the Constitution, only lip service is paid to the system of guarantees known as “federalism.”
Despite the ratification of the federal Constitution, Jefferson believed that vis-Ã -vis each other, the States remained like individuals in the “state of nature.” To characterize the true nature of the American union, for Jefferson, it was sufficient to transpose the Lockean natural rights model from individuals to the States. He never appealed to the theory of sovereignty (a term that does not even appear in his original draft of the Resolutions) to claim that the States are “free and independent”: their liberty and independence lie in the nature of the bond in which they find themselves, and not in the somewhat metaphysical property of being “original political communities.”
Despite the Constitution, the States retain all of their natural rights with respect to one another–exactly like individuals in a “state of nature.” Jefferson’s appeal to nullification was a peculiar application of the theory of natural rights: a “state’s natural right,” the right of nullification, was entirely within the realm of the federal compact, and was by no means an extra-constitutional remedy. In Jefferson’s opinion, such a right derived entirely from the nature of the American union, as it had been historically constructed.
Jefferson understood better than anybody else in his generation that Congress was the real heir to the king and that the concentration of powers in the federal center would have brought about “a government of discretion.” To this ultimate evil he preferred secession, as he wrote again and again. So, yes, Jefferson’s goal was the preservation of men’s natural rights, but he believed that the best way to reach that was through a strict territorial division of power.
Of course there were many inconsistencies in Jefferson’s writings, and his behavior in politics often contradicted his stated political philosophy. That said, it remains indisputably true that Jefferson was a Lockean who believed in the natural right of property and in the rights of the states as independent political entities to determine their own destinies. That so many scholars are unwilling to face these truths reflects, not contrary evidence in Jefferson’s writing, but rather the bias and wishful thinking of the academic class.
Originally published on May 23, 2002 at Mises.org
Marco Bassani, scholar in residence at the Mises Institute and author of the introduction to the Italian edition of Rothbard’s Ethics of Liberty, teaches political thought at the University of Milan. |
The Russian State Duma has passed a law that prohibits swearing in public performances. This is just the latest in a series of punitive legislative measures aiming to curb freedom of speech and expression in Russia, and many liberal-minded Russians see it as yet another sign of the country going back to Soviet times. The past few months have seen access inside Russia to some liberal media such as grani.ru withdrawn, while others, like the TV channel Rain (Дождь), are threatened with closure.
President Putin once said that the disintegration of the USSR was the greatest geo-political catastrophe of the 20th century. His recent actions in the Ukraine show he is prepared to use more than words to save whatever is possible to reconstruct the state he was born in. He has argued that education is the means of raising upright citizens in a spirit of deep patriotism, and that arts in general and literature in particular should play a pivotal role in this.
The new cultural strategy Putin is currently advocating includes strong recommendations on what in the Russian literary canon should be taught at schools, and what should be removed, or presented in a certain (state approved) way. So Tatyana in Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin is held up as a good role model because she succeeds in overcoming her passion, while Katerina in the playwright Ostrovsky’s The Storm, who throws herself in the river to escape an unhappy marriage and oppressive domestic life, is not. Some books, like Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment and Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita, are deemed “dangerous”, and are not to form part of the curriculum. Unified literature and history textbooks have already been commissioned and will be introduced in the next few years.
Putin sees Russia as a keeper of the traditional values that have been tainted and diluted in the West. His law banning the propagation of homosexuality is part of this view. And a series of children’s books, edited by Ludmilla Ulitskaya, a respected literary figure, has recently come under the scrutiny of Roskomnadzor, the regulatory body overseeing the mass media, for publishing a book on a family where parents are gay. Another popular series of books has been criticised for using examples from foreign fairy tales.
The ban on swearing seems to fit into this overall strategy. The first part of this law, banning swearing in the media, was passed on April 22. The second part, passed May 5, is due to come into force from July. The law was clearly passed in some haste because a number of issues are still unclear. For instance, it states that it does not affect works produced prior to May 5. But if all swearing is to be banned, does this mean that such works would simply no longer be staged or performed? It is equally unclear what exactly is going to be classified as swearing. So far the law only stipulates four key words and their derivatives. But a commission of experts is to provide further details.
Russia has an incredibly rich and versatile swear sub-language, called mat, which is based on four key stems: two denoting male and female genitalia, one denoting the act of copulation, and a word denoting a prostitute. The addition of prefixes and suffixes, as well as shifting the stress, turns these stems into a plethora of nouns, adjectives and verbs to express almost any idea, and all possible shades of meaning. One could teach the entire Russian grammar structure on these words and their derivatives.
The first written evidence of the existence of mat comes from letters dating from the 12th century. Most of the dictionaries made no mention of it, with the exception of the 3rd edition of Vladimir Dal’s Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language, which came out in 1903. The then editor of the dictionary, a French Slavist Jan Baudouin de Courtenay, felt that every word that existed in the language should form part of the dictionary.
Mat is considered by most Russians to be an intrinsic part of Russian cultural heritage. It is used in folklore, epic verse, folk tales and especially in the Russian limerick, known as chastushka, the format of which requires snappy and succinct vocabulary. Of all the folk genres this is almost the only one that still thrives: last year Russian State TV showed a cartoon of President Putin and Prime Minister Medvedev singing such couplets (with potentially offensive words substituted with more polite rhymes). Another example is the group Leningrad, whose lead singer Sergei Shnurov referred to their genre as a version of chastushki.
And of course, swear words have been used in a wealth of Russian literature, in works by Pushkin, Mayakovsky, Solzhenitsyn, Sorokin and Dovlatov.
Like everywhere, attitudes to swearing vary. A survey of public opinion conducted by the Levada Centre in March 2014 revealed that 51% of those aged 18 and over use mat on a regular basis, with men swearing more than women and younger people more than the older generation. The majority of the respondents opposed the use of gratuitous swearing in public places and in the media.
The reaction to the latest ban has been mixed. Ulitskaya feels that the use of swear words is acceptable when it is justified by the genre. Others think the law is hypocritical and excessive. And then there are those who argue that shrink-wrapping offensive works and painting warnings on them, as suggested by the government, will function as forbidden fruit – encouraging and spurring on interest in the underworld of mat.
What is certain is that such an apparently rudimentary law can never hope to successfully limit or cover the use of such a fluid and pervasive phenomenon. Like most cultures, swearing is absolutely embedded in the language. No statute or bill can hope to alter that. |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N) has urged the U.S. Supreme Court to throw out a mortgage securities class-action lawsuit that it said could cost Wall Street tens of billions of dollars.
A Goldman Sachs sign is seen over their kiosk on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, April 26, 2010. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
The bank is challenging a September 6 decision by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York allowing the lawsuit, which accuses it of misleading investors about the securities’ risks.
That court let the NECA-IBEW Health & Welfare Fund, which owned some mortgage-backed certificates underwritten by Goldman, sue on behalf of investors in certificates backed by mortgages from the same lenders, but which the fund did not own itself.
Circuit Judge Barrington Parker wrote for a three-judge panel that the NECA-IBEW fund could pursue these claims because they “implicated the same set of concerns” as its own.
Goldman’s lawyers argued that the 2nd Circuit created a direct conflict with the federal appeals court in Boston, which in a similar case involving Japan’s Nomura Asset Acceptance Corp, found in January 2011 that a plaintiff could not pursue claims on behalf of a class that it could not bring by itself.
The stakes are “difficult to overstate,” according to an October 26 brief by Theodore Olson, a partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and former U.S. solicitor general, who represents Goldman.
“In the context of mortgage-backed securities litigation in which this case arises, the decision will effectively increase by tens of billions of dollars the potential liability that financial institutions face in this and similar class actions,” he wrote. “Moreover, the new standard threatens to expand the scope of class actions in many other areas of the law.”
A split among federal courts often increases the chance that the Supreme Court will accept an appeal.
The NECA-IBEW fund serves electrical workers and is based in Decatur, Illinois. It has an opportunity to respond to Goldman’s filing. If the Supreme Court accepted Goldman’s appeal, no decision would likely be issued before the middle of 2013.
Joseph Daley and Arthur Leahy, partners at Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd who represent the NECA-IBEW fund, did not immediately respond on Friday to requests for comment.
JPMORGAN SEEKS HOLD ON SEPARATE CASE
Goldman and its rivals have faced thousands of lawsuits by investors seeking to recoup losses on mortgage securities.
Investors typically claim they were misled about the risks relating to the underlying home loans, most of which were made before or as the U.S. housing slump took hold in 2007.
The 17 offerings in the NECA-IBEW lawsuit dated from 2007, were sold under the same registration statement, and contained loans from many mortgage lenders.
According to court papers, the fund had bought certificates from two Goldman-led offerings that contained loans from GreenPoint Mortgage Funding, later part of Capital One Financial Corp (COF.N), and Wells Fargo & Co (WFC.N).
The 2nd Circuit let the NECA-IBEW fund represent investors in these and five other offerings backed by GreenPoint or Wells Fargo loans. It said the 10 other offerings were too different.
On Friday, JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) urged a Manhattan federal judge to put a similar case against it on hold while the Supreme Court addresses Goldman’s appeal. That case is led by the Fort Worth Employees’ Retirement Fund in Texas.
Goldman’s appeal is Goldman Sachs & Co et al v. NECA-IBEW Health & Welfare Fund et al, U.S. Supreme Court, No. 12-528. |
"It really is a worst-case scenario," one of the Weather Channel anchors said late last night. The forecast scared me enough to go out and buy a few items I normally wouldn't have: A windup radio/battery/charger, an electric lantern and a single-burner unit for a propane tank. I wish I had the money to buy a propane heater, because the storm is going to bring cold weather in its wake, and I'm not happy about the possibility of sitting in the cold and the dark.
This morning's update includes the European model forecast, which still sees a direct hit on the Delaware Bay. Since I live about a half-mile from the Delaware River, I'm worried about the potential for storm surge and flooding. There's no good way to predict what will happen, because no one's ever seen a storm like this before.
In the meantime, a friend of a friend who works in emergency services said in a call with the feds yesterday, they were told to prepare for two-week power outages along the East Coast -- which means no phone, no computer, and no heat. And that's the best case scenario. (As I've written before, power companies are chronically understaffed to keep stock prices up, and hire inexperienced temp workers to clean up after disasters.)
Maybe now that this puts Election Day at risk, we can start talking about global warming: |
Flickr/Rodney Buike The Republican National Committee Monday unveiled the results of its Growth and Opportunity Project, the so-called "autopsy" (their term) from its 2012 election collapse.
The results of the report are pretty stunning. The committee assigned to figure out why the GOP got blown out of the water in 2012 found that the party failed on every level, from messaging and campaign mechanics to fundraising, campaign finance, and even the primary process itself.
Here are some of the key reasons why the GOP lost, according to the report:
1. Public perception: "The perception, revealed in polling, that the GOP does not care about people is doing great harm to the Party and its candidates on the federal level, especially in presidential years. It is a major deficiency that must be addressed." The report notes that public perception is at record lows, and that young voters and minorities are increasingly "rolling their eyes" at Republicans.
2. The Reagan fetish: "At our core, Republicans have comfortably remained the Party of Reagan without figuring out what comes next. Ronald Reagan is a Republican hero and role model who was first elected 33 years ago — meaning no one under the age of 51 today was old enough to vote for Reagan when he first ran for President. Our Party knows how to appeal to older voters, but we have lost our way with younger ones. We sound increasingly out of touch."
3. Demographics: Unsurprisingly, the GOP recognizes that it has to solve its problem with minority, women, and young voters if it ever wants to win another presidential election.
4. Digital Campaigning: As we reported last week, the RNC recognizes that it has been blowing it when it comes to campaign technology and data mining, and has proposed a complete overhaul of the party's digital campaign strategy going into 2016.
5. The Primaries: The RNC recognizes that the party totally lost control of the primary process in the 2012 election, and proposes halving the number of primary debates and moving the primary calendar up in 2016 to give the eventual primary nominee more time in the general election.
Read the whole report below:
Growth Opportunity Project |
Two pilots were struck temporarily blind by green lasers shone into the cockpit at Wellington Airport.
Acting senior sergeant Andrzej Kowalczyk said a Jetstar flight was preparing to take off at about 8.40pm last night when a green laser was shone at the pilot from the Lyall Bay area.
About 20 minutes later an Air New Zealand plane coming into land also reported a laser strike.
The aircraft - an Airbus A320 and a Boeing 737 - could have been carrying more than 100 people, he said.
Kowalczyk said the offender or offenders were putting the lives of the pilots, flight crew and passengers at risk.
"When is it funny for these people? Is it when the plane crashes or when the people are burning?
"When [the laser] hits at an angle on glass, it completely blinds you. You can't see anything."
The incidents have been handed over to airport police, who will interview the pilots.
Police would like to hear from anyone with information about the laser strikes. |
Hidden in Plain View During WW II Lockheed (unbelievable 1940s pictures). This is a version of special effects during the 1940's. I have never seen these pictures or knew that we had gone this far to protect ourselves. During World War II the Army Corps of Engineers needed to hide the Lockheed Burbank Aircraft Plant to protect it from a possible Japanese air attack. They covered it with camouflage netting to make it look like a rural subdivision from the air. Before... After.. The person I received this from said she got back an interesting story about someone's mother who worked at Lockheed, and she as a younger child, remembers all this. And to this day, it is the first pictures of it she's seen.
Another person who lived in the area talked about as being a boy, watching it all be set up like a movie studio production. They had fake houses, trees, etc. and moved parked cars around so it looked like a residential area from the skies overhead.
Note.... I lived in North Long Beach during World War II, I was 13 years old. (1940) The Long Beach airport was near Lakewood, CA. There was a large Boeing Plant there. If you would drive down Carson St. going south you could drive under the camouflage netting. Ed Pollard
I am 85 and had much of my pilot training in Calif. I have been under this net and have seen it from the air. During preflight training I rode a bus under the net and was very surprised as I didn't know it was there. It was strong enough to walk on and they hired people to ride bicycles and move around as if they lived there to make it look authentic. Warren Holmgreen Jr Hiding the Lockheed Plant during World War II - wow this is amazing! Share This Page NEXT PAGE Please visit stories, etc. for more pictures, stories, etc. Please visit Videos 2 View for a great video selection! |
Dark Horse’s licensing contract for Star Wars comics seems to be ending in 2015. Now that Disney owns Lucasfilm and Marvel Comics, it only makes sense that Disney would want Marvel to publish Star Wars comic books. 2015 sounds like it’s going to be the year of Star Wars, with Episode 7 due in theaters, but what about Dark Horse Comics? Star Wars comics have been a Dark Horse staple for twenty years and now they’ll have to find another way to make up for the business they’ll be losing in two years. Thankfully, their March solicitations prove that they have the ability to survive.
1. Hellboy. People love Hellboy. I love Hellboy. You’ve seen Hellboy, but you should probably also read Hellboy too because it’s a lot of fun! Just this month alone has four issues from the Hellboy universe. Hellboy’s journey through hell continues in Hellboy in Hell, while the B.P.R.D. has two titles out that month. An agent fights vampires in B.P.R.D.: Vampire, as a follow up to the 1948 mini-series and the Hell on Earth saga continues with the now ongoing series B.P.R.D. Hell on Earth #105. Sledgehammer 44 #1 introduces the Iron Man of the Hellboy universe, as a man in armor fights Nazis in France during World War II.
Dark Horse should also expand their Hellboy catalogue with more books for their other characters. Nothing that will go against Mike Mignola’s plans for the franchise, but they need to push into new territory. There have already been several Abe Sapien books with The Drowning, The Abyssal Plain, and The Devil Does Not Jest. I don’t know about you, but I could always use more Abe Sapien. It’s just been announced that Abe will star in The Dark and Terrible, which will focus on Abe’s adventures in the midst of the Hell on Earth saga. Lobster Johnson is another Hellboy character that could use more attention. The ghostly vigilante has already starred in Iron Prometheus and The Burning Hand. He has since appeared in The Prayer of Neferu and Caput Mortuum One-Shots. Beside those two characters I would be interested to see books focusing on Johann Kraus, the pyrokinetic Liz Sherman, or maybe even a new character or two. The possibilities are endless.
2. Creator Owned Comics. Image Comics has become the crown jewel of creator owned comics in the last couple of years. Titles like Fatale, The Manhattan Projects, Saga, and Thief of Thieves are just a few of the titles Image has put out in the last year that have taken the industry by storm. Dark Horse has already followed in their footsteps in a few instances, but to fill the space left by Star Wars they could use even more creative juice in the Dark Horse blender.
