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The big news this week is that the zombies are coming. H1Z1 will launch into Early Access in mid January. Shards Online’s Kickstarter campaign is quickly coming to an end with just a few hours left as of writing this. And they’re sitting comfortably at 200% funded! Congratulations Shards Online team!
MOBA Dead Island: Epidemic not only has one of the best acronym for a game ever (DI:E) it is also now in Open Beta! New to closed beta this week we have Battleline, another tank based MMO and Block N Load, a voxel based shooter.
One thing you won’t see on the list but it is happening is an open beta weekend for World of Warships. You can get all the details on it by checking out our news post.
Find links to everything new this week and much more in the list below. Look for this to see everything we added this week.
And don’t forget to vote in our end of the year readers poll which features several of the games on this list!
Pre-Alpha, Alpha, and Early Access
Games in Pre-Alpha, Alpha, and Early Access often require a purchase and/or access to Steam.
Closed Beta
MMOs in Closed Beta are those which require a key to participate in. These events are only for a limited number of people.
Open Beta
Open Beta is the phase in which anyone can take part. No key is required.
Other Beta Related Events and Kickstarters
Find out about Gaming related betas and Kickstarter events taking place.
Shards Online Kickstarter Sandbox Ends December 12 Melee: Battlegrounds Kickstarter Sandbox Ends December 20 The Skies Kickstarter Non-Linear MMO Ends December 23 Profit Colony Kickstarter Top Down Shooter Ends December 23 Decendants Kickstarter Sci-Fi MMORPG Ends December 25
Related: Alpha |
Some Facts About Housing in San Francisco
Conclusion First (tl; dr)
The population of SF has been growing steadily over the past decade and the rate has increased by a wide margin over the last couple of years. While the housing stock of the city appears to have kept up with population growth, the increasing rate of vacancy means that the housing supply is inadequate by about 10,000 units. Lowering the vacancy rate could be significant in bringing the city's housing supply to adequate levels.
Population
As of the 2010 Census 805,000 people live in San Francisco county and the estimated population for 2012 is 825,000. In 1990 and 2000 respectively, the population was 723,000 and 776,000. That means that in the 90s SF grew by 52,000 people or 7.2%; in the 2000s by 28,000 or 3.6%; and in the last couple of years by 20,000 or 2.5%. (Sources: 1, 2, 3)
There are two things worth noting. First, while the 2000s have been slow compared to the 90s, the population grew by about the same number (about 50,000) in the 90s as over 2000 - 2012. Second, more than half of that growth has been over the last couple of years. This is not too surprising, given recent growth of the tech sector. If that growth proves more sustainable than what happened in the 90s, we can expect the population growth over the 2010s to be much faster than over the 90s.
Housing Stock
As of the 2010 census, there are 376,000 housing units; 123,000 are owner-occupied, and 222,000 are renter-occupied. In 2000 there were 346,000 housing units, which implies that SF has been adding about 3,000 units per year. This also means that the average owner-occupied household has 2.6 people in it and the average renter-occupied household has 2.1 people in it. (Sources: 1, 3)
At first glance, it would appear that the housing stock of the city has kept up with population growth. The population grew by about 50,000 over 2000 - 2012 and in that same period about 30,000 units were added. However, the number of vacant units has grown over the same time period. The number of occupied units in 2000 was 330,000 and 346,000 in 2012, and so the “effective” growth of the housing stock has been about 16,000 units over 2000 - 2010. (Source: 3)
The number of owner-occupied units has grown from 115,000 to 124,000, which should accommodate about 19,000 residents. Similarly, the number of renter-occupied units has grown from 214,000 to 222,000, which should accommodate about 21,000 residents. That is not enough to accommodate the population growth.
Vacancies
For clarity, a housing unit is vacant if no one is living in it at the time of the census interview, unless its occupants are only temporarily absent. (Source: 4)
In 2010 there were 31,000 units vacant, that's 8.2%. For comparison, in 2000 SF had 346,000 housing units with 16,000 or 5% vacant. The number of vacancies has almost doubled over 2000 - 2010. (Sources: 1, 3)
In 2010, 12,000 of the vacant units are for-rent and 3,000 are for sale. The data is unclear about whether the for-rent and for-sale vacancies are counted in the vacancies, so it is unclear whether SF had about 46,000 vacant units in 2010, with about 16,000 “on the market” or SF had 31,000 vacant units with about half “on the market”. Assuming, that it is the latter, that means that there are about 15,000 housing units vacant, which could house another 39,000 renters. In the other case, the vacant units could house 119,000 renters. To put that in perspective, those numbers are about 80% of or double the number the population growth over the past 12 years – theoretically, just about all of the new population from 2000 - 2012 would fit in the vacant housing units.
For comparison, Sacramento County has 41,000 vacant units out of a stock of 556,000 total units (7.3%) and Los Angeles Country has 204,000 out of 3.4 million housing units vacant (6%). California has 1.1 million housing units vacant out of a total stock of 13.6 million (8%). The similarity of these numbers to the SF vacancy numbers suggests that the vacancy-rate may be driven by state-level conditions. In fact, California has a higher rate of vacancies than the regional average (5.9% in 2013). (Sources: 5, 6)
Rent Control
Rent control data is remarkably difficult to find.
As of 1998, 71% of the rental units in SF were under rent control. (Source: 7)
San Francisco is one of the few cities in the country that has rent control. Notably, New York City, several other cities in New York State and New Jersey also have rent control. Also, Seattle and Portland, which are cities with similar characteristics to SF do not have rent control. (Source: 8)
It is unclear whether there is a link between rent control and other tenant-favorable housing regulations and vacancy rates, but the connection seems plausible.
List of sources: |
Narendra Modi has been ensnared in a trap of his own making.
For the past two years on social media, supporters of Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have been unsparing in their aggression against those who have even mildly criticised the Indian prime minister. From politicians to Bollywood celebrities, many have faced the wrath of these right-wing trolls, including much abuse and threats of violence and even rape.
The tables have now turned, and the prime minister—who has said little to rein in his unruly online backers—has come under severe attack. Even his own supporters are criticising him for the government’s inaction after a terror attack in Kashmir over the weekend.
#WakeUpModi has been the top trend on Twitter for several hours on Sept. 20:
On Sept. 18, four terrorists from Pakistan sneaked into an Army base near Uri in Kashmir and killed 18 soldiers during an intense three-hour gun battle.
The Modi government, which had promised strong action against Pakistan on the terrorism issue during its election campaign in 2014, has come under fire for not taking adequately aggressive steps against the neighbouring country.
Security experts have pointed out that there is little that India can do right now. “…Any Indian plan that would adequately punish Pakistan would also cross the Red Line of Pakistan’s nuclear threshold,” the Business Standard newspaper reported on Sept. 19.
For all the social media criticism, Modi remains widely popular. Even after two years in power, almost 81% of the respondents in a recent Pew Research survey of 2,464 people held a “favourable” view of Modi, including 57% who held a “very favourable” opinion.
Nonetheless, the widening gap between Modi’s words and his actions is rubbing many the wrong way. |
Rewind to E3, June 2011: we saw the PlayStation Vita. We marveled at its capabilities and its price. For $250--at the time, the same price as a Nintendo 3DS--Sony offered a far superior piece of hardware. We looked forward to its release at the end of the year.
CBS
Of course, that was then, and this is now. The Nintendo 3DS dropped its price to $170, still expensive but more sensible. The Vita will release in Japan on December 17, but in the U.S. the release has been delayed until February 22, 2012. Sony has been keen to make a comeback and make a new handheld game system to revive the flailing world of the PSP. Can it succeed?
Regardless of the hype and demand the Vita is able generate in the U.S., there's still a general sentiment of disappointment sweeping through the gaming community on this side of the world. As the Vita misses the 2011 holiday season, a huge loss of momentum follows. Instead of cashing in on becoming what would likely be the toy to get this year, the Vita will see a late February release, just in time to coincide with paying off bank-breaking gift-giving expenditures from a few weeks prior.
It's easy to make lofty accusations about missing golden opportunities and of course we don't know what truly influenced this decision made by Sony, but it's impossible to ignore the potential impact the Vita could have had in the U.S. before 2012 sets in.
CBS
Price
The Kindle Fire has become one of the hot holiday gadgets of the year, and it can play games. It only costs $199. The Nintendo 3DS is $170.
In today's new tech landscape, $250 once again seems expensive. The 3G-enabled version of the Vita will cost even more: $300. That's the cost of a PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 bundle. It's $50 more than an entry-level iPod Touch.
CBS
Let's also not forget how much more Vita games will cost, not only compared with the 3DS, but also the thousands of titles in the App Store. Sure, a 99-cent bubble-popping game won't compare with something like Uncharted: Golden Abyss, but explaining that to the casual consumer may not be an easy task.
Features
In an age of convergence devices, we've come to expect far more from our gadgets. The PS3 and Xbox 360 are making strides for their streaming-media and home theater functions. Smartphones are useful as cameras, always-on computers, and phones--and, of course, game systems.
The Vita will have to offer apps and services that make it multifaceted. Sure, there already does seem to be plenty of support from social entities like Twitter and Facebook, but we've already come to take these types apps for granted. The Vita will need to eventually match the content prowess of its big brother, the PlayStation 3, in order to maintain customer appeal. Even the Nintendo 3DS has Netflix. Can Sony develop software and partnerships that make the Vita more than a fancy game system?
Fun
Hard-core games are a joy...for hard-core gamers. Studded with dual control pads, front and back touch panels, gyroscopic sensors, and front- and rear-facing cameras, the PlayStation Vita is a machine dripping with potential. It's all for naught, though, if it's not fun. Those extra control schemes can also get confusing, especially for a newcomer to gaming. Heck, they even got confusing for us. During our time with games like Little Deviants, we found it confusing switching back and forth between control schemes. Also, that 5-inch screen might be big and gorgeous, but stretching your thumbs to reach across it for touch-gaming, isn't as simple as it sounds.
Android tablets have told the tale over and over again: an extra USB port or SD card slot doesn't sell a gadget. The Vita's control schemes are utilized in unique ways for some of the launch games, but cheap, mass-appeal games with unique qualities will be essential. As good as Uncharted looks, Infinity Blade II for the iPhone and iPad isn't too shabby, either. Graphics alone can't sell the Vita. Sony will need to tap deeply into its rich game library for ideas that can reach out in new ways, much like many of the most critically successful indie downloads on the PSN network, such as Flower.
As we mentioned above, it's here where Sony needs to flex its gaming muscle. The company needs to pounce on the fact that a game machine without buttons is missing out on satisfying and precise analog controls.
Taking advantage of the PS3
The Vita has a huge advantage going for it: Sony's technological expertise and the promise of integration with the PlayStation 3. The potential could be limitless: the Vita could be a satellite portable for the PS3, streaming remote content, playing shared games, or it could even be used as a versatile PS3 controller. The PS3 could use its expansive hard-drive storage for downloading and archiving Vita games. The Wii and DS never worked together the way they could have, and Microsoft has no true portable game system. It's Sony's opportunity to miss.
It'll be great if Sony can pull this collaboration off, but what will really make or break the union will be ease of use. Sony is at an instant advantage with the Vita and PS3 one-two punch, but executing it intuitively and logically will dictate whether the tandem lives or dies.
Backward compatibility, and helping old PSP owners out
As much as the Vita has going for it, it's still stuck in a difficult place: while it will play older PSP games via PSN download, there's no UMD drive for old PSP games. PSP owners will have to buy games over again or give up their gaming library. Nintendo, over the years, has always wisely offered a backward-compatible path for the first few years of its new hardware. The Game Boy Advance played Game Boy games. The Nintendo DS played Game Boy Advance games. The Nintendo 3DS plays Nintendo DS games. Your fan base isn't abandoned. The PSP Go was a download-only game system, but few PSP owners ever chose to upgrade because of that major hurdle.
This time around, the Vita has to offer some way to redeem games for codes or offer content to existing owners, or it'll have a hard time gaining traction. Apple launched its iOS App Store from scratch, but most of its apps are free or under $5. The Vita's games, likely to go for around $50 a pop, are an investment. |
Boy, was I conciliatory when I was younger. Either that or I was a realist. Or maybe I just wrote what I had to write to get an A. Whatever. I’m not conciliatory, realistic, or seeking a grade anymore, so I can now feel free to lay out a theoretical and hypothetical solution to the rape epidemic. If I had my choice, we’d do away with rape by changing our cultural attitudes toward gender, toward sex, toward power, toward everything, thereby creating a world in which rape could not possibly occur. That would most certainly be ideal, and I believe it’s possible, but I think it might take an awfully long time, and I’m ready for rape to stop right now. Rape and other forms of sexual violence are hate crimes and are among the most heinous manifestations of the misogyny that characterizes our culture. As such, eradicating rape, in my opinion, is one of the most pressing feminist issues. Our current laws are woefully ill-equipped to deal with rape, and I’ve devised a little thought experiment to illustrate that point and get people to thinking about possible solutions:
Deuce’s Law of 2008
default state of consent , they did not consent to a sex act. Victims will decide whether a crime has occurred, and defendants will not. This might frighten men, some of whom will claim that women will use the law to punish men out of vengeance. That might happen once in awhile, but our job is to protect the largest number of people possible, and false rape accusations are about a Section 1: The presumption of innocence, as it is not specifically iterated anywhere in the Constitution, will not attach to sex crimes. Instead, all individuals will be presumed to exist in a state of non-consent, as per Twisty Faster v. Patriarchy , which will replace Coffin v. United States as precedent in determining burden of proof for sex crime cases. As such, defendants accused of sex crimes will bear the burden of proof, and will have to prove their innocence. There is a danger inherent in such a system that a few innocent men will be punished, and this is quite unfortunate. It is not, however, more unfortunate than men raping with impunity in epidemic proportions simply because their victims are unable to prove to a room full of misogynists that, despite the ridiculous presumption of a, they did not consent to a sex act. Victims will decide whether a crime has occurred, and defendants will not. This might frighten men, some of whom will claim that women will use the law to punish men out of vengeance. That might happen once in awhile, but our job is to protect the largest number of people possible, and false rape accusations are about a hundredth as common as rapes that go unpunished
Section 2: Rape will be broadly defined as intentionally taking advantage of a person’s physical or emotional vulnerabilities for sexual purposes, including creating fear in order to coerce a victim into performing or submitting to a sex act against her/his will. That includes fear of any kind, not just of violence. That’s right. Men will have to learn to have sex only with women who want to have sex with them, and will have to eschew high-pressure tactics, emotional and financial manipulation, as well as physical force if they want to avoid rape charges.
Section 3: Any defendant convicted of rape will be assumed to have proven he is incapable of responsibly exercising his sexuality in society. As such, the penalty for rape will be immediate and irreversible castration. If a weapon is used in the commission of the crime, or if the victim at any time during the crime feels that her/his life was in danger, the added penalty of life in prison without parole will attach. Prison sentences are to be served at specially-constructed facilities at which offenders will perform uncompensated labor in service of women and children. What such labor will consist of will be decided by the administrators of individual facilities, but the result of the offenders’ labor must meet two criteria: 1) it must provide tangible benefits for women and/or children, but 2) offenders shall not come into direct contact with any women or children at any time.
Section 4: Offenders may appeal their sentences one time only. Appeals must be made on grounds other than “women are emotional and unreasonable and so we shouldn’t let them define rape and decide who’s guilty.” Women, who have much less incentive to use sex as a weapon than men do, are much less likely to violate men’s rights through rape accusations than men are to violate women’s and children’s rights through rape. This is not up for debate, and is thus not sufficient grounds for appeal.
I’m pretty sure Deuce’s Law would bring us a dramatic reduction in rape, and most likely destroy the pornography industry and drastically curb sexual harassment (more on this later). Too bad men, even those with women and children under their care, will never submit to any sort of limits being placed on their sexuality (or, rather, their prerogative to use their sexuality as a weapon for controlling women), because this law would really work. It’s a shame they’re allowed to vote. They’re so hysterical and irrational about this sort of thing. Snarf snarf.
* Note: False rape charges are MUCH less common than rapes that go unpunished. Let’s say 1 in 100 rape charges is false (which is a VERY high estimate). Well, as it stands now, only 6% of rape cases ends in conviction. That means that of 100 rapes, 1 is false, 6 of the rapists are (often lightly) punished, and 93 go free. On balance, it seems that 1 innocent dude suffering is less of a problem than 93 rapists getting away with sexually abusing innocent women and children. Remember, I’m not talking about the death penalty here. Also, don’t you think, in the case of a false accusation, that almost anyone would recant before allowing an innocent person to be castrated? As it stands now, the legal system is asking us to trust men not to rape us, and they’re doing it anyway. If the legal system asked men to trust women not to have them castrated, I think it’d be more reasonable. Women are simply not as violent as men are. I know there are exceptions, but it’s a fact.
** Another note: credit is due to Davetavius for being one of the few dudes reasonable enough to think section 3 is a good idea, and for the conversations from which this post derived (though he would strenuously disagree with Section 1).
*** A final note: I’m not surprised or anything, but I’m getting some seriously gnarly comments about this. I suppose men don’t like to hear someone discuss treating them the way they’ve treated women throughout history. I wonder why? Anyway, if you’re thinking about commenting on this, have something to say or fuck off. I’m not posting bullshit insults, so if that’s what you’re planning to write, do one. Also, please read this before commenting as I’d rather not have to explain it.
**** And an even finaler note: Go look up the definition of satire. This post is meant to serve as a foil to our current legal system. I admit that it doesn’t provide men with safeguards against castration, but nor does our current system provide women with any against rape. Neither one is a satisfactory system. Stop bitching about this hypothetical and start coming up with a solution or go ahead and admit to being a rape apologist. |
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In exclusive interview, Abu Qatada decries “Jihad is not and should not be about murdering innocent civilians;” believes US-led coalition to fight ISIS unnecessary because “ISIS will destroy itself”
By Ali Younes
He was called Al Qaida’s ambassador in Europe, a radical preacher, a Salafist, a violent Jihadist, a terrorist mastermind and Europe’s Bin Laden. But Omar Othman, better known as Abu Qatada insists that he is none of that. I spoke to him at length at his house in Amman, Jordan on several occasions about the stages he went through in his life.
We discussed his controversial “ Algerian terror fatwa” the terror charges he was charged with in Jordan, his intellectual transformations over the years, and of his developed doctrine of Jihad which stands as a total opposite to the “militaristic” or violent Jihad that dominates of the current Jihadist groups today. He also talked about his disdain for Salafisim which he now renounces and says that he is no longer one and of his rejection of using terror to empower Muslims.
He also talked about his British experience which made him rethink his strategies and his legal case both in Britain and Jordan . He also spoke of his deep respect for women especially his wife and his mother who he says have made him a better man, and his strong belief that Muslim women should be empowered and respected as equal human being. He also spoke about his dedication to Palestine and how ISIS, based on his theological reasoning, will eventually cannibalize and destroy itself from within. He also talked about his three young daughters and two sons and their choices in life and education.
Contrary to the image the western media weaved for him as a dangerous terrorist mastermind and a blood thirsty murderer, Abu Qatada appears to be a man in complete harmony with himself and of clear religious convictions that he says are to make the world a better place for Muslims and Islam as he sees it. “I am not a terrorist” he told me. He says that he transformed himself both theologically and politically in light of changing realities in Arab World especially after the rise of many Jihadists groups that use extreme murderous violence against innocent civilians in the name of Jihad and Islam. “Jihad is not and should not be about murder.” “I am no longer a Salafi” he added. The historic term “ Salafi” means the return to the methods and religious life of early Islamic scholars.
But for Abu Qatada, this term has been abused and has become a “meaningless slogan.” And that “every group that calls itself a salafist is in reality no more than a front for political agendas that probably uses Islam and religion for political and monetary gains.” According to this reasoning, therefore, this label no longer applies to him.
His views on the doctrine of Jihad have also become more sophisticated and developed further, reflecting his new thinking about the best strategy to empower the Muslim Ummah or nation. His doctrine of Jihad as he explained it to me, is not about murdering innocent civilians, journalists or aid workers or just wanton murderous violence the way ISIS is making it to be. In that sense, Abu Qatada said ” I am not a Jihadist .” For him, Jihad should come to mean a Muslim renaissance where the whole “ Ummah” should rise up to be a powerful and advanced nation on par with other developed powerful nations of the world.
He states that “Jihad should be among other things, about political, cultural, scientific empowerment of the Muslims.” The problem with current” Jihadist” groups today is that they use “ Jihad” in a way that made the whole religion of Islam absorbed by “Jihad” not the other way around. This is a pivotal point in Abu Qatada’s development of his doctrine of Jihad.
“The problem with groups like ISIS is that they use Jihad as paramount to everything else in Islam, and this is wrong and destructive.”
Speaking of ISIS, Abu Qatada said that this group is “a destructive, takfeeri, bloody and murderous organization that will not last too long.” He reasons that such murderous groups are intrinsically “self-destruct” . This is because its core values are based on finding elements within Islamic laws to negate the others and then murder them in the name of Jihad. Thus, ISIS will end up destroying itself by cannibalizing its members and murdering its way to a fiery end. Abu Qatada, meanwhile is confident that ISIS will eventually destroy itself based on his understanding of the way it uses Islamic faith and law to justify its actions and its narrow understanding of Jihad. That said, however, he argues that the international coalition led by the United States to destroy it has in essence breathed life in it.
While many in the Arab world speculate, rather conspiratorially, that ISIS is “a CIA creation” Abu Qatada holds that this is not true. “ISIS is not a CIA creation; it is, however, the choice of the enemies of our nation to use it against us.” In other words he thinks that the West has jumped on ISIS bandwagon, by amplifying its size and danger, in order to use it to its advantage to wreak havoc in the Arab World.
He does not however consider the United States or the West as an inherent enemy of Muslims. “Their actions against us and their support of Israeli actions against the Palestinians made them our enemies.” Using the American actor Silvestre Stallone character Rocky Balboa in the movie “Rocky” to illustrate his point further, he argued that “Muslims did not go to the United States to fight it, the way Rocky Balboa went to Moscow to fight the Russian boxer, similarly, the US through its unconditional support for Israel to occupy our lands in Palestine, made itself as our enemy.”
Abu Qatada, in addition, was accused of being an “ Al Qaida’s man in Europe” and that he held allegiance to Bin Laden and that he gave a controversial fatwa to Jihadists in Algeria to kill women and children during the civil war in that country. He denied both charges. He said that he actually never pledged allegiance to Bin Laden. Abu Qatada. moreover, does not see himself as a member of any religious group, jihadist or not. ” I am a religious scholar, not a member of any political or religious group. my concerns are researching Islamic religious laws and theology. ” he said
He also said that his famous Algerian Fatwa was about allowing Algerian Jihadists, on religious ground, to attack the Algerian army military bases not population or civilians. He said however, that the Algerian military had kept women and children-the families of its soldiers- on their military bases premises, therefore, it is the Algerian military that endangered the lives of innocent civilians by housing them inside legitimate military targets. He also said that Saudi religious scholars went even further than him and were too extreme about the issue.
Abu Qatada is a free man today, thanks to his legal victory in the European Human Rights Court against the British government especially Home Secretary Theresa May. The British government had tried for years to deport him to his native Jordan, where he was convicted in absentia on terror charges.
Abu Qatada was accused of masterminding plots to carry out several terror bombings in Amman known as the Millennium bombings. His lawyers however argued successfully that the confessions by witnesses against Abu Qatada were gained through torture in Jordan. Several British judges recognized that the evidence against Abu Qatada was extracted through torture and it was“extremely thin evidence.”
The European Human Rights Court agreed with Abu Qatada’s attorneys and rendered all confessions and the evidence against him inadmissible in court. This ruling, therefore, prohibited the British government form extraditing Abu Qatada to Jordan based on the discredited witnesses statements that were key to his conviction in Jordan in the first place.
Therefore, the only way for the British government to get rid of Abu Qatada and deport him from Britain was to convince Jordan based the legal treaty between the two countries, to retry Abu Qatada based on new evidence. Jordan agreed, and Abu Qatada was removed to Jordan where he faced a new trial. But since the Jordanian prosecutors were unable to come up with new evidence against him, Abu Qatada was found not guilty and was cleared of all charges against him. Local Jordanian newspapers reported, however, that the Jordanian government had agreed to the British demands not to use its alleged torture-based evidence only after it got paid a $ 150 million from Britain.
Although Abu Qatada was famous for his alleged connections to terrorism, Al Qaida, and violent Jihad, his views on women have rarely been explored and he comes across surprisingly, as open minded and modern. He told me that he considers women as the best creature God has created. “I have the deepest and utmost respect for women.” He also said that he does not consider it mandatory for women to cover their faces under a veil. “Although it is ok to do so, but women don’t have to do it. It is a matter of choice.” He said.
He spoke with a smile on his face about his mother Aisha who when she and his father were displaced from their village, Dier al Shaikh in 1948 after the founding of Israel, they went to live in the Palestinian Christian town of Biet Sahour, and how because of her, his father made better choices for his family.
He laughed fondly as he was telling me about his mother when she as a young girl used to drink from her Christian neighbors “grape juice” who used to make it in big pots and was getting tipsy. Or that when she gave birth to her oldest son and that it was her Christian neighbors who named him “Maher” while his father insisted on naming him Ali.
The name Maher remained the brother’s legal name, while Ali became the unofficial nickname. Just like his mother, Abu Qatada feels the deepest appreciation and respect for his wife. “She is in control of this house, and my lady.” he said. He also added that it was because of his wife insistence that they made the decision the buy the plot of land where they built their house before Amman became too expensive to buy any land or build a house. He feels very much grateful to her because of that.
The same thing goes for his children. Abu Qatada has 3 daughters, and two boys. He told me that his oldest daughter, 24, made her own choice to study Islamic Sharia, and while she covers her face, it was solely her choice. The middle daughter is now studying Biology and the youngest, 16 is in high school.
Qatada, 19, told me that when he was in Britain he was studying engineering, but when the family returned to Jordan, he could not continue with Engineering at the University of Jordan, he changed his major to study Islamic Sharia. The youngest is 13 years old Zied who was born while his father was in British jail. Abu Qatada insists he never forced his children to do anything. “My role as a father is to teach my children how to make the right choices in their lives.”
Ali Younes is the Editor of the Arab Daily News. He can be reached at : [email protected], and on twitter @clearli
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Green Party MP Caroline Lucas is to call for a "progressive alliance" with the SNP as her party holds what it says is its largest ever meeting.
At a spring conference in Liverpool, Ms Lucas will say the two parties could "forge a new grouping in Parliament".
The Greens are polling in similar numbers to the Lib Dems and say their membership quadrupled in the past year.
But the party's leader Natalie Bennett has faced criticism of her performance in recent weeks.
She struggled in a radio interview to explain how a flagship policy to build 500,000 new social rented homes would be funded, later attributing her performance to an "excruciating mind blank".
'Excruciating'
The leader of the Green Party on Liverpool council, John Coyne, said he had been "taken aback" by her "excruciating" performance and she had clearly been "underprepared".
He told the BBC that it wouldn't happen again as Ms Bennett - who could take part in a TV debate with other party leaders should they go ahead - would in future rehearse her performance in mock interviews.
"It's a failure that she was underprepared we know why that happened and we know it will be fixed for the future," Mr Coyne - a former Liberal Democrat who is now chair of the Green Councillors Association - said.
Constitution Green Main pledges Establish a People’s Constitutional Convention to radically change UK governance
Give 16-year-olds the right to vote
Further devolution within the UK
Change all voting systems in the UK to ensure proportional representation
"It was a serious failure and we thought it might be damaging to us but one thing that perhaps is saving us from that is people who are attracted to the Green Party tend to have a more generous disposition anyway tend to be able to forgive a mistake."
In her conference speech, Ms Bennett will say her party offers a "message of hope and real change" and would create "a political system that puts the public first".
'Distinctive values'
The Green Party in England and Wales is fielding its largest ever slate of candidates, aiming to stand in 90% of parliamentary seats on 7 May. The Green parties in Scotland and Northern Ireland are separate organisations.
In her address, former leader Ms Lucas will say the Green Party should join forces with the SNP in the next Parliament to maximise their influence on the next government.
"With the rise of the SNP, and with our own Green surge, we have the chance to forge a new grouping in Parliament. A progressive alliance.
"Of course, in Scotland and in Wales we'll be fighting hard for our distinctive values and policies. Just as we do against those individual Labour and even Lib Dem candidates with whom we have something in common.
"That's the nature of British politics under the first past the post system."
Policy guide: Key priorities What are the top issues for each political party at the 2015 general election?
The SNP is riding high in the polls, threatening even the safest Labour seat in Scotland, according to recent opinion polls published by Tory peer Lord Ashcroft . |
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Showtime was so impressed with Asia Kate Dillon's breakout performance as the gender non-binary character Taylor Mason in the drama Billions, it wanted to submit Dillon for an Emmy nomination.
But there was just one problem. The network wasn't sure whether to submit Dillon for best actor or best actress. Like the character Mason, Dillon identifies as neither male nor female and uses the pronouns "they" and "them."
Faced with this difficult choice, Dillon wrote a letter to the Television Academy asking what the categories mean and why they exist (You can read the whole letter at Variety).
The Academy replied that "anyone can submit under either category for any reason." After digging into the history of the terms "actor" and "actress," Dillon opted for the former.
Dillon spoke with As It Happens host Carol Off about how they came to that decision.
Sex: The classification of a person as male or female, usually based on the appearance of their external anatomy. Gender identity: A person's internal, deeply held sense of their gender. Non-binary: Terms used by some people who experience their gender identity and/or gender expression as falling outside the categories of man and woman. Source: Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation
Carol Off: You play a gender non-binary character, and yet you had to come up with a gender if you were going to be submitted for an award. That must have said something to you?
Asia Kate Dillon: Well, as it turned out, I didn't have to come up with a gender in order to be submitted. So it ended up sitting quite well, actually.
According to the Academy rules, they've always stated that ... any performer can submit under either category for any reason, and that the Academy is not going to do any kind of anatomical or gender identity check.
And so knowing that information, and using the findings of other research I'd done into the etymology, the origin, of the words "actor" and "actress," I decided to go with "actor," because it is a non-gendered, non-sexed word from the late 1500s referring to performers in plays, specifically.
Asia Kate Dillon says the character they play on Billions means a lot to people. (Jason Kempin/Getty Images for Showtime Networks)
CO: You've chosen this neutral word, actor, but you're going to be in a category where probably you're just competing with men.
AKD: Well, I will be in a category, as far as I know, with people who self-identify as men. But that doesn't mean that I know anything about, you know, the anatomical sex of the other people who are going to be submitted alongside me, which I think is really important.
Why Taylor Mason matters
CO: I just want to talk a bit about this show that you're in, Billions. ...Why do you think people are so drawn to Taylor Mason?
AKD: Taylor is someone who is, you know, surrounded by hypermasculinity, working in a morally ambiguous world. And Taylor has a very strong moral centre and is not hypermasculine in particular.
So I think that when you have someone who is sort of outside the norm of what we've seen of that world stepping into that world and then we get to watch them navigate that world, I think that's what's exciting about Taylor's journey.
I have received tweets from self-identified white, straight, cisgendered men who have openly said, you know, 'I knew nothing about non-binary identity, I'm a Republican, I'm 65 years old, but you and your character have opened my eyes.' So yeah, that's been extraordinarily gratifying.
CO: When you first read the script for Billions and the description of this character, what did you think?
AKD: Well, the character breakdown, among other things ... said: "Taylor, female, non-binary." And I had actually never come across those two words next to each other in that way
Since I do research into every aspect of a character I play, I looked up those words and I had an ah-ha moment, where I realized, you know, female ... referring to anatomical sex, non-binary, referring to gender identify. I was assigned female at birth. My gender identify is non-binary. How amazing!
Does anyone know? <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Billions?src=hash">#Billions</a> <a href="https://t.co/YgFWd9YOIG">pic.twitter.com/YgFWd9YOIG</a> —@SHO_Billions
CO: Was it an emotional moment for you?
AKD: Yes, I would say a grand emotional moment. I was able to finally put words to feelings and thoughts that I'd had from a very young age.
And you know, I've received many messages from people all over the world of varying age who have said how much the character of Taylor being non-binary means to them, and how much the fact that there is an actor who is non-binary that's playing that character means to them.
For all of the visibility that Taylor is giving to other people, and that I am giving to other people now, Taylor really gave that visibility to me first.
CO: How difficult is it going to be, do you think, to change people's views?
AKD: Because I was assigned female at birth and I am light-skinned, white, I think people hear my message more than they hear it from someone who was assigned male at birth and is a person of colour.
I have a lot of hope that people are listening to me and I also understand that we have a lot of work to do.
Just did an interview where I spoke about the privileges associated with being light skinned (White) and Assigned Female At Birth. ✌️🏻💚💯 —@AsiaKateDillon
This interview has been edited for clarity and length. For the whole conversation, listen to our complete interview with Asia Kate Dillon. |
Demands are being made to make parking on slip roads off the motorway near Johnstown illegal following complaints about encampments in the area.
Demands are being made to make parking on slip roads off the motorway near Johnstown illegal following complaints about encampments in the area.
Now the local authority is to be asked to bring in a bye-law which prohibits parking on these roads.
It’s the latest development in a controversy which has seen Traveller caravans parked adjacent to main roads in Naas, Johnstown and Kill.
At a Kildare County Council area meeting Cllr. Fintan Brett said he had received complaints about parking on slip roads and claimed one of the vehicles was a 2014 registered Mercedes, which he claimed was worth €80,000 “towing a caravan worth €40,000.”
Cllr. Brett added that some Travellers are great community people and live in the area but others take advantage of this.
Cllr. Seamie Moore said some Travellers have houses elsewhere in the country and he said the council has been slow to act because “there is an obligation to provide halting sites.”
There is no halting site in the Naas area - an issue that’s been highlighted by Kildare Traveller Action, which represents Travellers.The KTA has been critical of the council’s failure to address what it sees as an accommodation crisis facing members of the Traveller community. PJ Dooley of the KTA has accused the KCC of being more interested in deploying the resources to evict families from roadside encampments instead of putting these resources into providing accommodation.
Cllr. Paddy McNamara said the council has an obligation to provide halting sites for “genuine Travellers” adding “but they shouldn’t be on the public road.”
He said Travellers are recognised as a minority “but with rights come responsibilities.” |
Bill would increase penalties for teachers who have sex with teens Copyright by KRQE - All rights reserved Video
SANTA FE (KRQE) - A proposal upping criminal penalties on teachers and others in a position of authority, who have sex with or inappropriately touch teens, has been making steady progress at the Roundhouse.
Under current law, teachers who have sex with a student 13 years and older face a fourth degree felony, which typically carries a max sentence of a year and a half. In 2012, teacher Kristy Sanchez-Trujillo received house arrest and probation for having sex with a 13-year-old student. In 2015, Patrick Matthews had his entire sentence suspended for having sex with a 16-year-old student.
HB 121, proposed by Rep. Sharon Clahchischilliage, R-Kirtland, would make it so if the perpetrator of a rape was in a position of authority over a student between the ages of 13 and 18, that would be a second degree felony carrying a maximum sentence of up to 15 years in prison. At least three of those years would have to be served behind bars.
"Trust is being abused, the children's trust is being abused, the parent's trust is being abused," said Clahchischilliage. "When that trust is broken there's a big concern."
The bill would also increase penalties in criminal sexual contact cases involving someone in a position of authority.
The House passed HB 121 unanimously on Wednesday. |
Through repeated prayers offered in preparation of this message, I have had one objective: that I be led to communicate truths that would significantly help each of you find happiness. I recognize that the great majority I address are faithful sons and daughters of Father in Heaven who strive to obey his commandments—or sincere individuals who want to do so. For that reason I would speak to each of you as though we were in a private conversation where we share our purest feelings, our aspirations, our hopes, and our dreams as two can do when there is mutual trust and a common basis of belief. I encourage you to write the feelings and impressions that come to you. I have prayed that the Spirit confirm to your mind and heart the essence of what I would like to communicate.
For some time I have known how I wanted to begin this message, yet I have always been very careful not to share sacred experiences without a feeling of authorization to do so. I thought first of merely stating the principles that I learned from one such experience without reference to the specific event. Yet I realized that it would be far more meaningful if I related exactly what occurred. After prayerfully seeking guidance, I feel I can communicate an experience that is sacred to me. It indelibly taught how precious and of inestimable worth is the gospel plan or plan of happiness Heavenly Father has given us. I have seen that plan from a different perspective than ever before in my life, and that has given me greater understanding and appreciation for it. I pray that when we conclude you may feel that same gratitude. May you also resolve to take fuller advantage of the inexpressibly rich opportunities the Lord has given us for true happiness, now and forever.
Recently I awoke from a most disturbing dream. I ached physically, was saturated with perspiration, and my heart was pounding. Every sense was sharpened. The transition from sleep to wakefulness was imperceptible. I have come to recognize that as an indication of a significant spiritual experience in a dream. I had been taught lessons that would change my life. Although the actual dream was extensive, the key lessons communicated can be summarized by reference to a few specific experiences in the dream.
In it I found myself in a very different and unknown environment. Everything was strange to me. I could not recognize where I was or any of the individuals who surrounded me. I was anxiously seeking my wife, Jeanene. We had been separated, and I wanted very much to find her. Each individual I encountered said that I would not be able to do that. Repeatedly as I sought in different directions to find her, I was emphatically told to forget her for she would not be found. I was frustrated at every turn. One said, “She is no longer the same individual. There isn’t a Jeanene like you knew.”
I thought, that is impossible. I know her, and I know she will never change.
Then I was told, “You are not the same. There is no individual by the name of Richard Scott, and soon all of the memories you’ve had of Jeanene, your children, and other loved ones will be eradicated.”
Fear entered my heart, accompanied by a horrifying feeling. Then came the thought: “No, that is impossible. Those relationships are enduring and unchanging. As long as we live righteously, they cannot be eliminated. They are eternally fixed.”
As more encounters came I realized that I was surrounded with evil individuals who were completely unhappy, with no purpose save that of frustrating the happiness of others so that they too would become miserable. These wicked ones were striving to manipulate those persons over whom they sought to exercise control. I somehow was conscious that those who believed their lies were being led through treachery and deceit from what they wanted most. They soon began to believe that their individuality, their experience, and their relationships as families and friends were being altered and lost. They became angry, aggressive, and engulfed by feelings of hopelessness.
The pressure became more intense to accept as reality that what I had been no longer existed and that my cherished wife was no longer the same. Should I encounter her she wouldn’t recognize me nor want me. I resisted those thoughts with every capacity that I could find. I was determined to find her. I knew that there must be a way and was resolute in searching no matter what the cost in time or effort.
It was then that I broke out of that oppressive surrounding and could see that it was an ugly, artificial, contrived environment. So intense were the feelings generated by what I had been told by those bent on destroying my hope to take me captive that I had not realized the forces of opposition that made my efforts appear fruitless could have no power over me unless I yielded through fear or abandonment of my principles. The environment appeared real, yet it had been generated from fear and threat. Although it was simulated, to those who let themselves believe the falsehoods thrust upon them it became reality.
I can now understand that because of my faith in the truths of the gospel plan, I could break through Satan’s manipulative, evil environment to see it as it is—not only in the dream, but in real life as well—a confining, controlling, destructive influence that can be overcome by faith in and obedience to truth. Others were disheartened, disoriented, and finally overcome as they lost hope because they either lacked a foundation of truth to engender conviction, courage, and confidence or they let their belief be overcome by the pressure of the moment.
As I awoke there flooded over me feelings of love and gratitude for our Heavenly Father and his Beloved Son that I do not have the capacity to express. My heart and mind filled with consuming love for them and inexpressible appreciation for the blessings that are available to every spiritual child of Father in Heaven willing to believe and be obedient to the plan of happiness. I cannot convey the unspeakable joy, the feeling of being wrapped in pure love, the absolute assurance that we will never lose our identity or memory of cherished relationships or the benefits of righteous acts as we continue to resist evil and are obedient to truth.
Our Father’s love, his perfections, and his perfect righteousness are absolute guarantees that we will ever exist as an individual entity, an intelligence clothed with spirit and body with latent divine capacities that mature and flower through obedience to his plan and his commandments. We have in his Son a perfect example of willing obedience and perfect love. How hopeless life would be without the absolute assurance of justice centered in fixed laws that are the bedrock foundation of the Father’s plan. What is true one day cannot be manipulated to be something else by the whim or command of another personage. Your happiness is absolutely guaranteed as you willingly obey his commandments, receive all of the necessary ordinances, and are obedient to them, for he is a perfect, loving Father who will never change.
Somehow during that horrifying experience, I glimpsed how except for the Atonement of Jesus Christ, which lets us rectify mistakes through his plan of redemption, justice would demand a recompense for every error committed in life that we could not fulfill. Thus we could not return to Father in Heaven’s presence. We would be left under the dominion of Lucifer, whose intent is to capture us and to destroy everything that is good and righteous in our beings. Over time we would become like Satan because we would lose all hope of returning to Father in Heaven and of benefiting from his righteousness, his mercy, and his perfect love.
Although I would not welcome another like experience, this dream has taught me how easy it is to take for granted our relationship with our Father in Heaven and his Beloved Son, our Master and Savior. Oh, how blessed are we that they are as they say they are, perfect in every possible capacity and attribute. Fundamental to their purpose is that you “might have joy” (2 Nephi 2:25).
Recognizing that you are a person who wants to live worthily and be obedient to Father in Heaven, how would Satan strive to lead you from the path to happiness? Surely he would not be successful by tempting you to commit serious transgression—at least not initially. He would more likely fill your mind and heart with visions of many, many worthwhile things—none of which could be criticized as being wrong, but, taken together, they would so occupy your time that you would not do those things that are absolutely essential for eternal life with Father in Heaven and his Beloved Son. Nephi warned of that approach:
And others will he pacify, and lull them away into carnal security, that they will say: All is well in Zion; yea, Zion prospereth, all is well—and thus the devil cheateth their souls, and leadeth them away carefully down to hell.
And behold, others he flattereth away, and telleth them there is no hell; and he saith unto them: I am no devil, for there is none—and thus he whispereth in their ears, until he grasps them with his awful chains, from whence there is no deliverance. [2 Nephi 28:21–22]
It is clear that no one who has an inclination to live the commandments of God would intentionally do things that would separate him or her from the Lord. I am confident you have the intention of doing all of the right things. Yet I wonder, are you doing them as fully and as completely as you are capable of doing? That is not an accusatory question. It is one asked in sincerity to help you, if needed, to open your eyes and evaluate each day’s decisions to confirm that what you are doing will lead you to where you most desire to be. Be certain that you are not being led “carefully” from the main track to happiness onto a sidetrack that can, in time, result in the loss of that which is most precious.
What are some of the warning signals that are red flags indicating danger ahead? Do you think of others more than of yourself? If you are married, are you more understanding of your companion, more anxious to make life easier for that beloved being than for yourself? Do you seek time with your children or your parents in preference to a group of private friends? Have you received all the ordinances of the temple that you can receive—or is that something left for a future day? If so, that day may never come. Does the acquiring of things, when viewed in the brilliant light of reality, sometimes mean more to you than obeying principles known to be true? Do you thirst after righteousness? Or are there times when the allure of stimulating images is allowed to temporarily fill your mind because, after all, they are really not that bad? Do your actions focus on entertainment, immediate satisfaction, self-interests, or personal gratification even though your goals are elsewhere?
Do you find yourself often thinking of all of the things that you wish you had that you’ve not been blessed to have—maybe even very desirable ones like a husband or wife or children, good health, more personal attractiveness, more joy and happiness and peace of mind—while neglecting to recognize all that the Lord has blessed you with already? Do you ever pray to him when your heart is so filled with things to thank him for that you do not feel inclined to ask for anything else?
If you are one of the truly happy individuals who love your Father in Heaven and are grateful for each day’s blessings, reaching out to others in preference to thoughts of self, I rejoice for you. You have found a pattern of life that will ever bring you happiness. I can do little more than encourage you to continue to enjoy a life squarely centered in love of your Father in Heaven, your Savior, and those blessed to be within the circle of your righteous influence. If, however, you are among those who have not found a fullness of joy, even in your determination to live the commandments of the Lord, I pray that there could be something of worth in what we’ve talked about. I pray that you may feel how very much your Father in Heaven loves you and wants you to be happy. I pray that you will be stirred to recognize how infinitely blessed you are to have a Father in Heaven, to have a plan that is perfect, to be able to acquire a clear understanding of what brings happiness in life through pondering, prayer, and application of his teachings. I pray that you may grasp how comforting it is to have a fixed identity that can be counted on forever and to live in an environment where there is unchanging truth and justice tempered by mercy. May you be even more sensitive to the direction the Lord would give you in your personal life so that you may grow in understanding and perfection.
In my dream there was no physical evidence that what my faith led me to do could be done. There was nothing to indicate in any way that what I so much desired could possibly happen. There was nothing that I could see or hear or touch to encourage me. On the contrary, all around me was like a confirmation that I would never see the Jeanene I so much love ever again. Now I recognize that it was my faith in our Father in Heaven and his perfect Son as well as in their holy plan of happiness that freed me from that devastating environment. Fortunately you do not have to live in a world where there is nothing to support you in your convictions. By the choices you make, you can surround yourself with individuals and influences that will constantly aid you in your determination to live the commandments of God. In so doing you will receive the fullness of blessings possible from his comprehensive plan of happiness conditioned to your specific needs. By choosing to continually participate in Church activities you constantly renew influences for good from others with like dreams and the determination to live righteous lives. As you serve others there comes a strengthening of your own capacities. There quietly distills upon you a confirmation that those principles that guide your life taken from the Lord’s commandments are true. Your selfless service to others in your home, in the Church, and in every other walk of life will help verify your confidence in the plan of the Lord. You will know that Satan can have no power over you except as permitted by fear, indolence, disobedience, and appetite.
In contrast, everywhere about you there are individuals that embrace the appealing offerings of Satan as the only real way of life. They do not recognize and many even deny the existence of spiritual guidance or the reality of a loving Father in Heaven. They allow themselves to be convinced that what is really enduring is what they see, touch, smell, hear, and taste. In short, they confine themselves to the world Satan wants them to be confined in. They cut themselves off from the glorious opportunities that their holy Father in Heaven wants them to have. Don’t you make that mistake.
One can center his or her life in falsehood as though it were truth and be increasingly bound by the arch enemy of God while being subtly led from eternal happiness.
Although it may not be a welcome insight, you will grow more rapidly through challenge and trial than from a life of ease and serenity with no disturbing elements. The intent of your Father in Heaven is to lift you from where you are to where he knows you will have eternal purpose and unspeakable happiness. By using the talents, abilities, and latent capacities developed in the premortal existence, he will lead you through growth experiences here on earth. When faced squarely and lived fully without complaint, they will raise you to glorious heights of accomplishment and service. To do all of that during the brief period you are on earth is a tremendous challenge. To accelerate your growth and attainment in his plan for you, sometimes he employs a pattern described on the label of some medicines: “shake well before using.”
Such shaking comes through stirring challenges and stretching tests. You likely have encountered some already. You undoubtedly will encounter others. They may come in the form of an accident, the conferral of a great responsibility, or a move that dramatically changes your surroundings and circle of trusted friends. You may begin educational or professional pursuits that prove far more demanding than anticipated. Perhaps personal illness, handicaps, or the death of a loved one puts seeming barriers in your path. In truth they are more likely giant steps intended to lift you to higher levels of understanding and accomplishment. How these challenges are confronted is critically important to your happiness and personal growth now and forever. When armed with the power that an understanding and application of the teachings of the Lord provide—and with faith in him and in the capacity of the Holy Ghost to guide and fortify—you will overcome those challenges and gain the intended growth and attainment. As you remember that you are an eternal being, with latent capacities derived from divine parentage, you will not allow yourself to be limited by the confining world that Satan would have you believe is all that exists.
How can you see with greater clarity and feel more intensely the help that is available beyond the veil of this physical world? I would remind you of six of the many sources of help.
First: Guiding Principles
Establish a set of guiding principles for your life. You likely have done that. With such standards you will not make the wrong decisions on the basis of the circumstances and the pressures of the day. Principles that you are determined to live by will keep you on track. There is no better set than the teachings of Jesus Christ, his gospel, and the principles that flow from them. As you crystallize guiding principles for life, be honest with yourself and with the Lord. My experience is that most of the tragedy, disappointment, and lack of attainment in life comes when one is dishonest with himself or with the Lord.
Then never compromise your principles, no matter how it seems that circumstance would allow some departure from them. Don’t do it. Rationalization—to take something that is true and try to twist it to justify invalid exceptions—is Satan’s tool to lead you from truth. Difficulties in life start when small deviations from your standards are justified on the basis of circumstance. Don’t let that occur. Strength comes from making no exceptions to your principles. Individuals who live for the moment, who make decisions on the basis of current circumstances or what someone else would lead them to do, eventually are doomed to violate eternal law and to lose the great opportunities of life. They may temporarily leap ahead in a particular aspect of life, but they lose those things that bring happiness in the overall purpose of life. When you center your life in truth, you are assured success and happiness.
Second: Scriptures
The scriptures are an excellent source of understanding and strength. When carefully read, pondered, and the truths revealed applied diligently, they are an important source of worthy motivation and strength. They fortify faith in truth. As you read the scriptures with faith in the Redeemer and confidence and trust in the plan of salvation, you will receive great strength. Your courage to do what you know is right will be enhanced. You will be fortified in the necessary discipline in your life essential to consistent obedience to the teachings of the Lord and continually adherence to the most important priorities of life.
The scriptures give eloquent confirmation of how truth, consistently lived, opens the door to inspiration to know what to do and where you are needed to have your capacities enhanced by divine power. As you reflect upon the examples of how others’ capacities to conquer difficulty, doubt, and seemingly insurmountable challenges were strengthened by the Lord in time of need, there will come a quiet confirmation through the Holy Spirit that their experiences are true. You will know that similar help is available to you on the conditions prescribed by the Lord.
Third: Temple Worship
Another most significant way to enhance your capacity to understand and live eternal truth is through temple worship. Only by receiving the fullness of temple ordinances and living the covenants made there can you enter into the highest degree of glory and receive the greatest measure of happiness eternally. Temple attendance has a calming, settling, consoling influence that distills peace and contentment. The accompanying family history work to identify ancestors to receive those ordinances yields similar blessings.
Fourth: Prayer
You have likely found that prayer can be a source of great comfort, direction, and sustaining power. Too often in the routine of daily life you may be tempted to offer hurried, mechanical communications to the Lord. You know they are of little value. Prayers that bring comfort, solace, direction, and great inner strength are of the variety offered by Enos. His record teaches you the importance of praying with faith in Christ and being diligent in keeping his commandments. These words of Enos show how to pray for something vital:
My faith began to be unshaken in the Lord; and I prayed unto him with many long strugglings for my brethren, the Lamanites.
And it came to pass that after I had prayed and labored with all diligence, the Lord said unto me: I will grant unto thee according to thy desires, because of thy faith. [Enos 1:11–12; emphasis added]
Fifth: Faith
All that I have said is true. May it help you. Yet there will ever be a need for you to walk to the edge of the light of the knowledge and testimony you possess into the twilight area of faith. You will be asked to exercise faith in truths you have not yet come to prove through your own experience or through the sacred witness of the Holy Ghost.
Exercise faith. Faith is abiding trust in truth. Faith leads one to action, to achieve goals even when there is little visible evidence to give hope of success. It is a source of power to know simple yet profoundly important, priceless truths and to have the faith to live them. Enduring happiness is rooted in unchangeable truth.
Sixth: Good Music
Good music, especially sacred music, makes spiritual things more understandable. It is edifying and conducive to understanding. It prepares emotions for response to promptings of the Holy Spirit.
My prayer is that you may be helped in every way to live your life in the world of reality—the Lord’s reality founded on his eternal truth, his plan of happiness—so that you will not be captured by the artificial environment that Satan would try to make you believe is all that exists. The environment of your Heavenly Father leads to celestial happiness. The environment of Satan leads to anguish, hatred, and enduring misery.
Your goals are noble, but you decide by the choices you make each day whether they will be realized or not. A knowledge of truth is of little value unless lived in full measure.
If you think it is too hard, that you are imperfect and will not be able to do it, you are slipping into Satan’s world. Garner strength by remembering that you can do anything the Lord asks you to do. When needed, he will see that you get the required help as you do all you are capable of doing. It is the intent of our Father in Heaven to take you from your current state of progression to the highest levels of attainment in celestial worlds. You don’t know how he can do it, yet by meeting each test you demonstrate your faith in the Savior and in the plan of your holy Father. Though you do not see the end from the beginning, your trust in them will give you the capacity to overcome.
It is a principle of happiness to work hard and to obey willingly the principles of truth, confident that the Lord will open doors of help when needed. Our Father in Heaven will not violate his plan. He will not give eternal blessings to those who want them but have not paid the price in repentance (when needed) and consistent obedience. All of the richest blessings Father in Heaven has in store are within the reach of every individual who submits to the will of the Father and consistently lives his commandments and receives all of the ordinances and covenants he is able to have in this life.
This dream helped me understand as never before what hopeless means. How grateful I am that in the Savior there is absolute surety of eternal life when we pay the price of obedience and receive the necessary ordinances and keep the covenants made therein. Our faith in justice and in mercy and in Jesus Christ and our confidence in the perfect Father lay a foundation for happiness in this life and provide assurance of eternal happiness.
Although I have with significant effort tried to make as clear to you as my dream did to me the difference between Satan’s plan of entrapment and our Father’s plan of happiness, I do not feel that I have succeeded. I therefore pray that as you ponder the things we have discussed that the Holy Ghost will bear witness to you of the truths I have tried to emphasize.
For our time together to have enduring benefit, you need to do something with the insights shared. You may already have begun. Make the commitments you are impressed to make with the Lord and keep them.
All of what we have discussed is true because you have a Father in Heaven who loves you very much and wants your eternal happiness and also because you have a Savior and Redeemer. He willingly took upon himself the consequences of all the transgressions of the Father’s children that have been or ever will be committed. As Jehovah he understood what his Father asked him to do, as only a god could. Yet it was through this experience and those that followed—culminating in his giving of his life, being laid in the tomb, and his glorious resurrection—that he earned the right to judge each of Father in Heaven’s children according to how they use this time of probation here on earth. Although he committed absolutely no transgression, he allowed the consequences of all others’ transgressions to come upon him and thereby learned what, as a Savior, he needed to know and feel. We cannot comprehend, we cannot appreciate adequately the price he paid nor what this selfless, sinless, perfect being has done for us in total obedience to his Father’s will.
I solemnly witness that God our Father lives, that his plan is perfect. I bear testimony that as you raise your voice in prayer, those prayers are heard and can best be answered when they come from a broken heart and a contrite spirit. I know that someday I will be judged on how well I testified of my certain knowledge of Jesus Christ. Therefore I solemnly witness that because of the Atonement of the Savior, the plan of happiness will succeed and Satan’s plan is doomed to failure. I know that Jesus Christ lives. I solemnly witness with every capacity that I possess that he lives and that he loves you and will help you find happiness. I say this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
Richard G. Scott was a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints when this devotional address was given at Brigham Young University on 19 August 1997 during Campus Education Week.
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RELATED TOPICS Happiness |
Feminist icon Gloria Steinem talks revolution
Feminist icon will speak in June at Lehigh Valley Women's Summit.
"I'm just an excuse for people to get together and discover they don't need me," the feminist icon said.
Gloria Steinem is quick to downplay her role in next month's Lehigh Valley Women's Summit, where successful women will flock to Cedar Crest College in Allentown to talk about the future of the women's rights movement.
Her fans would disagree.
The 78-year-old writer, activist and lecturer is one of the most recognizable faces of feminism — founder of Ms. Magazine and the Women's Media Center, undercover Playboy bunny and one of the most influential women in America.
When she visits the Valley on June 7, in a keynote address sponsored by the Greater Lehigh Valley Chamber of Commerce, the United Way of the Greater Lehigh Valley and Cedar Crest College, she'll talk about "The Longest Revolution" — one, she's quick to say, that is far from over.
"Movements need to last a century to really be absorbed into society," she said.
While basic issues of gender equality now have majority support and legal powers needed to enforce them, there's still a lot of ground to cover, she said.
"Women are still caring for children much more than men are. We still don't have equal pay. We are the only modern democracy without a national system of child care. We see some ills that have expanded — sex trafficking, labor trafficking — within this country and globally," Steinem said.
She's amazed at how some of her audiences have turned her words into actions. In Texas, when a female banking executive asked how she could help the equality movement, Steinem advised her to start a credit union, which can often help fledging organizations representing the minority.
Five years later, she learned this woman created what became one of the largest credit unions in the state.
A New York resident, Steinem is still touring, lecturing, writing and speaking out on women's rights issues — and there's never a dearth of topics, she said.
She says the recently hyped, Republican-led "War on Women" — with politicians and pundits criticizing the use of contraception, funding for Planned Parenthood and domestic violence protections — isn't new.
"It's been that way for a very long time and it's not just Republicans," she said.
What's changed is the insistence that politicians adhere strictly to certain party positions.
Now, Ronald Reagan or George H.W. Bush wouldn't get the party's nomination — the former was pro-choice and pro-immigrant, while the latter supported Planned Parenthood, she said.
