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THAILAND is in the final stretch of a nail-biting election campaign, with only three days to go. A surge in support for the opposition party, led by the sister of Thaksin Shinawatra, former prime minister, has alarmed the ruling party and its military pals. What better time, then, to publish a book-length online exposé of the “invisible hand” in Thai politics? Armed with a trove of leaked American cables, a British journalist has done just that. The first two parts of his tale, entitled “Thaistory”, are available via his website. A third installment is promised shortly, with a final chapter to follow.
In American political parlance, such an exposé released on the eve of an election might be hailed as an “October surprise”. After all, most news channels love chewing on political conspiracies. But this one has proved far too hot to handle for Thailand's media. For all the online traffic and Twitter exchanges that “Thaistory” has generated, it has been studiously ignored by Thailand's mainstream media. Government censors have begun to block access to the story. Only a left-leaning news website, Prachatai, translated the original article (in English) by Andrew Marshall, a former correspondent with Thomson Reuters.
The reason is simple, and woven into the fabric of the conspiracy: the “invisible hand” wishes to stay off-stage in Thailand's political drama. In case you have not guessed, the hand belongs to the Thai royal family and their courtiers. Mr Marshall traces—often with excruciating detail—how King Bhumibol Adulyadej and his rather dysfunctional family have exercised power behind the scenes, notably during the rise and fall of Mr Thaksin, who was ousted by royalist generals in 2006.
Much of the account may be familiar in its broad outline to readers of this newspaper. But now it is salted with the pungent analysis of American diplomats and their informants, courtesy of WikLeaks. Mr Marshall is not the first journalist to scan these cables for news leads. Other news organisations apparently took a look and passed, either for lack of interest in the subject matter or for fear of upsetting Thailand's government, which has strict laws to prevent the public discussion of royal affairs. Mr Marshall decided that he would rather quit his job than sit on the story, so he parted ways with Reuters. His former employer says it didn't publish the story because of concerns over its “length, sourcing, objectivity, and legal issues”.
Presumably, Mr Marshall didn't expect a newswire to run a book-length article. In its current form, it is a sequel of sorts to The King Never Smiles, a critical biography of Bhumibol that caused a furore when Yale University Press published it in 2006. Thai diplomats went to extraordinary lengths to try to stop or delay that book's publication. Its arrival during the tense run-up to the coup fed a general paranoia about Mr Thaksin, who had thumbed his nose at royal flummery and styled himself as a sort of father figure to the country, in competition with Bhumibol. Five years on, Mr Thaksin is plotting a comeback via the ballot box, raising the stakes again.
This is the back-story to Thailand's political convulsions, which is why scholars will be pouring over the “Thaistory”, as will American diplomats and their embarrassed confidants. The Thai public can expect no such privileges from the guardians of public debate. Mr Marshall writes that, “Thailand needs to start dealing with reality”, which includes the likelihood of a messy succession to Bhumibol and the fact that many ordinary Thais no longer believe the royal mythmakers. Easier said than done, which is why politicians can be counted on to ignore these revelations as they race through the final stretch to the polls. |
Quote Hey folks,
I have a few updates to pass on regarding the current issues with Nightmare Loot Drops. First, we discovered there is a bug with the percentage chance of a 224 rated item dropping in any of our Nightmare Operations. We plan to address this when we release Chapter 10 (Game Update 4.1) scheduled in February. If we are able to address it sooner, I’ll pass along an update.
Aside from that, we realized that we need to make a correction to our Operations and Flashpoints in Fallen Empire blog. Currently it states the following:
Nightmare Mode will also be available for all the Operations that had it previously, and will reward the same as the highlighted Hard Mode, as well as the unique mounts and titles available currently.
This statement is in error and needs to be corrected. When running a Nightmare Operation, there is a chance that a 224 item can drop, but it is not a guaranteed drop like the highlighted Hard Mode is. Nightmare Mode Operations will still drop their unique mounts and titles, and once fixed there is a chance to get 224 gear from them. It is by design that the best and most consistent way to gear up in Operations is to run the highlighted Hard Mode each week. Although they did certainly want to make sure there was a chance for greater reward from Nightmare!
We apologize for any confusion and will make sure that the blog is updated to reflect the correct information. I will pass on any further updates as I have them.
Thanks.
-eric Eric Musco | Community Manager
Follow us on Twitter @SWTOR | Like us on Facebook
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Connelly: 'Shattered,' Clinton's campaign was a ship seeking an iceberg
Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks to a group at the IAM District 751 Everett Union Hall, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. She would be swamped by Bernie Sanders in the state's Democratic caucuses.
Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks to a group at the IAM District 751 Everett Union Hall, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. She would be swamped by Bernie Sanders in the state's Democratic caucuses. Photo: GENNA MARTIN, SEATTLEPI.COM Photo: GENNA MARTIN, SEATTLEPI.COM Image 1 of / 12 Caption Close Connelly: 'Shattered,' Clinton's campaign was a ship seeking an iceberg 1 / 12 Back to Gallery
The disconnected "data driven" 2016 campaign of Hillary Clinton helped deliver to America the disorganized, ego-driven presidency of Donald Trump.
"Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton's Doomed Campaign" (Crown, $28) explains how Clinton put it all together: Feuding centers of power, states taken for granted, inadequate field operations, an out-of-touch candidate, and disconnect with blue-collar voters once described by Bill Clinton as "those who work hard and play by the rules."
The book's account of the Democrats' national campaign mirrors what was taking place in this Washington.
Bill Clinton used to come out here for big Pike Place Market rallies and a bus tour across Southwest Washington. Hillary Clinton closeted herself with big donors. She last answered a Northwest press question in 2008.
Democratic luminaries, e.g. Veep nominee Tim Kaine and Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook, came but were never seen in public. They made cameo appearances at a party headquarters in Madrona, a Seattle neighborhood that votes 90 percent Democratic.
Once upon a time, in this writer's memory, the party's message delivered on the radio was: "Vote Democratic, the party for you, not just the few." The party's 2016 motto could have been, "Democrats: Behind closed doors."
Hillary carried the state, Gov. Inslee was reelected, but the Democrats took a bath in State Senate races, contests for the Snohomish and Pierce County Councils, and county commissioner races across once-solid Democratic turf.
"Shattered" is fair to its subject. It gives full treatment to hits taken by the Clinton campaign. Whenever Hillary seemed to put the email controversy behind her, she was snared once more. The culmination was FBI director Jim Comey announcing a reopening for the cause just 11 days before election day.
Yet, the Clinton campaign was replete with unforced errors. The candidate tongue-lashed her staff, never shouldering blame. "Shattered" reports:
"The one person with whom she didn't seem particularly upset: Herself. No one who drew a salary from the campaign would tell her that. It was a self-signed death warrant to raise a question about Hillary's competence -- to her or anyone else -- in loyalty-obsessed Clintonworld."
After Hillary lost the Michigan primary to Bernie Sanders, a harbinger of things to come in November, aides endured a browbeating. Clinton claimed her message was "off" and that Mook's analytics were off.
"The list went on and on," the authors write. "The underlying truth -- the one many didn't want to admit to themselves -- was that the person ultimately responsible for these decisions, the one whose name was on the ticket, hadn't corrected for these problems, all of which had been brought to her attention before primary day."
The candidate, and her campaign, seemed to eschew contact with the folks.
A classic political story, out of Massachusetts, was of future House Speaker Thomas "Tip" O'Neill trudging home after losing his first race for office.
"I voted for you, Thomas, although you didn't ask me to," his landlady said. O'Neill replied that he knew he could count on her. "Thomas, it's nice to be asked," she replied.
Hillary didn't ask. She never set foot in Wisconsin in the general election campaign, and did only one 11th hour touchdown in Michigan. Such Democratic bastions as Erie and Scranton in Pennsylvania were ignored, and voted for Trump. (So did Grays Harbor County in Washington.)
Instead, Hillary was raising money in Martha's Vineyard, joining Cher onstage in Provincetown, Mass., hitting the Hamptons and mingling with Jimmy Buffett, Harvey Weinstein, Jon Bon Jovi and Sir Paul McCartney at Sag Harbor on Long Island.
One person sensed something wrong, and understood the populist vibes sweeping America -- Bill Clinton. Amazingly, the young analytics whizzes -- one of whom was glowingly profiled in the New York Times -- treated Bill as old, out-of-touch with modern technology and of "little value."
"Bill liked data, but he believed it was insufficient," write authors Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes. "To him, politics wasn't just about finding people who agreed with you and getting them to the polls. He felt that it was important to talk to voters individually, and get a real sense for what they were feeling. He also believed that a candidate could persuade voters with the right argument."
Disconnect with "the folks" intensified hits on Clinton's credibility, whether administered by Donald Trump or emails hacked by the Russians. Hillary simply wasn't liked. She had collected too much scar tissue from a quarter-century on the national stage.
Post-election polls showed that a quarter of Trump's voters believed he was unqualified to be president. Anger at being left behind, at an American dream slipping from their grasp, trumped doubts about Trump.
The Clinton have loomed above the Democratic Party like a banyan tree, blocking light and stunting growth. As well, the party was decimated at the state and local level during the Obama years.
Can it grow out again? Reconnect with rural areas and non-college educated white voters? Get beyond stifling identity politics? Nurture a new generation of leaders?
Democratic National Chairman Tom Perez is in Seattle -- yes, the liberal island of Seattle -- on Tuesday. He has the challenge of challenging the troops. |
LIVINGSTON, Texas - Three employees were badly burned after a floor collapsed, sending hot grease in their direction, authorities said.
Video taken inside the restaurant right after the floor collapsed showed all the destruction.
Firefighters said after the floor caved in the fryer tipped over, sending the scalding hot grease everywhere.
Erica Acevedo, one of the employees, was badly burned in the incident. Her sister spoke to KSAT 12's sister station KPRC outside the hospital.
"She's gonna need skin grafts," Angela Galan said. "They've done surgeries, but she has several more to go."
Galan said Acevedo has burns over 50 percent of her body.
The Galan family said the 26-year-old single mother started working at Church's Chicken as a second job to make a little extra money for her son's back-to-school clothes and to help pay off her car.
"She just recently went back not even a week ago and started picking up hours," Galan said. "It's just not right."
The family wants to know why the floor collapsed in the first place. They believe the incident could have been prevented.
The Livingston fire chief said the incident is under investigation and OSHA is involved.
Copyright 2016 by KPRC Click2Houston - All rights reserved. |
With the cost of living skyrocketing in areas all throughout the country, many consumers are seeking out cheap, or preferably free, ways to curve their utility bills. When it comes to heating your home throughout the winter months, a wood-burning stove effectively warms your living spaces without burning through your bank account. To further deepen your monthly energy costs, stop buying your firewood and turn to these completely free, and completely legal, ways of gathering perfectly good free firewood.
Ask Tree Surgeons/Arborists For Free Firewood
Update: We use this method every year now. It is the only method here that we need to use, to get all the firewood we need (for FREE). We simply get the green, unprocessed wood delivered in the spring and early summer. I then saw, chop it, and store it for use the following winter.
Most tree surgeons (Arborists) are clever enough to realize that logging, seasoning and selling their hardwood waste is a no-brainer. However, there’s only really any value in hardwood logs, as this is what most people want to burn. This leaves a lot of fresh softwood being wasted or chipped for biomass (that usually just gets taken off their hands in bulk for little or no money). If you are willing to burn softwood (and if it is free then you should be willing!), it’s not too difficult to find a local tree surgeon/arborist who will be happy to dump loads of cords/tree rings on your driveway for free. This literally is an untapped resource for free firewood! All you need to do is cut it up and season it. Contact some of your local companies and ask. Some will ignore you or say no. Some may offer to deliver loads for $20 etc, but some will also be happy to help you out for free, as it helps them out.
We do this and get all the firewood to heat our home for free. As we have built relationships with a few local companies, they also sometimes deliver hardwood loads as well. If they are cutting several trees close to us, it is easier for them to quickly dump loads with us, rather than travel further to their depot each time during the day.
At the beginning of this year, we had several large loads of tree rings and branches delivered. None of it was perfect firewood, there was some very wet (but not rotten) oak that had been laying on the ground for sometime and some green sycamore and pine. This was all sawn, chopped and stored to season throughout the summer. We now have more than enough free firewood to get us through the winter, without spending a penny on heating. If you want free firewood, get in touch with local arborists!
A note on burning softwood: providing it is well dried and seasoned (which takes half the time of hardwoods!), and you get your chimney/flue cleaned once or twice a year, there is absolutely no problem with burning pines and other softwoods. Sure softwood burns through a bit quicker, but it is not an issue when it is free!
Free Firewood From Construction Tree Debris
As construction crews clear the land for new developments etc, there may be a significant amount of heavy brush or tree branches left in their wake. While some construction companies sell wood to firewood merchants or lumber yards, smaller branches and brush are often available free of charge as long as you receive permission from the construction manager. It is always worth asking when you see new developments in your area.
Find Free Firewood On eBay, Gumtree & FreeCycle
Every day, there are people in your area giving away waste wood (pallets etc) and wood from trees and bushes they have cut down on their properties. People without wood-burning stoves and fireplaces are only too happy to give their wood away for free, rather than having to dispose of it themselves. All you have to do is go around and pick up the wood. Check eBay, Gumtree and Freecycle and other similar websites, and search in your areas for free firewood and logs etc. Some people will charge a small amount, but most are only too happy to have someone to come over and take it away for them.
Gather Dead Tree Branches
Often times, dead tree branches are found scattered throughout residential or commercial properties. If you notice dead or even dying, trees lining a property, ask the owner if you can gather some of these branches. In many cases, property owners don’t have the need for the wood, or the financial resources to have the trees removed. Therefore, by gathering these potentially hazardous tree branches you’re not only stockpiling your free firewood supply but also helping out a neighbor.
Post Storm Tree Debris
After a major thunderstorm, tree branches tend to accumulate along the side of the road or in yards of commercial and residential properties. While most property owners simply throw away storm debris, ask the property owner if you can help collect and remove the debris with the premise of keeping some, or all, of the wood. If you live in an area that frequently sees windstorms, this could be the sole source of your free firewood supply.
Wooden Pallets Make Excellent Free Kindling
Commercial retail stores and warehouses use wooden pallets for a myriad of reasons. While many businesses reuse pallets, once damaged, or once their stock of pallets becomes too large, many are open to donating to local residents for firewood purposes. The size, shape, and portability of wooden pallets make them a perfect source for firewood, especially kindling. Just be sure to check they are pressure treated, rather than chemically treated. Most are these days, but it is better to check. A quick Google of the stamps on the pallets will tell you.
Ask Sawmills For Free Waste/Off Cuts
Many sawmills actively search for ways to reduce their overhead, which includes disposal costs associated with end cut removal. Contact your local saw mill and ask about pick up times for scrap lumber. While you’re there, don’t forget to pick up a bag or two of sawdust, which may be used as kindling. The sawmill got rid of some waste and you got some free firewood!
BONUS Section: How To MAKE Free And Virtually Unlimited Fuel To Heat Your Home
FREE fuel and unlimited fuel to heat your home – that’s quite a promise! It doesn’t actually promise to be a solution to provide ALL of the fuel to heat your home, but depending on the size of your home it probably could do just that… If you have a small house or cabin heated by a wood stove you could probably heat your house using just this method. For larger homes with a wood fire or stove, this would be an excellent addition to firewood which could possibly save you 50%, maybe more on your fuel costs.
You are obviously not going to be able to generate enough junk mail, cardboard and magazines etc to save a fortune (although still worth doing!), but if you ask friends, neighbors and family to save all their paper waste you’ll start to generate a significant amount of fuel material. You could also ask around local businesses for their waste paper too!
(Image from Tiny House Listings)
(Image from: Wikipedia) |
In its June issue Scientific American published an essay stating emphatically that reanimating species such as woolly mammoths from surviving DNA is a bad idea. This dismissal is too hasty. The idea has merit and is worth discussing with an open mind—and with multidisciplinary viewpoints.
The goal of reanimation research is not to make perfect living copies of extinct organisms, nor is it meant to be a one-off stunt in a laboratory or zoo. Reanimation is about leveraging the best of ancient and synthetic DNA. The goal is to adapt existing ecosystems to radical modern environmental changes, such as global warming, and possibly reverse those changes.