One of Dark Horse’s signature creative owned titles is Criminal Macabre, created by Steve Niles, and is in the middle of a crossover with IDW’s Final Night in Criminal Macabre: Final Night – The 30 Days of Night Crossover. Also solicited for March is the Criminal Macabre: No Peace for Dead Men collected edition, which includes a crossover with Eric Powell’s The Goon. Criminal Macabre is a big draw for Dark Horse and they should either figure out a way to bring in more stories, or get Steve Niles to do more work for them.
As seen in the most recent solicitation, Dark Horse has several titles going for them. After taking a short hiatus, Mind MGMT returns to regular publication for its second story arc starting in January. Matt Kindt (Frankenstein, Agent of S.H.A.D.E.) writes and draws a story about a government conspiracy that leads to the discovery of an organization devoted to mind control. The Massive, from Brian Wood (Northlanders), is a comic set in a post-everything world where the planet has been destroyed. It follows the environmentalist crew of the Kapital as they try to track down the missing ship, known as The Massive, through a dangerous and ugly world. Colder, from Paul Tobin and Juan Ferreyra, the creative team from Falling Skies, follows Declan Thomas, an ex-inmate at an insane asylum, who has the ability to interact with and potentially cure the insanity of others. The Answer, brought to you by Mike Norton (It Girl! and the Atomics) and Dennis Hopeless (Cable and X-Force), brings together a vigilante and a librarian to fight a criminal organization. These titles bring a lot of fun ideas to the Dark Horse stable, which is hopefully only the beginning for creator owned comics here.
3. Spin-off Dark Horse Presents. You know what’s a lot of fun? Anthology books. You know what doesn’t make a lot of money? Anthology books. It’s great to see Dark Horse Presents on the shelves again and still going strong into 2013 with issue #22. Dark Horse is doing a great job at taking the different stories seen in DHP and collecting them separately into their own cheap issues. The best part is that these issues actually have brand new story content, so it’s not just republished content, but actually a new and now complete story. This is a great way to get people to double dip for the original issues and the collected edition, as well as the people who like to get a complete story.
Previous stories that have been collected include Frank Miller’s Xerxes and Number 13. In March Buddy Cops and Wild Rover featuring The Sacrifice are being published. Buddy Cop, from Nate Cosby (Pigs) and Evan Shaner, is a zany buddy cop tale in space, with a space cop and an android. Wild Rover featuring The Sacrifice, by Michael Avon Oeming (The Victories) and Victor Santos (Ghosts), is about a man’s attempts to overcome alcoholism… by trying to kill a liquor demon that has possessed him.
4. Licensed Properties. Comics based off of licensed properties is how third party comic book publishers survive in today’s market. Dynamite Entertainment exclusively publishes many licensed properties like Zorro, Lone Ranger, Green Hornet and others, Boom! Studios previously published titles based on Disney properties, like Darkwing Duck and Duck Tales, as well as The Muppet Show, before Disney bought Marvel. Dark Horse is no different. They have been publishing comics based on Buffy, The Vampire Slayer, and written by Joss Whedon, for years. Season 8 was published as a continuation of the series and was in turn followed by Season Nine. March previews issue #19 of the flagship Buffy title, while also collecting the series into paperback with the season’s third volume, Guarded. The Buffy series has also seen many spin-offs as well. Angel & Faith and Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Willow – Wonderland are other series that are part of the Buffyverse and follow other characters from the franchise. Dark Horse picked up on publishing Angel and Spike comics after the IDW series ended, so perhaps they publish more Spike titles after Spike: A Dark Place.
Another licensed property that has done well for Dark Horse is Conan. A multitude of series have been published over the last couple years, but now Conan has been taken in a new direction. Conan the Barbarian, by Brian Wood, reaches its second year of publication in 2013. Dark Horse is also continuing its collection of Marvel Comic’s King Conan series with their Chronicles of King Conan series. Thankfully, there are still many, many more Conan comics that need collecting. They have also published Kull comics in the past, so a return to Kull could be helpful. Dynamite Entertainment currently possesses the license for Red Sonja, a character developed for Marvel based off a character created by Robert E. Howard. However there are many other Howard creations that could be brought into comic book format, such as Solomon Kane. Howard is not the only author that could have his work adapted into comic books. Other pulp writers could be looked into, characters in the public domain, as well as tv series and movies could all be tapped. IDW publishes Star Trek comics, Boom! Studios published several Farscape comic book series, and Dark Horse itself has previously published Firefly comics. All properties have the potential to be lucrative comic book endeavors. Try, fail and try again.
5. Milk the Shit Out of Star Wars. Dark Horse might be losing Star Wars in 2015, but 2013 just started. You better believe they’ll milk the shit out of Star Wars for the next two years. Not only are they still releasing their many Star Wars mini-series, but they’re actually launching two new ongoing series and collecting everything they possibly can before it’s too late. I’m not exactly sure how the licensing rights work, so I don’t know if they can collect previously released comics into paperback after the rights are taken back. It might be a smart idea to empty out the vault and release as much material as possible. Disney can’t stop them from selling what’s already in print, can they?
March continues Brian Wood’s (so much Wood) and Carlos D’Anda’s Star Wars comic with issue three. After so many years of offshoot story lines and expanded universes it’s nice to see someone like Wood getting a chance to shape the core of the Star Wars franchise. This book is about Luke, Leia, Han and the rest of the original cast as they fight Darth Vader and the Empire. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Dark Horse is still continuing to expand on its already expanded Star Wars universe. Star Wars: Legacy – Prisoner of the Floating World is a continuation of John Ostrander’s acclaimed Legacy title, which was set 125 years after the fall of the Empire and starred Cade Skywalker, who is a cross between Luke and Han. This new comic stars Ania Solo, descendent of Han and Leia, as she is targeted for death.
Other titles continue many plot threads through various titles. Star Wars: Dark Times – Fire Carrier brings back the Dark Times series, which takes place between Episode III and Episode IV. This installment of the series follows Jedi Master K’Kruhk and a group of Padawans, survivors of the Purge, as their space ship crashes on an Empire-aligned planet. Star Wars: Dawn of the Jedi – The Prisoner of Bogan is the second story arc in the Dawn of the Jedi series, which takes place thousands of years before the original trilogy. The series depicts the Jedi order in its early days, well before it was torn apart and rebuilt.
If it’s one thing Star Wars comics have produced, it’s a lot of individual issues. Collecting these issues is almost essential in order to keep track of every story throughout the years. Thankfully, Dark Horse is very good about this, and two new collections are out in March for our reading enjoyment. Star Wars: Darth Maul – Death Sentence is collected into paperback. In Death Sentence, it is discovered that Darth Maul survived the events of The Phantom Menace. He is made into a cyborg in order to survive his injuries and joins forces with his brother, Savage Opress, to cut a path of destruction throughout the universe. They fight a bounty hunter, a team of Jedi, and an entire army.
The latest edition to the Star Wars omnibus collection is a real bottom-of-the-barrel-scraper, but that’s ok! Star Wars Omnibus: Wild Space Volume One promises “previously uncollected adventures” and that’s exactly what we are getting here. While the book collects UK tales from Alan Moore, it also collects stories from toy pack-ins, cereal boxes and other bizarre sources. The talent level here is surprising, as you wouldn’t expect names like Chris Claremont, Archie Goodwin, Alan Moore, John Wagner, Len Wein, Alan Davis, Carmine Infantino, Klaus Janson, Walt Simonson, Patrick Zircher and Laura Allred to appear in a book containing commercial tie-ins. I can only imagine what Dark Horse will scrape up for Volume Two.
Bonus: Bring Back Comics’ Greatest World. Even though this doesn’t show up in the March solicitation I wanted to bring it up anyway. Comics’ Greatest World was Dark Horse’s own superhero line from the 1990s. It was popular with readers, but never made the bucks that DC or Marvel made. The imprint shut down and the characters mostly disappeared outside some sporadic appearances over the years. Their flagship character, Ghost, had previously returned in the pages of Dark Horse Presents and is currently starring in the four-issue mini-series Ghost: In the Smoke and Din. However, that title will be over by the time March comes around, so Comic’s Greatest World will once again be off the table.
That would still leave characters like X and Barb Wire (yes, this Barb Wire) without anything going on. If Dark Horse wants to be really daring, they could even launch a second anthology series, named Comic’s Greatest World, so they can get more product out there. Obviously these characters aren’t exactly proven moneymakers, but if they can take an approach similar to the way Image relaunched old Rob Liefeld comics Prophet and Glory, than it would be a worthy endeavor to explore.
2015 might be the year of Star Wars, but it will have to come after the rise of Dark Horse Comics.
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A week of high drama in Washington reached a stunning climax on Friday: President Trump Donald John TrumpHouse committee believes it has evidence Trump requested putting ally in charge of Cohen probe: report Vietnamese airline takes steps to open flights to US on sidelines of Trump-Kim summit Manafort's attorneys say he should get less than 10 years in prison MORE and Speaker Paul Ryan Paul Davis RyanBrexit and exit: A transatlantic comparison Five takeaways from McCabe’s allegations against Trump The Hill's 12:30 Report: Sanders set to shake up 2020 race MORE (R-Wis.) decided to pull the Republican bill that had sought to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act rather than watch it go down to certain defeat.
There will be no second attempt anytime soon. Ryan said at a Capitol Hill news conference on Friday afternoon that the nation will “be living with ObamaCare for the foreseeable future.”
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It’s an astonishing conclusion to one of the main fights that Republicans — including Trump — have sought for years.
As the dust settles, who are the biggest winners and losers?
LOSERS
President Trump
Make no mistake, this was a humiliating defeat for a president who campaigned as the ultimate dealmaker who could shake up a moribund Washington and get things done.
His big legislative push has fallen at the first hurdle. Trump himself was deeply engaged in trying to win over reluctant Republican lawmakers — and it didn’t work.
There are many unknowns: How will this affect other items on Trump’s agenda? How much frustration among grassroots Republican voters will be focused on him rather than Ryan or the GOP lawmakers who refused to get on board?
In remarks on Friday afternoon, Trump sought to put a brave face on the situation, avoiding lashing out at any Republicans and arguing that the Democrats would continue to “own” ObamaCare, to their political detriment.
But when Trump said, “There’s not much you can do about it,” referring to ObamaCare, it seemed an oddly impotent remark for a sitting president with majorities in both houses of Congress.
This is a very big setback for Trump. Just how big will become clear only after more time has passed.
Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.)
Friday’s developments were at least as damaging for Ryan as they were for the president.
Whether the American Health Care Act would ultimately have been signed into law or not, the fact that Ryan could not get it through the House is deeply embarrassing for the Speaker.
Ryan’s fingerprints were all over the legislation, which faced immediate and fierce pushback from conservative members of his own conference as well as several important interest groups.
Some Trump loyalists contend that Ryan erred by focusing on healthcare rather than tax reform out of the gate. And conservative media commentators are openly questioning his leadership.
Trump publicly insists that he retains confidence in Ryan. But the Speaker went down to a big defeat that revealed an inability to muscle his members into line.
Vice President Pence, Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price and Office of Management And Budget Director Mick Mulvaney
Pence, Price and Mulvaney were all once House members — in the case of the latter two, right up until they joined the Trump administration.
As such, the White House had suggested they would be especially effective in winning over members of the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus and other lawmakers. Mulvaney was a founding member of the group.
When all’s said and done, the trio failed to round up the required votes. That’s a political black eye for all three men.
MIXED
The House Freedom Caucus
The conservative group won the battle — but the outcome of the broader war has yet to be decided.
The caucus, led by Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), held the line in opposition to the bill, despite the urging of Trump himself. More than any other Republican group, they were responsible for the failure of the legislation.
The whole episode showed the power of the Freedom Caucus, but its members will have to deal with the consequences too.
They defied a president of their own party who — for all his broader struggles with popularity — is fervently supported by many grassroots Republicans.
They sank an effort to replace a law that many of those grassroots voters detest.
And the realpolitik argument for their position — that they could force Trump and the House leadership to come back to the table with a proposal that was more attentive to their concerns, appears to have proven untrue.
WINNERS
Former President Barack Obama Barack Hussein ObamaWith low birth rate, America needs future migrants 4 ways Hillary looms over the 2020 race Obama goes viral after sporting black bomber jacket with '44' on sleeve at basketball game MORE
The bottom line is simple: Obama’s signature domestic achievement has survived — and at a moment when the White House, the Senate and the House are all controlled by people who have repeatedly pledged to destroy it.
Trump, speaking from the White House on Friday afternoon, insisted that the Affordable Care Act would explode under its own weight. But the current president did not make any pledge to renew his efforts to undo it, instead suggesting he would be open to some more incremental repairs in tandem with congressional Democrats.
Obama’s big law dodged a bullet here. And that strengthens his legacy as a president of considerable historical significance.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.)
Pelosi displayed the kind of grip on her party colleagues that Ryan so signally failed to exhibit.
Not a single Democrat broke ranks to support the Republican proposal. The position may not have been that surprising. But it did ensure that Republicans faced the steepest possible gradient.
Pelosi, who loves the hand-to-hand political combat of Capitol Hill, clearly took some pleasure in the Republicans’ disarray.
When the vote was first postponed on Thursday, she told reporters, “Rookie’s error, Donald Trump.”
Jared Kushner
Trump’s son-in-law, among his most trusted advisers, was reportedly against the decision to move on healthcare from the get-go. But he was also out of Washington for much of the week, on a ski trip with his family in Aspen.
CNN reported that the president was displeased that Kushner was out of town.
But as someone who was physically and politically distant from the week’s messy horse-trading, he emerges relatively unscathed from the debacle.
Governors
Several GOP governors were critical of the replacement plan put forward by their colleagues in the House.
Ohio’s John Kasich, Nevada’s Brian Sandoval, Arkansas’s Asa Hutchinson and Michigan’s Rick Snyder wrote an open letter last week to Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell Addison (Mitch) Mitchell McConnellHouse to push back at Trump on border Democrats block abortion bill in Senate Overnight Energy: Climate protesters storm McConnell’s office | Center-right group says Green New Deal could cost trillion | Dire warnings from new climate studies MORE (R-Ky.) stating that they could not support the legislation.
Their argument, in essence, was that the bill would have hit Medicaid too hard.
They gave political cover to lawmakers from their states who were also leaning against the legislation.
The AARP
The organization for older Americans lobbied vigorously against the law.
It attacked one proposed change as “an age tax,” emphasized that 24 million fewer people were projected to have health insurance after a decade and declared the issue to be an “accountability vote” — in other words, one where it would use its muscle against lawmakers who voted against its wishes.
The association’s efforts were a reminder that it is not to be underestimated.
The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage, primarily focused on Donald Trump’s presidency. |
Tower Bridge will be closed to vehicles for three months from October to allow structural repair and maintenance works to take place.
Tower Bridge Road will close to vehicles but a crossing for pedestrians will be maintained by contractor Bam Nuttall.
The pedestrian part will be closed for three weekends during the work when a free replacement ferry service will be provided.
The City of London Corporation said it will be working closely with TfL and the London Boroughs of Southwark and Tower Hamlets to minimise disruption with “comprehensive traffic management plans”.
More than 40,000 people cross over Tower Bridge every day including 21,000 vehicles.
This daily heavy use has had an effect on the timber decking of the bridge which was last refurbished in the 1970s.
Significant operations in the schedule of work will include:
Replacement of the decking on the bascules
Corrosion prevention and repair operations
Replacement of worn expansion joints
Resurfacing of fixed roads and walkways
Waterproofing of approach viaducts
Overhaul/maintenance of key mechanical and lift components
General cleaning/repairs to the towers, as well as replacement of river navigation and traffic signal lights
Chris Hayward, Chairman of the Planning and Transport Committee said: “This decision to close Tower Bridge to vehicles has not been taken lightly, and this course of action has been taken after extensive consultation and planning in conjunction with numerous stakeholders.
“We will use this time to repair, refurbish, and upgrade London’s most iconic bridge, which has gone without significant engineering works for more than thirty-five years.
“We will work hard to minimise disruption to both pedestrians and motor vehicles, and the bridge’s viewing walkways and exhibitions will stay open for the entirety of the works.”
Leon Daniels, Managing Director of Surface Transport at TfL, said: “We’ve been working closely with the City of London to minimise the impact of the vital refurbishment of Tower Bridge and to ensure that Londoners have the travel advice they need.