"Women didn't leave the Republican Party, the Republican Party left women," she said. "Now the gender gap is bigger than it has ever been and the race gap is even bigger." |
There is a lot of confusing reporting on the water footprint of food. Many visualizations suffer from design shortcomings that present a distorted view of agricultural water footprint, compromising the public’s ability to make informed choices in response to water scarcity issues.
The Los Angeles Times recently ran an interactive visualization of food water footprint on their website as part of their drought coverage. This visualization got a lot of attention, and was shared widely on social media. Despite its popularity, this visualization has several shortcomings that distort the water footprint of food.
With such a tremendous amount of water at stake, it is important to consider representations of agricultural water footprint critically. In this article, we’ll discuss shortcomings of this water footprint analysis, why these problems matter, and how professional water footprint researchers address these issues.
The Los Angeles Times visualization
The Los Angeles Times ran an interactive feature on their website, along with this summary image, as a way to explore agricultural water footprint:
It’s important to focus on agricultural water use, rather than household water use, since the vast majority of our water use is agricultural. In that sense, the Los Angeles Times has chosen an appropriate focus for their visualization.
At first glance, the graphic seems plausible. Meat is generally water-intensive, whereas fruits and vegetables are comparatively water efficient. This aligns with ecological consensus, as well as common sense — animal foods are produced by animals that consume plant foods, and this conversion is inefficient, so we’d expect animal foods to be more water intensive than the plant foods that animals are fed.
However upon closer inspection, the graphic leads the reader to some strange conclusions that might arouse our suspicion:
Lentils here are more water-intensive than pork.
Eggs have a lower water footprint than staple grains.
Soy milk has a higher water footprint than dairy milk, by a factor of two or three.
We should be concerned that any animal products outperform staple grains, since farmed animals are primarily grain fed. Unless something strange is going on, this would imply a feed conversion efficiency of over 100%, violating the first law of thermodynamics.(2)
A reader encountering this visualization is likely to come away with a distorted sense of food water footprint, that differs from consensus among peer-reviewed research on the subject. In this article, we will explore some of the distortions at play in this visualization.
Comparing Wet and Dry Weights
One of the most common problems in water footprint visualizations is the choice of weight, rather than nutritional value, as the metric by which foods are compared. This is an easy mistake to make, however it confers a subtle bias that has dramatic effects on water footprint analysis.
Using weight to compare foods is especially problematic when comparing foods that are weighed dry with foods that are weighed wet. Many of the plant foods with a surprisingly high water footprint in the LA Times graphic, such as chickpeas, lentils, rice and pasta, are weighed dry. Meat and animal products are almost always weighed in their fully hydrated form.
To illustrate how this affects water efficiency analysis, consider lentils. Rehydrated lentils weigh about three times as much as dried lentils. If we measure water efficiency by water-per-weight, as the Los Angeles Times graphic does, the hydrated lentils would register as three times as efficient as dry lentils by this metric.
Since adding water to dry lentils does not create more food, so the fact that our water efficiency metric measures wet lentils as so much more water efficient is a weakness in our metric. The fact that this metric is so easily manipulated should lead us to think critically about our choice of units, and question whether weight is the best measure of food value.
A more useful approach would be to measure food by calories. If we compute water efficiency as the amount of water needed to produce a calorie of food, many anomalous results in the visualization disappear:
Using weight to compare the water efficiency of these foods, rather than nutritional value, biases this visualization in favor of heavier, wet-shipping animal foods, and against dry-shipping foods such as chickpeas and lentils.
Unreasonable Comparisons
If the graph is useful to the reader (or “actionable”, as we say in business analytics), it is because choosing foods with lower water footprints would have an effect of conserving water. Comparing water efficiency in this way suggests that equal-weight portions of food represent a reasonable consumer choice.
To explore this, let’s consider lettuce, a more efficient food on this graph, and lentils, a less efficient food on this graph. One kg of lettuce is about 150 calories. One kg of (dehydrated) lentils is 3530 calories. This does not represent a reasonable consumer choice — substituting 1 kg of lentils for 1 kg of lettuce increases the calorie content by a factor of 23, a difference of almost two full days of food for an adult.
This graphic invites this type of unreasonable comparison between vastly different amounts of food. This is a shortcoming of its design, and undermines its ability to guide readers to useful decisions about water efficiency.
Uncritical Analysis
The Los Angeles Times’ interactive feature suggests that the producers of this analysis are not aware that the water footprints they give for pulses correspond to dry pulses.
The water efficiency figures they present are consistent with dried legumes (3). However when they visualize portions of food, they picture a reasonable serving of rehydrated prepared legumes.
Consider their visualization of chickpeas, at the default portion size:
This water footprint figure corresponds to 8 oz (226 grams) of dry chickpeas. That’s 822 calories, or about 3 cups of chickpeas. The image appears to represent at most a cup of chickpeas. For comparison — a cup of chickpeas has a more modest footprint of 203 gallons.
It is disappointing that the authors of the Los Angeles Times visualization do not appear to have understood which of the water footprints they were working with represented dry weights, and how this affected the water footprint values they were presenting. This is especially unfortunate given that the papers they are citing gave the researchers’ interpretation of the data, and made a clear case for the nutritional water efficiency of plant foods. The fact that the figures they had taken from these papers painted a different picture should have invited skepticism.
Soy Milk
A related point of confusion in this visualization is soy milk. According to the Los Angeles Times, soy milk’s water footprint is 2-3 times that of dairy milk. This is a surprising conclusion, since we expect animal foods to be less efficient than the grains and soy that food animals are fed. This conclusion also contradicts research on the topic, including a paper coauthored by Arjen Hoekstra, one of the authors of the paper that the Los Angeles Times is citing (5).
The explanation for this again comes down to confusion involving water weight. The water footprint given in Mekonnen & Hoekstra 2010 (4) is for the soy component of soy milk, rather than soy milk itself. Since soy milk is composed of 10% soy solids and 90% water, the actual water footprint of soy milk is an order of magnitude smaller.
A detailed analysis of the water footprint of soy milk in comparison to dairy milk can be found in Ercin 2012 (5). In it, they find that the water footprint of soy milk is less than a third that of dairy milk.
The fact that Mekonnen & Hoekstra 2010 gives a water footprint of soy milk solids, rather than soy milk itself, is an easy mistake to make, and I can understand the Los Angeles Times making this error. However I think that a critical consideration of this data would have revealed that the conclusion their visualization suggests disagrees with that of the authors whose work they are citing. This should have invited some skepticism about their interpretation of these numbers.
Update: The Los Angeles Times has issued a correction to their interactive feature acknowledging their erroneous figure for soy milk water footprint, and giving a correct figure.
Chickpeas and Lentils
The most water-intensive plant foods in the Los Angeles Times visualization are chickpeas and lentils. The visualization suggests that these are the most water-intensive foods after only beef and lamb. Even when analyzed as water per calorie, the water footprint for US chickpeas is high — only moderately more efficient than pork. This might lead one to wonder why more attention is not paid to the water footprint of pulses, rather than animal foods. This merits some examination.
The relative water inefficiency for chickpeas and lentils is specific to the US, and global water footprint analyses for these crops shows them to be water efficient. US chickpea water consumption is dominated by grey water footprint (82% of the total footprint), which corresponds to pollution and water contamination (4). At this time I have not looked into why US chickpea farming would have a greater pollution burden than the global average, but this is not an inherent inefficiency. Chickpeas may be a commodity, like rice, that can be grown more efficiently in some climates than others. If so, then importing chickpeas, rather than producing them domestically, may be a wiser use of the world’s freshwater resources.
However highlighting chickpeas and lentils’ water footprint as prominently as the Los Angeles Times visualization does is inappropriate given the scale of US production of these crops. These crops occupy a trivial amount of US farmland, and account for a negligible amount of agricultural water use.
Chickpeas occupy some 215,100 acres in the US, comprising less than 0.07% of total US farmland. Only 4% of chickpea farmland is in California, accounting for 0.26% of Californian cropland (6). Compare this with the 46% of Californian cropland used to grow hay and other forage, or the 12% used to grow corn for silage, both used exclusively for food animals (6).
Lentils make up a similarly small fraction of US farmland — less than 0.09% — however unlike chickpeas, the USDA / NASS 2014 Crop Production Summary does not record any lentil production at all in California, making lentils an even less appropriate focus for water footprint analysis accompanying articles on California’s drought (6).
Chickpeas and lentils are also an inappropriate focus at a national level, as the US allocates less than 0.1% of farmland to these crops, while allocating 18% of farmland to hay and 27% of farmland to soy (used primarily for animal feed), for instance. (6)
The summary accompanying the Los Angeles Times visualization reads:
So what are some thirsty foods? Beef, pork, lamb, chickpeas, lentils, peas, goat, mangoes and asparagus.
The prominent placement of chickpeas and lentils in the list of water-intensive foods leaves the reader with the impression that these foods contribute meaningfully to agricultural water use in either the US or in California. By placing unwarranted emphasis on chickpeas and lentils, the Los Angeles Times compromises the ability of its readership to make prudent dietary choices.
How the professionals do it
Measure food by nutritional value
The problems above mostly derive from using food weight to measure water efficiency. These problems have a simple solution — measuring food by nutritional content, rather than by weight. Water efficiency then becomes a measure of “nutritional value per drop” as Hoekstra suggests (7, 8), measured in calories per unit water (or alternatively protein per unit water).
Water content of foods becomes irrelevant, and our measurements are not biased toward wet or dry foods. Graphs of water-per-calorie set up comparisons that are relevant to real-world choices between equicaloric portions of food.
If we use a water-per-calorie approach, meat’s water footprint grows, vegetable proteins like beans and lentils’ footprints are reduced, staple grains have the lowest water footprint (with potatoes lowest of all), and fruits and vegetables are in between. This is how professional ecologists represent their water footprint data.
This is the form of water footprint data that is most relevant to the dietary choices we face. Water footprint data in this form bring clarity to ecologists’ claims that animal foods are uniquely water inefficient.
Note that it was not necessary to mine the literature to find this graph. This graph comes from the very paper that the Los Angeles Times visualization is citing.
Here is my own attempt at visualizing similar data, from a post on California’s water restrictions:
This graph communicates more effectively why ecologists advocate reducing animal products as a way to reduce water footprint. It is also a more useful graph, since the comparisons it implies are reasonable, and the substitutions a reader might consider in response are fair, in that they are calorie-adjusted.
Make reasonable comparisons
Arjen Hoekstra, one of the authors of the water footprint papers that the Los Angeles Times visualization cites, also coauthored a paper that discusses replacing animal foods with vegan foods directly. Ercin and Hoekstra choose two common vegan alternative foods, and compare them directly with animal foods that they are most likely to replace. They compare dairy milk with soy milk, and a veggie burger with a conventional burger.
When compared in a straightforward way against reasonably analogous foods (in terms of nutritional and culinary role, and with comparable portions), the results are very clear — plant foods are a much more efficient use of resources, and water in particular, than the animal foods they are likely to replace. Soy burgers use less water than conventional burgers by a factor of ten, and soy milk uses less water than dairy milk by a factor of three (5).
Critically examining distortion
The shortcomings of the Los Angeles Times analysis are understandable, and are likely to arise from naive design and incomplete understanding, rather than willful distortion. However their willingness to accept results that should have been surprising may best be explained by bias.
For instance, when the Los Angeles Times came across data that seemed to suggest that soy milk had three times the water footprint of dairy milk, they published it. When A Vegan Perspective came across the same data, we contacted the authors to ask why this figure differs so substantially from one of the author’s other papers comparing soy and dairy specifically. (The authors were very helpful, and explained that the Mekonnen & Hoekstra figure was for the dry soy component of soy milk, rather than for fully constituted soy milk.)
Why would these responses be different? It’s possible that I have spent more time with water footprint data than had the authors of the Los Angeles Times visualization. However I find this to be an inadequate explanation. As journalists, the Los Angeles Times had the ability to contact experts, including the study’s authors.
I think the difference is more likely to be explained by bias. Comparing dry plant foods with wet animal foods may go unchallenged because it privileges animal foods, which most people are motivated to justify continuing to eat. Similarly, typical omnivores consume more dairy than soy milk, and might not be motivated to challenge distortions that privilege their consumption patterns.
One might counter that my own vegan bias explains the difference in response. This essentially saying the same thing. There is not a neutral and a biased position here; there are two different biases at play. This difference of perspective is important to consider given that one of these positions dominates the public conversation, supported by 97% of the population.
The willingness of journalists and the public to accept surprising results in favor of animal food, contrary to the researchers’ own interpretations of their data, may be best explained by bias.
Conclusion
We should pay attention to how researchers interpret their own data before performing our own analysis. With that in mind, let’s consider Arjen Hoekstra’s editorial on water footprint and animal foods in Environmental Research Letters:
We know from land, energy and climate studies that the livestock sector plays a substantial role in deforestation, biodiversity loss and climate change. More recently it has become clear that livestock also significantly contributes to humanity’s water footprint, water pollution and water scarcity. Jalava et al (Environ. Res. Lett.) show that considerable water savings can be achieved by reducing the fraction of animal products in our diet. The findings are in line with a few earlier studies on water use in relation to diets. As yet, this insight has not been taken forward in national water policies, which focus on ‘sustainable production’ rather than ‘sustainable consumption’. Most studies and practical efforts focus on increasing water-use efficiency in crop production (more crop per drop) and feed conversion efficiency in the livestock sector (more meat with less feed). Water use efficiency in the food system as a whole (more nutritional value per drop) remains a blind spot. (7)
Incremental improvements in production efficiency is unlikely to overcome the 20x difference in water footprint between staple grains and beef. Rather than hoping that a technological breakthrough will solve our ecological problems, we should choose a diet that can reduce our water footprint with current technology, and focus our research on improving the efficiency of plant foods.
I believe that a cultural bias favoring animal foods best explains our reluctance to embrace this research and to allow science to guide water conservation policy.
Related reading
Arjen Hoekstra has two excellent editorials on this topic: A New York Times editorial written for a general audience. An editorial in Environmental Research Letters written for a research audience.
Notes & References
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In this animation of Earth Observatory images, hundreds of millions of tons of dust are picked up from the deserts of Africa and blown across the Atlantic Ocean each year. (NASA Earth Observatory)
Leave your car parked outside in Miami for too many days in August, and you're likely to see a fine film of orange powder coating the windshield.
It's dust — African dust — carried thousands of miles across the Atlantic to parking lots in Florida.
This phenomenon, known as the Saharan Air Layer, brings several hundred million tons of dust to the Americas each year. It helps build beaches in the Caribbean and carries nutrients that fertilize the Amazon rainforest. The dust is also thought to help suppress hurricanes along the coast.
It has been happening for thousands of years, but in the past few decades, scientists have become concerned about the effects of this dust on coral reef ecosystems in the Caribbean. Studies have linked the dust plumes to toxic "red tides" — huge algae blooms that poison fish and trigger skin and breathing problems in people. There's also some evidence suggesting that African microbes may be hitching rides on the dust and poisoning corals on the other side of the sea.
[This toxin could be causing deadly brain damage in sea lions — and we might be to blame]
But what about the bacteria that already live in the ocean? In a study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists examined how one genus of bacteria, a pathogen called Vibrio, responded to the influx of dust that rains down on the Caribbean in the late summer months.
The answer: With gusto.
"Bacteria are really the first rapid responders to what's coming in," said William Landing, professor of Earth, ocean and atmospheric science at Florida State University and a co-author of the study. Vibrio bacteria are able to snatch up nutrients blown in with the dust before other microorganisms.
On a heavy dust day, the bacteria immediately start capitalizing on the sudden influx of iron, which is otherwise hard to come by in the ocean. Within 24 hours, they grow into vast blooms. Before the dust, Vibrio bacteria may represent 1 percent of all microbes in the water, but that proportion swells to nearly 20 percent afterward.
"A lot of work has gone into trying to understand what happens to a marine ecosystem under a dust event, but most of that work has been on phytoplankton and algae" — the culprits behind the red tides — said Erin Lipp, a microbiologist at the University of Georgia who was also part of the study. "But no one has really looked at how bacteria might be responding to the dust."
[After mass extinctions, the meek (fish) inherit the earth]
This study provides a model of how bacteria respond to the influx of dust, she said. And that will let Lipp and her colleagues start asking the big questions that naturally come next:
"What does it mean?" she said. "Does it help or hinder primary productivity? What does it mean when you have these blooms of vibrios that could potentially be pathogenic to humans and corals?"
Landing said it's too soon to say whether the bacteria blooms are good for the ecosystem. In fact, he resists the urge to qualify them as "good" or "bad."
"It's not 'bad' or 'good'; it's just a component of the nutrient cycle that they’re sitting in the middle of," he said.
Florida State doctoral student Alina Ebling (left) collects samples of the thin marine microlayer with University of Georgia post-doctoral researcher Jason Westrich. (Photo by Neil Wyatt)
Although humans are not likely to want to go swimming or eat fish from water with Vibrio blooms (the bacteria can cause diarrhea, wound infections and other unpleasantness), its presence may be beneficial in some cases. Landing pointed out that the bacteria blooms may help feed phytoplankton, photosynthetic microbes that absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
On the other hand, Vibrio bacteria are toxic to the Caribbean's already-stressed corals, which we would very much like to protect. It can contribute to bleaching and destroy tissue, and although Vibrio bacteria are usually never present in large enough numbers to pose a major threat, under the right environmental conditions (such as those created by a dust-borne surge in iron) it will overwhelm reefs' defenses.
Gene Shinn, a retired U.S. Geological Survey scientist now based at the University of South Florida, said he was "delighted" to see Lipp and Landing's study.
Shinn, who was not involved in the study but has worked with some of its authors in the past, has been sounding the alarm on African dust in the Caribbean for more than a decade, ever since he noticed that the first major Caribbean coral die-off began in 1983 — the same year that a catastrophic drought struck North Africa, turning acres of farmland there into dusty desert. In a later study, Shinn showed that Aspergillus, a soil fungus that doesn't reproduce in sea water but is endemic to Africa, was killing off Caribbean sea fans.
The bacteria blooms, he said, are further evidence that African dust is something to concern marine scientists. Exactly how worried they should be is still unclear.
"Bacteria have always been there," Landing said. "It's only if we get them more frequently that it's going to cause a problem."
Much of that depends on how climate change affects the dust in the Saharan Air Layer, and the science on that is still unsettled. On one hand, desertification of the Sahel, the arid transitional region at the edge of the Sahara that provides much of the dust, could increase the amount of dust in the air. But other studies have suggested that climate change will cause that dust to linger over Africa, rather than crossing the Atlantic, because of changes to regional wind patterns.
"That's something we're still looking into," Lipp said. "This study was about homing in on what's happening."
Now, she added, the goal is to figure out what's going to happen next.
Read more:
Scientists say there’s basically no way the Great Barrier Reef was bleached naturally
Why dead coral reefs could mark the beginning of ‘dangerous’ climate change
Dust blows in from the ends of the Earth, even beyond
A NASA video shows how dust leaves the Sahara and floats to the Amazon rainforest
How the Sahara Desert is helping make it tough to breathe in London |
We are living in a “post-truth” world. In fact, Oxford Dictionaries crowned the compound adjective the 2016 word of the year.
Here’s how the dictionary used the word in a sentence: “In this era of post-truth politics, it’s easy to cherry-pick data and come to whatever conclusion you desire.” It would appear we’ve moved on from the “truthiness” of 2006 to post-truth.
There’s the picked-over discussions over fake news on Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg said the company’s working on it. A fake-news writer told us why he peddles it. And The New York Times warned how all of this will come back to haunt traditional media.
Look no further than LibertyWritersNews.com, a fake-new site The Washington Post profiled over the weekend.
By Monday, LibertyWritersNews responded with its own article, saying the Post was “Just Caught in HUGE Fake News Lie!!” (Editor’s note: LibertyWritersNews has since taken down the story.)
Meanwhile, President-elect Donald Trump, who has been “nearly invisible” to the public, has largely left journalists to speculate — often incorrectly — over his picks for Cabinet.
Is it Nikki Haley? Is it Jeb Hensarling? Who knows? Guess Who!
We invite you to distract yourself from the guesswork and falsehoods with five important stories you won’t find on World News Daily Report, one of many sites that traffic in fake news.
1. Police deploy water cannons and tear gas against Standing Rock protesters
During an hourslong standoff Sunday night, law enforcement officials used water hoses and tear gas against activists protesting the Dakota Access oil pipeline.
Protesters filmed the encounter, posting the live-streamed video on Facebook and Twitter. Across several videos, activists can be heard yelling “No DAPL!” (Dakota Access pipeline) and “Who do you protect? Who do you serve?”
#1NTV #1N #NODAPL Posted by Cempoalli Twenny on Sunday, November 20, 2016
Although there are discrepancies over how the incident started, a spokeswoman for the Morton County Sheriff’s Department confirmed that law enforcement used water as “crowd control.”
The sheriff’s office said around 400 protesters were involved and called it an “ongoing riot.” Dallas Goldtooth of the Indigenous Environmental Network said the water cannons were an “excessive and potentially deadly use of force.”
Read the full story here.
Why it’s important
Since last spring, protests against the pipeline have swelled at the construction site in rural North Dakota, but also across the country. Now, protesters must prepare for winter.
In October, journalist Jenni Monet, who has been closely covering the protests from the ground, said there was a noticeable increase of “intensity” with the law enforcement presence there.
Reinforcements had come from other states to support the sheriff’s office, while protest camps expanded to welcome people who supported the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.
The sheriff’s office told The Bismarck Tribune that the overnight clash continued into Monday morning, adding that protesters threw rocks and burning logs at the police.
Jade Begay, an IEN spokeswoman told The Guardian that more than 160 people were injured and another seven were transported to a hospital for treatment.
At least one person was arrested, The Associated Press reported. The sheriff’s office also told Monet that it hasn’t received reports that any of the protesters were injured.
2. An NSA hub code-named “TITANPOINTE” resides in the middle of Manhattan
Known as the “Long Lines Building,” the windowless Brutalist building pictured above has been a fixture in the New York skyline since its completion in 1974.
The 550-foot building, located on 33 Thomas Street in Lower Manhattan, was originally created to house AT&T phone lines and withstand a nuclear blast.
Last year, the Times and ProPublica noted the close relationship between the telecommunications giant and the National Security Agency, with AT&T granting the intelligence agency access to billions of emails on its domestic networks, among other scores of data.
An article published jointly by The New York Times and ProPublica reports that AT&T demonstrated an “extreme willingness to help” the NSA, according to documents from Edward Snowden. Among other revelations, the article reports that AT&T forwarded a million emails and handed over a billion cell phone records to the NSA. Pro-Publica reporter Jeff Larson joins Hari Sreenivasan to discuss.
However, The Intercept reported that the building’s primary purpose appeared to be “one of the most important NSA surveillance sites on U.S. soil.”
Why it’s important
The Intercept said the conclusion that the building was an NSA hub was gleaned from interviews, public records and documents provided by Edward Snowden, the former intelligence contractor who leaked information about the agency’s vast surveillance programs in 2013.
Their investigation, complemented by a 10-minute documentary film called “Project X,” revealed how NSA travel guides instructed their employees and contractors to coordinate a visit to the building, whose code name is “TITANPOINTE.” “Project X” was how the original architect referred to the building in his drawings.
An excerpt from Henrik Moltke and Laura Poitras’s “Project X.
“When traveling to TITANPOINTE, NSA employees are told to hire a ‘cover vehicle’ through the FBI, especially if they are transporting equipment to the site,” The Intercept reported. “In order to keep their true identities secret while visiting, agency employees are instructed not to wear any clothing displaying NSA badges or insignia,” their report added.
The Intercept, however, stopped short of saying that the leaked documents proved that the NSA was able to control or directly access AT&T networks, “but they do make clear that the agency has placed its own equipment inside TITANPOINTE to tap into phone calls and internet data.”
An AT&T spokesman told the Times that the company does not grant government agencies control of its networks to collect information from its customers.
3. India’s surprise decision over the rupee creates chaos
Almost two weeks ago, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced during a televised address that the country was discontinuing the circulation of 500- and 1,000-rupee notes in an effort to stop counterfeit money.
“Black money and corruption are the biggest obstacles in eradicating poverty,” Modi is quoted as saying in a Reuters story.
The surprise move from the prime minister provoked a mad dash of hundreds of thousands of people to line up outside ATMs and banks wanting to replace their now-banned currency with the new 500- and 2,000-rupee notes.
“By making high denomination bank notes worthless overnight, the government hoped that those who had black money in this form would not be able to convert it into physical assets like gold,” BBC explained.
The Times reported that nearly a third of all business in the country — from real estate to wedding services — rely on black money.
Why it’s important
The discontinued rupees accounted for more than 80 percent of the country’s circulated currency, Reuters reported. The lines also remained exceptionally long days after the initial announcement. People have until late December to exchange their rupee notes, but many of those affected said the government’s decision was a long-term one that didn’t keep regular people in mind.
“I have three 500-rupee notes and only about 40 rupees (about 60 cents) in small change,” student Ankit Saini told AP shortly after the announcement. “I can either buy lunch or a bus ticket home … But what will I do tomorrow?” he said.
There have also been dozens of reported “demonetization deaths” in the fallout of the decision, but many others have been difficult to verify.
Last week, one Indian doctor held a news conference to say that reports of him dying of a heart attack amid the country’s cash crisis were wrong, BBC reported.
4. A look at the front lines of the fight to retake Mosul from ISIS
The mission to regain control of Mosul from Islamic State militants has now entered its sixth week.
In October, Iraqi and Kurdish forces, supported by airstrikes from the U.S.-led coalition, launched an offensive in the hopes of wrestling control of Iraq’s second-largest city from ISIS, which had two years to advance its battle strategy.
In her report last week, special correspondent Jane Ferguson documented what she saw while shadowing Iraqi special forces over several days at the front lines. Ferguson said ISIS has resorted to deadly warfare techniques like car bombs, IEDs and planted bombs in an attempt to slow the army’s advance into the city.
As the mission to retake Mosul rages on, Iraqi forces and their allies must deal with extremely deadly warfare techniques, including car bombs, explosives hidden in underground tunnels and booby-traps. Special correspondent Jane Ferguson reports from Mosul.
“The most dangerous thing ISIS is using is the car bomb,” Maj. Ziad Al Gubere told the NewsHour. “Also they have a new style, using drone-carried bombs. They can control them with the remote. They use a small amount of explosives. They target our cars and groups of us.
Why it’s important
The Iraqi Special Operations Forces, elite troops trained at an American base, are “not just the tip of the spear for the Iraqi forces [in Mosul], but the dominant group fighting block by block in the city,” NPR’s Alice Fordham reported.
As one Iraqi special forces commander explained to NPR, once cities started to succumb to ISIS control, it was these elite troops who were asked to help out. But these soldiers weren’t originally trained to do day-to-day battles. They were meant to target ISIS leaders.
Commander Major General Maan al Saadi said his men were the “only force capable of standing in the face of the enemy.”
They’re also a “very finite resource,” Fordham added.
5. Fact Check > Fake News
Snopes.com, once the premiere spot to debunk urban myths, has expanded its scope the past few years to become a fake-checking operation, equipped with a news section that tackles conspiracy theories, email hoaxes and fake photos, including one that purportedly showed Donald Trump with “no wig or make-up.” (That one was false, by the way.)
The website is owned and run by David and Barbara Mikkelson, who started the site when the internet was still in its infancy in the 1990s, before search engines were a go-to source for debunking.
Why it’s important
David Mikkelson told The Washington Post that Snopes.com largely began when he started collecting write-ups over Disney-related hoaxes. One entry from 1998 asked whether a disgruntled employee drew a penis amid the golden spires of the castle in the background on “The Little Mermaid” VHS cover. (Short answer: Yes, but it was accidental and not intentional. Thus, the rumor was deemed false.)
As for politics, it “wasn’t until the 2000 election when I saw the first political pieces come out that lent themselves to debunking,” David Mikkelson said.
“Technology changes, but human nature doesn’t,” he said. “People want to believe the same things for the same reasons, and spread the same kind of stories. It’s just, instead of talking over their back fence, they’re on Facebook or whatever, and it’s still the same function.”
After years of myth-busting, eventually an email chain would surely end up targeting the website itself. In 2009, a widely circulated email chain claimed that the Mikkelsons were “very Democratic” proprietors who pushed a liberal agenda.
But another fact-checker, FactCheck.org, took up that claim. The verdict? The so-called expose contained falsehoods.
“We reviewed a sampling of their political offerings, including some on rumors about George W. Bush, Sarah Palin and Barack Obama, and we found them to be utterly poker-faced,” FactCheck.org wrote.
According to public records, David Mikkelson never stated a political affiliation. Also, Barbara Mikkelson is a Canadian citizen.
“You’d be hard-pressed to find two more apolitical people,” David Mikkelson told FactCheck.org.
In a column on the Post website, Snopes.com’s managing editor Brooke Binkowski said the website is a source for people to do their own research.
“We don’t pretend to be, nor do we want to be, the final word on any subject,” she wrote. “We would like to be a starting point, though. In cases where clickability and virality trump fact, we feel that knowledge is the best antidote to fear.”
Now, read the story of Kyle.
READ MORE: 5 important stories that got lost in the Clinton and Trump election chatter |
By By Marcus Hondro Apr 9, 2016 in Health An organization representing pharmacies in Canada issued a press release Thursday saying it believes it is the best option to distribute medical marijuana in the country. A few years long ago the very same group said it did not want to do so. Pharmacies want pot The Canadian Pharmacist Association (CPhA) represents independent pharmacies and provincial and national pharmaceutical groups across the country. The association has previously voiced a reluctance to have its member dispense medical marijuana for a variety of reasons. Its stance was the opposite of Shopper's Drug Mart in Canada — that chain has wanted for some time to take part in dispensing medical marijuana. The CPhA has now joined it in that position, citing "patient safety" as its reason for doing so. “Pharmacists are medication experts and play a critical role in the management and monitoring of medication to ensure safe and optimal use,” a “And it is patient safety that is ultimately at the heart of CPhA’s decision to update its position on the role of pharmacists in the management and dispensing of medical marijuana,” he added. Prior to this the organization balked at its member pharmacies taking part in the medical marijuana industry because it felt not enough was known about the effects of marijuana as a medication. It was also concerned about its pharmacies becoming a target for criminals looking to steal pot. Licensed producers Not surprisingly, those already licensed to distribute medical marijuana (licensed producers) are leery of the CPhA announcement. Denis Arsenault of "Their statement is a bit of a disservice to the reality that the LPs are currently servicing 50,000 customers across the country who are extremely happy with the service they are getting from our staff," Arsenault told "It's ironic because they wanted no part in being a stakeholder in the MMPR (2013 regulations)," he said. "The licensed producers have made investments with people and training, and now the pharmacy is saying they're the only ones who can handle this. "We've lived it on the front lines for three years," he added. "We've put the protocols in place. We've put the training in place. With the various strains and symptoms, there is a tremendous learning curve to be able to be trained to serve a patient properly." Arsenault went on to say there is room for current LPs and pharmacies in the dispensing business and that his hope was that the government keep the consumer in mind above all else. There has been no official reaction from the federal government to the announcement from CPhA. The Canadian Pharmacist Association (CPhA) represents independent pharmacies and provincial and national pharmaceutical groups across the country. The association has previously voiced a reluctance to have its member dispense medical marijuana for a variety of reasons.Its stance was the opposite of Shopper's Drug Mart in Canada — that chain has wanted for some time to take part in dispensing medical marijuana. The CPhA has now joined it in that position, citing "patient safety" as its reason for doing so.“Pharmacists are medication experts and play a critical role in the management and monitoring of medication to ensure safe and optimal use,” a press release Thursday from Phil Emberley, CPhA's Director of Professional Affairs, said.“And it is patient safety that is ultimately at the heart of CPhA’s decision to update its position on the role of pharmacists in the management and dispensing of medical marijuana,” he added.Prior to this the organization balked at its member pharmacies taking part in the medical marijuana industry because it felt not enough was known about the effects of marijuana as a medication. It was also concerned about its pharmacies becoming a target for criminals looking to steal pot.Not surprisingly, those already licensed to distribute medical marijuana (licensed producers) are leery of the CPhA announcement. Denis Arsenault of OraniGram , a licensed grower of organic medical marijuana, spoke to Civilized, an online medical marijuana news site."Their statement is a bit of a disservice to the reality that the LPs are currently servicing 50,000 customers across the country who are extremely happy with the service they are getting from our staff," Arsenault told Civilized "It's ironic because they wanted no part in being a stakeholder in the MMPR (2013 regulations)," he said. "The licensed producers have made investments with people and training, and now the pharmacy is saying they're the only ones who can handle this."We've lived it on the front lines for three years," he added. "We've put the protocols in place. We've put the training in place. With the various strains and symptoms, there is a tremendous learning curve to be able to be trained to serve a patient properly."Arsenault went on to say there is room for current LPs and pharmacies in the dispensing business and that his hope was that the government keep the consumer in mind above all else. There has been no official reaction from the federal government to the announcement from CPhA. More about medicial marijuana, medical pot, canadian pharmacies medicial marijuana medical pot canadian pharmacies |
Feds May Require Cars to Talk to Each Other to Avoid Crashes Federal Ruling Is Expected in the 'Coming Weeks'
Federal officials will decided in the "coming weeks" whether to require new cars to include smart technology that would alert drivers of a coming crash, even in vehicles that are two or three cars away.
The vehicle-to-vehicle -- or V2V -- technology has undergone testing in recent years and has already been installed in some cars that are on the road.
A recent study by the Government Accountability Office determined that if the gizmos were widely deployed, "V2V technologies could provide warnings to drivers in as much as 76 percent of potential multi-vehicle collisions."
In 2011, there were 5.3 million car crashes that injured 2.2 million people and killed 32,000, according to the GAO.
"The continued progress of V2V technology development hinges on a decision that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration plans to make in late 2013 on how to proceed. ... One option would be to pursue a rule requiring their inclusion in new vehicles," the GAO wrote in a November study.
The year ended without NHTSA's expected decision, and this week the agency would say only that it expected "to announce a decision in the coming weeks."
Putting smart cars on the road comes with complications beyond cost, which is expected to be "modest relative to the price of a new vehicle," according to the GAO.
What could make cost a factor are the communication system safeguards that would be necessary for the widespread use of these cars.
"Widespread technology depends on other cars having the same system so they can talk to each other," said David Wise, director of the GAO's Physical Infrastructure Team, who wrote the GAO study.
But it also requires that the system be secure.
"Privacy is the real challenge," Wise said. He said the V2V will likely rely on GPS-type data that could track a person's movements.
"Who has access and how do you secure the data?" Wise asked rhetorically. He also raised the specter of someone hacking the system and causing havoc on the road.
"The cost is in the communication security system," he said.
There is also the issue of liability if a car that has the V2V system is involved in a crash, the GAO report said.
If NHTSA decides to require new cars to be smart cars, it could still be a generation before they become commonplace on the road, Wise said.
"It takes 20 years for the country's fleet of cars to turn over," he said. |
LGBTQ Women Balance Opportunity, Possible Extinction in Congress
by Nathan L. Gonzales
It’s been almost 20 years since Tammy Baldwin’s historic election, yet just one woman has followed her through the LGBTQ glass ceiling. And if both women lose competitive races in 2018, the next Congress could be without any LGBTQ women.
While the lack of LGBTQ women in Congress is inextricably linked to the dearth of women on Capitol Hill, the story of lesbian candidates includes some close calls, quixotic races, and a movement still evolving to position more qualified LGBTQ women to run for higher office.
“We have to figure out the secret sauce of how Tammy did it,” said Aisha Moodie-Mills, president of the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund. In 1998, the Wisconsin Democrat became the first openly gay nonincumbent elected to Congress, with help from the Human Rights Campaign, the Victory Fund, and others.
But in the intervening two decades, Democratic Rep. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who identifies as bisexual, is the only other openly LGBTQ woman elected to Congress, meaning LGBTQ women currently make up less than half of one percent of the lawmakers in Congress — 1 out of 435 in the House and 1 out of 100 in the Senate. (In 2012, Baldwin became the first openly gay elected senator.)
If Sinema leaves her 9th District seat to run for the Senate, the 116th Congress could be without any LGBTQ women in the House. According to Gallup, 4 percent of Americans identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (a majority of whom are women). But if Sinema runs for the Senate and loses and Baldwin loses a competitive re-election race, elected LGBTQ women on Capitol Hill could dip into obscurity.
“It’s pathetic,” said LPAC Executive Director Beth Shipp. “It shows that there is more work to be done to have more equity and parity in Congress.”
Close calls
Baldwin came close to having company in Congress in the years before Sinema’s arrival in 2013.
In Baldwin’s victorious cycle, San Diego city Councilmember Christine Kehoe lost to GOP Rep. Brian P. Bilbray by just 2 points, 49 percent to 47 percent, in California’s 49th District. Two other LGBTQ women also ran that cycle, but lost by larger margins: Retired Army National Guard Col. Grethe Cammermeyer of Washington (who became an LGBTQ hero when she was discharged in 1992 after disclosing that she was gay, and was later played by Glenn Close in a TV movie) and state Rep. Susan Tracy of Massachusetts.
Two years later, Democrat Gerrie Schipske lost a close race to GOP Rep. Steve Horn, 48.5 percent to 47.5 percent, in California’s 38th District.
In the 2002 cycle, two of the most established lesbian candidates to ever run for Congress fell short. State Sen. Cheryl Jacques finished second in the 2001 Democratic primary in the Massachusetts special election won by now-Rep. Stephen F. Lynch. State Sen. Susan Longley lost by 4 points (31-27 percent) to state Sen. Michael H. Michaud in the Democratic primary in Maine’s 2nd District. Michaud, who won the seat in the general election, publicly came out as gay before running for governor in 2014.
Atlanta City Council President Cathy Woolard lost a Democratic primary in Georgia’s 4th District in 2004 and businesswoman Linda Ketner lost a close race to GOP Rep. Henry E. Brown Jr. in South Carolina’s 1st District four years later.
From 2002 to 2016, 21 LGBTQ women ran for Congress compared to 110 gay men, according to unofficial numbers by a Democratic strategist who tracks LGBTQ candidates. That disparity could help explain why there are five openly gay men in Congress: Jared Polis of Colorado, David Cicilline of Rhode Island, Sean Patrick Maloney of New York, Mark Takano of California, and Mark Pocan of Wisconsin, who won Baldwin’s 2nd District when she was elected to the Senate.
“Lesbians don’t seem to run for office,” said Schipske, who also lost a 2002 race to GOP Rep. Dana Rohrabacher but was subsequently elected to the Long Beach City Council. “[It’s] the same thing that stops all women: Politics is still seen as a male profession.”
“We have to mentor and encourage women to seek public office,” she added. But sometimes, even when LGBTQ women run and win a majority of the vote, it’s not enough.
Last cycle in Minnesota, two LGBTQ women split 53 percent of the vote in the 2nd District: former St. Jude Medical executive Angie Craig, who is gay, took 45 percent, while Independence Party nominee Paula Overby, a transgender woman, won 8 percent. Republican Jason Lewis won the open seat with a plurality, the remaining 47 percent of the vote. Craig, who would have been the first gay mother in Congress, is running again in 2018.
Beyond moral victories
One way to boost the number of lesbians in Congress is to identify candidates in more Democratic districts.
Baldwin and Sinema’s victories both aligned with Democratic presidential victories. Baldwin was initially elected in 1998 to a House seat that Bill Clinton carried by 22 points two years earlier. She was elected to the Senate in 2012 when Barack Obama won Wisconsin by 7 points. Sinema, similarly, was elected while Obama was carrying her district by 4 points. Polis, Takano, Cicilline, and Pocan were also elected from Democratic districts. Trump narrowly carried Maloney’s district in 2016, but Obama took it by 4 points the year the congressman was first elected.
That’s a stark contrast to 2016, when Montana Superintendent of Public Instruction Denise Juneau lost her House bid while Clinton lost the state by 20 points. Transgender women Misty Snow and Misty Plowright ran and lost to Republican Sen. Mike Lee in Utah and Republican Rep. Doug Lamborn in a Colorado Springs-area district, respectively, — two of the most conservative areas of the country — and Kristen Beck primaried House Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer and was crushed 76 percent to 12 percent.
Prior to 2016, other Democratic LGBTQ women have taken on Republicans in Idaho and Utah too. And Republican Karen Kerin, a transgender woman, took on then-Rep. Bernie Sanders in 2000 in Vermont and lost by 51 points.
Developing the pipeline
An important step in getting more lesbians (or any particular demographic) elected to Congress is to build a political bench.
“Tammy didn’t just come out of nowhere. She worked her way through the pipeline,” said JoDee Winterhof, senior vice president of policy and political affairs for the Human Rights Campaign.
Baldwin and Sinema both took fairly typical routes to higher office. Baldwin was elected to the Dane County Board of Supervisors in 1986, elected to the state Legislature six years later and elected to Congress in 1998. Sinema, who lost her first state House race in 2002, rose through the ranks of the Legislature after getting elected in 2004.
There are at least 450 LGBTQ elected officials at the state and local level, 40 percent of whom are women, according to data of known LGBTQ elected officials compiled by the Victory Fund. And of LGBTQ officials exclusively at the state level, women actually outnumber men (92-89).
LGBTQ women have made history outside of Washington. In 2016, Oregon Democrat Kate Brown, who is bisexual, became the first openly LGBTQ person elected governor. Three-term Houston Mayor Annise Parker, a lesbian, was the first and only LGBTQ person elected in one of the country’s ten most populous cities.
The number of LGBTQ female lawmakers in Congress could grow considering the dramatic uptick in women interested in running for office (15,000 this cycle compared to 920 in the 2016 cycle).
“When women run, they win, even if they have to take more bites out of the apple,” Moodie-Mills said. New York Times columnist Frank Bruni struck an optimistic tone for lesbians in a July column “Voters Love Lesbians,” pointing to the 70 percent success rate of LGBTQ women supported by the Victory Fund, compared to 61 percent of LGBTQ men, up and down the ballot.
The ask(s)
Getting lesbians to progress from interested in running to filing for candidacy might be the toughest task of all, and the lack of congressional representation has some activists asking privately, “Are we doing everything we should to foster women running for office?”
Baldwin didn’t need any convincing to run for county supervisor but didn’t see herself moving up the political ladder. Then her state representative, David Clarenbach, ran for Congress and privately told Baldwin he wanted her to run for his seat.
“Are you kidding me?” Baldwin recalled recently. “I was excited and a little intimidated by it.”
Clarenbach, now openly gay, is the son of National Organization for Women co-founder Kay Clarenbach and was speaker pro tempore at the time.
“That was the nudge I needed,” Baldwin said.
But everyone’s threshold to run is different.
“If a typical heterosexual woman has to be asked seven times, I dare to say a lesbian or queer woman has to be asked more,” said Shipp, who believes LGBTQ women need specific plans and training to address unique fears and trepidation.
Women, LGBTQ people and people of color “don’t inherently assume we are the most qualified,” Moodie-Mills said.
“Women are aware of the bloodiness of running,” said Ketner, the 2008 House candidate from South Carolina. “Lesbians know it would be worse for them.”
“It’s a double-bind of being a woman and being queer,” Moodie-Mills added.
The social network
The lack of elected officials practically forces lesbian candidates into outsider status, but it also means they could struggle to match the financial and political resources of better-connected foes. “Being able to leverage a powerful network is the most daunting,” according to Moodie-Mills.
“At a time when politicians are held in low regard, sexual orientation and gender identity can be a huge asset,” Baldwin said. “Because anyone who remembers civil rights history doesn’t think it was easy.” But without a political network, candidates must rely on their own money or rely on outside groups for fundraising support.
“You have to look at the economic inequality issue between gay men versus lesbian and queer women,” Shipp said. “There’s a different mindset because they are economically disadvantaged.”
Gay men have a higher average income compared to lesbians ($56,936 vs. $45,606), according to a May 2016 survey by Prudential Financial, and the poverty rate for lesbian couples is 7.9 percent compared to 6.6 percent for different-sex couples, according to a 2015 University of Washington study.
Polis spent nearly $6 million of his own money (and raised another $1.2 million) in his initial race. Maloney raised $2.2 million with pre-established networks after working for President Bill Clinton and two governors.
Craig raised and spent nearly $4.8 million (including almost $1 million of her own money) in her Minnesota 2nd District race last cycle, placing her in the top-tier of Democratic candidates anywhere in the country. But her financial blueprint will be difficult for any candidate to replicate. In addition, some of Craig’s allies believe the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee made a strategic error in nationalizing her race in a district Trump ended up carrying.
Ketner’s problem wasn’t the DCCC’s message, but getting the committee’s attention at all.
“First, they wrote off the South. Then I was a woman and a Democrat,” Ketner recalled recently. “And, oh my God, I’m an out lesbian.” She described DCCC strategists as unenthusiastic until the final couple of weeks when the polls tightened. Then-DCCC Chairman Rahm Emanuel sent her a cake and some last-minute money. Ketner lost 52 percent to 48 percent.
Crossing the finish line
Lesbian candidates have an opportunity to raise money from groups focused on boosting women or LGBTQ candidates, but there is certain tension between seeking diversity in Congress and and not emphasizing an issue on the campaign trail that isn’t a priority for voters.
“It always boils down to all politics is local, having a ground game and connecting with voters,” Moodie-Mills said.
“Always be able to answer ‘Why are you running?’ It has to come from fire in the belly,” Baldwin advised.
“We as a community need to stand up and be more supportive,” Shipp said.
But the burden is also on the some of the women protesting Trump in the streets to shift gears to a congressional run. For those thinking about a campaign of their own, Baldwin has more advice.
“Gain experience in prior work that demystifies the process,” said the Wisconsin senator, who interned and worked for a governor and volunteered for activist groups and local campaigns before becoming a candidate. “Take early time to get some extra training.”
And Baldwin said, “If at first you don’t succeed, run, run again.” |
Hans Hahn ( German: [haːn]; 27 September 1879 – 24 July 1934) was an Austrian mathematician who made contributions to functional analysis, topology, set theory, the calculus of variations, real analysis, and order theory.
Biography [ edit ]
Born at Vienna as the son of a higher government official of the k.k. Telegraphen-Korrespondenz-Bureau (since 1946 named "Austria Presse Agentur"), in 1898 Hahn became a student at the Universität Wien starting with a study of law. In 1899 he switched over to mathematics and spent some time at the universities of Strasbourg, Munich and Göttingen. In 1902 he took his Ph.D. in Vienna, on the subject "Zur Theorie der zweiten Variation einfacher Integrale". He was a student of Gustav von Escherich.
He was appointed to the teaching staff (Habilitation) in Vienna in 1905. After 1905/1906 as a stand-in for Otto Stolz at Innsbruck and some further years as a Privatdozent in Vienna, he was nominated in 1909 Professor extraordinarius in Czernowitz, at that time a town within the empire of Austria. After joining the Austrian army in 1915, he was badly wounded in 1916 and became again Professor extraordinarius, now in Bonn. In 1917 he was nominated a regular Professor there and in 1921 he returned to Vienna with this title, where he stayed until his rather early death in 1934 at the age of 54, following cancer surgery.[1] He had married Eleonore ("Lilly") Minor in 1909 and they had a daughter, Nora (born 1910).
He was also interested in philosophy, and was part of a discussion group concerning Mach's positivism with Otto Neurath and Phillip Frank prior to the First World War. In 1922, he helped arrange Moritz Schlick's entry into the group, which led to the founding of the Vienna Circle, the group that was at the center of logical positivist thought in the 1920s. His most famous student was Kurt Gödel, whose Ph.D. thesis was completed in 1929. Within the Vienna Circle, Hahn was also known (and controversial) for using his mathematical and philosophical work to study psychic phenomena; according to Karl Menger he sometimes openly advocated further research into ESP while lecturing.[2]
Hahn's contributions to mathematics include the Hahn–Banach theorem and (independently of Banach and Steinhaus) the uniform boundedness principle. Other theorems include:
Hahn authored the book (Hahn 1921): according to Arthur Rosenthal,[3] "... (it) formed a great advance in the Theory of Real functions and had a great influence on the further development of this theory". He was also a co-author of the book Set Functions,[4] published in 1948 by Arthur Rosenthal, fourteen years after his death in Vienna in 1934.
In 1921 he received the Richard Lieben Prize. In 1926 he was the president of the German Mathematical Society. In 1928 he was an Invited Speaker at the ICM in Bologna.[5]
Publications [ edit ]
All his mathematical and philosophical works, except all books and all but one of his book reviews, are published in the three volumes (Hahn 1995), (Hahn 1996) and (Hahn 1997) of his "Collected papers".[6]
See also [ edit ] |
As of 11 a.m CST today (16 UTC on December 14, 2011), NASA’s Curiosity rover will have traveled 31.9 million miles of its 352-million-mile trip to Mars. That’s almost 1.8 million miles per day. After 18 days of traveling following its November 26 launch, Curiosity has begun analyzing radiation in space in order to assess how it would effect astronauts en route to the red planet.
The rover and its 10 science instruments are expected reach Mars on Aug. 6, 2012.
Curiosity’s Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD) is designed to monitor high-energy atomic and subatomic particles that are emitted by the sun and other objects in outer space. These particles zipping through space present a danger to humans attempting long-term space travel. Once on Mars, the RAD instrument – which is buried deep within the rover – will analyze the Martian surface. But for now, it’s essentially acting as a stand-in for a human astronaut, taking measurements of the space environment, according to a NASA press release.
In the release, Don Hassler, RAD’s principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, said:
RAD is serving as a proxy for an astronaut inside a spacecraft on the way to Mars. The instrument is deep inside the spacecraft, the way an astronaut would be. Understanding the effects of the spacecraft on the radiation field will be valuable in designing craft for astronauts to travel to Mars.
So far, Curiosity has been an exceptionally successful mission. NASA had planned six course adjustments for the craft, but due to the precision of the launch, the first adjustment was deemed unnecessary and postponed. The course will not need to be adjusted until mid-January.
In a press release, Louis D’Amario of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, placed the Mars launch “among the most accurate interplanetary injections ever.”
Curiosity’s launch planned for the rover to miss Mars by 35,000 miles. The upper stage of its launch rocket, called Centaur, is not as thoroughly cleaned as the rover itself; the planned trajectory ensures that Centaur will not touch Mars, protecting the planet from any Earth microbes so as not to interfere with tests.
Bottom line: NASA’s new Mars rover – Curiosity – launched 18 days ago and is now 31.9 million miles along on its 352-million-mile trip to Mars. It has traveled almost 1.8 million miles per day. After 18 days of traveling following its November 26 launch, Curiosity has begun analyzing radiation in space in order to assess how it would effect astronauts en route to the red planet.
After successful launch, new 8-month mission to Mars underway |
There’s no way to explain what Daniel Murphy—maybe the hottest player in the history of professional baseball—is doing right now. Even science can’t explain it.
For 30 years, the general consensus among sports analytics experts was that any single scalding or ice-cold stretch of play is an example of statistical noise that has no predictive value, and a prolonged period of success shouldn’t be treated in any way differently than we would if we started flipping a coin and landed on heads again and again.
But you’d be hard pressed to find an athlete or fan anywhere that doesn’t see this as profoundly wrong and an example of data wonks missing the forest for the trees.
Now, after all, it turns out the conventional wisdom—those armed with no advanced metrics but a working pair of eyeballs—might have been right all along.
In case you haven’t been following the New York Mets’ giddily improbable, borderline-miraculous trek to the World Series, their offense has been powered by an utterly average 30-year-old second baseman that never bopped more than 14 homers in a single season who, for reasons unknown, has transmogrified into the greatest hitter in postseason history.
Over the last nine games Murphy’s hitting an otherworldly .421 with a 1.026 slugging percentage, including a record-breaking 1.294 in the League Championship Series. He’s crushed seven dingers, including one in each of the last six games, a playoff feat that’s previously been accomplished by absolutely no one.
And it’s not like he’s feasting off lowly, back-of-the rotation pitchers. He’s gone yard facing the likes of Jake Arrieta, Clayton Kershaw, and Zach Grienke—more or less the top three candidates for the Cy Young Award.
Want more? Murphy’s never homered five times in a calendar month over the course of his career, nor has he ever hit one for more than two games in a row, and yet somehow he’s one dinger away from tying Barry Bonds, Carlos Beltran, and Nelson Cruz’s record of eight in a single postseason.
It’s mind-boggling, and all the more wondrous to behold simply because no one can pin down a reason for Murphy’s explosion. Just ask Daniel Murphy.
“I can’t explain it,’’ Murphy said after crushing a mid-90s fastball from the Chicago Cubs’s Fernando Rodney to top off an 8-3 series-clinching win. “It’s just such a blessing to be able to contribute to what we’ve been able to do. I’m excited to be able to do something to help us win ballgames, but I can’t explain it.’’
The question is, can he keep it up? Will the six-day layoff before the start of the World Series on Tuesday shake off whatever magical pixie dust or gift from a Met-loving deity that was bestowed on Murphy? And can science help us figure it out?
Ask many social scientists and economists, and they’ll still say Murphy’s hot streak is irrelevant for what he’ll do in the future.
Just because Murphy’s been mashing the ball like an in his prime Babe Ruth of late, it would still be quite unwise to pitch around him to face a struggling Yoenis Cespedes, like the Cubs did in Game Two. (It didn’t work out that well).
There’s even a name for this branch of social studies: the hot-hand fallacy. As the Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman wrote in Thinking Fast and Slow, that can’t-miss, almost Zen-like feeling of being “in the zone” is actually an example of a “massive and widespread cognitive illusion.”
But recent studies tell a different story. They’ve found that that lingering effects of a hot streak will have an impact on the next at-bat or jump shot.
To wit, three researchers at Harvard examined over 83,000 shots during the 2012-13 NBA season and found that after sinking an unusually high percentage of four shots, there was a “1.2 to 2.4 percentage points in increased likelihood of making a shot.”
In baseball, Jeff Zwiebel and Brett Green delved into 12 years worth of pitching and batting stats, and found “strong evidence for its existence in all ten statistical categories we consider. The magnitudes are significant; being ‘hot’ corresponds to roughly a one quartile increase in the distribution.”
As to why previous studies were inaccurate, “prior evidence on the absence of a hot hand (despite widespread belief in its presence) should not be interpreted as a cognitive mistake—as it typically is in the literature—but rather as an efficient equilibrium adjustment,” they wrote.
Ask Mitchel Litchman, a baseball analyst who has consulted for several MLB and the co-author of The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball.
He shared a chapter for the upcoming edition of the Hardball Times Baseball Annual in which he examines Zwiebel and Green’s work. While differing somewhat with their methodology, he agreed with the general conclusion.
“There is a modest hot and cold hand effect among hitters in baseball,” he told The Daily Beast. “Not enough for the manager of either team to significantly alter their strategies, but enough perhaps to break a tie, so to speak.”
Eno Sarris, a senior writer at Fangraphs.com, doesn’t think Murphy’s feats lend any credence to some of the latest research.
“I don't believe in hot hands,” he wrote via email. “However, I do believe in adjustments.
“With Murphy, he stepped closer to the plate and started pulling the ball a little more, probably because pitchers were content to take his opposite-field singles and were getting him out on the other half of the plate. He moves in closer, and the outside part of the plate is closer, and he has to pull in order to hit middle, middle-in.”
And that’s true. Mets hitting coach Kevin Long has been tinkering with Murphy’s approach all season and trying to get him to pull the ball more, an adjustment that certainly helped pull him out of an atrocious April slump.
Heading into the World Series, where the Mets will take on the Kansas City Royals, there’s surely a team of bleary-eyed analysts huddled in a basement poring over game film to find an exploitable, yet-unseen flaw in Murphy’s swing.
Sarris rightfully notes that that process has already begun.
“Did you see any of those back-door sinkers that Arrieta threw him?” he wrote. “He’s completely vulnerable to those now, because it looks like it will hit him on the hip, and then the movement takes it into the zone. He probably won’t swing at those, and he’ll take strikes, and his strikeout rate will go up. So he’ll have to make another decision. He’ll have to make another adjustment.”
So this isn’t a quasi-mystical outlier for Murphy. It’s representative of a level of ability that he had all along.
Over time—possibly starting as soon as Tuesday night—he’ll return to the statistical norms that he established over the first eight years of his major league career.
Take this, for example: When I was a working actor performing in a long run of a play, there were stretches where I got into the Zone. It’s not that I exceeded my abilities, but there would be a series of performances where I was just plumb nailing it. Eventually, that feeling would fade and like an athlete, I’d make adjustments.
Granted, it wasn’t a competitive situation, like Murphy staring down the barrel of a vicious slider at the knees. Quite the contrary: My doing better was in everyone’s best interest. But the fact that I felt like I was “on” certainly gave me more confidence going into a show, and that feeling usually led to a better performance.
Sarris has an answer for this as well.
“If you’re in the zone, your ideation is positive. You’re not thinking about the bad things. And thinking positively has been shown to have an effect on outcomes,” he wrote. “Honestly, I don’t know why it doesn’t turn up in the research. I think it’s the adjustments again. You get hot, you get more scrutiny, and they look closer at how to get you out.”
It’s pretty clear Daniel Murphy’s ideation is off the charts right now, what with teammates like Lucas Duda saying, “The guy’s on a different planet right now,” or Curtis Granderson joking, “I’ll get a chance to tell people I played with Babe Ruth.”
Maybe he’ll be able to ride that wave a little longer, or, in the noble tradition of streak-respecting jocks everywhere, will stop changing his socks or start taking his prized bat to bed with him.