Ecosystems that depend on “keystone species” have lost the species diversity they once had because some species no longer fit. As environmental change occurs, ancient diversity may be needed again. For instance, 4,000 years ago the tundras of Russia and Canada consisted of a richer grass- and ice-based ecosystem. Today they are melting, and if that process continues, they could release more greenhouse gas than all the world's forests would if they burned to the ground. A few dozen changes to the genome of a modern elephant—to give it subcutaneous fat, woolly hair and sebaceous glands—might suffice to create a variation that is functionally similar to the mammoth. Returning this keystone species to the tundras could stave off some effects of warming.
Mammoths could keep the region colder by: (a) eating dead grass, thus enabling the sun to reach spring grass, whose deep roots prevent erosion; (b) increasing reflected light by felling trees, which absorb sunlight; and (c) punching through insulating snow so that freezing air penetrates the soil. Poachers seem far less likely to target Arctic mammoths than African elephants.
“De-extinction” is not a novel idea. Medical researchers have resurrected the full genomes of the human endogenous retrovirus HERV-K and the 1918 influenza virus. Insight into these reanimated species could save millions of lives. Several other extinct genes, including for mammoth hemoglobin, have been reconstructed and tested for novel properties. Moving from these few genes to most of the 20,000 or so in a bird or mammalian genome may not be necessary, and even if it is, it may not be hard to do. The costs for a variety of relevant technologies are low—and dropping.
Breeding animals and raising them until there are sufficient numbers to release into the wild is an ambitious undertaking, but the expense should be comparable to breeding livestock or preserving other endangered wildlife. These costs could be reduced if we used genetic means to improve the species we revive—boosting their immunity and fertility and their ability to draw nutrition from available food and to cope with environmental stress.
Aside from bringing back extinct species, reanimation could help living ones by restoring lost genetic diversity. The Tasmanian devil (aka Sarcophilus harrisii) is so inbred at this point that most species members can exchange tumor cells without rejection. A rare transmissible cancer spread via facial wounds is driving the species toward extinction. Reanimating ancestral, diverse Sarcophilus histocompatibility genes, which govern tissue rejection, could save it. Similar arguments could be made for amphibians, cheetahs, corals and other groups. Ancient genes could make them more tolerant of chemicals, heat, infection and drought.
Reanimation is not a panacea for ecosystems at risk. Preventing ongoing extinction of elephants, rhinoceroses and other threatened species is critically important. By all means, we must set priorities for allocating finite conservation resources. But it is a mistake to look at this issue as a zero-sum game. Just as a new vaccine can free up medical resources that would otherwise be spent on sick patients, reanimation may be able to help conservationists by giving them powerful new tools. That this is even a possibility is reason enough to explore it seriously. |
A picture says 1,000 words, and an Instagram caption might tack on another 300, but it takes one truly self-indulgent bro to write an “inspirational” post that somehow conveys a much more pathetic message entirely.
Much of the internet is praising Robbie Tripp, a public speaker and writer, for a seemingly precious Instagram post he made about his wife, Sarah Tripp—well, about Sarah’s body, specifically. In the post, Tripp writes about how he grew up being teased about his attraction to “girls on the thicker side,” who “basic bros” might call chubby or fat.
And while Sarah might not got a spot on the cover of Cosmopolitan, Tripp writes, he loves her for her figure, and wants other women to know they don’t have to change to be considered beautiful—”There is a guy out there who is going to celebrate you for exactly who you are, someone who will love you like I love my Sarah.”
The photo and caption have made the media rounds from Metro to Mic for its inspirational messaging, and tens of people have cheered the Tripps online for their body positivity. But a lot of others have, understandably, criticized Robbie for the post’s performative nature—for emphasizing just how “not basic” of a bro he is for accepting a woman as she is, and how much more elevated he’s become as a human and feminist for choosing to marry a woman with curves.
At first glance, the messaging behind this photo is positive—Tripp is celebrating women for who they are, and expressing his love for his wife. However, his message is tinged in problematic language. Tripp loves that his wife is curvy, but fails to even acknowledge the body positivity movement that his post represents by insinuating that “chubby” and “fat” are insults, instead of descriptors that people have begun to re-appropriate and embrace. He makes a big fuss over her physical attributes and tells women to find a man who is attracted to them, as if what women look like and having a partner defines their value.
“You’re trash. Must’ve been SO hard to be attracted to these women who had it ten times harder than you’ll ever know, but here you go making it all about you and stripping the idea of feminism that these confident women represent,” one person commented.
“Dude, can’t believe how many people are buying this shit. You have no idea about feminism. Typical Instagram famous douche. Not one mention about her personality,” chimed in another.
Other people took issue with Tripp’s message for other men to not “buy into the lie” of thin women being the only kind of women acceptable to find attractive. While it’s definitely a message projected through advertising and entertainment, the fact that Tripp made the distinction that “real” women are fat and completely focused on Sarah’s physical attributes didn’t impress a few followers.
“I caution to watch out for the use of the term ‘real’ or comforting women by saying that we will find a man to love us for who we are one day, as if this is our life goal,” one commenter stated. “All women are real, our curves or lack there of are real, and we should first love ourselves before we expect a man (or woman) to love us back. I love that you love your wife this much. Thick or not, all women are beautiful.”
“Lol but like this somehow still reeks of objectification,” another commented. “Women > their bodies…I agree who cares about size, and this post is great for empowering women who are bigger but empowering them how and for what, to be another desirable object for a man?”
Ultimately, Tripp’s entire post appears to champion the fact that he’s attracted to fat women—excuse me, curvy women—and exudes the energy of someone hoping to be praised and celebrated for being a decent human being who isn’t fat-phobic. Like many feminist men who have made this mistake before him, and many who will after, Tripp’s focus on his own excellence and “good guy” nature comes off as masturbatory instead of celebratory of the woman he’s posting about. He doesn’t elevate Sarah, but instead objectifies her to put his own actions on a pedestal for other men to emulate.
Sarah herself doesn’t seem to mind. In a response on her own Instagram, she thanked people for the kind emails and messages that the couple has received in the wake of Robbie’s viral post—especially the people who tagged their significant other in the comments.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BXVnILDhlwO/?taken-by=sassyredlipstick
The fact remains that we do need more fat acceptance and body-positive messages in the world, and if that post inspired others to be more honest and authentic with themselves and others, then Tripp has done his job. But the act of being a good and decent person shouldn’t be motivated by an opportunity for tens of thousands of likes and other social media praise.
You don’t get brownie points for being a nice guy, and if you try to, you just end up looking like an exploitative jerk searching for validation instead. |
Sprint MVNO Republic Wireless that mostly relies on WiFi and on cellular network only when WiFi is out of the reach has announced a new feature for its customers. For improving voice quality, Republic Wireless launches Bonding Calling. Instead of switching to Sprint’s cellular network only when WiFi is not available, Bonding Calling technology makes Republic phones switch seamlessly to cellular network whenever it recognizes that the WiFi signal is weak.
Switching between cellular and WiFi service whenever WiFi provides a weak signal will result in fewer dropped calls and improved quality of conversation. Republic Wireless said that the new Bonding Calling technology will extend the range of indoor coverage, too.
Bonded Calling is part of Republic’s Adaptive Coverage technology platform and customers are not required to do anything in order to get access to new feature.
Advertisement
“In parallel, our engineers have been laser focused on creating a solution that can deliver a great experience regardless of WiFi conditions, Bonded Calling. It will enable WiFi calls to simultaneously consume cellular data in millisecond intervals, effectively ‘patching’ holes in the conversation and preventing these holes from being noticed. During customer testing of Bonded Calling, we experienced a 52% increase in WiFi call quality across the board, and a 209% increase in quality at the edge of a WiFi network*, which is a notoriously difficult challenge. The best part is our customers don’t have to do anything – we are already rolling out this new feature of our Adaptive CoverageTM technology to our customers.” – said David Morken, chief executive officer and co-founder of Bandwidth and Republic Wireless.
Google’s Project Fi, also WiFi orientated prepaid provider, switches between WiFi and two cellular networks, Sprint’s and T-Mobile’s, searching for the strongest signal possible at the given time and location. Republic Wireless also plans to add GSM service, most likely T-Mobile.
Source: Republic Wireless |
Check out all of the new screenshots in our media section here.
SOE released a whole batch of new Screenshots of the MAX Units as well as the Female Characters!
Latest Comments
2012-05-29 04:18 PM
Malorn Re: New MAX and Female Screenshots The MAX look good - is that "taking a dump" pose they are all in their normal position?
The females look really scrawny. None of the empires seem to give their women proper food rationing. These are soldiers not cheerleaders.
2012-05-29 04:50 PM
Atheosim Re: New MAX and Female Screenshots Malorn Originally Posted by The females look really scrawny. None of the empires seem to give their women proper food rationing. These are soldiers not cheerleaders.
2012-05-29 05:02 PM
capiqu Re: New MAX and Female Screenshots The TR woman definitely looks malnourished .
2012-05-29 05:06 PM
noodz Re: New MAX and Female Screenshots Mean as! MAX units kick-ass.
I thought they weren't going to be in PS2... that's what I read around announcement time, did the community make them change their mind?
2012-05-29 05:13 PM
Atheosim Re: New MAX and Female Screenshots capiqu Originally Posted by The TR woman definitely looks malnourished .
2012-05-29 06:21 PM
Xyntech Re: New MAX and Female Screenshots noodz Originally Posted by Mean as! MAX units kick-ass.
I thought they weren't going to be in PS2... that's what I read around announcement time, did the community make them change their mind?
Although, Battlefield and Call of Duty don't have MAXes, so some players may have assumed they wouldn't be included
2012-05-29 06:30 PM
capiqu Re: New MAX and Female Screenshots Atheosim Originally Posted by What parts of her specifically look underweight?
2012-05-29 06:37 PM
IMMentat Re: New MAX and Female Screenshots Remember the MAX suits don't have a regular trooper next to them to show the scale, so the VS one could well be taller and better armoured than it appears.
Just remember the first pic we saw of the lightning next to the 3 empire specific MBT (it looked huge), perspective is everything.
capiqu Originally Posted by Lol, look how skinny her legs are compred to the VS, and NC women. This is not right T-Ray we want our women to be beautiful ,
The NC model has the curve of her bottom making her leg look thicker plus the baggiest trousers of the set (dirty scavengers don't dress well), the VS armour/padding make them more muscular than the other empires (Tech = Might ).
2012-05-29 06:42 PM
capiqu Re: New MAX and Female Screenshots IMMentat Originally Posted by Remember the MAX suits don't have a regular trooper next to them to show the scale, so the VS one could well be taller and better armoured than it appears.
Just remember the first pic we saw of the lightning next to the 3 empire specific MBT perspective is everything.
You mean compare the 2 sets of baggy combat fatigues with a skin-tight synth-suit?
If anything the Crysis-suit style padding make her look more muscular than the others.
2012-05-29 06:59 PM
IMMentat Re: New MAX and Female Screenshots As is editing posts to argue the relevant side of the question
2012-05-29 07:37 PM
Malorn Re: New MAX and Female Screenshots elfailo Originally Posted by They obviously look malnourished for American standards because the average American woman has a BMI of 50.
2012-05-29 08:45 PM
Malorn Re: New MAX and Female Screenshots You don't live in America, do you? Our women come in all ranges, from morbidly obese to 80 pound anorexic twigs. Most are in the middle. The women models we've seen look like they're about 5'8, 110 lbs.
I expect women soldiers of Planetside to be built more like a triathlete than a cheerleader.
Notice the buffer shoulders and upper body and the less pronounced hips and only slightly more slim than the male triathlete.
Not expecting them to look like Latino weather anchors, but I do expect them to look like someone who gets a lot of exercise and lifts heavy equipment quite regularly. Other than a slightly smaller stature and maybe a less rugged face I don't expect them to look all that noticeably different from male soldiers.
2012-05-29 08:48 PM
SouthernGoods Re: New MAX and Female Screenshots Dude where do you get all this info... you are a great researcher
2012-05-31 09:12 AM
Top Sgt Re: New MAX and Female Screenshots lol it does look like they starved the TR females before sending them out.
2012-05-31 09:18 AM |
Orioles manager Buck Showalter declined to go into detail on the surgery, but he said the urologist opted for surgery after they didn't like Joseph's symptoms. Given the uncommon nature of the injury, Showalter didn't have a timetable for Joseph's return.
BALTIMORE -- Orioles catcher Caleb Joseph underwent surgery late Monday night after a foul tip struck him in the groin during Monday's 7-2 loss to Boston. Joseph was placed on the 15-day disabled list Tuesday with a testicular injury.
BALTIMORE -- Orioles catcher Caleb Joseph underwent surgery late Monday night after a foul tip struck him in the groin during Monday's 7-2 loss to Boston. Joseph was placed on the 15-day disabled list Tuesday with a testicular injury.
Orioles manager Buck Showalter declined to go into detail on the surgery, but he said the urologist opted for surgery after they didn't like Joseph's symptoms. Given the uncommon nature of the injury, Showalter didn't have a timetable for Joseph's return.
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"I know what they thought but there's not a whole lot of history that says, 'If you have this done and you're a catcher when are you going to be able to catch again?'" Showalter said. "Obviously, not before 15 days."
Joseph has started 19 games backing up Matt Wieters. With Joseph headed to the DL, the Orioles recalled catcher Francisco Pena from Triple-A Norfolk.
The 26-year-old Pena didn't know Joseph was injured during Monday's game, so he was surprised when he got a call Tuesday around 10:30 a.m. ET from Norfolk manager Ron Johnson, who told him he was headed to Baltimore.
The self-described defensive catcher is hitting .200 in 24 games at Norfolk this season, but he has hit safely in five of the past six contests, batting .353/.421/.353 (6-for-17) in that stretch.
Pena said he feels comfortable in Baltimore because he played with the guys during Spring Training.
"It helps me a lot because I know everybody here," Pena said. "I caught all the guys in the bullpen; I caught all the starters here. So I have a pretty good idea of what they got, what they throw, what they like to do, what are their tendencies."
The Orioles may call on Pena often while Joseph recovers as Wieters has only caught three straight games once since undergoing Tommy John surgery in June 2014. Although Pena has started just one game -- a 6-0 loss on Sept. 25, 2015, with the Royals -- Showalter doesn't plan to have Wieters catch more often.
"It doesn't change anything about Matt," Showalter said. "We are not going to start pushing up his load and jeopardize something down the road. He may feel differently, but we'll take it day to day. Shouldn't change anything about that. But we'll see."
Ryan Baillargeon is a reporter for MLB.com based in Baltimore. |
When Anonymous heard that teens Daisy Coleman and Paige Parkhurst had tried and failed to bring their alleged rapists to trial, it took action immediately. As with the Steubenville and Rehtaeh Parsons cases, members of the hacker group mobilized and launched #OpMaryville, spreading a video on social media to warn the Missouri town that Anonymous would take action unless authorities reopened Coleman’s case.
And now the case has been reopened.
There’s a virtual template for these operations, constantly refined to make the next op more effective and decrease the amount of hacktivist arrests and raids. YourAnonCentral, the principal Twitter account involved in publicizing #OpMaryville, told us that the campaign is very narrowly focused this time. They are not involved with any Facebook pages, for instance, nor are they running the Twitter accounts @OpMaryville or @Justice4Daisy. “One of the Facebook accounts posted a fake dox yesterday and told people to go to the house,” he said. “We suspect one of the accounts was created by someone trying to derail the operation.”
It’s a small, international team, whose members requested we keep even their Anonymous pseudonyms off the record—all but crypt0nymous, a well-known Anonymous video producer. Crypt0nymous was tasked with creating the message video for #OpMaryville, the call to action featured on websites around the world (including ours). But he’s had difficulty with YouTube. After the #OpMaryville video clocked 130,000 views, YouTube took it down, claiming it violated the site’s terms of service. Others had already uploaded copies of the clip, however.
Since the video went up on his channel, he saw no point in obfuscating his Anon identity in this interview.
We’ll call the interview participants A, B, C, and Redhacker. The latter is a team member of a Turkish political hacker crew that’s also working to support #OpMaryville. We spoke to him in a separate chat.