“Our advice to those traveling in the area is to check before they travel and to plan an alternative route or allow more time for their journeys as roads will be busier than usual.” |
Adelaide scientist, Colin Hall, recognised with Prime Minister's science prize for creating shatter-proof car mirror
Updated
As automotive manufacturing winds down in Australia, Adelaide scientist Colin Hall has created a car mirror for export.
He has won the inaugural Prime Minister's Prize for New Innovators after developing a plastic car mirror that is now being exported to the United States.
Dr Hall said he has loved tinkering with different materials and solving problems for as long as he can remember.
"I'm a nerd at heart," he said.
"I love playing with materials, making those materials, maybe do something that they're not conventionally allowed to do."
That passion led him to creating a new process that allows manufacturers to replace traditional materials like glass with lighter, more efficient materials.
Its first commercial success has been in the car industry where job losses in Australia have become all too frequent.
Conventional glass in vehicles poses problems because it is heavy and can break, so Dr Hall and his team set out to develop a new product.
A combination of five layers of materials sprayed on top of the plastic created the advanced manufacturing product, which is niche and in demand across the globe.
"It's shatter-proof, low-vibration, we can mould it into quite complex shapes," Dr Hall said.
"We knew what target we had to set and we just worked towards it and spent three years developing the coating so that it would pass those tests."
Jobs created in Adelaide as car manufacturing winds down
Dr Hall said the process had been long but rewarding.
"The first idea to start with was fairly easy, making it work was very hard," he said.
"We almost ran out of the Greek alphabet in number of prototypes before we got one that was up to scratch."
Car makers have long searched for ways to reduce the body weight of vehicles and the car-wing mirror design weighs a fraction of the conventional glass product.
In five years, 1.6 million of them have been exported to the United States to be used in a Ford truck.
"We hope to be able to roll out this technology, doorhandles, grills, badges or even the wing-mirror housing as well," Dr Hall said.
The product is being made by SMR Automotive Australia in Adelaide's south, which has created 20 jobs.
And while that kind of number cannot compete with those that will be lost when Holden closes next year, Dr Hall believes investing in more niche, innovative products is how South Australia can still compete in global manufacturing.
"A lot of other countries can make cars and it's very competitive in that environment," he said.
"If we can make items or show technologies that no-one else can do, then we can compete on technology."
Dr Hall is among a group being recognised for their work in science for the Prime Minister's Science Awards.
Topics: science-and-technology, science-awards, adelaide-5000, sa
First posted |
On the last day of Comic-Con, we were fortunate enough to have a PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale panel for the fans! Moderated by the one and only Greg Miller, the panel started with SuperBot‘s very own Chan Park and Omar Kendall explaining the studio’s beginnings and its affinity towards the PlayStation universe and the fighting game genre. They then fielded questions from an eager audience, detailing various tidbits regarding the game including DLC plans, roster creation, stage hazards, level mash-ups, and game modes. The crowd was also presented with several videos to showcase the game, including trailers featuring our newest additions Cole MacGrath and Jak and Daxter. These reveals were met with overwhelming enthusiasm, which is great because we have plenty more where that came from!
As Comic-Con comes to an end, we are pleased to say that PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale made a big splash at the convention and we plan to continue the trend at all of our up-and-coming events. As we get closer to our October 24th release date, stay tuned for more news and reveals! |
Why The “Black Pill”?
Why is this blog called “The Black Pill”? Originally, it started out as a blog called OmegaVirginRevolt (which is still evident from the URL), but over time it became clear to me that I had gone beyond a blog called “OmegaVirginRevolt”. The name, “OmegaVirginRevolt”, had outlived its usefulness. When I first started writing as OmegaVirginRevolt, I believed that we were on the verge of the Mens’ Rights Movement (MRM) actually begining to rollback feminism. While I think that is still true, it is taking longer than I thought. That was because there was additional threats to the MRM besides the main enemy of feminism/women. Since around 2009 or so, the biggest such threat to the advancement of the MRM has been what I call The Paleo-Game Cult, an intersection of the paleo diet, conspiracy theory, Roissysphere game, and several other things. (This has also led me to investigate more how feminists are interested in game and how it could be used by feminists to block the advancement of the MRM.)
It became clear to me that taking on The Paleo-Game Cult (and other similar threats to the MRM) was the most important thing that can be done right now for the MRM. These groups are trying to attach themselves and take over the MRM for their own purposes which do not benefit men or advance Mens’ Rights. I wanted to name the blog with a concept that would encompass all of this. Paragon came up with the idea of “The Black Pill”. Lots of people like to use the analogy from the Matrix movies of the “blue pill” and the “red pill”. The “blue pill” represents mainstream feminism which is a delusion whereas the “red pill” is supposed to represent the anti-feminist truth. What has happened with the “red pill” is that the concept has been colonized by the Paleo-Game Cult. The “red pill” instead of meaning anti-feminist truth, now means alternate/non-mainstream delusion that still pedestalizes women. It now means non-mainstream feminism of the Paleo-Game Cult form. Just because something isn’t mainstream like the Paleo-Game Cult does not make it truth or anti-feminist. The “red pills” believe incorrectly that they are anti-feminist, and the delusion that feminism can be solved using personal solutions. They believe that using game and the paleo diet they can expel feminism from their lives. This is a delusion. When Paragon came up with the idea of the “black pill”, he recognized the nature of feminism/women being a systemic problem. Systemic problems have no personal solutions. The “black pill” is about that principle and more. It is about reality as it is and facts. It stands in opposition to both mainstream feminist delusions (the “blue pill”) and non-mainstream feminist delusions (the “red pill”). Disagreeing with the mainstream does not automatically make something truth.
For the record, there are those such as A Voice For Men who still use the “red pill” idea. AVFM does not subscribe to the Paleo-Game Cult delusions and is about reality and facts. Even though it calls itself a “red pill” site, AVFM (and many other true MRM sites that call themselves “red pill” sites) are actually “black pill” sites.
The “black pill” represents the main focus of this blog that provides a true anti-feminist option beyond the mainstream and non-mainstream feminist delusions. Since this is my personal blog, it will also include my personal experiences dealing with feminism and any topic I consider to be related.
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Looks like Marnie will be left boyfriend-less once again: Christopher Abbott is reportedly leaving "Girls."
According to the New York Post, Abbott -- who plays Marnie's (Allison Williams) on-again-off-again boyfriend Charlie on the HBO series -- is leaving due to creative differences with "Girls" creator, writer, director and star Lena Dunham.
“They’ve just started work on Season 3, and Chris is at odds with Lena,” a source told the Post. “He didn’t like the direction things are going in, which seems a bit odd since the show put him on the map.”
But according to The Hollywood Reporter, Abbott was simply too busy to continue his work on the show.
"[Chris] is grateful for the experience of collaborating with Lena, Judd [Apatow], and the entire 'Girls' cast and crew, but right now he’s working on numerous other projects and has decided not to return to the show," a rep said.
As Marnie and Charlie finally seemed to be getting back together for good, Abbott's exit comes as a bit of a surprise for "Girls" fans ... especially considering how highly Abbott has spoken of Dunham in the past.
"The way Lena writes, she’s so good at putting everyday situations under a microscope and blowing them up," Abbott told Vogue in September 2012. "She makes people realize that these kind of moments you have in your life that could be fleeting are actually very important and telling in terms of who you are as a person."
HBO did not immediately return The Huffington Post's request for comment.
Are you surprised Christopher Abbott is leaving "Girls"? Will you miss Charlie? Sound off in the comments. |
Monday, October 6, 2014
Apache Storm recently became a top-level project, marking a huge milestone for the project and for me personally. It's crazy to think that four years ago Storm was nothing more than an idea in my head, and now it's a thriving project with a large community used by a ton of companies. In this post I want to look back at how Storm got to this point and the lessons I learned along the way.
The topics I will cover through Storm's history naturally follow whatever key challenges I had to deal with at those points in time. The first 25% of this post is about how Storm was conceived and initially created, so the main topics covered there are the technical issues I had to figure out to enable the project to exist. The rest of the post is about releasing Storm and establishing it as a widely used project with active user and developer communities. The main topics discussed there are marketing, communication, and community development.
Any successful project requires two things:
It solves a useful problem You are able to convince a significant number of people that your project is the best solution to their problem
What I think many developers fail to understand is that achieving that second condition is as hard and as interesting as building the project itself. I hope this becomes apparent as you read through Storm's history.
Before Storm
Storm originated out of my work at BackType. At BackType we built analytics products to help businesses understand their impact on social media both historically and in realtime. Before Storm, the realtime portions of our implementation were done using a standard queues and workers approach. For example, we would write the Twitter firehose to a set of queues, and then Python workers would read those tweets and process them. Oftentimes these workers would send messages through another set of queues to another set of workers for further processing.
We were very unsatisfied with this approach. It was brittle – we had to make sure the queues and workers all stayed up – and it was very cumbersome to build apps. Most of the logic we were writing had to do with where to send/receive messages, how to serialize/deserialize messages, and so on. The actual business logic was a small portion of the codebase. Plus, it didn't feel right – the logic for one application would be spread across many workers, all of which were deployed separately. It felt like all that logic should be self-contained in one application.
The first insight
In December of 2010, I had my first big realization. That's when I came up with the idea of a "stream" as a distributed abstraction. Streams would be produced and processed in parallel, but they could be represented in a single program as a single abstraction. That led me to the idea of "spouts" and "bolts" – a spout produces brand new streams, and a bolt takes in streams as input and produces streams as output. They key insight was that spouts and bolts were inherently parallel, similar to how mappers and reducers are inherently parallel in Hadoop. Bolts would simply subscribe to whatever streams they need to process and indicate how the incoming stream should be partitioned to the bolt. Finally, the top-level abstraction I came up with was the "topology", a network of spouts and bolts.
I tested these abstractions against our use cases at BackType and everything fit together very nicely. I especially liked the fact that all the grunt work we were dealing with before – sending/receiving messages, serialization, deployment, etc. would be automated by these new abstractions.
Before embarking on building Storm, I wanted to validate my ideas against a wider set of use cases. So I sent out this tweet:
I'm working on a new kind of stream processing system. If this sounds interesting to you, ping me. I want to learn your use cases. — Nathan Marz (@nathanmarz) December 14, 2010
A bunch of people responded and we emailed back and forth with each other. It became clear that my abstractions were very, very sound.
I then embarked on designing Storm. I quickly hit a roadblock when trying to figure out how to pass messages between spouts and bolts. My initial thoughts were that I would mimic the queues and workers approach we were doing before and use a message broker like RabbitMQ to pass the intermediate messages. I actually spent a bunch of time diving into RabbitMQ to see how it be used for this purpose and what that would imply operationally. However, the whole idea of using message brokers for intermediate messages didn't feel right and I decided to sit on Storm until I could better think things through.
The second insight
The reason I thought I needed those intermediate brokers was to provide guarantees on the processing of data. If a bolt failed to process a message, it could replay it from whatever broker it got the message from. However, a lot of things bothered me about intermediate message brokers:
They were a huge, complex piece of the architecture that would have to be scaled alongside Storm. They create uncomfortable situations, such as what to do when a topology is redeployed. There might still be intermediate messages on the brokers that are no longer compatible with the new version of the topology. So those messages would have to be cleaned up/ignored somehow. They make fault-tolerance harder. I would have to figure out what to do not just when Storm workers went down, but also when individual brokers went down. They're slow. Instead of sending messages directly between spouts and bolts, the messages go through a 3rd party, and not only that, the messages need to be persisted to disk.
I had an instinct that there should be a way to get that message processing guarantee without using intermediate message brokers. So I spent a lot of time pondering how to get that guarantee with spouts and bolts passing messages directly to one another. Without intermediate message persistence, it was implied that retries would have to come from the source (the spout). The tricky thing was that the failure of processing could happen anywhere downstream from the spout, on a completely different server, and this would have to be detected with perfect accuracy.
After a few weeks of thinking about the problem I finally had my flash of insight. I developed an algorithm based on random numbers and xors that would only require about 20 bytes to track each spout tuple, regardless of how much processing was triggered downstream. It's easily one of the best algorithms I ever developed and one of the few times in my career I can say I would not have come up with it without a good computer science education.
Once I figured out this algorithm, I knew I was onto something big. It massively simplified the design of the system by avoiding all the aforementioned problems, along with making things way more performant. (Amusingly, the day I figured out the algorithm I had a date with a girl I'd met recently. But I was so excited by what I'd just discovered that I was completely distracted the whole time. Needless to say, I did not do well with the girl.)
Building first version
Over the next 5 months, I built the first version of Storm. From the beginning I knew I wanted to open source it, so I made some key decisions in the early days with that in mind. First off, I made all of Storm's APIs in Java, but implemented Storm in Clojure. By keeping Storm's APIs 100% Java, Storm was ensured to have a very large amount of potential users. By doing the implementation in Clojure, I was able to be a lot more productive and get the project working sooner.
I also planned from the beginning to make Storm usable from non-JVM languages. Topologies are defined as Thrift data structures, and topologies are submitted using a Thrift API. Additionally, I designed a protocol so that spouts and bolts could be implemented in any language. Making Storm accessible from other languages makes the project accessible by more people. It makes it much easier for people to migrate to Storm, as they don't necessarily have to rewrite their existing realtime processing in Java. Instead they can port their existing code to run on Storm's multi-language API.
I was a long time Hadoop user and used my knowledge of Hadoop's design to make Storm's design better. For example, one of the most aggravating issues I dealt with from Hadoop was that in certain cases Hadoop workers would not shut down and the processes would just sit there doing nothing. Eventually these "zombie processes" would accumulate, soaking up resources and making the cluster inoperable. The core issue was that Hadoop put the burden of worker shutdown on the worker itself, and for a variety of reasons workers would sometimes fail to shut themselves down. So in Storm's design, I put the burden of worker shutdown on the same Storm daemon that started the worker in the first place. This turned out to be a lot more robust and Storm has never had issues with zombie processes.
Another problem I faced with Hadoop was if the JobTracker died for any reason, any running jobs would terminate. This was a real hair-puller when you had jobs that had been running for many days. With Storm, it was even more unacceptable to have a single point of failure like that since topologies are meant to run forever. So I designed Storm to be "process fault-tolerant": if a Storm daemon is killed and restarted it has absolutely no effect on running topologies. It makes the engineering more challenging, since you have to consider the effect of the process being kill -9'd and restarted at any point in the program, but it makes things far more robust.
A key decision I made early on in development was to assign one of our interns, Jason Jackson, to develop an automated deploy for Storm on AWS. This massively accelerated Storm's development, as it made it easy for me to test clusters of all different sizes and configurations. I really cannot emphasize enough how important this tool was, as it enabled me to iterate much, much faster.
Acquisition by Twitter
In May of 2011, BackType got into acquisition talks with Twitter. The acquisition made a lot of sense for us for a variety of reasons. Additionally, it was attractive to me because I realized I could do so much more with Storm by releasing it from within Twitter than from within BackType. Being able to make use of the Twitter brand was very compelling.
During acquisition talks I announced Storm to the world by writing a post on BackType's tech blog. The purpose of the post was actually just to raise our valuation in the negotiations with Twitter. And it worked: Twitter became extremely interested in the technology, and when they did their tech due-diligence on us, the entire due-diligence turned into a big demo of Storm.
The post had some surprising other effects. In the post I casually referred to Storm as "the Hadoop of realtime", and this phrase really caught on. To this day people still use it, and it even gets butchered into "realtime Hadoop" by many people. This accidental branding was really powerful and helped with adoption later on.
Open-sourcing Storm
We officially joined Twitter in July of 2011, and I immediately began planning Storm's release.
There are two ways you can go about releasing open source software. The first is to "go big", build a lot of hype for the project, and then get as much exposure as possible on release. This approach can be risky though, since if the quality isn't there or you mess up the messaging, you will alienate a huge number of people to the project on day one. That could kill any chance the project had to be successful.
The second approach is to quietly release the code and let the software slowly gain adoption. This avoids the risks of the first approach, but it has its own risk of people viewing the project as insignificant and ignoring it.
I decided to go with the first approach. I knew I had a very high quality, very useful piece of software, and through my experience with my first open source project Cascalog, I was confident I could get the messaging right.