That’s what makes this all so much fun: the plunge into the unknown, that we really don’t have any idea what strangeness might happen next, predictive statistical models be damned.
It certainly shouldn’t be happening to a player like Murphy, who up until this point was defined not so much by Herculean blasts, but by the odd tendency to screw up in the most ridiculous, hilarious ways at the absolute worst moment. As David Roth wrote at VICE Sports, “he looks and acts exactly like an average square-jawed big leaguer, except sometimes he just, like, does the ‘Thriller’ dance instead of tagging up.”
If all goes well, maybe he’ll get to sit behind another postgame lectern looking like the human embodiment of the shrug emoticon, goofily blurting out the same thing as everyone watching: “I just swung... And then when I hit it, I said, ‘Oh my goodness.’” |
For the first time in my life, I have to commute to work.
A brief walk, 35 minutes on the subway, a briefer walk. There’s a train change in there too. There’s also a lot of avoidance of sticky things on seats, floors, railings, and other people. There are so many sticky things.
But mostly I have to avoid falling asleep.
So, because I’m a grown up, I’ve started packing a snack for this morning adventure. Because when you’re eating you’re rarely asleep.
Cue Spiced Grown-Up Muffins.
Chili powder, cinnamon, chia seeds, flaxseeds, protein powder, soy flour, gluten-free – so grown up! This muffin completed an online course and is totally certified mature. With every muffin comes an honorary doctorate. Before you ate this muffin on the subway, it was reading Kafka. In German. Not on a kindle.
Man. That’s a grown-up muffin.
But the Spiced Grown-Up Muffin doesn’t stop there. It also offers only 8 grams of carbs per serving and only 3 grams of net-carbs. This is fab because it means it’s a snack that won’t cause any carb-y crash as soon as you get to work. Side-note/cool story: I just learned what net-carbs are.
And 11 grams of protein? That’s the sort of train munchy that keeps you full til lunch.
We won’t talk about the fat grams because they are good fat grams from soy flour, chia seeds, flaxseed, and tahini and your hair and nails will send me a charming thank you note. Swear on a Spiced Grown-Up Muffin.
Spiced Grown-Up Muffins
makes 12 regular sized muffins
You look more mature already, now gather:
1/2 cup soy flour
1/2 cup protein powder (I used vanilla because it’s what I own)
1/2 cup ground flaxseed
2 tablespoons chia seeds
10g unsweetened cocoa powder (sorry for the unit change, but also deal with it, you’re a grown-up now)
3 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons cinnamon
2 teaspoons chili powder
1 teaspoon salt
dash of paprika
2 eggs
5 packets of Truvia
1 cup unsweetened almond milk
1/2 cup tahini (you can use whatever nut butter, but nutrition info will be slightly different)
Grown ups make muffins this way:
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Spray a muffin pan with cooking spray. Set aside.
Combine every ingredient from the soy flour to the salt in a food processor. Process. You can also just sift these things together. Whatever, combine them and stuff. Set aside, no matter what technique you use.
In a large medium bowl (technical term), whisk the eggs with the Truvia. Add the milk and the tahini and whisk til smooth. Fold the dry ingredient mixture into the wet stuff. Mix until just incorporated to keep these suckers light and airy akin to your intoxicating sophistication.
Fill the muffin tins a little more than 2/3 full. Bake for 20 minutes. Cool on your adorable window sil. Eat.
These muffins beat my protein bars. Hands down. And they’re actually better for you if you’re a low carb/high protein/not afraid of fat kinda girl like me. Let’s all hop on the me-train! They have a nice hearty texture from the flaxseed and chia seeds, and the cocoa, cinnamon, and chili powder combo creates enough flavor to make up for any wayward sugar desires. Top it with some cottage cheese or jam or peanut butter and you have yourself a party. I crumbled mine into my cottage-cheese-and-stuff dessert and the party was legit. My dog totally blacked out and I drew a picture of a cat on him with a Sharpie. Epic.
Note: these would be really good with some chocolate chips. Think about it. THINK ABOUT IT.
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Rove's eye will be on FISA vote
Take note, Democratic presidential operatives: Karl Rove will be very carefully watching the Senate floor vote on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Addressing the Republican National Committee’s winter meeting Wednesday, Rove urged the party faithful to watch closely how the Democratic presidential front-runners, New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, vote on the issue.
“Do they or do they not want our intelligence agencies to be listening in on conversations between terrorists in the Middle East who may be plotting to hurt America?” Rove asked.
A former top adviser to President Bush, Rove is still seen as perhaps the pre-eminent Republican electoral strategist, with Beltway insiders hanging on his every word. And while “The Architect,” as Bush calls him, used most of his speech to attack Clinton’s and Obama’s record on health care, taxes and the war in Iraq, Rove particularly homed in on FISA.
The issue cuts to the core of national security in a post-Sept. 11 world, Rove said, and he is betting that voters will favor the GOP’s argument over concerns about trampling civil liberties raised by Democrats.
Throughout his remarks, Rove repeatedly referred to the FISA program as a “terrorist surveillance program,” unlike many Democrats, who prefer to call it “warrantless wiretapping.”
He urged the party officials to devise communication strategies that find “creative and sustaining ways” to “talk about these contrasts.”
Both Clinton and Obama have raised concerns about the program, indicating they’ll not support the current version of the bill pending in the Senate, which grants immunity to the large telecom companies that assisted the government.
“The Bush administration has blatantly disregarded Americans’ civil liberties over the past seven years, and I simply will not trust them to protect Americans’ privacy rights,” Clinton said in December.
Rove also said that withdrawing immunity for telecom companies would “effectively gut” the program.
Despite his eager anticipation for a floor vote on the matter, Rove may have to wait.
With the temporary FISA statute set to expire Feb. 1, Democratic leaders are mulling another extension, which could push a potential decisive vote on the matter past Election Day. |
These bands may be in small print on the poster, but they’re making a big splash in the music scene.
But one of the greatest Coachella experiences is hearing up-and-coming artists. Goldenvoice does an incredible job identifying the next big music hit long before they enter the mainstream.
In 2004, a relatively unknown MUSE played an afternoon slot, six years later they were a headlining performance. Arcade Fire has a similar story, first playing Coachella in 2005.
So brave the mid-day heat and head to the festival early to see some of the acts listed below, at the very least you’ll discover some amazing new bands, or you might be one of the first people to listen to a future Coachella headliner.
Must-see Coachella bands on Friday
GOAT
The Gist: If their distorted guitar and heavy drums weren’t psychedelic enough, this experimental group from Sweden plays their shows wearing voodoo masks and trippy garb. Be sure to tune in and drop out with GOAT, we’re hoping they get a spot on the Outdoor stage!
Sounds Like: The singer of Sleepy Sun teamed up for a garage session with Tame Impala, and they decided to borrow costumes from The Knife.
Similar Coachella ’14 Artists: Ty Segall
Dum Dum Girls
The Gist: Taking their name from an Iggy Pop song, the Dum Dum Girls were formed in 2008 by guitarist/vocalist Kirstin Gundred. Their vocal-centric, lo-pop music is perfectly suited for an early afternoon on the palm-tree lined Polo Fields at Coachella.
Sounds Like: The Raveonettes
Similar Coachella ’14 Artists: Surfer Blood
Wye Oak
Genre: Indie Folk
The Gist: Jenn Wasner and Andy Stack create the soothing sounds of this Baltimore-based duo. Pitchfork’s David Bevan describes Wye Oak as a “combination of boy-girl hymns and dreamy, sometimes shoegazing sonics.”
Sounds Like: A 21st century folk version of The Velvet Underground… is that possible?
Similar Coachella ’14 Artists: Neko Case
The Preatures
Genre: Rock + Pop
The Gist: Do The Preatures sound familiar? You might recognize lead singer Isabella Manfredi’s voice from a recent collab with Flume. One thing is clear, this Sydney-based band is heading to Coachella and is sure to spread positive vibes. “Is This How You Feel” might just be the feel-good Coachella anthem of 2014.
Sounds Like: Feist is the lead singer of a slightly more upbeat Fleetwood Mac
Similar Coachella ’14 Artists: Jagwar Ma and HAIM
Must-see Coachella bands on Saturday
Future Islands
Genre: New Wave Synth Pop
The Gist: Future Islands, like so many great bands before it, was formed by a group of university art students that ultimately decided music was their creative calling. Coming to Coachella from North Carolina via Baltimore , Future Islands will get Coachella dancing with their synth melodies. They’ve come a long way since their debut album Wave Like Home, and they’re heading in the right direction.
Sounds Like: Gardens & Villa or Wu Lyf with huskier vocals
Similar Coachella ’14 Artists: Blood Orange
Ty Segall
Genre: Lo-fi + Garage Rock
The Gist: Ty Segall embodies garage rock at its finest: heavily distorted vocals laid over reverbed guitar riffs and hard-hitting percussions. Like original Garage Rock bands, Ty Segall’s music conjures up images of surfing, skating, running around wildly and breaking shit. Sounds like fun!
Sounds Like: The Stooges, Wavves and The Black Lips circa 2005
Similar Coachella ’14 Artists: J Roddy Walston & The Business
DARKSIDE
Genre: ________. Care to take a stab at it?
The Gist: Recent Brown University graduates Nicolas Jaar and Dave Harrington have traveled through space and time, and back, to bring you one of the best albums of 2013: Psychic. You may already be familiar with Nico Jaar’s deep house sounds, and he brings the same level of creativity to the DARKSIDE project. Thumping bass kicks, intimate vocals and grooving guitar riffs are going to resonate with the one lucky Coachella audience.
Sounds Like: Nothing you’ve heard before
Similar Coachella ’14 Artists: Shlohmo. And various other noises to be found in the Yuma Tent.
Bombay Bicycle Club
Genre: Indie Rock
The Gist: This 4-piece indie rock group hails from London and is currently traveling the world to promote their 4th album So Long, See You Tomorrow, which took the #1 spot on the British charts in early February.
Sounds Like: The British version of Vampire Weekend, with a little Foals and Two Door Cinema Club mixed in.
Similar Coachella ’14 Artists: Vampire Weekend
Foxygen
Genre: Psychedelic Pop/Rock
The Gist: Listen to one of Foxygen’s freewheeling tunes and you’d swear the flower-in-the-hair-wearing-band spawned from Haight Street in 1968, not the upscale LA suburb of Westlake Village in the early 2000s. The title of their second and most recent album, “We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic” should give you an idea of their vibe. Aside from their amazing nostalgic rock n’ roll sounds, Foxygen lead singer Sam France is known for his on-stage antics during live shows… don’t miss this set.
Sounds Like: Girls + The Doors + The Growlers + Early MGMT (think “The Youth” and “The Handshake” from “Oracular Spectacular”). Yep
Similar Coachella ’14 Artists: Dum Dum Girls
Graveyard
Genre: Hard Rock
The Gist: Like GOAT, Graveyard is a guitar-heavy rock band hailing from Sweden. Members Joakim Nilsson, Rikard Edlund, Axel Sjöberg and Jonatan Ramm have mastered the hard rock sound and look. We’re excited to see what they bring to the Polo Fields.
Sounds Like: Danzig + Cream + Black Sabbath
Similar Coachella ’14 Artists: GOAT
The Internet
Genre: Hip-hop/neo-soul/OFWGKTA (yes they have their own genre)
The Gist: The Internet is is comprised of Syd the Kyd and Matt Martians, both are members/producers of the LA hip-hop collective OFWGKTA.
Sounds Like: A less refined, but equally talented female version of Frank Ocean.
Similar Coachella ’14 Artists: Chance the Rapper
Blood Orange
Genre: Let’s call it “Indie-Funk”
The Gist: Dev Hynes, the stylish Brit also known as Blood Orange, originally caught our attention with Sutphin Boulevard (listen to that guitar!) from his 2011 album Coastal Grooves and we’ve been hooked ever since. In his sophomore album Cupid Deluxe the talented 27 year-old showcases the skills he developed in his former bands (Test Icicles and Lightspeed Champion) by singing, playing the drums, bass, guitar and keyboard, among other instruments. To get an idea of Dev’s live show, check out this review of his show by our friend Kai Flanders.
Sounds Like: A less-dreamy version of Washed Out’s chillwave sounds with Toro Y Moi-style vocals
Similar Coachella ’14 Artists: CHVRCHES, Washed Out and Aluna George
Young & Sick
Genre: Soul
The Gist: Despite their growing fan-base, this “music & art project” out of LA likes to keep things pretty hush-hush. All we know is that the “project” is headed up by a Dutchman named Nick. Listen to a couple of their smooth R&B-like songs and work up some excitement for Young & Sick to lift the veil and reveal their secrets at Coachella.
Sounds Like: “A voice that conjures the gentle crystalline coo of Hot Chip’s Alexis Taylor is set against production that synthesizes Autre Ne Veut’s damaged-psyche pop, How To Dress Well’s ethereal R&B, and M83′s big-dreams-big-sky new wave.” – StereoGum
Similar Coachella ’14 Artists: The Internet, Banks and Aloe Blacc, perhaps.
Sunday
Poolside
Genre: Daytime Disco
The Gist: The name says it all, Poolside has a discernible sound that could only come from a group based in Southern California. The duo was born when friends/producers Filip Nikolic and Jeffrey Paradise started making beats in a converted-pool-house-turned-recording-studio.
Sounds Like: A more relaxed version of Aeroplane, Mitzi or Gigamesh. Palm trees and pools, palm trees and pools.
Similar Coachella ’14 Artists: Classixx and Holy Ghost
James Vincent McMorrow
Genre: Indie-Folk
The Gist: No Coachella lineup would be complete without an indie-folk sensation. Last year it was The Lumineers, the year before that, Bon Iver. James Vincent McMorrow will continue the trend this year with his smooth harmonies over a soft piano. This will sound and feel great during an early slot under the scorching Coachella sun.
Sounds Like: An Irish Bon Iver or a more vocal-heavy Mumford & Sons/The Lumineers
Similar Coachella ’14 Artists: The Head and The Heart
RATKING
Genre: Hip-Hop
The Gist: A product of the blogosphere, RATKING sprang out of Harlem in 2012 with their debut album Wiki93. The trio (Wiki, MC Hak, and Sporting Life) connects with fans through nihilistic verses over hard drums. Their fast rap brings mischief to mind: trouble and harmless crime in New York, sort of like the Wackness.
Sounds Like: A more hard-hitting version of Joey Bada$$ or the East Coast version of OFWGKTA
Similar Coachella ’14 Artists: Nas
J Roddy Walston & the Business
Genre: Southern Rock
The Gist: This rock band from Tennessee has a large and dedicated following that comes to see their uniquely Americana-style music which is emphasized by their guitar solos. We can’t wait to check them out!
Sounds Like: Dawes, Middle Brother & Deer Tick
Similar Coachella ’14 Artists: Cage the Elephant
Shlohmo
Genre: Experimental, Glitch-Hop
The Gist: Henry Laufer a.k.a. Shlohmo is a beat-making prodigy, he’s been make head-nodding tracks since his early teens. Early on, this LA-based producer was influenced by FlyLo and the Low End Theory crew, and it’s apparent in his songs. Looping, falsetto vocals over crisp drum machine whaps are somehow reminiscent of Nico Jaar, but not in a deep-house sort of way. We’re excited to see this 20-something do his thing in the Mojave or Yuma Tent, and we’re hoping for Nosaj Thing-type visuals!
Sounds Like: What you would get if you threw Nosaj Thing, TOKiMONSTA, Flying Lotus, Boards of Canada, Amon Tobin and Four Tet into a blender.
Similar Coachella ’14 Artists: DARKSIDE, Flume
Coachella 2014 Spotify Playlist
Be sure to subscribe to our Coachella Spotify Playlist. If you want more ways to discover artists at Coachella, check out the music festival song tumbler. |
Elizabeth Smart, the young woman who made headlines after being abducted for nine months at age 14, spoke out last week against the abstinence-only education she received as a child, suggesting that it deterred her from escaping her captors.
At a John Hopkins University forum on human trafficking, Smart, who was raped repeatedly by her abductors, said abstinence-only education makes rape victims feel “so dirty” and “so filthy,” according to MSNBC.
Smart, now 25, was abducted at knifepoint in 2002, before being taken to a remote location and forced into a polygamous marriage. She was discovered walking down a suburban street with her captors. However, followers of her story have wondered why she did not try to escape immediately upon being taken outside.
Smart offered a response to that inquiry last week, saying that abstinence-only education partially informed her decision not to scream or run away.
“I think it goes beyond fear for so many children, especially in sex trafficking. … It's feeling like 'who would ever want me now? I’m worthless.' That is what it was for me the first time I was raped,” said Smart in a video of the talk, captured by Fox45.
Smart, who grew up in a strict Mormon household, recalled being taught in school that women who engage in pre-marital sex are like chewed pieces of gum that nobody wants to chew again, according to Slate.
“I understand so easily … why someone wouldn’t run because of that alone,” said Smart in the video. “Can you imagine turning around and going back into society where you’re no longer of value?”
At the end of the talk, Smart emphasized that children should be taught that they will always have value no matter what. |
The Alaska House is considering whether to pass a measure declaring April 2018 Sexual Assault Awareness Month, which seems like a no-brainer — except for the fact that a conservative lawmaker has tacked on an amendment to the measure calling abortion "child abuse."
It all began when the Alaska State House Rules Committee took a look at the resolution last week, after the Alaska Senate had already passed it. The committee's chair, State Representative Gabrielle LeDoux (R-Anchorage), decided the resolution would be stronger if it included language about child abuse prevention and declared April 2018 Child Abuse Prevention Month.
So far, so good.
But then on Monday, State Representative David Eastman, a Republican representing Wasila — Sarah Palin's former hometown — introduced a provision stating that "taking the life of an innocent preborn child through abortion is the ultimate form of child abuse."
Eastman told local CBS affiliate KTVA that there is a "direct connection between sexual assault and child abuse" and that it's "important to talk about the fact that we are dealing with child abuse, and certainly without mentioning abortion, we would not be doing justice to child abuse."
LeDoux and other Republicans back the revised amendment, turning a resolution meant to show support for survivors of sexual violence into a backdoor attack on reproductive rights. A resolution declaring April Sexual Assault Awareness Month has been introduced in Alaska every year since 2001, and this is the first time it hasn't received unanimous support from the Alaska State House. It's unclear whether it will pass.
"Abortion is a very serious issue, and it needs to be talked about," Eastman told the Associated Press. "We have folks who try to get pregnant in this state so that they can get a free trip to the city, and we have folks who want to carry their baby past the point of being able to have an abortion in this state so that they can have a free trip to Seattle."
Eastman is referring to the fact that Medicaid can cover travel to Washington state for women in Alaska who need second-trimester abortions, since in Alaska, outpatient abortion performed after the first trimester is illegal. (As for Eastman's unsupported claim that women get pregnant so they can travel for free, Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest and the Hawaiian Islands spokesperson Katie Rogers called it “ludicrous and despicable.")
In November of 2016, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR), and Planned Parenthood jointly filed a suit against Alaska, saying the ban on abortion after the first trimester poses a significant burden on Alaskans in need of abortion care because of the state's geographical limitations. By calling abortion "child abuse," Eastman and fellow Republicans push the idea that a fertilized egg has the same rights as person, further politicizing a safe and legal form of health care in a state where it's already too difficult to get.
More on politics and reproductive rights: |
Getty Images
The man who was recently proclaimed the greatest player in NFL history has a new job.
Richard Deitsch of Sports Illustrated reports that Jerry Rice, the former 49ers, Raiders and Seahawks wide receiver who came in first in NFL Network’s ranking of the Top 100 players of all-time, is ESPN’s newest NFL analyst.
Rice will appear on NFL Live, SportsCenter and Audibles, on which he’ll work with his former 49ers quarterback Steve Young. He starts on September 15.
Although Deitsch’s report was published Monday afternoon, there was no mention of Rice’s new job when he appeared on ESPN Radio on Tuesday morning.
As we previously noted, Rice offered some harsh comments about Randy Moss in that radio appearance. If he’s consistently that candid, and if he’s regularly willing to call out players who don’t work hard, he’ll be a welcome addition to ESPN’s staff. |
This week, India and Indonesia began another iteration of their biannual joint naval patrols. The engagement was one manifestation of the continued efforts by both Asian powers to advance their defense cooperation in the maritime security realm.
India and Indonesia, two large Asian democracies, strategic partners, and Indian Ocean littoral neighbors, have been looking to advance their defense ties in recent years, with New Delhi seeing this as part of its Act East policy to advance ties with Southeast Asian states under Narendra Modi. As I have written previously, though there does tend to be sensationalism around this dimension of the relationship, there have been efforts by both sides to deepen ties in some areas, from upgrading their existing defense cooperation agreement and related dialogues to making inroads in functional areas like maritime security (See: “The Future of India-Indonesia Defense Ties”).
One manifestation of India-Indonesia defense ties in the maritime security realm are coordinated patrols along the international maritime boundary. Since 2002, the Indian Navy and the Indonesian Navy (TNI-AL) have been participating in coordinated patrols near the international maritime boundary line twice a year, usually in April and October. The so-called Ind-Indo CORPAT is geared toward both enhancing interoperability and boosting capabilities in areas such as search and rescue, environmental management, and ensuring the safety of commercial shipping and international trade in the Indian Ocean.
Traditionally Ind-Indo CORPAT has seen the deployment of one ship and one fixed wing aircraft from each country. But both sides have also been boosting it over time, whether through the level of participation by military officials or the holding of a bilateral maritime exercise embedded within an expanded version of CORPAT since October 2015 (See: “India-Indonesia Kick Off Joint Naval Patrols”).
On October 24, both countries kicked off the 30th edition of CORPAT as well as the third iteration of their newer bilateral exercise as part of that in Port Belawan. Following the arrival of the Indian Navy ship Sukanya, New Delhi said that apart from the exercise itself, which will last till November 5, related engagements would include official calls, a formal reception on board the ship, guided tours for Indian naval personnel, and professional interactions between the naval personnel of both nations. It added that CORPAT was a demonstration of India’s commitment to its ties with Indonesia and to the maritime security in the Indian Ocean Region. |
In a website update late Wednesday night, NBN Co has added FSAMs (Fibre Serving Area Modules) that are undergoing Telstra remediation to their rollout map — marking them as having commenced “Build preparation”. A full list of FSAMs added to the remediation stage can be found at the end of this post.
In a typical NBN Co brownfields fibre-to-the-premies (FTTP) rollout, NBN Co releases areas for Telstra to replace pits and ducts (remediation) before sending their own construction partners into the area to build and rollout the fibre.
NBN Co has previously indicated that it was their intention to improve the rollout map to make it more relevant and accurate to end users. This addition comes after NBN Co removed around two-thirds of the areas listed as “Construction commenced” after the change in Government, replacing it instead with a build commenced metric. This new “Build preparation” provide more clarity to Australians who may have previously witnessed “NBN work” in their area yet the NBN Co rollout map had not been updated to reflect that.
NBN Co also recently changed their premises passed metric in an attempt to make it more relevant and accurate to consumers and retail service providers.
Brownfields Fibre (Remediation)
(NBS) denotes an FSAM “never before seen” on the construction maps. i.e. not part of those that were removed from the Construction Commenced map in Nov 2013. |
I recently conducted a video interview with Satoki Nagata, a talented street photographer based in Chicago about his photography and approach.
One of the questions I asked Satoki was regarding his Cabrini–Green Housing, a documentary he did with people in the Cabrini–Green area of Chicago (known to be a dangerous area full of gang-activity with low-income housing). Satoki was drawn to the area, and he was able to take some incredible portraits of the people in the community. My biggest question for him was: “How did you conquer your fear of photographing strangers you didn’t know, especially in a dangerous area?”
His answer was that he photographed a month shooting at his Leica’s minimum focusing distance: .7 meters (2.3 feet).
Satoki said that by shooting for .7 meters for an entire month, it forced him not only get physically close to people, but also emotionally close to them. He often spoke to the people he photographed and got to know them more personally.
Many of us have hesitations when it comes to photographing strangers — especially getting close to them. If you want to build your confidence when shooting on the street, I highly recommend you trying out the “.7 meter challenge” for a month. Of course it doesn’t have to be .7 meters (every camera and lens combination is different).
Some additional points/suggestions:
1. The photos don’t need to be candid
Talk to strangers on the street, get to know them better, and perhaps ask them for a portrait. The shots you take at .7 meters don’t necessarily need to be candid. I actually find it more difficult to ask people permission to take photographs than taking photos candidly.
When you ask people for permission, you step outside of your comfort zone and make yourself open and vulnerable to the other person you are photographing. Shooting candidly takes guts, but the connection you have with your subjects is very shallow.
2. Use the viewfinder
If your camera has a viewfinder, use it. Satoki discourages “shooting from the hip” as it can be a barrier to overcoming your fear of photographing strangers and from connecting with people. Of course if you only have an LCD screen you should use that, but if you have a viewfinder try to use it.
3. The photos don’t have to be just portraits
One of the things I loved most about Satoki’s Canrini-Green project is that he photographed both portraits and “detail shots”. Not only did he focus on faces, but he also photographed chests, hands, and more.
Conclusion
I can guarantee that if you stick to this challenge for a month, your confidence of shooting in the streets will go up and you will be much better at communicating with people.
If you would like to take part of the “.7 meter challenge”, upload your photos to my Facebook Fan Page and write “.7 meter challenge” as the caption. At the end of February I will share my favorite photos on my blog and Facebook!
Make sure to check out Satoki Nagata’s work on his website and also see the interview I did with him on the Leica blog. |
On Halloween night in 1979, Kiss appeared on the nationally syndicated The Tomorrow Show. Almost immediately, a clearly inebriated Ace Frehley stole the show. Reacting to Tom Snyder’s assertion that Gene Simmons played the “bass” guitar, Ace jokes that he is the “trout player” before schooling his amused host on the proper pronunciation of Gene’s instrument.
One can’t help but be taken by Frehley’s laugh. Ace is at once revealed as a jokester who saw the humor in a grown man dressing like a space alien. He couldn’t help but laugh at himself and the absurdity of life in Kiss.
Ace’s unrestrained cackle demands attention. At one point, his laughter is so dominant that Snyder interrupts Gene mid-story to ask if Ace has ever recorded his laugh. By the time the camera pans back to Simmons, the bass player sits sulking like an angry child. It’s a very public cue that inner turmoil had crept into the Kiss camp.
Ace manages to ruin just about every cliché rock and roll sentiment. As Paul Stanley describes the adulation of fans crying at Kiss concerts, Ace quickly interrupts by shouting, “I spent all that money,” as he mockingly wipes away fake tears.
There is laughter all around. Snyder clearly loves Ace’s unscripted humor. Peter’s amusement comes across as genuine. Paul is visibly agitated, even as he flashes a few fake smiles. Gene just scowls.
What follows are a bunch of jokes that detract from the serious interview that Gene and Paul attempt to give. Perhaps most memorable is Ace’s description of his “self-explanatory” costume. When asked by Snyder if he is “kind of like a space man,” Ace responds, “No, actually I’m a plumber.” As Frehley bursts into laughter, the camera quickly cuts to a close-up of Gene and Paul. Both musicians are riddled with anger.
Playing along and clearly oblivious to unsavory connotations, Snyder responds, ”I got a little piece of pipe backstage I’d like you to work on.” There’s no way Ace can pass up the golden opportunity. Not missing a beat, he shouts, “Tell me about it!” Again, the camera pans back to Gene and Paul whose feeble grins fail to mask their mortification. Their best efforts to portray Kiss as a serious band have hopelessly fallen into a comedy routine.
Shortly after the interview, there were big changes in the Kiss camp. Peter was soon out of the band. Ace hung around just long enough to produce this gem.
Drunk again, he’s quite incapable of introducing new drummer Eric Carr on Australian television. Although the clip makes it clear why Kiss and Ace had to part ways, it’s also a reminder of why Kiss fans will forever love Space Ace. |
As the Kremlin claims it cannot control separatist forces in east Ukraine, its clear orchestration of the release of kidnapped international observers shows the exact opposite.
Overshadowed by the Ukrainian assault on occupied towns in the Donbass industrial region, and by bloodshed in Odessa, is yesterday's release of eight international observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) held hostage in Russia’s command and control center of Slovyansk. With Slovyansk under siege and the risk of Russian operatives being captured, Putin probably concluded he needed to get the black mark of the hostage taking of OSCE international observers off the agenda. It is enough that Putin’s local commanders would face murder charges for the well-documented killing of a local pro-Ukrainian politician.
Russia has publicly asserted that the hostage taking was a purely local matter, over which they have no influence or control.
Russia’s lie is exposed by tapped phone calls, obtained by the Ukraine Security Service (SBU), that took place on May 1 and 2 between Colonel Igor Girkin (alias Igor Strelkov), the military commander of the “People's Republic of Donetsk,” and Putin’s special envoy, Vladimir Lukin.
In their calls, Lukin gives Girkin aka Strelkov his instructions about how to carry out this “thing.” Girkin a.k.a. Strelkov has no objections to this “thing” because he has already “been informed.” In their calls, Lukin refers to “verification from the highest levels.” As the President’s special envoy, I imagine this refers to Putin himself. It also appears that Girkin/Strelkov has to make calls to clear new "things" with higher-ups, such as admitting Council of Europe members along with Lukin.
The series of phone calls begins the evening of May 1 with Lukin’s personal assistant (who identifies herself as “Mirza”) calling Colonel Girkin/Strelkov:
Conversation between Lukin and Girkin/Strelkov, May 1 evening
Mirza: Hello, Good day. I am calling on behalf of Lukin. He asked me to tell you that we are flying tomorrow from Moscow at 10 a.m. plus-or-minus.
Girkin/Strelkov: Who will be coming?
Mirza: Lukin, Mirzha, Kozokhin.
Girkin/Strelkov: So, I’ll pass along these names. What should I say?
Mirza: Say that we are flying in tomorrow. All further details are known. Everybody is informed.
Conversation between Lukin and Girkin/Strelkov, May 2, 10:59 a.m.
Lukin: Excuse me. This is Vladimir Petrovich [Lukin]. I have arrived here as we have agreed upon. Greetings Igor Ivanovich [Girkin/Strelkov]. We have agreed to meet. I am in Donetsk right now in good company. And if I may I’d like to ask you two questions.
Girkin/Strelkov: Go ahead.
Lukin: First how “warm” is it at your place and can we talk? You do have a general idea about the “thing” I have been assigned to do, don’t you?
Girkin/Strelkov: Yes I know. I have been informed.
Lukin: You do not have any objections about this “thing,” do you? The job is to carry out this “thing.” The representatives, the Secretary General of the Council of Europe, will be in Donetsk today. We are carrying out this “thing” together.
Girkin/Strelkov: I have no objections for one simple reason. All this has already been discussed with me.
Lukin: Very good, then we have to figure out how to get there to carry out this “thing?” So let me call you a little later.
Girkin/Strelkov: Call me, call, but I had instruction to assist you and not the European partners.
Lukin: Yes I understand. The problem is, well, we have to keep working on this matter together to carry out this “thing.”
Girkin/Strelkov: Keep working on it. I must manage the defense [of Slovyansk].
Conversation between Lukin with Girkin/Strelkov, May 2, 5:04 p.m.
Girkin/Strelkov: I am listening Vladimir Petrovich [Lukin].
Lukin: Forgive me that I have to interrupt you all the time.
Girkin/Strelkov: No bother.
Lukin: So Igor Ivanovich [Girkin/Strelkov] the problem is the following. When is it convenient to arrive? OSCE provides the transportation. I’ll be in the first car. And we will be carrying out this “thing” once we are allowed to pass. There seems to be an order to let us pass, but it is being verified at the highest level. What is better: In a few hours or if we arrive tomorrow morning say 5-7?
Girkin/Strelkov: For me it is more convenient if you come in the morning for one simple reason. After you leave, the fighting will resume.
Lukin: I see. So you think morning is better. Yes. Okay It is agreed. So we’ll call sometime near 7 a.m.
Girkin/Strelkov; Yes, call me when you near the city so I can instruct the blockade to let you in.
I am convinced the recorded calls are authentic. I have personally met Lukin several times, and it would be difficult to imitate his voice and super-polite manner of speech. Their conversation rings like two acquaintances arranging a golf game.
Girkin/Streltsov’s voice is well known from You Tube (introducing to the local police their new boss whom he has named) and from his intercepted call with the self-appointed mayor of Slovyansk about the disposition of the body of the murdered local politician, Volodymir Rybak.
Complicated lies break down in the light of day, either bit by bit, or all at once. (An amusing example is the visit by reporters to “Ukrainian” Girkin’s Moscow apartment, where they interview his neighbors and wife). Putin’s Big Lie has been penetrated with so many smoking guns that U.S. diplomats can scarcely believe that Putin continues to assert that his lies are the truth. The normally reticent John Kerry cannot refrain from calling Putin a liar and U.N. Ambassador, Samantha Power, accused Russia of “trying to insult the intelligence of the world community” at yesterday’s emergency Security Council session called by Russia.
Putin may not worry about his Big Lie collapsing like a house of cards in the West, as it is. His main concern is Russian public opinion and that can be handled by his 24/7 monopoly of TV broadcasting. Or at least so he hopes. The May Day parade is a rare chance for the opposition to show itself, and they came out in the tens of thousands. That could not have escaped his notice. |
The First Minister said he wants to increase the pressure on Mr Cameron to go head-to-head with him in a TV debate ahead of next year’s independence referendum.
He said this would give the Prime Minister the opportunity to “articulate a case against Scotland”, while he would make the opposing argument for independence.
The Scottish Liberal Democrats said the intervention had “given the game away” because it showed that Mr Salmond is prepared to label anyone anti-Scottish just because they do not agree with separation.
Alistair Carmichael MP, the party’s deputy leader, attacked the First Minister’s “cheap and narrow” remark and accused him of overseeing a “nationalist witch-hunt.”
“This is the negative campaign from the nationalists which says that anyone who questions their plans is fundamentally against Scotland,” the Orkney and Shetland MP said.
“If that’s the kind of battle lines Alex Salmond wants to draw he may very well find even more people turning their backs on his campaign."
Mr Salmond has so far refused to take part in a television debate with Alistair Darling, the head of the pro-UK Better Together campaign.
He has insisted he will only debate with Mr Cameron, an invitation the Prime Minister has refused on the grounds that it is for Scotland to decide and he does not have a vote in the referendum.
Downing Street insiders said Mr Salmond would use such a debate to turn the referendum into a battle between Scotland and England instead of Scottish unionists and nationalists.
Speaking to STV’s Scotland Tonight programme, the First Minister said: “Let's see if we can get the pressure on to make sure we pull the Prime Minister into the ring and then let's see if he can articulate a case against Scotland because I'll certainly be articulating the case for Scotland.”
The First Minister has previously called the Union a “nonsense” that will cease to exist soon. However, two opinion polls published this week show support for remaining part of the UK far ahead of that for separation. |
The FCC’s incentive auction of 600 MHz spectrum shifts into forward tomorrow when as many as 62 bidders begin to make offers for TV broadcasters’ airwaves. But exactly when the event will actually be over remains a mystery.
The Commission announced the conclusion of the first stage of the incentive auction in June, setting the clearing cost for broadcasters’ airwaves at $86.4 billion for the 126 MHz it cleared for wireless use. That price must be met by carriers and would-be wireless service providers during the forward auction to end the event; otherwise the FCC must reduce the amount of spectrum it will free up and resume bidding with TV broadcasters in the reverse auction where it ended during the previous stage.
Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile are all expected to bid aggressively in the forward auction in an effort to keep pace with ever-increasing demand for mobile data, while Sprint – which continues to struggle financially – is sitting out. Comcast will participate as well, and is expected to spend several billion dollars as it prepares to launch wireless service. Dish is also among those companies that will participate.
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But some industry onlookers have been disappointed that the final list of bidders doesn’t include some deep-pocketed players that might have leveraged 600 MHz airwaves to try to disrupt the U.S. wireless market. Google quelled speculation that it would participate when it said in May that it would opt out. And former Facebook executive Chamath Palihapitiya made headlines last fall when he announced plans to bid anywhere from $4 billion to $10 billion at auction – but his firm wasn’t on the final list of bidders announced last month.
But the $86.4 billion clearing cost, which was announced in June, is far higher than analysts’ estimates that were generally in the range of $30 billion to $40 billion. Given the lack of potential upstarts with big bankrolls participating, many analysts say the auction won’t meet the initial clearing cost and will likely drag into next year.
Barclays, for instance, predicts the FCC will ultimately free up only 84 MHz before the event concludes in the first quarter of 2017. And repacking the spectrum for use by wireless service providers is likely to extend beyond the FCC’s 39-month timeframe, Barclays suggested, which could mean carriers won’t be able to use much of the spectrum as soon as they hope.
“It is unlikely that a shift in administration would alter the timeline of the auction, given where the process is,” Barclays analysts wrote recently in a research note. “The mandated time for vacating the spectrum bands and amount allocated towards relocation expenses are expected to increase, however.”
Indeed, the FCC may have to shift back and forth between the reverse auction and the forward auction a few times as the event progresses, gradually closing the gap between what TV broadcasters are willing to sell their airwaves for and what bidders are willing to pay. But as Jonathan Cohen of the law firm Wilkinson Barker Knauer LLP recently pointed out, it’s impossible to determine just how much demand there is for the 600 MHz airwaves – so it’s plausible that the clearing cost is met during a single forward auction.
And even if the FCC has to hold multiple reverse and forward auctions, each will build on the progress made during the previous auctions.
“To be sure, revenues in the initial stage of the forward auction would have to far exceed most analysts’ expectations in order for the auction to close in this stage, but the level of demand for the new mobile broadband licenses is as yet uncertain,” Cohen wrote. “We just don’t know for sure whether the forward auction bidders will pony up the funds to clear 126 MHz, or if not, how close they will come. Even if we assume that revenues in the initial stage of the forward auction fall short and that a second auction stage is needed, the second stage of the auction will take less time than the first stage, for two reasons: (1) the reverse and forward auctions will ‘pick up where they left off’ in the prior stage; and (2) there will be no six-week hiatus between the reverse and forward auctions, as has been the case in the initial stage.”
While $86.4 billion seems unobtainable, the FCC’s recent AWS-3 auction ended north of $40 billion, and that amount was far beyond any analyst’s expectation.
As Walter Piecyk of BTIG Research explained earlier this year, the FCC will provide much more information during the forward auction than it released during the reverse auction. While bidders will remain anonymous, the Commission will provide market-by-market data on bids as well as progress toward the triggering of reserve blocks that are designed to prevent dominant carriers from compiling huge amounts of spectrum in large markets.
That data will provide clues as to how much progress the FCC is making to reaching the sky-high clearing cost it unveiled in June. But just how much longer the auction will take – and how quickly carriers will be able to put their new airwaves to use – is still far from clear. --Colin |
Following a discussion on Reddit that proved demand, Fantasy-Faction has decided to run a Small Press edition of our monthly ‘On Our Radar‘ post.
What this means is that every month we will be inviting Small Press from around the world to submit up to three titles that they are releasing for the coming month and that we can showcase to our readers.
In order to take part, each Small Press will need to send an e-mail on a monthly basis to Fantasy-Faction with the following:
Subject: SP RADAR – NAME OF SMALL PRESS – MONTH & YEAR TITLES RELEASED E.g. SP RADAR – BIG MONSTER PRESS – MARCH 2016
Up to three titles that are to be released for the following month
The name of the author for each title
The release date for each title
The book’s description as it would appear on Amazon
Where the book will be available (links if already able to pre-order)
A cover image that is no more than 250kb (we display at 300-500 pixel high, so should be easy enough)
The e-mail should be sent to [email protected] by the 15th of each month prior to the ‘On Our Radar’ feature (i.e. for March’s ‘On Our Radar’ feature, Small Press will need to send their titles over by 15th February).
It goes without saying, but we will say it anyway: Fantasy-Faction was founded to promote good authors and good books. We want to connect readers with authors who can provide them with life-changing stories. Fantasy-Faction will not feature any Small Press we deem as partaking in exploitation of authors. We will also not feature any Small Press that we don’t feel is providing the quality of work our readers would expect from a novel / anthology that they are paying for. I’m sure the hardworking Small Press will read that, nod and support the reasons why that is the case.
Thank you and I look forward to receiving titles from Small Press from around the world and delivering readers an even more extensive look into what the genre has to offer. |
Ryan Giggs has made his first move as Manchester United interim manager by calling on Paul Scholes to assist with training at Carrington.
Giggs has been placed in charge of the first team until the end of the season following the sacking of David Moyes on Tuesday.
And with coaches Steve Round and Jimmy Lumsden following Moyes out of the door, Giggs has turned to the former United midfielder to help with training the first team.
Scholes assisted Phil Neville and Nicky Butt at training on Wednesday, with Giggs observing from the sidelines.
"It's great to see Paul Scholes here at the Aon Training Complex today, assisting Ryan Giggs, Nicky Butt and Phil Neville," read a post on Manchester United's official Twitter feed.
Scholes coached at the club for six months when he first retired from the playing staff in 2011. Sir Alex Ferguson managed to persuade the midfielder to come out of retirement the following year and he then hung up his boots for good last summer after Ferguson left.
Scholes rejected the chance to stay on as a coach, with Moyes failing to offer a role in the immediate aftermath of Moyes's appointment last May.
The former United midfielder, who has 11 Premier League winner's medals to his name, has spent his time out of the game pursuing various projects.
He was part of a consortium, along with Giggs, Butt, Gary Neville and his brother Phil, that bought Salford City FC. Scholes has also appeared as a TV pundit during his time away from United.
The 39 year-old has assisted Butt with the club's U21 team in Europe this season, but his involvement has been limited.
Scholes's return comes just a month after he criticised Moyes's team following the 3-0 Old Trafford defeat against Manchester City. |
April 2013. I wake up and look at the clock. 2:58 AM. I have a long day ahead of me.
I don't have to be up for another two hours and five minutes for the first of three workouts. Yes, I'm that exact. In the wee hours of twilight my mind begins to race. I can feel my heart rate rising and my body beginning to perspire as I think, "You're gay."
Trying to ignore the thought I pick up the book sitting on my nightstand. Sometimes reading calms my mind and help me run away from this terrifying idea. Not this time. My internal dialogue proceeds to get more and more aggressive.
"You're a fag. You're a queen. You're undeserving of love. You're never going to amount to anything."
After ruling out sleep - let's be honest, no one is falling back asleep with that kind of thought process - I walk over to my desk where I begin to work. In addition to my athletic and academic responsibilities on campus, I'm an active member of the athletic department on four different committees that operate on campus. These organizations are dedicated to making the University of North Carolina the best public education institution in the country. They range from meetings with the many athletic directors, to bringing kids with cancer to sporting events, to helping freshman adjust to life in college and organizing community service opportunities for the varsity teams.
For most athletes, one of these responsibilities would have been daunting. Not for me - four wasn't even enough.
After spending some time working, I look at the clock. 3:30 AM. That half hour felt like three days. Time crawls as I try to repress the conflicting thoughts in my head. The second I stop, my mind becomes active again.
"FAGGOT! QUEER!"
I get up and walk to my master bathroom feeling defeated, worthless. Weak. I undress and get ready to jump in the shower. I look at my physique in the mirror. Nothing seems good enough. My lower abs aren't as defined as my upper abs, giving my middle section a strange and disproportioned look. My chest isn't big enough for my wide frame. My back is so swayed that my teammates nicknamed me "spineless," something that feels pretty accurate as I live in silent shame.
You name it, I hate it about myself.
I jump in the shower. After washing and rinsing my body and hair, I towel dry and walk over to the dresser where I keep my sweats. I want comfort, not style, since I'm going to lie awake for another hour or so. As I open up my drawers, I look at the 12 ACC Medals, 10 All-American Certificates, three All-American Trophies, and ACC Men's Swimmer of the Year accolades that have accumulated on top of my dresser. Four years of accomplishments glaring back at me, titles my teammates would kill for, hold no value to me.
"You are still a queen. You are still a fairy!"
Shaking my head I pull out my favorite North Carolina sweatshirt and some of my lifeguarding sweatpants. I put the sweats on and curl up in bed.
3:51AM. Seventy-two more minutes to kill.
I reach for the rosary beads hanging from my headboard. When my grandmother passed away, she left each of her grandchildren a string of rosary beads. Every morning I thought this would be the cure; Saying the rosary would make the thoughts go away. The prayers would make me a straight man, the man I wanted to be but couldn't figure out.
As I lay in bed with my eyes closed, I begin saying the Hail Mary and Our Father. Praying the gay away. Or trying to, anyway. Seventy minutes of praying and nothing changes. I still have the nasty internal dialogue, I still hate every part of myself and I still feel worthless, unaccomplished.
5:03 AM. My alarm blares. I don't need it. I never fell back asleep.
* * *
Winning my national title in June of 2013 changed my life. All of a sudden I was projected to make the 2016 Olympic Team. I had attention from fans, I had a sponsor, and I found a new responsibility to keep the swimming community updated on the majority of my life.
I hated social media, probably because I was terrified of being outed on the Internet. After becoming a professional swimmer it seemed that social media was going to be a necessary evil. I left USA Swimming Nationals that year with a Twitter account, an Instagram account and an updated Facebook page. Talk about social media overload!
My fear was not just limited to social media, it extended to the mainstream press. The mere sight of a camera or a photographer on the pool deck was enough to cause an interior panic so strong it would ruin my race. I was a small reason that these cameras were on the deck. Sure, photographers wanted pictures of the newest national champion. Swim fans wanted to see how I got ready for a race and how I strategized my races.
Yet I always wondered, "Why would anyone want to take a picture of me? Why would anyone want to film me? I'm nothing but an unaccomplished, closeted queer."
With this new semi-public image, I was expected to show people the ins and outs of my life: where I was going, whom I was with, and what we were doing. Where previously I flew under the radar, I was suddenly expected to do interviews. How was I supposed to be comfortable in front of a camera when I couldn't stomach looking at myself in the mirror? The attention that some athletes revel in was causing me turmoil.
Whenever I posted anything on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook, I would read it over 10, 15, 20 times to make sure no one could infer anything about my sexuality. Whenever I was interviewed I would watch the online clips over and over again to make sure I seemed masculine. I seemed fully confident in front of the media, coaches, parents and teammates but completely inadequate, worthless and insecure behind closed doors.
I was the King of the Double Life.
An entire year went on with me living this double life. In June 2014-almost one year to the day after winning my national title-I made a deal with myself. If I didn't repeat my championship title, the way I was living my life needed to change. For my own personal health, I needed to come out. I needed to accept myself and stop hating myself.
Tom Luchsinger of the USA competes during the Men's 200m Butterfly prelims of the 15th FINA World Championships on July 30, 2013 in Barcelona. (Photo by Alexander Hassenstein/Getty Images)
My personal ultimatum came at a time where everything seemed to be spiraling out of control. I felt like garbage in the water. I couldn't hit a pace time if my life depended on it. My anxiety was through the roof. I was constantly sweating, to the point where I couldn't keep hydrated. The stress hormones in my blood were triple the concentrations from my previous readings. My resting heart rate was double what it usually was-typically resting in the 30s and 40s, it was now in the 70s and 80s.
My body was beginning to demand a release. I couldn't take it much longer.
I didn't repeat my title. I wasn't even close. A deeply disappointing seventh place.
I decided to keep the deal to myself.
* * *
August 2014. I was petrified, but started to reach out.
My very first confidant was a man named Warren. I knew he would understand what it was like to be a closeted swimmer for he had done it himself, graduating from UNC in 2003. We met up for dinner in New York City and I shared my story with him. He encouraged me, showed me that everything was going to be alright and helped me through the process of telling my family and friends.
My older brother, Ryan, was the first person I told in my family. He had been through a lot in his life, often feeling like an outcast. I felt that he would be the safest and most understanding person to tell. He didn't even bat a proverbial eyelash. Twenty minutes after I told him, we were making jokes about it. Nothing changed.
My best friend Kate could always could read me like a book; She knew something was wrong. Because we have had an extremely close friendship that has lasted over a decade, I trusted her to keep my most shameful secret.
"Oh my gosh! Why didn't you tell me sooner?! I'm so happy for you!"
Not a flinch. Lots of excitement. Typical Kate.
Telling my parents proved to be the most emotionally difficult. I was laying in a king size bed at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Chicago after an appearance for my agency, waiting for a flight back to Baltimore. After lying to my parents for so many years, the stress leading up to my big conversation with them caused my normally clear complexion to become riddled with acne -- the kind that only the perfect trifecta of finals, lack of sleep and too much caffeine seemed to produce. I had a cold-sore crater on my bottom lip-something that never happened.
I originally wanted to tell my parents face to face, but it was clear that my body wouldn't allow that to happen.
I called my parents from half a continent away and, like any self-respecting national champion talking with his mom and dad, immediately began to cry.
"I'm gay. And I'm scared."
They weren't. They were great.
"Are you the same man we raised for the past 23 years?" They asked.
With a sinking feeling that I had let them down, I told them, "Yes."
"Then, who cares?"
I lucked out to get them as my parents.
After that I began telling people in casual conversation. I told one of my teammates while we were talking between sets at a workout. I told another friend while talking casually on the phone. It was shocking how easy something that caused me so much pain and anxiety simply began to roll off my tongue. The best part: No one seemed to care!
For as long as I can remember I tried to repress my feelings through athletics. I tried to hide who I was through medals and accomplishments. I tried to pray away my sexuality. I tried to shower it off. Nothing ever worked. After years of stress, hate, and disgust toward myself, I have come to accept who I am. I am a proud gay man living my life the best way I know how, surrounded by people who love and support me!
For years, my sexuality was the quality I was most ashamed of about myself. But now it seems that being gay is one of the characteristics I'm most proud of. I have accomplishments linked to my name that most heterosexual men will never have. I've overcome the fear of being rejected from the people I love the most.
My friendships have gotten stronger because of my self acceptance. My smile is a lot more genuine and surfaces much more frequently. I laugh a lot more. My body has time to recover from a workout because I'm actually an easy-going person. I have found qualities-both physical and emotional-that I like about myself - though that's still a work in progress. My number of good days far out number my bad days.
I'm still the same person I have always been, just a hell of a lot better at it.
You can follow Tom Luchsinger on Twitter @TomLuchsinger.
Edited by Cyd Zeigler. |
This is the second post in our series on politics, political science and the World Cup. In this post, Andrew Bertoli examines whether the World Cup incites nationalism that encourages political leaders to behave more aggressively in the international arena.
—Erik Voeten.
Although international sporting events were originally established to encourage peace between countries, there is substantial disagreement about how they actually affect interstate conflict. No doubt, the most popular view is that they reduce conflict by providing an outlet for nationalistic aggression and teaching countries to play fair and respect each other. This argument has been championed by many reporters, academics, U.S. presidents and international institutions.
However, others have contended that sports actually increase conflict between countries by inciting nationalism. Proponents of this view point to the 1969 Football War between El Salvador and Honduras and the 2009 Egypt-Algeria World Cup Dispute as clear examples of cases where sporting events resulted in conflict on the international stage.
The ideal way to address this question would be to run an experiment where we randomly selected a large number of countries to attend a major international sporting event and randomly chose others to stay home. We could then track the aggression levels of the treatment and control groups before and after the sporting event, much like we were medical researchers testing the effect of some new drug through a randomized controlled trial. These experiments are the gold standard for establishing causal relationships in most scientific fields, so the results from this type of study could significantly improve our understanding of how sporting events affect interstate conflict.
Although there has never been a real experiment that tests how sports influence state aggression, my new paper analyzes a natural experiment that is very similar to the ideal study described above. This natural experiment was created by the format of the World Cup qualification process from 1958-2010. Over this period, many countries qualified for the World Cup by playing a round of games against other teams and earning a top position in the standings. It is therefore possible to compare the group of countries that barely qualified to the group that barely fell short. The idea is that if Switzerland scored 15 points in the standings and qualified, while Portugal scored 14 points in the standings and missed, then it is basically a coin flip which of these countries went to the World Cup.
Using this idea, I constructed a sample consisting of 142 countries that barely qualified or barely missed qualification. I show in my paper that the qualifier and non-qualifier groups are very similar across a wide range of political, economic and demographic factors, which supports the idea that qualification was essentially random for these countries. They are also very similar on past levels of aggression. To quantify aggression, I use the standard measure of international aggression in political science, which is the number of Militarized Interstate Disputes that a state initiates. These disputes are instances where states explicitly threaten, display or use force against other countries. This measure is commonly in security studies, since interstate wars happen too infrequently to be a useful measure in most statistical tests.
The results show that going to the World Cup increases aggression substantially. The countries that barely qualified experienced a large spike in aggression during the World Cup year. The difference in the aggression levels between the two groups is statistically significant and very unlikely to have been caused by chance (p<0.01). The estimated treatment effect is also much larger for (1) countries where soccer is the most popular sport and (2) non-democracies, which have a history of using sports to generate public support for their aggressive foreign policies.
The qualifiers not only took military action more often than the non-qualifiers, but the actions they took tended to be more violent. The Militarized Interstate Dispute dataset codes for the highest level of action taken by each country, with one being the threat to use force and 20 being the start of interstate war. In the two years following the World Cup, the median for the qualifiers was 15, whereas the median for the non-qualifiers was 11. Moreover, the qualifiers were significantly more likely to launch a direct attack against another country (highest level of action=16). The Militarized Interstate Dispute dataset also codes for whether each dispute was intended to revise the status quo. In the two years following the World Cup, 72 percent of the disputes started by the qualifiers were revisionist, compared to only 54 percent for the non-qualifiers.
In my paper, I also replicate this analysis using the FIFA regional soccer championships like the European Football Championship and African Cup of Nations. Like before, I construct a sample of countries that barely made or missed qualification. In total, this new sample consists of 78 countries that barely made or missed their regional tournaments. The qualifiers and non-qualifiers were again well-balanced on aggression levels prior to qualification, but the qualifiers became significantly more aggressive following qualification. A full analysis of these results is available in my paper.
Although this data provides very strong evidence that international sporting events contribute to interstate conflict, these competitions may also have positive effects, like encouraging peace at the domestic level. For instance, in 2006 the civil war in the Ivory Coast was suspended after the national soccer team qualified for the World Cup. Similarly, Nelson Mandela used international sports to unify South Africa in the 1990s after the collapse of the apartheid regime. So even though international sports may create division between countries, they might also be able to forge a common identity within them, and this domestic stability could outweigh the costs at the international level. Thus, I do not believe that FIFA and other sports organizations should stop holding these competitions. However, they should recognize that pitting countries against each other on the international stage is unlikely to create feelings of peace and friendship between them.
Andrew Bertoli is a doctoral candidate in political science at the University of California at Berkeley. His research examines nationalism and war, with a focus on how surges of nationalism from sporting events lead to conflict. |
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday expressed deep concern over the gangrape of an elderly nun in West Bengal and the attack on a church in Haryana, as he sought immediate reports on these incidents.
"PM is deeply concerned about the incidents in Hisar, Haryana and Nadia, West Bengal," the PMO tweeted.
"PMO has asked for immediate report on facts & action taken regarding the incidents in Haryana & West Bengal," it said in another tweet, amid growing concerns over the security of Christians.
In Bengal, a 71-year-old nun was allegedly gangraped by dacoits in Nadia district in the early hours of Saturday, in an incident that sparked protests across the state and prompted the state government to order a CID probe into the incident.
In another incident, an under-construction church in Kaimri village near Hisar, Haryana, was vandalised by a group and the cross was replaced with an idol of Hanuman on Sunday, triggering tension in the area.
Both incidents triggered a nationwide outrage, with the Christian community taking to the streets to stage demonstrations.
Hundreds of priests, schoolgirls and civilians took out a rally on Monday in Kolkata to protest against the assault on the elderly nun. Angry protesters, demanding justice for the victim, also blocked West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee's convoy when she visited Ranaghat.
In the church attack case, Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar on Monday told the state assembly that the building was reportedly built in an illegal colony and the dispute was the result of an altercation between the priest and those who attacked the place of worship. Making a statement in the state assembly, Khattar said that an FIR had been registered against the accused on the statement of church priest Subhash Chander.
In February, PM Modi had broken his silence over religious tension in India following mounting criticism that the safety of religious minorities was being increasingly targeted after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power.
Modi's comments came after US President Barack Obama called for religious tolerance in a speech wrapping up his recent visit, saying India would not succeed if it was splintered along religious lines.
First Published: Mar 17, 2015 09:54 IST |
Microsoft's digital 'personal assistant' Cortana is now available on Windows Phone 8.1, Windows 10 and on Android (as a beta), with a planned launch for iOS on the cards too - and another platform will soon be added to that list.
In an interview with International Business Times, Cyanogen CEO Kirt McMaster said that Microsoft and his company were already working together to bring Cortana to the next version of Cyanogen OS. But unlike on Android - where Cortana is installed as an app with certain 'hooks' into the operating system, such as being able to replace Google Now - Cortana will be 'deeply integrated' into Cyanogen.
McMaster sounds enthusiastic about the prospect, particularly because he sees that integration as being the key to exploiting Cortana's full potential on Cyanogen OS devices:
Natural language coupled with intelligence is very important but as an application it doesn’t rally work because you need to be embedded into the framework of the OS because that is where you get all the signal from the services that makes that intelligence smarter.