Beautiful photo from Paige’s mom. #Justice4Daisy #Justice4Paige #OpMaryville pic.twitter.com/kXxf1kaU16 — Anonymous Operations (@YourAnonCentral) October 16, 2013
When did you hear about Daisy? What brought the case to your attention?
A: Unfortunately, we didn’t hear about the case until Dugan Arnett published his article in the Kansas City Star. We’ve had to do this kind of work before. I wish we didn’t have so many opportunities to utilize our anti-rape campaign skills. We quickly issued a press release, planned a Twitterstorm, and began working on a live protest. There was a protest already planned, so we decided to endorse it instead. I took what I learned from the Rehtaeh Parsons op and applied it here. The thing is, there’s no need for us to break laws here and provide authorities with ammunition against us.
B: I saw a tweet with a link to the original article saying “This is what happens when anonymous doesn’t get involved in a rape case.”
A: Yeah, it’s a shame that we didn’t find out sooner. I’m just glad in this case that Daisy’s attempts at suicide were unsuccessful. So many other girls give up hope and check out. We’re lucky, in that sense. And I say “we’re lucky” because she’s such a brave and amazing young girl, both of them are.
B: The victim should never have to hide and be shamed, the attacker should. An example needed to be made that instead of teaching “don’t get raped” we should be teaching “don’t rape.” If any other crime happens to you, you don’t have to hide your face. Only rape.
I think she’s inspirational. Both of them. I’ve spoken with her mother. There’s a screenshot on YourAnonCentral.
Tweeted with the permission of Paige’s mother @robinbourland1 ❤️ #Justice4Paige and #Justice4Daisy pic.twitter.com/0J343jeHDH — Anonymous Operations (@YourAnonCentral) October 15, 2013
Let’s talk about the video.
A: It peaked at over 100,000 hits and it was embedded in countless news articles. They [YouTube] labeled it a “scam.” I don’t want to speculate whether or not YouTube is intentionally censoring us or anything like that, but obviously there is something wrong with their system.
B: 130,000.
Will you be putting the video back up?
Crypt0nymous: No.
How long did the op take to come together as an action?
B: Like five minutes after reading the article. I hit up Crypt0nymous, we started writing [press releases] and Twitterstorms.
A: Two. We outsourced the video to Crypt0nymous because he owed us. I guess, there were like five [team members] maybe?
C: Yeah literally five minutes, as soon as well all even mentioned the story to each other we were like “aw, shit, op time.”
A: We’re sick of this shit. We expect we’ll be fighting battles against censorship and copyright bullshit for rest of our lives, but when is law enforcement going to stop covering up for child rapists? It’s the 21st century. The justice department had no problem going after Aaron Swartz for 35 years or threatening Barrett Brown with 100 years in prison, but we’re still letting child rape slide? C’mon.
There are a lot of non-Anons working on this. You can see them all over the hashtag, and I think they’re taking inspiration from the acts of Anonymous in the past. Most of the people I see tweeting about it are not Anons and would not have known what an Op was a year ago.
B: I’m a professional.
Redhacker: The project is just in its first [stage] of grouping. The project itself is for now focused on rape cases similar to those in Maryville or Steubenville, where justice fails. And until justice prevails, hack and protest will replace it!
Yes, there is hacking in Maryville, but not technically. Like we said before, we don’t care about mainstream media attention, we care about people. We want justice! And if people try to ignore such cases in order to protect the image of the city, they are going to get hacked and faced with consequences.
So, do you think people will wear Guy Fawkes masks at the demonstration [10am Saturday, October 22, at the Nodaway County Courthouse]?
B: We aren’t calling for that. People can do whatever they want. Who knows how it will play out?
A: Masks aren’t always appropriate, particularly in some cases that involve traumatic rapes. But, we’re deciding whether or not to specifically ask people not to wear them.
B: People will be bringing daisies, perhaps we should find out Paige’s favorite flower as well. She wasn’t out in the open when it was planned.
We also suggested those who cannot attend could perhaps send some. After the Sandy Hook tragedy, a bunch of anons converged (because of Westboro Baptist Church) on the town in Fawkes masks, a town where a guy in a mask had just shot a classroom full of children. So, not always appropriate.
A: The Sandy Hook shooting, for example, that was not an appropriate place to wear a mask.
B: A town where a whole class full of children were killed by a guy in a mask. People were calling the police because their kids were scared shitless. Their friends were shot and you go into their town in creepy masks? Not really OK.
A: Yes, and some Anons attended to help stop the Westboro Baptist Church from picketing the funeral of the teacher slain in the shooting. Obviously, wearing a mask in a town where children were just killed by someone in a mask is inherently fucked-up. So, yeah, people should be conscious of when it’s okay and when it’s not. I don’t see an issue with people wearing a mask in Maryville. Although I’d probably stay away from Sheriff White.
B: I think people should [wear] whatever they want: mask, no mask, a lampshade on your head, whatever; just bring daisies.
A: I hear the lampshade look is going to be really hot in 2014. It’s a brilliant idea. Thank you for illuminating me.
What do you see as Anonymous’s involvement with this in the future? Given the suspects are known, the prosecutor is known, etc.
A: We’ll continue to keep an eye on the events that are unfolding. In this instance, we’re a publicity machine. The officials in Missouri may be waiting for this to blow over, but it isn’t going to. Like Sheriff White said, we’re all unemployed, right? We have plenty of free time on our hands. Like I said, we got the public’s attention. A lot of this is in their hands now. We just need to keep them motivated.
Any specific actions planned?
A: Other than the protest next Tuesday (Oct. 22), nothing specific. We’re encouraged a bit to hear that a special prosecutor may be assigned to investigate this case… but we can’t be bought off with promises. We need to see some action. And the officials in Missouri need to stop spending time in front of the microphone defending themselves and spend more time defending the girls. [the investigation has now been relaunched]
What do you need from supporters, followers, the public? What do you want to see in terms of results from them? Best-case scenario. The question of what you want from the justice system is entirely separate.
B: We are hoping not to have to bust out more action, to be honest.
A: Maryville can help rehabilitate its image next Tuesday by coming out to show their support for these girls. This is a public event, not a rowdy activist march. The officials there can do right by their constituents and seek justice for Daisy and Paige. There’s an opening right now for a hero in Maryville. It’s not Anonymous. It’s the person with actual authority that steps forward and admits they fucked up and proves they’re willing to do everything in their power to fix it. For God’s sake, they’re kids.
We issued a press release earlier, following statements to the press by prosecutor Bob Rice.
B: Sheriff [Darren White] called Anons cowardly basement dwellers, basically trying to antagonize us into messing up.
A: Some of the press release references Robert Rice’s press conference earlier today, which is also online now. The comments to Attorney General reference his prior statements in which he claimed he had no power to intervene in Daisy Coleman’s case.
A: We’ve given them an opening. They can reopen the case, actually perform an investigation, then get on television and tell everyone they did it because it was the right thing to do, not because the Internet demanded it be done. Take the credit, Anonymous doesn’t care. I would like to see an investigation as to why charges were dropped before the rape kits came back, personally.
The goal is to get shit done, not get pats on our backs. That’s why we don’t need someone like KY lingering around.
B: I intend to stay on [Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster] Koster’s ass like a hemorrhoid.
C: Could [you] write this? “Thanks, Mum and Dad, for letting us run an international hacker collective from your basement.”
Photo by Sunfrog/Flickr |
BY: Follow @LizWFB
The Department of Labor is seeking to remove the terms "he" and "she" from a regulation prohibiting discrimination in the workforce in an effort to "avoid the gender binary."
The agency is also adding "sex stereotyping, transgender status, and gender identity" to the list of types of employment discrimination banned under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act. If adopted, the regulation would cost job training centers millions of dollars to change their equal employment opportunity posters to include "gender identity."
The agency issued a proposed rule Tuesday that updates the nondiscrimination provisions of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act signed by President Obama in 2014, which provides funding for job training.
The law forbids groups that receive program funding to discriminate on the basis of "race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, political affiliation or belief, and, for beneficiaries only, citizenship status." The new rule, which will be open to public comment for 60 days, updates the list to include gender identity.
"Our nation’s workforce system should reflect our commitment to diversity and the idea that America works best when we field a full team," Labor Secretary Thomas E. Perez said when announcing the changes. "Protecting workers from discrimination based on disability, pregnancy, language proficiency, gender identity, and other factors is the right thing to do. This proposed rule provides welcome clarity on how to achieve that in the workforce system."
The agency is also proposing to remove male and female pronouns from the regulation to avoid gender norms.
"This [Notice of Proposed Rulemaking] also replaces ‘he or she’ with ‘the individual,’ ‘person,’ or other appropriate identifier wherever possible to avoid the gender binary," the proposed rule stated. "The plain language of the regulations is retained for ease of comprehension and application."
The rule would also require training centers that receive federal funding to add gender identity to the posters they must display.
"The [Notice of Proposed Rulemaking] proposes changes to the specific language provided by the Department for recipients to use in the equal opportunity notice and poster that they are required to post prominently in physical locations and on the recipient’s website," the agency said. "The changes state that ‘sex discrimination includes pregnancy, childbirth and related medical conditions, transgender status, and gender identity; and that national origin discrimination may include limited English proficiency.’"
"These changes, although slight, identify the scope of the nondiscrimination obligation with more specificity and inform those who may not otherwise be aware of the developments in law," the agency said.
Organizations must display posters in English and other versions in up to 10 different languages.
The agency estimated it would cost approximately $4 million to update and disseminate the new equal opportunity posters, which it called an "important benefit to society."
The changes are necessary because the "principles of nondiscrimination and equal opportunity law under these statutes have evolved significantly" since the first version of the law was passed in 1998, according to the notice.
The rule also listed what is now considered examples of "sex-based discrimination," which includes denying an employee access to the "bathrooms used by the gender with which they identify."
The government made a point to note that discrimination against a transgender individual can occur regardless of whether they have "undergone, is undergoing, or plans to undergo sex-reassignment surgery." |
All you need to know about League Two clash
Pompey will be hoping it is a case of third time lucky at Broadfield Stadium tonight.
The Blues have squandered two chances to climb into the automatic promotion places in the past seven days.
A draw with Morecambe and defeat to Crewe means that Carlisle are still clinging stubbornly on to third spot, with Luton a point behind in fourth.
But Paul Cook knows his side will leapfrog the pair of them if they can defeat Crawley in this evening’s rearranged fixture.
The game was originally scheduled to be played in January, only to be called off because of a frozen pitch.
Dermot Drummy’s outfit are currently down in 16th position and are 11 points away from both the bottom two and the play-off berths.
Tonight sees them face promotion contenders at home for the third time in eight days, with the Red Devils losing to Exeter last Tuesday before holding leaders Doncaster to a draw at the weekend.
And Crawley will be hoping to halt a run of four successive games without a win on their own patch that stretches back to mid-January.
It was Pompey who came out on top when the sides met at Fratton Park back in September, with Curtis Main’s brace and a Gary Roberts strike securing a 3-0 triumph.
TEAM NEWS
Curtis Main (knee) is still sidelined, while Paul Cook is weighing up whether to rest a fatigued Amine Linganzi.
Matt Harrold (Achilles) and Jordan Roberts (hamstring) are missing for the hosts, but former Blues youngster Andre Blackman could feature.
QUOTES
Read what Paul Cook and Michael Doyle have to say about tonight’s game or subscribe to Pompey PlayerHD for full pre-match video content.
HEAD TO HEAD
Overall
Pompey: 3 Wins
Crawley: 1 Win
1 Draw
At Broadfield Stadium
Pompey: 1 Win
Crawley: 0 Wins
1 Draw
TICKETS
Pompey have sold their full allocation of tickets for this fixture and no more will be available to buy at the ground.
MATCH COVERAGE
Pompey PlayerHD subscribers can listen to live commentary from Broadfield Stadium from 7pm tonight.
We will also have match updates on Twitter and the Pompey Wall
There will be post-match reaction on the website, Pompey PlayerHD and our official YouTube channel , with highlights to follow on Wednesday.
BETTING
Pompey are 4/6 favourites with Sky Bet to collect all three points, while the hosts can be backed at 9/2
Click here to read our full betting preview and sign-up to www.skybet.com/pompey for great offers.
ALSO IN LEAGUE TWO
Plymouth v Blackpool (7.30pm)
LAST MEETING |
Abyss Box to keep deep animals RATE THIS! +0 Share Posted in Science on 18th Feb, 2012 06:53 PM by APM
Normally when organisms are raised from kilometres below the sea surface, they quickly die because of the huge change in pressure.
But scientists have now developed the Abyss Box, which can maintain animals in the extreme environment they need.
The vessel, containing deep-sea crab and shrimp, will go on show at the Oceanopolis aquarium in Brest, France.
The volume of the box is quite small (16 litres) but researchers believe the technology could eventually be scaled up to house larger animals, such as fish.
It is hoped such vessels will enable scientists to study bottom-dwelling creatures over long periods of time - something that is just not possible at the moment.
"We want such basic information as the length of life of a deep-sea animal," explained Dr Bruce Shillito, a marine biologist at the Universite Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris.
"No-one really knows how long they live, so by keeping them this way we can get that information. Of course, its information in captivity but it's better than no information at all," he told BBC News.
Dr Shillito has been discussing the project here at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). |
Iraq War Families Campaign Group try to raise total of £150,000 for legal assessment and possible private prosecution
Family members of British soldiers killed in Iraq have launched a crowdfunding appeal to prosecute Tony Blair over his role in the war.
Relatives aim to raise £150,000 to fund a legal assessment of the possibility of a private prosecution of the former prime minister and others, following the publication of the Chilcot report earlier this month.
The report – the result of a seven-year inquiry into the 2003 war by Sir John Chilcot – was damning in its criticism of Blair, finding that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, that Saddam Hussain posed no imminent threat, and that both Blair and George W Bush had not exhausted all diplomatic options before resorting to invasion.
The appeal is led by Reg Keys and Roger Bacon, whose sons L/Cpl Tom Keys and Maj Matthew Bacon were among 179 British service personnel who died during the invasion.
Keys said that while some families had opted to move on, the campaign, under the banner of the Iraq War Families Campaign Group, spoke for the majority of bereaved relatives.
“The families will be taking a civil prosecution against Tony Blair and anybody who is flagged up in [the report] who it is deemed viable and appropriate to pursue legally,” he said.
Keys said the money would enable the families’ legal team, from the London firm McCue and Partners, to assess the 2.6m-word report and determine whether there are grounds for possible prosecutions.
Tony Blair unrepentant as Chilcot gives crushing Iraq war verdict Read more
“The police will not look at [the report], the government will not look at it, we cannot get legal aid to look at it,” Keys said. “There’s a lot of work involved, but we feel that [Blair] needs to be brought to account for this. He and the other peddlers of the deceit.”
By midday on Tuesday, just 12 hours after its launch, the appeal had raised almost half its target of £50,000, which Keys described as heartwarming. The total target is £150,000 but sites set targets in £50,000-increments.
“Our determination to find answers has been redoubled by Sir John’s excoriating view of the establishment’s tragic and error-strewn display,” said Bacon. “We must now ensure every iota of the report is analysed in depth, to determine whether there are potential legal cases to follow up. And to help us, we ask the British public to take action.”
Blair defended his actions after the report was published, insisting he had acted in good faith, based on intelligence at the time that Iraq was developing WMDs. He vehemently denied that he had lied to parliament, saying: “I can look the nation in the eye and say I did not mislead this country.”
Matthew Jury, the lawyer representing the families, said the appeal was “the only chance for justice” for the families and the British people.
“The report told us what went wrong and who was responsible, but it was not a court of law. If they can, the families are determined to hold those individuals to account by bringing them to trial to answer for their actions,” he said.
“Not just for them or their loved ones but to ensure that never again will our politicians act with such impunity in taking our country into an unjust war with such tragic consequences.” |
Disclaimer: This article is about to nerd out on some code.
A few months ago, I wrote about how switching up my code editor helped to improve my personal workflow. Since then, we have made several changes at Brolik to improve our workflow as a company. Some of these changes include adding Git, SASS, Compass, and GitHub into our system for development and deployment.