Initially I planned to release Storm with a blog post, but then I came up with the idea of releasing Storm at a conference. By releasing at a conference:
The conference would help with marketing and promotion. I would be presenting to a concentrated group of potential early adopters, who would then blog/tweet/email about it all at once, massively increasing exposure. I could hype my conference session, building anticipation for the project and ensuring that on the day of release, there would be a lot of eyes on the project.
So releasing at a conference seemed superior in all respects. Coincidentally, I was scheduled to present at Strange Loop that September on a completely different topic. Since that was when I wanted to release Storm, I emailed Alex, the Strange Loop organizer, and changed my session to be the release of Storm. As you can see from the session description, I made sure to use the Twitter brand in describing Storm.
Next, I began the process of hyping Storm. In August of 2011, a little over a month before the conference, I wrote a post on Twitter's tech blog announcing that Storm would be released at Strange Loop. In that post I built excitement for Storm by showing a lot the details of how Storm works and by giving code examples that demonstrated Storm's elegance. The post had the effect I wanted and got people really excited.
The next day I did something which I thought was really clever. I started the mailing list for Storm:
If you want to be kept up to date on Storm or have questions, join the Google group http://t.co/S7TJlCB — Nathan Marz (@nathanmarz) August 5, 2011
Here's why I think that was clever. A key issue you have to deal with to get adoption for a project is building social proof. Social proof exists in many forms: documented real-world usage of the project, Github watchers, mailing list activity, mailing list subscribers, Twitter followers, blog posts about the project, etc. If I had started the mailing list the day I released the project, then when people looked at it, it would have shown zero activity and very few subscribers. Potentially the project would be popular immediately and the mailing list would build social proof, but I had no guarantee of that.
By starting the mailing list before release, I was in a situation of arbitrage. If people asked questions and subscribed, then I was building social proof. If nothing happened, it didn't matter because the project wasn't released yet.
A mistake I made in those early days, which is bizarre since I was working at Twitter, was not starting a Twitter account for the project. Twitter's a great way to keep people up to date about a project as well as constantly expose people to the project (through retweets). I didn't realize I should make a Twitter account until well after release, but fortunately it didn't turn out to be that big of a deal. If I could do it again I would have started the Twitter account the same day I made the mailing list.
Between the time I wrote the post on Twitter's tech blog and the start of Strange Loop, I spent the majority of my time writing documentation for Storm. This is the single most important thing I did for the project. I wrote about 12,000 words of carefully thought out documentation – tutorials, references, API docs, and so on. A lot of open source developers don't realize how crucial docs are: people cannot use your software if they don't understand it. Writing good documentation is painful and time-consuming, but absolutely essential.
The moment of truth came on September 19th, 2011. I had fun with the release. I started my talk by saying I had been debating whether to open source Storm at the beginning of my talk, starting things off with a bang, or the end of my talk, finishing on an exclamation point. I said I decided to get the best of both worlds by open sourcing Storm right in the middle of my talk. I told the audience the time of the exact middle of my talk, and told them to shout out at me if I hadn't open sourced it by that time. As soon as that moment came, the audience shouted at me and I released the project.
Everything went according to plan. The project got a huge amount of attention and got over 1000 Github watchers on the first day. The project went to #1 on Hacker News immediately. After my talk, I went online and answered questions on Hacker News, the mailing list, and Twitter.
The aftermath of release
Within four days Storm became the most watched Java, Scala, or Clojure project on Github. Within two weeks, spider.io announced they already had Storm in production. I thought that was incredible and a testament to the high quality of the project and docs at release.
As soon as Storm was released I started getting feedback from people using the project. In the first week I made three minor releases to address quality of life issues people were having. They were minor but I was focused on making sure everyone had the best experience possible. I also added a lot of additional logging into Storm in that first week so that when people ran into issues on the mailing list, they could provide me more information on what was going on.
I didn't anticipate how much time it would take to answer questions on the mailing list. The mailing list had a ton of activity and I was spending one to two hours a day answering questions. Part of what made the mailing list so time-consuming is how bad most people are at asking questions. It's very common to get a question like this: "I'm having a lot of tuple failures. Why??" Most of the time there's an easy fix as typically the user had something strange going on with how they configured or were using Storm. But I would have to spend a ton of time asking the user follow-up questions to get them to provide me the information they already had so I could help them. You'd be amazed at how often a user fails to tell you about something really bizarre they did, like running multiple versions of Storm at once, manually editing the files Storm daemons keep on local disk, running their own modified version of Storm, or using a shared network drive for the state of Storm daemons. These endless hours I spent on the mailing list became very draining (especially since at the same time I was building a brand new team within Twitter) and I wouldn't get relief for well over a year.
Over the next year I did a ton of talks on Storm at conferences, meetups, and companies. I believe I did over 25 Storm talks. It got to a point where I could present Storm with my eyes closed. All this speaking got Storm more and more exposure.
The marketing paid off and Storm acquired production users very quickly. I did a survey in January of 2012 and found out Storm had 10 production users, another 15 planning to have it in production soon, and another 30 companies experimenting with the technology. To have that many production users for a major piece of infrastructure in only 3 months since release was very significant.
I set up a "Powered By" page for Storm to get that last piece of critical social proof going. Rather than just have a list of companies, I requested that everyone who listed themselves on that page include a short paragraph about how they're using it. This allows people reading that page to get a sense of the variety of use cases and scales that Storm can be used for. I included a link to my email on that page for people who wanted to be listed on it. As I did the tech talk circuit, that page continued to grow and grow.
Filling the "Powered By" page for a project can be frustrating, as there can be a lot of people using your project that you're not aware of. I remember one time I got an email from one of the biggest Chinese companies in the world asking to be listed on Storm's Powered By page. They had been using Storm for over a year at that point, but that whole time I had no idea. To this day I don't know the best way to get people to tell you they're using your software. Besides the link to my email on Storm's Powered By page, the technique I've used is to occasionally solicit Powered By submissions via Twitter and the mailing list.
Technical evolution of Storm
Storm is a far more advanced project now than when it was released. On release it was still very much oriented towards the needs we had at BackType, as we had not yet learned the needs of larger companies for major infrastructure. Getting Storm in shape to be deployed widely within Twitter drove its development for the next 1.5 years after release.
The technical needs of a large company are different than a startup. Whereas at a startup a small team manages the entire stack, including operations and deployment, in a big company these functions are typically spread across multiple teams. One thing we learned immediately within Twitter is that people didn't want to run their own Storm clusters. They just wanted a Storm cluster they could use with someone else taking care of operations.
This implied that we needed to be able to have one large, shared cluster running many independent applications. We needed to ensure that applications could be given guarantees on how many resources they would get and make sure there was no possible way one application going haywire would affect other applications on the cluster. This is called "multi-tenancy".
We also ran into process issues. As we built out the shared cluster, we noticed that pretty much everyone was configuring their topologies to use a huge number of resources – way more than they actually needed. This was making usage of the cluster very inefficient. The problem was that no one had an incentive to optimize their topologies. People just wanted to run their stuff and have it work, so from their perspective there was no reason not to request a ton of resources.
I solved both these issues by developing something called the "isolation scheduler". It was an incredibly simple solution that provided for multi-tenancy, created incentives for people to use resources efficiently, and allowed a single cluster to share both production and development workloads.
As more and more people used Storm within Twitter, we also discovered that people needed to monitor their topologies with metrics beyond what Storm captures by default. That led us to developing Storm's excellent metrics API to allow users to collect completely custom, arbitrary metrics, and send those metrics to any monitoring system.
Another big technical jump for Storm was developing Trident, a micro-batching API on top of Storm that provides exactly-once processing semantics. This enabled Storm to be applied to a lot of new use cases.
Besides all these major improvements, there were of course tons of quality of life improvements and performance enhancements along the way. All the work we were doing allowed us to do many releases of Storm – we averaged more than one release a month that first year. Doing frequent releases is incredibly important to growing a project in the early days, as each release gives you a boost of visibility from people tweeting/talking about it. It also shows people that the project is continuously improving and that if they run into issues, the project will be responsive to them.
Building developer community
The hardest part about building an open source project is building the community of developers contributing to the project. This is definitely something I struggled with.
For the first 1.5 years after release, I drove all development of Storm. All changes to the project went through me. There were pros and cons to having all development centered on me.
By controlling every detail of the project, I could ensure the project remained at a very high quality. Since I knew the project from top to bottom, I could anticipate all the ways any given change would affect the project as a whole. And since I had a vision of where the project should go, I could prevent any changes from going in that conflicted with that vision (or modify them to be consistent). I could ensure the project always had a consistent design and experience.
Unfortunately, "visionary-driven development" has a major drawback in that it makes it very hard to build an active and enthusiastic development community. First off, there's very little room for anyone to come in and make major contributions, since I am controlling everything. Second, I am a major bottleneck in all development. It became very, very hard to keep up with pull requests coming in (remember, I was also building a brand new infrastructure team within Twitter at the same time). So people would get discouraged from contributing to the project due to the incredibly slow feedback/merge cycle.
Another drawback to centering development on myself was that people viewed me as a single point of failure for the project. People brought up concerns to me of what would happen if I got hit by a bus. This concern actually limited the project less than you would think, as Storm was adopted by tons of major companies while I was at the center of development, including Yahoo!, Groupon, The Weather Channel, WebMD, Cerner, Alibaba, Baidu, Taobao, and many other companies.
Finally, the worst aspect to centering development on myself was the burden I personally felt. It's a ton of pressure and makes it hard to take a break. However, I was hesitant to expand control over project development to others because I was worried about project quality suffering. There was no way anyone else would have the deep understanding I did of the entire code base, and inevitably that would lead to changes going in with unintended consequences. However, I began to realize that this is something you have to accept when expanding a developer community. And later on I would realize this isn't as big of a deal as I thought.
Leaving Twitter
When I left Twitter in March of 2013 to pursue my current startup, I was still at the center of Storm development. After a few months it became a priority to remove myself as a bottleneck to the project. I felt that Storm would be better served with a consensus-driven development model.
I think "visionary-driven development" is best when the solution space for the project hasn't been fully explored yet. So for Storm, having me controlling all decisions as we built out multi-tenancy, custom metrics, Trident, and the major performance refactorings was a good thing. Major design issues can only be resolved well by someone with a deep understanding of the entire project.
By the time I left Twitter, we had largely figured out what the solution space for Storm looked like. That's not to say there wasn't lots of innovation still possible – Storm has had a lot of improvements since then – but those innovations weren't necessarily surprising. A lot of the work since I left Twitter has been transitioning Storm from ZeroMQ to Netty, implementing security/authentication, improving performance/scalability, improving topology visualizations, and so on. These are all awesome improvements but all of which were already anticipated as directions for improvements back in March of 2013. To put it another way, I think "visionary-driven development" is necessary when the solution space still has a lot of uncertainty in it. When the solution space is relatively well understood, the value of "visionary-driven development" diminishes dramatically. Then having that one person as a bottleneck seriously inhibits growth of the project.
About four months before leaving Twitter, Andy Feng over at Yahoo! started pushing me hard to submit Storm to Apache. At that point I had just started thinking about how to ensure the future of Storm, and Apache seemed like an interesting idea. I met with Doug Cutting, the creator of Hadoop, to get his thoughts on Apache and potentially moving Storm to Apache. Doug gave me an overview of how Apache works and was very candid about the pros and cons. He told me that the incubator could be chaotic and would most likely be painful to get through (though in reality, it turned out to be an incredibly smooth process). Doug's advice was invaluable and he really helped me understand how a consensus-driven development model works.
In consensus-driven development, at least how its done by many Apache projects, changes are voted into a project by a group of "committers". Typically all changes require at least two +1 votes and no -1 votes. That means every committer has veto power. In a consensus-driven project, not every committer will have a full understanding of the codebase. Many committers will specialize in different portions of the codebase. Over time, some of those committers will learn a greater portion of the codebase and achieve a greater understanding of how everything fits together.
When Storm first transitioned to a consensus-driven model, most of the committers had relatively limited understandings of the codebase as a whole and instead had various specialized understandings of certain areas. This was entirely due to the fact I had been so dominant in development – no one had ever been given the responsibility where they would need to learn more to make good decisions. By giving other people more authority and stepping back a bit, my hope was that others would fill that void. And that's exactly what happened.
One of my fears when moving to consensus-driven development was that the quality of changes would drop. And indeed, some of the changes that went in as we transitioned had some bugs in them. But this isn't a big deal. Because you'll get a bug report, and you can fix the problem for the next release. And if the problem is really bad, you can cut an emergency release for people to use. When I was personally making all development decisions, I would thoroughly test things myself and make use of my knowledge of the entire codebase such that anything that went out in a release was extremely high quality. But even then, my code sometimes had bugs in it and we would have to fix them in the next release. So consensus-driven development is really no different, except that changes may require a bit more iteration to iron out the issues. No software is perfect – what's important is that you have an active and responsive development community that will iterate and fix problems that arise.
Submitting to Apache
Getting back to the history of Storm, a few months after leaving Twitter I decided I wanted Storm to move to a consensus-driven development model. As I was very focused on my new startup, I also wanted Storm to have a long-term home that would give users the confidence that Storm would be a thriving project for years to come. When I considered all the options, submitting Storm to Apache seemed like far and away the best choice. Apache would give Storm a powerful brand, a strong legal foundation, and exactly the consensus-driven model that I wanted for the project.
Using what I learned from Doug Cutting, I eased the transition into Apache by identifying any legal issues beforehand that would cause problems during incubation. Storm made use of the ZeroMQ library for inter-process communication, but unfortunately the licensing of ZeroMQ was incompatible with Apache Foundation policy. A few developers at Yahoo! stepped up and created a replacement based on Netty (they all later became Storm committers).
In forming the intitial committer list for Storm, I chose developers from a variety of companies who had made relatively significant contributions to the project. One person who I'm super glad to have invited as a committer was Taylor Goetz, who worked at Health Market Science at the time. I was on the fence about inviting him since he hadn't contributed much code at that point. However, he was very active in the community and mailing list so I decided to take a chance on him. Once becoming a committer, Taylor took a huge amount of initiative, relieving me of many of the management burdens of the project. During incubation he handled most of the nitty-gritty stuff (like taking care of certain legal things, figuring out how to move the website over to Apache, how to get permissions for new committers, managing releases, calling for votes, etc.). Taylor later went to Hortonworks to work on Storm full-time, and he did such a good job helping shepherd Storm through the incubator that he is now the PMC chair for the project.
In September of 2013, with the help of Andy Feng at Yahoo!, I officially proposed Storm for incubation in Apache. Since we were well-prepared the proposal went through with only some minor modifications needed.
Apache incubation
During incubation we had to demonstrate that we could make releases, grow the user community, and expand the set of committers to the project. We never ran into any problems accomplishing any of these things. Once Storm was in incubation and I was no longer a bottleneck, development accelerated rapidly. People submitting patches got feedback faster and were encouraged to contribute more. We identified people who were making significant contributions and invited them to be committers.
Since incubation I've been just one committer like any other committer, with a vote no stronger than anyone else. I've focused my energies on any issues that affect anything core in Storm or have some sort of difficult design decision to work out. This has been a much more efficient use of my time and a huge relief compared to having to review every little change.
Storm officially graduated to a top-level project on September 17th, 2014, just short of three years after being open-sourced.
Conclusion
Building Storm and getting it to where it is now was quite a ride. I learned that building a successful project requires a lot more than just producing good code that solves an important problem. Documentation, marketing, and community development are just as important. Especially in the early days, you have to be creative and think of clever ways to get the project established. Examples of how I did that were making use of the Twitter brand, starting the mailing list a few months before release, and doing a big hyped up release to maximize exposure. Additionally, there's a lot of tedious, time-consuming work involved in building a successful project, such as writing docs, answering the never-ending questions on the mailing list, and giving talks.
One of the most amazing things for me has been seeing the huge range of industries Storm has affected. On the Powered By page there are applications listed in the areas of healthcare, weather, analytics, news, auctions, advertising, travel, alerting, finance, and many more. Reading that page makes the insane amount of work I've put into Storm feel worth it.
In telling this story, I have not been able to include every detail (three years is a long time, after all). So I want to finish by listing many of the people who have been important to Storm getting to the point it is at today. I am very grateful to all of these people: Chris Aniszczyk, Ashley Brown, Doug Cutting, Derek Dagit, Ted Dunning, Robert Evans, Andy Feng, Taylor Goetz, Christopher Golda, Edmund Jackson, Jason Jackson, Jeff Kaditz, Jennifer Lee, Michael Montano, Michael Noll, Adrian Petrescu, Adam Schuck, James Xu, and anyone who's ever contributed a patch to the project, deployed it in production, written about it, or given a presentation on it.