He went on to draw comparisons between Cortana and its rivals, saying that Microsoft's assistant is "much better than Apple's Siri" and Google Now in certain areas:
When Apple launched Apple Music at WWDC, they showed the Siri integration with Apple Music. Siri doesn’t power Spotify like that so we can do these kind of things with for example, integration of Microsoft’s Cortana into the OS enabling natural language to power Spotify and other services.
This isn't the first partnership between Microsoft and Cyanogen - earlier this year, the two companies announced that Bing services, Skype, OneDrive, Office and more would be bundled with Cyanogen OS.
Source: International Business Times via Windows Central |
Haydée Tamara Bunke Bider (November 19, 1937 – August 31, 1967), better known as Tania or Tania the Guerrilla, was an Argentine-born East German communist revolutionary and spy who played a prominent role in the Cuban government after the Cuban Revolution and in various Latin American revolutionary movements.[1] She was the only woman to fight alongside Marxist guerrillas under Che Guevara during the Bolivian Insurgency (1966–1967) where she was killed in an ambush by CIA-assisted Bolivian Army Rangers.[1]
Early life (1937–52) [ edit ]
Bunke was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the daughter of German communists Erich Bunke and Nadia Bider (who was of Polish origin).[2][3] Her father Erich had joined the Communist Party of Germany in 1928 and fled with his wife to Argentina when the Nazis came to power in 1933.[2][3] Her parents immediately joined the Argentine Communist Party, ensuring that Tamara and her brother Olaf would grow up in a highly charged political atmosphere.[3] Their family home in Buenos Aires was often used for meetings, helping refugees, hiding publications and occasionally stashing weapons.[3]
As a youth Bunke was a keen athlete and an excellent student, who developed a particular fondness for the folk music of South America.[3] However, in 1952, the family returned to East Germany and settled in Stalinstadt (later named Eisenhüttenstadt).[3] Bunke did not learn German until her adolescence.[4]
University years (1953–59) [ edit ]
Bunke thrived in her new environment and began studying political science at Humboldt University in East Berlin. She soon joined the ruling Socialist Unity Party of Germany's youth organization, the Free German Youth (FGY).[3] In addition, she also joined the World Federation of Democratic Youth, allowing her to attend the World Festival of Youth and Students in Vienna, Prague, Moscow and finally Havana, Cuba.[3] Her keen interest in and familiarity with Latin America, along with her linguistic abilities (she spoke fluent Russian, French, English, Spanish and German),[1] soon saw her translating on behalf of the FGY's International Department. In this capacity she entertained and translated for the growing stream of visitors from Cuba, following the victory of the 1959 Cuban Revolution.[3]
Cuba and Che Guevara (1960–64) [ edit ]
Bunke as she first arrived in Cuba in 1961.
In 1960, at the age of 23, Bunke met the Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara.[2] Guevara was visiting the East German city of Leipzig with a Cuban trade delegation and Bunke, who considered him a hero of hers, was assigned to him as an interpreter.[1] Inspired by the Cuban Revolution, of which Guevara had become an international icon, Bunke came to live in Cuba in 1961[4]. She first sought out voluntary work, teaching and building homes and schools in the countryside.[1] Her Cuban hosts soon began to notice the efficiency, discipline and good-natured sense of service that she possessed. As a result, she participated in work brigades, the militia, and the Cuban Literacy Campaign.[3] She also worked in the Ministry of Education, the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples, and the Federation of Cuban Women.[3]
Eventually she was selected for training to take part in Che's ill-fated guerrilla expedition to Bolivia entitled "Operation Fantasma". Guevara's goal was to spark a continent-wide revolutionary uprising into neighbouring Argentina, Paraguay, Brazil, Peru and Chile; by creating "two, three, many Vietnams" in order to challenge American imperialism.[1][3] In preparation, Guevara assigned Bunke to be trained by Dariel Alarcón Ramírez (known by his nom de guerre Benigno) in Pinar del Río in western Cuba.[1] Guevara wanted her taught self-defence, such as how to use a knife, a submachine gun and a pistol; and how to send and receive telegraph transmissions and coded messages by radio.[1] It was during this period that she took the name "Tania" as her nom de guerre. During her training in Cuba and later at a small farm on the outskirts of Prague, Bunke impressed the Cubans with her intelligence, stamina, and skill for espionage.[1] Benigno for instance, has described her as "gracious, beautiful and kind, but also very tough".[1] She further endeared herself to the Cubans by entertaining them in the training camp by playing Argentine folk songs on accordion or guitar.[1] Moreover, as a very sociable person who could strike up friendships easily, the Cuban government realized that she possessed beneficial traits for her future work in Bolivia.[3]
Bolivian insurgency (1964–67) [ edit ]
[1] During her years working for the Cuban government (1961–1967), Bunke utilized various disguises. These included a Czech woman Marta Iriarte, Haydée González, and Vittoria Pancini, an Italian citizen travelling in Europe.
In October 1964, Bunke traveled to Bolivia under the name Laura Gutiérrez Bauer, as a secret agent for Guevara's last campaign. Her first mission was to gather intelligence on Bolivia's political elite and the strength of its armed forces.[1] Posing as a right-wing folklore expert of Argentine background, she quickly found herself infiltrating high society and rubbing shoulders with the glitterati of Bolivia's academic and official circles.[3][5] Showing how high she was able to rise in La Paz society, she won the adoration of Bolivian President René Barrientos, and even went on holiday with him to Peru.[1] In order to maintain her cover, she also busied herself part-time with her explorations of folk music (producing one of the most valuable collections of Bolivian music in the process) and entered into a marriage of convenience with a young Bolivian to gain citizenship.[1][3]
Tactically, she was initially invaluable to Guevara's guerrillas because she used radio equipment hidden in a compartment behind the wall in her apartment to not only send coded messages to Fidel Castro in Havana; but to Guevara's guerrillas in the field by posing as a radiohost giving encoded relationship advice to fictitious lovelorn couples.[1] This radio program was called "Advice to Women".[4]
In late 1966 however, the unreliability of many of her comrades in the urban network set up to support Che's guerrillas forced Bunke to travel to their rural camp at Ñancahuazú on a number of occasions. On one of these trips, a captured Bolivian communist gave away a safe house where Tania's jeep was parked in which she had left her address book. As a result, her cover was blown, and she now had no other choice than to join Guevara's armed guerrilla campaign. In this capacity she was in charge of rationing food and monitoring radio broadcasts.[3] There continues to also be the allegation from fellow surviving guerrilla Benigno, that Bunke and Guevara had at some point become lovers in Bolivia; with Benigno remarking decades later in 2008 that "You could tell by the way they spoke so quietly and looked at each other when they were together near the end".[1]
Without Bunke as the guerrilla's contact to the outside world, the guerrillas then found themselves isolated. Bunke also soon found herself battling a high fever, a leg injury, and the painful effects of the Chigoe flea parasite.[1][3] Consequently, Guevara decided to try to send a group of 16 other ailing combatants, including Bunke, out of the mountains.[1][3]
Death [ edit ]
"Will my name one day be forgotten
and nothing of me remain on the Earth?" — Tamara Bunke, a 1966 poem[1]
At 5:20 pm on August 31, 1967, the lead guerrilla column was ambushed while crossing the Río Grande at Vado del Yeso.[1] Tania was waist-deep in the water, with her rifle held above her head, when she was shot through the arm and the lung and killed along with eight of her fellow insurgents in quick succession.[1][3] Her body was then carried downstream and only recovered by the Bolivian army several days later on September 6. When her corpse was presented to Barrientos, it was decided that it would be buried in an unmarked grave with the rest of the guerrillas. However, the local campesino women demanded that, as a woman, she be given a proper Christian burial.[3]
When her death was announced over the radio, Guevara, still struggling through the jungles close by, refused to believe the news; suspecting it was army propaganda to demoralise him.[1] Later, when Fidel Castro learned of her demise, he declared "Tania the guerrilla" a hero of the Cuban Revolution.[1]
Remains [ edit ]
After the research of biographer Jon Lee Anderson led to the 1997 discovery of Che Guevara's Bolivian remains, Bunke's remains were also tracked down to an unmarked grave in a small pit on the periphery of the Vallegrande army base on October 13, 1998. They were transferred to Cuba and were interred in the Che Guevara Mausoleum in the city of Santa Clara, alongside those of Guevara himself and several other guerrillas killed during the Bolivian Insurgency (1966–1967).
KGB, Stasi, and affair claims [ edit ]
Since the time of her death there have been various conflicting rumors or allegations that she worked for the Soviet KGB and/or the East German Stasi; along with the claim that she and Che Guevara were lovers while in Bolivia, and that she may have even been carrying his child when she was killed[1]; this was finally refuted in 2017 by Dr. Abraham Baptista, who was in charge of the autopsy of both the Ché and Tamara Bunke.[6]
In 1997 amidst unproven rumors and claims that Tamara worked for the KGB or East German Stasi, her 85-year-old mother Nadia Bunke travelled to Moscow to obtain a written statement from the successors to the KGB declaring that Bunke never worked for them.[2] For their part the German government, which now holds the Stasi files, has also confirmed that it has no records on her.[2]
Before Tania's mother Nadia Bunke died in 2003, she also managed to have the book Tania, the Woman Che Guevara Loved by Uruguayan author José A Friedl, removed from sale in Germany.[3] The courts ruled that the book contained defamatory allegations against Tamara Bunke; namely it repeated Stasi defector Günter Männel's rumor from the 1970s that Bunke and Guevara started an extra-marital affair in 1965 while training together in the Czech capital of Prague.[1][3] However, although they both did receive instruction in Prague, they were never in the city at the same time.[3]
Popular culture [ edit ]
In fiction [ edit ]
A 2007 novel by Chilean economist Sebastián Edwards entitled El misterio de las Tanias is inspired by Bunke's story.
is inspired by Bunke's story. A character known as Tania Vunke appears in Chuck Pfarrers novel Killing Che . In the story Tania is an East German KGB spy who falls in love with Guevara when she is supposed to be helping to kill him. Eventually she betrays the KGB to fight for Che and dies in battle.
. In the story Tania is an East German KGB spy who falls in love with Guevara when she is supposed to be helping to kill him. Eventually she betrays the KGB to fight for Che and dies in battle. A fictionalized version of Bunke appears in the shared world anthology Heroes in Hell, created by Janet Morris. Written in the 1980s, this version of Bunke incorporates what was then commonly believed about her work for the KGB and betraying Che to his death. In this series, Bunke is working for one of Satan's various intelligence agencies and is sent to find and (temporarily) assassinate Che, who is now running Hell's Dissidents.
Further reading [ edit ] |
First and foremost, the Senior Judges of the Judge Program want to thank all of the Judges who participated in the first pilot wave of the Exemplar Program. We received almost 900 recognition messages in this first pilot wave! Messages came to and from Judges across the globe in a variety of languages, which recognize an incredible variety of amazing contributions we all make to the broader Magic community! We have shared this list of recognition messages with our friends at Wizards of the Coast.
You can see these messages for yourself here.
With that said, we also need to set some expectations for what comes next. Wizards of the Coast has been very generous in allowing the Judge Program leadership to create the Exemplar Program. Our goal has been to foster recognition of each others’ contributions to the Judge Program. Another goal was to break us out of the entitlement mindset associated with a system of rewards (e.g. “I judged at this Grand Prix, I’m rewarded with foils.”). Instead, Exemplar focuses on peer-to-peer feedback by enabling Judges to recognize the exemplary behaviors and actions we find valuable and worthy of promotion in the broader community.
One way in which Wizards of the Coast has offered to support this program is by continuing to provide promotional foils, distributed primarily or even exclusively to certified Judges. These cards might be sent to Judges who receive recognition through the Exemplar Program. However, not all judges recognized are certain to receive foils. Again, to be clear, not every recognition will equate to Wizards of the Coast sending foils. We sincerely hope that the recognition alone is meaningful for you – positive feedback always makes us feel better, and if it sometimes comes with something rare and shiny, well, so much the better!
Also, once Wizards hands over envelopes to the delivery service or postal carrier, Wizards’ involvement is complete. If cards sent to you are lost or damaged in the shipping process, or – worse yet! – if you fail to maintain a current address, those cards will not be replaced. Wizards cannot provide resources to track shipments, replace missing or damaged shipments, or otherwise follow up on these shipments. While that may sound harsh, it really ties back to that earlier point – this is not about entitlement, it’s about recognition.
As of this writing, the first wave of Exemplar recognitions has not shipped. You can still update your address here.
Please note that for security purposes, when you visit the page to update your address, there is no way to review the current address you have on file. We can’t see that information, either, so any questions such as, “What address do you have on file for me?” can only be answered by, “Whichever address you last provided.” If you aren’t sure, update it here.
If you have questions about this process or want to contact anyone about anything you did or did not receive in the mail as a result of this effort, please contact us at [email protected]. Do not contact Wizards of the Coast or the Judge Program Manager. They will not assist in this. They will be forwarding any messages or requests they receive regarding this directly to the e-mail address above. |
The star of Steven Soderbergh's "Haywire" is in talks to join Dwayne Johnson's team in the sixth installment of the Universal mega-franchise.
Haywire star Gina Carano, the MMA athlete-turned-actress, is in negotiations to join the cast of Fast & Furious 6, the next installment in the billion-dollar franchise for Universal Pictures.
PHOTOS: Premiere Pics: 'Fast Five' and 'Water for Elephants'
Plot and character are being kept locked in the trunk of a 1970 Dodge Charger, but Paul Walker and Vin Diesel are set to return as rogue heroes Brian O’Conner and Dominic Toretto, respectively, while Dwayne Johnson is reprising his role as Diplomatic Security Service Agent Luke Hobbs, out to capture the boys.
Carano will play a member of Johnson’s team.
For Fast 6, Justin Lin is back as director for his fourth outing in the movie series, and Chris Morgan, who wrote the past three Fast films, is back on scripting duty. Neal H. Moritz and Diesel are returning as producers.
Launched in 2001, the Fast franchise is one of Universal’s hottest properties, with 2011’s Fast Five reinvigorating what was considered a long-in-the-tooth series. Fast Five gave Universal its biggest opening weekend in studio history and grossed more than $600 million worldwide.
Fast 6 is slated for release May 24, 2013.
Carano gained favorable notices for her acting debut with Haywire, which director Steven Soderbergh built around her. Carano went toe-to-toe in the film against such heavyweights as Michael Fassbender, Channing Tatum, Ewan McGregor and Michael Douglas.
On the strength of that movie, Carano nabbed the lead in In the Blood, an action thriller to be directed by John Stockwell. Carano will shoot that film after she finishes Fast 6.
Carano is repped by Gersh, The Syndicate and Ziffren Brittenham.
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @Borys_Kit |
Nine years later, in April, our little family — Willem; Jake, our 3-year-old son, whom we had adopted from Lithuania as a baby, and I — visited a friend’s sheep farm in Connecticut . When we returned to New York, Willem parked the car on the street near our apartment. We walked from the car with Jake riding on Willem’s shoulders.
In the middle of the block I said, “Should we get the car seat?”
Willem said, “What’s a car seat?” And with that seemingly simple question, we entered a new kingdom.
Over the next three days, Willem’s personality began to change. He had always had a bit of a temper, but one morning he asked if I had an “ink pen.” He sometimes used different forms of English words, but when I handed him a ballpoint, because we didn’t own ink pens anymore, he began to scream at me.
He agreed to go to a marriage counselor, who advised Willem to have a checkup. I sat with a furrowed brow in the examining room as the doctor took all his vital signs. My husband was a marathon runner, in top condition, with healthy lungs and a healthy heart, but then the internist began to ask him questions.
The doctor held up a paper clip and Willem said, “I know what it does, but I don’t know the word for it.”
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English was not Willem’s first language, but this was something else.
“I’m concerned,” the doctor said. “I’m scheduling a brain M.R.I. Immediately.”
I dropped Willem at his appointment five blocks away and went to pick up Jake at preschool.
Before Willem got home, the phone rang. It was our doctor, who said softly: “I am sorry but I have very bad news. Your husband has glioblastoma, which is the worst form of brain cancer .”
Jake had opened the refrigerator and was pouring orange juice on the floor.
“Do you want me to tell him?” the doctor asked.
Jake was tugging on my sleeve to show me his handiwork.
“No, no, thank you,” I murmured. “I’ll tell him. Tell me one thing: Is he going to die?”
“Yes,” he said.
In the middle of the night, while Willem and Jake slept, I got up and Googled “glioblastoma.” I read, “The patient will slowly lose all memory, as well as all bodily movement.”
The next day I found Willem reading on the couch in the living room. He was re-reading a novel in Dutch, by the author J. Bernlef, called “Out of Mind.” It is about a husband who slowly loses his mind and ability to speak.
I huddled next to him. “Why are you reading this now?”
He shrugged. “Maybe it will help me. I’m having trouble with words.”
“Yes,” I said and took a deep breath. “Do you want to know about the M.R.I.?”
“What’s that?” he said.
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“The picture, the picture they took of your brain.”
“Yes, thank you,” he said. He had always been a formal man, but already his speech was different.
And then, as simply as I would say we needed a new rug, I said, “You have a brain tumor .”
He nodded, and then went back to his book.
A half-hour later, Willem called to me, while I was in the kitchen trying to feed Jake pasta wagon wheels without weeping.
“What’s it called, the tumor?”
I called back as cheerily as I could, “Glioblastoma,” trying to make it sound like a lovely flower.
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Willem’s first operation lasted four hours. After the surgeon came out, I stood before him, waiting to hear our destiny. “We got most of it out,” he said.
I hugged myself. “When is he going to die?”
“One year, maybe two. Very few people ask that question.”
I don’t know why I was so blunt. Of course there are miracles. Of course there are exceptions. But I wanted to know the worst-case scenario. For me that made me feel more in control, even though I was acutely aware I was in control of nothing.
“Live in the moment.”
“All you have is the day.”
“We’re all terminal.”
These phrases ricocheted through my head. Some friends immediately looked up Willem’s illness and forwarded their dire discoveries to me. Others told me it must be because he used a cellphone, although he did not own one. “Blueberries,” wrote a friend on a postcard from California . “The antioxidants will do it. Blueberries are the key.”
WILLEM was a historian. He worked as the director of a photo archive and spent so long on his doctoral dissertation that I called him Dr. Footnote. And though he was a researcher, he never once looked up his disease and had no desire to join any kind of support group. He wanted to return to his job and work with his beloved photographs and papers, he wanted to write a book about displaced persons in World War II, he wanted to go to Prague for his 50th birthday, he wanted to take Jake and me bike riding in Belgium and run a marathon some day in Tokyo .
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“I have no interest in cancer,” he declared, “even if it has an interest in me.”
Yet he knew what the outcome of his illness would be. It was his idea to call the cemetery where my grandparents are buried.
A woman quoted prices over the phone. “Do you want a single, double or triple site?”
When Willem was back on his feet, with a Nike headband on his head covering his scar, and Jake was at preschool, we drove out of the city to the bucolic cemetery on a hillside.
I was nervous having Willem drive. I always was nervous with him at the wheel. He had learned in this country, as an adult, because growing up in the Netherlands his mode of transportation was his bicycle. Now he loved “to put the pedal to the metal” and scream Dutch words of joy as he accelerated.
We arrived safely at the cemetery, and a gentle man carrying a transistor radio to his ear, listening to a Mets-Cardinals game, showed us around. Then we took the proper papers to fill out and my head spun wondering when my time would be. Afterward we went out for cheeseburgers and milkshakes, and drove back to the city, went home and made love.
A week before his fourth birthday, Jake announced that he wanted a cake in the shape of a fire truck. I am not a baker. I have the urge to bake perhaps twice a year, and that usually results in an apple or pumpkin pie with, I confess, store-bought crust.
But my son wanted a cake in the shape of a fire truck, and in that way that mothers are able to lift cars off their children’s feet in an emergency, I somehow made one. I used practically a whole bottle of red dye in the frosting, which in earlier days would appall me. But now I reasoned that if Willem grew up on the purest whole-wheat bread and beet salad, perhaps junk food was the key to a long life.
I decorated the cake with care — licorice hoses, peppermint wheels, butterscotch headlights and a lattice of thin pretzels for ladders. It was my offering to my son on what I knew would be his last birthday with his father.
We had the party in Central Park. Friends helped push the party favors and food in carts. Willem was able to walk there slowly, but with elegance, holding my hand, wearing his navy blue Nike headband.
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The children sat at a picnic table for cake. Jake blew out the candles on the fire truck cake and made a wish. During that period of our lives, he made wishes whenever candles were lighted, and on eyelashes and fluffy dandelions. “I always make the same wish, Mom,” he’d say, “and you can’t ever ask me what it is.”
I didn’t ask. Regardless, Willem died. On the day of the funeral, I couldn’t get Jake to wear what he called his “lots of buttons shirt,” but he did acquiesce to a navy blue polo shirt with three buttons.
AT the synagogue, when Willem’s friends were eulogizing him, Jake began to lose patience and tugged on my arm.
“I want to go to the digging part,” he said.
Finally we drove out of the city, dazed and weary, to the cemetery on the hill where Willem and I had blithely picked out a spot and spent our romantic afternoon only months before. A sweet wind blew in the August afternoon.
We all took turns shoveling, in the way the rabbi had instructed, with the shovel upside down to show this was a special kind of digging. And then, and then, a picture I thought I would never see — my 4-year-old son reached for the shovel and he, too, dumped two shovelfuls of dirt onto his father’s plain pine coffin.
A train whistled in the valley below us, and Jake handed the shovel to his cousin and put his arms straight up in the air. I knew what he wanted. I lifted him up as the rabbi said prayers, and we watched the train snaking by. I held him tightly and we waved to the far-off travelers. |
In this brand new featurette, Ridley Scott talks about bridging Prometheus into the summer’s Alien: Covenant, which takes place 10 years after events of Prometheus. He explains that the film is about answering the question, “where do we come from?” and also reveals that this new crew, the Covenant, are on a mission to colonize a planet. They pick up a distress call, which leads them to hell.
This video is also the first footage of Scott directing on set, revealing some really cool behind-the-scenes shots including David’s laboratory. It looks like they give Walter a scar so the audience can tell the difference between him and David, since they’re both played by Michael Fassbender.
“It will scare the living shit out of you,” explains Scott, dropping one helluva button to end the video.
Katherine Waterston stars with Michael Fassbender returning as Prometheus‘ android David (and Walter), with a crew that includes Demian Bichir and Danny McBride (“Eastbound and Down”), as well as Alex England (Gods of Egypt), Billy Crudup, Amy Seimetz (A Horrible Way to Die, “The Killing”), Jussie Smollett (“Empire”), Carmen Ejogo, and Callie Hernandez (Machete Kills). James Franco also has a role, which was confirmed in this short film.
Bound for a remote planet on the far side of the galaxy, the crew of the colony ship Covenant discovers what they think is an uncharted paradise, but is actually a dark, dangerous world — whose sole inhabitant is the “synthetic” David (Michael Fassbender), survivor of the doomed Prometheus expedition.
Scott had previously promised to answer questions that left Prometheus viewers confused: “Covenant is really going to show you who did it and why.”
[Related] Footage Description Reveals CRAZY Post-‘Prometheus’ Scene in Alien: Covenant |
White House staffers will not be attending the annual White House Correspondents Association dinner in “solidarity” with President Trump who announced last month via Twitter he would not attend the dinner, WHCA President Jeff Mason (Reuters) said in a statement released Tuesday.
The White House informed the White House Correspondents’ Association this evening that White House staff will not be attending this year’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner out of “solidarity” with President Trump, who has previously announced that he would skip the event.
The WHCA board regrets this decision very much. We have worked hard to build a constructive relationship with the Trump White House and believe strongly that this goal is possible even with the natural tension between the press and administrations that is a hallmark of a healthy republic.
We made clear in our meeting tonight that President Trump, Vice President Pence, and White House staff continue to be welcome to join us at this dinner.
Only the White House can speak to the signal it wants to send with this decision. But our signal is clear: We will celebrate the First Amendment on April 29 and look forward to acknowledging the important work of our terrific members and awarding scholarships to students who represent the next generation of our profession.” |
We (Audrey Roy and I) wrote a book on Django! It's called Two Scoops of Django: Best Practices for Django 1.5, and you can buy it right now in e-book (PDF) form on the website: http://django.2scoops.org.
Django, like any framework, has tips, tricks, and pitfalls that aren't documented in one place. Experienced developers know this stuff, but gleaning it off the Internet takes a lot of time. We decided to take everything we know and write it down. This book reflects a portion of what we documented, and if it does well we plan to follow it up with other references.
If you've followed this blog or watched our talks you've know we've explained tons of Django and Python related examples. We enjoy using Django and Python to build stable, fast web applications quickly and efficiently. This is the book we would have wanted while learning the intricacies of our tools, and then kept it handy for reference.
In the book we cover everything from customizing the Django 1.5 User model, forms, views, templates, security, bottleneck analysis and so much more. We tie in third-party packages from the Django and Python community. We discuss the positive patterns that allow for rapid development, and point out the anti-patterns that cause problems. The result isn't a walk-through or tutorial, but a reference guide for anyone with at least a basic understanding of Django.
We tried to make the code copy/pastable, but we are constrained by the limits of PDF. While the code examples display nicely, when pasting from Adobe Reader the leading white spaces vanish. We apologize and ask if anyone knows how to address this issue to let us know at [email protected].
Even with an amazing cadre of technical reviewers, there is always the possibility of errors. We are going to be actively maintaining the book, so if you find a mistake, let us know and we'll update it and send out an updated copy of the PDF to all buyers.
If you'd like to buy the book (or learn more about it), you can do so here: http://django.2scoops.org
Published: 2013-01-17 10:00
Tags: twoscoops resolutions python django audrey heroku
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Back in December the topic of insider trading by prominent members of Congress hit new highs when as we reported at the time a "Prominent Tennessee Senator Fails To Disclose Millions In Hedge Fund, Real Estate Investments." The politician in question, Tennessee republican Senator Bob Corker, who according to Roll Call was recently the 23rd richest member of Congress...
... and the company under focus: a Tennessee-based REIT, CBL & Associates.
As a reminder, last November, the Campaign for Accountability (CFA), a D.C. watchdog, called for an SEC and ethics investigation of Corker in connection with his family's trading in shares of CBL & Associates (a REIT based in Tennessee). According to CFA, between 2008 and 2015, Sen. Corker, his wife and daughters made an astonishing 70 trades of stock in the real estate investment giant CBL & Associates Properties – more than triple the number of transactions he made of any other stock. Some of the trades closely preceded company announcements that led to changes in the stock’s price and seemingly resulted in the senator making millions of dollars.
CfA Executive Director Anne Weismann stated, “Sen. Corker’s trades followed a consistent pattern — he bought low and sold high. It beggars belief to suggest these trades – netting the senator and his family millions – were mere coincidences.”
As the Wall Street Journal has reported, Sen. Corker failed to report numerous trades of CBL stock. Federal law requires members of Congress to report stock trades and file reports disclosing their assets. Many of Sen. Corker’s profitable trades were made in advance of his broker, UBS, issuing reports impacting CBL’s trading price.
Sen. Corker then amended his filings to reveal a 2009 purchase of between $1 and $5 million of CBL stock, sold just five months later in 2010 at a 42% profit. Similarly, Sen. Corker made purchases worth between $3 and $15 million in 2010 and, just after his last trade, UBS said it was upgrading its outlook. The stock went up 18%. Shortly thereafter, Sen. Corker began selling; a week later, UBS downgraded the stock and the share price soon declined about 10%.
As the CBA also wrote, "as a member of the Senate Banking Committee, Sen. Corker has advanced legislation that would financially benefit UBS and CBL." This is what Vanity Fair added to this curious story:
As the complaint—filed with the SEC and the Senate Select Committee on Ethics—details, Corker and CBL go way back. Corker began his career at a company whose primary business was subcontracting for CBL and which is now substantially owned by CBL. CBL executives were Corker’s “first and most generous donors,” as the complaint put it, when Corker filed to run for Congress in 2006. Both directly and indirectly, CBL have given generously to Corker. According to the complaint, CBL’s executives, directors and their spouses rank among the senator’s top campaign donors, contributing $88,706 to his campaign committee and PAC since his 2006 run. Since Corker’s arrival in the Senate, CBL executives have contributed more than $50,000 each to NAREIT and ICSC—which, in turn, were part of a nine-PAC consortium that held a fundraiser for Corker in Washington in 2011. NAREIT and ICSC also donated $15,000 directly to his campaign committee since his arrival in the Senate.
* * *
All these questionable revelations proved too much for the Feds to ignore, and as the WSJ reports overnight, CBL is now under investigation by federal law-enforcement officials for alleged accounting fraud.
As the paper adds, the FBI and the SEC are focusing their examination of CBL & Associates Properties Inc. on whether officials at the Chattanooga, Tenn., company falsified information on financial statements to banks when applying for financing arrangements, the people said. Law-enforcement officials have talked to former CBL employees who allege the company inflated its rental income and its properties’ occupancy rates when reporting those figures to banks, the people said.
More importantly, the focus of the investigation is not just whether CBL cooked its books, but the REIT's cozy relationship with Corker and his dozens of oddly profitable trades involving CBL stock:
The FBI and SEC officials have also separately asked questions about the relationship between the company and Mr. Corker, who is close with senior executives at the firm and has made millions of dollars in profits trading the company’s stock in recent years. Authorities don’t believe that Mr. Corker was involved in the company’s potential accounting issues, but they are interested in learning more about the senator’s trading in CBL’s stock, the people said.
So far, the WSJ reports, "they have found no evidence to suggest that Mr. Corker has committed wrongdoing" and to be sure Corker's camp denies any wrongdoing. Micah Johnson, a spokeswoman for Mr. Corker, decried the “baseless charges against Senator Corker.”
Stephen Lebovitz, president and chief executive of CBL, said in a statement that the company “has not been contacted by the FBI, the SEC or any other regulatory agency regarding any accounting or financial issues.” He said the company has “stringent policies regarding our accounting and financial practices in keeping with applicable laws, rules, and regulations to which we strictly adhere.”
The investigation is being run by the FBI’s Washington field office and SEC staff at its Washington headquarters, which tend to handle higher-profile investigations, as opposed to the agencies’ local offices.
What makes the probe especially grotesque is that Corker is not only a chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee but also a senior member of the Senate Banking Committee which is directly involved in crafting legislation aimed at regulating entities such as the CBL REIT. He has close personal, business and political ties with several members of the family that founded CBL and runs it. That includes founder Charles Lebovitz and his sons, Stephen Lebovitz and Executive Vice President Michael Lebovitz.
The relationship between Corker and the REIT's owners runs deep. After graduating from college in 1974, Mr. Corker worked for a small company that helped construct buildings for CBL. Corker has a home in the same upscale Chattanooga suburb as three of the Lebovitz family members. “He’s a friend,” Stephen Lebovitz said of Mr. Corker in an interview in November with The Wall Street Journal. “Chattanooga’s not that big a city.”
Michael Lebovitz served as a vice chairman of Mr. Corker’s initial Senate campaign and records show that CBL executives are major donors to his campaigns.
Perhaps aware that his trades would eventually be probed, in a 2011 article on Corker’s CBL investments, Corker preemptively said that by tracking the company’s stock for many years, he noticed that its shares traded within a range. “I’ve bought it heavily when it is at the low end of that range and then I hold it until there is upward movement, when I sell,” he said in a statement at the time.
Surprisingly, the vast majority of these "rangebound" trades were very profitable.
In one of these purchases, Mr. Corker bought between $1 million and $5 million in CBL shares on Nov. 29, 2011, according to updated financial-disclosure statements that he filed after questions from the Journal. The stock rose nearly 7% the next day and continued to climb. He sold the stock in May 2012 for between $5 million and $25 million after the stock had risen 42%, representing a gain of between $420,000 and $2.1 million, according to a Journal analysis of the trade.
And, just in case Corker's "trading explanation" does not work, Corker's spokesman decided to attack the messenger, casting doubt on the motives of the group that brought attention to his trades.
Ms. Johnson, the Corker spokeswoman, said she believes the questions into Mr. Corker have been prompted by the Campaign for Accountability, a nonpartisan organization that has filed several complaints with the Senate Ethics Committee about Mr. Corker’s financial activity. She said the group is a “politically motivated special-interest group that refuses to disclose its donors. We know that any effort to examine [Mr. Corker’s] actions will result in this smear campaign being discredited.” “I wish we had that much authority,” said Anne Weismann, executive director of the organization. “We don’t have the ability to tell the FBI or SEC what to do.”
Well thank god for that, because if in addition to legal insider trading by members of Congress, these same Congressmen, such as Corker, could also wish away any probe into their trades, then the corruption at the very top would be clear for all to see. As it stands, the FBI and the SEC will actually have to go through Corker's trades one by one. At the end of the day, we must note, even though Corker "does not have the ability to tell the FBI or SEC what to do", we are confident there will be no punishment and at best Corkers will be given the "Mickelson" treatment, in which he has to forfeit a part of his illegal profits with absolutely no consequences whatsoever. |
Yo,
ça gaze ?
Je suis posé devant l’ordi cet aprèm et j’étais en train de me dire que tout allait bien et que c’était cool. Le blog ça roule, le boulot ça roule, la famille ça roule, les amis ça roule, et même la météo ça roule.
Je suis plutôt en mode hyper productif sur le site en ce moment, inspiré et tout et tout, et ça me fait vraiment du bien. J’ai envie de « freehugger » la terre entière (avis aux amateurs 🤣) et les bonnes opportunités se pressent à la porte de ma vie (Inside poet on fire !!).
Mon agenda se remplit d’ailleurs à vue d’œil de belles rencontres et de conférences ! D’ailleurs il me reste quelques slots donc n’hésitez pas si vous avez des choses à me proposer ;-).
Bref, de la bonne énergie tout partout ! Je soupçonne d’ailleurs ce soleil nouveau d’y contribuer grandement.
Merci de me lire encore et toujours et excellent week-end à tous |
Yahoo executives upset with a 2007 government order to provide information to the U.S. National Security Agency were given a sobering choice: Either hand it over or face a $250,000 fine for each day you refuse. Details on the order, which forced Yahoo to take part in the controversial PRISM surveillance program, were unveiled in a Washington Post report based on court documents unsealed Thursday.
Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) ultimately lost a legal battle that began when the company complained that the intelligence agency had gone outside the traditional legal process that forces the order to undergo court review before surveillance is installed. Instead, the NSA earned permission from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, a secret court that’s been criticized as a “rubber stamp” for surveillance requests. Yahoo’s failed appeal also became a precedent for the NSA, which soon pressed other Silicon Valley titans including Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL), Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) to start turning over users’ metadata.
“The released documents underscore how we had to fight every step of the way to challenge the U.S. government’s surveillance efforts,” Yahoo general counsel Ron Bell wrote in a Tumblr post detailing the legal wrangling. “At one point, the U.S. government threatened the imposition of $250,000 in fines per day if we refused to comply.”
PRISM, which was discontinued in 2011 and first revealed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden in July 2013, was the program that gave NSA intelligence analysts the ability to monitor much of the world’s raw electronic communications if they could determine with a 51 percent certainty that the target was not an American citizen.
The NSA forced Yahoo and the like to turn over “metadata,” which doesn’t include the contents of an email, for instance, but the sender, recipient, time of transmission, IP address information, the subject of the email and other identifying information. Previous reports have suggested that intelligence analysts using the correct metadata wouldn’t need the contents of a message to accurately determine what a communication said. The popular example is the hypothetical surveillance subject who phones, in order, a pharmacy, male friend then finally an abortion clinic.
Intelligence officials wrote in a briefing published last year by the Post that the NSA perceived Silicon Valley’s involvement in PRISM as one of the program’s most important aspects.
“98 percent of PRISM production is based on Yahoo, Google and Microsoft; we need to make sure we don’t harm these sources,” the memo explained.
In a statement given upon PRISM’s public disclosure Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said “information collected under this program is among the most important and valuable foreign information we collect, and is used to protect our nation from a wide variety of threats.” |
The Death Agony of Capitalism
and the Tasks of the Fourth International
The Transitional Program
The Objective Prerequisites for a Socialist Revolution
The world political situation as a whole is chiefly characterized by a historical crisis of the leadership of the proletariat.
The economic prerequisite for the proletarian revolution has already in general achieved the highest point of fruition that can be reached under capitalism. Mankind’s productive forces stagnate. Already new inventions and improvements fail to raise the level of material wealth. Conjunctural crises under the conditions of the social crisis of the whole capitalist system inflict ever heavier deprivations and sufferings upon the masses. Growing unemployment, in its turn, deepens the financial crisis of the state and undermines the unstable monetary systems. Democratic regimes, as well as fascist, stagger on from one bankruptcy to another.
The bourgeoisie itself sees no way out. In countries where it has already been forced to stake its last upon the card of fascism, it now toboggans with closed eyes toward an economic and military catastrophe. In the historically privileged countries, i.e., in those where the bourgeoisie can still for a certain period permit itself the luxury of democracy at the expense of national accumulations (Great Britain, France, United States, etc.), all of capital’s traditional parties are in a state of perplexity bordering on a paralysis of will.
The “New Deal,” despite its first period of pretentious resoluteness, represents but a special form of political perplexity, possible only in a country where the bourgeoisie succeeded in accumulating incalculable wealth. The present crisis, far from having run its full course, has already succeeded in showing that “New Deal” politics, like Popular Front politics in France, opens no new exit from the economic blind alley.
International relations present no better picture. Under the increasing tension of capitalist disintegration, imperialist antagonisms reach an impasse at the height of which separate clashes and bloody local disturbances (Ethiopia, Spain, the Far East, Central Europe) must inevitably coalesce into a conflagration of world dimensions. The bourgeoisie, of course, is aware of the mortal danger to its domination represented by a new war. But that class is now immeasurably less capable of averting war than on the eve of 1914.
All talk to the effect that historical conditions have not yet “ripened” for socialism is the product of ignorance or conscious deception. The objective prerequisites for the proletarian revolution have not only “ripened”; they have begun to get somewhat rotten. Without a socialist revolution, in the next historical period at that, a catastrophe threatens the whole culture of mankind. The turn is now to the proletariat, i.e., chiefly to its revolutionary vanguard. The historical crisis of mankind is reduced to the crisis of the revolutionary leadership.
The Proletariat and its Leadership
The economy, the state, the politics of the bourgeoisie and its international relations are completely blighted by a social crisis, characteristic of a prerevolutionary state of society. The chief obstacle in the path of transforming the prerevolutionary into a revolutionary state is the opportunist character of proletarian leadership: its petty bourgeois cowardice before the big bourgeoisie and its perfidious connection with it even in its death agony.
In all countries the proletariat is racked by a deep disquiet. The multimillioned masses again and again enter the road of revolution. But each time they are blocked by their own conservative bureaucratic machines.
The Spanish proletariat has made a series of heroic attempts since April 1931 to take power in its hands and guide the fate of society. However, its own parties (Social Democrats, Stalinists, Anarchists, POUMists) – each in its own way acted as a brake and thus prepared Franco’s triumphs.
In France, the great wave of “sit down” strikes, particularly during June 1936, revealed the wholehearted readiness of the proletariat to overthrow the capitalist system. However, the leading organizations (Socialists, Stalinists, Syndicalists) under the label of the Popular Front succeeded in canalizing and damming, at least temporarily, the revolutionary stream.
The unprecedented wave of sit down strikes and the amazingly rapid growth of industrial unionism in the United States (the CIO) is the most indisputable expression of the instinctive striving of the American workers to raise themselves to the level of the tasks imposed on them by history. But here. too, the leading political organizations, including the newly created CIO, do everything possible to keep in check and paralyze the revolutionary pressure of the masses.
The definite passing over of the Comintern to the side of bourgeois order, its cynically counterrevolutionary role throughout the world, particularly in Spain, France, the United States and other “democratic” countries, created exceptional supplementary difficulties for the world proletariat. Under the banner of the October Revolution, the conciliatory politics practiced by the “People’s Front” doom the working class to impotence and clear the road for fascism.
”People’s Fronts” on the one hand – fascism on the other: these are the last political resources of imperialism in the struggle against the proletarian revolution. From the historical point of view, however, both these resources are stopgaps. The decay of capitalism continues under the sign of the Phrygian cap in France as under the sign of the swastika in Germany. Nothing short of the overthrow of the bourgeoisie can open a road out.
The orientation of the masses is determined first by the objective conditions of decaying capitalism, and second, by the treacherous politics of the old workers’ organizations. Of these factors, the first, of course, is the decisive one: the laws of history are stronger than the bureaucratic apparatus. No matter how the methods of the social betrayers differ – from the “social” legislation of Blum to the judicial frame-ups of Stalin – they will never succeed in breaking the revolutionary will of the proletariat. As time goes on, their desperate efforts to hold back the wheel of history will demonstrate more clearly to the masses that the crisis of the proletarian leadership, having become the crisis in mankind’s culture, can be resolved only by the Fourth International.
The Minimum Program and
the Transitional Program
The strategic task of the next period – prerevolutionary period of agitation, propaganda and organization – consists in overcoming the contradiction between the maturity of the objective revolutionary conditions and the immaturity of the proletariat and its vanguard (the confusion and disappointment of the older generation, the inexperience of the younger generation . It is necessary to help the masses in the process of the daily struggle to find the bridge between present demand and the socialist program of the revolution. This bridge should include a system of transitional demands, stemming from today’s conditions and from today’s consciousness of wide layers of the working class and unalterably leading to one final conclusion: the conquest of power by the proletariat.
Classical Social Democracy, functioning in an epoch of progressive capitalism, divided its program into two parts independent of each other: the minimum program which limited itself to reforms within the framework of bourgeois society, and the maximum program which promised substitution of socialism for capitalism in the indefinite future. Between the minimum and the maximum program no bridge existed. And indeed Social Democracy has no need of such a bridge, since the word socialism is used only for holiday speechifying. The Comintern has set out to follow the path of Social Democracy in an epoch of decaying capitalism: when, in general, there can be no discussion of systematic social reforms and the raising of he masses’ living standards; when every serious demand of the proletariat and even every serious demand of the petty bourgeoisie inevitably reaches beyond the limits of capitalist property relations and of the bourgeois state.
The strategic task of the Fourth International lies not in reforming capitalism but in its overthrow. Its political aim is the conquest of power by the proletariat for the purpose of expropriating the bourgeoisie. However, the achievement of this strategic task is unthinkable without the most considered attention to all, even small and partial, questions of tactics. All sections of the proletariat, all its layers, occupations and groups should be drawn into the revolutionary movement. The present epoch is distinguished not for the fact that it frees the revolutionary party from day-to-day work but because it permits this work to be carried on indissolubly with the actual tasks of the revolution.
The Fourth International does not discard the program of the old “minimal” demands to the degree to which these have preserved at least part of their vital forcefulness. Indefatigably, it defends the democratic rights and social conquests of the workers. But it carries on this day-to-day work within the framework of the correct actual, that is, revolutionary perspective. Insofar as the old, partial, “minimal” demands of the masses clash with the destructive and degrading tendencies of decadent capitalism – and this occurs at each step – the Fourth International advances a system of transitional demands, the essence of which is contained in the fact that ever more openly and decisively they will be directed against the very bases of the bourgeois regime. The old “minimal program” is superseded by the transitional program, the task of which lies in systematic mobilization of the masses for the proletarian revolution.
Sliding Scale of Wages
and Sliding Scale of Hours
Under the conditions of disintegrating capitalism, the masses continue to live the meagerized life of the oppressed, threatened now more than at any other time with the danger of being cast into the pit of pauperism. They must defend their mouthful of bread, if they cannot increase or better it. There is neither the need nor the opportunity to enumerate here those separate, partial demands which time and again arise on the basis of concrete circumstances – national, local, trade union. But two basic economic afflictions, in which is summarized the increasing absurdity of the capitalist system, that is, unemployment and high prices, demand generalized slogans and methods of struggle.
The Fourth International declares uncompromising war on the politics of the capitalists which, to a considerable degree, like the politics of their agents, the reformists, aims to place the whole burden of militarism, the crisis, the disorganization of the monetary system and all other scourges stemming from capitalism’s death agony upon the backs of the toilers. The Fourth International demands employment and decent living conditions for all.
Neither monetary inflation nor stabilization can serve as slogans for the proletariat because these are but two ends of the same stick. Against a bounding rise in prices, which with the approach of war will assume an ever more unbridled character, one can fight only under the slogan of a sliding scale of wages. This means that collective agreements should assure an automatic rise in wages in relation to the increase in price of consumer goods.
Under the menace of its own disintegration, the proletariat cannot permit the transformation of an increasing section of the workers into chronically unemployed paupers, living off the slops of a crumbling society. The right to employment is the only serious right left to the worker in a society based upon exploitation. This right today is left to the worker in a society based upon exploitation. This right today is being shorn from him at every step. Against unemployment, “structural” as well as “conjunctural,” the time is ripe to advance along with the slogan of public works, the slogan of a sliding scale of working hours. Trade unions and other mass organizations should bind the workers and the unemployed together in the solidarity of mutual responsibility. On this basis all the work on hand would then be divided among all existing workers in accordance with how the extent of the working week is defined. The average wage of every worker remains the same as it was under the old working week. Wages, under a strictly guaranteed minimum, would follow the movement of prices. It is impossible to accept any other program for the present catastrophic period.
Property owners and their lawyers will prove the “unrealizability” of these demands. Smaller, especially ruined capitalists, in addition will refer to their account ledgers. The workers categorically denounce such conclusions and references. The question is not one of a “normal” collision between opposing material interests. The question is one of guarding the proletariat from decay, demoralization and ruin. The question is one of life or death of the only creative and progressive class, and by that token of the future of mankind. If capitalism is incapable of satisfying the demands inevitably arising from the calamities generated by itself, then let it perish. “Realizability” or “unrealizability” is in the given instance a question of the relationship of forces, which can be decided only by the struggle. By means of this struggle, no matter what immediate practical successes may be, the workers will best come to understand the necessity of liquidating capitalist slavery.
Trade Unions in the Transitional Epoch
In the struggle for partial and transitional demands, the workers now more than ever before need mass organizations, principally trade unions. The powerful growth of trade unionism in France and the United States is the best refutation of the preachments of those ultra-left doctrinaires who have been teaching that trade unions have “outlived their usefulness.”
The Bolshevik-Leninist stands in the front-line trenches of all kinds of struggles, even when they involve only the most modest material interests or democratic rights of the working class. He takes active part in mass trade unions for the purpose of strengthening them and raising their spirit of militancy. He fights uncompromisingly against any attempt to subordinate the unions to the bourgeois state and bind the proletariat to “compulsory arbitration” and every other form of police guardianship – not only fascist but also “democratic.” Only on the basis of such work within the trade unions is successful struggle possible against the reformists, including those of the Stalinist bureaucracy. Sectarian attempts to build or preserve small “revolutionary” unions, as a second edition of the party, signify in actuality the renouncing of the struggle for leadership of the working class. It is necessary to establish this firm rule: self-isolation of the capitulationist variety from mass trade unions, which is tantamount to a betrayal of the revolution, is incompatible with membership in the Fourth International.
At the same time, the Fourth International resolutely rejects and condemns trade union fetishism, equally characteristic of trade unionists and syndicalists.
Trade unions do not offer, and in line with their task, composition and manner of recruiting membership, cannot offer a finished revolutionary program; in consequence, they cannot replace the party. The building of national revolutionary parties as sections of the Fourth International is the central task of the transitional epoch.
Trade unions, even the most powerful, embrace no more than 20 to 25 percent of the working class, and at that, predominantly the more skilled and better paid layers. The more oppressed majority of the working class is drawn only episodically into the struggle, during a period of exceptional upsurges in the labor movement. During such moments it is necessary to create organizations ad hoc, embracing the whole fighting mass: strike committees, factory committees, and finally, soviets.
As organizations expressive of the top layers of the proletariat, trade unions, as witnessed by all past historical experience, including the fresh experience of the anarcho-syndicalist unions in Spain, developed powerful tendencies toward compromise with the bourgeois-democratic regime. In periods of acute class struggle, the leading bodies of the trade unions aim to become masters of the mass movement in order to render it harmless. This is already occurring during the period of simple strikes, especially in the case of the mass sit-down strikes which shake the principle of bourgeois property. In time of war or revolution, when the bourgeoisie is plunged into exceptional difficulties, trade union leaders usually become bourgeois ministers.
Therefore, the sections of the Fourth International should always strive not only to renew the top leadership of the trade unions, boldly and resolutely in critical moments advancing new militant leaders in place of routine functionaries and careerists, but also to create in all possible instances independent militant organizations corresponding more closely to the tasks of mass struggle against bourgeois society; and, if necessary, not flinching even in the face of a direct break with the conservative apparatus of the trade unions. If it be criminal to turn one’s back on mass organizations for the sake of fostering sectarian factions, it is no less so passively to tolerate subordination of the revolutionary mass movement to the control of openly reactionary or disguised conservative (”progressive”) bureaucratic cliques. Trade unions are not ends in themselves; they are but means along the road to proletarian revolution.
Factory Committees
During a transitional epoch, the workers’ movement does not have a systematic and well-balanced, but a feverish and explosive character. Slogans as well as organizational forms should be subordinated to the indices of the movement. On guard against routine handling of a situation as against a plague, the leadership should respond sensitively to the initiative of the masses.
Sit-down strikes, the latest expression of this kind of initiative, go beyond the limits of “normal” capitalist procedure. Independently of the demands of the strikers, the temporary seizure of factories deals a blow to the idol, capitalist property. Every sit-down strike poses in a practical manner the question of who is boss of the factory: the capitalist or the workers?
If the sit-down strike raises this question episodically, the factory committee gives it organized expression. Elected by all the factory employees, the factory committee immediately creates a counterweight to the will of the administration.
To the reformist criticism of bosses of the so-called “economic royalist” type like Ford in contradistinction to “good,” “democratic” exploiters, we counterpose the slogan of factory committees as centers of struggle against both the first and the second.
Trade union bureaucrats will, as a general rule, resist the creation of factory committees, just as they resist every bold step along the road of mobilizing the masses.
However, the wider the sweep of the movement, the easier will it be to break this resistance. Where the closed shop has already been instituted in “peaceful” times, the committee will formally coincide with the usual organ of the trade union, but will renew its personnel and widen its functions. The prime significance of the committee, however, lies in the fact that it becomes the militant staff for such working class layers, as the trade union is usually incapable of moving to action. It is precisely from these more oppressed layers that the most self-sacrificing battalions of the revolution will come.
From the moment that the committee makes its appearance, a factual dual power is established in the factory. By its very essence it represents the transitional state, because it includes in itself two irreconcilable regimes: the capitalist and the proletarian. The fundamental significance of factory committees is precisely contained in the fact that they open the doors, if not to a direct revolutionary, then to a pre-revolutionary period – between the bourgeois and the proletarian regimes. That the propagation of the factory committee idea is neither premature nor artificial is amply attested to by the waves of sit-down strikes spreading through several countries. New waves of this type will be inevitable in the immediate future. It is necessary to begin a campaign in favor of factory committees in time in order not to be caught unawares.
“Business Secrets” and
Workers’ Control of Industry
Liberal capitalism, based upon competition and free trade, has completely receded into the past. Its successor, monopolistic capitalism not only does not mitigate the anarchy of the market, but on the contrary imparts to it a particularly convulsive character. The necessity of “controlling” economy, of placing state “guidance” over industry and of “planning” is today recognized – at least in words – by almost all current bourgeois and petty bourgeois tendencies, from fascist to Social Democratic. With the fascists, it is manly a question of “planned” plundering of the people for military purposes. The Social Democrats prepare to drain the ocean of anarchy with spoonfuls of bureaucratic “planning.” Engineers and professors write articles about “technocracy.” In their cowardly experiments in “regulation,” democratic governments run head-on into the invincible sabotage of big capital.
The actual relationship existing between the exploiters and the democratic “controllers” is best characterized by the fact that the gentlemen “reformers” stop short in pious trepidation before the threshold of the trusts and their business “secrets.” Here the principle of “non-interference” with business dominates. The accounts kept between the individual capitalist and society remain the secret of the capitalist: they are not the concern of society. The motivation offered for the principle of business “secrets” is ostensibly, as in the epoch of liberal capitalism, that of free competition.” In reality, the trusts keep no secrets from one another. The business secrets of the present epoch are part of a persistent plot of monopoly capitalism against the interests of society. Projects for limiting the autocracy of “economic royalists” will continue to be pathetic farces as long as private owners of the social means of production can hide from producers and consumers the machinations of exploitation, robbery and fraud. The abolition of “business secrets” is the first step toward actual control of industry.
Workers no less than capitalists have the right to know the “secrets” of the factory, of the trust, of the whole branch of industry, of the national economy as a whole. First and foremost, banks, heavy industry and centralized transport should be placed under an observation glass.
The immediate tasks of workers’ control should be to explain the debits and credits of society, beginning with individual business undertakings; to determine the actual share of the national income appropriated by individual capitalists and by the exploiters as a whole; to expose the behind-the-scenes deals and swindles of banks and trusts; finally, to reveal to all members of society that unconscionable squandering of human labor which is the result of capitalist anarchy and the naked pursuit of profits.
No office holder of the bourgeois state is in a position to carry out this work, no matter with how great authority one would wish to endow him. All the world was witness to the impotence of President Roosevelt and Premier Blum against the plottings of the “60” or “200 Families” of their respective nations. To break the resistance of the exploiters, the mass pressure of the proletariat is necessary. Only factory committees can bring about real control of production, calling in – as consultants but not as “technocrats” – specialists sincerely devoted to the people: accountants, statisticians, engineers, scientists, etc.
The struggle against unemployment is not to be considered without the calling for a broad and bold organization of public works. But public works can have a continuous and progressive significance for society, as for the unemployed themselves, only when they are made part of a general plan worked out to cover a considerable number of years. Within the framework of this plan, the workers would demand resumption, as public utilities, of work in private businesses closed as a result of the crisis. Workers’ control in such case: would be replaced by direct workers’ management.
The working out of even the most elementary economic plan – from the point of view of the exploited, not the exploiters – is impossible without workers’ control, that is, without the penetration of the workers’ eye into all open and concealed springs of capitalist economy. Committees representing individual business enterprises should meet at conference to choose corresponding committees of trusts, whole branches of industry, economic regions and finally, of national industry as a whole. Thus, workers’ control becomes a school for planned economy. On the basis of the experience of control, the proletariat will prepare itself for direct management of nationalized industry when the hour for that eventuality strikes.
To those capitalists, mainly of the lower and middle strata, who of their own accord sometimes offer to throw open their books to the workers – usually to demonstrate the necessity of lowering wages – the workers answer that they are not interested in the bookkeeping of individual bankrupts or semi-bankrupts but in the account ledgers of all exploiters as a whole. The workers cannot and do not wish to accommodate the level of their living conditions to the exigencies of individual capitalists, themselves victims of their own regime. The task is one of reorganizing the whole system of production and distribution on a more dignified and workable basis if the abolition of business secrets be a necessary condition to workers’ control, then control is the first step along the road to the socialist guidance of economy.
Expropriation of Separate Groups of Capitalists
The socialist program of expropriation, i.e., of political overthrow of the bourgeoisie and liquidation of its economic domination, should in no case during the present transitional period hinder us from advancing, when the occasion warrants, the demand for the expropriation of several key branches of industry vital for national existence or of the most parasitic group of the bourgeoisie.
Thus, in answer to the pathetic jeremiads of the gentlemen democrats anent the dictatorship of the “60 Families” of the United States or the “200 Families” of France, we counterpose the demand for the expropriation of those 60 or 200 feudalistic capitalist overlords.
In precisely the same way, we demand the expropriation of the corporations holding monopolies on war industries, railroads, the most important sources of raw materials, etc.
The difference between these demands and the muddleheaded reformist slogan of “nationalization” lies in the following: (1) we reject indemnification; (2) we warn the masses against demagogues of the People’s Front who, giving lip service to nationalization, remain in reality agents of capital; (3) we call upon the masses to rely only upon their own revolutionary strength; (4) we link up the question of expropriation with that of seizure of power by the workers and farmers.
The necessity of advancing the slogan of expropriation in the course of daily agitation in partial form, and not only in our propaganda in its more comprehensive aspects, is dictated by the fact that different branches of industry are on different levels of development, occupy a different place in the life of society, and pass through different stages of the class struggle. Only a general revolutionary upsurge of the proletariat can place the complete expropriation of the bourgeoisie on the order of the day. The task of transitional demands is to prepare the proletariat to solve this problem.
Expropriation of the Private Banks and
State-ization of the Credit System
Imperialism means the domination of finance capital. Side by side with the trusts and syndicates, and very frequently rising above them, the banks concentrate in their hands the actual command over the economy. In their structure the banks express in a concentrated form the entire structure of modern capital: they combine tendencies of monopoly with tendencies of anarchy. They organize the miracles of technology, giant enterprises, mighty trusts; and they also organize high prices, crises and unemployment. It is impossible to take a single serious step in the struggle against monopolistic despotism and capitalistic anarchy – which supplement one another in their work of destruction – if the commanding posts of banks are left in the hands of predatory capitalists. In order to create a unified system of investments and credits, along a rational plan corresponding to the interests of the entire people, it is necessary to merge all the banks into a single national institution. Only the expropriation of the private banks and the concentration of the entire credit system in the hands of the state will provide the latter with the necessary actual, i.e., material resources – and not merely paper and bureaucratic resources – for economic planning.