While adding SASS and Compass was a fairly seamless integration, Git admittedly was a scary proposition at first, not only for myself, but for my co-workers as well. While I am very “techy,” they tend to lean more to the design side of the industry, meaning straying away from the norm and adding Git to a workflow can be difficult.
As soon as we overcame the learning curve included with Git, we ran into another potential hurdle: Git and GitHub offer great version control and management features, but how can we incorporate that into the deployment of our live sites so that we have these same features on the remote server?
In a normal workflow with Git, a team might work with their local repositories and sync up to a remote repository to keep themselves in check with the team. But this still requires someone to FTP all the files up to the server to test or push changes live. This is an unnecessary waste of time, and when time is money, wasting time is never a good thing.
After some extensive research into GitHub’s Webhooks and executing shell commands on the server, I found several scripts that, after combining a few, would allow us to keep our sites version controlled on our local machines and the remote server. Following some minor modifications to the files I found that I had a single file that could be uploaded to any remote server and with minimal customization would keep that server in sync with the repository. The file would automatically sync down any changes that were pushed to the GitHub repository to keep it in its most up-to-date status.
If you’re unfamiliar with GitHub’s Webhooks, you can read more about them here. The short explanation is every time a push is sent to the remote repository on GitHub, it will post JSON data to the file you set in the Webhook containing all the information about the commit. We use this file to determine what exactly happens on the website’s server, however; some setup is necessary for the file to work properly.
Installation and Setup
Before we get into the actual file, some set up is required on the server so that it can function as a working repository. Servers today generally come on some form of the Linux kernel, which is great because they usually already have Git installed. In the event that your server doesn’t have Git installed, it’s simple to install on a Linux server.The first thing you’ll need to do is SSH into your web server through terminal. Generally the command is:
$> ssh [email protected]
password: [your ftp password]
If this doesn’t work for you, check with your host for any special parameters that need to be set before you can SSH in. While it’s never smart to go poking around inside your server’s terminal with ROOT access, you might have to do so if you need to install Git. For the time being, though, just use your standard FTP account.
Once you are in the server, you can treat it just like you would any normal computer with Git. You’ll have to generate a public key and link that to your repository. This will allow the server to execute Git commands using PHP’s shell_exec command.
Once you have the public key set up with GitHub, navigate to your domain folder (often it is domains/yoursite.com/or simply html). If you view the files here, you should see a folder called public_html or html. This is the folder where your files need to go, or in this case the repository, in order for it to show up on the Web. If the folder is empty, you can simply remove it using the command:
$> rm –rf public_html
For those of you that don’t know what this does, it recursively removes the folder and all its sub files and folders. THIS IS PERMANENT, so if you’re afraid of causing problems on the server, remember to make a backup (easiest way to do this is just to use Filezilla or any other FTP program and download a copy first).
Once your working directory is gone, you can clone down your repository. Make sure you clone the correct branch and clone it into the correct folder. You can find the link to your repository on GitHub.
Copy that and include it in the following command:
$> git clone –b [branch name] git@[link from github] public_html
If the repository is large, it may take some time to download. Once it’s complete, you may have to change your thinking about the relationship between your computer, hosting server, and GitHub. I can best explain it by saying that you should now consider your hosting server to be another computer in your Git network. Once you can do this, trouble shooting becomes much easier.
Once your server is setup as a Git repository, you’re ready to set up the .gitignore!
Gitignore
Setting up this file is one of the most important things you need to do prior to adding files to your repository. Because of the way .gitignore works, it’s best to do it first thing. If you are unfamiliar with how a .gitignore file works, you can read up on it here.
The most important files to add to the .gitignore would be the following:
Database settings file (username, password) File that contains a base URL (if you use perma or pretty links) Tractum.php Any folder or file that is dynamically updated on the server
#4 on that list can cause the most problems. If you’ve ever used Git and GitHub before, you know that you can’t make a git pull if you have modified files on your repository. The same concept applies here. Your server can’t have any files that are untracked or modified or else it won’t perform the pull.
Once your .gitignore is complete, you can safely FTP it, the tractum.php file, and any other files that need to be on the server but are not tracked by GitHub.
Configuring Tractum.php
All of this setup leads to the file that’s actually going to be handling the pulling on the remote server. The file will execute a single command on the server of “git pull” allowing the server to pull down any changes made. If you head over to the project repository you can view and download the files. There are two files included, tractum.php which is the main file for handling each action, and capere.php which can be used if you have multiple servers.
When you open tractum.php, you’ll notice several settings at the top that can be set for your project. I will quickly run through what they are and their function in the file.
$projectName – This appears in an email header when an email alert is sent out. $branch – The name of the branch your server is connected to. Because GitHub will send out a Webhook when a push is made to it regardless of the branch, we have to specify which branch we’re synced to. $emailTrigger – You can set this to anything you like. At Brolik, we use (email). This means, that any time someone makes a commit where the message contains “(email)” everyone will get an email alerting them to the commit, as well as a list of all files edited. $secondaryBranch[] and $secondaryURL[] – If you’re using a development environment and a live server, you can add the other branch names here. For example, if you use dev.yoursite.com and yoursite.com, with multiple branches called “master” and“Development,” you would set tractum.php in the dev server, set $branch to “Development”, set $secondaryBranch to “master” and $secondaryBranchURL[] to http://www.yoursite.com/ [ location of capere.php] Now, anytime a push is made to “master”, tractum.php will send a request to capere.php which will update yoursite.com, and any time a push is made to “Development”, tractum.php will handle it. $team[] – Here you can set the email address of anyone that is working on the project. Those added to this list will receive an email update anytime $emailTrigger is included in the commit message.
The last two variables that need to be set are $salt and $pass. In order to have these generated, navigate to yourserver.com/tractum.php?passgen=[yourpassword]
The file will then give you the link you need to set your GitHub Webhook to, as well as the salt and password for the file.
And You’re Done!
If everything was done correctly, any changes you make on your local repository and push up to GitHub will automatically be pulled down onto the remote server, removing that unnecessary process of FTPing.
For more information and access to the files, head over to Remote-Server-Autopull. If you have questions or want to share your process for FTPing/publishing, leave a comment below. |
In computer chess there is no getting past Komodo, a two-time ICGA Computer World Chess Champion. Find out how Komodo can take your game to the next level!
3/9/2013 – In an effort to turn chess into a spectator sport the Iranian Chess Federation (really!) is taking the initiative and staging an innovative match in which the players – former World Championship Challenger Nigel Short and GM Ehsan Ghaem Maghami, Iran’s strongest player – will explain their thought processes to the public during the game.
How to make chess a spectator sport? Talking Chess is the new way to broadcast chess. Former World Championship Challenger GM Nigel Short is playing a Talking Chess match, organized by the Iranian Chess Federation, from 8-12 March 2013 in Tehran against GM Ehsan Ghaem Maghami, Iran’s strongest player. There will be four standard chess games, four rapid and eight blitz games.
Press conference with Maghami (2nd from right) and Short (middle) before the match
Every six moves, players go to a secluded room and record their thoughts on videocam. The live broadcast of the moves will be highlighted by the recording of the players. It will be interesting to see how the players think. Both may think they are ahead in the position. Or both may think they are at a disadvantage.
Usually players give press conferences after the game and explain their analysis. In Talking Chess, players share their analysis while the game is going on! Neither player will be able to hear the other’s recording although spectators in the hall will have headphones and the live analysis will be broadcast on the Internet on the official Talkingchess site given below.
This format may be what chess needs to enter television. Mehrdad Pahlevanzadeh, originator of the Talking Chess Match, said that television companies in Iran have shown great interest in the format and will make it a TV show.
Talking during the game The idea is not completely new. A decade and a half ago, during the Intel Grand Prix tournaments, an idea was developed to have two top players – e.g. Kasparov and Anand – play against each other while explaining to a host what they were thinking. Naturally the two would be in separate locations and the moves communicated electronically. The plan was to have them located on the observation decks of (sigh) the two towers of the World Trade Center, in view of each other. Each would be sitting at a board, opposite a host, who would get the moves of the opponent by radio and execute them on the board. The host would also engage the player in conversation, asking what he thought of the move, the position, what plans he was mulling over, what his evaluation of the situation was. A light would signal when the other side was discussing, in order to avoid overlap. All this would be broadcast into a big hall filled with spectators who could follow it on large screens, and it would be recorded for broadcast on TV and for subsequent multimedia distribution. Unfortunately the plan, which was developed by PCA board members the Intel management, and was given green light by the latter, never actually materialised. The BBC Master Game was a prior simulation of the concept, and the Tehran Talking Chess event is a contemporary first step in this direction. Perhaps it will catch on – the original concept is interesting enough to be revived and reconsidered. |
Nearly two years ago, this column reported on an official financial forecast from the northern California city of Stockton’s bankruptcy proceedings showing that within a few years after exiting bankruptcy the city was likely to re-enter it.
It was an official document, circulated by former Republican Assemblyman and Board of Equalization member Dean Andal, who is well respected for his understanding of fiscal matters. The city pooh-poohed the suggestion – and provided its own economic analysis, although it refused to share the detailed data with the media or the public.
The bad news was easy to believe. Stockton’s bankruptcy exit plan didn’t address the fiscal elephant in City Hall (unfunded pension liabilities). The city was following the basic route taken by the Bay Area city of Vallejo, which also went bankrupt and soon again faced deep fiscal problems.
The crux of Stockton’s plan was a voter-approved tax and spending plan. Measure A raised the city’s sales tax by three-quarters of a cent. Measure B was an advisory vote for how the money would be spent. The tax-hike campaign promised significant new spending on popular programs, especially law enforcement in that crime-plagued city. Voters approved the measures.
Now, after collecting the tax for 15 months, the data seems to confirm what Andal had been saying. “After only one full budget year, the city has already broken three fundamental promises and is destined to return to insolvency within four years,” wrote Andal in a letter this month to supporters and opponents of the 2013 ballot measures.
First, the city promised to hire 120 net new police officers over three years, with 40 new officers hired by last July. The city hired only 13 new officers so far. Second, the city promised the new sales-tax measure would raise $29.5 million by July, but fell $1.4 million short. Third, the “plan of adjustment” expected its pension payments to the California Public Employees' Retirement System to be nearly $23 million – but the actual costs were $23.7 million higher.
The Stockton situation is of statewide importance because it’s clear the state’s unfunded pension liability crisis has not gone away even in relatively good economic times. “All these budget problems show up at the service level,” Andal told me. He says Stockton faces “service insolvency” – i.e., a budget so troubled the city cannot provide adequate levels of public services.
Stockton spent $38 million in legal fees in a nationally watched bankruptcy proceeding. Judge Christopher Klein ruled that cities could cut pension benefits in bankruptcy. Stockton officials chose not to do so, relying instead on other cuts and sales-tax increase. Now that their numbers might not be adding up, it puts the city in a difficult position, Andal argues, given it already has the highest sales tax allowed by law, the highest utility tax in the Central Valley and some of the highest developer fees.
Other cities will likewise find limited ability to raise new revenues as CalPERS continues its plan to ramp up its bill for cities that participate in its pension plan. Yet Sacramento officials act as if the pension problem is gone. There’s hardly an issue legislators didn’t try to address in the recently concluded legislative session, yet nothing of substance to deal with growing pension debts. The good-government group California Common Sense confirms that the state’s unfunded pension liabilities continue to show a pattern of steady increases.
Pension reformers led by former San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed and former San Diego city councilman Carl DeMaio have proposed a statewide measure that would subject most local pension increases to voter approval. They say the title and summary Attorney General Kamala Harris offered for that measure includes the same union-backed poison pill (claiming the initiative undermines constitutional benefit protections) she used for previous pension reform measures. They plan take the matter to court.
So nothing much has changed at the statewide level, with the state political establishment squelching reform. Sadly, it might take another economic downturn to get Sacramento officials to check out the problems in a city just 50 miles from the Capitol. |
Indonesia halts military cooperation with Australia over 'insulting' West Papua posters at training base
Updated
"Offensive" material about West Papua displayed at an Australian Special Forces base has prompted Indonesia's defence chief to cut military cooperation, throwing future joint exercises into doubt.
Key points: An Indonesian instructor took offence to poster displayed at SAS in Perth
All cooperation between the Indonesian and Australian military has been suspended
Future of Australia's defence ties with Indonesia are uncertain
The ABC has confirmed an Indonesian officer complained about the "insulting" training posters at the SAS headquarters in Perth in November last year, prompting Australian Defence leaders to launch furious efforts to try to smooth relations with their counterparts in Jakarta.
An Indonesian military spokesman told the ABC cooperation between Indonesia and the Australian Defence Force (ADF) had been suspended, effective immediately.
Indonesian Special Forces group Kopassus trains with the Special Air Service at the unit's Campbell Barracks in Perth.
Major General Wuryanto would not confirm the reason for the suspension, saying it was for technical matters, and that there were "ups and downs in every cooperation between two national forces".
Sources familiar with the incident have confirmed the "laminated material" concerned perhaps Indonesia's most sensitive topic — West Papua, which is an Indonesian province that has tried to seek independence from Jakarta.
Defence Minister Marise Payne confirmed the complaints concerned "some teaching materials and remarks" at an Army language training facility in Australia, and that some military cooperation with Indonesia was now on hold.
Senator Payne told the ABC that the concerns were raised in November, though she first addressed the issue of suspended defence cooperation with her Indonesian counterpart this week.
She said cooperation in some areas — such as addressing asylum seeker vessels — continued.
"We have been communicating with our counterparts at the appropriate level to manage this process," she said.
No timeframe has been provided for an expected resumption of cooperation and Senator Payne could not confirm whether joint exercises between the Australian and Indonesian navies would go ahead next month.
"Indonesia has informed Australia that defence cooperation would be suspended," Senator Payne said in a statement.
"As a result, some interaction between the two Defence organisations has been postponed until the matter is resolved. Cooperation in other areas is continuing."
In a separate statement, the Defence Minister said Australia was committed "to building a strong Defence relationship with Indonesia" and would "work with Indonesia to restore full cooperation as soon as possible".
Defence chief wrote to Indonesia about material
The ABC has learned that on November 23 last year, ADF chief Air Chief Marshal Mark Binskin wrote to his Indonesian counterpart about the offending material.
A diplomatic source familiar with the correspondence said the Defence chief's letter reassured the Indonesian military that the offensive material displayed in Perth did not reflect the view of Australia's Defence Force, and was an isolated incident.
Australia's Chief of Army Lieutenant General Angus Campbell also wrote to his Indonesian counterpart on November 24 to reassure him that Australia did not endorse the material.
The Defence Force is yet to respond to questions from the ABC, but senior figures have expressed surprise at the comments from Indonesia's military.
Future of Navy exercises unclear
It is unclear how long the suspension is for or whether the suspension will affect future joint training exercises between Indonesia and Australia.
The Indonesian and Australian navies are due to participate in multinational training exercises in February.
A spokesman for the Indonesian Navy said he had just found out about the military chief's "statement about the suspension of cooperation with Australia".
"Whether or not we will continue with the joint exercise, I will have to get back to you on that," First Admiral Jonias Mozes Sipasulta said.
"I need to build more details first. Usually we don't suspend cooperation on education and training but now I heard we've suspended all cooperation."
Until this incident the military relationship between the two nations had been improving.
Military cooperation between the two nations was last suspended in 2013 over a phone-tapping scandal.
Documents obtained by the ABC and Guardian Australia revealed that in 2009, Australian intelligence attempted to tap the mobile phone of then-president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
Topics: defence-and-national-security, defence-forces, government-and-politics, foreign-affairs, indonesia, australia, perth-6000, asia
First posted |
Normally, Hank Venture doesn't dress as any superhero other than Batman, but he's making an exception in this piece by Josh Gowdy. See what other mashed-up hijinks Team Venture is getting up to.
We're not the only ones who are beyond thrilled that The Venture Bros. is finally back on the air. Venture mashups are the theme of this week's The Line It Is Drawn at Comics Should Be Good.