You should follow me on Twitter here. |
Saudi Arabia's mountain of oil money is shrinking.
After years of raking in cash from lofty prices, oil-producing countries are getting squeezed by the crash in crude oil prices.
Even mighty Saudi Arabia.
The cash crunch caused the OPEC leader to sell bonds over the summer to raise at least $4 billion. It was the first time Saudi Arabia tapped the bond markets in eight years.
Now there are signs Saudi Arabia is pulling out cash from global asset management firms like BlackRock (BLK).
The Saudi central bank has yanked $50 billion to $70 billion over the past six months, Nigel Sillitoe, CEO of financial services market intelligence firm Insight Discovery, told CNNMoney.
By freeing up cash held overseas, the Saudis are shoring up its finances at home.
"The Saudis feel much more comfortable bringing liquidity home in times of crisis. They like to keep cash on hand," said Michael Nayebi-Oskoui, Middle East and South Asia analyst at Stratfor, a geopolitical intelligence and advisory firm.
Related: OPEC leader forced to borrow money
Saudi Arabia has a budget deficit
It should be no surprise that Saudi Arabia is being hurt by cheap oil. The country relies heavily on oil revenue to offset its increasing spending programs. Just like Brazil, Qatar and Russia, the crash in oil prices has made balancing the budget difficult for Saudi Arabia.
It's a dramatic reversal of fortunes for the Saudis. Capital Economics estimates the country's current account deficit will climb to 7.5% of gross domestic product this year. That's compares to budget surpluses north of 20% of GDP in the past decade.
Investors around the world too are pulling money out from Middle Eastern countries that have been hurt by the prolonged slump in oil prices. After enjoying net capital inflows for years, Saudi Arabia is now grappling with significant capital outflows.
Related: Another oil company cuts jobs
Saudis spend $77B as oil plunges
That's why Saudi Arabia has been forced to crack open its war chest of cash.
Foreign-exchange reserves held at the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency, the country's central bank, have tumbled from a peak of $746 billion in the middle of 2014 to $669 billion at the end of July.
"FX reserve depletion, rather than accumulation, is the new reality for Saudi Arabia," Jason Tuvey, Middle East economist at Capital Economics, wrote in a report this week.
Related: Shell ends arctic offshore drilling in Alaska
Wall Street firms suffer outflows
All of this has dinged the Wall Street firms that have enjoyed managing huge sums of money for cash-flush Gulf countries.
Among the favorite asset managers of Middle Eastern countries are BlackRock and Franklin Templeton (BEN). Both firms declined to break out fund flows from Saudi Arabia to CNNMoney.
However, BlackRock admitted it had suffered $24 billion of net outflows from the region that includes Europe, the Middle East and Africa during the second quarter. That's compared to inflows of $18 billion during the first quarter.
A lot of that money was being yanked due to "cash need driven by rainy-day issues," BlackRock CEO Larry Fink told analysts in July. He didn't name any countries in the region, but added, "It's raining in some of the commodity-based economies."
Related: U.S. oil exports: Coming soon?
Saudis still spending like oil's at $100
Saudi Arabia is also ramping up its spending at a time when oil revenue is falling.
When King Salman bin Abdulaziz took power earlier this year, he ordered $30 billion in spending programs, including big payouts to state employees.
Stratfor estimates Saudi Arabia has spent between $5 billion and $8 billion on its military conflict in Yemen, where it's fighting against the Houthi rebels and it has also given Egypt billions of dollars in financial aid.
"As oil went up, so did their spending," said Win Thin, global head of emerging market currency market strategy at Brown Brothers Harriman.
Related: Oil price wars: Russia hints at squeeze in production
Too early to panic
Still, analysts believe the Saudis are well positioned to weather the storm and won't have to devalue their currency, the riyal. That's especially true if oil prices rebound in the coming months and years.
Unlike Qatar, Saudi Arabia still has very low levels of external debt and a strong overall balance sheet. That means it can keep borrowing money cheaply. And unlike other oil-dependent countries like Venezuela, the Saudis still have a ton of cash stockpiled.
"I wouldn't push the panic button now. But the situation bears monitoring," said Thin. |
SAO PAULO (Reuters) - The Brazilian Congress approved on Thursday legislation allowing parties and candidates to force social media outlets to immediately withdraw offensive or defamatory content by anonymous authors.
Brazil's President Michel Temer speaks during the opening ceremony of Futurecom, Technology and Telecom Congress in Sao Paulo, Brazil October 2, 2017. REUTERS/Paulo Whitaker
The law was included in a late vote in Congress of a set of rules for next year’s general election, and was met with harsh criticism from groups defending civil rights and online freedom of expression.
Social media would have to provide the full name, identification and social security number of the author to keep the comment online, although it was not clear where they would need to send that information.
The legislation, which does not require a judicial order for candidates or parties to request the withdrawal of content from websites and apps, could be blocked by Brazil’s President Michel Temer, who is expected to sign the broader set of rules for 2018 elections by Saturday.
There was no immediate comment from the Temer administration regarding his likely action regarding the restrictions.
“That piece of legislation will transform candidates and parties into electoral judges, with powers to take out of the web any content they consider offensive to them,” said Carlos Affonso Souza, a director at the Institute of Technology and Society (ITS), an organization defending a freer online environment.
Three associations representing newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations in Brazil released a joint statement on Thursday calling the law a form of censorship.
“Brazil’s internet legal framework clearly states that only through a judicial order it is possible to force the withdrawal of online content,” the entities said.
Congressman Áureo, from Brazil’s Solidariedade party, the author of the restrictive legislation, defended the rule saying it would give transparency to online content.
“Freedom of expression is guaranteed, but it cannot be anonymous,” he told Reuters. |
Posted by Darren Urban on January 21, 2013 – 3:06 pm
The Cardinals officially announced Monday the additions of the three main new coaches to Bruce Arians’ staff: offensive coordinator Harold Goodwin, defensive coordinator Todd Bowles and Tom Moore, the assistant head coach/offense. The addition of Bowles and Goodwin I’ve covered before. Hopefully we’ll hear from Arians soon about his choice. While I understand there are still a lot of questions over going from Ray Horton to Bowles, that too was explained in simple terms by Arians. Now we see how this plays out.
But the addition of Moore is a big deal. Moore had stepped away from the game for health reasons — he did serve as a consultant for the Titans for five games at the end of the 2012 season and consulted for the Jets in 2011 — but he wanted to get back into coaching this year. The Cardinals benefit. Moore was the guru who brought along a young Peyton Manning in Indianapolis. That, along with Arians himself, give the Cardinals a good base with whatever young quarterback they choose to bring along. Between the two of them (below, talking before a Colts-Titans game last season), that’s a good start for any young quarterback.
Now, would the quarterback be Kevin Kolb? Maybe. It would seem very likely a quarterback is drafted this year. Sitting here right now, I don’t see it in the first round and seventh overall, but second round, that makes sense. Jason Cole noted Arians was at the Senior Bowl practice of the North team Monday, a team that features quarterbacks Mike Glennon of North Carolina State, Ryan Nassib of Syracuse and Zac Dysert of Miami (Ohio.)
As for the rest of the staff, I believe most of the decisions — if not all — have been made but the announcements will filter out as the logistics work out.
Tags: coaching staff Posted in Blog |
Army Gen. John Nicholson, the commander of Resolute Support forces and US forces in Afghanistan, discussed the US’s new strategy for Afghanistan at a news conference in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Thursday. REUTERS/Omar Sobhani KABUL, Afghanistan — The top US military commander in Afghanistan on Thursday said President Donald Trump's new strategy was a sign of a long-term commitment to what is already America's longest war and called on Taliban insurgents to agree to peace talks.
"The Taliban cannot win on the battlefield — it's time for them to join the peace process," Gen. John Nicholson told reporters in the Afghan capital, Kabul. "We will not fail in Afghanistan. Our national security depends on that as well."
Critics, including Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign, have argued that Afghanistan is no closer to peace despite billions of dollars spent on aid and nearly 16 years of US and allied military operations.
In February, Nicholson told the US Congress he needed "a few thousand" more troops in Afghanistan, mostly to help advise Afghan security forces that are battling Taliban, Islamic State, and other Islamist insurgents.
Trump has now approved an extended American presence in Afghanistan, though neither he nor his military leaders have provided any specifics about troop numbers or timelines.
The US force for the predominantly advise-and-assist mission in Afghanistan stands at about 8,400, well down from about 100,000 during the "surge" decided on by Trump's most recent predecessor, Barack Obama.
Several thousand more troops are often in the country on "temporary" or other uncounted missions.
Nicholson said new advisers from the US and NATO coalition allies would increase the training missions, including at specialized military schools and expanding the Afghan air force and special forces.
He also praised Trump's decision not to impose "arbitrary" deadlines on the American mission in Afghanistan.
"This policy announcement ... is proof of our continued commitment," he said.
The Taliban government was overthrown by US-backed Afghan forces in late 2001, but US forces have been bogged down there ever since. About 2,400 US troops have been killed in Afghanistan.
US military and intelligence officials are concerned that a new Taliban victory would allow Al Qaeda and the Islamic State's regional affiliate to establish bases in Afghanistan.
That could allow them to plot attacks against the US and its allies, they fear, just as Osama bin Laden had done with the September 11, 2001, strikes that triggered the war in Afghanistan.
(Writing by Josh Smith; Editing by Paul Tait) |
Image copyright AFP Image caption EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini (centre) said the bloc did not intend to compete with Nato
European Union countries have agreed a plan to boost the organisation's defence and security role.
The plan envisages greater co-ordination in areas like EU-led peacekeeping missions outside the bloc.
However, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini stressed that the bloc did not intend to compete with Nato or create a European army.
She added that the plan was under consideration before Donald Trump's victory in US presidential elections.
During the campaign, Mr Trump suggested that Washington may not automatically come to the aid of a Nato ally under attack, criticising low levels of defence spending by some EU members of the military alliance.
The defence plan was agreed at a meeting of EU defence and foreign ministers in Brussels on Monday.
"This is a qualitative leap in the European Union's security and defence," Ms Mogherini told reporters, while French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said that "Europe needs to be able to act for its own security".
Ms Mogherini said the EU would not be competing with Nato but rather would strengthen the alliance, and nor would it be creating an EU army or a military headquarters.
What it would seek to do is to provide far-greater co-ordination in areas like peacekeeping missions to African countries, naval efforts to reduce refugee flows, and defence spending and research by EU countries on items like drones and helicopters, she said.
The aim of all of these was to make both the EU and its citizens safer at home and abroad in an uncertain world, Ms Mogherini added.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Donald Trump's US election victory has exposed rifts in Europe
The EU action plan has been a year in the making, conceived after last year's Paris attacks left Europeans feeling vulnerable, the BBC's Europe correspondent Damian Grammaticas reports.
But it has been given added impetus by Mr Trump's warnings that he expects Europe to pay more of the bills for its own defence, our correspondent adds.
He says that Brexit has also boosted the plan, because the UK has traditionally blocked such Franco-German initiatives to give the EU a greater security dimension. |
Istanbul-born Armenian economist Daron Acemoglu has topped the Research Papers in Economics (RePEc) ranking of the world’s most influential economists. The ranking is based on the research of more than 2,000 economists over the last 10 years.
Acemoglu is the Elizabeth and James Killian Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He was born in Istanbul to an Armenian family. His father Kevork was a lawyer and lecturer at the University of Istanbul, and his mother Irma was a principal and teacher at an Armenian middle school in Istanbul.
Acemoglu received a bachelor of arts in economics from the University of York, a master of science in mathematical economics and econometrics, and a Ph.D. in economics from the London School of Economics (LSE). He is the recipient of several awards and honors, including the inaugural T.W. Schulz Prize.
Acemoglu was a lecturer in economics at the LSE from 1992-93, before becoming a faculty member at MIT in 1993. In 2000 he was promoted to full professor, and in 2004 was named the Charles P. Kindleberger Professor of Applied Economics. Acemoglu is a member of the Economic Growth program of the Canadian Institute of Advanced Research, the co-editor of “Econometrica, Review of Economics and Statistics,” and associate editor of the “Journal of Economic Growth.” He is also an editorial committee board member of the “Annual Review of Economics.” In 2006, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Acemoglu was one of several scholars, artists, and writers from Turkey who in 2014 condemned the widespread anti-Armenian rhetoric in primary and middle school Turkish textbooks, and demanded that the books be pulled from circulation. That same year, several reports indicated that Acemoglu had been offered an ambassadorial posting from the Turkish government. In an interview with Turkey’s Hürriyet newspaper in 2014, he stated, “I do not intend to be part of bureaucracy or enter politics.” |
In 2013, I contracted a virus that I thought was the flu. It ended up being dengue, sometimes referred to as “breakbone fever.” The nickname is a reference to the levels of pain some people experience when they are in dengue’s throes. I expected my symptoms to subside once the active infection went away. After all, friends who contracted dengue, sometimes multiple years in a row, seemed to return to a sense of normalcy. Instead, the joint pain remained, below the fever pitch of “breaking bones” but nowhere near my old self. For a long time I waited for that “old self” to materialize, and for the pain to recede. It took three years to finally surrender to my present and admit that the pain isn’t going anywhere.
Pain, Fatigue and My New Normal
“Pain is a message to the mind that something is wrong,” Anna Altman wrote in a devastating piece about managing her own pain and migraines. “To this day I guard a hidden hope that I will receive a new diagnosis, one that clearly explains the severity of my symptoms.”
Like Anna, I don’t have a definitive answer about what to call the aggregate of pain that has taken up residence. However, I do have an idea of how it got there.
I got dengue in Vietnam, while already having celiac disease. It hung out, and wreaked further havoc on my immune system. Doctors have offered up that the dengue triggered post-viral fatigue, which may or may not go away. It also gifted me with what seems like Raynaud’s disease, a disorder of the small blood vessels that reduce blood flow. When exposed to cold, my blood vessels go into spasms, which causes pain, numbness, aching and tingling. When I touch cold food or I am in cold weather, my hands and feet turn white, then blue. I tried making meatballs this summer, but had to stop because touching the ground meat was so painful that I stood in the kitchen in tears. I’m now the worst Canadian ever.
To add to the list, I seem to have lost my fingerprints. I found this out when applying for a visa. After placing my hands on the digital fingerprint reader, all of my fingers had giant red Xs on them. “Oh!” said the man reading the scans, “You have no fingerprints!” Excuse me? I found a 1970 study noting that some celiacs have fingerprint atrophy, but mine were definitely intact pre-dengue. A mystery. Jokes about my going out and robbing banks abound, don’t worry.
And finally, the most debilitating thing after the joint pain itself has been the fatigue. A deep, never-ending bone weariness that makes simple things seem like obstacles. And a restless sleep that does not provide respite from the haze of exhaustion.
The combination of chronic pain, circulation issues, and fatigue combined to compress my resilience and made it difficult to see the forest through the trees. Emotionally, it felt like small disagreements loomed large. I found myself more reactive than before, taking things more personally.
Instead of facing my days with resolve, I started curling into myself, warding off intrusions that might make things hurt more. I started fearing the next shoe that could drop, and wondering if I would be able to cope. Anxiety can be magnificently destructive, but when combined with chronic pain, it becomes paralyzing. Worrying about whether you can withstand more pain is a valid concern. But, as I eventually figured out, it only serves to make things worse.
In his book Full Catastrophe Living, Jon Kabat-Zinn notes:
“If you have a chronic illness or a disability that prevents you from doing what you used to be able to do, whole areas of control may go up in smoke. And if your condition causes you physical pain that has not responded well to medical treatment, the distress you might be feeling can be compounded by emotional turmoil caused by knowing that your condition seems to be beyond even your doctor’s control.”
My distress was compounded by the fact that I looked healthy, even though I was in pain all of the time. “You seem great!” friends would say, glimpsing a photo on Facebook. Some would tell me to take supplements, or to just ‘think positive’ about the pain and live my life as I used to. They meant well, of course. But the comments reveal a dismissiveness about longer-term pain that other friends with ‘invisible illnesses’ struggle with also. It’s as if people expected us to will it away. If only we had thought about being more positive! How silly of us.