The expropriation of the banks in no case implies the expropriation of bank deposits. On the contrary, the single state bank will be able to create much more favorable conditions for the small depositors than could the private banks. In the same way, only the state bank can establish for farmers, tradesmen and small merchants conditions of favorable, that is, cheap credit. Even more important, however, is the circumstance that the entire economy – first and foremost large-scale industry and transport directed by a single financial staff, will serve the vital interests of the workers and all other toilers.
However, the state-ization of the banks will produce these favorable results only if the state power itself passes completely from the hands of the exploiters into the hands of the toilers.
The Picket Line,
Defense Guards/Workers’ Militia and
The Arming of the Proletariat
Sit-down strikes are a serious warning from the masses addressed not only to the bourgeoisie but also to the organizations of the workers, including the Fourth International. In 1919-20, the Italian workers seized factories on their own initiative, thus signaling the news to their “leaders” of the coming of the social revolution. The “leaders” paid no heed to the signal. The victory of fascism was the result.
Sit down strikes do not yet mean the seizure of factories in the Italian manner, but they are a decisive step toward such seizures. The present crisis can sharpen the class struggle to an extreme point and bring nearer the moment of denouement. But that does not mean that a revolutionary situation comes on at one stroke. Actually, its approach is signalized by a continuous series of convulsions. One of these is the wave of sit-down strikes. The problem of the sections of the Fourth International is to help the proletarian vanguard understand the general character and tempo of our epoch and to fructify in time the struggle of the masses with ever more resolute and organizational measures.
The sharpening of the proletariat’s struggle means the sharpening of the methods of counterattack on the part of capital. New waves of sit down strikes can call forth and undoubtedly will call forth resolute countermeasures on the part of the bourgeoisie. Preparatory work is already being done by the confidential staffs of big trusts. Woe to the revolutionary organizations, woe to the proletariat if it is again caught unawares!
The bourgeoisie is nowhere satisfied with the official police and army. In the United States even during “peaceful” times the bourgeoisie maintains militarized battalions of scabs and privately armed thugs in factories. To this must now be added the various groups of American Nazis. The French bourgeoisie at the first approach of danger mobilized semi-legal and illegal fascist detachments, including such as are in the army. No sooner does the pressure of the English workers once again become stronger than immediately the fascist bands are doubled, trebled, increased tenfold to come out in bloody march against the workers. The bourgeoisie keeps itself most accurately informed about the fact that in the present epoch the class struggle irresistibly tends to transform itself into civil war. The examples of Italy, Germany, Austria, Spain and other countries taught considerably more to the magnates and lackeys of capital than to the official leaders of the proletariat.
The politicians of the Second and Third Internationals as well as the bureaucrats of the trade unions, consciously close their eyes to the bourgeoisie’s private army; otherwise they could not preserve their alliance with it for even twenty-four hours. The reformists systematically implant in the minds of the workers the notion that the sacredness of democracy is best guaranteed when the bourgeoisie is armed to the teeth and the workers are unarmed.
The duty of the Fourth International is to put an end to such slavish polices once and for all. The petty bourgeois democrats – including Social Democrats, Stalinists and Anarchists – yell louder about the struggle against fascism the more cravenly they capitulate to it in actuality. Only armed workers’ detachments, who feel the support of tens of millions of toilers behind them, can successfully prevail against the fascist bands. The struggle against fascism does not start in the liberal editorial office but in the factory – and ends in the street. Scabs and private gunmen in factory plants are the basic nuclei of the fascist army. Strike pickets are the basic nuclei of the proletarian army. This is our point of departure. In connection with every strike and street demonstration, it is imperative to propagate the necessity of creating workers’ groups for self-defense. It is necessary to write this slogan into the program of the revolutionary wing of the trade unions. It is imperative wherever possible, beginning with the youth groups, to organize groups for self-defense, to drill and acquaint them with the use of arms.
A new upsurge of the mass movement should serve not only to increase the number of these units but also to unite them according to neighborhoods, cities, regions. It is necessary to give organized expression to the valid hatred of the workers toward scabs and bands of gangsters and fascists. It is necessary to advance the slogan of a workers’ militia as the one serious guarantee for the inviolability of workers’ organizations, meetings and press.
Only with the help of such systematic, persistent, indefatigable, courageous agitational and organizational work always on the basis of the experience of the masses themselves, is it possible to root out from their consciousness the traditions of submissiveness and passivity; to train detachments of heroic fighters capable of setting an example to all toilers; to inflict a series of tactical defeats upon the armed thugs of counterrevolution; to raise the self-confidence of the exploited and oppressed; to compromise Fascism in the eyes of the petty bourgeoisie and pave the road for the conquest of power by the proletariat.
Engels defined the state as “bodies of armed men.” The arming of the proletariat is an imperative concomitant element to its struggle for liberation. When the proletariat wills it, it will find the road and the means to arming. In this field, also, else leadership falls naturally to the sections of the Fourth International.
The Alliance of the Workers and Farmers
The brother-in-arms and counterpart of the worker in the country is the agricultural laborer. They are two parts of one and the same class. Their interests are inseparable. The industrial workers’ program of transitional demands, with changes here and there, is likewise the program of the agricultural proletariat.
The peasants (farmers) represent another class: they are the petty bourgeoisie of the village. The petty bourgeoisie is made up of various layers, from the semi-proletarian to the exploiter elements. In accordance with this, the political task of the industrial proletariat is to carry the class struggle into the country. Only thus will he be able to draw a dividing line between his allies and his enemies.
The peculiarities of national development of each country find their queerest expression in the status of farmers and, to some extent, of the urban petty bourgeoisie (artisans and shopkeepers). These classes, no matter how numerically strong they may be, essentially are representative survivals of pre-capitalist forms of production. The sections of the Fourth International should work out with all possible concreteness a program of transitional demands concerning the peasants (farmers) and urban petty bourgeoisie, in conformity with the conditions of each country. The advanced workers should learn to give clear and concrete answers to the questions put by their future allies.
While the farmer remains an “independent” petty producer he is in need of cheap credit, of agricultural machines and fertilizer at prices he can afford to pay, favorable conditions of transport, and conscientious organization of the market for his agricultural products. But the banks, the trusts, the merchants rob the farmer from every side. Only the farmers themselves with the help of the workers can curb this robbery. Committees elected by small farmers should make their appearance on the national scene and jointly with the workers’ committees and committees of bank employees take into their hands control of transport, credit, and mercantile operations affecting agriculture.
By falsely citing the “excessive” demands of the workers the big bourgeoisie skillfully transforms the question of commodity prices into a wedge to be driven between the workers and farmers and between the workers and the petty bourgeoisie of the cities. The peasant, artisan, small merchant, unlike the industrial worker, office and civil service employee, cannot demand a wage increase corresponding to the increase in prices. The official struggle of the government with high prices is only a deception of the masses. But the farmers, artisans, merchants, in their capacity of consumers, can step into the politics of price-fixing shoulder to shoulder with the workers. To the capitalist’s lamentations about costs of production, of transport and trade, the consumers answer: “Show us your books; we demand control over the fixing of prices.” The organs of this control should be the committees on prices, made up of delegates from the factories, trade unions, cooperatives, farmers’ organizations, the “little man” of the city, housewives, etc. By this means the workers will be able to prove to the farmers that the real reason for high prices is not high wages but the exorbitant profits of the capitalists and the overhead expenses of capitalist anarchy.
The program for the nationalization of the land and collectivization of agriculture should be so drawn that from its very basis it should exclude the possibility of expropriation of small farmers and their compulsory collectivization. The farmer will remain owner of his plot of land as long as he himself believes it possible or necessary. In order to rehabilitate the program of socialism in the eyes of the farmer, it is necessary to expose mercilessly the Stalinist methods of collectivization, which are dictated not by the interests of the farmers or workers but by the interests of the bureaucracy.
The expropriation of the expropriators likewise does not signify forcible confiscation of the property of artisans and shopkeepers. On the contrary, workers’ control of banks and trusts – even more, the nationalization of these concerns, can create for the urban petty bourgeoisie incomparably more favorable conditions of credit purchase, and sale than is possible under the unchecked domination of the monopolies. Dependence upon private capital will be replaced by dependence upon the state, which will be the more attentive to the needs of its small co-workers and agents the more firmly the toilers themselves keep the state in their own hands .
The practical participation of the exploited farmers in the control of different fields of economy will allow them to decide for themselves whether or not it would be profitable for them to go over to collective working of the land – at what date and on what scale. Industrial workers should consider themselves duty-bound to show farmers every cooperation in traveling this road: through the trade unions, factory committees, and, above all, through a workers’ and farmers’ government.
The alliance proposed by the proletariat – not to the “middle classes in general but to the exploited layers of the urban and rural petty bourgeoisie, against all exploiters, including those of the “middle classes” – can be based not on compulsion but only on free consent, which should be consolidated in a special “contract.” This “contract” is the program of transitional demands voluntarily accepted by both sides.
The Struggle Against Imperialism and War
The whole world outlook, and consequently also the inner political life of individual countries, is overcast by the threat of world war. Already the imminent catastrophe sends violent ripples of apprehension through the very broadest masses of mankind.
The Second International repeats its infamous politics of 1914 with all the greater assurance since today it is the Comintern which plays first fiddle in chauvinism. As quickly as the danger of war assumed concrete outline the Stalinists, outstripping the bourgeois and petty bourgeois pacifists by far, became blatant haranguers for so-called “national defense.” The revolutionary struggle against war thus rests fully on the shoulders of the Fourth International.
The Bolshevik-Leninist policy regarding this question, formulated in the thesis of the International Secretariat (War and the Fourth International, 1934), preserves all of its force today.
In the next period a revolutionary party will depend for success primarily on its policy on the question of war. A correct policy is composed of two elements: an uncompromising attitude on imperialism and its wars, and the ability to base one’s program on the experience of the masses themselves.
The bourgeoisie and its agents use the war question, more than any other, to deceive the people by means of abstractions, general formulas, lame phraseology: “neutrality,” “collective defense,” “arming for the defense of peace,” “struggle against fascism,” and so on. All such formulas reduce themselves in the end to the fact that the war question, i.e., the fate of the people, is left in the hands of the imperialists, their governing staffs, their diplomacy, their generals, with all their intrigues and plots against the people.
The Fourth International rejects with abhorrence all such abstractions which play the same role in the democratic camp as in the fascist: “honor “ “blood,” “race.” But abhorrence is not enough. It is imperative to help the masses discern, by means of verifying criteria, slogans and demands, the concrete essence of fraudulent abstractions.
”Disarmament?” – But the entire question revolves around who will disarm whom. The only disarmament which can avert or end war is the disarmament of the bourgeoisie by the workers. But to disarm the bourgeoisie, the workers must arm themselves.
”Neutrality?” – But the proletariat is nothing like neutral in the war between Japan and China, or a war between Germany and the USSR. “Then what is meant Is the defense of China and the USSR?” Of course! But not by the imperialists who will strangle both China and the USSR.
”Defense of the Fatherland?” – But by this abstraction, the bourgeoisie understands the defense of its profits and plunder. We stand ready to defend the fatherland from foreign capitalists, if we first bind our own (capitalists) hand and foot and hinder them from attacking foreign fatherlands; if the workers and the farmers of our country become its real masters, if the wealth of the country be transferred from the hands of a tiny minority to the hands of the people; if the army becomes a weapon of the exploited instead of the exploiters.
It is necessary to interpret these fundamental ideas by breaking them up into more concrete and partial ones, dependent upon the course of events and the orientation of thought of the masses. In addition, it is necessary to differentiate strictly between the pacifism of the diplomat, professor, journalist, and the pacifism of the carpenter, agricultural worker, and the charwoman. In one case, pacifism is a screen for imperialism; in the other, it is the confused expression of distrust in imperialism. When the small farmer or worker speaks about the defense of the fatherland, he means defense of his home, his family and other similar families from invasion, bombs and poison gas. The capitalist and his journalist understand by the defense of the fatherland the seizure of colonies and markets, the predatory increase of the “national” share of world income. Bourgeois pacifism and patriotism are shot through with deceit. In the pacifism and even patriotism of the oppressed, there are elements which reflect on the one hand a hatred of destructive war, and on the other a clinging to what they believe to be their own good – elements which we must know how to seize upon in order to draw the requisite conclusions.
Using these considerations as its point of departure, the Fourth International supports every, even if insufficient, demand, if it can draw the masses to a certain extent into active politics, awaken their criticism and strengthen their control over the machinations of the bourgeoisie.
From this point of view, our American section, for example, entirely supports the proposal for establishing a referendum on the question of declaring war. No democratic reform, it is understood, can by itself prevent the rulers from provoking war when they wish it. It is necessary to give frank warning of this. But not withstanding the illusions of the masses in regard to the proposed referendum, their support of it reflects the distrust felt by workers and farmers for bourgeois government and Congress. Without supporting and without sparing illusions, it is necessary to support with all possible strength the progressive distrust of the exploited toward the exploiters. The more widespread the movement for the referendum becomes, the sooner will the bourgeois pacifists move away from it; the more completely will the betrayers of the Comintern be compromised; the more acute will distrust of the imperialists become.
From this viewpoint, it is necessary to advance the demand: electoral rights for men and women beginning with age of 18. Those who will be called upon to die for the fatherland tomorrow should have the right to vote today. The struggle against war must first of all begin with the revolutionary mobilization of the youth.
Light must be shed upon the problem of war from all angles, hinging upon the side from which it will confront the masses at a given moment.
War is a gigantic commercial enterprise, especially for the war industry. The “60 Families” are therefore first-line patriots and the chief provocateurs of war. Workers’ control of war industries is the first step in the struggle against the “manufacturers” of war.
To the slogan of the reformists: a tax on military profit, we counterpose the slogans: confiscation of military profit and expropriation of the traffickers in war industries. Where military industry is “nationalized,” as in France, the slogan of workers’ control preserves its full strength. The proletariat has as little confidence in the government of the bourgeoisie as in an individual capitalist
Not one man and not one penny for the bourgeois government!
Not an armaments program but a program of useful public works!
Complete independence of workers’ organizations from military-police control!
Once and for all we must tear from the hands of the greedy and merciless imperialist clique, scheming behind the backs of the people, the disposition of the people’s fate. In accordance with this, we demand:
Complete abolition of secret diplomacy; all treaties and agreements to be made accessible to all workers and farmers; Military training and arming of workers and farmers under direct control of workers’ and farmers’ committees; Creation of military schools for the training of commanders among the toilers, chosen by workers’ organizations; Substitution for the standing army of a people’s militia, indissolubly linked up with factories, mines, farms, etc.
Imperialist war is the continuation and sharpening of the predatory politics of the bourgeoisie. The struggle of the proletariat against war is the continuation and sharpening of its class struggle. The beginning of war alters the situation and partially the means of struggle between the classes, but not the aim and basic course. The imperialist bourgeoisie dominates the world. In its basic character the approaching war will therefore be an imperialist war. The fundamental content of the politics of the international proletariat will consequently be a struggle against imperialism and its war. In this struggle the basic principle is: “the chief enemy is in your own country” or “the defeat of your own (imperialist) government is the lesser evil.”
But not all countries of the world are imperialist countries. On the contrary, the majority are victims of imperialism. Some of the colonial or semi colonial countries will undoubtedly attempt to utilize the war in order to east off the yoke of slavery. Their war will be not imperialist but liberating. It will be the duty of the international proletariat to aid the oppressed countries in their war against oppressors. The same duty applies in regard to aiding the USSR, or whatever other workers’ government might arise before the war or during the war. The defeat of every imperialist government in the struggle with the workers’ state or with a colonial country is the lesser evil.
The workers of imperialist countries, however, cannot help an anti-imperialist country through their own government, no matter what might be the diplomatic and military relations between the two countries at a given moment. If the governments find themselves in a temporary and, by the very essence of the matter, unreliable alliance, then the proletariat of the imperialist country continues to remain in class opposition to its own government and supports the non-imperialist “ally” through its own methods, i.e., through the methods of the international class struggle (agitation not only against their perfidious allies, but also in favor of a workers’ state in a colonial country; boycott, strikes, in one case; rejection of boycott and strikes in another case, etc.)
In supporting the colonial country or the USSR in a war, the proletariat does not in the slightest degree solidarize either with the bourgeois government of the colonial country or with the Thermidorian bureaucracy of the USSR. On the contrary, it maintains full political independence from the one as from the other. Giving aid in a just and progressive war, the revolutionary proletariat wins the sympathy of the workers in the colonies and in the USSR, strengthens there the authority and influence of the Fourth International, and increases its ability to help overthrow the bourgeois government in the colonial country, the reactionary bureaucracy in the USSR.
At the beginning of the war the sections of the Fourth International will inevitably feel themselves isolated: every war takes the national masses unawares and impels them to the side of the government apparatus. The internationalists will have to swim against the stream. However, the devastation and misery brought about by the new war, which in the first months will far outstrip the bloody horrors of 1914-18 will quickly prove sobering. The discontents of the masses and their revolt will grow by leaps and bounds. The sections of the Fourth International will be found at the head of the revolutionary tide. The program of transitional demands will gain burning actuality. The problem of the conquest of power by the proletariat will loom in full stature.
Before exhausting or drowning mankind in blood, capitalism befouls the world atmosphere with the poisonous vapors of national and race hatred. Anti-Semitism today is one of the most malignant convulsions of capitalism’ s death agony.
An uncompromising disclosure of the roots of race prejudice and all forms and shades of national arrogance and chauvinism, particularly anti-Semitism, should become part of the daily work of all sections of the Fourth International, as the most important part of the struggle against imperialism and war. Our basic slogan remains: Workers of the World Unite!
Last updated on: 15 MAY 2012 |
The Argentine legend believes the talisman is off form and therefore wishes his old club Napoli could play their Champions League last-16 tie against Real Madrid now
Real Madrid talisman Cristiano Ronaldo is “not at his best”, according to Argentina legend Diego Maradona.
The Portugal international has enjoyed a stellar 2016 – claiming the Champions League crown, Euro 2016 glory and a fourth Ballon d’Or.
CR7: 2016 my best year so far
His last appearance of the calendar year saw him bag a hat-trick in the Club World Cup final, as Real added to their enviable collection of silverware.
Maradona, though, believes a man with 23 goals in 22 appearances for club and country this season is not performing at the peak of his powers.
As a Napoli icon, he wishes the Serie A side were running into Ronaldo and Real at this stage but fears the Spaniards and their star man will be back to their best by the time a Champions League last-16 encounter rolls around in the new year.
Maradona told reporters: "I want [Madrid-Napoli] to be played today because Ronaldo is not at his best.
'Ronaldo is AC/DC and Messi reggae'
"However, by February I think he'll be in top condition, as will his teammates."
The 1986 World Cup winner has also had his say on the summer departure of Gonzalo Higuain from his beloved Napoli.
His fellow Argentine was offloaded to domestic rivals Juventus, with Maradona questioning the motives of Napoli president Aurelio de Laurentiis and Higuain in getting a big-money deal done.
"I said last season that if Higuain scores 36 goals, it's a miracle and de Laurentiis knew how to use that to sell him, because he'd sell his own wife," joked the 56-year-old.
"He saw Juve needed a striker and sold them one. I think these decisions should be made with the heart; I stayed with Napoli and Higuain joined Juventus.
RUMOURS: Arsenal target Juve boss
"Times have changed. Before, I chose the shirt. Now, they choose the money."
Higuain has netted 13 times in all competitions this season for Juve, helping them to open up a four-point lead at the top of the Serie A table in the defence of their Italian top-flight crown. |
AutoGuide.com
Porsche has just released a spattering of details (and a few photos) of the next 911 Turbo, which will make more power, consume less fuel and offer even better performance than the current model.
Displacement for the turbocharged flat-six is up from 3.6 to 3.8-liters, however, this is far more than just a re-worked engine. The new 3.8-liter motor is the first entirely new engine in the Turbo’s 35-year history. Porsche’s variable turbine geometry turbos are back, and the new engine also gets direct-injection for the first time, resulting in an output of 500hp. Also for the first time, the Turbo will also be offered with Porsche’s 7-speed dual-clutch PDK transmission.
Porsche says the new Turbo will be capable of a 0-60 mph sprint in just 3.4 seconds and can blast on to a top speed of 194 mph.
The new engine is also significantly more fuel-efficient than the previous Turbo, consuming just 24.1 mpg with the manual transmission (compared to 22.1 mpg before), meaning it avoids the gas guzzler tax in the U.S. And when combined with Porsche’s PDK tranny the Turbo gets even better mileage at 24.8 mpg.
The 2010 Turbo will be lighter than it predecessor and feature updated versions of Porsche’s PTM and PSM systems. A PTV (Porsche Torque Vectoring) system will also be offered for the first time.
Sales of the 2010 911 Turbo will begin in Europe in November with worldwide sales to follow. Coupe models will be priced at $132,800 ($165,300 CDN), with the Cabriolet costing $143,800 ($178,400 CDN).
Porsche will officially debut the vehicle at the Frankfurt Auto Show this September.
GALLERY: 2010 Porsche 911 Turbo
Official release after the jump:
New Porsche 911 Turbo making its Debut at the Frankfurt Motor Show
Intelligent Power: Consumption Down Significantly, Performance Up Once Again
Stuttgart. Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche AG, Stuttgart, is proudly presenting a new top model at the pinnacle of its broad range of production sports cars: The new Porsche 911 Turbo combines far-reaching innovations in technology with fine tuning and supreme refinement in design. All key features of this high-performance sports car have been significantly improved, the new 911 Turbo combining a substantial improvement in fuel efficiency and lower weight with more power, even higher speed, and enhanced driving dynamics.
Particularly in terms of fuel economy and dynamic performance, the new top-of-the-range 911 from Zuffenhausen now stands out even more than before from its competitors in the market. Porsche’s new top model will be presented to the public for the first time at the Frankfurt Motor Show from 17 – 27 September.
The heart and highlight of the seventh generation of the Turbo is the new power unit displacing 3.8 litres and delivering maximum output of 500 bhp (368 kW). The first entirely new engine in the 35-year-history of the Turbo comes with features such as Direct Fuel Injection and Porsche’s exclusive turbocharger with variable turbine geometry on a gasoline power unit. And as an option, the new six-cylinder may be combined for the first time with Porsche’s seven-speed PDK Doppelkupplungsgetriebe (Double-Clutch Gearbox).
Models equipped with PDK are also available with a new, optional three-spoke steering wheel with gearshift paddles as an alternative to the standard steering wheel with its proven shift buttons. Fitted firmly on the steering wheel, the right paddle is for shifting up, the left paddle for shifting down. In conjunction with the optional Sport Chrono Package Turbo both the gearshift paddle and the PDK steering wheel with its shift buttons come with integrated displays for Launch Control and the Sport/Sport Plus mode, which are however designed differently on the two steering wheels.
The combination of PDK, Direct Fuel Injection and turbocharging ensures an unprecedented standard of efficiency, agility, responsiveness and performance, the Porsche 911 Turbo reducing CO2 emissions versus its predecessor by almost 18 per cent and therefore ranking unique in its segment also in this respect. Depending on the configuration of the car, the new top model requires just 11.4 – 11.7 ltr/100 km (equal to 24.8 – 24.1 mpg imp) under the EU5 standard. And unlike most other cars in its segment, the new Turbo remains even further below the crucial level of fuel consumption for gas guzzler tax in the USA, the special tax imposed on cars with substantial fuel consumption. All this despite acceleration to 100 km/h in 3.4 seconds. Top speed, in turn, is 312 km/h or 194 mph.
The Turbo driver of the future will also enjoy a further improvement in driving dynamics, detailed enhancement of PTM fully controlled all-wheel drive and PSM Porsche Stability Management being further supported by new PTV Porsche Torque Vectoring available as an option. This makes the car even more agile and precise in its steering for an even higher level of driving pleasure.
Sales of the new Porsche 911 Turbo in both Coupé and Cabriolet guise are starting in Germany on 21 November 2009. The Euro base price without value-added tax and national specifications is Euro 122,400.- for the Coupé and Euro 131,800.- for the Cabriolet. The gross retail price in Germany, therefore, is Euro 145,871.- for the Coupé and Euro 157,057.- for the Cabriolet, in each case including 19% value-added tax and national specifications. |
A second imported MERS-CoV (Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus) infection has been detected in the United States, in another health worker who had been living and working in Saudi Arabia and traveled to the states to visit family, officials from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Florida announced today.
Identification of a second US case comes amid a steady rise in cases from Saudi Arabia and a report that the virus has killed another health worker in Jordan. Saudi Arabia reported 18 new cases, 3 of them fatal, today and over the weekend.
Second case bears similarities to first
The new US patient started having mild symptoms such as fever, chills, and a slight cough on May 1 on a flight from Jeddah to London, the first flight of a four-leg trip to visit family in the Orlando area, CDC officials said at a press telebriefing.
He sought care in the emergency department of an Orlando hospital on May 9 and was admitted. Florida health officials said the man was placed in isolation once MERS-CoV was suspected. The patient's sample tested positive at a Florida lab, with the finding confirmed by the CDC yesterday.
When asked about potential community exposures between the time the patient arrived in Orlando on May 1 and was hospitalized on May 9, John Armstrong, MD, Florida's state surgeon and secretary of health, said at the briefing that the patient remained in Orlando, did not visit any theme parks, and that health officials are tracing any other links. Florida media outlets said the man is 44 years old.
Antonio Crespo, MD, infectious disease specialist at Dr. Phillips Hospital in Orlando, said in a press release from the Florida Department of Health (FDH) today that the patient is in good condition and improving. "We are taking every precaution, but we believe the risk of transmission from this patient is very low since his symptoms were mild and he was not coughing when he arrived at the hospital." The hospital is a full-service 237-bed medical-surgical facility in southwestern Orange County.
Today's announcement of another MERS case in the US comes just 3 days after the first patient, a healthcare worker in his 60s, was discharged from a Munster, Ind., hospital.
At the briefing, CDC director Tom Frieden, MD, MPH, said that though the two cases are similar, there are no epidemiologic links between them. He said the patient hospitalized in Orlando worked in a hospital in Jeddah that has treated MERS cases, though it's not clear if he had cared for any of them. The health worker that was hospitalized in Indiana worked in a Riyadh hospital.
Recent hospital clusters of cases have occurred in both cities, and an expert team from the World Health Organization that recently traveled to the country to probe the gush of infections that began in March said the hospital outbreaks appear to be amplifying what may be a seasonal increase in MERS activity.
Frieden said the latest imported case "is unwelcome but not unexpected news." He said health officials expect that other similar cases will be detected, but they emphasized that the infections pose a low public health threat, because MERS-CoV does not appear to spread easily in community settings. The human-to-human cases that have occurred have been among close contacts, such as healthcare workers or family members caring for sick patients.
That no secondary cases have been detected in connection to the Indiana case is encouraging, he said, adding that a team from the CDC is in Saudi Arabia helping with ongoing disease investigations.
Anne Schuchat, MD, director of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said CDC scientists with their partners in Greece and Indiana have compared recent sequences from imported MERS patients and found no significant changes and that the CDC has submitted a sample from the Indiana patient to GenBank.
Out of an abundance of caution, health officials from as many as 20 states with help from the CDC will call nearly 500 people who flew with the patient on three legs of the patient's trip: from London to Boston, from Boston to Atlanta, and from Atlanta to Orlando. Though the CDC emphasized that the risk of MERS transmission on an airline flight appears to be low, fellow travelers will be asked to submit a respiratory sample to see if any asymptomatic infections have occurred.
Public Health England (PHE) said it was advised today about a MERS illness in a person flying from Jeddah to the United States through London on May 1. It said the passenger flew Saudi Airlines flight 113 from Jeddah to London, transferring at Heathrow for onward travel to the United States. It said it was the second instance of a MERS case-patient flying through Heathrow to the United States and added that follow-up on passengers on the first flight, from Riyadh to London, found no other cases.
In its statement, PHE said that though he risk it low, it will follow up with any UK passengers who were sitting in the vicinity of the person with MERS.
The CDC did not specify airlines or flight numbers for the US legs of the trip, adding that the follow-up procedure involves contacting passengers directly. Schuchat said the process is labor-intensive and for the first imported case required about 1,000 hours of CDC worker time over the course of a weekend.
At today's briefing, CDC officials said the man's family is in voluntary home quarantine.
Earlier patient discharged from hospital
The patient with the nation's first imported MERS case was discharged from the hospital on May 10, according to a statement from the Indiana State Department of Health (ISDH).
Alan Kumar, MD, chief medical information officer for Community Hospital in Munster, where the man had been hospitalized, said the patient has tested negative for MERS, no longer has symptoms, and no longer poses a threat to the community. He added that the hospital finalized the discharge plan with the CDC and the ISDH.
The ISDH said multiple tests done at different times by the Indiana state lab and the CDC were negative for ongoing MERS infection in the patient and that no other cases have been detected. Hospital staff who had direct contact with the patient are still on temporary home isolation and are being monitored for symptoms. They can return to work after the incubation period passes and lab tests are negative for the virus.
The man had traveled from Riyadh to London on Apr 24, then continued to the United States, where he arrived in Chicago then traveled by bus to Highland, Ind., to visit relatives.
He had some symptoms before he flew, and after having respiratory symptoms he was admitted to the Munster, Ind., hospital on Apr 28 and tested positive for MERS-CoV on May 2.
Saudi Arabia reports 18 new cases, 14 deaths
Meanwhile, over the last 3 days Saudi Arabia's health ministry (MOH) has reported 18 new MERS-CoV infections, three of them fatal, along with 11 more deaths among previously confirmed cases. The latest cases are all from the country's hotspots for the disease, including Riyadh (9), Jeddah (6), Medina (2), and Mecca (1).
The patients are all adults, ranging in age from 29 to 80. Twelve are women and six are men. Nine of them had contact with confirmed cases. The reports don't specify if the cases involved healthcare workers, and no exposures to camels or animal environments were listed for any of the patients.
Two patients are listed as asymptomatic, though the ministry's statement yesterday noted another asymptomatic patient whose infection is not detailed or included in the country's case count. Eight patients are listed in stable condition, five are being treated in intensive care units (ICUs), and three died from their infections.
Illness onsets, available for 14 of the patients, range from Apr 18 through May 11. Hospitalization dates, listed for 12 cases, range from Apr 4 through May 12, though most were hospitalized in May.
Among the new cases, fatalities include an 80-year-old woman from Riyadh who had apparently been hospitalized since Apr 19 for other conditions before she got sick with respiratory symptoms on May 1, a 66-year-old man from Medina who got sick on May 1 and was hospitalized the same day, and a 35-year-old woman from Riyadh who was hospitalized on May 1.
Of the previously confirmed cases that were fatal, patients' ages ranged from 22 to 82, though many of them were people over age 60. Six were men and five were women. Dates of death ranged from May 7 through May 11. Six of the people were from Riyadh, three were from Jeddah, and two were from Medina.
The new infections and deaths lift Saudi Arabia's MERS count to 491 cases and 147 deaths.
Jordan reports fatal case
In Jordan, a man in his 50s died of MERS yesterday, marking the country's fifth death from the infection, according to an Agence France-Presse (AFP) report published today. The story said the man worked in a private hospital. A story from the Chinese news agency Xinhua said the man was a nurse and that his case was the country's ninth.
News editor Robert Roos contributed to this story.
See also:
May 12 FDH statement
May 12 CDC MERS background update
May 12 PHE statement
May 10 ISDH press release
May 10 Saudi MOH statement on 7 cases
May 11 Saudi MOH statement on 3 cases
May 12 Saudi MOH statement on 8 cases
Saudi MOH MERS page with case count
May 12 AFP story on Jordan case
May 12 Xinhua story on Jordan case |
Brexit supporters’ closely held belief that Britain can leave the EU but still be “European” has run into a roadblock: the European Commission has ruled that UK cities will not be permitted to be named a European Capital of Culture in 2023.
The decision came after UK cities including Dundee, Nottingham, Leeds, Milton Keynes, and Belfast/Derry had submitted their official bids, and a week before the shortlist was announced. While the timing might be a bit harsh, the commission was indeed adhering to predetermined rules. While cities in non-EU countries have won the designation before—Istanbul, Reykjavik, and Stavanger among them—they came from countries that are either part of the European Economic Area, the European Free Trade Association, or applying to be members of the EU. By 2023, the UK will adhere to none of those criteria if it follows through with a “hard Brexit.”
While the grandstanding of British MPs on Twitter may further prove that Brexiteers live in a fantasyland where they can have their cake and eat it, the decision has a real-world downside. It’s a huge loss for UK cities hoping to boost tourism in a country where London attracts a hugely disproportionate share of visitors. According to VisitBritain, London accounts for 53% of all inbound visitor spending to the UK.
Indeed, when it comes to boosting tourism, the European Capital of Culture label is more than just semantics. Past cities that have served as the capital saw gains in visitors and local economic growth. Writing for the Huffington Post, Joe Anderson, the mayor of Liverpool—which served as the capital in 2008—explains how the city also experienced a much-needed boost in morale:
“Not only did it offer a stage to show the world the creative brilliance of our city, but it led to real, bottom-line benefits in terms of our visitor economy and improvements to our infrastructure… We saw 9.7 million visitors come to the city—an increase of a third—generating £754 million [$1 billion] for the local economy. Of the visitors surveyed 99% said they liked the general atmosphere and 97% felt welcome. Crucially, the research from academics at Liverpool University found that 85% of the city’s residents agreed that Liverpool was a better place to live in than before.”
For the past year and a half, the implications of Brexit have remained largely theoretical. Earlier this week, the EU announced that the headquarters of the European Medicines Agency and European Banking Authority will be moved from London to Amsterdam and Paris, respectively. In removing British cities from the running for European Capital of Culture as well, the reality of Britain’s divorce from the EU is beginning to dawn. |
View this email in your browser Alternative Comics Announces
Fall and Winter 2015 Books Kevin Hooyman, Anna Ehrlemark, Gregory Benton, Dylan Horrocks, Mardou, Eric Haven and Jon Allen sign up with indie graphic novel house. Independent publishing house Alternative Comics will have the largest season of its 22 year history this fall, beginning with the September release of a trio of titles from Brooklyn's Hang Dai Studios. Alternative Comics has twelve books scheduled from August 2015 through March 2016. This will mark their first season to include books from the imprints Hang Dai Editions, Floating World Comics and Revival House Press—who joined Alternative Comics along with Study Group Comics and Hic and Hoc Publications in February of this year. The season also marks the publisher's second with Consortium Book Sales & Distribution, part of the Perseus Group, as its distributor.
Dean Haspiel and Tom Hart continue their long relationship with Alternative Comics with a pair of largely slice of life comics; but, this is a year of mainly fresh faces. Kevin Hooyman, Gregory Benton, Dylan Horrocks, Mardou, Anna Ehrlemark, Eric Haven and Jon Allen are all new to Alternative Comics. The Alternative Comics house anthology returns with 200 pages of the top comic artists of the moment in Alternative Comics Are Dead, fronted by a stunning Hellen Jo cover. This fall also sees the release of Schmuck, written by the late Seth Kushner and illustrated by a gang of 22 artists.
Alternative Comics still issues the old-fashioned stapled variety of comics including three original titles this fall: Fedor by Patt Kelley (Hic & Hoc); The Yankee by Jason Leivian and Ian MacEwan (Floating World); and, Titan #2 by François Vigneault (Study Group). Fall 2015 & Winter 2016 Books Alternative Comics' books are distributed to the trade by Consortium Book Sales & Distribution. The full Fall 2015 Consortium catalog is viewable on Scribd and Edelweiss.
Click on the cover art for a higher resolution version. Conditions On The Ground
Kevin Hooyman Conditions On The Ground weaves a graphic stream of consciousness with metaphysical atmospheres and a mystical cast of characters. Kevin Hooyman’s fantastically detailed comics elevate everyday situations into psychedelic self-reflection and humorous revelations. This gorgeous 360 page hardcover collects all 10 issues of Kevin’s self-published breakthrough series.
“Hooyman will comb and smooth and style your neurons with his groovy lines of beauty.” —Jonathan Lethem (Motherless Brooklyn)
“Conditions On The Ground is 350 beautiful pages of existential and meditative comics. It had me smiling all day.” —Farel Dalrymple (The Wrenchies)
Kevin Hooyman is a graduate of Brown University with a degree in Visual Arts. Kevin's energized linework captures the lushness and vibrancy of a psychedelic experience. His illustrations have been featured in Arthur Magazine, various album covers, Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom, and a number of self published books.
A Floating World Comics production
Publication Date: August 4, 2015
360 page black and white 6.5"x9.25" hardcover
ISBN: 978-0-9886624-9-0
Price: $29.95 / $37.50 CAN
More information and a preview can be found here. Beef With Tomato
Dean Haspiel
With an introduction by Jonathan Ames A native New York bruiser is fed up with life in the dregs of a drug-addled Alphabet City where his neighbors are shut-ins and his bicycle is always getting stolen. He escapes from Manhattan to make a fresh start in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, only to face a new strain of street logic — where most everything he encounters is not as it seems.
Dean Haspiel is an Emmy award winner and Eisner and Harvey Award nominee. Haspiel created BILLY DOGMA, illustrated for HBO's "Bored To Death," was a Master Artist at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, is a Yaddo fellow, a playwright ("Switch To Kill"), and is the co-founder of HANG DAI Editions. Dean's comics include The Fox with Mark Waid, The Alcoholic with Jonathan Ames and The Quitter with Harvey Pekar.
A Hang Dai Editions /
Alternative Comics Co-Production
Publication Date: September 15, 2015
96 page 7.5"x10.25" paperback
ISBN: 978-1-934460-81-8
Price: $14.00 / $18.99 CAN
More information and a preview can be found here. Schmuck
Seth Kushner
Foreword by Jonathan Ames
One man’s awkward coming-of-age-quest to find love in New York City, illustrated by 22 artists, whose individual short stories together tell a complete narrative. Artists include Josh Neufeld, Nick Bertozzi, Dean Haspiel, Gregory Benton, Noah Van Sciver, Stephan DeStefano, and Christa Cassano. Cover Art By Joseph Remnant. Book Design By Eisner Award Winner Eric Skillman. Introduction By Jonathan Ames.
Seth Kushner was an environmental portrait photographer whose work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Time, L’Uomo Vogue, Sports Illustrated, The New Yorker and others. He was a founding partner in Hang Dai Editions with Dean Haspiel, Josh Neufeld, and Gregory Benton.
A Hang Dai Editions Production
Publication Date: September 15, 2015
176 page full-color 8"x10" paperback
ISBN: 978-1-934460-84-9
Price: $19.95 / $24.99 CAN
More information and a preview can be f ound he re. Smoke
Gregory Benton After an accident on an industrial farm unhinges two young brothers from reality, they are guided through a weird and wonderful journey by Xolo, the Aztec's mythological protector of souls. Gregory Benton received the Society of Illustrators inaugural MoCCA Award of Excellence for his critically acclaimed wordless book B+F. Smoke is another column in the lore of that universe.
Gregory Benton has been making comix since 1993. He cut his teeth on the political anthology World War 3, moving on to writing and drawing stories for Nickelodeon, Vertigo, DC Comics, Disney Adventures, Watson-Guptil, Entertainment Weekly, and his books Hummingbird and B+F.
A Hang Dai Editions Production
Publication Date: September 15, 2015
72 page full color 7"x7" hardcover
ISBN: 978-1-934460-79-5
Price: $14.99 / $18.99 CAN
More information and a preview can be found Gregory Benton received the Society of Illustrators inaugural MoCCA Award of Excellence for his critically acclaimed wordless book B+F. Smoke is another column in the lore of that universe.has been making comix since 1993. He cut his teeth on the political anthology World War 3, moving on to writing and drawing stories for Nickelodeon, Vertigo, DC Comics, Disney Adventures, Watson-Guptil, Entertainment Weekly, and his books Hummingbird and B+F.September 15, 2015978-1-934460-79-5$14.99 / $18.99 CANMore information and a preview can be found here Imitating Life, Succe$$, And Other Stories
Karl Stevens & Gustavo Turner
Karl Stevens's fifth book collects his collaborations with the writer and artist Gustavo Turner, including the critically acclaimed Succe$$, originally serialized in the Boston Phoenix. Imitating Life is the long-awaited missing link between the strips included in Stevens' Whatever (Alternative Comics, 2008) and Failure (Alternative Comics, 2013). Succe$$ is a post-9/11 story about a new breed of young capitalists. They're eco-friendly, gadget-obsessed, and they scorn the gaucheness and vanity of the Gordon Gekko yuppies. They're Reagan babies, programmed to "Just Say No" and "Just Do It" at the same time. If you looked at the back seat of their Priuses, you'd find well-thumbed copies of Atlas Shrugged. This collection also includes never-before published Stevens-Turner collaborations prepared especially for Imitating Life in 2015
Karl Stevens is a graphic novelist and painter. His first book, Guilty, was published in 2004 with a grant from the Xeric Foundation. He is also the author of Whatever (2008), The Lodger (A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist, 2010), and Failure (2013).
Gustavo Turner is a writer and artist based in Los Angeles.
Publication Date: October 13, 2015
96 page full color 8"x10" hardcover
ISBN: 978-1-934460-72-6
Price: $9.95 / $12.50 CAN
More information and a preview can be found here. Incomplete Works
Dylan Horrocks
Daydreams, fantasy, true love and procrastination feature strongly in this marvelous selection of Dylan Horrocks’s shorter comics. Running from 1986 to 2012, Incomplete Works is both the chronicle of an age and a portrait of one man’s heroic struggle to get some work done. From the creator of Hicksville and Sam Zabel and the Magic Pen. First North American Edition.
Dylan Horrocks has written and drawn graphic novels, comic books, comic strips and short stories for publishers around the world. His graphic novel Hicksville has been published in six languages. His second graphic novel Sam Zabel and The Magic Pen was published in January, 2015.
Publication Date: October 13, 2015
192 page black and white with 22 color pages
6" x 9" paperback
ISBN: 978-1-934460-54-2
Price: $19.99 / $24.99 CAN
More information and a preview can be found here. She's Not Into Poetry
Mini-Comics 1991-1996
Tom Hart
A collection of celebrated mini-comics from the early and mid-90s by Tom Hart, creator of Hutch Owen and director of the Sequential Artists Workshop. Includes the classic comics Love Looks Left, The Angry Criminal, Maria, New Hat, Mañana, Heike and more.
“The stories are offbeat and funny, and anyone who reads them will be reminded of the first time you saw an independent film or heard a non-major-label rock and roll record... As good a sustained output in mini-comics by anyone not named John Porcellino” —Tom Spurgeon, The Comics Reporter
“Some of my favorite comics of the 1990s.” —John Porcellino, creator of King Cat
Tom Hart is a cartoonist and the Executive Director of The Sequential Artists Workshop, a school and arts organization in Gainesville, Florida. He is the creator of the Hutch Owen series of graphic novels and books, and has been nominated for all the major comic book industry awards.
Publication Date: October 13, 2015
272 page black and white 6"x9" paperback
ISBN: 978-1-934460-88-7
Price: $14.95 / $18.50 CAN
More information and a preview can be found here.
Sky In Stereo
Mardou
Iris, a young woman turning eighteen in early 1990s Manchester, England, is slowly losing her tenuous grip on her world of burger-flipping, drugs, and Rock ‘n Roll. After quitting her job at a clothes shop, Iris takes a position at a burger bar at the train station, where her crush on fellow burger-flipper Glen takes her down a dark path.
“There’s a sensibility of the universal experience in this book: I love the way Mardou draws people with all their flaws and everyday wit, with all the grit and gray of the landscapes of their lives pierced by occasional shafts of yellow sunlight." —Nick Abadzis, Boing Boing
Mardou is from Manchester, England and now lives in St Louis, MO. She has been making mini-comics like ‘Anais in Paris’ and ‘Manhole’ since 2001, and was a founder of the all-girl comic ‘Whores of Mensa.’ Mardou contributed art to the 2015 film The Missing Girl.
A Revival House Press Production.
Publication Date: October 13, 2015
180 page black and white 6"x9" paperback
ISBN: 978-1-934460-83-2
Price: $17.95 / $22.50 CAN
More information and a preview can be found here. Winners
Anna Ehrlemark
Anna Ehrlemark is well known in Eastern Europe for her unconventional, twisted narratives and her striking visual style. Her comics explore feminist, queer, anti-capitalist themes and she has been published by the Balkan collectives Stripburger, Fijuk, and Komikaze. Winners collects 128 pages of her stories about family, nostalgia, chance, witchcraft, sex, abstinence, economy, and revenge. Science fiction in a future that is already old.
Anna Ehrlemark is a comic artist, illustrator and linguist. She lives in Gothenburg, Sweden. She started drawing with the Croatian comic bandits KOMIKAZE and worked as a designer and organizer for Kud Mreža and Menza pri Koritu in the cultural center ACC Metelkova mesto in Ljubljana. From 2012 she has been involved with the Novo Doba festival in Belgrade and is part of the Fijuk network of comic artists around the Adriatic sea.
A Floating World Comics production.
Publication Date: October 13, 2015
128 page 6.5"x9" black and white paperback
ISBN: 978-1-942801-91-7
Price: $14.95 / $18.95 CAN Alternative Comics Are Dead
Erik Aucoin, editor
Alternative Comics flagship anthology returns. This volume will feature contributions from comics creators Anders Nielsen, Leslie Stein, Paul Hornschemeier, Anya Davidson, Noah Van Sciver, Charles Forsman, Lane Milburn, Julia Wertz, Zak Sally, Malachi Ward and many others.
Cover art by Hellen Jo
Publication Date: November 10, 2015
192 page black and white with 48 color pages 8"x10" paperback
ISBN: 978-1-934460-90-0
Price: $24.95 / $30.99
More information and a preview can be found here. Sunbeam On The Astronaut Box Set
Steven Cerio
A box set of books and disks documenting Steven Cerio's work on the book Sunbeam on the Astronaut and the short film The Magnificent Pigtail Shadow. Includes the complete book and film as well as a full color reproduction of sketchbook drawings and studio photos, and the entire soundtrack to The Magnificent Pigtail Shadow—featuring narration by Kristin Hersh.
Steven Cerio is an artist who has spent over two decades relentlessly documenting a universe devoid of death and decay. A prominent rock poster and magazine illustrator, his work is best known from his ongoing collaboration with San Francisco-based group The Residents.
Publication Date: November 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-934460-75-7
Price: $39.99 / $49.99
More information and a preview can be found here. Compulsive Comics
Eric Haven
Enter the strange and compelling comic book world of Eric Haven. Collecting The Tales To Demolish series and The Aviatrix. Deconstructing the tawdry form of the traditional comic book, Haven builds layers of dark, dorkish humor to undermine the expectations of certain familiar genres. A series of short comics that deconstructs—while it celebrates—classic comic book tropes.
Eric Haven is a producer of the popular television series Mythbusters. He has been producing unusual and fascinating comics for many years.
Publication Date: March 15, 2016
176 page black and white 7"x10" hardcover
ISBN: 978-1-934460-58-0
Price: $24.99 / $31.50 CAN
More information and a preview can be found here. Ohio Is For Sale
Jon Allen
Three cartoon animals live in a house together in the American midwest. They get a job, get sick, and throw a party. Their lives are lit by street lamps and the flickering TV set. They do incredibly stupid things with hilarious and disastrous results. It's about friendship, booze, and the slow collapse of western civilization. And they're so cute!
Jon Allen studied Illustration at Pratt Institute and holds a Master’s Degree in painting from Cranbrook Academy of Art. He teaches foundation drawing. In addition to Ohio Is For Sale, he wrote and illustrated Vacationland, a self-published graphic novel.
Publication Date: March 15, 2016
272 page black and white 7"x7" paperback
ISBN: 978-1-934460-82-5
Price: $19.99 / $24.99 CAN
More information can be found here. Fall Comic Books Alternative Comics' comic book titles are distributed by Diamond Comics Distributors, Inc. and Last Gasp of San Francisco. Fedor
Patt Kelley
Picking up where Tod Browning’s Freaks left off, Patt Kelley’s Fedor tells the fictionalized story of real-life turn of the century circus sideshow attraction JoJo the Dog Faced Boy and his on-again/off-again globetrotting forbidden romance with another circus spectacle – the tattooed girl. Fedor is a full-color 40 page comic book.
ISBN: 978-1-68148-101-2
$8.00
A Hic & Hoc production.
August, 2015 The Yankee
Jason Leivian & Ian MacEwan
The Yankee is a dumb American. He’s Cosmo Vitelli. He’s Prince Rogers Nelson. He’s a Richard Pryor monologue Psychedelic-economic fiction set in the Nation States of America. Reality is just a part of your brain. The part that you can touch.Features visionary artwork by Ian MacEwan ( Prophet, Sex, The Tomorrows ).
48 page black and white comic book.
ISBN: 978-1-942801-90-0
$7.95
A Floating World Comics production.
August, 2015 Titan #2
François Vigneault
At the edges of the solar system, MNGR João da Silva struggles to keep Homestead Station running despite mounting tensions with the giant Titan workers. Meanwhile, Titan union rep Phoebe Mackintosh finds herself caught between a violent past she’d rather forget and a dangerous future she can’t predict. A Study Group Comics production.
32 page full-color comic book.
$4.95
A Study Group Comics production.
October, 2015 Alternative Comics has been a co-operative organization of independent comic book editors, publishers and artists since 1993 and is the home to some of the finest creator-owned graphic novels and comic books.
Alternative Comics is home to Hic and Hoc Publications, Revival House Press, Study Group Comics,
IndyWorld.com Alternative Comics is home to Floating World Comics Hang Dai Editions and our home imprint, Alternative Comics Contact:
Marc Arsenault
General Manager
Alternative Comics
21607B Stevens Creek Blvd.
Cupertino, CA 95014
[email protected]
408 921-5164 Marc ArsenaultGeneral Manager21607B Stevens Creek Blvd.Cupertino, CA 95014408 921-5164 |
For nearly 20 years, Texans have flocked to Russo’s New York Pizzeria and Russo’s Coal-Fired Italian Kitchen for an authentic Italian meal and New York-style pizza.
On the heels of the restaurant’s recent addition of gluten-free pizza to the menu, consumers will soon be able to find Chef Anthony Russo’s new gluten-free pizza line in their local grocery stores.
As a growing number of consumers are leaning toward gluten-free options for dietary restrictions, Russo’s new line of pizzas will offer an authentic but healthy Italian option for consumers.
From the pizza crust to the cheese, all components of the pizza will be 100 percent gluten-free. In addition, the facility the pizzas will be produced in will be gluten-free.
“As gluten-free products have become a larger demand in the United States, we wanted to do our part by providing consumers with a great tasting and healthy meal, and something they can throw in their oven after a long day of work,” says Anthony Russo, founder of Russo’s New York Pizzeria and Russo’s Coal Fired Italian Kitchen.
“As the company remains passionate about freshness, only the finest ingredients will go into our gluten-free pizzas. While we will initially launch the product line in Texas, we look forward to introducing the pizzas nationwide over the next several years.”
The new pizza line will initially launch onto retail shelves in Central Texas in 2012 and pizzas will be available in six different varieties, including Greek, New York Style, Margherita, Chicken Rustica, Pepperoni, and Italian Mozzarella, as well as Mulberry.
All pizzas will be made with 100 percent fresh mozzarella. The pizza crust will be vegan, made with rice flour, tapioca flour, potato starch, and extra virgin olive oil, infused with honey and Italian seasonings. All pizzas will also include a Chef Anthony Russo family recipe, dating back to the 1930s in Avellino, Italy.
In addition, the Chef Anthony Russo brand will be offering a shelf stable pre-made gluten-free pizza crust for those interested in trying out their own pizza recipe.
The brand is also launching an organic extra-virgin olive oil made with Sicilian olives, which is cold pressed and unfiltered. Russo’s Organic Olive Oil line can already be found in Central Market stores throughout Texas.
Future products on the horizon also include fresh made gourmet pasta sauces, gourmet salad dressings, gourmet dipping blends, and a line of gourmet spice blends.
Scott Treadaway will spearhead the product line’s expansion into retail stores as the newly appointed director of sales. With more than 20 years of experience in the food industry, Treadaway has spent time with food giant Nestle USA, as well as Red Monkey Foods, which is one of the nation’s fastest growing private label gourmet spice suppliers.
“I am excited to be on board to help Chef Russo expand his pizza line and organic extra virgin olive oil on a national level,” Treadaway says. “Chef Anthony’s restaurants have become a gathering place for families. The new line of products will help make dinner time for families at home more enjoyable.” |
Story highlights Alabama, South Dakota and Texas passed legislation that may prevent LGBT parents from adopting or fostering children
The ACLU of Northern California applauds the additions to the banned travel list
(CNN) California has issued a ban on state-funded and state-sponsored travel to four more states that it says have laws discriminating against LGBTQ people.
The travel ban was first put into effect January 1 when state measure AB 1887 became law. The law says California is "a leader in protecting civil rights and preventing discrimination" and should not support or finance "discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people."
The travel ban list also includes states that California believes don't protect religious freedoms and states that it says use religious freedom as a basis of discrimination.
"Our country has made great strides in dismantling prejudicial laws that have deprived too many of our fellow Americans of their precious rights. Sadly, that is not the case in all parts of our nation, even in the 21st century," California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said in a statement Thursday.
Why the ban?
Read More |
EDMONTON – A controversy over an Alberta politician using his taxpayer-funded housing allowance to make money took a new turn Thursday night with Derek Fildebrandt apologizing and announcing he would take a leave of absence as finance critic for the new United Conservative Party.
Fildebrandt started out the day in a defensive posture, saying there was nothing wrong with renting out his subsidized Edmonton apartment through Airbnb when he wasn’t using it.
“I confirmed that letting out my Edmonton home while it is not being used is compliant with the rules,” Fildebrandt said in an email earlier in the day. “Letting out an unused residence is reasonable and a part of the modern sharing economy.”
But several hours later he issued a news release saying: “I apologize.”
“Since January I believed that renting out my Edmonton home while I was away was above board and never cost the taxpayer anything extra,” he said. “I however recognize the perception that this is not good enough, and have spoken with my constituents, and they are never wrong.
“I have paid the amount I earned during those eight months ($2,555) to the taxpayer.”
Interim UCP Leader Nathan Cooper issued a three-paragraph statement confirming those developments and adding “the UCP believes in fiscal accountability and protecting taxpayers.”
Both news releases said there would be no further comment, and that Fildebrandt would be leaving on a family vacation.
Earlier in the day, Fildebrandt had noted the information was leaked to the media the day after he said he would not be voting for former Wildrose Party leader Brian Jean, who is now campaigning for the leadership of the UCP.
“I hope that my stance two days ago concerning the UCP leadership race in no way influenced the timing of this story.”
Alberta Party Leader Greg Clark said he has asked the Speaker of the legislature to review Fildebrandt’s sub-rental of the apartment and wants a full review of living expenses claimed by all members of the assembly.
Clark said subletting an apartment being paid for by taxpayers is not right even if the current rules allow it.
“The spirit of the law should be that no MLA benefits personally from tax dollars – it is fundamentally wrong what he has done here,” Clark said in front of the legislature.
“It’s deeply hypocritical for someone who’s been such a fierce critic of government waste to take advantage of a loophole for personal benefit.”
Alex McCuaig, spokesman for the Speakers office, said Clark’s request is being reviewed. Under the current rules, McCuaig said no regulations forbid what Fildebrandt had done.
“The issue of subletting a temporary residence on Airbnb, or subletting in general, is not addressed in the orders established by the member services committee,” he said.
“We are not aware of any other MLAs who are currently subletting their temporary residence.”
NDP Finance Minister Joe Ceci, who has been the target of years of criticism from Fildebrandt over Alberta’s budget deficits and growing accumulated debt, took to social media to chide Fildebrandt.
“Yes, Derek, it’s the 21st century and reasonable people don’t Airbnb their tax-funded apartment for personal profit,” Ceci wrote in a post on Twitter.
A spokeswoman for the government caucus said no NDP MLAs are subletting taxpayer subsidized apartments.
Fildebrandt is the member of the legislature for Strathmore-Brooks and launched a group called United Liberty to advocate for the recent merger of the Wildrose and Progressive Conservative parties – now the United Conservative Party.
The United Liberty website says he once served as the Alberta director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and led the fight against former Alberta premier Alison Redford government’s deficit budgets and abuse of taxpayers’ money.
Colin Craig, interim director of the federation in Alberta, said what Fildebrandt did was wrong, even if the rules technically allowed it. Craig said the federation has been lobbying for stricter regulations regarding MLA expenses for more than five years.
Politicians should be reimbursed for legitimate expenses, but should never profit on the backs of taxpayers, he said.
“It is wrong. MLAs shouldn’t be taking funds and using them to profit privately off of them,” he said. “Whether it is Derek or any other MLA in the legislature, that is our position.” |
HOLYOKE, Mass.—A Massachusetts man has been arrested after a kilogram of cocaine hidden inside a hollowed out chunk of bologna was delivered to his home.
Holyoke police say they were tipped off by postal inspectors in Puerto Rico who had been investigating similar shipments. A dog confirmed the presence of drugs and the bologna was cut open.
The meat was then repackaged and an undercover postal inspector delivered it to a Holyoke address at about 4:45 p.m. on Thursday where a woman sitting on the front steps signed for it.
Police then executed a search warrant and arrested 30-year-old Juan Rodriguez on a cocaine trafficking charge. He is scheduled to be arraigned Friday. It was not immediately clear if he had a lawyer.