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In Gowdy's piece, the twins trade their usual Team Venture gesture for an X:
Action Johnny is already an emotionally scarred character on The Venture Bros., but in John Trumbull's piece, the Ventures travel back in time and meet up with the Johnny Quest crew:
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Eyepatch meets eyepatch in Robert Rath's poor depth perception team-up:
And the Order of the Triad finds a natural home at B.P.R.D. in Cynthia “Thea” Rodgers and Amanda Rodgers' piece:
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See the rest, including the Monarch's showdown with Batman (and Hank dressed as the Bat, of course) at Comics Should Be Good.
The Line it is Drawn #144 – Go Team Venture! [Comics Should Be Good via Xombie DIRGE] |
Former US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel knew that the United States strategy to oust Syrian President Bashar Assad was a fool’s errand, former White House National Security Council advisor Gwenyth Todd told Sputnik.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — Top US military leaders deliberately opposed and tried to subvert the Obama administration’s policy to remove Assad, veteran journalist Seymour Hersh wrote in an article published in the London Review (LBR) of Books on Monday.
"Hagel also understood that toppling Assad was insanely foolish," Todd told Sputnik on Tuesday when asked about Hersh’s revelations.
Hagel had carried the United States through the most dangerous times in Syria, illustrating how being Secretary of Defense is a "thankless job," she added.
Obama, Todd claimed, is trying to stave off intense pressure to call for Assad's removal during this election season because he does not want another Iraq.
Todd noted, Hersh documented in 2014 how former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director David Petraeus and others "nearly successfully dragged us into a war to topple Assad," in an LBR piece entitled "The Red Line and the Rat Line."
In his nearly 7,000-word article, Hersh wrote that the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, then led by General Martin Dempsey, decided to deliberately subvert Obama’s foreign policy and form a secret alliance with Assad and Russian President Vladimir Putin. |
My first deployment to Iraq was as an embedded adviser to a reflagged Kurdish Peshmerga battalion in Mosul in 2005. The 3rd Battalion of the 4th Brigade of the 2nd Iraqi Army Division was a Peshmerga unit from Duhok and would be responsible for conducting counterinsurgency operations in West Mosul at the height of the Sunni insurgency.
We were 10 American advisers embedded with a 500-man Kurdish force commanded by Col. Nooraldeen al-Herki in the heart of al Qaeda’s stronghold in West Mosul. We were also the luckiest 10 Americans in Iraq — we had a pro-American force that made American partner units more effective in decimating al Qaeda.
We partnered with LTC Eric Kurilla’s Deuce 4 (https://www.michaelyon-online.com/gates-of-fire.htm), a Stryker Battalion out of Fort Lewis, Washington. The Peshmerga unit I was with was his go-to partner unit for developing intelligence and conducting raids against al Qaeda High-Value-Targets — military for al Qaeda leadership. This U.S.-Peshmerga partnership was very successful against al Qaeda terrorists in Mosul and oversaw security for parliamentary elections in 2005.
In 2006, we pushed to the east side of Mosul or as the Kurds call it the “left-side” as they look south from Kurdistan. Security improved in Mosul due to the effectiveness of this Peshmerga unit to the point where President George W. Bush touted Mosul as an example of what an effective operation looks like.
Most of the unit was familiar with Mosul’s neighborhoods and tribal leaders, and they spoke Mosul’s dialect of Iraqi Arabic. They effectively helped U.S. forces protect the 2.2 million Sunnis, Kurds and Christians, and pushed al Qaeda out of Mosul — all without knocking down a single building in Iraq’s second-largest city.
With security improving, this unit, along with its American partner unit, deployed to Baghdad to take part in the operation that decimated al Qaeda — The Surge.
Most Iraqi units at the time were afraid to take on both al Qaeda and Iranian-backed Shia militias, but this unit did exactly that when it was deployed to one of the most dangerous parts of Baghdad. This Peshmerga unit was one of the first units capable of operating as a national force, meaning it could be effective in areas bordering Kurdish areas and as effective in areas where Shia militias and al Qaeda stoked sectarian flames.
The Peshmerga were the chosen force to fill the ranks of the Iraqi Special Operations Forces (ISOF); they partnered with American Special Operators to conduct raids against key al Qaeda and Shia militia targets.
The Peshmerga were so effective that Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki saw them as a potential threat and brought the ISOF under his direct control — and purged the predominantly Kurdish force and replaced them with Shia Party loyalists. He took a counterterrorism strike force and made it a countercoup force — he politicized it and, as a result, made it ineffective.
Mr. Maliki didn’t stop there: He purged effective Peshmerga and Sunni Arab Iraqi commanders, prompting my return to Mosul in 2008 to assess the situation on behalf of United States Forces-Iraq (USF-I) Commander Army Chief of Staff Gen. Raymond T. Odierno. Mr. Maliki brought false charges against effective Kurdish and Sunni commanders, only to drop the charges once they were removed from command. It was the easiest way to have them removed from their positions and filled with his cronies.
The 2nd and 3rd Iraqi Divisions that operated in Talafar and Mosul were now politicized to the point where they were ineffective in combat — the Peshmerga were no longer wearing the Iraqi Army uniform. Mr. Maliki had successfully purged competent Kurdish commanders and their troops from the two divisions that helped decimate al Qaeda during The Surge.
With the purge complete and Mr. Maliki’s cronies in place, ISIS saw an opening. Two short years later — Mr. Maliki’s politicized force abandoned the citizens of Talafar and Mosul and left U.S. tanks and Humvees to ISIS.
There is no doubt that if those effective Sunni and Peshmerga commanders had remained, ISIS would not have been able to roll into Mosul and Talafar — evidenced by the wall ISIS faced when it tried to push into Kurdish territory. The Peshmerga held their own, despite Baghdad’s decision to push U.S. arms and equipment to Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-backed Shia militias, but deny them to the Peshmerga.
The Islamic State’s first loss of territory was to a Peshmerga force with U.S. air support — the Mosul Dam, north of Mosul, Iraq. I later had a chance to brief Gen. John Allen upon his appointment by President Barack Obama as the ISIS czar (https://www.businessinsider.com/john-allen-isis-war-obama-2015-9) — I told him that ISIS cannot hold territory against a capable ground force with U.S. air support and cited the Peshmerga’s role in retaking the Mosul Dam as an example. It was this example that was used as model for our U.S. strategy.
The Peshmerga stopped ISIS from spreading into Kurdish territory in Iraq, partnered with U.S. Special Operators to bring combat power to the Syrian Kurds fighting ISIS in the Syrian city of Kobane, and sealed off Mosul for two years while waiting for Baghdad to mobilize against ISIS and begin the Mosul offensive.
The U.S. relies on Kurdish intel and weighs it higher than what comes out of Baghdad’s intel agencies; we rely on our trusted Kurdish allies and proven brothers in combat against al Qaeda and now in this fight against ISIS. The fight is not over and continued success against ISIS will remain dependent on our continued relationship with our Kurdish allies.
When Iraqis — all Iraqis — are worried about security, they go to Kurdistan. There will always be an answer to emerging terrorist threats in Iraq — and the answer will come from the north. From “those who face death” — the Peshmerga.
• Michael Pregent is an Adjunct Fellow at the Hudson Institute. He is a senior Middle East analyst, a former adjunct lecturer for the College of International Security Affairs, and a visiting fellow at the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University.
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission. |
When you think of a locale for cactus, Ohio doesn’t generally spring to mind. Texas perhaps, certainly Arizona, but not Ohio. Yet there is a species of cactus that not only grows in Ohio, but is native to the state.
Eastern prickly pear cactus (Opuntia humifusa) is native to Ohio growing in sandy soil in a few select places in northwest and southern Ohio. Deb and I lived in Austin, Texas for several years and frequently saw prickly pear cactus. It never occurred to us we’d find it in Ohio. But on a recent trip to the northwest near Toledo, we visited Kitty Todd Nature Preserve and saw prickly pear growing in patches in the wild.
Naturally I wondered, how can prickly pear survive cold winter temperatures in Ohio. The USDA site states: “Eastern prickly pear is winter hardy, being able to survive on sites where the minimum winter temperatures can drop below 10°F (-12°C). The cactus avoids freeze damage by rapidly reducing the water content in cells during cold acclimation”.
The Kitty Todd Preserve is in an area of Ohio called “Oak Openings”. I described this area in a recent post about nearby Oak Openings Metro Park (where prickly pear is also found). There are sand dunes found here that are remnants of barrier islands of an ancient lake. And eastern prickly pear cactus grows quite well in this sandy soil.
We visited in May, but the best time to go is in June, when the prickly pear is in bloom. See the links at the bottom of this post for an article by botanist Andrew Gibson. His article includes photos of the flower.
Additional information
TrekOhio: Lucas County Parks & Preserves; links to preserves where prickly pear can be viewed in the wild, such as the Oak Openings Metropark and Kitty Todd.
Buckeye Botanist: Prickly Pear – Includes photos of Ohio Prickly Pear in bloom
USDA: Opuntia humifusa — This is the scientific name for eastern prickly pear cactus.
USDA: Distribution of Opuntia humifusa in Ohio
More on Lucas County
© Deborah Platt, Robert Platt and TrekOhio.com 2012 to 2019 |
The website of the Sankore Institute of Islamic-African Studies International (SIIASI), based in Pittsburgh, P.A., calls on Muslims to engage in “litigation jihad” as a means of moving the U.S. towards Sharia law. The anti-American group had its offices raided by the FBI in 2006.
“The United States has long held Muslim political prisoners within its federal, state and now privatized penal colonies. It is by waging a litigation jihad [sic] in the US penal system that some redress can be made in the international community as well. It is for this reason that Muslim inmate legal actions in the US courts constitute the front line of defense of Islam,” SIIASI says.
The objective of the “litigation jihad” is bigger than freeing Muslims from jail. It continues:
“Every successful Muslim litigation passed in the U.S. courts, is a standardization and recognition of the Islamic shari’a….but more importantly it is a perfecting and refining of the United States constitution.”
The organization states that the jihad should lead an “internationally recognized SOCIAL CONTRACT between the United States and its Muslim national minorities; which is consistent with the shari’a, but does not challenge the sovereignty of the United States.”
Don’t be fooled by the moderate costume disguising the extremist language.
SIIASI’s leader, Imam Muhammad Shareef, regularly refers to the U.S. as “Amerikkka.” He preaches against democracy and in favor of violent jihad. In 2010, Shareef condemned the “the pseudo-religion redefined by the pacifist “imams” who deny the obligation of jihad and who have deluded their followers into the fruitless activity of supporting democratic constitutional government.”
He then quoted Mohammed, the founder of Islam, as saying “There is coming upon man a time when some of the religious scholars will say, ‘This is not a time for jihad.’ For whoever comes upon that time, then know that the most blessed action during that time will be jihad.”
The organization says that Jamil Al-Amin, previously known as H. Rap Brown, is a “political prisoner.” He was a member of the Black Panthers terrorist group and was convicted of murdering a police officer in 2000. He is also anti-American, stating “if America doesn’t come around, we’re gonna burn it down,” and “I say violence is necessary. It is as American as cherry pie.”
SIASSI started the Jawala Scouts in 2005. Photos of the Jawala Scouts show boys as young as seven years old dressed in military fatigue and learning combat techniques and playing paintball. This is especially unsettling when you consider that the website says it is “active in the area of prison reform and outreach as it pertains to Muslim inmates.” Other photos on the site show some members swords and guns.
In 2006, the FBI raided the site and arrested Larry M. Williams, also known as Hasan Ali, a convicted felon that had been attending the mosque for about three years.
He was found in Utah with parts for a pistol and associated ammunition and a magazine for an assault rifle, which were confiscated. He was accidentally not apprehended at athe time. FBI agents then searched the site for four hours and questioned six members for two hours. The organization and its allies condemned the FBI for unfairly targeting Muslims and African-Americans.
Subsequently, an arrest warrant was issued, and Williams/Ali was arrested in Pittsburgh near SIASSI.
The raid earned SIASSI positive attention with the release of a documentary titled New Muslim Cool. Its website boasts that it won the “Freedom Award” at the Al-Jazeera International Documentary Festival in Qatar.
In the wake of the Boston bombings, we must not focus only on the acts themselves, but the ideology that drove them. The anti-American ideology it espouses is the egg from which jihadists hatch. |
Today Whitecoin has been accepted to a new exchange: Bitshares this is coming as a pleasant news that shows our growing strength with a lot of help from the community.
Links:
http://www.bitshares.org is the English version.
http://www.bit.btsabc.org is the Chinese version.
What is BitShares?
BitShares is a technology supported by next generation entrepreneurs, investors, and developers with a common interest in finding free market solutions by leveraging the power of globally decentralized consensus and decision making. Consensus technology has the power to do for economics what the internet did for information. It can harness the combined power of all humanity to coordinate the discovery and aggregation of real-time knowledge, previously unobtainable. This knowledge can be used to more effectively coordinate the allocation of resources toward their most productive and valuable use.
BitShares looks to extend the innovation of the blockchain to all industries that rely upon the internet to provide their services. Whether its banking, stock exchanges, lotteries, voting, music, auctions or many others, a digital public ledger allows for the creation of distributed autonomous companies (or DACs) that provide better quality services at a fraction of the cost incurred by their more traditional, centralized counterparts. The advent of DACs ushers in a new paradigm in organizational structure in which companies can run without any human management and under the control of an incorruptible set of business rules. These rules are encoded in publicly auditable open source software distributed across the computers of the companies’ shareholders, who effortlessly secure the company from arbitrary control.
BitShares does for business what bitcoin did for money by utilizing distributed consensus technology to create companies that are inherently global, transparent, trustworthy, efficient and most importantly profitable.
BitShares has went through many changes and has done its best to stay on top of blockchain technology. Towards the end of 2014 some of the DACs were merged and the X was dropped from “BitShares X” to become simply BitShares (BTS). |
Ok, on the one hand I don't want this website to be known as the WWII obituary page. On the other hand, a number of very notable participants in or survivors of the Second World War have passed away of late. And when it comes to someone like Alice Herz-Sommer...well let's just say that it behooves us to take note of her passing.
Alice Herz-Sommer was a remarkable person, and her advanced age of passing is only one of many things for which she should be remembered. That said, at the age of 110 upon her death nearly one week ago on February 23rd, Alice Herz-Sommer was the oldest known survivor of the Holocaust. Nevertheless, compared to her achievements her long life should really be just a footnote. Why you might ask....well let's start with this.
First off Alice Herz-Sommer survived nearly two years in the Theresienstadt concentration camp; located in the present day Czech town of Terezin. Alice Herz-Sommer was born in Prague on November 26, 1903 and like most of Bohemia's Jews ended up in Terezin following the Nazi occupation. As for Theresienstadt, I visited Terezin late in September of 2013 and as noted in my ensuing write up about the camp:
"Though it was not an extermination camp those interned at Terezin suffered horribly. In total over 150,000 people were sent to Terezin during the Second World War. Roughly 32,000-35,000 (depending upon the source) died in the camp - of disease, exposure, starvation (with 2,600 killed in the small fortress - including many executed by the Gestapo)."
What's more, of those that did not die in Terezin itself nearly 90,000 people were deported on to Auschwitz, and to their ultimate deaths; with these unfortunate victims including Alice Herz-Sommer's husband (though he was moved to Dachau where he eventually died). So just surviving two years at Terezin/Theresienstadt was a major accomplishment. And survive she did, being one of those liberated by the Red Army in May of 1945.
If that were enough her story would be amazing. But the thing is she didn't just survive. You see Alice Herz-Sommer was also a world class pianist. At Terezin she played approximately 100 concerts for her fellow prisoners and for the guards. An Oscar nominated documentary entitled The Lady in Number 6: Music Saved My Life tells this story, and I highly recommend you take the time to view it. Furthermore, this incredible woman was able to look after her son, also interned at Terezin, and he would be one of the few children to survive his time in the camp.
All too often names such as Patton, Eisenhower, Churchill, Montgomery, Rommel, Hitler, Zhukov, Stalin, and so on dominate our understanding of World War II's great personalities. It is my fervent hope that names such as Alice Herz-Sommer are not so completely overshadowed by the War's military and political leaders as to be forgotten. |
The Obama administration is threatening to veto a 2017 spending bill for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Interior Department.
The House is set to consider a $32.1 billion bill for the two departments and other programs this week. The legislation would cut spending for the departments by $64 million from current spending levels and is $1 billion less than what President Obama requested in his budget.