The Spoon Theory explains the effects of invisible pain with very effective imagery. You only have a certain amount of ‘spoons’ in a day, and you use them to do things that most people don’t think twice about. Because for you, being in constant pain, even simple things require spoons. So everything you do, every decision you make about undertaking activities, it comes with the knowledge that there’s a spoon-like opportunity cost. And if you use up all your spoons that day, that’s it. You can’t do anything but rest, since you are so depleted.
The problem is that for most people pain is temporary. When it becomes a full-time roommate, the things that used to help — going to the gym to work through it, climbing a mountain and communing with nature, going to a concert — become threats instead of pleasurable experiences. Some days you have 5 spoons. Other days 10. But the fact that you are counting is part of your illness. For many, that kind of sustained bracing is beyond contemplation.
No matter the challenges in my life, be it someone who bet me I couldn’t get into law school or the other illnesses on my travels, I have always found a way around. This time felt different, because the pain was ongoing and frustratingly opaque.
The Portuguese have a word I love, saudade. NPR defines it as follows:
A melancholy nostalgia for something that perhaps has not even happened. It often carries an assurance that this thing you feel nostalgic for will never happen again.
This word, untranslatable in English, is what I have struggled against these last years. A wistful longing for something that may never return. After so long, seeking an answer to ‘fix’ the pain was not helping. I only turned toward healing once I forced that deep, destructive nostalgia out of my mind.
Turning Things Around
In her long, thoughtful piece about her daughter Carmen’s MS journey, Maria Bustillos interviewed a doctor named George Jelinek. Dr. Jelinek referred to the difference between “healing” and “curing,” with the central message that it really matters to take a more active role in the care of our own bodies. Ultimately, if you fall through the cracks of the medical system, or if you fail to receive a diagnosis that has clear, actionable treatment, you have to take some control back for your own sense of self and health.
Maria’s reaction to his philosophy was one of comfort:
“Being encouraged to take care of herself made a world of difference to Carmen, and to us. We weren’t waiting around for the next bad thing to happen; we were working together in a diligent and increasingly hopeful state of mind.”
In the absence of finding a solution to stop feeling pain, I found hope in being able to reframe my attitude toward the pain. This included actively cultivating a sense of self-compassion, acceptance, and gratitude. These are all words that pre-travel Jodi would have taken a look at and rolled her eyes forever.
Simply accepting what is unmanageable and not trying to control what you cannot change is a marked shift from my old way of thinking. It is also directly in conflict with the way I was raised in Western society. “Give up and just accept that things suck? Are you kidding?” But it is the only way that I have been able to turn things around. By focusing on my progress (or lack thereof), I was making a difficult situation more untenable. Now, I celebrate the small steps I have started to take instead of fighting for bigger goals.
Rachel, a reader who contracted dengue and malaria at the same time, has struggled with issues of chronic pain and fatigue. Her journey mirrored mine, except that she was able to see a pain specialist in her home country. She and I have gone back and forth about our experiences, and our respective attempts to find joy in a life that is now different for each of us. For her, too, it has meant accepting the pain and not struggling against it. She has also actively sought out what brings her joy. “I had to try and look for joy and gratitude even when I didn’t feel it,” she wrote. “This became reflexive, and somewhat automatic.”
Like me, Rachel wasn’t brought up to seek out gratitude moment to moment. But she too found that focusing on it, even if things hurt, helped shape the outline of her healing.
When I talk about travel as a small woman, or as someone with celiac disease, I say that I can only live in the body I have been given. And yet I did not want to accept that very same fact when dealing with pain. But I have come around. For me, accepting what is unchangeable and not fighting what I am experiencing has meant the following:
Making Oaxaca my home base for winter, but one I will keep thereafter. I am not in love with Oaxaca, the way I immediately loved Saigon, but it is a good spot to be. And Saigon keeps trying to kill me with respiratory and mosquito infections. Oaxaca is not far from my family in Canada, it’s delicious, it has a fascinating food culture, and I get called Juana here, which still makes me giggle. The area does have zika, but given my circulation issues, anywhere cold enough to not have mosquitoes will be a painful place for me to live. My neighbours (wonderful as they are) have screened in my apartment, and I wear repellant whenever I go out. I will still travel in the region, if I’m up for it, and I’m going to Brazil for a few weeks shortly for a wedding. But the indefinite no home base swath of my life has come to an end.
Turning down fun travel opportunities because my health takes priority
Focusing on business opportunities that did not require movement, like the food art store, and my writing course.
Looking for joy in smaller things, in the absence of the bigger ones I can no longer do.
Not beating myself up for being less physically strong than before. This includes the fact that I’m susceptible to flus and colds, and take far longer than normal to get well.
So Why Am I Sharing My Journey with Chronic Pain?
This post was important to write for a few reasons.
First, because readers are asking why it is that I am staying in Oaxaca for so long. I see many of my travel colleagues finding bases for a myriad of valid reasons. They’re tired, they’re wanting to focus on business, they’ve met someone great and want to be near them. For me, it came down to my health. It isn’t my spirit that is weary of travel, but my body. Reconciling those two needs has been a struggle.
Second, because no doubt there are readers who have their own chronic pain issues, and they may benefit from hearing this story. We are all unique in our suffering, but sometimes it helps to feel less alone. It took me time to get past the twisted psychology of wondering if I simply needed to be stronger. No doubt others are feeling the burden of pain too.
And third, because it’s all part of the journey. I’ve long maintained that this website exists to share the good and the bad, and reframing my relationship to pain and my own life choices is part and parcel of what I’m living.
How I Learned to Cope With Chronic Pain
It wouldn’t be a Legal Nomads post without some resources, right?
The most important, most difficult, most fundamentally frustrating thing is this: you simply need to accept that this is your reality, and move forward from there. Even when moving forward feels like crawling on the floor, a millimeter at a time. Even when progress feels elusive, and you can’t bend your hands in the morning. The only thing you can do is care for yourself and try to find solutions that work for the body you’ve been given.
I do want to add that I have experimented with a lot of different diet-based changes, supplements, and therapies. I have been tested for inflammation markers in the blood (thankfully they’re low), and thyroid disorders, and many other things. While I appreciate those telling me that I should try x and y thing that will magically fix it, with all due respect, I have tried many of those things.
1. Daily meditation: I meditate both morning and night, and while there are times where I feel resistant to the practice, I cannot deny that it makes a big difference. Meditation has helped accepting what my body is feeling moment to moment, and also reduced reactivity in other areas of my life.
2. I read three very helpful books for stress and pain management: the following books are three of the dozens and dozens that I have read in the realm of pain management, stress, self-help, and more. They are books that I will return to, because they tackle the precise tool that has helped turn things around: my attitude toward the pain. I highly recommend all three, and each of them were suggestions from close friends who found them comforting. I’ll be posting book summaries of these soon also.
Full Catastrophe Living, by Jon Kabat-Zinn . As the creator of mindfulness-based stress reduction programmes, Zinn focuses on mind-body strategies derived from meditation and yoga to counteract stress, establish greater balance of body and mind, and help you get out of the rut of fearing pain.
. As the creator of mindfulness-based stress reduction programmes, Zinn focuses on mind-body strategies derived from meditation and yoga to counteract stress, establish greater balance of body and mind, and help you get out of the rut of fearing pain. Self-Compassion, by Kristin Neff. Self-esteem work isn’t the fix to perfectionism, argues Neff. Accepting the present, being kind and compassionate to ourselves and still striving to do better is. The book offers exercises and questions in each chapter to help.
Self-esteem work isn’t the fix to perfectionism, argues Neff. Accepting the present, being kind and compassionate to ourselves and still striving to do better is. The book offers exercises and questions in each chapter to help. When Things Fall Apart, by Pema Chodron. I picked this book up a few years ago, but wasn’t really ready to read it. Or rather, I was not yet willing to accept the pain and change my perspective about it. I was still looking for a fix. Chodron writes that when we are continually overcome by fear, anxiety, and pain, the way out is to stop bracing against it and learning to stay open. Not easy, and you have to be willing to read her words without judgement, but I’ve found them very helpful.
I picked this book up a few years ago, but wasn’t really ready to read it. Or rather, I was not yet willing to accept the pain and change my perspective about it. I was still looking for a fix. Chodron writes that when we are continually overcome by fear, anxiety, and pain, the way out is to stop bracing against it and learning to stay open. Not easy, and you have to be willing to read her words without judgement, but I’ve found them very helpful. The Brain’s Way of Healing, by Norman Doidge. This is more about neuroplasticity than coping with pain, but the entire first chapter delves into just how incredibly adaptable the brain is, and how we can harness its plasticity to help downregulate our pain loops, be they neurogenic or nociceptive. One of the more important books I’ve read for my own journey.
3. I started to understand that resilience is a process. Like many overachievers, I trafficked in perfectionism for most of my life. I’ve had to let that go. Warding off imperfection doesn’t make us stronger, even if it feels like it might protect us. As with opening your heart to others, cultivating openness makes you resilient, not weaker. For chronic pain, baby steps feel like giant leaps. Progress doesn’t happen overnight.
4. Accepting what is. One of my best friends often mentions “magical thinking,” that wishful place when you “what if” something to oblivion. Magical thinking isn’t reality, it’s simply a story you are telling yourself. Instead of my fantasy that I’d wake up healthy one day, I’ve worked on accepting what is. I’m a person with significant pain problems, and I’m availing myself of tools to cope better. It is what it is. All you can do is work with the reality you are living, and for me that meant accepting that these limits are valid and I need to respect them.
5. Practicing Gratitude. A friend argued that this blog is a practice of gratitude, since it shares the many wonderful things I’ve encountered and appreciated during my travels. While that’s true, it also hasn’t been enough to help me in this journey with pain. What has helped is very simple: writing down 3 things at the end of each day that I am grateful for, within my reality. There is science behind this practice, despite my initial skepticism. Nowadays I’m all for reminding myself of the good in my life, which is plentiful despite the pain.
6. Implement movement wherever you can. Walking when the pain is slightly better, doing restorative yoga classes (highly recommended and far more gentle than a different type of yoga class), stretching and taking stairs when they are around. Every little bit of movements counts. I’m used to it hurting when I move but I still try to move when I can.
7. Trying to find joy in this new space. As I mentioned above, the things that brought me joy were the ones that now hurt. I had to get creative with the things that were available. I started to make lists, with a hat tip to the app IFTTT – if this, then that. I made two-column sheets: if this isn’t available then I’ll do that instead. If I can’t climb a mountain, I can go for a long walk in the park. If I can’t eat chilies, I can cook a fun meal at home. And so on.
8. Morning and Evening Routines. These are very simple routines — not the “how I hacked my mornings and became The Most Productive Entrepreneur Ever” lists. I have found that even if it is a really painful day and I feel like it was a wash, I still feel like I accomplished something if I stick to them.
Morning:
10 minute stretches (I use the Sworkit Stretching App, free on iTunes and Android)
15 minute meditation (Thanks to a friend’s suggestion, I’ve been using Insight Timer for guided meditations)
Drink my coffee because coffee.
Write 3 pages by hand about what my brain is ruminating about. If my hands or joints hurt too much, I draw flow charts instead.
Evening, just before bed:
10 minutes of tai chi (I use YouTube videos for this)
30 minutes of meditation
9. Diet changes. Some of what has worked for me:
This may be common sense to the rest of humanity, but I’ve spent most of my life in a state of normalized dehydration. It’s amazing how much better I feel when I drink water. It’s as though everyone else telling me I was crazy for not drinking more of it was right.
Cutting out caffeine except for that one (glorious) cup of coffee per day.
Cutting out alcohol, with rare exceptions.
Cutting down on sugar as much as possible. It’s in a lot of foods, and I do put a spoon in my coffee, but I have eliminated desserts and snacks that have sugar.
Taking a robust probiotic daily (I take Hyperbiotics Pro-15 because it’s shelf-stable and includes the strains I want to supplement with.)
I am already celiac, so I don’t eat gluten but I have found when I do nowadays by mistake it’s far worse than it was pre-dengue. So I’m extra careful about cross-contamination. When my joints are particularly bad, I also cut out corn and nightshades.
10. Connect with Others. Chronic pain has a tendency to make you feel alone and misunderstood. While it’s true that some people may not grasp the extent of it, no doubt if they are true friends they will love you all the same. Connecting to friends who accept me despite the current limitations has been really important in helping me out of my foggy isolation. I also appreciate friends and the three readers named Rachel who have been willing to share their experiences with chronic pain and immune disorders. As humans, we are wired for connecting to others and it’s times like these that we need to remind ourselves to do so.
Tim Urban wrote a short post about the 100 10-minute blocks we get each day. It’s up to us to decide how to use them. It has taken a lot of reframing for me to recalibrate into this new normal, and I am not fully there yet. There are many days, bad days when it hurts to move, when I think what if this never ends. But then I actively try to focus on what I can do: fill those ‘blocks’ with laughter and soup and learning. Go outside and take the time to smell a flower or stare up at a beautiful building. Write whatever comes to mind, without judging.
The pain is here, and it may be here to stay. All I can do is carve out my own joy within it, and accept that it is now a part of who I am.
-Jodi |
Amid the horrific scenes of the victims of the attack on the Westgate shopping complex in Nairobi, there have also been instances of heroism.
Several stories have emerged of people helping others escape the carnage as the attack raged on Saturday.
Satpal Singh
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Eyewitness Satpal Singh: "People were running in all directions, there were loud shots being fired... nobody was doing anything about it"
Satpal was at Westgate for a business meeting, close to a children's cooking competition going on in the complex's car park.
As gunshots and explosions began to ring out in the complex, Mr Singh ran downstairs to see what he could do to help.
After being shot at by one of the attackers, Mr Singh returned to the top floor, ushering people into the complex's cinema hall and telling a security guard to put the shutters down.
Mr Singh then asked the cinema staff to direct them towards the fire exit, which led back onto the roof terrace.
After barricading the door behind them, Mr Singh made his way back down to the basement with the rest of the group and "started pushing people out through the gate onto the streets very fast".
"Once we got everybody out, the policeman who was with us went towards the basement to see if there was anybody there, or any terrorists, and he got shot in the leg and he dropped his gun so we had to bring him back out," Mr Singh told the BBC.
He asked other armed police officers to go back upstairs with him to help other people escape.
"They didn't help us, so we decided to go up there again by ourselves," Mr Singh said.
"We found people with gunshot wounds - that's why blood is on my shoes. We carried them on our shoulders down the fire escape."
Abdul Haji
Mr Haji was at a meeting when he received a text from his brother saying that something was happening at Westgate and he was trapped inside.
"It looked like a goodbye message so I immediately made my way there," he told the BBC.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Abdul Haji describes how his rescue attempts unfolded
He thought his brother may have been targeted, as his brother and father - Kenyan former Defence Minister Yusuf Haji - had recently received death threats.
After rushing to the Westgate he helped give cover to Red Cross rescuers as they tried to reach injured survivors in a vehicle. The men then made their way to an upstairs parking area where they saw "a lot of dead people".
Mr Haji was in a group of five including three plain-clothes police officers, one of whom had been shot and was holding his stomach.
They entered the mall on the top floor and went from shop to shop.
"We saw some people lying on the floor. We started shouting 'we're police, get out, get out', and we started doing this at every store."
They made their way down to the ground floor, where they engaged the gunmen, receiving backup from two security officials in protective gear and armed with tear gas.
They could see a woman hiding under a table, who said she was with three children. They asked her to tell the older child to run to them.
Mr Haji said he was in the mall for three or four hours, helping people escape from a toilet, a bank and a burger restaurant. His brother also managed to flee.
Ex-Royal Marine
Mr Singh made reference to a British ex-soldier he spoke to who was also trying to evacuate people from the complex.
And several British newspapers have also spoken of an-ex Royal Marine who was involved in the rescue effort.
Some have published an image of a man escorting two women away from the scene, with what appears to be a gun tucked into the waistband of his jeans.
His face, however, is pixellated as he apparently cannot be named or identified because of security concerns.
Zachary Yach
Eighteen-year-old Zachary Yach was having lunch with his mother and sister at a burger restaurant in the complex when the attack began.
"A huge explosion really swept us off our feet... So we just dropped to the floor under the table, put our heads down and curled up for a good 20 or 30 minutes," Mr Yach told the BBC's Will Ross.
Once the noise of grenades and gunfire had subsided, "we put our heads up to see what was going on", and saw bodies and two badly injured people, Mr Yach said.