Police say the cocaine had a street value of $100,000. The investigation is ongoing.
© Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. |
A Lehigh Township teenager who claimed he was beaten after trying to sell his PlayStation was actually assaulted when he tried to trade the console for marijuana.
Assistant District Attorney Richard Peppper said today Richard Davis agreed March 9 to trade his PlayStation with William Shelhamer II, of Bethlehem, for marijuana.
The marijuana was actually oregano and the deal went bad, Pepper said.
Shelhamer and Nathan Shiller, of the 200 block of Edmonds Avenue, Moore Township, along with three other unidentified men attacked Davis, Pepper said.
Pepper said it was the other attackers who beat Davis until he was unconscious. Shelhammer, 20, said he tried to stop the beating and pulled other people off of Davis.
“All of this fussing and fighting was over a PlayStation? Have we not outgrown the PlayStation yet,” President Judge F.P. Kimberly McFadden asked. “Do you feel as dumb as you sound?”
Shelhamer pleaded guilty to simple assault and attempted theft. McFadden sentenced him to 18 months probation. McFadden ordered Shelhamer to pay court costs and $450 in fines, perform 20 hours of community service and pay restitution.
Shiller, 20, pleaded guilty to simple assault and a separate drug charge. McFadden sentenced him to 18 months probation, 20 hours of community service and ordered him to pay court costs, restitution and $650 in fines.
Pepper said prosecutors may charge Davis as well for his role in the crime. |
EXCLUSIVE - Panama Papers NZ - Locked up in a Brazilian prison, accused of bribery in one of the country's biggest corruption scandals, Joao Procopio saw one way out.
He struck a deal with prosecutors. In return for his release last year, Procopio spilled the beans on how he'd moved almost $30 million in kickbacks offshore.
Swiss bank accountants and loose tax rules in a number of countries allowed him to hide the money trail.
One of those countries was New Zealand - Procopio set up a limited partnership called Santa Tereza Services, registered to an Auckland address.
Panama Papers NZ - Read our full coverage
The firm was part of an intricate structure of offshore companies now implicated in a huge Brazilian bribery scandal - known as Operation Car Wash - and a controversial bid to redevelop an African port.
Photo: YouTube / NúcleoMultimídia Estadão
Procopio worked for a fixer and currency dealer called Alberto Youseff, who is also accused of helping construction company Construtora OAS funnel bribes through offshore accounts.
Their office in Sao Paulo was raided by police in 2014. A huge tranche of incriminating documents - including Swiss bank account statements - revealed the link to Santa Tereza Services.
Leaked documents from Panama law firm Mossack Fonseca appear to detail one such deal. In 2013 Santa Tereza was used to make two unexplained payments related to a bid to win the $400 million contract to redevelop Walvis Bay port in Namibia.
OAS was in the running for the multi-million dollar bid. The money - a payment of $US1 million, and another of $50,000 - went through a Panama company, registered to former Trinidad and Tobago politician Ken Emrith.
Mr Emrith also worked for OAS in the Caribbean.
The payment was supposed to be for a technical study which would determine the price of the port development.
But Santa Tereza's transactions were raising eyebrows.
Photo: AFP
How it all unravelled
Procopio had employed another New Zealand company Trustee.net.nz to form Santa Tereza Services and its UK based general partner, Santa Clara Private Equity LLP. Procopio told them that he wanted to build a hotel for the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.
Bruce Sheppard - a well-known accountant and champion of cleaning up board rooms in a former role as chairman of the Shareholders Association - is a director and shareholder of Trustee.net.nz.
Mr Sheppard said after a while Procopio was slow to provide statements and in 2013 they became concerned about "transactions within the bank accounts that were not in line with what he undertook these structures would be used for."
The hotel never materialised, so Trustee.net.nz raised the alarm with authorities. However Anti-Money Laundering laws mean we can't publish any details.
Meanwhile, Mr Emrith's bank was also worried about the payments.
The Bank of St Lucia International (BOSLIL) unexpectedly closed his account and refused to allow the first transaction in August 2013.
The Panama Papers show Mossack Fonseca's New Zealand agent, Daniel Leon, desperately advocating on his behalf.
Emails went back and forth between the bank's compliance department and Mossack Fonseca.
BOSLIL wanted to know what Mr Emrith's company was doing and an explanation for the cash. Mr Emrith - through Mossack Fonseca - supplied a technical study on the Namibian port to the bank and a contract with Santa Tereza and was eventually paid in late 2013.
In the end, the Namibian government rejected the bid by OAS.
Mr Emrith didn't respond to our requests for comment.
NZ regime needs to change - Sheppard
Mr Sheppard said Procopio presented as a plausible client - and they went to extra lengths to prove he was legitimate.
He said Procopio was introduced to his UK-based partner by "an international banker of repute" and a Brazilian barrister vouched for the business man.
"Initial inquiries in the Brazilian economy indicated this man to be well-qualified, wealthy in his retirement years, holding public company directorships, in short a respected business person."
Mr Sheppard's partner even went to Brazil to meet Procopio. "And of course we cited all of the identification documentation that was required under the anti-money laundering [regulations]."
Photo: AFP
He said Trustee.net.nz was "not a shareholder or a manager…we had no involvement in any of the transactions of the structure. It is like a lawyer forming a company."
The firm's staff chased Procopio to comply with regulations, Mr Sheppard said.
"It is very difficult when you have someone who looks respectable at the front end of the business, who is making the right noises about doing proper and decent business, that then suddenly goes quiet."
Mr Sheppard said Trustee.net.nz was formed to help ex-pat Kiwis returning to New Zealand. "But what we also found is that these structures are a cowpat - they attract flies."
He said the New Zealand regime can still work - he wants all firms to publicly disclose their financial accounts on the Companies Office website, which is not the case now.
"In New Zealand, these entities have complete secrecy and sunlight is the best disinfectant."
Cabinet ministers are expected to receive a report on foreign trusts tomorrow, and Prime Minister John Key has signalled the disclosure rules may be tightened.
Santa Tereza Services was de-registered in July last year. A spokesman for the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment said it did not comply with rules that require a general partner live in New Zealand.
"Neither the Registrar nor MBIE had any knowledge of the activities of Santa Tereza and, therefore, no investigation was undertaken," the spokesman said.
IRD refused to say if they were investigating Santa Tereza Services or Trustee.net.nz.
A spokesman cited privacy reasons. "These types of questions all fall under the taxpayer secrecy provisions in the legislation we operate under, so we're unable to comment."
*The investigation into New Zealand links in the Panama Papers is a journalistic collaboration by reporters from RNZ, One News and investigative journalist Nicky Hager, and with the assistance of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung. |
The house with modern minimalist design has a distinctive atmosphere, and a house like this typically small in size. To save space, the owners will choose minimalist furniture. Selection of furniture, especially chairs, lots of things to consider, because in addition to cool design, the chair should when occupied.
Minimalist modern seat design can be found in many furniture stores, but of course the stock available does not necessarily match the color theme and size of the room in your home. The best option is to order a chair with a design that is in conformity with the design of the room. You have to pay higher prices, but the result will be more satisfactory.
Futuristic chair has a simple design, there is also a chrome-colored, but now a popular trend is colorful furniture.
Some forms of modern chairs are too radical, making it less ergonomic. You really have to pay attention on this, design a good chair is comfortable is viewed and used. |
New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft said this week that Russia’s President Vladimir Putin stole his Superbowl ring in 2005 when Kraft and a group of American businessmen were visiting St. Petersburg, Russia. According to CBS Sports, what has been portrayed in the media as a “gift” of the $25,000 ring from Kraft to the Russian leader was in fact an act of open theft.
“I took out the ring and showed it to [Putin], and he put it on and he goes, ‘I can kill someone with this ring,'” Kraft told the crowd at Carnegie Hall’s Medal of Excellence gala at New York City’s Waldorf-Astoria hotel on Thursday. “I put my hand out and he put it in his pocket, and three KGB [sic] guys got around him and walked out.”
The KGB was the Soviet Union’s chief spying agency until 1991. Since glasnost and the fall of the Soviet regime, Russia’s main intelligence and security agency is known as FSB.
Kraft said that when he complained to a U.S. official that Putin had stolen from him, he got a call from the Bush White House that said, “It would really be in the best interest of US-Soviet relations if you meant to give the ring as a present.”
Kraft reported, “”I really didn’t [want to]. I had an emotional tie to the ring, it has my name on it. I don’t want to see it on eBay. There was a pause on the other end of the line, and the voice repeated, ‘It would really be in the best interest if you meant to give the ring as a present.'”
At the White House’s behest, Kraft released a statement that said, “I decided to give him the ring as a symbol of the respect and admiration that I have for the Russian people and the leadership of President Putin.”
According to the New York Post, the ring is currently being stored in the Kremlin library. |
Can Wall-E director Andrew Stanton capture the pulpy greatness of Edgar Rice Burroughs' A Princess of Mars, in his first live-action movie? We've been keeping all our appendages crossed. Here's the first inside scoop on Stanton's John Carter movie — including a first ever shot of the alien Tharks!
Last month io9 went to Disney's Barsoom, with a sneak peek edit-bay visit. Stanton showed us footage of the leather-strapped Taylor Kitsch (John Carter) struggling with Mars' gravity. We ogled the four arms of the warrior clan of Tharks, and Carter's pet Woola! And here's what we learned about Disney's huge Martian adventure movie.
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For those of you unaware of the John Carter series, here's a quickie synopsis that Disney is using for the film:
The film tells the story of war-weary, former military captain John Carter (Taylor Kitsch), who is inexplicably transported to Mars where he becomes reluctantly embroiled in a conflict of epic proportions amongst the inhabitants of the planet, including Tars Tarkas (Willem Dafoe) [a giant green warrior creature] and the captivating Princess Dejah Thoris (Lynn Collins) [Silverfox in X-Men Origins: Wolverine]. In a world on the brink of collapse, Carter rediscovers his humanity when he realizes that the survival of Barsoom and its people rests in his hands.
The whole story is revealed via the author Edgar Rice Burroughs, who actually puts himself in the novel claiming that he's discovered a manuscript of a factual account from an old Uncle. And yes ERB is 100% in the movie as well (and in the trailer, which we also watched).
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Clearly a movie of this magnitude is no easy challenge to take on. Especially when it's being helmed by a director who (while clearly brilliant) has never directed a live-action feature film. We scanned and analyzed every still, each piece of concept art, we even examined Matai Shang (Mark Strong)'s robes (which were kind of a delightful version of the Necromongers race's aesthetic from Chronicles of Riddick with a Jedi sleeve) and here are some things we learned about:
The Tharks
The biggest surprise out of the edit-bay visit was the reveal of the 9-foot tall, four-armed alien creatures that also inhabit the red world of Barsoom, The Tharks. I've always imagined these Martians to be a bit more like giant insects with unfeeling bug-eyes. Not the case here. Stanton and team figured out a way to humanize the aliens, thus giving this alien species the ability to emote. As you can see in this little hint of a picture here, the creatures are slender but they're rocking the leather strap costume that is the uniform of Barsoom.
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But, as a result of making them a bit lankier, the whole world feels a lot less like something you'd paint on the side of your van, and much more tangible. And even though they have four arms, green skin and giant tusks (on closer inspection I noticed that a few of the Tharks had carved their tusks, etching out interesting patterns barely visible to the eye) the most striking thing about this alien race were their eyes. Stanton had literally overlaid Willem Dafoe's eyes over the flat face of this warrior, and lightened the iris with a striking ice blue. Why blue?
"Because they arrest you," Stanton explained. "We had all these eye colors. Fortunately, Defoe is getting so defined and wrinklely so there is a lot of Defoe in that face so it translates really well." Here's a bit more from Stanton on creating the Tharks.
Tharks are 9-foot to 10-foot tall green aliens with four arms and tusks. They're all CG, so I went with my Pixar gut and experience, and got actors because of their eyes, their voice, and their acting ability. That's all that's going to be left when all of this is said and done. Those are three things that can translate directly to the animated characters, once they're portrayed there. I got Willem Dafoe and Samantha Morton, and this is what I asked them to do, which was to be on stilts with gray pajamas on, with face cams in 100-degree heat. That's how I sold it. I didn't know how else to get around this issue. I said, "How would you like to wear gray pajamas and be on stilts and wear face cams and stand in 100 degree heat in the desert for six months or three months?" They said, "Where do I sign?" I think it was being honest with the challenge and it was different than things they had done before, they were really up for seeing where this would go. The reason I really, really wanted to do this is because at least for me I can tell when somebody's acting to a tennis ball or nothing there versus somebody's really being there. I wanted every possible chance to make this believable, so by having them really there, people acted better, people acted differently, people had actual eye lines. People reacted to things they weren't prepared for, and even down to the cameramen: The cameramen framed it differently because there was somebody there. Cameramen are trained to frame nicely, so if you take somebody out of the background and have nothing there, they're going to use the background — whether they know it or not — to try to frame to make that look balanced and good. When you have somebody actually there, they're willing to be sloppier and do all the stuff they would normally do. I learned a lot of this working on Wall-E. It all added up to hopefully a very visceral, believable sense of being there, that you're talking to an actor. That's exactly what people did, so we were out there with the gray pajamas, standing on stilts with a face cam. The face cams turned out to be great for the actors, because they could treat them like they could use them for the actual distance that they had to be from things. That was a real benefit... I swear now that I'm seeing the end product, finally getting finished shots on the other side, if I were to shoot again tomorrow, I would do it all over again exactly this way. It was the right call, it was the right way to be.... Even when I would take time of writing the Thoats [the creatures the Tharks ride]. We actually went through the pain of figuring out what it felt, looked like, animating it, figuring out what the lope of it and the gallop of it was, and then programming that data into an electrical cart so the saddle would move exactly at that, so that hopefully when it was all done and you put a Thoat on there and you put a Thark in it, that real saddle would match, and it does. So hopefully if we've done it right, people will go, "How the hell is he sitting on this? How the hell did he ride around on this thing?"
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What other beasts from the Edgar Rice Burroughs work are in the film?
John Carter isn't all Thoat-riding Tharks (which would still pretty awesome, even if it was). ERB was a machine when it came to creating alien beasties and Disney had a lot monsters to make in order to make this world come to live. Creature animator Eamonn Butler [pictured here] took us through a collection of concept art and creature drawings and introduced us to Woola (Carter's Martian mutt!).
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Woola went through a lot of concept art, specifically softening the monster pup's look, and in the last image we saw Woola looked downright adorable. Butler surmises that Woola may steal the show (even though it's only on screen for a small amount of time). Woola has a wide mouth with rows of shark-like teeth but kind puppy eyes. It looks absolutely nothing like the earlier concept art for the defunct Jon Favreau production. Think wider mouth, squatter feet and sweeter disposition.
Also on the monster roster: the big White Ape! We watched a few minutes of the infamous ape showdown, and let's just say Taylor Kitsch is swoon-worthy. Somehow, they've managed to take the boy scout out of Carter and replace it with a bit of Han Solo. Watching Kitsch roll about in the dust (in what I'm assuming was temple to the Therns) kicked the crap out of the Star Wars prequel's monster fight. And I only got to see that White Ape for a few minutes, but it just felt real. There was a weight to the giant beast.
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Sadly, there are no giant lion Banths in this production, but plenty of sabertooth Banth skulls strewn about for the keen eye. Fingers crossed the next film will have some giant Martian cats!
What will Mars look like?
Very little time was spent with the Zodangas and Heliumates tribes (the humanoids living on Mars) but I did get to see each tribe's armor (channeling a whole lotta Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes) and watched a quick exchange between Princess Dejah and Carter in one of her more elaborate getting-ready rooms. Their exchange was intense, but little could be really revealed as it was one of the first times we saw these two together and already drama was flying. That being said, the set inside Dejah's world was a gypsy fairy wonderland, full of dirty sex magic. If you get what I'm saying. Stanton explained that Petra in Jordan was an massive inspiration for the world on Mars.
How the hell do you make this and not look like you're being derivative yourself?" It wasn't until Nathan Crowley, who was the production designer on Nolan's film — and it was lucky that he was free for a while. He came in, and I wanted somebody that was not a famous sci-fi guy. I wanted somebody that would think more literally. He comes more from an architectural background. How would he attack some of these things? How would a different world come up with doors and windows? Not necessarily how we would do it — that challenge. When I was on a rant, like usually when I'm describing something, how I wanted it to feel, he had somebody mock up this image. It was totally the touchstone for me. I said, "That's what I want. I want to feel like I'm really there. I want to feel like it's really happening." This is not what somebody wished for; this is what really happened. This is the source of the book. Then I realized that's what it is: It's a period film, of a period we just don't know about. It's as if somebody has done their research really, really well and called in all the authorities. I thought that's the way to approach this. I don't want it to seem like this is images of creatures that people have been drawing on their notebooks their whole life and just want to selfishly see realized on the screen; I want you to go, "No, sorry, this is actually how people dressed in Aztec times" or "This is how people bargained in Japanese feudal times." Can we capture that faux authenticity? Breaking that down was making things weathered, aged, having limitations, a sense of deep-seeded culture that you don't really ever get to explore to the depths you'd like to, a sense that much has gone on in the world long before the times that we're present to. Setting the time period on earth to match the books helped. I set the time period on earth to be what the books were, and it really helped put you in a past mentality for both planets, which I think was a real helpful way to make it feel fresh. Petra in Jordan was a real inspiration, and we came up with this epiphany. [During filming in Utah we used] landmasses that truly exist, and just adding the tiniest Photoshop tweak to them. They become man-made or Martian-made. That way when you watch the film, it feels real. A large percentage of the screen space that you're watching has truly been photographed, and it will hopefully help give it a sense of believability that I really wanted out there. This is an actual set location, and this is what we're doing with it, seeing another angle. To those of you on the Utah set, this as you remember is ultimately what will happen to it. It's having the effect we hoped it would: "Where the hell did they find this place to shoot it?"
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But what about the major problems with the books? There are a lot of them, like the fact that everybody on Barsoom is telepathic except John Carter (and that's how everyone communicates)?
Stanton did explain that a lot had to be changed in the book, and yet I wasn't seeing any major differences until I brought up the issue of telepathy. In the books, everyone communicates this way — but John Carter can't. Stanton explained, "I explored that for a very short amount of time... after a while I realized I'm just doing it because it's in the book, not because it helped anything. There was no story need for it, it actually made things more complicated and created problems, it made every scene a "why can't he just read his thoughts?" So I killed it and people will hate me for it." Although we disagree that anyone will hate him for removing this plot obstacle — even the author did away with it in the end as well!
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Also in this picture, a blurry image of a Mars ship.
What about the nudity? Will the everyone be running around in leather thongs?
No. They will, however, be running around in just-as-sexy leather chest plates, and elaborate head dresses and flowing Middle Eastern garb (specifically for Dejah). But no, this will not look like a heavy metal album cover, sorry. But trust me, everyone looks really darn good. Although I was curious to see if Stanton would want a little reality in his Martian movie. Not everyone can be an airbrushed chiseled brick house, so are there overweight Martians in this movie?
There actually are, but we cut them. We got a lot of half-naked running around. We're not going to make them look terrible. I looked at a lot of desert-dwelling people and they are very efficient and very lean and have been beaten by the sun and I just kind of wanted the Masai warriors and the Aborigines. We worked really hard on the physicality. If you travel enough, you will see things that you have never see anything before. That's just nature evolved that way. We all felt that it was all naturally evolved through nature for those reasons. So that every thing grown up would have a more natural basis.
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Are any threads from the second book?
Yes! Matai Shang leader of the Holy Therns will be making an early appearance in this movie!
So Matai was such an important player in the second and third book, I need a greater issue that if there is a second movie, I will have a smaller issue in the first movie. There will be existence for a greater issue to be dealt further. I bring in the river Iss – I am setting up a lot of things that are hopefully able for you to get dropped in the second film.
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Why did they remove the "of Mars" mention in the movies new title. Why is it just called John Carter?
I know I'm going to get this question all day and probably for the rest of my frickin' life: Why 'John Carter?' This has had quite an evolution of me figuring out what was the best thing to do for this book to preserve what I thought was timeless about it, what I thought was the resonant elements about it, but not be afraid to tweak or alter things for the benefit of it, so that it would translate the best it could to screen. Nobody's a bigger fan of these books than me, or at least I could match myself with a lot of people. I'm also a huge cinephile, and I have witnessed that to honor the book literally word-for-word never makes a good movie. How can I somehow do that and make you feel like how it felt to read the books when you're watching the movie? You have to be willing in private to be able to dismantle it all, break it apart, analyze it, and look at it almost objectively as if you were making it from scratch, and then see what comes back together. It's actually not that different than when you have to rewrite anything that you've done once you've done the first draft. In doing so, I also found that — this is the wrong crowd to get this — not everybody's into sci-fi. I've tried really hard to capture what I thought was universal and timeless about this book that is above and beyond the genre itself. I don't want to exclude anybody from a wrong first impression assumption about this movie or this property, so I didn't want to lie and say it isn't what it is, so I said, "Let's sell the character that we put all our efforts towards." Believe me, Mars is going to come into this thing, title and everything, before this whole journey's over. You've just got to be patient. There was a grand design to all this thing. That's the most I want to say, because I don't want to spoil it even for you guys. You've got to know that it was not a studio-driven hammer on me, and it was not a decision that came quickly. I put a lot of thought into what's the most promising way to make a good first impression to a majority of the world that does not know anything about this, and invite them in and hopefully make them enjoy it as much as the people that do love it. That's the best way I can put it.
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It's going to be a trilogy
Even though Stanton is staunchly against sequels (or we probably would have had a Wall-E 2 by now) he's 100% dedicated to telling the larger stories from the books:
Most people know me at Pixar as the guy that doesn't like to do sequels or very reluctant to do sequels. The irony wasn't lost on me when I asked them to do this first book to option the first three. I said, "I really want to try to attack the first 3 like a trilogy and give us a fighting chance to introduce it to the world the way it was introduced to me," which was as an ongoing series with a promise of something going on — not as a cold crafts franchise, but again, to try to capture what I felt as a young kid when I got introduced to them. There was already 11 books, and they were my 'Harry Potters.' I wanted to see if we could do the same, get off on the right foot with this one. They were very receptive to that fact, and that's exactly what we did. We tapped all three, knowing that the first one was really going to be the only promise of what could be made and [if] it succeeds and does well, then we'll move on.
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Is Stanton worried that audiences will write this film off simply as a desert version of Avatar (but with green aliens)?
Let's let Stanton address this specifically:
I have the comfort of going to sleep knowing where this came from. They can misconstrue all they want. It's not a competition. I love Avatar. Other than the fundamental bones of boy meet girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back. It's not that simple. And so I was very confident that we wouldn't be stepping on each others' toes.
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And finally biggest take away from the day (for me personally) was when Stanton started showing off childhood drawings from Assistant Director and co-writer Mark Andrews (the head of story on Incredibles), Michael Chabon (screenwriter) and himself. It was wonderful validation that the folks behind this production truly cared about the source material and we're fans themselves. Plus, getting a sneak peak into Chabon's adolescent scribbles is really just amazing on its own. I left with these words from Stanton in my mind, "The core of this film is about survival, it's about a man rediscovering his humanity and the Martians, and that's where I'm going to leave it." So far it looks amazing, but it's got a long road ahead of it. Thank goodness there's this much talent behind it.
Full disclosure: Disney paid for io9's travel and expenses during this edit bay visit. |
Ana Draa, left, stands with other Trump protesters in Wisconsin on April 18. (Courtesy of Ana Draa)
For Ana Draa, a Trump protester, the most shocking part of her coming to the aid of a fallen Trump supporter, was that others were shocked.
Draa, a 53-year-old stay-at-home mom and self-described passionate advocate for women’s reproductive rights, joined a pack of protesters and supporters outside the Wisconsin manufacturing company where President Trump spoke Tuesday afternoon. In the mass of people, she found herself standing next to a seated older man holding a defund Planned Parenthood sign.
The man started complaining that he wasn’t feeling well, and Draa, a former CPR instructor, could tell he didn’t look good. He asked her to find him some ibuprofen, even offering to hold her sign, which read: “Trump, Who Are You In Bed With Because It Sure Ain’t Melania. Show Your Taxes!!!”
Soon after, she heard what she described as “the sickening thud of someone’s head hitting the concrete.” He had said he felt faint before he passed out and toppled off his seat.
As he lay on the ground, Draa held his hand, assuring him that he would be fine, that the ambulance would be there soon to take care of him. She tried to keep him calm as another anti-Trump activist, who happened to be a nurse, also stayed by his side until emergency workers arrived.
After he was taken away in the ambulance, Draa said a local reporter asked her why she helped him.
“Why? Wouldn’t you?” Draa said she responded. “He’s an old man. He felt the power of his convictions and he was very respectful. We need to respect and value the humanity in each other. Just because we have different opinions it doesn’t make them evil. I was really taken aback that they were shocked.”
[Feeling stuck in your social media bubble? Here’s the latest in a growing class of apps designed to help]
Earlier at the event, Draa said another Trump supporter was screaming obscenities at her and the other protesters. When she held up her sign in front of her face to block him from her view, she said he punched the sign. She’s still shaken by that man’s behavior, but said if he had been the one who had fallen, she would have helped him, too. “It’s what my faith calls me to do,” she said.
Draa, who lives in Libertyville, Ill., said she has always been politically minded, but the first time she was inspired to take her beliefs to the street was after Trump’s election. In January, she flew to Houston to participate in the Women’s March there. As a half-Mexican woman, Draa said there were many things about the Trump candidacy that offended her personally.
But while the march was invigorating, she was surrounded by like-minded people there. At the protest of Trump’s Wisconsin visit, despite her one negative interaction, Draa said she was heartened by the conversations she overheard between political opposites. They were animated and impassioned, but it was a dialogue, not just yelling.
“The reality is the more we talk, the more commonality we’re going to find and the more we humanize each other, which is so important,” she said. “I’m not saying you excuse racism or sexism, but by talking to people, that’s how you break those barriers down.”
Draa doesn’t know how the older Trump supporter fared, but she said he’s been on her mind and that she has been worried about him.
“I wish we were going to find out he was okay,” she said.
Read more Inspired Life:
This election has divided the country. Getting Clinton and Trump voters talking is one way to heal.
He dramatically changed his views on gay marriage. Here’s how he says the nation can come together.
Her teen son called her an ‘intolerant’ liberal. So she launched a national project to hear from the other side. |
The pace of job creation in the US slowed by more than expected in May, and less participation in the labor market helped to push the unemployment rate to a 16-year low.
The economy added 138,000 nonfarm payrolls, while the unemployment rate fell to 4.3%, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said Friday in its monthly report.
Economists had forecast 182,000 nonfarm payrolls and a 4.4% unemployment rate, according to a Bloomberg survey.
Business Insider/Andy Kiersz, data from Bureau of Labor Statistics
A broader measure of unemployment that includes people who are working part time but would prefer full-time jobs — the U-6, or underemployment, rate — fell to 8.4%, its lowest level since November 2007.
The share of people who are either working or job hunting relative to everyone in their prime working age — the labor-force participation rate — declined to 62.7% from 62.9%.
Wage growth was little changed, and economists had expected this because of a calendar quirk: The survey week for the jobs report usually includes the 12th of the month. But in this case that fell in a different week from May 15, when many workers get paid and would receive any raises.
Average hourly earnings increased by 0.2% from April and rose by 2.5% year-on-year.
"Despite a tightening in the labor market, wages don't seem to be picking up, and that's kind of hard to explain," said Andrew Chamberlain, the chief economist at Glassdoor.
One reason could be that the top-line wage-growth numbers mask progress in stronger industries, he said.
Despite the miss on job gains, this report should provide the final green light to the Federal Reserve. It meets later in June and is expected to raise borrowing costs for the second time this year, confident that wages will eventually pick up amid a shortage of skilled workers.
Retail trade lost 6,100 jobs, and the majority were in large department stores. Up to 3,500 stores are expected to close this year as more consumers choose to shop online. |
I recently had the chance to sit down with Marie D. Jones, author of This Book Is From the Future and Viral Mythology to discuss the possibility of human time travel and the possible link to the ancient alien theory.
The growing popularity of the History Channel series, Ancient Aliens has led to some interesting speculations about what, or who, may have once visited our ancestors, imparting knowledge and technological advancement that lead to leaps and bounds in human development. Originally, the concept of ancient aliens, or ancient astronauts, pointed to extraterrestrial intervention occurring thousands of years ago, and possibly even a little genetic intervention as well. The ancient astronaut theory posits that our ancestors experienced these huge leaps forward in advancement of scientific, astronomical, technological and medical knowledge that could simply NOT have happened on their own. We MUST have had some help from above, from entities far more intelligent and evolved than we.
Otherwise, how could we have built those amazing Egyptian pyramids and erected those massive stone statues on Easter Island, or the meticulously intricate blocks that make up Puma Punku in Bolivia... and what of the many glyphs, cave and rock paintings, carvings, drawings and statuettes from our distant past that appear to portray "helmeted" figures that do not look quite human, or those of strange craft whizzing by in the sky? Are all these "archeo-enigmas" proof that our ancestors mingled with the star people, and left us clues in their art, architecture, myths and religious texts?
While many argue that there is no proof we humans needed a little help from above to make those huge jumps forward in our evolution, there are many who insist that the archeological evidence is clear... we were once hanging out with aliens, maybe even breeding with them, or having their DNA spliced into our own, possibly against our knowledge or will. The theory also posits that these aliens were from advanced civilizations, coming to visit lowly human Earthlings and impart what they knew of the vast cosmos and all possibilities therein. Speculation includes locations both within and outside of our known universe, where the laws of physics might allow for travel between worlds.
But... what about travel between times? If we entertain the ancient astronaut theory, and there is compelling "circumstantial evidence" to give it serious thought, must we accept that the aliens that intervened were indeed aliens at all? Might they have been... dare I say... US? Humans of the future, coming back to teach, warn and guide the humans of the past? Lest you think that a ridiculously unfounded statement, let me bring up an interesting subject.
Roswell.
In the summer of 1947, a mysterious object crashed on a ranch in the desert near Roswell, New Mexico, creating a firestorm of ongoing controversy. Original news stories claimed it a flying saucer, but were immediately suppressed in favor of a weather balloon story courtesy of the authorities... the classic cover-up. Roswell is now the stuff of legends, as well as movies, TV shows, books by the dozen and continued debate and discussion as to exactly what happened on that fateful date in history. Were alien bodies discovered at the crash site, as many claim, and whisked away to a top-secret hangar at Wright-Patterson AFB? Was the craft later back-engineered at the notorious Area 51 in Nevada? Was there an alien autopsy done on the crash victims, as claimed by a TV show years ago?
We still really don't know what happened at Roswell, but there is an ancient alien/astronaut link that adds to the mystery. According to a renowned U.S. Navy Commander named George W. Hoover, the aliens may have been human beings from the future... us... come back to, well, interact with... us.
Allegedly, Hoover had top-secret clearance as part of his work as a Naval Intelligence Officer to view the Roswell debris and bodies during the 1950s...and he eventually told a very select group of people before his death of his beliefs. Those people included his own son, George Hoover, Jr. and later ufologist and researcher William J. Birnes, both of whom were made privy to what the elder Hoover knew before his death. Hoover stated during interviews that he believed the aliens were not extraterrestrial, but were extratemporal -- as in time travelers. In addition, he believed they were not really aliens at all... but humans of the future, with incredible abilities to use the power of consciousness to morph reality and travel through the landscape of time.
Hoover's story mirrors other stories from some ufologists and many UFO abductees that aliens may have been, and still may be, humans of the future who have found the technology to overcome the limitations of light speed and time travel paradoxes that keep present day humans from breaching the boundaries of time. Their often-humanoid appearance may suggest a link between the way we look today, and what we might look like thousands of years from now. |
Fictional character created by J. R. R. Tolkien
Gandalf [a] is a fictional character and one of the protagonists in J. R. R. Tolkien's novels The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. He is a wizard, member of the Istari order, as well as leader of the Fellowship of the Ring and the army of the West. In The Lord of the Rings, he is initially known as Gandalf the Grey, but returns from death as Gandalf the White.[1]
Names [ edit ]
Although mainly known as Gandalf, the character has a number of names in Tolkien's writings. Gandalf himself says, "Many are my names in many countries. Mithrandir[b] among the Elves, Tharkûn to the Dwarves, Olórin I was in my youth in the West that is forgotten, in the South Incánus, in the North Gandalf; to the East I go not."[2]
Tolkien derived the name Gandalf from Norse mythology.[3] In Norse the name means wand-elf or staff-elf. This is reflected in his name Tharkûn, which is "said to mean 'Staff-man' " in Khuzdul,[4] one of Tolkien's invented languages.
In Middle-earth the colour of a Wizard's cloak distinguishes him from other Wizards. For most of his manifestation as a wizard, Gandalf's cloak is famously grey, and from this derive a number of his appellations: hence Gandalf the Grey, and Greyhame. Mithrandir is a name in Sindarin (another language invented by Tolkien), the translation of which gives rise to further names for Gandalf: the Grey Pilgrim and the Grey Wanderer.
Midway through The Lord of the Rings, Gandalf is promoted to the head of the order of Wizards, and is thus named Gandalf the White instead of Gandalf the Grey. This change in status (and clothing) also introduces yet another name for the wizard: the White Rider. However even after this transformation, characters who speak Elvish still refer to the wizard as Mithrandir.
At times in The Lord of the Rings, other characters address Gandalf by nicknames, usually disparaging: hence Stormcrow, Láthspell, and Grey Fool. Láthspell means 'Ill-news' in Old English.
Characteristics [ edit ]
Tolkien discusses Gandalf in his essay on the Istari, which appears in the work Unfinished Tales. He describes Gandalf as the last of the wizards to appear in Middle-earth, one who: "seemed the least, less tall than the others, and in looks more aged, grey-haired and grey-clad, and leaning on a staff". Yet the Elf Círdan who met him on arrival nevertheless considered him "the greatest spirit and the wisest" and gave him the Elven Ring of Power called Narya, the Ring of Fire, containing a "red" stone for his aid and comfort. Tolkien explicitly links Gandalf to the element fire later in the same essay:
Warm and eager was his spirit (and it was enhanced by the ring Narya), for he was the Enemy of Sauron, opposing the fire that devours and wastes with the fire that kindles, and succours in wanhope and distress; but his joy, and his swift wrath, were veiled in garments grey as ash, so that only those that knew him well glimpsed the flame that was within. Merry he could be, and kindly to the young and simple, yet quick at times to sharp speech and the rebuking of folly; but he was not proud, and sought neither power nor praise... Mostly he journeyed tirelessly on foot, leaning on a staff, and so he was called among Men of the North Gandalf 'the Elf of the Wand'. For they deemed him (though in error) to be of Elven-kind, since he would at times work wonders among them, loving especially the beauty of fire; and yet such marvels he wrought mostly for mirth and delight, and desired not that any should hold him in awe or take his counsels out of fear. ... Yet it is said that in the ending of the task for which he came he suffered greatly, and was slain, and being sent back from death for a brief while was clothed then in white, and became a radiant flame (yet veiled still save in great need).[1]
Internal biography [ edit ]
As one of the Maiar, Gandalf would have participated in the Music of the Ainur at the creation of the world. However he does not attain any prominence until the Valar settle in Valinor.
Valinor [ edit ]
In Valinor, Gandalf was known as Olórin.[5] As recounted in the "Valaquenta" in The Silmarillion,[6] he was one of the Maiar of Valinor, specifically, of the people of the Vala Manwë; and was said to be the wisest of the Maiar. He was also closely associated with two other Valar: Irmo, in whose gardens he lived, and Nienna, the patron of mercy, who gave him tutelage. When the Valar decided to send the order of the Wizards (Istari) to Middle-earth in order to counsel and assist all those who opposed Sauron, Olórin was proposed by Manwë. Olórin initially begged to be excused as he feared Sauron and lacked the strength to face him, but Manwë replied that that was all the more reason for him to go.[7]
As one of the Maiar, Gandalf was not a mortal Man but an angelic being who had taken human form. As one of those spirits, Olórin was in service to the Creator (Eru Ilúvatar) and the Creator's 'Secret Fire'. Along with the other Maiar who entered into the world as the five Wizards, he took on the specific form of an aged old man as a sign of his humility. The role of the wizards was to advise and counsel but never to attempt to match Sauron's strength with his own, and hopefully the kings and lords of Middle-earth would be more receptive to the advice of a humble old man than a more glorious form giving them direct commands.
The Istari arrived in Middle-earth separately, around T.A. 1000; Gandalf the Grey was the last, landing in the Havens of Mithlond. He seemed the oldest and least in stature of them, but Círdan the Shipwright felt that he had the highest inner greatness on their first meeting in the Havens, and gave him Narya, the Ring of Fire. Saruman, the chief Wizard, later learned of the gift and resented it. Gandalf hid the ring well, and it was not widely known until he left with the other ring-bearers at the end of the Third Age that he, and not Círdan, was the holder of the third of the Elven-rings.
Gandalf's relationship with Saruman, the head of their Order, was strained. The Wizards were commanded to aid Men, Elves, and Dwarves, but only through counsel; it was forbidden to use force to dominate them – an injunction that Saruman increasingly disregarded.
The White Council [ edit ]
In Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age (in The Silmarillion) and The Istari (in Unfinished Tales), Tolkien fleshes out the background and the history briefly tabulated by date in Appendix B of The Lord of the Rings. Gandalf suspected early on that the Necromancer of Dol Guldur was not a Nazgûl but Sauron himself. He went to Dol Guldur (in T.A. 2063[8]) to discover the truth, but the Necromancer withdrew before him. The Necromancer returned to Dol Guldur with greater force in T.A. 2460,[8] and the White Council was formed in response (T.A. 2463[8]). Galadriel had hoped Gandalf would lead the Council, but Gandalf refused, declining to be bound by any but the Valar who sent him. Saruman was chosen instead, as being most knowledgeable about Sauron's work in the Second Age.
Gandalf returned to Dol Guldur in T.A. 2850[8] "at great peril" and learned that the Necromancer was indeed Sauron returned. (This is when Gandalf found Thráin II imprisoned in Dol Guldur and recovered Thrór's map and the key to Erebor before Thráin died.[8]) The following year[8] the White Council was summoned, and Gandalf urged that Sauron be driven out. Saruman, however, reassured the Council that Sauron's evident effort to find the One Ring (a necessary component of his resurgence) would fail, as the Ring would long since have been carried by the river Anduin to the Sea; and the matter was allowed to rest. But at this time, Saruman himself began actively seeking the Ring near the Gladden Fields where Isildur had been killed, not far from Dol Guldur.
The Quest of Erebor [ edit ]
"The Quest of Erebor" in Unfinished Tales elaborates upon the story behind The Hobbit. It tells of a chance meeting between Gandalf and Thorin Oakenshield, a Dwarf-king in exile, in the inn of the Prancing Pony in Bree. Gandalf had for some time foreseen the coming war with Sauron, and knew that the North was especially vulnerable. If Rivendell were to be attacked, the dragon Smaug could cause great devastation. He persuaded Thorin that he could help him regain his lost territory of Erebor from Smaug, and so the quest was born.
In T.A. 2941,[8] Gandalf arranged (and frequently accompanied) a band of 13 dwarves and the hobbit Bilbo Baggins to reclaim from Smaug the Dwarves' lost treasure in Erebor. To the quest, Gandalf contributed the map and key to Erebor. It was on this Quest of Erebor that Gandalf found his sword, Glamdring, in a troll's treasure hoard.
After escaping from the Misty Mountains pursued by goblins and wargs, the party was carried to safety by the Great Eagles. Gandalf then persuaded Beorn—who did not like uninvited guests or dwarves—to house and provision the company for the trip through Mirkwood.
Gandalf left the company before they entered Mirkwood, saying that he had pressing business to attend to. He turned up again, however, before the walls of Erebor disguised as an old man, revealing himself when it seemed the Men of Esgaroth and the Mirkwood Elves would fight Thorin and the dwarves over Smaug's treasure. The Battle of the Five Armies ensued when hosts of goblins and wargs attacked all three parties. After the battle, Gandalf accompanied Bilbo back to the Shire, revealing at Rivendell what his pressing business had been: Gandalf had once again urged the Council to evict Sauron, since quite evidently Sauron did not require the One Ring to continue to attract evil to Mirkwood. Then, in an event only briefly described (in The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings), the Council "put forth its power" and drove Sauron from Dol Guldur. Sauron, however, had anticipated this and withdrew as a feint, only to reappear in Mordor.
Prelude to the War of the Ring [ edit ]
As explained in The Fellowship of the Ring, Gandalf spent the years between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings travelling Middle-earth in search of information on Sauron's resurgence and Bilbo's mysterious ring, spurred particularly by Bilbo's initial misleading story of how he had obtained it as a "present" from Gollum. During this period he befriended Aragorn and first became suspicious of Saruman. He spent as much time as he could in the Shire, strengthening his friendship with Bilbo and Frodo, Bilbo's orphaned cousin and adopted heir.
He returned to the Shire for Bilbo's "eleventy-first" (111th) birthday party in T.A. 3001, bringing many fireworks for the occasion. After Bilbo, as a prank on his guests, put on the Ring and disappeared, Gandalf strongly encouraged his old friend to leave the Ring to Frodo, as they had planned. Bilbo became hostile and accused Gandalf of trying to steal the Ring—which he called "my precious", much as Gollum had done. (Gandalf later discovered that Isildur, who earlier possessed the ring and was destroyed by it, had written "it is precious to me".[9]) Alarmed, Gandalf impressed on Bilbo the foolishness of this accusation. Coming to his senses, Bilbo admitted that the Ring had been troubling him, and leaving it behind for Frodo, he departed for Rivendell. Though Bilbo would never be entirely free of the desire for the Ring, he was the first of its bearers to give it up willingly.
Over the next 17 years, Gandalf travelled extensively, searching for answers on the Ring. He found some answers in Isildur's scroll, in the archives of Minas Tirith. But he also wanted to question Gollum, who had borne the Ring for many years. Gandalf searched long and widely for Gollum, and often had the assistance of Aragorn. Aragorn eventually succeeded. Gandalf questioned Gollum, threatening him with fire when he proved unwilling to speak. Gandalf learned finally that Sauron had forced Gollum under torture in Barad-dûr to tell what he knew of the Ring. This reinforced Gandalf's growing suspicion that Bilbo's ring was the One Ring.
The Fellowship of the Ring [ edit ]
Returning to the Shire, in T.A. 3018, Gandalf confirmed his suspicions by throwing the Ring into Frodo's hearth-fire and reading the writing that appeared on the Ring's surface. He told Frodo the full history of the Ring, and urged him to take the Ring to Rivendell; for he would be in grave danger if he stayed in the Shire. Gandalf said he would attempt to return for Frodo's 50th birthday party, in order to accompany him on the road thereafter; and that meanwhile Frodo should arrange to leave quietly, as the servants of Sauron would be searching for him.
Outside the Shire, Gandalf encountered Radagast the Brown, another of the Istari, who brought the news that the Nazgûl had ridden forth and crossed the River Anduin—and a request from Saruman that Gandalf come to Isengard. Gandalf left a letter to Frodo (urging his immediate departure) with Barliman Butterbur at the inn in Bree, and headed towards Isengard. There Saruman revealed his true colours, urging Gandalf to help him obtain the Ring for his own use. Gandalf refused, and Saruman imprisoned him at the top of the tower of Orthanc. Eventually Gandalf was rescued by Gwaihir the Eagle.
Gwaihir set Gandalf down in Rohan, where Gandalf appealed to King Théoden for a horse. Théoden, under the malign influence of Gríma Wormtongue, Saruman's spy, told Gandalf to take any horse he pleased, but to leave quickly. It was then that Gandalf met the great horse Shadowfax, one of the mearas, who would be his mount and companion for most of the rest of the war. Gandalf pursued the horse for two days[8] before Shadowfax permitted Gandalf to ride him. Gandalf then rode hard for the Shire, but did not reach it until Frodo had already set out. Knowing that Frodo and his companions would be heading for Rivendell, Gandalf began to make his own way there. He learned at Bree that the Hobbits had fallen in with Aragorn. He faced the Nazgûl at Weathertop but escaped after an all-night battle, drawing four of them northward. Frodo, Aragorn and company faced the remaining five on Weathertop a few nights later. Gandalf reached Rivendell just before Frodo's arrival.
In Rivendell, Gandalf helped Elrond drive off the Nazgûl pursuing Frodo and played a great part in the following council as the only person who knew the full history of the Ring. He also revealed that Saruman had betrayed them and was in league with Sauron. When it was decided that the Ring had to be destroyed, Gandalf volunteered to accompany Frodo—now the Ring-bearer—in his quest. He also persuaded Elrond to let Frodo's cousins Merry and Pippin join the Fellowship.
The Balrog reached the bridge. Gandalf stood in the middle of the span, leaning on the staff in his left hand, but in his other hand Glamdring gleamed, cold and white. His enemy halted again, facing him, and the shadow about it reached out like two vast wings. It raised the whip, and the thongs whined and cracked. Fire came from its nostrils. But Gandalf stood firm. "You cannot pass," he said. The orcs stood still, and a dead silence fell. "I am a servant of the Secret Fire , wielder of the flame of Anor. You cannot pass. The dark fire will not avail you, flame of Udûn . Go back to the Shadow! You cannot pass." J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
Taking charge of the Fellowship (comprising nine representatives of the free peoples of Middle-earth, "set against the Nine Riders"), Gandalf and Aragorn led the Hobbits and their companions south. After an unsuccessful attempt to cross Mount Caradhras in winter, they crossed under the mountains through the Mines of Moria, though only Gimli the Dwarf was enthusiastic about that route. In Moria, they discovered that the Dwarf colony established there earlier had been overrun by orcs. The Fellowship fought with the orcs and trolls of Moria and escaped them.
At the Bridge of Khazad-dûm, they encountered "Durin's Bane", a fearsome Balrog from ancient times. Gandalf faced the Balrog to enable the others to escape. After a brief exchange of blows, Gandalf broke the bridge beneath the Balrog with his staff. As the Balrog fell, it wrapped its whip around Gandalf's legs, dragging him over the edge. As his friends looked on in horror, Gandalf fell into the abyss, crying "Fly, you fools!" as he went.
After a long fall, Gandalf and the Balrog crashed into a deep subterranean lake far under Moria. Gandalf pursued the Balrog through the tunnels for eight days until they climbed to the peak of Zirakzigil. Here they fought for two days and nights. In the end, the Balrog was defeated and cast down onto the mountainside. Gandalf himself died shortly afterwards, and his body lay on the peak while his spirit travelled "out of thought and time".
Gandalf the White [ edit ]
Gandalf was eventually "sent back"[c] as Gandalf the White, and returned to life on the mountain top. Gwaihir, lord of eagles, carried him to Lórien, where he was healed of his injuries and re-clothed in white robes by Galadriel. He travelled to Fangorn Forest, where he encountered Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas (who were tracking Merry and Pippin). They mistook him for Saruman, but he stopped their attacks and revealed himself.
They travelled to Rohan, where Gandalf found that Théoden had been further weakened by Wormtongue's influence. He broke Wormtongue's hold over Théoden, and convinced the king to join in the fight against Sauron. Gandalf then set off to gather Erkenbrand of the Westfold and his warriors to assist Théoden in the coming battle with Saruman. Gandalf arrived just in time to shatter Saruman's attack on Helm's Deep. After the ensuing battle, Gandalf and the king rode to Isengard, which in the interim had itself been attacked and conquered by Treebeard and the Ents, along with Merry and Pippin. Gandalf broke Saruman's staff and expelled him from the White Council and the Order of Wizards, and assumed Saruman's place as head of both. Wormtongue made an indecisive attempt to kill Gandalf or Saruman with the palantír of Orthanc, but missed both. Pippin retrieved the palantír, but Gandalf quickly appropriated it. After the group left Isengard, Pippin took the palantír from a sleeping Gandalf, looked into it, and came face to face with Sauron himself. Gandalf then took the chastened Pippin with him to Minas Tirith to keep the young hobbit out of further trouble.
Gandalf arrived in time to help order the defences of Minas Tirith. His presence was resented by Denethor, the Steward of Gondor; but after Denethor's son Faramir was gravely wounded in battle, Denethor sank into despair and madness. Together with Prince Imrahil of Dol Amroth, Gandalf led the defenders during the siege of the city. When the forces of Mordor finally broke the main gate, Gandalf alone on Shadowfax confronted the Witch-king of Angmar, Lord of the Nazgûl. But at that moment the Rohirrim arrived, compelling the Witch-king to withdraw and engage them. Gandalf would have ridden to their aid, but he too was suddenly required elsewhere—to save Faramir from Denethor, who sought in desperation to burn himself and his son on a funeral pyre in Rath Dínen.
"This, then, is my counsel," [said Gandalf.] "We have not the Ring. In wisdom or great folly it has been sent away to be destroyed, lest it destroy us. Without it we cannot by force defeat [Sauron's] force. But we must at all costs keep his Eye from his true peril... We must call out his hidden strength, so that he shall empty his land... We must make ourselves the bait, though his jaws should close on us... We must walk open-eyed into that trap, with courage, but small hope for ourselves. For, my lords, it may well prove that we ourselves shall perish utterly in a black battle far from the living lands; so that even if Barad-dûr be thrown down, we shall not live to see a new age. But this, I deem, is our duty." J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
Aragorn and Gandalf then led the final campaign against Sauron's forces at the Black Gate, in an effort to distract the Dark Lord's attention from Frodo and Sam, who were at the same moment scaling Mount Doom to destroy the One Ring. In a parley before the battle, Gandalf and the other leaders of the West met the Mouth of Sauron, who showed them Frodo's mithril shirt and other items from the Hobbits' equipment. But Gandalf rejected Mordor's terms of surrender, and the forces of the West faced the full might of Sauron's armies, until the Ring was destroyed in Mount Doom. Gandalf led the Eagles to rescue Frodo and Sam from the erupting mountain.
After the war, Gandalf crowned Aragorn as King Elessar, and helped him find a sapling of the White Tree of Gondor. He accompanied the Hobbits back to the borders of the Shire, before leaving to visit Tom Bombadil.
Two years later, Gandalf—who by now had spent about 2,000 years in Middle-earth[8]—departed with Frodo, Bilbo, Galadriel, and Elrond across the sea to the Undying Lands. It was only then that his possession of Narya, one of the Three Elven Rings, became generally known.
Concept and creation [ edit ]
Appearance and character [ edit ]
Humphrey Carpenter in his 1977 biography relates that Tolkien owned a postcard entitled Der Berggeist ("the mountain spirit"), and on the paper cover in which he kept it, he wrote "the origin of Gandalf". The postcard reproduces a painting of a bearded figure, sitting on a rock under a pine tree in a mountainous setting. He wears a wide-brimmed round hat and a long red cloak, and a white fawn is nuzzling his upturned hands.
Carpenter said that Tolkien recalled buying the postcard during his holiday in Switzerland in 1911. Manfred Zimmerman,[10] however, discovered that the painting was by German artist Josef Madlener and dates to the mid-1920s. Carpenter acknowledged that Tolkien was probably mistaken about the origin of the postcard.
The original painting was auctioned at Sotheby's in London on 12 July 2005 for £84,000.[11] The previous owner had been given the painting by Madlener in the 1940s and recalled that Madlener said the mountains in the background were the Torri del Vaiolet peaks in the Dolomites.[10]
Throughout the early drafts, and through to the first edition of The Hobbit Bladorthin/Gandalf is described as being a "little old man", distinct from a dwarf, but not of the full human stature that would later be described in The Lord of the Rings. Even in The Lord of the Rings, Gandalf was not tall; shorter, for example, than Elrond[12] or the other wizards.[13]
Gandalf's role and importance was substantially increased in the conception of The Lord of the Rings, and in a letter of 1954, Tolkien refers to Gandalf as an "angel incarnate".[14] In the same letter Tolkien states he was given the form of an old man in order to limit his powers on Earth. Both in 1965 and 1971 Tolkien again refers to Gandalf as an angelic being.[15][16]
In a letter of 1946 Tolkien stated that he thought of Gandalf as an "Odinic wanderer".[17] Other commentators have also compared Gandalf to the Norse god Odin in his "Wanderer" guise—an old man with one eye, a long white beard, a wide brimmed hat, and a staff.[18][19]
Naming the character [ edit ]
When writing The Hobbit in the early 1930s Tolkien gave the name Gandalf to the leader of the Dwarves, the character later called Thorin Oakenshield. The name is taken from the same source as all the other Dwarf names (save Balin) in The Hobbit: the "Catalogue of Dwarves" in the Völuspá.[20] The Old Norse name Gandalfr incorporates the words gandr meaning "wand", "staff" or (especially in compounds) "magic" and álfr "elf". The name Gandalf is found in at least one more place in Norse myth, in the semi-historical Heimskringla, which briefly describes Gandalf Alfgeirsson, a legendary Norse king from eastern Norway and rival of Halfdan the Black.[21] Gandalf is also the name of a Norse sea-king in Ibsen's second play The Burial Mound.
The name "Gandolf" occurs as a character in William Morris' 1896 fantasy novel The Well at the World's End. Morris' book is a four-part story set in a pseudo-medieval landscape which is known to have deeply influenced Tolkien.
The wizard that became Gandalf was originally named Bladorthin.[22][23] Tolkien later assigned this name to an ancient king who had ordered some spears from the dwarves.[24]
Tolkien came to regret his ad hoc use of Old Norse names, referring to a "rabble of eddaic-named dwarves, ... invented in an idle hour" in 1937.[25] But the decision to use Old Norse names came to have far-reaching consequences in the composition of The Lord of the Rings; in 1942, Tolkien decided that the work was to be a purported translation from the fictional language of Westron, and in the English translation Old Norse names were taken to represent names in the language of Dale.[26] Gandalf, in this setting, is thus a representation in English (anglicised from Old Norse) of the name the dwarves of Dale had given to Olórin in the language they used "externally" in their daily affairs, while Tharkûn is the (untranslated) name, presumably of the same meaning, that the dwarves gave him in their native Khuzdul language. Tolkien explains this in his Guide to the Names in The Lord of the Rings (1967) to prospective translators.
Adaptations [ edit ]
In the BBC Radio dramatizations, Gandalf has been voiced by Norman Shelley in The Lord of the Rings (1955–1956), Heron Carvic in The Hobbit (1968), Bernard Mayes in The Lord of the Rings (1979) and Sir Michael Hordern in The Lord of the Rings (1981).
John Huston voiced Gandalf in the animated films The Hobbit (1977) and The Return of the King (1980) produced by Rankin/Bass. William Squire voiced Gandalf in the animated film The Lord of the Rings (1978) directed by Ralph Bakshi. Ivan I. Krasko played Gandalf in the Soviet film adaptation The Hobbit (1985)[27] Gandalf was portrayed by Vesa Vierikko in the Finnish television miniseries Hobitit (1993).
Sir Ian McKellen portrayed Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings film series (2001–2003), directed by Peter Jackson, after Sean Connery and Patrick Stewart both turned down the role.[28][29] The make-up and costumes were based on designs by John Howe and Alan Lee. According to Jackson, McKellen based his performance as Gandalf on Tolkien himself:
We listened to audio recordings of Tolkien reading excerpts from Lord of the Rings. We watched some BBC interviews with him — there's a few interviews with Tolkien — and Ian based his performance on an impersonation of Tolkien. He's literally basing Gandalf on Tolkien. He sounds the same, he uses the speech patterns and his mannerisms are born out of the same roughness from the footage of Tolkien. So, Tolkien would recognize himself in Ian's performance.[30]
Ian McKellen received widespread acclaim for his performance as Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings films, particularly in The Fellowship of the Ring, for which he received both a Screen Actors Guild Award and Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actor, and an Academy Award nomination under the same category[31] (making him the only individual cast member of the films to be nominated for an Oscar). In addition, Empire named Gandalf, as portrayed by McKellen, the 30th greatest film character of all time.[32] He later reprised the role in The Hobbit film series (2012–2014), claiming that he enjoyed playing Gandalf the Grey more than Gandalf the White.[33][34] McKellen has also provided the voice of Gandalf for multiple video games based on the films, including The Two Towers and The Return of the King.
Charles Picard portrayed Gandalf in the 1999 stage production of The Two Towers at Chicago's Lifeline Theatre.[citation needed] Tom Stiver portrayed Gandalf in the early 2000s stage productions of The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King for Clear Stage Cincinnati.[citation needed] Brent Carver portrayed Gandalf in the 2006 musical production The Lord of the Rings, which opened in Toronto.[35]
Gandalf appears in The Lego Movie voiced by Todd Hanson. He is among the Master Builders that meet in Cloud Cuckoo Land. Vitruvius often mixes him up with Albus Dumbledore, much to the chagrin of the two wizards. Gandalf is also a playable character in The Lego Movie Videogame: in story mode he and a Magician help Emmet fight Lord Business's giant robot by providing his construction mech with debris to throw at it. Gandalf appears in the video game Lego Dimensions and is voiced by Tom Kane (who previously voiced Gandalf in the video game The Fellowship of the Ring). Gandalf is one of the three main characters (with Batman and Wyldstyle) and works with them to rescue the kidnapped Frodo and the One Ring.[36]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Footnotes
^ Alternatively, , following guidelines in Appendix E of The Lord of the Rings. The symbol equivalent for English 'f' or 'v' in most elvish languages would be pronounced as 'v' when it appears as the last letter of a word. ("Gandalf", however, represents a word in the language of the Northmen, not an elvish language.) ^ Meaning "Grey Pilgrim" ^ Letters, #156, pp 202–3, Tolkien clearly implies that the "Authority" that sent Gandalf back was above the In, #156, pp 202–3, Tolkien clearly implies that the "Authority" that sent Gandalf back was above the Valar (who are bound by Arda 's space and time, while Gandalf went beyond time). He clearly intends this as an example of Eru intervening to change the course of the world.