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The bill also contains policy riders designed to block administration rules on water, power plant emissions and coal mining.
The White House, in a veto warning issued Monday night, said it objects to the spending levels and riders within the bill.
“The bill underfunds core Department of the Interior (DOI) programs as well as the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) operating budget, which supports nationwide protection of human health, and vital air, water and land resources,” the Office of Management and Budget said in its statement.
The riders “threaten to undermine the most basic protections for America's unique natural treasures and the people and wildlife that rely on them, as well as the ability of States and communities to address climate change and protect a resource that is essential to America's health—clean water.”
The Republicans’ bill looks to cut regulatory spending at the EPA and blocks the agency’s Clean Water and Clean Power Plan rules, both major administration and Democratic priorities. The spending cuts, though, are not as deep as those Republicans have sought in the past.
The House will consider the bill this week after years of failing to clear the legislation. The last time the House passed the EPA and Interior spending bill was 2009; last year’s didn’t even make it to a vote amid a debate over Confederate flag amendments offered to it. |
Schools will be within their statutory rights to dismiss staff that wilfully fail to use stories or textbooks promoting same-sex weddings, it is claimed.
Aidan O’Neill, a senior QC and expert on religious freedom and human rights, also warned that parents who object to gay marriage being taught to their children will have no right to withdraw their child from lessons.
In a report, he said that any decision to redefine marriage would have far-reaching consequences for schools, hospitals, foster carers and public buildings.
The most serious impact is likely to be felt in the church where vicars and priests conducting religious marriage ceremonies could be taken to court for refusing to carry out a gay wedding, he said.
The conclusions – in legal advice commissioned by the Coalition for Marriage – comes amid continuing fall-out over Government plans to tear up the centuries-old law on marriage.
Ministers launched a consultation on proposals to legalise homosexual weddings earlier this year. David Cameron has said he is committed to pushing through the change by 2015.
The plan is being backed by the Liberal Democrats and many senior Conservatives, although it has prompted a backlash among some backbenchers and Christian groups.
Last month, the Roman Catholic Church had a letter read in all 500 Catholic parishes in Scotland urging churchgoers to oppose attempts to “redefine” marriage north of the border.
Sharon James, a Coalition for Marriage spokeswoman, said the proposed law change would have a serious effect on schools, representing an “unprecedented assault on the rights of parents”.
“This is a dangerous path to go down and one that should be resisted,” she said.
“The redefinition of marriage would ride roughshod over a person’s right to support marriage as the exclusive union between one man and one woman, whether that person be a teacher, a parent, a foster carer or a marriage registrar. The only winners from a change in marriage law will be lawyers.”
Mr O’Neill – based at Matrix Chambers – has analysed the effect that any change in the legal basis of marriage would have on a series of public institutions.
He outlined a fictional scenario in which a Christian teacher is asked to use a book called King & King, a story of a prince who marries a man, and produce a play based on the tale.
The QC suggested that any refusal to comply would be “grounds for her dismissal from employment” because of a legal ruling that religious belief cannot be used by employees “to demand changes in their conditions of their employment”.
Mr O’Neill also warned that parents who object to gay marriage being taught would have no right to withdraw their child from lessons for religious conscience reasons.
“If gay marriage is introduced, the school would be in its own legal right to refuse the wishes of the child’s parents, arguing it is under a legal obligation of its own to promote equality - whatever the cost,” he said.
In the report, he also claimed that Government promises to protect churches and other faiths who object to gay marriage would be meaningless.
Mr O’Neill insisted that vicars or priests would be powerless to stop same-sex couples demanding the same weddings as hetrosexuals under the European Convention on Human Rights.
Churches would be in a stronger legal position if they were to stop conducting weddings altogether – bring to an end more than a thousand years of tradition, he suggested.
“Churches might indeed better protect themselves against the possibility of any such litigation by deciding not to provide marriage services at all, since there could be no complaint then of discrimination in their provision of services as between same sex and opposite sex couples,” he said. |
Michael Chertoff, the lead prosecutor on the Senate Whitewater Committee that targeted Bill and Hillary Clinton, is now endorsing the former secretary of State for president. For Chertoff, his decision on who to back was based on national security. “I realized we spent a huge amount of time in the ’90s on issues that were much less important than what was brewing in terms of terrorism,” Chertoff admitted, adding that Clinton “has good judgment and a strategic vision how to deal with the threats that face us.” He called the 1990s investigations “very, very insignificant” compared to the national-security challenges the U.S. now faces. As a senator, Clinton was the only one to vote against Chertoff’s nomination to lead the Justice Department’s criminal division in 2001, as well as his nomination to the U.S. Court of Appeals. |
Bob Ley discusses how Tennessee's crazy coaching carousel is a lot like Tinder, except everyone keeps swiping left. (1:02)
Washington State football coach Mike Leach has met with Tennessee regarding the school's head-coaching vacancy, a source confirmed to ESPN's Edward Aschoff.
The meeting took place with Tennessee athletic director John Currie in Los Angeles on Thursday, a source told The Associated Press.
Currie returned to Knoxville early Friday morning after meeting with Leach about the Vols' head coaching vacancy on Thursday in Los Angeles, sources told ESPN's Chris Low.
Sources told Low that no deal was struck.
Sources told Low that Currie is scheduled to meet Friday with university officials, including chancellor Beverly Davenport, to discuss and reassess a search that has already coiled through a litany of candidates.
Leach flew back to Pullman, Washington on Thursday night, but sources close to Leach said he has definite interest in the Tennessee job.
When Leach surfaced as a potential candidate elsewhere last week, WSU president Kirk Schulz met with athletic department officials and decided that if Leach were to leave, they would make defensive coordinator Alex Grinch the primary target to replace him, sources told ESPN's Kyle Bonagura.
At that time, WSU was already engaged in talks with Leach's representative on a raise and contract extension. An offer was presented to Leach's representative this week, and he was underwhelmed by the offer, sources told Bonagura.
Leach had a good relationship with former WSU athletic director Bill Moos, and after Moos left to take the same job at Nebraska on Oct. 15, Leach made a recommendation to Schulz on a possible successor. The job has yet to be filled, and Leach has grown frustrated by the lack of communication about the search process, a source told Bonagura. John Johnson, the interim AD, will not be considered for the permanent job.
Leach has been at Washington State for six years and is 38-37, but 26-12 the past three seasons, including 19-8 in the Pac-12. Previously, he coached 10 seasons at Texas Tech and went 84-43.
Tennessee (4-8, 0-8 SEC) fired Butch Jones on Nov. 12 after a season in which it set a school record for losses. This marks Tennessee's fourth coaching search since the forced exit of Phillip Fulmer in 2008.
Tennessee was close to hiring Ohio State defensive coordinator Greg Schiano, but the deal fell through due to backlash from fans and supporters.
Vols officials also have courted Oklahoma State's Mike Gundy, Duke's David Cutcliffe, NC State's Dave Doeren and Purdue's Jeff Brohm.
The Associated Press contributed to this report. |
A frozen block of poo and urine is believed to have landed on a woman in India, injuring her shoulder.
The woman was lucky to escape with her life, as the ‘poo-bomb’ glanced off a nearby rooftop instead of smashing directly into her skull.
It was the size of a football, the Times of India reported, and could have been deadly.
The ‘poo from the blue’ is believed to have come from a passing aeroplane, which unintentionally dropped a ball of frozen urine and excrement from its toilet.
Where does poo go after it leaves our earthly bodies? (Picture: Getty)
It happened in the Sagar district of Madhya Pradesh on December 17, where 60-year-old Rajrani Gaud was walking.
School teacher Deepak Jain told the Times: ‘I was only 25 feet away from the spot where the monster came crashing down.
‘Children and villagers witnessed the fall and then heard screams. We ran towards Rajrani’s house and referred her to hospital.’
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Aside from cryo-poo, it could conceivably also be a gigantic piece of hail but this is seen as unlikely as there was no other hail at that time.
This is not the first time faeces has flown. In October last year, a British couple attributed damage to their roof to the same problem.
The Civil Aviation Authority say incidents like this are relatively rare. Aeroplanes try to store toilet waste until landing, but sometimes the mechanism fails.
In comparison to the 2.5 million flights a year in UK airspace, approximately 25 ice falls per year are reported to the CAA, said a spokesman. |
Zelene2004 thank you for the prompt it was delicious:
OUAT!Elsanna: The storybrooke gang visits Arendelle for vacation only to find that Anna and Elsa are married. Regina had a bet with Emma regarding this, and she totally wins.
“It’ll be nice to see them again,” Emma commented as she lay in their cot. The ship was rocking gently back and forth and Emma probably wasn’t getting up anytime soon. The trip was surprisingly uneventful, and Emma was thankful for that.
Regina propped herself up on her elbow, “Hmm, it’ll be nice to be waited on again by dozens of servants.”
Emma rolled her eyes as Regina laced an arm over her waist, “Oh, of course your majesty.”
Regina practically purred, “Oh I’ll show you your majesty.”
Emma didn’t get up very soon, or even very late. Hook sat out overlooking the sea all by his lonesome until almost one in the afternoon.
Regina sauntered out of Emma and her’s cabin and joined the man. Hook glanced over at Regina’s smile and shook his head. Fuckin’ horn dogs.
“Is that it?” Regina nodded towards the nearing landmass.
“Mhhmm,” Hook nodded and the two stood in silence, listening to the ocean.
It was only another hour before the ship docked and the three compatriots made their way on shore. The day was beautiful, a warm wind and an endlessly blue sky stretched out over the port city.
“Well, seems Elsa’s in a good mood.” Emma smacked him and Hook just laughed.
A castle carriage awaited the three, donned with the Arendelle crest and pulled by six massive horses, it made for an impressive entrance. Regina strutted up to the carriage and the door man pulled it open for her. Regina smiled, she had missed this.
“Coming Emma?” Regina glanced back and held out her hand, but Emma wasn’t looking at her. Regina frowned and followed her gaze. Ah, Regina shook her head and walked over to Emma.
“He’ll catch up eventually.” Emma turned to Regina, her face a mixture of confusion and surprise and sighed.
Hook went off with his newfound friend while Emma and Regina allowed the carriage to carry them to the castle.
The Arendelle castle was quite impressive, it’s towering walls and expansive tower system would certainly deter any attacker. However, if the walls didn’t impress an enemy, the moat system certainly would.
Crystal clear water, warm enough for the village children to swim in, held light-refracting fish. They darted to and fro and Regina realized they were made of ice.
Emma gasped, “Wow, they’re beautiful.” She hung out of the carriage to get a better view so Regina wrapped her arms around the enraptured woman and joined her at the window.
Regina felt a chill and turned her head, a snow-white owl cocked its head at her and then bowed. Regina’s eyebrows jumped up and she bowed back before the snow-creature took flight again. Elsa’s sentries. My goodness, that child’s control looks almost complete.
The carriage pulled to a stop at the castle doors and Emma and Regina stepped out to be greeted by an elderly gentleman, “Greetings ladies, welcome to Arendelle, I am Kai, the head butler.”
Emma smiled and stretched out her hand, “Nice to meet you, I’m Emma.”
Kai smiled and shook her hand, Regina was staring intently at the parapet above them and Kai smiled again, “Admiring her majesty’s handiwork?”
Sequins of ice twirled over the castle, everywhere now that Regina was looking. Regina looked to Kai and said, “Those aren’t just decorations are they?” Seemed like a waste to Regina.
“No,” Kai almost beamed, proudly Emma noted, “It insulates the castle and cools it.”
Emma nodded, impressed, and glanced at the castle door to see a snow-fox watching them. “I assume that’s our guide?”
Kai turned and then nodded, “Yes, Their Majesties are out on the training grounds.” He bowed again to them and went to help with their belongings.
Regina and Emma, frowned together, Their Majesties?, but turned to follow the snow-fox through the ornate castle doors and into the castle.
Emma shivered as the pleasantly cool air wafted over them. The fox trotted ahead of them as they looked around. There were suits of armor lining one side of the hall, the other had tapestries of silver, gold, red, and blue. They told epic tales of battles long since passed or held the sewn faces of ancient Arendellians. The floor was fine worn stone and it spoke just as much to the history of the castle as the tapestries did.
“This is quite the castle you have Elsa,” Regina spoke to the fox. It only twitched its ears in response but both of the trailing women were pretty sure that if foxes smiled, the fox was smiling.
It lead them around a corner and to a door, then something… well, magical happened. The fox elongated from the legs up, it grew taller and its muzzle shrunk, ripples of snow flowed across its surface and before Regina or Emma could even blink the fox had transformed into a woman in a dress. The woman, still white as snow, bowed to them and opened the door.
The light streaming in momentarily blinded the two and when their sunspots finally faded the girl was gone, only specs of fleeting ice remained.
What a fucking showoff, Regina thought as Emma stood there grinning. “That was so cool.” Regina rolled her eyes, so easily impressed by everyone else’s magic I see.
Emma didn’t comment on Regina’s pout as the two made their way out onto the training grounds.
The grounds were huge, easily large enough for a small army to practice on. There were archery targets, sword and lance dummies, horse obstacles, weapon racks, armor racks, and even a small guard tower. There were soldiers and guards all over the grounds but most were watching a horse-rider with a bow and arrow ruthlessly take down dummies.
Regina and Emma approached the mass of soldiers, who parted for them, to find a white, padded chair sitting in front of them. It even had a side table with tea and cookies. Neither were surprised to find the Queen of Arendelle herself sitting in that chair, watching as the rider made another pass at the targets.
Emma moved forward a step, now in line with the chair, a rider with two red pigtails? “Elsa,” Emma turned to see the Queen sitting, one arm resting lightly on the arm of the chair, the other supporting her delicate chin, “Is that Anna?”
Elsa smiled and winked at Emma before looking back to see Anna riding toward them. Anna turned the horse seconds before she would have crashed into the waiting crowd and leapt off the horse mid-stride. She didn’t even slow as she hit the ground, not until she was straddled across Elsa’s lap, laughing like a madwoman, arms laced behind Elsa’s head.
Regina and Emma shared a look. The guards and soldiers shared some laughter and turned back to their training like the Queen and Princess of Arendelle weren’t touching their foreheads tog-actually kissing. Emma’s eyes went wide as saucers and Regina jumped on the opportunity.
“They’re together, hah!” She pointed at Emma, “I win, you owe me a night with a-“
Emma frantically held up a hand, “They’re sisters, they can kiss! That’s totally normal, perhaps not in that provocative of a position, but still within sisterly boundaries!”
A tutting noise, almost like a mother hen expressing her disapproval, came from behind them and Emma and Regina turned to see a portly, older woman shaking her head, “Your Majesties, True Love or not, your parents did not raise you to snog on the training grounds. And Queen Anna, you should know better than to get your wife all dirty right before she entertains guests!”
Anna laughed, still straddling Elsa’s lap, “Well, Gerda, I figured if I was going to take a bath, I might as well take one with Elsa!” At that Gerda shook her head and tutted off toward the castle, Anna laughed again as she watched the head hand-maiden strut off.
Elsa looked back at her guests and greeted them, “Hello Emma, Regina, how are you two?”
Emma twitched just once and sighed, Regina smiled a smile neither Anna nor Elsa had seen in a long time and said, “Well, Your Majesties, I’ve never been better.”
And that’s the story of how Regina got Emma to sleejdnokvnp pnb’o-nfkjbn’l……………… No one needs to know what Regina got me to do, author……
-evil laughter- Oh that was fun. Regina and Emma are probably wildly OOC to anyone who’s watched OUAT but I can’t bring myself to care! -laughs away on an incetuous lesbian float- |
In his last two games Chase Headley is 3 for 9 with 2 walks and 1 strikeout, a marked improvement over the previous few weeks. But two decent games does not signify a slump, busted.
A Padres Public reader asked the following last weekend:
@ducksnorts @PadresPublic How about an analysis of why Chase is struggling so much lately? #sonofaduck — Clayton Tyler (@clayton_tyler) June 2, 2013
This is a great question, Clayton, and I think it’s one that we’ve all been trying to wrap our minds around this last month. Geoff had a few other things on his plate so he offered the topic to the team – since I had already been digging through the numbers I grabbed it – hope you don’t mind.