One man had been shot in the arm and "managed to grab a knife and come towards us.
"He cut his T-shirt and tied it around - we helped him and tried to get him to keep pressure on."
He told his mother to play dead "but I kept an eye open to see what was going on and if they [the attackers] were coming into the restaurant".
After about two-and-a-half hours, the police arrived with the army and a gun battle began.
When he saw that a team of security services had entered the restaurant, he "lifted up my hand and whistled to say: 'Come here we need help,'" Mr Yach says.
"I got my mum and sister to go first and then we went back to help the guy with the blood running from his head and the guy with the bullet wound in his arm. All five of us survived."
Policeman rescues family
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption New footage shows a family being rescued
On Wednesday, footage emerged from the beginning of the attack showing a terrified woman and two young children crouching for safety in the mall.
A policeman appears to be reassuring them for several minutes until eventually persuading them to leave their hiding place.
The group then make a dramatic run to escape the building. |
Al Qaeda has taken control of a town in Yemen just outside the capital, the latest in a series of towns and cities, the AFP reported.
Militants took over Rada over night on Sunday, overrunning it within hours, as they make their way towards Sanaa. The town is just 80 miles southeast of Sanaa, and close in distance to a strategic highway that connects Sanaa with Yemen’s southern and southwestern regions. Sources in the town told the AFP more than 1,000 Al Qaeda gunmen invaded the town.
Read more at GlobalPost: Yemen: "Al Qaeda jailbreak" in city of Aden
"Al Qaeda has taken over the town and is now the de facto power there," an anonymous local official said, the AFP reported. "The government's security forces have retreated to their bases and militants are now manning the checkpoints in and out of the town.”
The capture of this town underscores the growing strength of Al Qaeda in Yemen, as the group tries to take advantage of the weak central government, which has suffered for the last year due to massive political unrest, MSNBC reported.
"Al Qaeda has raised its flag over the citadel," one resident told Reuters. "Its members have spread out across the town's neighborhoods after pledging allegiance to Ayman al-Zawahiri during evening prayers (on Sunday)."
Opposition forces have accused President Ali Abdullah Saleh of allowing Islamist militants to overrun the city, in order to enforce his claims that he must remain in power, the Associated Press reported.
Read more at GlobalPost: US State Department urges amnesty for Yemen president Ali Abdullah Saleh
According to the AP, militants made a security ring around Rada, stopping residents from leaving or entering the town. They also killed two soldiers and wounded a third of the forces in clashes with the army.
Al Qaeda pledged their allegiance to leader Ayman al-Zawahiri after they seized the town. As Reuters reported, the takeover is likely to raise concern with Saudi Arabia, the world’s top oil exporter, and the United States regarding Al Qaeda’s presence in Yemen, which is close to important oil and cargo shipping lanes in the Red Sea. |
America's top places to start a new business include 6 Texas cities
Fortune's Most Admired Companies in Texas National rank no. 7 - Southwest Airlines Dallas, Texas
Industry rank: No. 5 - Airlines Source: Fortune Fortune's Most Admired Companies in Texas National rank no. 7 - Southwest Airlines Dallas, Texas
Industry rank: No. 5 - Airlines Source: Fortune Photo: Southwest Airlines Photo: Southwest Airlines Image 1 of / 18 Caption Close America's top places to start a new business include 6 Texas cities 1 / 18 Back to Gallery
According to CNBC, Texas is a good place to launch a new business.
The Metro 20: America's Best Places to Start a Business list was just released, and four Lone Star State cities landed in the top 10.
Austin landed at No. 1, Houston at No. 6, Dallas at No. 8 and San Antonio rounded out the listicle at No. 10.
To determine the ranking, CNBC focused on the 107 metro areas that have a population of 500,000 or more and considered "business location, including tax and regulatory climate, workforce strength, access to capital and the cost of living."
The study's sources include the U.S. Bureau of the Census, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Energy Information Administration and the Small Business & Entrepreneurship, among others. It also used CNBC's America's Top States for Business 2016 study to determine quality of life and "business friendliness."
Top 10 ranking:
1. Austin, Texas
2. Provo, Utah
3. Washington, D.C.
4. Denver
5. Charlotte, North Carolina
6. Houston
7. Ogden, Utah
8. Dallas
9. Des Moines, Iowa
10. San Antonio
McAllen and El Paso also represent Texas on this list at the No. 12 and No. 16 spots, respectively. |
CLOSE Riley Louis Swearingen allegedly licked a finger on each hand and stuck them into the ears of a police sergeant, resulting in an arrest.
A photo taken from video shows Riley Swearingen. (Photo: Buzz: 60 video)
MANKATO, Minn. — A former Kiester man accused of licking his fingers and poking a Mankato police officer in both ears has pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor to avoid a felony charge.
The Mankato Free Press reports (http://bit.ly/1tH3BEX ) 24-year-old Riley Swearingen pleaded guilty to disruptive intoxication Monday. A police officer says Swearingen assaulted him with the move known as a "wet Willy" after Swearingen had been out drinking early Saturday.
Swearingen was visiting on leave from a U.S. Air Force base in Goldsboro, North Carolina. He spent three days in jail after prosecutors charged him with assaulting a police officer with bodily fluids. Prosecutors say his blood alcohol content was 0.18 at the time of the incident.
Swearingen apologized before a judge Monday. He agreed to the plea deal, which also included paying $77 in court costs.
Read or Share this story: http://azc.cc/1tLzXya |
(Reuters) - Electric car maker Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) reaffirmed on Sunday it is talking with the Shanghai municipal government to set up a factory in the region and expects to agree on a plan by the end of the year, but declined to comment on a report that a deal has been reached.
FILE PHOTO: Tesla Model 3 cars are seen as Tesla holds an event at the factory handing over its first 30 Model 3 vehicles to employee buyers at the company’s Fremont facility in California, U.S. on July 28, 2017. Courtesy Tesla/Handout via REUTERS
China levies a 25 percent duty on sales of imported vehicles and has not allowed foreign automakers to establish wholly owned factories in the country, the world’s largest auto market. Those are problems for Tesla, which wants to expand its presence in China’s growing electric vehicle market without compromising its independence or intellectual property.
China’s government has considered allowing foreign automakers to set up wholly owned factories in free trade zones in part to encourage more production of electric and hybrid vehicles - which the government calls “new energy vehicles” - to meet ambitious sales quotas.
Tesla would still have to pay a 25 percent duty on cars built in a free trade zone, but it could lower its production costs.
Tesla on Sunday pointed to a statement it made in June that the company “is working with the Shanghai Municipal Government to explore the possibility of establishing a manufacturing facility in the region to serve the Chinese market. As we’ve said before, we expect to more clearly define our plans for production in China by the end of the year.”
A Tesla spokesperson in the United States declined to comment further beyond referring to the June statement.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Tesla and the Shanghai government have reached a deal in that city’s free trade zone. Shanghai is China’s de facto automotive capital and a significant market for luxury vehicles of all kinds.
Chinese internet company Tencent Holdings Ltd(0700.HK) has a five percent stake in Tesla and is seen as a potential ally for Tesla’s efforts to enter the Chinese market.
It was unclear if the Chinese government will conclude a deal with Tesla to coincide with U.S. President Donald Trump’s visit next month.
Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk has said the company eventually will need vehicle and battery manufacturing centers in Europe and Asia.
Tesla is wrestling with production problems at its sole factory, in Fremont, California. It is trying to accelerate output of its new Model 3 sedan, but conceded earlier this month that production bottlenecks had held third-quarter production to just 260 vehicles, well short of the 1,500 previously planned. |
Driver who chased down and knocked over cyclist on Perth street mortified, court told
Updated
The lawyer for a Perth driver who ran down a cyclist has told the Perth Magistrates Court his client is mortified about the uncharacteristic "overreaction".
Richard Sheridan, 54, admitted crossing to the wrong side of Beaufort Street in January of this year and striking cyclist Derek Holland with his car.
The cyclist was left with multiple fractures and grazes on his arms, legs and torso.
The Perth Magistrates Court was told the early morning incident started with a minor disagreement and escalated when the cyclist hit the driver's windscreen, causing it to crack.
I'm not a morning person either but I don't go hitting people on bicycles. Magistrate Elizabeth Woods
The court heard that "enraged" Sheridan, who spun his car around and accelerated heavily.
The impact of the crash buckled the victim's bike and he was dragged some distance underneath the car before it came to a stop.
It happened outside the police complex on Beaufort Street, near the Roe Street intersection, and several police officers were on the scene in seconds.
They arrested Sheridan and he was charged with reckless driving and causing bodily harm.
Sheridan pleaded guilty to the charges last month and on Tuesday his lawyer Curt Hoffman said his client did a "profoundly stupid" thing and his "greatest error" was following the cyclist.
Mr Hoffman told the court Sheridan, who is an architect, does a lot of community work and is a former chair of homeless organisation Shelter WA.
Magistrate Elizabeth Woods described the incident as a "brain snap", and cited a report provided to the court in which Sheridan said he was not a morning person.
"I'm not a morning person either but I don't go hitting people on bicycles," she said.
Sheridan is expected to be sentenced on Thursday.
The court heard he has already paid more than $6,000 to replace the victim's bicycle.
Topics: courts-and-trials, lifestyle, perth-6000
First posted |
Newcastle University
An artificial hand is using artificial intelligence to see with an artificial eye. The new prosthetic can choose how best to grab objects placed in front of it automatically, making it easier to use.
When it sees an object, the artificial hand detects the intention to grasp by interpreting electrical signals from muscles in the wearer’s arm. It then takes a picture of the object using a cheap webcam and picks one of four possible grasping positions.
The different grips include one similar to picking up a cup, one similar to picking up a TV remote from a table, one that uses two fingers and a thumb, and another that uses just the thumb and index finger. “The hand learns the best way to grasp objects – that’s the beauty of it,” says Ghazal Ghazaei at Newcastle University, UK.
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To train the hand, Ghazaei and her colleagues showed it images of more than 500 objects. Each object came with 72 different images, showing different angles and different backgrounds, as well as the best grip for picking it up. Through trial and error, the system learned to choose the best grips for itself.
Not quite there
Existing controllable prosthetics work by converting electrical signals in a person’s arm or leg into movement. But it can take a long time to learn to control an artificial limb and the movements can still be clumsy. The new system is just a prototype, but by giving a hand the ability to see what it is doing and position itself accordingly, the team believe they can make a better prosthetic.
The design has been tested by two people who have had a hand amputated. They were able to grab a range of objects with just under 90 per cent accuracy. That’s not bad for a prototype but dropping one out of 10 things users try to pick up is not yet good enough.
“We’re aiming for 100 per cent accuracy,” says Ghazaei. The researchers hope to achieve this by trying out different algorithms. They also plan to make a lighter version with the camera embedded in the palm of the hand.
The key with prostheses like these is getting the balance right between user and computer control, says Dario Farina at Imperial College London. “People don’t want to feel like a robot, they want to feel like they are fully in control,” he says.
It’s important that the technology helps assist grasping rather than fully taking over. “It should be similar to brake assistance on a car, the driver decides when to brake but the car helps them brake better,” says Farina. |
Dane County Parks
All Snowmobile Trails are CLOSED - NW Region to OPEN 6 PM on 2/26 All snowmobile trails are CLOSED. The NW Region will OPEN at 6 PM on Tuesday, February 26th. Users are urged to used caution as they may encounter pockets of ice on the trails especially in low lying areas and on turns.
Winter Updates CAUTION: The Capital City Trail and the Lower Yahara River Trail are ice covered and slippery
The Capital City Trail and the Lower Yahara River Trail are Dane County is conducting selective tree removals along the Capital City Trail, between Fish Hatchery Road and Seminole Highway this winter. For more information see Press Release and Capital City Trail Pavement Restoration webpage.
Visit our Closures & Trail Conditions webpage for information on snowmobile and cross-country ski trail closures and conditions.
Located in south-central Wisconsin, Dane County Parks offers a variety of recreational opportunities for the outdoor enthusiast. Natural environments are venues for quiet getaways as well as unique locations for your special event. Dane County Parks is dedicated to making your experience enjoyable and takes an active role to enhance and preserve the county’s finest natural resources.
Dane County Parks welcomes 2.5 million visitors annually and manages
over 12,000 acres of land including:
26 Recreation Parks, including 7 Dog Parks
18 Wildlife Areas
14 Natural Resource Areas
4 Historical/Cultural Sites
2 Forests
Over 100 miles of Trails - Including Bicycle, Equestrian, and Cross-country Ski Trails
5 Campgrounds and Multiple Adult and Youth Group Camp Sites
Lussier Family Heritage Center
Donations, Memorials and Planned Giving:
Your tax-deductible donation will help us continue to maintain and improve the Dane County Park System. A variety of donation and memorial options are available. |
Yet Citi Bike was supposed to be different. Our tax dollars were not paying for it. Instead, it would be sustained by an optimistic projection of subscription revenues and corporate sponsorship — a sort of Bloombergian perpetual motion machine.
Other bike share programs run differently. Capital Bikeshare in Washington is partly financed by a grant from the United States Department of Transportation, as well as other regional subsidies. Vélib’ in Paris is funded by JCDecaux, an advertising company, in exchange for control of some 1,600 billboards — space it sells to clients. In London, the system is sponsored by Barclays Bank, but also looks to Transport for London as well as local councils to help fund its expansion, which ultimately costs the taxpayers.
Granted, only the fact that New Yorkers weren’t ostensibly paying for Citi Bike allowed it to overcome ingrained cultural resistance. Mayor Bill de Blasio has made it clear that he will not give city funds to Citi Bike.
This is a shame. Sure, Citi Bike is not indispensable; after all, this is not the subway we’re talking about. Yet it’s difficult at this point to imagine New York City without it — and we shouldn’t have to. It’s a fantastic amenity and a convenience to many thousands of people, from the tourist to the workaday commuter heading from Grand Central to an office. And where would the New York media be without paparazzi shots of Leonardo DiCaprio riding one on the sidewalk?
Perhaps most important, bike share is an integral part of a change in street design that has had a palliative effect on New York City streets, calming them and making them safer for all of us no matter how we travel. It’s an essential part of the urban ecosystem, like bivalves helping to clean a polluted waterway.
As Citi Bike enters its second year, it does so having passed both the safety test and the popularity test. Now it faces its biggest and most important test, which is whether we’ll forgive it for being unprofitable and poorly managed in the past, and commit to maintaining and improving it for the future — even if, ultimately, it should prove necessary to use city funds. When our auto industry sputtered, it got a bailout. When our banking system, Citibank included, was on the brink of collapse, it got a bailout.
Citi Bike is minuscule compared with the auto industry, or the banking industry or even the rest of the transit system, but its tiny size belies the positive effects it’s already had on the city. If we can find a way to keep bike share running in New York City, then it, too, will have officially become American. |
Ontarians seeking vaccine exemptions for their children would be required to attend an education session, according to legislation introduced by the provincial Liberal government.
If passed, the legislation would require parents to complete an education session offered by their local public health unit before children are exempted from getting vaccinated.
The legislation would also require health-care providers to report to the public health unit what vaccines are given to children, in an attempt to reduce school suspensions over out-of-date immunization records.
It currently falls on parents or guardians to ensure children's vaccination records are up to date, so the change would reduce that burden while strengthening the reporting system.
Eric Hoskins, minister of health and long-term care, said last December that such changes were coming under the province's Immunization 2020 strategy aimed at strengthening Ontario's publicly funded immunization program.
"Choosing to vaccinate your child protects them from disease, and it protects vulnerable children who can't get vaccinated for medical reasons. That's why it's important for parents to keep their children's immunizations up to date," Hoskins said Thursday in a statement.
"If passed, the proposed amendments to the Immunization of School Pupils Act would help parents and guardians make informed decisions about vaccination."
Under the Immunization of School Pupils Act, children must have received certain vaccines before they can attend school in the province, or have a valid exemption. These vaccines include diphtheria, tetanus, polio, measles, mumps, rubella, pertussis (whooping cough) and meningococcal disease. For children born in 2010 or later, the vaccine regimen includes varicella (chickenpox).
Earlier this year, public health units across the province warned parents about potential suspensions over out-of-date immunization records.
On March 1, Toronto Public Health sent letters to the families of 45,000 elementary and high school students following a review of immunization records.
Also March 1, public health officials in Ottawa issued another round of suspensions for students over out-of-date records. Between Dec. 15, 2015, and March 1, 2016, Ottawa Public Health issued suspension letters to 7,350 students, ordering them to stay home until their parents submitted proof they had received the required vaccines.