Citations |
Christopher Cook, of Bakersfield, agreed to forfeit to the United States approximately 3,804 polymer AR-15 lower receivers manufactured in violation of federal firearms laws, United States Attorney Benjamin B. Wagner announced. AR-15 lower receivers are classified as firearms under federal law.
The AR-15 style rifle is composed of both an upper and lower receiver. The lower receiver contains the trigger control group, hammer and firing mechanism, and contains mounting points for the upper receiver. Federal law classifies AR-15 lower receivers as firearms and, thus, requires that they must be manufactured with serial numbers by a licensed manufacturer, and that they can only be sold by a licensed firearms dealer. In addition, dealers must perform background check on prospective buyers before they can be sold. The unregulated sale of unserialized AR-15 style firearms assembled using similar lower receivers has been a focus of several recent criminal prosecutions in the Eastern District of California.
RELATED:
According to documents filed by the Government in the civil forfeiture case, Christopher Cook manufactured and sold unserialized polymer AR-15 lower receivers online and from his retail store in Bakersfield. Cook also distributed his product to other dealers who sold them at gun shows. Cook’s lower receivers were made of polymer and contained cavities with different color polymer, making it easier for purchasers to mill out the cavities and convert the lower receiver to an operational firearm. Cook holds a dealer’s license and was trained on the laws governing the manufacture and sale of firearms. Cook does not, however, have a manufacturer’s license.
Calif. law would require registration of home-built guns; Owners edgy after Bakersfield store raid
Starting in January 2014, undercover federal agents purchased approximately 33 lower receivers directly from Cook’s retail store, through his company’s online store, or from one of his distributors. Not one of the lower receivers purchased by undercover agents were serialized for later identification, nor did Cook or his distributors initiate background checks. In April 2014, federal agents executed warrants at Cook’s business and personal residence, seizing the 3,804 lower receivers. According to the Government’s complaint, Cook contracted with a Southern California plastics company to manufacture approximately 40,000 of the multi-colored polymer lower receivers. In the stipulation in which he agreed to the forfeiture of the lower receivers, Cook did not admit to the allegations in the Government’s complaint.
“The construction of high-powered firearms with no serial numbers, and the sale of such firearms with no background checks or other regulatory oversight, has become a serious threat to public safety in this area,” said U.S. Attorney Wagner. “As a result of this agreement, over 3,800 unserialized lower receivers will never hit the streets as components in illegally sold firearms.”
“Targeting the illegal manufacturing and distribution of unfinished lower receivers continues to be a priority for ATF. Keeping these untraceable firearms out of the hands of criminals is paramount to protecting the public,” said ATF Special Agent in Charge Jill A. Snyder.
This case was the product of an investigation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Assistant United States Attorney Kevin C. Khasigian prosecuted the case. |
Ahmed Abu Hashem threaten by soldier for documenting occupation (photo: Palestine Solidarity Project)
The New York Times piece on the Palestinian “rite of passage” of throwing stones in the West Bank village of Beit Ummar has gotten a lot of criticism, but one thing the critics have missed is the piece’s misrepresentation of Jewish settlers who were targeted by Palestinian boys throwing stones. In one case, the settlers were “tending trees.” In another case, they were just passing by a Palestinian funeral when kids targeted their cars. “Whack.” The settlers then got out to shout at the Palestinians, and soldiers arrived, with guns.
Israeli forces detained Mohammad Al-Alami outside funeral August 1, 2013
(photo: Alwatan)
Is that the full context? No. Settlers have been trying to take Beit Ummar’s land, settlements virtually surround the Palestinian village and choke it because it is prized territory in land the settlers want to annex.
Judge for yourself from these recent accounts of settler attacks on Palestinians in Beit Ummar that the New York Times left out:
Ma’an News reports on Friday August 2, 2013 about an attack the day before: Settlers attack Palestinians at funeral near Hebron:
Clashes broke out after Israeli forces along with settlers attacked a Palestinian funeral in Beit Ummar north of Hebron on Thursday, a local activist said. Forces detained Mohammad Al-Alami, 23, according to Mohammad Ayyad Awad, spokesman of the popular committee to resist the wall and the settlements in Beit Ummar. He said that that Palestinians were participating in a funeral when a settler parked near the Islamic cemetery struck one of the attendants. Fighting broke out and Israeli forces arrived to help the settlers. Ayyad said journalists were not allowed to film the incident.
The International Middle East Media Center (IMEMC) reported on that same attack in Beit Ummar on Thursday August 1st: Several Palestinians Injured Near Hebron:
Palestinian medical sources in Hebron, in the southern part of the occupied West Bank, have reported Thursday [August 1, 2013] that several Palestinians have been injured, and one has been kidnapped, after Israeli soldiers and settlers attacked a funeral procession in Beit Ummar town, north of the city. Media spokesperson of the Popular Committee Against the Wall in Beit Ummar, Mohammad Awad, told the Radio Bethlehem 2000 that a number of settlers attacked a funeral procession in the town, as they were leaving a local graveyard, and also attacked a local reporter identified as Nayef al-Hashlamon. Israeli soldiers arrived at the scene and attacked the Palestinian instead of removing the settlers. Awad also stated that he was also attacked by a settler woman who tried to slap him in the face as he tried to take pictures of the attack, and that the soldiers pushed him around causing his camera to drop, and kidnapped one youth identified as Ahmad Younis Al-Allami, 23, after violently beating him. There have been numerous incidents of similar attacks against locals participating in burial ceremonies and funeral processions in Hebron leading to dozens of injuries and several arrests.
Now here is the Times’s “rite of passage” article, covering a Palestinian rock thrower after that funeral. Notice how it brings in the cemetery as a site of Palestinian attacks.
And then there is the 200-year-old cemetery that slopes up from the road just north of the village entrance. On Thursday, after the burial of a 63-year-old retired teacher, a teenager hurled a rock at a passing car with yellow Israeli plates: whack. Another teenager, two more stones: another direct hit. The settlers stopped their car, got out, and began shouting at the small crowd. Soon, there were soldiers, rifles raised and tear gas at the ready, who eventually hauled a Palestinian taxi driver into a waiting army jeep.
Which is rather curious reporting, given the earlier reports that settlers attacked the funeral procession in Beit Ummar. The Times did not offer any quotes from Mohammad Awad, the media spokesperson for Beit Ummar’s popular committee who was present during the attack that day, nor did it point out that journalists were attacked by the settlers.
Further down in that article, the Times documents the arrest of Muhammad Abu Hashem (which we covered on July 8th, the day of the arrest):
It was the June funeral of a 2-year-old girl accidentally crushed by a relative’s bulldozer that led to his most recent arrest. “They were shooting gas, and I was with my mother in the car while the soldiers’ jeep was entering the town,” Muhammad admitted to a police officer after the arrest. “So I got out and threw stones at them.” …… Mr. Awad, like many here, views the stone throwers with a mixture of pride at confronting Israel and fear for their safety. “Nobody dares to criticize them and say, ‘Why are you doing this?”
As the Times walks us thru rock throwing as a “rite of passage” does it occur to the paper of record that Israeli forces shooting tear gas at another funeral procession in June might be connected to the rock throwing? In the same way the ‘rock thrower’ in the funeral on August 1st might be connected to settler/Israeli forces assaulting mourners exiting a funeral?
More Times:
For as long as anyone here can remember, the cemetery has been a field for that game. Residents said it was often surrounded by soldiers and filled with tear gas, though the military commander said he stations his troops across the road and instructs them to unleash riot-control measures only if violence erupts.
Why do Palestinian mourners have to attended funerals with occupation soldiers planted across the street from their cemeteries? In death and in birth they are never far away.
IMEMC’s coverage claims there have been “numerous incidents of similar attacks” against Palestinians around Hebron participating in burial ceremonies and funeral processions that have led to dozens of injuries and arrests. Isn’t that provocation? Is this a conscious plan by settlers to cause the arrests of Palestinians who resist? And why prevent the filming of these attacks on funeral goers?
Ahmed Abu Hashem and daughter (photo: PSP)
The Times does not explain why Ahmed Abu Hashem, Mohammed’s father, was arrested along with his son on July 8th. The brief video ‘confession’ provided by the New York Times doesn’t explain why Ahmed Abu Hashem was arrested either.
But Ahmed Abu Hashem is an activist member of the Beit Ommar Popular Committee. And to be clear, “Israeli army targets and arrests children in order to repress Palestinian dissent in the West Bank.” There is ample documentation as well that “children are used to implicate the leaders of the Popular Committee for incitement in demonstrations.”
Like Bassem Tamimi, the leader of the Popular Committee of Nabi Saleh ( ‘They come for our woman and our children”), Ahmed Abu Hashem works to document the occupation. Especially in towns and villages across the West Bank involved in non-violent struggle where village lands are targeted for annexation for nearby settlements and settlers are pushing Palestinians off their lands, Popular Committee members and their children are targeted.
That is the war for survival by humble villagers that the Times ignores, and reduces to a rite of passage of stonethrowing.
More context. Ahmed Abu Hashem’s land is adjacent the Karmei Tsur settlement. Peace Now-reports 27 percent of Karmei Tzur is built on privately owned Palestinian land.
From the 2012 Campaign for the Release of Ahmed Abu Hashem and His Sons:
Ahmed is the father of eight children, and is the only source of income for his family. Ahmed has a piece of land, about 3 dunams (3000 square meters), adjacent to Karmei Tsur settlement. The settlement is illegal according to international law under the 4th Geneva Convention. The Palestinian land near the settlement has been planted, uprooted and cut by settlers, and replanted again many times. It is a constant effort for Palestinians to keep their own land. Ahmed, who was arrested while trying to defend his land, has been arrested several times in the last few years. He has spent about four and a half years total in Israeli jails. His sons have also been arrested several times since they were children. Yousef (19 years old) was released on April 4th, 2012, after spending about six months in jail. Emad (22 years old), who is married with two infant children, was arrested on April 17th and is still in detention, along with their 15 year-old brother Muhammad, who was taken during a night raid on April 23rd.
This is not just about rock throwing. Take another look at B’Tselem’s map provided by the New York Times and do some research on the pressure surrounding the little town of Beit Ummar, the kind of settlers who live there.
Settler led religious tour of Beit Ummar Cemetery
Oct 12, 2012(photo: ARIJ)
Applied Research Institute-Jerusalem (ARIJ) has documented several settler guided tours, accompanied by Israeli soldiers, roaming Beit Ummar. Two culminating in “religious rituals in a Muslims Cemetery.”
Settler led religious tour of Beit Ummar
Oct 12, 2012(photo: ARIJ)
The Times account acknowledges that the stonethrowers use the cemetery. But why are soldiers posted at the cemetery? Why are settlers guiding tourists to pray at the Lady Najla altar? Do settlers want the Islamic cemetery land of Beit Ummar?
Ahmed Abu Hashem encountered the settlers on one of their guided tours last year, recorded by ARIJ: Provocative Tours in Beit Ummar town- Hebron Governorate
As soon as the Israeli Government announced its intention to expand 70 colonies in the West Bank; intensive activities of Israeli colonists were reported in Beit Ummar. Ahmad abu Hashem, member of Beit Ummar Popular Resistance Committee, staed that around 150 colonists organized tours in Khirbat al Qarn and Khirbat wardan, eastern Beit Ummar, at the beginning of February. He said: ‘a group of colonists headed to the mountain summits in Khirbat al Qarn and Khirbat wardan and set a tent there. They stayed there for two hours before leaving. It Is not the first time they do such a thing. I headed up to the mountain when they were there and asked them what they want. One of them simply answered that they want to take over the lands there.’
Settlers want the land of Beit Ummar, but not the people who live there. Below is a list of arrests during a 5 month period last year. Are these arrests primarily about ‘rock throwing‘? Surely not. From the 2012 Campaign for the Release of Ahmed Abu Hashem and His Sons:
“There have been 84 arrests from Beit Ommar so far this year in 2012. 56 of those arrested are under 21, and 37 of them are under 18. Names, ages and dates of the arrests can be found below. “
January 2012
1. Muhammad Jamal Alqam – 17 – Jan. 2, 2012
2. Moath Jamal Alqam – 16 – Jan. 2
3. Ibrahim Yousef Sabarna – 22 – Jan. 2
4. Hamza Noaf Sabarna – 23 – Jan. 3
5. Khadr Fathi Sabarna – 18 – Jan. 3
6. Mohammad Shokat Alqam – 23 – Jan. 3
7. Raid Mahmoud Sabarna – 28 – Jan. 8
8. Yousef Mahmoud Al Alamy – 23 – Jan. 8
9. Ahmad Yousef Sabarna – 23 – Jan. 9
10. Safwat Sameer Ikhlayl – 22 – Jan. 11
11. Hasan Shaheda Salaby – 20 – Jan. 11
12. Muhammad Haitham Salaby – 21 – Jan. 11
13. Firas Ibrahim Abu Maria – 20 – Jan. 21
14. Mamdoh Basem Alamy – 18 – Jan. 18
15. Yousef Ahmad Alamy – 17 – Jan. 20
16. Azmy Muhammad Ikhlayl – 16 – Jan. 21
17. Ameer Shokat Alqam – 16 – Jan. 21
18. Nasr Fathi Ikhlayl – 22 – Jan. 29
19. Montasr Fathi Ikhlayl – 18 – Jan. 29
20. Muhammad Nasr Al Alamy – 22 – Jan. 29
21. Hamza Muhammad Awad – 15 – Jan. 30
22. Moath Jamal Alqam – 18 – Jan. 30
23. Moayed Jowad Bahr – 18 – Jan. 30 February 2012
1. Muhammad Basem Al Alamy – 23 – Feb. ???
2. Nadeem Rasm Ikhlayl – 26 – Feb. 8
3. Rafat Muhammad Al Alamy – 24 – Feb. 8
4. Yousef Abdel Hamid Abu Maria – 38 – Feb. 11
5. Saqr Sadeq Abu Maria – 42 – Feb. 11
6. Ayesh Abdel Nasr Ikhlayl – 18 – Feb. 12
7. Ahmad Mahmoud Za’aqiq – 15 – Feb. 12
8. Ehab Muhammad Abu Fanoos – 15 – Feb. 12
9. Muhammad Ahmad Abu Hashem – 15 – Feb. 21
10. Muhab Sameer Abu Maria – 16 – Feb. 21
11. Muhammad Jameel Abu Maria – 16 – Feb. 21 March 2012
1. Naseem Khadr Al Alamy – 32 – Mar. 1
2. Hasan Saadi Al Alamy – 22 – Mar. 1
3. Malek Saadi Al Alamy – 23 – Mar. 1
4. Yousef Ibrahim Al Alamy – 36 – Mar. 1
5. Malek Mahmoud Al Alamy – 20 – Mar. 1
6. Abdel Aziz Al Hindi – 38 – Mar. 2
7. Ayesh Khalid Awad – 16 – Mar. 5
8. Mataz Khaled Awad – 18 – Mar. 5
9. Basel Khaled Abu Maria – 16 – Mar. 5
10. Ahmad Mahmoud Al Salaby – 16 – Mar. 7
11. Bilal Mahmoud Awad – 16 – Mar. 7
12. Muhammad Jawdat Ali – 14 – Mar. 7
13. Zain Hashem Abu Maria – 15 – Mar. 12
14. Sami Amer Abu Juda – 15 – Mar. 12
15. Sa’id Emad Salaby – 16 – Mar. 12
16. Omar Shokat Alqam – 16 – Mar. 12
17. Ismail Issa Salaby – 24 – Mar. 23 April 2012
1. Hossein Ramzy Al Alamy – 14 – April 1
2. Muhammad Ali Awad – 14 – April 2
3. Yousef Muhammad Awad – 17 – Apr. 2
4. Muhammad Mahmoud Awad – 20 – Apr. 2
5. Muhannad Zuhair Al Alamy – 14 – Apr. 2
6. Hamza Nasr Abu Maria – 17 – Apr. 11
7. Emad Ahmad Abu Hashem – 22 – Apr. 16
8. Muhammad Yasr Al Khatib – 18 – Apr. 16
9. Jihad Yousef Alqam – 17 – Apr. 20
10. Fady Muhammad Abu Fanoos – 16 – Apr. 20
11. Qasem Ahmad Abu Maria – 16 – Apr. 20
12. Ismail Ghalib Awad – 20 – Apr. 20
13. Alaa Mousa Za’aqiq – 23 – Apr. 20
14. Ahmad Abdel Jibar – 15 – Apr. 20
15. Tariq Jamal Abu Maria – 17 – Apr. 23
16. Badran Jalal Abu Ayesh – 16 – Apr. 23
17. Nabeel Mahmoud Al Alamy – 21 – Apr. 24
18. Muhammad Yousef Al Sabarna – 18 – Apr. 24 May 2012
1. Hamza Shahda Sabarna – 18 – May 2
2. Khaled Abdel Qadr Ikhlayl – 20 – May 2
3. Hamza Muhammad Abu Maria – 18 – May 3
4. Khalil Hamad Al Alamy – 15 – May 5
5. Ramzy Nasr Al Alamy – 14 – May 5
6. Yousef Ahmad Bahr – 21 – May 6
7. Ahmad Khalil Abu Hashem – 45 – May 11
8. Muhannad Mershad Awad – 12 – May 21
9. Alaa Yousef Abu Maria – 14 – May 21
10. Jowad Muhammad Za’aqiq – 15 – May 21
11. Alaa Fahmy Za’aqiq – 32 – May 23
12. Hamad Ahmad Abu Maria – 20 – May 23
13. Muhammad Ali Sabarna – 22 – May 23
14. Hossam Sabr Abu Maria – 16 – May 23
15. Muhammad Wajeh Abu Maria – 19 – May 23
(Update: Video of events outside funeral on Aug. 1, 2013 in Beit Ummar: Jodi Rudoren intentionally obscured reality in her recent piece on Beit Ommar) |
The Obama administration, public opinion and the drive to war
5 September 2013
A political charade is underway in Washington, with the Obama administration and leading members of both the Democratic and Republican parties engaged in a phony debate in the run-up to war against Syria.
Top government officials, including Obama himself, are utilizing the period preceding a likely congressional vote next week to express their hypocritical outrage over Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s alleged use of chemical weapons and present “evidence” that consists of lies and unsubstantiated assertions.
The real causes and consequences of aggression against Syria are not discussed openly, with anything considered “sensitive”—i.e., that which must be kept from the population of the United States and the world—confined to closed hearings. All of the Obama administration’s premises are accepted as given by the media and both big-business parties, including the lies about chemical weapons use, the claim that this is the motive behind the drive for war, and the assertion that the upcoming conflict will be “limited” in character.
The sentiments of the population find virtually no reflection in these proceedings. On the contrary, the congressional hearings are part of an operation aimed at browbeating and delegitimizing antiwar sentiment.
The ruling class is well aware of the deep opposition to war among the American people. According to a Washington Post /ABC News poll published yesterday, 59 percent oppose any military strikes, compared to only 36 percent who support them. And this lopsided opposition is in response to a question that presupposes the US government’s central propaganda claim, that the Syrian government used chemical weapons to attack civilians, and that the planned strikes are a response to this attack.
There is not a single sector of the population—broken down by age, gender, political affiliation, education, income or region of the country—that supports war. It is significant, however, that opposition to war is higher among poorer Americans than among the wealthy (63 percent opposition among those earning under $50,000, compared to 51 percent among those earning more than $100,000). Young people are more opposed than older Americans (65 percent among 18-39 year olds, compared to 55 percent among those 65 or older).
The gulf between the political establishment and the population is not limited to war. At the height of the vicious government and media campaign against Edward Snowden, polls showed overwhelming popular support for the whistleblower, who continues to reveal government criminality. A pollster noted at the time that public sentiment “goes against almost the unified view of the nation’s political establishment.” And so it is with war.
The antiwar sentiment is all the more significant in view of the fact that it follows two solid weeks of non-stop media propaganda, with the vacuous talking heads and agents of the state who function as news broadcasters eschewing any pretext of impartiality, let alone criticism. Syria is denounced as the “enemy,” government claims are presented as fact, and the long history of lies used to drag the population into war is ignored.
Any forum where genuine popular sentiment can find any expression reveals the divide that exists. Comments on generally pro-war articles and editorials in the New York Times and other major newspapers are overwhelmingly antiwar, and those most “recommended” by other readers are almost entirely so. Many comments express outrage that neither the political parties nor the media (including the Times itself) are the slightest bit interested in what the population thinks.
It is not necessary to glorify the past to take note of the transformation that has occurred in bourgeois politics. During the Vietnam War, congressional hearings were a serious undertaking. Certain politicians made an appeal to broader popular sentiment, and the media served as a mechanism for exposing government lies and secrets. Prior to the 1991 vote in Iraq there were extensive hearings. Even in 2003, the Bush administration made more of a pretense of establishing a case for war, though based on complete lies, with a lengthy build-up to the invasion of Iraq extending over several months.
Now, a decision to launch a war with incalculable consequences—including the possibility of sparking a civil war throughout the Middle East and a direct conflict between the United States and Russia—is made without any serious public debate. The proceedings on Capitol Hill, which will likely be wrapped up within a week, were staged only after the failure of the vote in the British Parliament last week.
The decay of democratic and political forms is an expression of a social process—above all, the extraordinary growth of social inequality. The state is run by a military and intelligence apparatus, in league with a financial aristocracy, determined to implement deeply unpopular policies at home and abroad. It exists as a permanent conspiracy against the rights and interests of the vast majority.
The Obama administration represents a certain culmination of this process. The “candidate of change,” the “transformative” president (as at 2008 statement by the International Socialist Organization put it), is leading the most right-wing government in American history. Elected in large part due to antiwar sentiment, Obama, the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, has overseen an historic expansion of militarism, including an international policy of drone assassinations and wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and now Syria.
The pro-Democratic Party organizations representing more privileged sections of the upper-middle class, which organized and led antiwar demonstrations in the early years of the Bush administration, have become pro-war. Supposedly “left” organizations such as the ISO and its international co-thinkers, along with their coterie of “liberal” academics, have prepared over the past two years the ideological justification for war, presenting as a “revolution” a US-engineered civil war that is dominated by Islamic fundamentalists.
Opposition to war now shifts decisively to the broad mass of the people—the working class. That there is general hostility to what is being planned is undeniable. As for those who supported Obama, there is an overwhelming sense that they have been lied to and sold a bill of goods.
This hostility must be given an active and conscious political form. There is no other political force outside of the Socialist Equality Party and the International Committee of the Fourth International that can provide leadership in this struggle. From the beginning, the SEP has explained that the actions of the Obama administration would be dictated not by the hopes of the population, but by the class interests that he and the entire political apparatus represent. The source of war lies in the capitalist system and the financial aristocracy, whose ruthless interests this system serves.
The SEP is fighting to mobilize opposition throughout the United States and internationally to the impending war. We will be holding meetings and organizing demonstrations wherever we can. We call on all our readers and supporters to take an active role in this fight. The voice of the working class must be heard. Contact and join the SEP today .
Joseph Kishore
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October 27, 2009, 6:54 pm Article Source Linux Developer Network October 27, 2009, 6:54 pm
In the world of computer languages, nothing speaks louder than who adopts its usage. The Python language hit a home run with Google adopting it for a high percentage of their internal and public (Google App Engine) projects. One of the things that makes the Python language appealing to so many is how it treats everything as an object. This makes the language inherently object-oriented but not so complex and wordy that it can’t be understood by beginning programmers.
This article will give an overview of the basic object-oriented concepts in Python. We’ll start by defining an object and learning what it is. Next, we’ll take a look at how you can discover the properties of Python's built-in objects and how you can create your own. Then we’ll finish off with a list of best practices and a pointer to where you can go to get more information.
Introduction
The Python language is growing in acceptance and has made itself useful for a variety of purposes and platforms, everything from mobile phones to major websites to windowed applications and more. With so many ways to employ the language, a standardized method for sharing functionality in an extensible fashion is imperative. Fortunately, Python has provided the solution to its own problem in the form of objects.
An object is an entity defined by a class containing attributes and methods which can be inherited and can also inherit functionality from others in a variety of scopes. Objects simplify writing reusable code, thereby making the development process faster and more efficient. Objects are not unique to the Python language, but there certainly are some unique aspects. For instance, Python uses underscores in attribute names to mark accessibility rather than taking the traditional method of using keywords, thereby decreasing the amount of code needed. Note the contrast between Python and Java shown below.
Python:
Java:
When delivering software libraries, a developer needs to have a standardized way to allow for others to extend and integrate the functionality they are providing. Using objects and inheritance, this is made simple.
Syntax
Here is some of the syntax for Python.
Class Definition
A class defines the behavior and attributes of an object. It is the blueprint, if you will, for an object. Note that Python uses the # symbol to denote comments, so those lines are not executable parts of the program. The basic syntax looks like this:
The first line is the class keyword followed by the name of the class, any parent classes (more on that later), a colon, and a code block containing the body of the class. (pass is just a place-holding keyword)
Attributes
An attribute is created by a variable assignment within the scope of the class body as in this example:
This creates an attribute name whose value is a string John Doe. Now we can access the attribute as if it were a variable by combining the object and attribute names with a dot in the following manner:
Classes vs. Instances
A class and an instance are two different but related things. A class is a type while an instance is a single occurrence of some class. To create an instance (also known as "instantiating a class") call the class as if it were a function including any arguments to pass to the constructor (more on that later):
Now we have an instance of the Person class called my_instance. As you can see, it shares much the same initial state as the class itself, but just a little experimentation will show that they are now separate and distinct entities.
Methods
This part assumes you know how to declare a function, but in the event you do not you can copy the examples shown here.
A method is to a function what an attribute is to a variable. That is, they are the same except that one is defined as the child of a class/object. A method is simply a function defined within the scope of a class or, more appropriately, a callable attribute. Take this example:
This basic instance method simply prints out the name of that Person. The self argument is automatically supplied when the method is called and is a reference to this particular instance:
Here we instantiated the Person class, used the print_name method, changed the name attribute, and called the method again with the new value.
It can Inherit Functionality
Python uses base classes, or super classes, to allow developers to take advantage of library functionality. A super class is a class that defines attributes and methods that can then be inherited by other classes. Let's say we want to make another type of Person called a Plumber, and we want to change the name attribute. We could reuse our existing class to avoid repetition and speed up the development process:
With a single word we've inherited whatever functionality may be found in the base class. We then replace or override the attribute with these results:
Now we can extend and customize existing objects however we need to. What if we want to combine functionality from two or more base classes?  Here’s an example:
We've added a base class that defines another attribute, gender, and changed the Plumber class to inherit from both Person and Man. If we play around with our new Plumber class, we can see that the attributes and methods of the two classes have now been merged.
Constructors
Now that we've covered instantiation, methods, and inheritance, let's see how they overlap. You probably noticed from the first class example that basic classes inherit from object. This is a Python base class that provides a standardized control mechanism for objects. All of your classes should trace back to object. One of the methods the object class provides is the constructor or __init__ method. When you instantiate a class, the arguments passed to the call are directed to the constructor which is always run at instantiation. Let's add a constructor to our Person class to make things a little more dynamic:
So now when we instantiate a person we can pass in the name to the constructor rather than having to assign the attribute later. We also provided a default value for the argument in case the user leaves it empty. You'll notice we're calling the parent constructor. Backward compatibility is maintained since the constructor will run in the same way with no arguments as seen in this example:
What to Do With Conflicting Attributes
If you frequently use multiple inheritance you may have to take a little more time to merge two classes into one. The first listed class takes precedence over any others and overrides any other parent classes. Here's an example of conflicting methods:
Now we've modified the Man class to have its own print_name method to add the prefix to the hard-coded name.  In addition, we’ve removed the attribute definition in the Plumber class since that's now supplied via the Person constructor. At this point we have a problem if we wanted to use that nifty new print_name method with the Plumber class since Person.print_name takes precedence over Man.print_name as seen in the following example.
So we can just do this, right?
Wrong! This will raise an exception since the constructor for Man is overriding the constructor for Person which takes an argument. We need to take just the constructor from the Person class and let the Man class override everything else. Here's how to do it:
So all we did here is write our own constructor using wildcards to catch all positional arguments (those passed in without a name associated with them) and keyword arguments as args and kwargs to pass on to the Person constructor. Obviously, the Man constructor takes no arguments.
Conclusion
Objects are an easy and efficient way to expose your code for others to use and to combine different features to build the ultimate programming experience. You should use them when possible in your programming to allow for reuse at later times. Be sure to document and test your code! |
Right now the gestural music system is being built specifically for Heap, who has already come up with some crazy combinations. One of them, for example, is as follows: "If I am making a fist with my right hand, and pointing downwards with my left hand, map the 'roll' of my right wrist to MIDI control change message 60 on channel 2." Say what? The goal is to make the project open-source so anyone can get in on the action. Pricing on the Mi.Mu's Kickstarter page, however, represents a product that's more for pop stars than your average garage band. To get a glove and the necessary electronics you'll need to shell out 750 pounds ($1260!). If you do decide to invest, the system could certainly add a little flair to your stage presence -- as long as you don't have to sneeze.
Image source: Imogen Heap |
Alibaba Digital Media and Entertainment, part of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, is planning to invest $7.2 billion (RMB50 billion) in entertainment and media over the next three years.
The plan surfaced in an internal email and was first reported by Reuters. According to the agency the company verified the document as genuine.
The plan is being spearheaded by Yu Yongfu, who joined the Alibaba parent group in 2014, and in a meteoric rise has come to head the digital group. He also recently took over as chairman and CEO of Alibaba’s listed film making subsidiary Alibaba Pictures group.
A former financier with Legend Capital and seasoned technology executive, Yu said in the email that he “did not come to play.” He pledged to invest in content.
It is not clear whether the investment figure stated in the email includes costs of a previously announced consolidation of Alibaba’s media assets or the recently announced commitment to starting a $1.45 billion (RMB10 billion) content fund.
Alibaba Pictures recently invested in Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Partners. It also committed to financing a young adult film “The Warriors” with “Harry Potter” producer David Heyman producing. While Heyman says that does not yet constitute a franchise, APG has confirmed that it bought out global film adaptation rights to the entire 36-volume series of books on which the film is to be based. |
The New York Filming Locations of The Godfather, Then and Now
On March 29, 1971, The Godfather, considered by many to be one of the greatest films ever made, began principal photography in New York City.
Because the film is a period piece, The Godfather actually presents a fascinating record of what 1940s-era New York City locations still existed in the early-1970s. Sadly, many of them are now gone. What still remains? Let’s take a closer look.
The Godfather opens at the wedding of Don Corleone’s only daughter Connie.
This is the Corleone residence today, located at 110 Longfellow Avenue in Staten Island.
The house today is pretty much the same as it appears in the film, except for one detail…
What happened to all the stone walls and the entrance gate?
These were all fake, set up at the end of Longfellow Avenue to give the Corleone residence the feeling of a walled compound. This is what the same angle looks like today:
Another shot from later in the film offers a better look at the layout:
Still later, when Kay arrives at the house, we see a different angle including the guard booth.
In reality, there are actually several houses at the end of the block that were cut off by the fake wall:
As the wedding progresses, detectives show up to take license plate numbers. Our point of view here is toward toward the house…
The wedding sequence was staged on the house’s palatial lawn, which I imagine was a major factor for why it was chosen:
After a quick jaunt to California involving a movie producer and a horse (to be covered someday by sister site Scouting LA), we return to New York and get our first look at Corleone’s business front, Genco Olive Oil, just as Sollozzo arrives for a sit-down.
This was filmed in what was once the heart of Little Italy at 128 Mott Street, known as The Mietz Building.
Built in 1892, the sprawling Mietz & Weiss Oil Engine Building has a wonderful ever-so-slight curve that follows the path of Mott Street:
While the Renaissance Revival building is overall in good shape, some changes have been made over the years, including the removal of fire escapes…
…and most egregiously, the complete gutting of the ground floor facade. I have no idea how this was allowed to happen, but it’s pretty awful.
The interior of Genco Oil was reportedly built on the fourth floor of a warehouse nearby to 128 Mott Street (but not actually in the Mietz building).
We then join Michael Corleone and his girlfriend Kay Adams as they Christmas shop at the Best & Co. Department Store on Fifth Avenue at 51st Street.
After the Best & Co. chain went out of business in the mid-1970s, the building was torn down to make way for the 51-story Olympic Tower currently at the site. Note St. Patrick’s and Saks a block further in both pictures.
Uneasy with the possible introduction of drugs into his business world, Don Corleone sends Luca Brasi to meet with Sollozzo and pledge his loyalty in order to spy on him. Brasi heads down a hotel hallway…
…shot in the rear entrance to the Hotel Edison on West 46th Street btw. 7th & 8th.
Brasi is then murdered by Sollozzo in an upscale restaurant…but where was this shot? There has been a lot of debate over this. Many argue that it was simply done in the Edison’s bar, and logistically it would make sense – except that nothing at the Edison ever looked like this.
In fact, this pivotal scene was actually filmed in the Hotel St. George in Brooklyn.
The tip comes from a 72-year-old Brooklyn Heights barber named Rocco Scali, who recalls cutting actor Lenny Montana’s hair just before the scene was filmed in the hotel’s lobby bar, according to this NY Times article.
What is unbelievable is that I cannot find a single damn picture of the establishment. In fact, about the only pictures you can find of the Hotel St. George, once the largest hotel in New York City, are postcard images taken in the 1930s and 40s. The St. George used to be teeming with theme venues (The Stardust Room, The Bermuda Terrace), but who knows what was still around in 1971 when The Godfather was shot? If anyone has any leads, or has any memories of the space, please let me know!
Carrying on, Tom Hagen is then abducted by Sollozzo as he exits Polk’s Hobby Shop at 314 Fifth Avenue.
Fondly remembered as one of New York’s best hobby shops, Polk’s went out of business over 20 years ago, and is today Empire Pizza.
Back in Little Italy, Don Corleone steps out of the Genco offices and crosses the street toward 135-137 Mott Street.
He stops to buy fruit from the vendor at 137 Mott Street (note the Jake “Raging Bull” La Motta poster in the window):
Today, a Chinese pharmacy:
Just then, two assassins spring out and begin shooting, gunning down Corleone in front of the entrance to Genco at 128 Mott:
Later that night, we find Michael and Kay coming out of a show at Radio City Music Hall:
They exit the side entrance on West 50th Street…
Then, Kay notices a headline on the newsstand announcing the Corleone shooting:
The two run across the street…
…to a telephone booth, where Michael calls home.
Meanwhile, Tom has been taken to an abandoned diner.
I really wish I knew where this was, but it seems that any record of it is long gone. Anyone have any ideas? Not sure if the interior was actually abandoned, or if this was built on a stage:
In retaliation, Sonny orders Clemenza to kill Paulie Gatto, who helped set up the attempt on his father’s life. We see Clemenza leaving his house…
…and here it is today, located at 1999 East 5th Street on the edge of the Gravesend section in Brooklyn.
Other than a few hints about the neighborhood, I couldn’t find any information anywhere on the address, and I almost gave up looking. Finally, I just knocked on a neighbor’s door – and she pointed me right up the block!
We later get another shot of the house as Clemenza leaves to assist in the round of assassinations at the end of the film.
There’s more! Click below to go to the next page!
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Over the next several weeks, we’re spotlighting the top 20 3D Jam experiences chosen by the jury and community votes. These spotlights will focus on game design, interaction design, and the big ideas driving our community forward.
Tomáš Mariančík wants to change how people learn about the world and bring their ideas to life. While his World of Comenius demo earned third place, it’s just the start of a much larger project – a global online platform that opens up new possibilities for exploration, discovery, and creativity. You can download the Windows demo free for the Oculus Rift: frooxius.itch.io/world-of-comenius.
Outside of academic circles, the father of modern education doesn’t get much name recognition. What does it mean for you to name the platform after him?
Even though many people don’t know who John Amos Comenius was, he probably had quite a large impact on their lives – as he was one of the very first innovators of education. Many of his ideas seem progressive even now, over 350 years later!
Comenius was born a Czech, but from our little country he traveled over the world (well, mostly Europe) and spread his ideas about education, becoming known as “teacher of the nations.” In the age of “learning” by rote memorization of Latin passages from books for the rich and privileged, he suggested that education should be accessible to anyone, regardless of wealth, social position, or gender. And instead of rote memorization, we should focus on understanding.
He also came up with a concept of “school by play,” learning languages by re-enacting various scenarios in a theatrical play where the language was used. Besides making one of the very first children’s encyclopedias and textbooks with pictures, he was also a proponent of lifelong education – not something you finish, but something anyone can do to enrich their lives.
Our goal is to spread this platform to the whole world, giving people new ways to learn and pushing Comenius’ ideas even further. And who knows, maybe he’ll get some more name recognition soon!
What does VR have to offer education “in the third millennium”?
Personal education. A large world, where you can travel to any scale, any time period, and any place you want. Exploring what you want to explore, not because you have to, but because it’s fun. Virtual reality allows us to create experiences that wouldn’t be possible in the real world, so you can play around inside of a cell, observing how its biochemistry reacts to little changes you make (like a sandbox game, but based on facts!) or manipulating things at a quantum level.
VR also allows us to bring people together – of all ages and all over the world, thanks to the power of the Internet. People of different ages and skills interacting can learn a lot more from each other than a class of kids sitting in a room and being only at the receiving end of the interaction.
Finally, I think VR will bring access to education to a lot of people. Probably not right away, because it’s not yet widespread enough (or even ready), but the same was once true for the personal computer or the Internet. And if you look at the surge of VR devices, whether cheap or expensive, I think it’s going to spread sooner than later.
Even now, almost four centuries later, we can look at Comenius’ ideas and see how the world is still only slowly changing. I want to do what I can to show people that learning can be a fun and enriching experience (if you’re not forced to study something you have no interest in, that is). Understanding the world around us better is not only beautiful, but gives you the power to make your own world.
What’s the connection between education and the power to create?
Education gives you the best possible tools to build and shape your ideas – sort of a bridge between your imagination and reality, giving you ways to transform the former into the latter. Our brains are essentially association machines, creating links between various pieces of information and sensory stimuli.
The richer and more intertwined web of meaningful associations you build, the more you’ll make connections in things you perceive or think. You’ll recall various ideas from electronics, physics, or mathematics that can be used to construct that idea – and these will in turn fire up more and more associations, lighting up the neural pathways like a reaction chain of fireworks.
World of Comenius experiments with navigation using portals and the ability to grab 3D space. Can you speak to the challenge of 3D VR navigation?
It’s a definitely challenging part to design. You essentially have two opposing forces: the need to go around the environment and explore, and your stomach pushing its contents upwards the moment you see a motion but don’t feel it. A very important thing is to make the interactions as natural as possible, so our brains can interpret it reasonably well.
I’ve used grabbing and moving with your hand with 1:1 mapping at the moment for small-scale movements. This mimics the way you would move around when weightless – by grabbing some solid handle, and then pulling or pushing your arm so you move your body relative to it. This allows quite precise position adjustments. Having your hand as a reference point in your field of vision seems to help with nausea as well. For the full version, you’ll see more methods to get around, most probably a hi-tech floating chair with personal HUD.
Your work has a lot of unique visual touches, like the red glowing light that appears when your hand intersects an object. How do you develop these visual elements?
Like everything else! Design it conceptually first and then implement it – in this case with shader code and camera post processing effect (for the glow). The conceptual idea behind this is fairly simple. Since there’s nothing to stop your hand from going through an object in the scene, making it clip through and look bad, I instead came up with the narrative that the objects are like holograms. The glow effect is because they’re breaking up around that area. You can still stick your hand through them, but now it at least makes a little more sense visually.
What will World of Comenius look like in the future?
Quite a lot bigger! The 3D Jam demo uses only a fraction of the design for the whole project and a lot of quick code written specifically for the jam (which will ultimately get thrown away in favor of a more robust system). World of Comenius is going to allow you to both consume educational experiences and create them – a world where anyone can be both student and teacher and share their work with the community.
Communities can achieve quite incredible things when given the right tools and direction to get them started, and that’s what WoC aims to do. Give people the means to easily construct new experiences focused on education and science – not only to learn, but also to share their new ideas and communicate about them with others. A proper infoverse.
For example, it’s often helpful to sketch ideas on a whiteboard or paper when trying to explain them to someone. But you’re limited by two dimensions and simple tools. In WoC you’ll be able to sketch a 3D scheme or geometry to others, in real time, even if they’re halfway across the world.
That’s actually the reason behind the first part of the name, as it’s meant to be a world of experiences that will grow and expand thanks to the work of the community. There are many talented people out there who are very good at teaching others and helping others understand new things. WoC will give them tools to create compelling educational experiences, and a platform where they can share their work with the whole world – making the best of the best education accessible to anyone.
How do you think VR will transform the face of education? Share your thoughts with Tomáš on Twitter @Frooxius. |
Photosynthetic sea slugs: an evolutionary enigma
by Shaun Doyle
Photograph courtesy of Mary S.Tyler Figure 1. The sacoglossan sea slug Elysia chlorotica is a kleptoplast—it can ‘steal’ chloroplasts from its algal prey and use them for photosynthesis.
Kleptoplasty (also known as kleptoplastidy or chloroplast symbiosis) occurs across a diverse range of eukaryotic organisms—dinoflagellates, ciliates, foraminifera, and even some sea slugs! It happens when a predator ingests a chloroplast-containing prey (often algae) and retains only the plastids, while it digests the rest. The predator can thenceforth photosynthesise to produce its own fuel. It really is an ingenious principle: why waste energy constantly looking for prey when one can just devour some algae, retain their chloroplasts, and use them for fuel production? It’s a great mechanism to have, especially in a resource-limited environment.
Certain types of sea slugs called sacoglossans possess the capacity for kleptoplasty. One in particular, Elysia chlorotica, can survive its entire adult life on the photosynthetic products of the chloroplasts it sequesters in the first few days of its adult life from its food source, the intertidal alga Vaucheria litorea. Even though the larvae of E. chlorotica eat V. litorea, they don’t retain chloroplasts until after reaching the adult stage of the life cycle and then ingesting V. litorea.1
Most plastid-thieving molluscs do not supply their stolen plastids with required accessory molecules, so the plastids must be replaced periodically, leaving these sea slugs dependent on a continual supply of algae.2 However, E. chlorotica and other sacoglossans maintain their chloroplasts, and recent research suggests that E. chlorotica possesses nuclear DNA for photosynthesis.3–5 Therefore, these sacoglossans possess an inherent ability to use and maintain chloroplasts.
It really is an ingenious principle: why waste energy constantly looking for prey when one can just devour some algae, retain their chloroplasts, and use them for fuel production?
Kleptoplasty and endosymbiosis
Evolutionists think that kleptoplasty presents a modern analogue for endosymbiosis, which is the favoured theory for the origin of all eukaryotic organisms.6 Endosymbiosis posits that a large, anaerobic prokaryote ingested a smaller aerobic prokaryote and retained it permanently, modifying it to interact beneficially, and even reproducing it during cell division. This is supposed to have happened a couple of times with different prokaryotes to explain the origin of membrane-bound organelles, such as chloroplasts and mitochondria, in eukaryote cells. There are numerous problems with this idea,7–9 and kleptoplasty provides no support for it either.
That is what makes kleptoplasty such an amazing phenomenon: the chloroplasts of one organism are sequestered and used by another organism with a completely different cellular environment.
The first thing to note is that kleptoplasty involves the sequestration of chloroplasts, not whole cyanobacteria. Most of the information to enable photosynthesis is not present in chloroplasts of algae because it is encoded in the nucleus. So the information needed for photosynthesis couldn’t be passed from the chloroplasts to the kleptoplast. Chloroplasts, unlike cyanobacteria, are also completely dependent on an appropriate cellular environment to function. That is what makes kleptoplasty such an amazing phenomenon: the chloroplasts of one organism are sequestered and used by another organism with a completely different cellular environment.
Secondly, chloroplasts are not passed to the next generation in kleptoplastic organisms—especially not in sacoglossans—but the nuclear information for chloroplast acquisition, usage, and maintenance is. It’s like having everything you need to drive a car—except the engine. This is quite different to what is supposed to have occurred in endosymbiosis, where both the endosymbiont and all its genetic information are supposed to be passed onto the next generation when the host reproduces.
While kleptoplasty may look like the evolutionary notion of endosymbiosis on the surface, it turns out to work against this evolutionary explanation for the origin of the eukaryotes.
How did sea slugs get the ability to photosynthesize?
Evolutionists believe kleptoplasty arose in the sacoglossans via lateral gene transfer (LGT: the transfer of genetic material by means other than reproduction) from the algae directly to the sea slugs. The evidence they cite to confirm this is the presence of nuclear DNA in E. chlorotica identical or nearly identical to their algal prey that enables them to use the chloroplasts.10
Some of the identical strands found between E. chlorotica and V. litorea by Pierce et al. are around 800–1,000 bp long.11 Therefore, LGT is a possible explanation, though common design for the purpose of kleptoplasty is probably more likely.
But even if it occurred by LGT, would the information be truly new, such as to give credence to the evolutionary paradigm? It would be a transfer of information—the information hasn’t been created from nothing. Orthodox neo-Darwinism (microbes-to-magnolias evolution) requires new information to arise by mutations and natural selection. Even if E. chlorotica received the information from V. litorea, where did V. litorea get it from? From cyanobacteria via endosymbiosis? Again, where did the cyanobacteria get the information for photosynthesis from? And here the ‘endosymbiosis’ and ‘lateral gene transfer’ chains end because photosynthesis supposedly originated in the unknown ancestors of cyanobacteria. Where to from there?
Another common problem with LGT explanations between eukaryotes is the lack of a mechanism. Prokaryotic LGT is well-documented and has been directly observed many times. However, eukaryote-eukaryote LGT has not been directly observed to date, and is only inferred from the similarity of genetic sequences found in unrelated organisms. This is not necessarily a bad inference—it may have occurred in some measure in the past. However, the lack of direct observational support should urge caution at accepting LGT as a widespread phenomenon occurring between eukaryotes.
Moreover, LGT between such diverse eukaryotic organisms would itself require an incredibly complex and coordinated information system to facilitate such a transition. How would such a mechanism originate? Neo-Darwinism? Experimental science is hard-pressed to find examples of a random mutation that produces new information, where neo-Darwinism requires many.12 Moreover, we see an inexorable trend of genetic deterioration caused by near-neutral mutations that will eventually lead to the extinction of all multicellular life.13,14 Even with systems that are designed to produce a certain amount of variation (which may even involve a measure of LGT), there are fixed limits to designed variation potential because for life to work it must be able to maintain fundamental genetic and cellular stability.15 Therefore, not even this can stave off forever extinction by genetic deterioration.16 Molecules-to-man evolution expects the exact opposite of what we see happening in biology, so it’s a seemingly impossible concept.
Is lateral gene transfer likely?
It is possible that LGT has played a role in the history of sacoglossan kleptoplasty. However, LGT is an unlikely explanation for the origin of kleptoplasty in sacoglossans for a number of reasons. Numerous independent LGT events have to be postulated to come together in just the right fashion to enable kleptoplasty to occur. Since LGT between eukaryotic cells of different kingdoms (chromalveolate to animal) has not been directly observed to date, such a scenario seems unlikely.
E. chlorotica would have required much more than a few sporadic LGT events to use chloroplasts. It is well known that over 90% of the proteins needed for using plastids are coded for in the nucleus.5 E. chlorotica must therefore possess a large portion of that information for any chloroplast use at all. With such a large and specified content of DNA required for kleptoplasty, multiple, sequential LGT events are an exceedingly unlikely explanation for the origin of kleptoplasty in sacoglossans.
Also, since kleptoplasty occurs across a diverse range of organisms, we are supposed to believe that this phenomenon, with obvious benefits to heterotrophs, evolved independently several times. It’s the same problem as the evolution of flight in bats, birds, and insects: another supposed example of convergent evolution. Convergent evolution resists evolutionary explanation, but is consistent with common design.17
There is also evidence of nuclear DNA for photosynthesis encoded in the kleptoplastic dinoflagellate Dinophysis acuminata.18 It can only sustain chloroplasts for 1–2 months, as opposed to E. chlorotica, which can do so for 9–10 months. The phylogenetic history postulated for kleptoplasty in D. acuminata is also very complex and different from sacoglossans, possibly involving gene loss and transfer events from multiple, independent sources. However, even evolutionists are very tentative about these speculations. Therefore nuclear genes for photosynthesis are found in two very different kleptoplastic organisms, which have very different proposed phylogenies for the acquisition of kleptoplasty.
There is far more involved in kleptoplasty than just the transfer of some genes: the chloroplasts are exported from the algal prey into a completely different cellular environment (algal cells are very different to animal cells!), and yet they still work. For example, chloroplasts are not incorporated naked into the epithelial cells of the sea slugs when they are ingested for use, as has been previously supposed. They have an animal membrane tightly applied to them when they are incorporated into the cytoplasm of the digestive tubule cell.19 This packaging procedure implies that the chloroplasts have to be properly integrated into the digestive epithelium of sacoglossans, which again suggests design. This also contrasts with proposed endosymbiosis scenarios wherein organelle membranes supposedly are derived from the cellular membranes of the ingested prokaryote.
The ability to retain plastids long term is known only in a few sacoglossans, but evolutionists tend towards seeing even those as independent occurrences.20 Short-term kleptoplasty, on the other hand, is too widespread among the sacoglossans to presume it arose multiple times.21 Therefore, the sacoglossans were most likely originally designed with the ability to retain and use plastids, regardless of the length of chloroplast retention.
Opportunities for research
While lateral gene transfer is unlikely to be the origin of kleptoplasty, it may help explain some of the ‘fine tuning’ of the ability in certain species of sacoglossans. This is far from certain, and degeneration and specialization from an original high kleptoplastic ability might be more likely from a creationist perspective. More research is required on the methods of chloroplast retention and usage within different species, as well as a proper baraminological analysis of the sacoglossans, to determine what is most likely.
Conclusions
Because of the diverse and uniformly unlikely nature of evolutionary explanations of kleptoplasty, as well as the evident complexity of the apparatus, kleptoplasty was most likely designed by a single creator to resist evolutionary explanations, as per ReMine’s ‘Message Theory’. Neither does kleptoplasty provide a modern analogue for the evolutionary speculation of endosymbiosis. Kleptoplasty provides one more line of evidence that supports the single, intelligent Creator God of the Bible. |
Not one to shy away from the weird, HBO has picked up the internet based talk show The Gorburger Show as a pilot. Variety reports the show, led by T.J. Miller wearing a strange blue monster costume akin to Japanese culture who happens to take over a Japanese chat show, is jumping from the little screen to a slightly larger screen.
Gorburger's whole shtick is to understand humanity through interviews with our biggest celebrities. The Gorburger Show is currently in its second season over on YouTube. They've managed to land pretty big guests like Carson Daly, Tegan and Sara, 3OH!3 and even Grouplove.
This marks the second show to be transitioned from internet to television by HBO. The premium channel previously picked up the Vimeo web series High Maintenance for six new episodes to be aired on the network. And it's also another milestone in the vein that T.J. Miller already has a job with HBO as an actor on Silicon Valley. |
Donald Trump is ahead of virtually any of his recent predecessors in terms of appointments thus far. | Getty High energy: Trump's flurry of announcements put him ahead of predecessors
President-elect Donald Trump’s flurry of cabinet appointments is putting him far ahead of schedule compared to recent presidential transitions.
In fact, Donald Trump has announced five more cabinet level appointments than President Barack Obama had by a comparable point in 2008, with two more top posts in the Trump administration all-but confirmed.
Trump has announced six cabinet level nominations: Sen. Jeff Sessions, for attorney general; Betsy DeVos, for education secretary; Gov. Nikki Haley for ambassador to the United Nations; Rep. Tom Price, for the Department of Health and Human Services; Elaine Chao to run the Department of Transportation.
In addition, Trump is expected to soon announce investor Wilbur Ross as his Commerce secretary and financier Steve Mnuchin to run the Treasury Department. Trump has also appointed four senior-level White House aides, including a national security adviser, White House counsel, chief of staff and chief strategist.
That puts him ahead of virtually any of his recent predecessors in terms of appointments — including President Barack Obama, whose 2008 transition was considered one of the smoothest in modern times.
By this point in 2008, had named just one cabinet secretary — Treasury Sec. Timothy Geithner — and a handful of White House staff positions. And Obama was elected four days earlier than Trump. By Dec. 1, Obama rolled out more senior positions, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Department of Homeland Security Sec. Janet Napolitano, Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.
With the exception of Treasury, many of the cabinet positions that Trump has announced so far took longer for Obama to roll out; he did not name an education secretary, for example, until mid-December and his eventual pick for Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, was not announced until February after former Sen. Tom Daschle’s nomination ran into trouble. Obama announced his attorney general along with a series of national security-themed picks on Dec. 1.
Trump is also far ahead of George W. Bush — who, by this point in 2000, was still in the middle of a legal battle over the Florida recount. |
FILE - This April 13, 2016 file photo shows the seal of the Central Intelligence Agency at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va. A psychologist who helped design the CIA's harsh interrogation methods in the war on terror says his participation in the program that involved torturing suspects caused him "great, soulful torment." The comments are in videotaped depositions of Bruce Jessen ahead of a Sept. 5, 2017 trial. He is one of two psychologists sued by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of three men who say they were tortured with techniques designed by the defendants.. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)
SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — A psychologist who helped design the CIA’s harsh interrogation methods in the war on terror has said his participation in the program that involved torturing suspects caused him “great, soulful torment.”
The comments were in videotaped depositions of Bruce Jessen ahead of a Sept. 5 trial in federal court in Spokane, Washington.
Jessen is one of two psychologists sued by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of three men who contend they were tortured with techniques designed by the defendants.
Jessen and James Mitchell ran a Spokane-based company that received $81 million from the U.S. government to develop harsh interrogation methods to pry information from suspected terrorists.
In comments first reported Wednesday by The New York Times, Jessen said he and Mitchell, who now lives in Florida, objected to some of the methods but were told they would be blamed for future terrorist attacks if they did not participate.
“They kept telling me every day a nuclear bomb was going to be exploded in the United States, and that because I told them to stop I had lost my nerve , and it was going to be my fault if I didn’t continue,” Jessen said in a deposition transcript posted on an ACLU website related to the lawsuit.
“I think the word that was actually used is that ‘you guys are pussies,’” Mitchell said in his deposition. “There’s going to be another attack in America and the blood of dead civilians is going to be on your hands.”
Jessen and Mitchell previously worked at Fairchild Air Force Base outside Spokane, where they had developed methods to help U.S. military members resist torture. They were hired after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks by the CIA to reverse-engineer those methods for the war on terror.
The psychologists personally conducted some interrogations at overseas CIA sites.
The depositions, taken since the beginning of the year and running for hundreds of pages, mark the first time Jessen has made comments on the case that have been made public. Mitchell has previously given interviews to some media outlets.
Jessen said the decision to participate in the program tormented him.
“I think any, any normal, conscionable man would have to consider carefully doing something like this,” Jessen said.
Both men insisted in their depositions that they were not the decision-makers for using the torture program.
Mitchell said he did not participate for the money, which amounted to $1,800 per day each for Mitchell and Jessen.
“I didn’t view the campaign against al-Qaeda as a business opportunity. I viewed it as a patriotic duty,” Mitchell said.
Jessen said he has received death threats to himself and his family over the years because of his work for the CIA.
“I did my duty and I stood up and I went to war and I’ll stand up to any of them again. But I don’t want them messing with my family,” he said.
The two men have said in court records that they used harsh tactics, but denied allegations of torture and war crimes.
President Barack Obama terminated their contract in 2009.
The ACLU sued the two psychologists in 2015 on behalf of Suleiman Abdullah Salim, Mohamed Ahmed Ben Soud and the estate of Gul Rahman, who are seeking unspecified monetary damages.
The Justice Department became involved in the case to represent the government’s interests in keeping classified information secret.
Rahman, an Afghan, was taken from his home in Pakistan in 2002 to a secret CIA prison in Afghanistan. He died of hypothermia after being shackled to a floor.
The lawsuit contends Salim, from Tanzania, and Ben Soud, from Libya, underwent waterboarding, daily beatings and sleep deprivation while inside CIA facilities. They were later released after officials determined they posed no threat.
A U.S. Senate investigation in 2014 found that Mitchell and Jessen’s techniques produced no useful intelligence in the war on terror. |
While this week's Black Lives Matter panel in Elgin focused on healing personal racism, Mary Shesgreen said she would like to hear more about the problems facing the African American community.
"I find myself hungry for conversation about how to challenge and change institutional racism," which she is only just now learning about, said Shesgreen, one of the 125 people who attended the discussion.
"I am only starting to understand myself how institutional racism works and I want to understand it more deeply," Shesgreen said.
Her comment — and those from others in attendance — may mean more conversations on race in Elgin, too.