Let’s begin with a few observations:
In 2013, Chase Headley does NOT look like he did in 2012. Duh!
It looks like there’s a lot of swing and miss to Chase’s game this year.
Chase looks to be susceptible to breaking balls inside, and more specifically, down and in. Whooosh!
I’m sure we could add to this list but it’s where I’ll begin.
What about 2012?
I didn’t get the Padres on television last season but that does not mean I didn’t develop an impression of Chase Headley. Based on a combination of radio, MLB At Bat, and Twitter I’ve concluded the following about 2012:
Chase appeared to be a more aggressive hitter. He still took his walks but if a pitcher gave him his pitch to start an at-bat he would hammer it.
Chase was at his best after the trade deadline passed and he no longer had to hear the rumors of being shipped off to a new club.
Questions to Consider
Is Chase Headley swinging and missing more or less this season? What kind of discipline is he showing at the plate?
Are pitchers pitching him differently in 2013? What adjustments are pitchers making to the Padres third baseman who tore up the league over the last third of 2012?
When Chase hits the ball what does it look like relative to years past?
How much of this is just bad luck?
So after doing some research this week, wouldn’t ya know, Corey Brock posted a great article on this very topic: Slumping Headley seeks more patience at the plate.
Perfect. Let’s take a look at Corey’s findings first.
Corey discovered that Chase is seeing fewer pitches per plate appearance than he saw last year and that he’s also swinging and missing with greater frequency than he did in 2012. What did Chase have to say about it?
“It’s a combination of things. First and foremost, I’ve got to swing at better pitches,” Headley said. “I’m getting myself out. I’m making him [opposing pitcher] thrown one quality strike. And there has been a little bad luck mixed in there, too.”
Corey also noted that Headley’s contact rate dropped from 74% in 2012 to 71.6% this season. Doesn’t sound good does it? What If I told you that his contact rate in 2011 was far higher than in 2012 when he had a career year? The data that Cory used came from Baseball Info Solutions which can be viewed at Fan Graphs. I’ve simplified their chart so we can focus on just a few items. I’m also going to focus on the years 2011-2013 because this probably best represents who Chase Headley is as a baseball player. Having said that, keep the following in mind: 2011 was shortened due to injury, 2012 was a career year, 2013 is only a third of the way completed. The comparisons are imperfect.
Plate Discipline and the Ol’ Swing-and-a-Miss!
YEAR Contact % -All balls thrown Contact % -Balls in Strike Zone Contact% -Balls out Strike Zone 2011 80 89 63.7 2012 74.8 85.5 55.8 2013 71.5 83.3 52.7
A far more striking difference between contact percentage on balls thrown between 2011 and 2012 yet Chase had a career year despite the drop-off. Chase’s batting average actually dropped 3 points from 2011 to 2012 and his K percentage also rose slightly (21% to 22.5%). Perhaps we can attribute this to the sacrifice necessary to hit for more power?
What we also see though is that when Chase is thrown a pitch in the strike zone his contact percentage has dropped each year. That’s not good. Is it possible that Chase is feeling the pressure to live up to the notion that he is the face of the franchise and he’s taking bigger swings to accrue HR totals that will justify such praise? Will Smith continues to receive roles in summer blockbusters . . . anything is possible!
What about the luck factor? Chase said that he thought some of his struggles could be attributed to bad luck. On average, balls (BABIP – Fan Graphs) in play tend to fall in for hits 30% of the time. According to the numbers, Chase’s BABIP has gone from .368 (’11) to .337 (’12) to .288 (’13). I think we could say that Chase has experienced a little less luck than he’s grown accustomed to in recent years.
This should change. Sometime. Right?
Is Chase Being Pitched Differently this Season?
Year Fastball Cutter Change-Up 2011 57.3% 4.6% 16.1% 2012 53.6% 4.8% 13.0% 2013 53.8% 5.8% 15.3%
I’ve left out a few pitches because there weren’t big shifts in the percentage of times they were thrown. But if we look at these three pitches we see shifts in the pitchers’ approach. Chase is seeing the same percentage of fastballs this year as he did in 2012 but pitchers appear to have taken notice of the damage Chase can do to a baseball. This season he’s seeing a greater percentage of cutters and a lot more change-ups. Think this might disrupt a batter’s timing just a bit? The change-ups are particularly interesting. If you click the link above you’ll see that the percentage of change-ups Chase has seen across his career pretty much mirrors what he’s seeing this season but for some reason pitchers threw the change with a lot less frequency last year. I don’t know what this means in terms of the the pitcher but it would seem to suggest that the pitchers are working hard to put him off balance this season, and successfully so, I might add.
Where Dat Ball Go?
What happens when Chase puts the ball in play (his K% is nearly the same as last year)? What does it look like?
YEAR Line Drive % (LD/BIP) Ground Ball % (GB/BIP) Fly Ball % (FB/BIP) 2011 21.9 45.8 32.3 % 2012 19.5 48.5 32.1 % 2013 20.8 45.4 33.8 %
Chase is hitting fewer ground balls in 2013 by 3 percent, which is sizable. That 3 percent has been dispersed across his line drives and fly balls. Why is he hitting more fly balls though? Is he pressing, trying to muscle up on the ball? The numbers that aren’t included in our chart are even more telling and this relates to what the ball does once it is in the air. Let’s look at Chase’s home runs as a percentage of total fly balls hit (HR/FB):
2011: 4.3%
2012: 21.4%
2013: 11.4%
Conclusion: Yikes!
The 2013 version of Chase Headley is not even close to the 2012 version of Chase Headley and the 2013 version of Chase Headley is also not even close to the 2011 version of Chase Headley. That was a very existential sentence, but an important sentence nonetheless as we desire to know precisely who Chase Headley is. Or is not.
Coming Full Circle
Let’s go back to the idea of early count results touched upon by Corey Brock in his article. Bud Black said this of Chase’s approach at the plate:
“I think more than anything, he’s probably a little overaggressive early in the count,” Black said. “The uncharacteristic early-count swings on pitches out of the zone.
What defines early in the count? Probably 0-0, 1-0, 2-0. It couldn’t be the inverse of those counts because it would be foolish to sit back and wait while in a pitcher’s count. Initially, the research that interested me related to what Chase did on the first pitch of an at-bat so I parsed through the data at Baseball Reference to see how Chase is performing in that count (Feel free to go examine it further and bring back your findings in 1-0 and 2-0 counts. Heck, knock your socks off and check the 2-1 counts too).
YEAR First Pitch % of Plate Appearances BA OBP SLG 2011 46 10% .341 .356 .545 2012 93 13% .344 .333 .633 2013 21 10% .250 .286 .250
*FYI: The “% of Plate Appearances” is a column that I created to show frequency.
Chase is actually swinging at the first pitch 3 percent less than he did in 2012.
Take another look at 2012. By this point in his career, Chase Headley had developed a reputation as a very patient hitter, the type of hitter who liked to see pitches and was more than willing to take a strike. And then he flipped the script, swinging at the first pitch 3 percent more of the times he batted in 2012. And it worked! If Chase got his pitch he went for it and was rewarded with a .633 slugging percentage. It is no longer 2012 though. The results just haven’t been there in the 0-0 count.
Conclusions
What can we conclude from all of these numbers? I think we could say that Chase has been a bit unlucky when he hits the ball in play. It also seems reasonable to suggest that he’s been pressing, trying to do more than he should with certain pitches, perhaps in an attempt to justify the contract offer that Ron Fowler floated last month. But it also appears clear that pitchers have made an adjustment relative to 2012. Now it’s Chase’s turn to adjust.
***
Thanks to Geoff Young for providing me with some cool charts.
I contribute to Padres Public on Thursday mornings and when I’m feeling particularly inspired. I can also be found on twitter at @AvengingJM where I comment on ___________ , 7 days a week. |
DataViz History: Edward Tufte, Charles Minard, Napoleon and The Russian Campaign of 1812 – Part 5
Charles Minard’s Flow Map of Napoleon’s Russian Campaign of 1812
The chart above also tells the story of a war:. It was drawn half a century afterwards by Charles Joseph Minard, a French civil engineer who worked on dams, canals and bridges. He was 80 years old and long retired when, in 1861, he called on the innovative techniques he had invented for the purpose of displaying flows of people, in order to tell the tragic tale in a single image. Edward Tufte, whose book, “The Visual Display of Quantitative Information” is a bible to statisticians, calls it “the best statistical graphic ever drawn”. [SOURCE]
Minard’s chart shows six types of information: geography, time, temperature, the course and direction of the army’s movement, and the number of troops remaining. The widths of the gold (outward) and black (returning) paths represent the size of the force, one millimetre to 10,000 men. Geographical features and major battles are marked and named, and plummeting temperatures on the return journey are shown along the bottom.
The chart tells the dreadful story with painful clarity: in 1812, the Grand Army set out from Poland with a force of 422,000; only 100,000 reached Moscow; and only 10,000 returned. The detail and understatement with which such horrifying loss is represented combine to bring a lump to the throat. As men tried, and mostly failed, to cross the Bérézina river under heavy attack, the width of the black line halves: another 20,000 or so gone. The French now use the expression “C’est la Bérézina” to describe a total disaster.
In 1871, the year after Minard died, his obituarist cited particularly his graphical innovations: “For the dry and complicated columns of statistical data, of which the analysis and the discussion always require a great sustained mental effort, he had substituted images mathematically proportioned, that the first glance takes in and knows without fatigue, and which manifest immediately the natural consequences or the comparisons unforeseen.” The chart shown here is singled out for special mention: it “inspires bitter reflections on the cost to humanity of the madnesses of conquerors and the merciless thirst of military glory”.
What does the map show us [1]
Forces visual comparisons (the upper lighter band showing the large army going to Moscow vs. the narrow dark band showing the small army returning).
Shows causality (the temperature chart at the bottom).
Captures multivariate complexity (size of army, location, direction, temperature, and time).
Integrates text and graphic into a coherent whole.
Illustrate high quality content (complete and accurate data, presented to support Minard’s argument against war).
Place comparisons adjacent to each other, not sequentially (people forget if they have to go from page to page ).
Use the smallest effective differences (i.e., avoid bold colors, heavy lines, distracting labels and scales).
Let’s look at the map in detail
Since Minard’s map is in French, I have provided an Englsh language version for us to use as we discusss the flow of Napoleon’s march in detail. [2]
Crossing the Niemen River – So It Begins
As Napoleon concentrated his enormous coalition army in preparation for the invasion of Russia, three Russian armies were positioned to guard the western frontier: the 1st Western Army, under Mikhail Barclay de Tolly, the 2nd Western Army, under Prince Pyotr Bagration, and the 3rd Western Army, under Alexander Tormasov. In June 1812, the 1st Western Army was stationed along the frontier with East Prussia and the Duchy of Warsaw. The 2nd was placed further south in modern Belarus. The 3rd stood yet further south, but still in Belarus. The overall commander of these three armies was Alexander himself, who was installed in Barclay de Tolly’s headquarters near Vilna.
On 23 June, the Prussian major (and later military theorist) Karl von Clausewitz, who had recently entered Alexander’s service, reached the Drissa camp (northwest of Polotsk on the Dvina, near modern Verkhniadzvinsk in Belarus) to inspect the site and report on the progress being made on its defensive works and fortifications. He remained unconvinced of its defensive qualities and said so to Alexander on 28 June. Despite the fact that the camp had appeared central to Russian strategy pre-invasion, it would prove of little worth once the Russian forces had withdrawn from the western frontier.
News of the Grande Armée’s advance guard crossing the Niemen (24 June, 1812) reached Alexander and Barclay de Tolly that same day, late in the evening. The order to withdraw to the Drissa camp was issued shortly afterwards, and Barclay’s units fell back.
Between 26 and 27 June, the order to retreat back from borders spread to each of the Russian corps commanders. Although most of the 1st Western Army’s withdrawal was relatively untroubled, General Dokhturov’s 6th corps, stationed between Lida and Grodno, was almost cut off by the Grande Armée’s crossing of the Niemen and Davout’s troops making for Minsk. Only by force marching did the 6th corps avoid the advancing French troops and reach Drissa unmolested. It was also on 26 June that Alexander dispatched a letter proposing talks with Napoleon, provided that the French emperor retired back over the border. The messenger was held up by Davout and only succeeded in reaching Berthier and Napoleon at the end of the month. The evacuation of Vilna began late on 26 June: by the time Napoleon received Alexander’s messenger and letter, Vilna had been occupied by the Grande Armée. Barclay de Tolly left the city early on 28 June, having destroyed the remaining depots as well as the bridge across the Dvina. Napoleon’s advance troops arrived about an hour later.
Next: The March Continues
References
[1] Dr. Daniel Churchill, MITE6323 – Interactivity, Visualization, Emerging Technologies and Paradigms, The University of Hong Kong, February, 2007.
[2] Mike Stucka, English translation of Minard’s classic chart of Napoleon’s March, Analyticjournalism.com, November 4, 2006, http://www.analyticjournalism.com/2006/11/04/english-translation-of-minards-classic-chart-of-napoleons-march/
[3] Napoleon’s Russian campaign: From the Niemen to Moscow, Napoleon.org, http://www.napoleon.org/en/Template/chronologie.asp?idpage=481959&onglet=1. |
Apple’s Sir Jony Ive has created a one-of-a-kind range of iPad accessories, to be sold at the upcoming ’Time For Design’ auction, proceeds of which will go towards the new Design Museum in Kensington. Pictured from left: unique iPad Pro, iPad ’Smart Cover’, Apple Pencil and holder. Donated by the Apple Design Team. Estimate: £10,000 – £15,000
Apple’s Sir Jony Ive has created a one-of-a-kind range of iPad accessories, to be sold at the upcoming ’Time For Design’ auction, proceeds of which will go towards the new Design Museum in Kensington. Pictured from left: unique iPad Pro, iPad ’Smart Cover’, Apple Pencil and holder. Donated by the Apple Design Team. Estimate: £10,000 – £15,000
To raise money for their relocation to Kensington, the Design Museum has partnered with Phillips to stage the ’Time for Design’ auction in Berkeley Square.
In aid of the good cause, the Museum has been inundated with generous donations from globally renowned designers and collectors. For example, the Zaha Hadid Foundation has donated three ’Mercuric’ collection tables; Ron Arad has contributed his striking ’D-Sofa’ in stainless steel; and pop-philanthropist Bono has parted with his Gretsch ’Irish Falcon’ guitar.
Keen to get in on the action, Apple’s chief design officer Sir Jony Ive has created something new: a one-of-a-kind accessory collection for the 12.9-inch iPad Pro.
Ive has a long history with the Design Museum, which is due to close its Shad Thames location in May, and reopen in Kensington at the end of November. He won their inaugural Designer of the Year award in 2003 for the iMac, and he also showed a prototype of a mobile phone at the museum way back in 1990.
Interview with Jony Ive on Apple Park
His new accessory collection includes an iPad Pro housing, which has been anodised with a custom dye; a blue, suede-lined ’Smart Cover’, crafted from supple French leather; and an orange cover for the Apple Pencil, created from fine grain Italian calf leather.
Ive’s new products are in single editions, designed exclusively for the Design Museum event. To prove it, ’Edition 1 of 1’ has been laser etched on the back surface of the iPad and the interior surface of the ’Smart Cover’.
’We are extremely grateful to the friends of the museum who had donated such outstanding pieces to help us fulfill our ambition of creating one of London’s most important new cultural sites,’ says Design Museum curator (and auction co-curator) Deyan Sudjic. |
The advanced Level 2 role of Team Leader Certification (TLC) was introduced as part of the NNWO a year ago. The documents supporting this certification have been updated. These changes were made after using the testing procedure for a year and collecting feedback from all people involved (Level 2s who tested for the TLC, Level 3s who were their Shadows, and GPHJs who were in charge). We added a lot of clarity and transparency, but the core of the process remains unchanged.
It is with pride that we present you the new Level 2 Team Leader Certification.
The TLC is a requirement to advance to Level 3, but interest in advancement to Level 3 is not a requirement to test for the TLC. The TLC indicates a judge can lead a team on Day 2 of a Grand Prix. The TLC is not needed or recommended for other tasks a Level 2 could perform such as being Head Judge of a PPTQ or acting as Head Judge or Team Leader of a Grand Prix public event. If you already have the TLC, just continue being awesome, as nothing changed for you!