Fewer than 2% of parents request exemption
Ontario parents are required to produce a valid signed exemption form if they choose not to immunize their children for medical, religious or philosophical reasons.
For a medical exemption, parents-guardians must have their children's doctor complete the form. For religious or philosophical exemptions, parents must fill out an exemption form, as well as an "affidavit instruction letter" that indicates which vaccines the children should be exempted from receiving.
In 2014, Ontario's then chief medical officer of health, Dr. Arlene King, told CBC that fewer than two per cent of parents request an exemption. The province does not keep records breaking down how many seek one for medical, for religious or for philosophical reasons.
However, measles outbreaks over the last couple of years, as well as high numbers of children who have fallen ill with whooping cough or chicken pox, have public health officials worried about whether a growing number of parents are distrusting vaccines.
The Canadian Paediatric Society says as many as 20 per cent of parents are hesitant about vaccines. This means they either have concerns about immunization, or they are outright delaying or refusing recommended vaccines.
Last year, public health officials blamed whooping cough outbreaks in several provinces and the Northwest Territories on lower vaccine immunity and encouraged residents to keep their immunizations up to date.
King told CBC there is a lot of unfounded, unsubstantiated information and myths about vaccines, and recommended that parents speak to their health-care provider if they have questions.
Details about the pre-exemption education sessions that the province is planning under the proposed legislation will be developed during consultations with public health units "and other stakeholders," according to the statement from the ministry.
Meanwhile, parents who are unsure if their children's immunization records are up to date are urged to contact their local public health unit. |
GM response to Volt/PR fiasco GM response to Volt/PR fiasco
UPDATE- Well turns out GM was not going to stay silent. Phil Colley and crew have been hard at work tweeting out responses to the naysayers, trying to explain and defend while standing the ground they laid from the beginning. The point is GM is facing the social media storm and trying to respond before the situation spirals completely out of control and reaches the wider Web
Hey did you hear? The media are driving the upcoming 2011 Chevrolet Volt today! If you are on Twitter and follow anyone that talks about cars, you probably know where this is going. GM suddenly has a PR nightmare on their hands. Worse, it's on social media and is spreading like the oil in the gulf.
GM originally stated many times (as late as this past June) that the Volt's wheels would never be powered by the internal combustion engine. Rather the gasoline engine would act as a generator to pass power along to the battery pack which then powers the electric motor. Basically the actual gas engine was supposedly not going to be connected to the drive wheels.
Well hey, surprise! Today we found out that in fact the gas engine is connected to the drive wheels. We will not get into details in this post about how it works and all that jazz. I'm going to focus on this PR nightmare and how it is spreading.
Tweets about Volt/GM Fiasco
All the people in the auto industry are tweeting about this. Some are posting to Facebook while others are just keeping quiet. Many are actually debating this whole thing on Twitter publicly. People that do not tweet or care about cars are seeing these tweets fly across their screens. Heck this could become a trending topic.
Tweets about Volt/GM Fiasco
How is GM going to handle this nightmare? So far they have remained pretty quiet on the situation. Some blogs have taken it upon themselves to create polls while others have just blatantly written posts about how GM lied to us all. One has to wonder if GM thought this wouldn't be a big deal.
Personally I will not get into this debate about whether GM lied or did not lie. The thing that is clear to me is that social media has helped this spread and given people the ability to debate the topic publicly. At some level I am hoping GM will step up and address this publicly whether on social media or not. |
“Rolling coal” is now banned through a new law aimed to crack down on drivers who pump out plumes of black smoke.
In Fort Collins, it’s a regular problem.
“Some truck will rev up its engine and drive past me and blow smoke in my face,” said Genevieve Marmaduke, who regularly bikes around town.
RELATED: Bill could crack down on 'rolling coal'
RELATED: Bill outlawing 'rolling coal' in Colorado headed to Hickenlooper's desk
She’s been on the receiving end of someone rolling coal, and so have people eating on patios downtown. On occasion, police officers are targeted at night.
Fort Collins Police helped craft the new law that will fine drivers $100 if they are caught.
Tom Franklin, a diesel truck expert, told 9NEWS when a truck does blow out that much smoke, it’s a waste of fuel. He also said more people than not modify their trucks for a legitimate reason.
“For some, it gives them better fuel mileage and most do it for power,” he said.
It comes in handy for ranchers and farmers pulling tractors and heavy equipment. For that reason, Sen. Randy Baumgardner never supported the bill.
“I'm concerned those individuals might be possibly get a ticket for causing without trying to cause the rolling coal effect,” Baumgardner said.
It took two tries and overcoming opposition, but the bill is now officially law.
Other law enforcement agencies said they were waiting for the governor to sign the bill and learn more to figure out how to implement it.
Copyright 2017 KUSA |
President Obama on Tuesday will lead a special summit on the need to take in Syrian refugees, just days after weekend terrorist attacks that are raising more questions about whether the U.S. should be cracking down on immigration instead of opening the doors further.
Plans for Obama to lead the summit were months in the making, long before Ahmad Khan Rahami allegedly planted a pressure cooker bomb in New York that detonated, injuring 29 people. Rahami, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Afghanistan, is also thought to be responsible for bombs discovered in New Jersey.
The incident puts real pressure on Obama to make the case for taking in thousands of additional refugees, in the face of calls from Donald Trump and other Republican critics who say it's time to tighten the rules, not ease them. Obama's critics say the timing couldn't be worse.
"The timing of the summit just reinforces the idea that we need to get a handle on our refugee program," Rep. Brian Babin, R-Texas, told the Washington Examiner. "There is a clear and present danger posed to our national security by these poorly vetted refugees that are pouring in, and the president continues to double down on his intentions to bring in more and more of the individuals from hot spots like Syria."
Babin last week wrote a letter to Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., urging him to include provisions in the continuing resolution to fund the government that would place a moratorium on refugees coming from terrorist hotbeds in Syria, the Middle East and North Africa. Thirty-seven House GOP colleagues signed onto the letter.
The Texas Republican said his effort to put a halt to the admission of the refugees is even more important after this weekend's terrorist attacks in New York, New Jersey and Minnesota.
"The people of the United States and of Western Europe are getting very weary about the politically correct pressure that is being brought to bear by Obama and the U.N. to take in people," including those that top U.S. national security officials have said we "cannot properly vet."
FBI Director James Comey, Department of Homeland Security Director Jeh Johnson and Director of National Security James Clapper have each testified to Congress over the last year that they couldn't certify that every single refugee admitted into the United States was not a security threat.
Those officials have all testified before several congressional panels about the challenges and information gaps that exist when screening refugees and have emphasized that there is no risk-free process. Comey, however, specifically has said the State Department and other agencies have "dramatically" improved the process over the past few years, and over the past few months, when it comes to Syrian refugees.
Holding Obama's U.N. summit meeting just after the weekend terrorist bombings is also causing headaches for Hillary Clinton, who has called for increasing U.S. admissions of Syrian refugees to 65,000. Her opponent has taken full advantage.
Just hours after the Rahami was arrested, Trump blasted Clinton for supporting policies like the admission of Syrian refugees, which he said would allow radical Islamic groups to "continue their savagery and murder."
The Republican presidential nominee and other GOP critics have also assailed the Obama administration over a new Department of Homeland Security Inspector General report that said the agency mistakenly granted citizenship to at least 858 immigrants from countries deemed to pose security concerns to the U.S.
"We need to get smart and get tough fast so that this weekend's attacks do not become the new normal here as it has in Europe and other parts of the world," Trump said in a statement Monday.
Christian Whiton, a former senior State Department adviser in the George W. Bush administration, said Obama's and Clinton's insistence on pushing for the admission of more Syrian refugees is playing into Trump's hands in the final weeks of the election.
"If you look at polls — only 35 percent of Americans want Syrian refugees to come here — I think they instinctively know that these people cannot be vetted," Whiton said.
After the weekend's bombings and Obama's U.N. summit, he predicted that Clinton would have a very difficult time defending her push for more Syrian refugees on the campaign trail.
"Hillary is pathologically committed to bringing more refugees here, knowing full well that there will be Islamists and jihadists among them," he told the Examiner. "How can she possibly think the government can screen out those who adhere to radical Islam if she won't even name that threat?"
"The twin pillars of Hillary's worldview are globalism and multiculturalism," he said. "She's just too committed to this orthodoxy to accept that Americans don't want jihadists brought here by their own government."
Obama is scheduled to address the United Nations Tuesday with broad remarks about the state of U.S. foreign policy, which will undoubtedly include a call for more admissions of Syrian refugees into the U.S. and other countries around the world.
In the afternoon, he will host the Leaders Summit on Refugees and underscore the gravity of the refugee crisis in which more than 65 million have been displaced worldwide, the largest number since World War II, according to the White House.
From Syria alone, nearly 5 million refugees have left the war-torn country, Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told reporters late last week in previewing the summit.
"All of these individuals, every one of these numbers is a face and a person with a family," she said. "They are facing very uncertain futures and they're looking to the rest of the world and to the U.N., of course, for help."
Power said several countries, including the U.S., are going to be pledging more slots for the resettlement of refugees. "You're going to see a range of announcements by different world leaders," she said.
The U.S. under Obama's direction has admitted 10,000 Syrian refugees already this year, and will increase those commitments in the final months of his administration with the goal of accepting 110,000 Syrian refugees by next October. But that figure will depend on the next president's views and policies.
Power also argued that the U.S. can admit the refugees while "ensuring our own security."
"As a country that's admitted 3.2 million refugees since the 1970s, we are more than capable of doing that and ensuring our own security, and the highest levels of security checks are in place for the refugee program," she told reporters. |
SALT LAKE CITY — Gov. Gary Herbert stepped up the pressure Thursday on House Speaker Greg Hughes, R-Draper, to allow a hearing on his Healthy Utah alternative to Medicaid expansion but didn't get the answer he wanted.
Hughes said there's still "no traction" in the House for the governor's plan to use nearly $1 billion in federal funds available under the Affordable Care Act to provide health care coverage to low-income Utahns.
The governor said he would continue fighting for the proposal: "We'll look at any and every opportunity we have to get to the right point. Clearly, we want to negotiate with our colleagues in the House and see if we can't have reason and common sense prevail."
Both Republican leaders had pointed words about the apparent impasse, which follows Senate approval for Healthy Utah and comes with just two weeks left in the legislative session. It also included back-and-forth on the Utah State Prison relocation, as Herbert raised the possibility the prison won't be moved from Draper, one of the speaker's top priorities.
Over the past year, Herbert has been negotiating to win approval for the plan from the Obama administration. The governor, who has already scaled back Healthy Utah, announced details Thursday of a new concession from Washington — a cap on enrollment after two years.
The governor said his plan to replace traditional Medicaid with private health insurance to cover some 126,000 Utahns, including about 60,000 in the so-called coverage gap, has support from a long list of business leaders, nonprofit organizations and others.
Concerns lawmakers have raised have been addressed, Herbert said, but not discussed by the House GOP caucus behind closed doors. He also has agreed to end the program after two years and pay for it without tax increases.
The governor, asked repeatedly about taking executive action on Healthy Utah during the taping of his monthly news conference on KUED, said all options remain on the table.
We'll look at any and every opportunity we have to get to the right point. Clearly, we want to negotiate with our colleagues in the House and see if we can't have reason and common sense prevail. –Gov. Gary Herbert
His spokesman, Marty Carpenter, said later the governor saw executive action as calling a special session of the Legislature, not attempting to enact Healthy Utah through signing an executive order.
Meanwhile, the speaker posted on his Facebook page that the only reason someone would want Healthy Utah heard "is to try and bully members into voting against their conscience."
Hughes later said the bullying he was talking about was mailers targeting lawmakers opposed to Healthy Utah sent to their constituents by the left-leaning Alliance for a Better Utah.
The alliance's executive director, Maryann Martindale, said Hughes is incorrect in believing a recent closed-door Republican caucus vote on Healthy Utah is sufficient in the House.
"Constituents deserve to hear their legislators publicly debate this important bill. Instead, Hughes is shutting the door on the people," she said, calling his decision not to hear Healthy Utah "disingenuous at best and immoral at worst."
Hughes said Healthy Utah "advocates say the worst things about this House. We've been told our process has been bad. We've been told that our intentions have been bad or have been vindictive. Nothing further could be from the truth."
The speaker dismissed rumors that he had threatened House members with losing their committee chairmanships over the issue.
"That would be unfortunate if that was ever said," he said.
Morgan Lyon Cotti, who studies the state Legislature as a member of the Hinckley Institute of Politics, said Hughes' steps to block the bill through his position as speaker has led to a dramatic standoff between Hughes and the governor.
"I think we also see Herbert as trying to be a consensus-builder, but he's had challenges because he has had powerful speakers who have been willing to take strong stances, like Speaker Hughes is doing," Lyon Cotti said. "This isn't like it's just some random issue. This is an issue people know about. Everyone knows knows what Obamacare means. This is a very polarizing issue. It will be interesting to see where the chips lay and how it affects all the parties politically."
Despite the heavy Republican majority in the Utah Legislature, the power to keep a bill from being heard on the floor, held by both the House speaker and Senate president, plays a powerful role in local political battles, she said.
"One of the interesting things in Utah is how much power the speaker does have, that the speaker can block this," Lyon Cotti said. "This has probably happened with smaller bills that he doesn't want to see, I think the reason that we're noticing it is because this is such a major issue. … The fact that he is pulling out this power makes it all the more noticeable and all the more dramatic."
Senate leaders tried to sound optimistic about Healthy Utah's chances. SB164, sponsored by Sen. Brian Shiozawa, R-Cottonwood Heights, passed the Senate on Wednesday.
"Healthy Utah is far from dead," Shiozawa told reporters. "We still have time in the session. We have time to negotiate. This is a good bill."
The senator noted lawmakers have made time for many other issues, including naming the golden retriever the state domestic animal.
House Minority Leader Brian King, D-Salt Lake City, said Democrats are "amazed" at Hughes' lack of perspective on Healthy Utah and accused the GOP leaders of "cowering behind the starting line."
The Senate shot down an alternative to Healthy Utah, Sen. Allen Christensen's "Utah Cares" plan Thursday, saying that passing SB153 would weaken the Senate's position with the House on the issue.
The North Ogden Republican wanted to keep his bill on the table should the House and the governor remain at odds.
"I wonder why we would empower the House over our body," said Senate Majority Leader Ralph Okerlund, R-Monroe. "I question that logic."
Shiozawa said there's no reason to keep Christensen's bill alive. The Senate, he said, should "go with one and only one plan."
"I think we need to send a clear and unequivocal voice from the Senate," he said. "Healthy Utah is negotiating from a position of strength."
Christensen said doing nothing this session is lawmakers' only option without his bill.
"I'm 100 percent convinced the speaker is going to hold his ground despite what the governor has threatened," he said.
Christensen pitched his plan as a compromise between full Medicaid expansion and doing nothing. It would have covered Utahns up to 100 percent of the federal poverty level and who are uninsured, medically frail or vulnerable to becoming disabled.
The insertion of the effort to relocate the aging prison into the debate over Healthy Utah came as House leaders have called for the Legislature's seven-member Prison Relocation Commission to have the final say on where it should be moved.
Herbert said he has a role in deciding where the prison goes and could veto any legislation turning it over to the legislative commission. He also said the prison should be moved only if a suitable location can be found.
The possibility of using some of the 700 acres the prison sits on at Point of the Mountain to build a new prison is "a legitimate intellectual position to take," the governor said.
The commission, which meets Friday, was charged with bringing a recommendation to lawmakers this session but has run into significant community opposition on sites identified in Eagle Mountain, Salt Lake City and Tooele County.
New sites in Eagle Mountain and Tooele are expected to be added to the shortlist Friday, but coming up with a single site will take until May or June, long after the legislative session ends.
That means unless the law is changed, naming the site of the $500 million to $600 million project could have to wait until the 2016 Legislature if the governor isn't willing to call lawmakers into special session.
Hughes and other proponents of moving the prison have said the prime real estate along a high-tech corridor straddling Salt Lake and Utah counties needs to be freed up for development.
The speaker said House Republicans didn't see a connection between the prison relocation and Healthy Utah, "but I can see how people would like to play hardball or there might be some interest in trying to bleed the issues together."
Contributing: Keith McCord, McKenzie Romero
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