"We have had other community conversations," in Elgin, said Mayor David Kaptain following the event, including those between the police department and residents following the protests in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014. But the questions brought up at the Black Lives Matter discussion show a need for more conversations, too, Kaptain said.
Bob Whitt, one of the organizers from Elgin's Human Rights Commission, said the event held at the Centre of Elgin Thursday night, was to help people from all walks of life understand the Black Lives Matter movement.
The phrase — which started as a social media hashtag following the Trayvon Martin case in Florida — has blossomed into a movement and is used by protesters following many police-involved shootings elsewhere, Whitt said.
But what they wanted those in attendance to understand is Black Lives Matter doesn't mean that other lives don't matter, but that black lives matter, too, organizers said.
The panel discussion was moderated by Whitt and included Marcia Thompson, Phillip Reed, and Deb Perryman.
Thompson is a national public speaker, consultant and Supreme Court of Virginia-certified mediator who has worked in Elgin before. Reed is a workplace diversity trainer, and Perryman is a District U46 educator who is also co-advisor of Elgin High School's Gay-Straight Alliance.
Perryman said she started looking deeper at the issues facing African American families after she saw social media posts from black mothers, talking about the conversations they had with their children. It was so different from what she talked to her children about that she needed more information, Perryman said. That brought her new awareness of the issues, she said.
"People like me have to step up and say that black lives do matter," Perryman said.
The panelists started with a few prepared questions, then moved on to questions from the audience, submitted on cards.
That was done purposefully, Whitt said, to prevent one person or group from dominating the conversation.
The difference between "black lives matter" and "all lives matter" is one of perception, Thompson said.
Historically, and in recent events which have made national headlines, perception "is that black lives have had less value," Thompson said. Those incidents where African American youth have died have many different factors, but the founders of the movement believed black lives were not treated equally to other lives, she said.
"Black lives are equal and when they are all equal, then all lives will matter," Thompson said.
"We know all lives matter, but when we look around the world I'm not so sure that it true," added Reed. What black lives matter means to him "is a call to action and to raise our consciousness around things that occur," in the country, he said.
One thing many of the speakers noted is the incidents that have brought Black Lives Matter to the forefront hasn't been an issue in Elgin. The department is respected by the community, added Bill Williamson, one of the organizers from the Human Relations Commission.
While many of the negative incidents have been recorded and gone viral on social media, so did a positive experience with an Elgin police officer last fall — Sgt. Ken Ericson's conversation with a group of car enthusiasts who had been meeting up in a Summit Street parking lot. The video, made by one of the bystanders and put on Facebook, was viewed millions of times after it was picked up by one social media site. The video was remarked on because of the respectful way he talked to the young men and women and how they responded.
That, Williamson said, is what Elgin expects from its officers.
Elgin has exported its style of policing elsewhere, Kaptain noted. Former Assistant Chief of Police Cecil Smith is now Chief of Police in Sandord, Fla., where the Travyon Martin case occurred. He became chief shortly before George Zimmerman was found not guilty in the death.
Smith has taken many of the things Elgin does to Florida, including walking the neighborhoods and talking with residents about the problems there.
It is a good idea to continue these discussions, Williamson said, adding that the Human Relations Commission will look at future discussions "based on the questions here today."
Janelle Walker is a freelance reporter. |
Orioles fan Anthony Bochniak was so disenchanted by the team's habitual losing that he took off the first 23 years of the Camden Yards era, refusing to venture to the stadium even once — until Wednesday.
The 71-year-old Baltimore retiree not only ended his boycott, he was first in line to purchase single-game tickets for the coming season — evidence that the club's success in 2014 is a magnet even for the most disillusioned fans.
"I'm here because they turned it around last year," he said. "They lost the 'loser' tag."
Bochniak was among "a steady stream of buyers," mostly online, seizing the opportunity when single-game seats became available, Orioles spokesman Greg Bader said.
The Orioles advanced to the American League Championship Series last season for the first time since 1997. The windfall from that playoff push is evidenced by the club's recent announcement that not all multiple-game plan holders are guaranteed seats for Opening Day.
Individual game tickets went on sale at Oriole Park at Camden Yards March 11.
"This is the first year that we are unable to guarantee all 13-game plan members Opening Day tickets, and it is entirely due to the number of season plan holders increasing for 2015," Bader said. "We will work to accommodate existing 13-game-plan members based on seniority, though it is unlikely that everyone who wants Opening Day tickets will be able to get them."
The team's success heightened interest in its 81-game and 29-game ticket packages, though Bader declined to provide specific numbers on sales. Those plan holders are guaranteed tickets for the home opener April 10 against the Toronto Blue Jays.
Look through pictures of the Orioles at spring training in Sarasota, Fla.
The most senior 13-game plan buyers — those who have held their tickets for at least three full seasons — "should also certainly have the ability to get Opening Day tickets," Bader said.
The remaining 13-game ticket holders can take their chances in an online sale March 19. Plan members will be notified via email of a login time for the sale.
Remaining tickets for the 80 games after Opening Day went on sale Wednesday morning.
"There are plenty of seats available," Bader said.
Bochniak and 10 other fans stood in line on a dank, overcast morning before the ticket windows opened at 10 a.m.
Bochniak said he couldn't bring himself to buy tickets as the Orioles endured 14 straight losing seasons until 2012. He couldn't square what the club had become with the teams he remembered from Memorial Stadium featuring Hall of Famers Frank Robinson and Brooks Robinson.
Bochniak had circled 11 games on the Orioles schedule. The ticket attendant informed him of the seating options for each. "What's the next date, hon?" she asked several times.
Bochniak, who said he came in person to buy tickets because he doesn't have a computer, ended up purchasing tickets for seven games. He chose the games based on the visiting teams he wanted to see, making certain the dates did not conflict with his regular golf outings.
Other fans in line said they showed up in person for convenience and to avoid online problems and processing fees. For a $66 ticket, online fees pushed the price to $77.75.
"To have the ticket in your hands is always good," said David Papenfuse, 40, who bought tickets for a June 27 game in which the club is giving away a garden gnome modeled after manager Buck Showalter.
Last year's average attendance of 30,806 — which ranked in the middle of the pack of major league clubs — marked the first time Camden Yards had averaged more than 30,000 since 2005.
Bader attributed increased demand this year to a few factors.
"Advancing to the ALCS certainly assisted in driving our season plan member base higher," he said. "We also believe the decision not to raise ticket prices has also led to some good season ticket numbers."
Seeking to capitalize on its postseason success, the club originally offered new 20-game and 40-game plans last fall. Fans putting down deposits were guaranteed access to a select number of home game tickets for the championship series and a possible World Series.
But the club decided this year to scrap the new plans, saying it contacted fans who committed to the new options to ask how they wanted to proceed.
"We did not want to overcomplicate the message to fans coming off a year in which the team had great success on and off the field," Bader said. " We have an opportunity to grow our season ticket membership and believe that 13- and 29-game plans, at least at this time, represent the best opportunity for us to do so."
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Obama Making Good On Promise to Eliminate Free Speech
Dave Hodges
February 15, 2014
The Common Sense Show
Any discussion about free speech in America must begin and end with the NDAA in which the government can snatch anyone off the street, without due process, and hold them indefinitely. This kind of unbridled power has a devastating effect on free speech.
Prior to the 2012 election, David Axerlrod, announced that Obama would push for a constitutional amendment to rollback free speech if he was re-elected. Obama is making good on that promise. Obama’s promise to destroy free speech combined with the passage of the NDAA, constitutes a lethal cocktail for all freedom loving Americans.
The last of the Bill of Rights which will taken away in its totality is indeed the freedom of speech. Freedom of speech is the cornerstone of dissent, necessary civil disobedience and rebellion in the face of abject tyranny. Freedom of speech is the organizing principle for the people in response to its government. Without freedom of speech, there can only be tyranny. And where tyranny abounds, there is always unchecked abuse perpetrated against the citizens by the minions of the government.
The government has a long of history of supporting attacks upon the First Amendment. John Adams was in support of the Alien and Sedition Act which outright criminalized criticism of the government and its officials. History shows that Lincoln jailed protesters against the draft and the Civil War in general. President Wilson also jailed World War I era protesters. Franklin Roosevelt even took the unprecedented act of making a preemptive move against Americans, of Japanese background, by incarcerating them because they MIGHT pose a threat to the war effort in WWII. However, each of these incidents were standalone issues and ended as soon as the perceived crises had abated.
What is going on in America in terms of an attack upon the First Amendment is unprecedented. The assaults upon First Amendment rights are not in response to a perceived crisis. The Obama administration attacks upon freedom of speech are not standalone events. And the scope of these attacks upon free speech are incremental and appears to be aimed at eliminating all free speech, thus rendering the government and its officials immune from criticism.
The Obama administration is attacking the First Amendment in unprecedented ways in this country. The assaults began in 2012 with H.R. 347 and have accelerated to effectively outlawing legitimate political activity by grassroots organizations and minor political parties. America is one short step away from having its free speech rights obliterated from the annals of history.
H.R. 347
Two years ago, when Congress passed H.R. 347, entitled the Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act, it passed the House by a vote of 399-3 and hardly anyone noticed. Certainly, with this type of landslide vote, nobody in Congress seems to care about the First Amendment.
H.R. 347 was designed to “improve” public grounds by moving all protesters “elsewhere”. The law claims it is merely an update to an old law, Section 1752 of Title 18 of the United States Code, that restricted areas around the president, vice president, or any others under the protection of the Secret Service.
The original law was enacted in 1971 and amended in 2006. The law, in effect has not been fundamentally altered since its initial passage. However, what has significantly changed since 1971, are the types of events and individuals warranting Secret Service protection.
Under the present law, any occasion that is officially defined as a National Special Security Event (NSSE) automatically warrants Secret Service protection. NSSE’s can include college bowl games, major PGA golf tournaments, basketball championships, rock concerts, and even the present Winter Olympics. The Super Bowl and the World Series have been declared a NSSE since 9/11. Further, it is the President who determines who is eligible for Secret Service protection under the NSSE provisions. This shields any and all public figures from legitimate protest.
The net effect of H.R. 347 is to limit to any politician, public figure deemed by the President to be in some kind of danger. However, the Super Bowl, nor a rock concert constitutes government business. This is a clear abuse of power, but it does not stop with H.R. 347.
Journalists Are Intimidated
Last spring’s revelations about the Justice Department secretly seizing phone records at The Associated Press and obtaining a Fox News reporter’s email account have increased concerns closer to home.
Close to my home , near Arizona State University hired Washington Times freelance reporter, Leonard Downie, who subsequently examined a range of Obama administration tactics that hinder government transparency. These include the unprecedented use of the Espionage Act in prosecuting media leaks, classifying government documents as secret when no harm could come from their release, increased government surveillance that jeopardizes the safety of news sources, Freedom of Information Act violations, and White House-produced content that can’t substitute for independent, accountability journalism.
David Sanger, chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times, said “this is the most closed, control freak administration I have ever covered.”
The Obama Administration Attempts to Silence Political Dissent
Political dissent is protected under the First Amendment, as is political activity. The current administration is attempting to silence millions of Libertarians, Constitutionalists and Tea Partiers by attempting to pass new regulations which will destroy free speech rights.
America, you need to pay close attention to this development. The IRS is trying to silence millions of Tea Partiers and third party candidates by destroying free speech rights. If these regulations are allowed to stand, Americans will be forever silenced.
Please keep in mind that the following regulations only apply to third parties, grassroots groups and the Tea Party. These regulations will make it illegal to:
1. Mention a candidate up for re-election within 60 days of an election. That includes every single member of the House of Representatives. Effectively, you will not be able to petition your own elected representatives.
2. The aforementioned groups will not be allowed to register voters. Does this put anyone else in the mind of the old Jim Crow laws which were designed to prevent the registration of African-Americans.
3. Call for the election or defeat of a political candidate. This will effectively eliminate all recall provisions in State Constitutions.
4. Hold candidate forums so voters can decide who would best represent them In other words, primary election activities for third party candidates would be prohibited. This provision would cut the proverbial legs out from under any political party or movement.
The IRS is trying to silence millions of American voters. They’re trying to pass new regulations that will destroy our free speech rights and this constitutes a complete end run around Congress and ultimately the Constitution.
I am calling for a massive campaign to protest this IRS action. You may send your comments to the IRS at this link.
Conclusion
There is a definitive reason why the Founding Fathers made the act of free speech the FIRST AMENDMENT to the Constitution. Without question, it is our most important right.
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.” Theodore Roosevelt “Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.” Benjamin Franklin
“If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.” George Washington
When freedom of speech disappears from our political and social landscape, it is almost always a portend of very bad things to come. These events are the chest pains before the heart attack. We can be silent, like so many victims do, or we can take action in mass displays of civil disobedience. And all we have to do is to speak out. |
Only three of city's 50-some mayoral candidates were at a debate about heritage matters on Thursday night.
The slim participation in the debate was because of the familiar five front running candidates — Rob Ford, John Tory, Olivia Chow, Karen Stintz and David Soknacki — only three attended. The afternoon before the debate, Stintz announced she was now out of the race. Rob Ford, the incumbent, was at a campaign fundraiser at his mother's house in Etobicoke.
On the subject of the city's heritage — the debate was hosted by Heritage Toronto — the candidates found common ground.
"There's a lot more to heritage than simply buildings. It's all about our life and quality of life as well," said Soknacki, echoing what the other two candidates said.
Chow, Tory and Soknacki debated the role the Ontario Municipal Board. All said the process of settling development disputes needed reform, with Tory arguing in favour of some kind of appeal board.
One point of contention was Ontario Place. Chow criticized Tory for his idea to allow condos on the provincially run lakefront space. Tory was the head of an advisory panel on Ontario Place, and recommended selling parts of it to developers. Tory said that was in response to not having public money for the revitalization of Ontario Place.
Chow also said she wants to see a city of Toronto museum — calling it overdue.
"Vancouver has one. New York has one. It is Toronto's turn," announced Chow.
The candidates all agreed that the city's natural heritage, in forms of parks, rivers and natural ecosystems were important to protect. They were also in agreement that the cultural heritage that was most underrepresented was that of First Nations.
About 40 other debates are planned before the election on October 27th. |
Skyscrapers dedicated to student accommodation, with hundreds of studio apartments as small as 12.1 square metres, are being planned and built in Melbourne.
In a rarity for a city teeming with units designed for investors, there are advanced plans for at least five new high-rise towers in the CBD catering to university students.
UK-based Scape Student Living is leading the charge, with a proposal for Melbourne’s largest and tallest student housing project.
Its three proposed skyscrapers opposite RMIT University on Swanston Street could house almost 1600 students.
An example of a Scape Student Housing studio room. Photo: Supplied.
They will also have some of the smallest dwellings in the city. All the rooms will be less than 30 square metres and some less than 15 square metres – about the size of a car park space.
The builder says that after six years of development it has designed rooms that fit storage space, a kitchen with cooker, sink and fridge, at least a double bed, and a “pod bathroom” with a toilet, shower and space for toiletries.
Many of these features are built in. “If you tipped our rooms upside down the only thing that would fall out is the bed and the chair,” Scape director Craig Carracher said.
Mr Carracher said the studio rooms were typically larger than you would find in a share house or other student accommodation.
Within the proposed towers there are also larger apartments, or clusters, where four or six studio bedrooms back onto a shared kitchen and lounge room. It is envisaged these dwellings will be ideal for students working together in collaborative courses or international students finding it difficult living away from home.
Scape already has approval for a 43-storey skyscraper at 393 Swanston Street, while its proposal to build two towers of 42 storeys and 56 storeys on two adjoining blocks facing La Trobe and Little La Trobe streets are before the Planning Minister.
It is possible these two projects, due to be completed by mid-2018 and early-2019, could be delayed because the site is close to the planned Melbourne Metro Rail.
Education is Victoria’s biggest export, but there is a lack of affordable accommodation for students in Melbourne.
Homes built specifically for university students are still limited. About 42,500 students live in central Melbourne, but only 9108, or 21 per cent, live in dwellings specifically designed for students.
Many students end up in the expensive private rental market, where the shortage of affordable housing has helped fuel illegal rooming house operations, where students pay more than $100 a week to sleep on the floor of living rooms.
Another example of a Scape Student Housing studio room. The door on the right leads to a bathroom. Photo: Supplied.
It will cost about $400 a week for students to live in one of the serviced Scape towers.
RMIT professor Tony Dalton said apartments in this price bracket would probably cater to relatively well-off students.
“You still have very large numbers of international students really struggling,” he said. “That lack of affordability plays out with people crowding into apartments and other houses and sharing in quite larger numbers.”
Scape will manage the apartment towers once they are developed. Mr Carracher said because the company did not outsource any of their major services, such as cleaning and concierge, all of the staff on the premises would be able to keep an eye out for students who were struggling.
A shared study space in a Scape Student Housing property. Photo: Supplied.
The towers will have large communal study areas and other shared facilities such as laundries, food outlets and gyms. Social activities such as movie nights, cooking classes and barbecues will be organised and there will be a business space likely to house start-ups, technology companies and services for the students, such as a bank branch.
To rent one of the rooms, students must be able to prove they are enrolled in tertiary education. In the case of international students, they must have a valid student visa and be enrolled at university or with another education course that satisfies visa requirements. |
Christopher Gregory/The New York Times
President Obama urged law schools on Friday to consider cutting a year of classroom instruction, wading into a hotly debated issue inside the beleaguered legal academy.
“This is probably controversial to say, but what the heck. I am in my second term, so I can say it,” Mr. Obama said at a town hall-style meeting at Binghamton University in New York. “I believe that law schools would probably be wise to think about being two years instead of three years.”
The president’s surprising remarks, made while discussing how to make education more affordable, come at a time of crisis for law schools. With an increasing number of graduates struggling with soaring tuition costs, heavy student debt and a difficult job market, a growing number of professors and administrators are pushing for broad reforms in legal education.
“We academics toil in the wilderness,” said Samuel Estreicher, a professor at the New York University School of Law leading a movement to permit students to take the bar exam and practice after two years. “It is great to have the president join the cause.”
Mr. Obama has plenty of credibility inside the legal world. After graduating from Harvard Law School, where he served as the president of the Harvard Law Review, he taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago from 1992 until his election to the Senate in 2004.
On Friday, he questioned the utility of a third year of classes and suggested that students use their final two semesters to gain work experience. “In the first two years, young people are learning in the classroom,” Mr. Obama said. “The third year, they’d be better off clerking or practicing in a firm even if they weren’t getting paid that much, but that step alone would reduce the costs for the student.”
He acknowledged that eliminating a third year could possibly hurt a law school’s finances and ability to maintain a strong faculty. “Now, the question is,” Mr. Obama said, “can law schools maintain quality and keep good professors and sustain themselves without that third year? My suspicion is, is that if they thought creatively about it, they probably could.”
The president was preaching to a growing choir of law school faculty.
Earlier this year, New York University held a symposium on reforming law school. Professor Estreicher argued that making the third year optional would reduce the cost of a legal education while encouraging clinical work outside the classroom. The school recently revamped its third-year curriculum with a focus on foreign study and specialized concentrations.
William D. Henderson, an Indiana University law professor who has also pushed for changes, welcomed Mr. Obama’s remarks. But he expressed relief that law school wasn’t two years when he attended the University of Chicago, graduating in 2001.
“I took Obama’s class in my third year,” Mr. Henderson wrote in an e-mail. “I would have missed out!” |
There are a number of gadgets, both new and old, that allow parents to geo-locate their children – or let puppy parents track down a wandering Fido – but many of these either fall short of the task at hand by relying on Bluetooth alone, or require a monthly fee, like the FiLIP smartwatch for kids or the Amber Alert GPS, for instance. A new gadget now in the works called Findster differentiates itself through the use of proprietary RF technology, which allows for a longer range than Bluetooth, as well as no monthly fees.
The Findster team, based in Portugal, includes founders Virgílio Bento, David Barroso, Paulo Fonseca, André Ferreira, Márcio Colunas and David Dieteren, whose background includes a mix of experience in hardware, software, and design.
Bento, a university professor with a Ph.D. in electrical engineering, also has previous experience with hardware, having developed a medical device aimed at improving rehabilitation in stroke patients in the past.
Not a parent himself, Bento admits that the idea for Findster came to him after he went looking for an affordable GPS tracker for his dog, who would sometimes become lost. But he was disappointed that most of the better GPS trackers required a monthly fee – which was hard to swallow given that the gadget wasn’t something he would need, except on a handful of occasions.
After deciding to tackle the problem himself along with the Findster team, Bento realized that there was a bigger need than just hunting down missing pets.
“People with kids told us, that is perfect for my kids. And we thought, okay, maybe we have a different segment here that’s important to acknowledge,” he says of the device’s transition in the far more crowded, and potentially more profitable, “kid tracker” space.
The founders began work on the device last year, and raised $67,000 during a prior crowdfunding campaign whose goal was $50,000. They’ve now just opened up an extension to that campaign to allow additional backers to get in. With still nearly a month left to go, Findster has raised over $11,000 so far on the new campaign.
How It Works
Findster is a bit different from other gadgets in this space because of the way it has incorporated the technology used to identify the child (or pet’s) GPS coordinates. Instead of leaning on cellular providers’ services or limited Bluetooth technology, it enables long-range bi-directional communication between two modules, one held by the parents, the other attached to the child or pet.
“We’re filing our patent now, but [the long-range communication is] below 1 GHz…and we’re using a frequency band that’s available to everyone. What makes us different are the details of the communication – how we encrypt the data, and how we design our antennas to be more sensitive,” says Bento.
Meanwhile, the child module passes information to an iPhone via Bluetooth. Between the two, the range is 1 Km. However, through an optional base station, the range can extend to 2 Km. These base stations, designed for use in the home or even at schools, are part of the company’s larger vision for setting up a mesh network for its trackers – similar to how the lost item finder Tile is working to create the same via its users’ smartphones.
In addition, the devices and accompanying software will allow for things like geo-fences, push notifications, group monitoring, emergency alerts, fall detection (via an accelerometer), a locate mode that offers proximity and direction, an activity tracker for pets (for super obsessive dog parents, we suppose), remote monitoring via the base station, and integration with the IFTTT alerts service.
Bento claims they have a working prototype, which will begin shipping in April worldwide on a first come, first serve basis. Early crowdfunders paid $99 for the two modules and a charger (retail to be $129), while the full system including a base station will eventually retail for $250.
The company is fairly certain they can hit their ship date, having already done a lot of the legwork of finding and partnering with manufacturers when working on the above-referenced earlier medical device.
Though in bootstrapping mode for now, Bento says that they’re now in talks with the medical device’s angel investors for additional seed funding. |
Get ready to see some "shooting stars" this weekend, skywatchers.
The 2013 Leonid meteor shower is expected to be visible from Nov. 16 through Nov. 18. Weather permitting, observers around the world should be able to see the brightest "Leonids" streak across the sky from Saturday night through Sunday morning. The Northern Hemisphere will be treated to the prime show, as it has the best view of the constellation Leo, from which the meteor shower derives its name.
Unfortunately, this year's Leonid meteor shower will not be as visible as the show has been in the past years. Since the moon turns full on Nov. 17 -- in the midst of the shower -- only the brightest of the meteors will be apparent to most watchers. For some, the "shooting stars" may not be detectable at all.
Like last year's Leonid meteor shower, projections suggest that there will be two peaks of activity -- one at 5 a.m. EST on Nov. 17 and the second at 11 a.m. EST, Universe Today reports. Since the meteors are most visible during the dark overnight hours, East Coast viewers will probably have the best chance of seeing the show around the first peak, while the second peak may be best for West Coast watchers.
NASA recommends going outside 30 minutes ahead of the show, so your eyes can adjust to the night sky. Also, it's best to choose a viewing location away from artificial lighting. Typically, 10 to 15 meteors are visible per hour.
For those who are unable to step outside or can't view the meteors from their location, NASA and the privately owned SLOOH Space Camera are both offering live streams of the radiant show. |
Living in a country where people learn world geography through frequently fought overseas wars, Americans are accustomed to reading about places where we’ve fought wars – Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. But one formerly war-ravaged part of the world most Americans don’t think much about is Okinawa.
Once the independent kingdom of Ryukyu, Okinawa was annexed by Japan through a series of events in the 1870s. At the end of World War II, exactly 70 years ago, Okinawa was the site of one of the war’s most ferocious battles. Caught between the armies of Japan and the United States, Okinawans suffered unspeakable horrors during the “typhoon of steel.” Viewed as expendable under imperial Japan, many Okinawans were killed outright by Japanese soldiers or forced to commit mass suicide. An estimated 120,000 Okinawans – between one-third and one-quarter of the population – died between March and June 1945.
The pain inflicted during the war and its aftermath underscored the Okinawan core value nuchi du takara (“life is precious”) and left many Okinawans highly adverse to warfare and militarism. Despite this, Okinawa has remained one of the most militarized places in the world for more than 70 years, first under direct US military occupation and continuing after Okinawa’s “reversion” to Japan in 1972.
Okinawa is one of the smallest of Japan’s 47 prefectures, and although it accounts for less than one percent of Japanese territory, it is home to around 24,000 US military personnel, almost half of Japan’s total, and is burdened with nearly 75 percent of US bases in Japan.
Consider what it’s like to have 20 percent of your small, crowded island home occupied by more than 32 foreign military bases and some 50 restricted air and marine military training sites. The island of Okinawa, which has a population of 1.4 million, is 20 percent smaller than the Hawaiian island of Kauai, which has around 70,000 people. Given these numbers, it isn’t hard to imagine why Okinawans are fed up with being (again) sacrificed by the central government in Tokyo to serve as Japan’s primary military staging grounds (and, many point out, a potential target should a major war break out).
More war? No Thanks
Although it receives scant coverage in US media, the history of noise, crowding, toxic pollution, environmental harm, crime, sexual violence and serious military accidents in Okinawa has been well-documented.
Now, as a more assertive Japan reconsiders its commitment to pacifism, or at least nonmilitarism, as defined by its Constitution, Tokyo and the US are pushing hard for a new military base they say will “replace” Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, which sprawls across crowded Ginowan City on Okinawa.
Plans to “relocate” (or build an entirely new base depending who you ask) from the crowded South to the more sparsely populated and biologically diverse marine environment of Henoko Point and Oura Bay, have been evolving over the two decades since the gang rape of a 12-year-old Okinawan girl by three US servicemen unleashed new outrage. But the idea of a new and expanded base in the relatively pristine north has never been as unpopular as now.
Okinawa’s Governor Takeshi Onaga, who was overwhelmingly elected on his promise to stop construction of the Henoko base, has been trying to get Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and other top officials to back off the base and find an alternative location outside of Okinawa prefecture.
After months of Abe seeming to avoid Onaga, the two finally met face-to-face two weeks before the prime minister embarked on a high-profile US visit that was crowned with a rare address to a joint session of Congress.
Sore Spot
The Abe-Onaga meeting demonstrated nothing more than the depth of the rift between the two men. Moreover, Abe’s address before Congress in April must have surely rubbed Okinawans sorely, as Abe spoke of the Japan-US alliance’s “respect for human rights and freedom,” while calling the partnership an “Alliance of Hope.”
Two weeks after Abe’s US visit, some 35,000 Okinawans rallied against the Henoko base plan. The very next day, an MV-22 Osprey – a hybrid aircraft widely unpopular in Okinawa over noise and safety concerns – crashed at a military air base in Hawaii, further igniting Okinawans determination to roll back the US presence.
All this occurred just as Gov. Onaga was preparing to take Okinawa’s appeal against the Henoko plan to the United States, where he arrived on May 27. After meeting members of Hawaii’s congressional delegation, Governor David Ige (who is himself of Okinawan ancestry) and members of the local Okinawan community, Onaga now brings his “no new base” message to Washington DC.
It’s not clear how high up the pole the governor will get in Washington or how much sway, if any, his message will have with policy makers who are supposed to have oversight of overseas base construction. But if anyone is going to express solidarity with the people of Okinawa on the issue of bases, it should be American citizens. After all, the US military stands at the core of Okinawa’s long struggle.
Not in My Backyard
Americans, when they are aware (not always easy when the US media willfully ignores issues relating to the impact of overseas US bases), can certainly understand why people wouldn’t want a foreign military occupying their land.
Like Okinawans, Americans have demonstrated opposition to disruptive, destructive and dangerous military training and testing. Recent examples from Vermont and Alaska, to Washington State, Hawaii and elsewhere, show Americans share similar concerns to people in Okinawa. In consequence, at a minimum, we have a moral responsibility to be better informed and more engaged with how our military affects people around the world.
If the human rights, freedom and democracy that we so often speak of as American ideals and values mean anything at all, we owe it not just to people in Okinawa, but to ourselves, to live up to our own ideals. We must recognize that one more base on an island already overburdened by our military is not going to make us or them safer, and, in the long run, it may very well produce the opposite result.
And if that is too much to consider, ask yourself: How many foreign military bases would you accept in your hometown? How many foreign soldiers should the US allow to occupy its soil? If that number is zero, why should it be any different in Okinawa?
This article has been modified to reflect a correction regarding the size of Okinawa prefecture and its annexation by Japan. |
1
When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d,
And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night,
I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.
Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring,
Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west,
And thought of him I love.
2
O powerful western fallen star!
O shades of night—O moody, tearful night!
O great star disappear’d—O the black murk that hides the star!
O cruel hands that hold me powerless—O helpless soul of me!
O harsh surrounding cloud that will not free my soul.
3
In the dooryard fronting an old farm-house near the white-wash’d palings,
Stands the lilac-bush tall-growing with heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
With many a pointed blossom rising delicate, with the perfume strong I love,
With every leaf a miracle—and from this bush in the dooryard,
With delicate-color’d blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
A sprig with its flower I break.
4
In the swamp in secluded recesses,
A shy and hidden bird is warbling a song.
Solitary the thrush,
The hermit withdrawn to himself, avoiding the settlements,
Sings by himself a song.
Song of the bleeding throat,
Death’s outlet song of life, (for well dear brother I know,
If thou wast not granted to sing thou would’st surely die.)
5
Over the breast of the spring, the land, amid cities,
Amid lanes and through old woods, where lately the violets peep’d from the ground, spotting the gray debris,
Amid the grass in the fields each side of the lanes, passing the endless grass,
Passing the yellow-spear’d wheat, every grain from its shroud in the dark-brown fields uprisen,
Passing the apple-tree blows of white and pink in the orchards,
Carrying a corpse to where it shall rest in the grave,
Night and day journeys a coffin.
6
Coffin that passes through lanes and streets,
Through day and night with the great cloud darkening the land,
With the pomp of the inloop’d flags with the cities draped in black,
With the show of the States themselves as of crape-veil’d women standing,
With processions long and winding and the flambeaus of the night,
With the countless torches lit, with the silent sea of faces and the unbared heads,
With the waiting depot, the arriving coffin, and the sombre faces,
With dirges through the night, with the thousand voices rising strong and solemn,
With all the mournful voices of the dirges pour’d around the coffin,
The dim-lit churches and the shuddering organs—where amid these you journey,
With the tolling tolling bells’ perpetual clang,
Here, coffin that slowly passes,
I give you my sprig of lilac.
7
(Nor for you, for one alone,
Blossoms and branches green to coffins all I bring,
For fresh as the morning, thus would I chant a song for you O sane and sacred death.
All over bouquets of roses,
O death, I cover you over with roses and early lilies,
But mostly and now the lilac that blooms the first,
Copious I break, I break the sprigs from the bushes,
With loaded arms I come, pouring for you,
For you and the coffins all of you O death.)
8
O western orb sailing the heaven,
Now I know what you must have meant as a month since I walk’d,
As I walk’d in silence the transparent shadowy night,
As I saw you had something to tell as you bent to me night after night,
As you droop’d from the sky low down as if to my side, (while the other stars all look’d on,)
As we wander’d together the solemn night, (for something I know not what kept me from sleep,)
As the night advanced, and I saw on the rim of the west how full you were of woe,
As I stood on the rising ground in the breeze in the cool transparent night,
As I watch’d where you pass’d and was lost in the netherward black of the night,
As my soul in its trouble dissatisfied sank, as where you sad orb,
Concluded, dropt in the night, and was gone.
9
Sing on there in the swamp,
O singer bashful and tender, I hear your notes, I hear your call,
I hear, I come presently, I understand you,
But a moment I linger, for the lustrous star has detain’d me,
The star my departing comrade holds and detains me.
10
O how shall I warble myself for the dead one there I loved?
And how shall I deck my song for the large sweet soul that has gone?
And what shall my perfume be for the grave of him I love?
Sea-winds blown from east and west,
Blown from the Eastern sea and blown from the Western sea, till there on the prairies meeting,
These and with these and the breath of my chant,
I’ll perfume the grave of him I love.
11
O what shall I hang on the chamber walls?
And what shall the pictures be that I hang on the walls,
To adorn the burial-house of him I love?
Pictures of growing spring and farms and homes,
With the Fourth-month eve at sundown, and the gray smoke lucid and bright,
With floods of the yellow gold of the gorgeous, indolent, sinking sun, burning, expanding the air,
With the fresh sweet herbage under foot, and the pale green leaves of the trees prolific,
In the distance the flowing glaze, the breast of the river, with a wind-dapple here and there,
With ranging hills on the banks, with many a line against the sky, and shadows,
And the city at hand with dwellings so dense, and stacks of chimneys,
And all the scenes of life and the workshops, and the workmen homeward returning.
12
Lo, body and soul—this land,
My own Manhattan with spires, and the sparkling and hurrying tides, and the ships,
The varied and ample land, the South and the North in the light, Ohio’s shores and flashing Missouri,
And ever the far-spreading prairies cover’d with grass and corn.
Lo, the most excellent sun so calm and haughty,
The violet and purple morn with just-felt breezes,
The gentle soft-born measureless light,
The miracle spreading bathing all, the fulfill’d noon,
The coming eve delicious, the welcome night and the stars,
Over my cities shining all, enveloping man and land.
13
Sing on, sing on you gray-brown bird,
Sing from the swamps, the recesses, pour your chant from the bushes,
Limitless out of the dusk, out of the cedars and pines.
Sing on dearest brother, warble your reedy song,
Loud human song, with voice of uttermost woe.
O liquid and free and tender!
O wild and loose to my soul—O wondrous singer!
You only I hear—yet the star holds me, (but will soon depart,)
Yet the lilac with mastering odor holds me.
14
Now while I sat in the day and look’d forth,
In the close of the day with its light and the fields of spring, and the farmers preparing their crops,
In the large unconscious scenery of my land with its lakes and forests,
In the heavenly aerial beauty, (after the perturb’d winds and the storms,)
Under the arching heavens of the afternoon swift passing, and the voices of children and women,
The many-moving sea-tides, and I saw the ships how they sail’d,
And the summer approaching with richness, and the fields all busy with labor,
And the infinite separate houses, how they all went on, each with its meals and minutia of daily usages,
And the streets how their throbbings throbb’d, and the cities pent—lo, then and there,
Falling upon them all and among them all, enveloping me with the rest,
Appear’d the cloud, appear’d the long black trail,
And I knew death, its thought, and the sacred knowledge of death.
Then with the knowledge of death as walking one side of me,
And the thought of death close-walking the other side of me,
And I in the middle as with companions, and as holding the hands of companions,
I fled forth to the hiding receiving night that talks not,
Down to the shores of the water, the path by the swamp in the dimness,
To the solemn shadowy cedars and ghostly pines so still.
And the singer so shy to the rest receiv’d me,
The gray-brown bird I know receiv’d us comrades three,
And he sang the carol of death, and a verse for him I love.
From deep secluded recesses,
From the fragrant cedars and the ghostly pines so still,
Came the carol of the bird.
And the charm of the carol rapt me,
As I held as if by their hands my comrades in the night,
And the voice of my spirit tallied the song of the bird.
Come lovely and soothing death,
Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving,
In the day, in the night, to all, to each,
Sooner or later delicate death.
Prais’d be the fathomless universe,
For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious,
And for love, sweet love—but praise! praise! praise!
For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding death.
Dark mother always gliding near with soft feet,
Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome?
Then I chant it for thee, I glorify thee above all,
I bring thee a song that when thou must indeed come, come unfalteringly.
Approach strong deliveress,
When it is so, when thou hast taken them I joyously sing the dead,
Lost in the loving floating ocean of thee,
Laved in the flood of thy bliss O death.
From me to thee glad serenades,
Dances for thee I propose saluting thee, adornments and feastings for thee,
And the sights of the open landscape and the high-spread sky are fitting,
And life and the fields, and the huge and thoughtful night.
The night in silence under many a star,
The ocean shore and the husky whispering wave whose voice I know,
And the soul turning to thee O vast and well-veil’d death,
And the body gratefully nestling close to thee.
Over the tree-tops I float thee a song,
Over the rising and sinking waves, over the myriad fields and the prairies wide,
Over the dense-pack’d cities all and the teeming wharves and ways,
I float this carol with joy, with joy to thee O death.
15
To the tally of my soul,
Loud and strong kept up the gray-brown bird,
With pure deliberate notes spreading filling the night.
Loud in the pines and cedars dim,
Clear in the freshness moist and the swamp-perfume,
And I with my comrades there in the night.
While my sight that was bound in my eyes unclosed,
As to long panoramas of visions.
And I saw askant the armies,
I saw as in noiseless dreams hundreds of battle-flags,
Borne through the smoke of the battles and pierc’d with missiles I saw them,
And carried hither and yon through the smoke, and torn and bloody,
And at last but a few shreds left on the staffs, (and all in silence,)
And the staffs all splinter’d and broken.
I saw battle-corpses, myriads of them,
And the white skeletons of young men, I saw them,
I saw the debris and debris of all the slain soldiers of the war,
But I saw they were not as was thought,
They themselves were fully at rest, they suffer’d not,
The living remain’d and suffer’d, the mother suffer’d,
And the wife and the child and the musing comrade suffer’d,
And the armies that remain’d suffer’d.
16
Passing the visions, passing the night,
Passing, unloosing the hold of my comrades’ hands,
Passing the song of the hermit bird and the tallying song of my soul,
Victorious song, death’s outlet song, yet varying ever-altering song,
As low and wailing, yet clear the notes, rising and falling, flooding the night,
Sadly sinking and fainting, as warning and warning, and yet again bursting with joy,
Covering the earth and filling the spread of the heaven,
As that powerful psalm in the night I heard from recesses,
Passing, I leave thee lilac with heart-shaped leaves,
I leave thee there in the door-yard, blooming, returning with spring.
I cease from my song for thee,
From my gaze on thee in the west, fronting the west, communing with thee,
O comrade lustrous with silver face in the night.
Yet each to keep and all, retrievements out of the night,
The song, the wondrous chant of the gray-brown bird,
And the tallying chant, the echo arous’d in my soul,
With the lustrous and drooping star with the countenance full of woe,
With the holders holding my hand nearing the call of the bird,
Comrades mine and I in the midst, and their memory ever to keep, for the dead I loved so well,
For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and lands—and this for his dear sake,
Lilac and star and bird twined with the chant of my soul,
There in the fragrant pines and the cedars dusk and dim. |
Taking advantage of graphene’s special properties, physicists have experimentally observed a stream of record-breaking electrons that move with a conductance exceeding the limit theorists established decades ago. The researchers reported their findings recently in Nature Physics.
For more than half a century, physicists who study the flow of electrons have wondered how high conductance can go in a material. Conductance is the opposite of resistance; it describes how easily current passes through. Physicists study conductance to investigate fundamental properties of electrons. From a more practical standpoint, devices with high conductance make appealing components for future electronic devices.
The standard assumption, based on pioneering work from the 1960s, predicts a natural maximum for free electrons. Electrons lose momentum as they interact with the impurities, walls, and vibrations of the material, all sources of resistance. But even if they travel ballistically—unimpeded and without scattering—a quantum limit should apply. But new experiments have revealed streams of electrons flagrantly exceeding that upper bound as they flowed through tiny channels in a graphene device—not unlike water or gas streaming through a pinhole.
The work, led by physicist Andre Geim at the University of Manchester and with theoretical support from Marco Polini of Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, in Genoa, reports the first experimental evidence of higher-than-expected conductance, with the electrons flowing like a fluid more viscous than honey. They describe the behavior as “superballistic” because it exceeds the limit for ballistic travel.
Finding such high conductance was “one of the big surprises in these experimental findings,” says physicist Kin Chung Fong at Harvard University, who was not involved in the study.
Theorists have long predicted that such electron fluids can form when interactions between the charged particles dominate over the interactions of the electrons with the material itself. That’s because when electrons encounter impurities or barriers, they lose momentum in the collisions. When they hit other electrons, momentum is conserved. Coaxing that liquid into existence experimentally has been a challenge, says Geim. Ordinary metals have too many impediments.
“In order to create a collective behavior, and viscosity is a collective behavior, you need to allow time and space for the molecules to interact,” says Geim. At low temperatures, in which electrons interact with each other each other over longer distances, normal metals have too many imperfections to allow the electron-electron behavior to dominate. If the temperature is raised, the electron interaction scale decreases—but vibrations can occur in the crystal structure of the material. These can act effectively like obstacles, leading to momentum losses in the electrons.
Graphene, though, changes the game. Made of a single layer of carbon atoms, graphene is stiff and strong, and demonstrates a spectrum of surprising electronic properties. Geim, together with Konstantin Novoselov, first isolated graphene in 2004, and they were awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics for their pioneering work.
Geim says graphene makes a good playground for super-ballistic electrons because it’s free of impurities. But he says “the real breakthrough” came with the realization that electron-phonon interactions are very weak in graphene. Phonons are quasiparticles associated with thermal vibrations in a material, but because “graphene is the stiffest material we know,” Geim notes, vibrations pose less of a problem.
In February 2016, Science published a trio of papers—including one led by Fong, and one led by Geim—reporting hydrodynamic behavior of electrons. They described structures associated with the flow of ordinary gases and liquids, such as turbulence, whirlpools and vortices, but in the electron fluids.
In March of this year, in PNAS, theorists led by Leonid S. Levitov at MIT predicted that super-ballistic behaviors should arise in materials like graphene. The new paper, says Fong, not only verifies those predictions but also shows that physicists have to consider a new limit associated with the viscous flow.
“Graphene provides a basic model to understand these physics because we have a well-controlled environment to study strongly-interacting electron gas now,” says Fong. “These are things that we couldn’t study a year ago.” |
A senior citizen who faces $100 in fines for having free books on his Toronto property is the result of "bureaucratic bullcrap," according to his daughter – and lots of angry people on Facebook agree.
Jennifer Sherwood Hicks took to the social network yesterday after her father, who lives near Yonge and Eglinton, received a letter from the City of Toronto.
The letter, according to Hicks, was sent to notify her dad that the little free library in his front lawn "contravenes city by-laws," and stated that he must remove the wooden box and its contents within 14 days – or be fined.
"ARE YOU KIDDING ME, TORONTO??? IS THIS HOW YOU'RE SPENDING MY TAX DOLLARS...BY HARASSING SENIOR CITIZENS WHO ARE TRYING TO SPREAD A LITTLE LITERARY LOVE AROUND THE NEIGHBOURHOOD???" she wrote on Facebook Wednesday. "Excuse the caps, but I am absolutely steamed."
People from all over the city are similarly incensed over this particular situation, and by what they perceive as an attack on the Little Free Library movement – a literacy initiative that's resulted in the free exchange of millions of books between community members around the world each year.
"Pathetic," wrote one commenter on Hicks' Facebook post. "I've seen a few of these lovely community libraries popping up around the city. Personally, I love them. So sad." "It's a beautiful little library that brings curb appeal and community thoughtfulnes," wrote someone else. "What jerk is behind this madness to remove it?"
Hicks told me today that her father has contacted his city councillor in the hopes of keeping his library, which he received as a Christmas gift last year.
My favourite thing about Toronto are these cute little libraries. Find one near you at littlefreelibrary.org #littlefreelibrary #littlefreelibrarytoronto #books #library #bookstagram #bookworm A post shared by Brianna Benton (@briannafbenton) on Sep 26, 2017 at 1:19pm PDT
"My dad's a fan of mysteries, and you'll always find a few of those in the library," she says. "I keep it stocked with contemporary fiction. A few weeks ago when I posted on my Facebook page that I'd just dropped a few literary gems off, there was a bit of a bidding war over Beartown by Fredrik Backman."
Hicks says she posted about the situation on Facebook "simply to vent," but that she's happy with the response its been getting.
"I'm glad to see neighbours rallying around this cause, and promoting little libraries as community builders," she says. And rallying they are.
"I work in bylaw court often," wrote one local paralegal in the comments. "If they charge you I will take on your case for free and pay your fine if we lose."
Another person offered to pay the fine flat-out. "Where do I send $100," they asked, "to support his generosity?"
Update: The City of Toronto has had a change of heart and canceled the ticket. Little free libraries are here to stay. |
One of the great battle cries of the No campaign is the insistence that an independent Scotland couldn’t possibly be a “land of milk and honey” (even though nobody has ever actually said that it would). You simply can’t, we’re constantly told, run a country with Scandinavian levels of public services on US levels of taxation.
That, of course, is a matter of opinion, rather dependent on what you want that country to spend its money on – it’s a lot easier to afford pensions if you haven’t spunked all your cash on a load of nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers.
But that’s by the by. To make a better, Nordic-style Scotland, we’re warned, we’d all have to pay much more tax, and if there’s one thing that terrifies British people beyond sanity it’s the threat of higher tax. But just for a moment, let’s assume that’s really the choice, and have a quick quiz.
Which of these scenarios would you prefer?
(a) A salary of £23,063 taxed at 21%?
(b) A salary of £41,025 taxed at 27%?
Take your time. Use a calculator if you like. There’s no rush.
We didn’t just pluck those numbers out of the air. They’re the World Bank’s current calculations of international GDP per capita for the UK and Norway respectively, adjusted for what’s called “Purchasing Power Parity”, or PPP. (We’ve also converted them from dollars to Sterling.)
What PPP means is that the figures already take account of the cost of living, so they’re genuinely comparable – it doesn’t matter that beer costs £10 a pint in Norway or whatever, because that’s been factored into the figures, which means you know you can still afford to buy 1.78 pints (41 divided by 23) in Oslo for every one pint you can get in Auchtermuchty before your wages run out.
The gap’s getting bigger, too. Those are 2012 figures – in 2009 Norwegians were only 1.59 times as well off than their British counterparts. And it’s actually worse still, because those are national averages but Norway is a much more equal country than the UK, so the average Brit doesn’t get as much of their fair share of national GDP wealth as the average Norwegian does. But let’s not complicate things.
The graph above is Norwegian taxation. Conveniently, the exchange rate between the Norwegian krone and the pound is almost exactly 10:1, so it’s easy to compare to UK wages. At an income of 410,000 krone a year (£41,000), a Norwegian worker is still paying only around 27% in income tax and the equivalent of National Insurance.
(In the UK that same income would put you just inside the 40% bracket, which currently starts at £41,000. Factoring in current personal allowances, your tax and NI would take roughly £11,200 out of that – an effective combined tax/NI rate of, er, 27.3%. So what we’ve learned is this: on a very healthy salary of £41,000 a Norwegian would actually still be paying slightly LESS tax than a UK worker on the same wages.)
But the average UK worker would actually be taking home roughly £18,000 a year less than that, and paying a lower total of around 21.4% in tax and NI after single-person’s allowance. So let’s finish the calculation:
Worker with average national purchasing power
UK: £23,000 minus tax/NI of £4935 = £18,065 disposable income
Norway: £41,000 minus tax/NI of £11,070 = £29,930 disposable income
That, readers, is the reality of the “Scandinavian tax levels” with which the No camp seeks to terrify Scottish voters. A country the same size as Scotland with similar levels of natural resources, but which chooses different spending priorities, is almost £12,000 better off per head per year DESPITE higher tax rates.
This is the great lie of neoliberalism, the political creed which now unites all three UK parties – that we need austerity because there just isn’t enough money to go round, but we have to cut taxes for “wealth creators” so that some of it will trickle down to the rest of us. But Norway shows that it’s simply a matter of which choices you make.
So that’s the reality. Vote Yes next year and you could find yourself paying 6% more tax, but in return for a 65% pay increase. Sound like a fair trade? |
The Himachal Pradesh high court on Friday ordered state chief information commissioner Bhim Sen and information commissioner KD Batish to seek an unconditional apology for disobeying its orders in the Priyanka Gandhi land deal case.
The commissioners withdrew an earlier affidavit in which, sources said, they had said they were sorry “if the court deemed them guilty”.
A division bench, comprising Justice Tarlok Singh Chauhan and Justice Sureshwar Thakur, listed November 27 for the next hearing.
The two officers have been asked to file a fresh affidavit of apology.
The high court had on August 7 served a notice on the two officers and asked them to explain why contempt proceedings shouldn’t be initiated as they had “deliberately disobeyed” the court’s order.
Priyanka’s counsel had told the high court that the state information commission had continued hearing the case about divulging of information about her land deals at Chharabra village near Shimla town to an applicant under the RTI Act, despite the court’s stay on it.
Even after the stay on the proceedings of the case, the information commission had pulled up its officers and asked them to explain the delay in proving information before the court ordered the restraint.
First Published: Oct 09, 2015 17:22 IST |
The Milwaukee Brewers acquired Luis Sardinas as part of the trade that sent Yovani Gallardo to Texas. And with Scooter Gennett being demoted to the minors, along with Hector Gomez and Elian Herrera doing very little positive things at the plate, Sardinas was called up maybe earlier than what people expected. In 32 games in Triple-A, Sardinas posted a .324 OBP and created 10% fewer runs than league average. In other words, he didn’t do much with the bat that warranted a promotion; however, his Triple-A numbers as a player in the Brewers’ organization were better than they were as a Triple-A player with Texas.
After a hot start with the big-league club, Sardinas has slowed down and has become the player most scouts have him pegged as. He’s good with the glove (although Defensive Runs Saved has yet to see that), but very below-average offensively. He has yet to walk this season, and is striking out at a 23.8% clip. Plus, his lack of power is unsettling.
Sardinas is a shortstop by trade, but unluckily for him, the Brewers already have one of those in Jean Segura. And no, the Brewers are not about to give up on Segura. Milwaukee also has a stud shortstop in Double-A right now in Orlando Arcia. Arcia, by the way, is currently taking the league by storm. ESPN’s scout guy Keith Law recently ranked him as baseball’s 20th-best prospect. He’s so talented that Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Todd Rosiak suggested the Brewers might move Segura to third base in order to make room for Arcia. They might not need to do that if Arcia can man second, but as of now, that’s not in the plans.
Sardinas is capable of handling second base, which makes him a bit more valuable, but do the Brewers really want three infielders — Segura, Arcia and Sardinas — who have absolutely no pop or power in their bats? I would be very surprised if the infield shaped up like that in the future. The Brewers have a hard enough time as it is scoring runs.
That’s why you shouldn’t be surprised if Sardinas is wearing a different uniform come August.
It basically comes down to this: who has the higher ceiling, Sardinas or Gennett? The Brewers will probably trade one of them, if not both, and I think Sardinas would offer the greatest return. He’s younger, is a better defender and can switch-hit, meaning there’s no need to platoon him like a team would and has done with Gennett. Milwaukee would, however, need to demand a power-hitting third baseman or a second baseman with at least gap power. When Aramis Ramirez retires after the season, the Brewers will be in desperate need of someone in the infield who is capable of producing runs.
Sardinas might be the ticket that grants that wish. |
What a busy past month! I bought a place, had it renovated, was sent to London last minute for work, and then moved.
I’ve been living off of sliced turkey and cheese, but am finally up and cooking in my new kitchen.
Long time readers will probably have noticed I don’t post many chicken recipes. I’m not a fan of chicken in general, but after seeing this delicious looking low carb chicken nuggets over at Fat Cat Keto, I had to give it a try.
Well, it was a learning experience using my new stove. Apparently there is an ‘ultra hot hot hot’ for ‘long pots’, and I burnt my oil and first batch of chicken. I tried both a fry and a bake version.
I also got a new food processor! WOOO!!! I splurged and got the a fly stainless steel 11 cup Cuisinart. I used it tonight for the first time and was VERY happy. I’ll post a review in another update. But it was perfect timing to make these Low Carb Chicken Nuggets.
Low Carb Chicken Nuggets Print Recipe A yummy Low Carb Chicken Nuggets recipe! Prep Time 20 minutes Cook Time 20 Prep Time 20 minutes Cook Time 20 Low Carb Chicken Nuggets Print Recipe A yummy Low Carb Chicken Nuggets recipe! Prep Time 20 minutes Cook Time 20 Prep Time 20 minutes Cook Time 20 Ingredients 2 pounds Chicken Breast
2 bags 3oz Pork Rinds i used mission picante pork rinds
1 cup Flaxseed Meal
4 Eggs
Salt
Coconut Oil Servings: Instructions In your food processor, empty one bag of the pork rinds and 1/2 cup of the flaxseed meal Place pork rind mixture into a large bowl Cut chicken up into small, consistently sized pieces (mine were about 1.5"x1.5") In a bowl, mix two eggs with salt, pepper and garlic powder Dip chicken in egg mixture, and then coat in the mixture Repeat this process with the second half of the ingredients to finish coating all the chicken Share this Recipe Powered by WP Ultimate Recipe
To bake: Set oven to 380 degrees, and bake for 20 minutes. 10 minutes in, give the chicken a shake
To fry: Heat up coconut oil over medium heat and cook for about 4 minutes per side, turning chicken, until cooked
Serve with celery and blue cheese dressing! Serves 4.
If you want the baked ones crispy, or if you go to re-heat, just heat up some coconut oil and throw them in to crisp them up!
Products used to make the Low Carb Chicken Nuggets: |
Soft and fluffy angel food cake roll with rich cream filling and fresh strawberries. Tastes good as it looks but don't get intimidated by its beauty. This delicious treat is not as complicated as it looks. You can whip up this masterpiece in under an hour. Here is an easy dessert recipe for Strawberries and Cream Roll.
Ingredients:
Angel Food Cake
9 egg whites in room temperature
1½ teaspoons vanilla extract
¾ teaspoon cream of tartar
1 cup + 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
¾ cup cake flour
1 tablespoon powdered sugar
Strawberries and Cream Filling
2 cups heavy whipping cream, chilled
6 tablespoons powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 cups diced strawberries
Powdered sugar for dusting and strawberry slices for garnish
Procedures:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line a 15x10-inch baking pan with waxed paper and grease lightly with cooking spray. Set aside.
In a large mixing bowl, Beat egg whites, vanilla and cream of tartar using an electric mixer on medium speed until soft peaks form. Add sugar, 2 tablespoons at a time, on high until stiff glossy peaks form and sugar is dissolved. Gently fold in flour, ¼ cup at a time, taking care not to deflate the egg whites.
Spread batter in an even layer into prepared pan using a spatula. Bake for 15-20 minutes or until cake springs back when lightly touched. Remove from oven and cool for while, around 5 minutes.
Lay a clean kitchen towel on a flat work surface and dust with 1 tablespoon powdered sugar. Turn the cake out onto the kitchen towel and gently peel off waxed paper. Roll up the warm cake in the towel jelly-roll style, starting with a short side. Cool completely on a wire rack.
While waiting for the roll to cool down, beat the cream on medium speed until it begins to thicken. Add powdered sugar and vanilla; increase the speed to medium-high and beat until soft peaks form. Gently fold in the strawberries. Chill in the refrigerator until ready to use.
Carefully unroll the angel food cake on a flat surface. Spread filling on top of the cake to within ½-inch of edges. Gently roll up again and place seam side down on a serving plate. Sprinkle top with powdered sugar and garnish with strawberry slices, if desired. Cover leftover with plastic wrap and keep in the refrigerator.
Get These Other Easy Dessert Recipes:
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Move over Watson. Microsoft has trained an artificial intelligence program that can pick through the thousands of submissions to the New Yorker’s cartoon caption contest to help find a winner. Bloomberg writes that Microsoft researchers worked with Bob Mankoff, the cartoon editor at the New Yorker to train a computer to understand what makes a New Yorker cartoon funny. Mankoff, who goes through an assistant every two-years because they suffer burn out reading so many caption entries, is excited about the AI possibilities.
Dafna Shahaf, a researcher at Microsoft, used the database of cartoons to train the program to understand commonalities and differences in the millions of cartoons, which lets the AI run through the entries the New Yorker receives each week for its back-of-magazine cartoon caption contest. About 55.8% of the time the humans agree with the captions the AI selects, which is a pretty good percentage.
That means the New Yorker could use the system to eliminate at least 2,200 submissions a week without missing the gems. “On average, we saved about 50 percent of his workload,” says Shahaf. It could also save Mankoff the time it takes to hire new assistants. “I do think the future is human-machine companionship,” Mankoff says. “Computers can be a great aid.”
From a technical perspective, computers have not suddenly learned a sense of humor (not even the dry, New Yorker sense of humor). They have learned how to emulate a specific style of humor, although that in itself is pretty cool, because learning how to emulate something, as opposed to being told exactly how to do something is an important step. If you ran the same AI against Dilbert or Ziggy caption suggestions you’d get poorer results because the Microsoft AI is trained against the New Yorker’s specific archives. However, getting computers to “understand” humor is an important step in almost all aspects of interacting with humans and translation.
Thus, efforts to make the lives of Mankoff’s assistants easier has the added benefit of possibly making Microsoft’s Cortana or Skype’s translation features better as well. And maybe one day, instead of just helping weed out caption suggestions, researchers can build an AI that will write one on its own. |
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