It’s recommended that the GPHJ selects as many L2 Team Leaders on Sunday as they feel comfortable with. A judge with the TLC can lead a team without having a Shadow L3, but it is strongly recommended that all L2 Team Leaders have a L3 in their team. A judge seeking the TLC must also have a GPHJ who is wearing burgundy assigned to them. That GPHJ may not be assigned to more than one judge seeking the TLC. The TLC is valuable, but the feedback from the GPHJ and the L3 Shadow may be even more valuable. We designed this process to ensure that the candidate receives the feedback they deserve.
Speaking of the L3 Shadow: their role has been clarified. This is not a change in philosophy, but we received feedback that this philosophy needed more detail. The Shadow should act as an inexperienced, passive L2, not providing guidance or mentoring throughout the day, and not setting up any specific situations. The TLC candidate should have free reign in leading the team and showing what they are capable of. Of course, when the candidate asks for advice, it should be given. At the end of the day, the Shadow should have lots of constructive feedback for the candidate.
We also clarified what we expect of a TLC candidate: Lead a Team. While that may sound obvious, we added more detail here, too. Accomplishing the tasks of the team is necessary to succeed, but it is not enough alone. The candidate has to lead and make the team feel like a team. A team lead is expected to share their wisdom and experience with their team. They do this by mentoring them, giving them feedback, and making them into a team where everyone feels safe, welcome, and valued.
Yes, that’s a lot of expectations. To make sure the candidate is ready for this challenge, we have some guidance. The pre-test requirements all make sense for a team lead. A team lead should have some experience leading multiple judges and communicating with them. A team lead has the power to permit back ups, resolve Hidden Card Errors, and award Game Losses. When you are leading the Deck Check Team, you’ll even be responsible for a lot of Deck Problems and Decklist Problems. All of these are more than we expect from a beginning L2, so just passing the L2 test isn’t strong enough an indication of being ready.
At the moment, we use the L3 Practice test as a prerequisite to test for the TLC. There is an L3 practice available even without Judge Center, you can ask your RC for it. We will make a TLC test focusing on policy in the near future, that will replace the L3 Practice requirement.
Once you have your checklist complete, and you’re ready to test for the TLC, make sure to make it known! You can indicate this in your application for the GP, so the Tournament Organizer is aware of your request. Then, if you get accepted, make sure to let the Head Judge know that you want to test.
The overhaul of this document was made possible by the contributions of many people, most of all the L2 judges who shared their feedback about the testing procedure. Special thanks to the judges who tirelessly went over the many iterations of the document over and over again, constantly providing suggestions and improvements:
Alfonso Bueno
Rob Castellon
Stephan Classen
Daniel Kitachewsky
John Brian McCarthy
Fabian Peck
Luca Romano
Hans Wang
Yu Win Yew
If you have any questions, concerns, ideas or feedback, please send an email to the TLC Leader, Dustin de Leeuw . We’d love to hear from you! |
Quote
And it looks like I was wrong. On December 24, 25 and 26, they
Quote: We'll have new sales for previous packs almost daily (24, 25, 26) are the same sale. Each morning check back for the latest pack deals. I'd hold off on all the praise about the Black and White dyes. To me, they are just the regular weekly sale (since they arrived on the CM on Tuesday) and not part of the 12 Days of SWTOR.And it looks like I was wrong. On December 24, 25 and 26, they won't have a new sale Which doesn't really make sense. I could have understood that if they don't want to come to work during Christmas, they'd at least extend the sale so that it ends on December 31st, which would at least be a more logical ending date than December 29th. But since they state that the sale ends on December 29th, it won't really be a "12 Days" sale. Scoundrel healer. Raid leader. Guild officer @ Tulak Hord |
The Turnbull government is optimistic it can strike a shock deal with the Senate crossbench and pass the $7.8 billion Medicare levy, one of the centrepiece measures of the 2017 budget.
In a move that defies predictions the 0.5 per cent levy rise would stall in the Senate - and possibly be put on ice until after the next federal election - Treasurer Scott Morrison will on Thursday bring the bill to the Parliament.
The 0.5 per cent levy rise is supposed to start from July 1, 2019 and is designed to help fill the 10-year, $55.7 billion funding shortfall for the National Disability Insurance Scheme.
Mr Morrison has led behind the scenes negotiations with the Greens and members of the Senate crossbench in recent weeks and senior government sources said those meetings had been very "constructive" and the prospect of a deal was a "live option". |
Google Bans Sexually Explicit Content From Blogger (Update: There Will Be No Ban)
Update, 27/02: Google has decided to reverse the proposed ban. Instead it will “step up enforcement around our existing policy prohibiting commercial porn.” (H/t Engadget)
Google is banning adult content from websites hosted on Blogger from next month, after the company updated regulations governing the use of media on its blogging service.
A company support page for Blogger explains that “starting March 23, 2015, you won’t be able to publicly share images and video that are sexually explicit or show graphic nudity on Blogger.” Global News reports that emails were sent to Blogger users informing them of the policy change.
Google isn’t actually deleting any salacious websites, however. Blogs that fall foul of the new policy will be made private after March 23, Google said, unless they remove the content in question. That means they will be invisible to anyone but the blog owner and any associated admins. That said, new blogs created from March 23 that include sexually explicit material may be straight up deleted, the company explained.
There is a small caveat:
“We’ll still allow nudity if the content offers a substantial public benefit, for example in artistic, educational, documentary, or scientific contexts,” Google said.
It appears that the internet giant will be in charge of interpreting exceptions that fall under that rule, so don’t expect many allowances to be made.
The current policy allows sexual material (so long as it is legal) on a blog, which is then marked with an ‘adult’ warning for any visitors.
Google didn’t say why it has made the change, and a company rep declined to provide further details to TechCrunch when we reached out to seek clarification.
The company’s last significant policy change for Blogger came in 2013, when it cracked down on Blogger-hosted sites that monetized adult content. Now it is removing adult content from the network altogether. |
At a hearing of the House Intelligence Committee, the director of the National Security Agency and head of US Cyber Command, Michael Rogers, revealed that several countries are performing regular electronic surveillance on the US to place themselves in a position where they are able to cause havoc with vital control systems.
It is easy to cover-up a cyberattack with the right know-how.
Experts outside of the government have warned about this potential scenario for some time, but it’s the first time it has been confirmed by the nation’s top cyber official. On the subject, Rogers says " it is only a matter of when, not if, we are going to see something dramatic."
The news might not be much of a surprise if you follow developments in the surveillance area. It is widely-acknowledged that most governments, including the US, are investing in both defensive and offensive cyber warfare capabilities. US Cyber Command are also said to have the ability to hack into and damage other countries critical infrastructure; but Rogers wouldn’t reveal his offensive tools.
We are connecting more critical infrastructure to the web than ever before as we pursue the idea of automated “smart cities” and therefore the potential of an attack is increasing. It is easy to cover-up a cyberattack with the right know-how, whereas the source of physical attacks are much easier to detect. The NSA director said that in cyberspace, "you can literally do almost anything you want and there is not a price to pay for it."
Several countries are performing regular electronic surveillance on the US
Rogers was pressured into responding to a question from Republican Mike Rogers of Michigan who asked which countries other than China have the capability to launch similar attacks. “One or two others,” the NSA director said, but declined to name them due to being classified.
The US administration is working to set rules on what intrusions would be declared an act of war. It is a strange dynamic as the government appears to accept that intrusions will be made, but need to decide which systems would be off-limits. Observers meanwhile will be questioning why the NSA is publicly making these claims, and whether it is simply to reduce the criticism of the NSA’s own controversial surveillance efforts.
Do you think cyberwarfare is of significant concern? Let us know in the comments. |
This blog article is a continuation of my Goalie Coaching Philosopy series based on the conversations I had with Mike Lumsden of Breakaway Goaltending.
Now while footwork is the underlying bedrock for a goalie's performance from a physical standpoint, I want to talk about the second major element of my coaching philosophy: job of the goalie is to stop pucks vs preventing goals. This second element is very much a mental attitude or a mindset that I require of my goalies that should eventually dictate their physical skills and responses on the ice during practice and eventually games.
Let me start with the general idea behind puck-stopping. While puck-stopping is obvious as a major part of goaltending and if a goalie could stop the puck 100% of the time, there would really be no need to worry about things like rebound control or playing or setting the puck. Of course, the game of hockey would cease to exist if all goalies were perfect puck-stoppers as every game would end on 0-0 ties. But that level of puck-stopping is not the case and will likely never be.
The term puck-stopping, or "puck-stopper" as a nickname for a goalie, comes from an attempt to distill the core job of goaltending in its simplest terms. When Mike Lumsden of Breakaway Goaltending and I had our long goaltending philosophy discussion this was my open, sand-bagging, question to him. I asked him "what is the goalie's job?" Of course, the pat answer is "to stop pucks", but I feel that answer is way too delimiting and I always respond to that answer that the goalie's job is "to prevent goals" which is a much broader and deeper concept.
Many coaches like the idea that a goalie's only real job is to "stop pucks", because it allows them to judge their goalies by a very simple and (in their minds) objective criteria. As a result, coaches can dismiss the subtleties of the game with, what Steve McKichan of Future Pro calls, willful ignorance of the position. The idea of past and modern coaches ducking behind the excuse of "no knowledge" of the position will be another series of articles in this blog.
While "stopping pucks" is an element of "preventing goals", it is not the complete picture of the goaltending profession. Usually, I have some odd looks from my young charges when I give them this pop quiz at the start of the season. Older and more experienced goalies will typically clue in very quickly to the idea when they start to run through different scenarios in their head of situations they have experienced, how they responded to them, and the end result.
For the younger kids, I usually give them certain "goalie dilemma"-type questions.
Example #1: "On a hard low shot from a poor angle, would you rather (a) get your stick on the puck and put it over the glass, or (b) make the save with your pad and attempt a second difficult sliding save on the shot from the rebound that you put into the slot?"
Example #2: "On a pass from below the goal line into the slot, would you rather (a) deflect the pass safely away so there is no shot, (b) make a tough in-close save attempt on a shot from the deep slot?"
Example #3: "On a loose puck after a dump-in, would you rather (a) race to it quickly and pass it to a teammate, or (b) let the puck be contested with a good chance that other team may get a clear drive to the net?"
Essentially, while (b) is demanding the goalie to be a "puck-stopper" which to many is the goalie's job and goalies should WANT to do their job, very few goalies, even eight-year old novices, actively choose (b) over (a) in any or all of those scenarios. Even those young and inexperienced athletes realize that there are more preferrable results to just "stopping the puck".
In normal team practices, goalies rarely, if ever, get to use the skills represented by choice (a) and they certainly rarely get encouraged to do so. There are very few cases of coaches pushing goalies to be more active in controlling the puck, as long as they are making the stops. This coaching mindset quickly spills over to the goalie who then starts to think that as long as I'm making the stops, I'm doing my job and I need to do nothing more. There are no penalties or consequences for poor puck control in practice, either from the coaching staff or the goalie's own internal standards of play. This simple mindset will have real consequences in games and over the long haul of a season.
I try to demand from my goalies, even in standard team practices, the "prevent goals" philosophy of training and play. As a result, I have had situations of goalies being so effective with using their stick around the net to break up plays during practice, they were asked by their coaches to not do so any more. Many of my goalies are getting so effective at controlling rebounds on perimeter shots, in order for the team to practice driving the net for rebounds, we've had to set up boards in front of the goalie to (artificially) create these second opportunities. Or worse, we've had to take away the goalies' sticks to limit their puck-control abilities. The goalies that are this effective in practice see the results in games.
The best save you'll ever make is the one you don't have to! Steve McKichan
Goalie coaches themselves are very often at fault. Goalie coaches practice B scenarios a LOT, but A scenarios not nearly enough. Drills are often set to encourage post-save responses. Little is done to reward good controlled saves that require no post-save response other than recovering and repositioning. Now don't get me wrong, post-save responses that require a second-effort save are extremely important and need to be practiced in a controlled way to build an instantaneous reaction. But emotional and positive reinforcement on a second-effort save in practice on a shot or a scenario that shouldn't have required one, is like rewarding a defenseman that took a penalty to recover from a mistake in his own defensive zone. He may have helped stop a goal, but he has created a new dangerous situation from a play that shouldn't have required a second effort in the first place.
Banger Maxim #409: Everything is stickin' like dad's barbeque chick'n!
Check out Boston Bruins prospect, Adam Morrison, exercising puck-control saves on nearly every shot in practice.
I remember my senior team coach often thought it was helpful to tell me before a game, "hey, goaltending is easy. You just have to stop the puck". Usually this was his way to help me not over-complicate a big game against a tough team where I would typically tie myself in mental knots worrying about it. I don't think he was actually suggesting that "puck-stopping" was all there was to goaltending. I hark back to an old addage from veteran goalie coach, Jim Park, to drive home my point.
"High level goaltending is like professional billiards. It is not what you take away from the table that matters, but what you leave behind."
If you ever watched elite billiard players, what is most remarkable about their skill is not so much on how they sink the balls, but how they set up the table with every shot. After they sink their target ball, they manage to move the remaining balls to desired locations and the cue ball after striking its target, settles in a perfect spot to set up the next play. Lay people watching the sport may only notice how the billiard player sinks the balls, but the students of the game see how the player sets up the table after sinking the ball.
Watch how World Champion Ronnie O'Sullivan uses post-strike ball placement to clear a table in billiards.
I rarely see this level of observation in hockey by even by so-called high level coaches. They notice the tremendous effort on a second save, but rarely recognize the goalie that never has to make those types of saves because they have actively controlled the placement of the puck after the initial save. Teams that recruit goalies based soley on their ability on second saves will soon find themselves down in the standing mid-way through the season for seemingly inexplicable reasons.
There are shots and scenarios that are definitely outside the control (or reaction) zone of a goaltender. Plays in tight where a goalie has very little reaction time will create a lot of rebounds or second and third scoring attempts. Screens and obstructed vision will also create plays where a goalie must drop from a "prevent goals" mindset to a "just stop the puck" one. Defensive breakdowns in and around the net may cause scoring chances from forwards in a totally open spot. These scoring chances are very hard to control and desperation types saves may be required even though they lead to saves with uncontrolled rebounds.
As a goalie developer, what should we be doing to create these effective goal-preventers?
Firstly, standards in team practice should be held to what I call game-standards. Generally the first five minutes of flow drills where the team is shooting and warming up, I allow my goalies to just "feel" the puck. After the five-minute mark, we establish shots are to be handled at game-standard. Game standard means that every shot should be regarded as potential goal against in a real game and rebounds, positioning, post-save response, and puck placement are judged just like the goalies were in a game. Good controlled saves, either caught or redirected to a safe area, are praised loudly and enthusiastically. Poorly controlled saves that result in rebounds or bad puck placement are admonished even if there was a strong post-save response.
Secondly, when working with their goalies, goalie coaches should try to help young goalies recognize shots released from the puck-control or "reaction" zone. Shots from the reaction zone should be controlled rather than simply just stopped. In addition to this recognition, the goalie coach will try to expand a goalie's control zone, thereby allowing the goalie to control more shots in closer proximity to the net. Game experience and drills that work on the border of the control zone and stopping zone should help goalies become more reactive and more willing and skilled at controlling shots.
Banger Maxim #51: If you can see the shot, you should be able to control it.
Next, active sticks breaking up walk-outs or passes through the blue paint should also be encouraged. Situations where a goalie can play a contested puck safely, a goalie should. Allowing goalies to handle, play, and set the puck for their teammates in practice in a low consequence environment will increase their in-game skill at this important game management skill.
Banger Maxim #349: If a pass goes through the blue, who wears the goal? YOU!!
The importance of developing a strong responsibility to shot control and a goal-prevention mindset is that it is not something that can easily be switched on in a game. It must become a natural instinct like a butterfly knee-drive or a t-push. Problems arise when a goalie hasn't made puck-control a natural part of their game. When a game starts and then the shots, rebounds, passes and loose puck have real consequences, it causes one of two things. (1) The goalie now tries to overthink every shot or play which typically results in them overplaying or overreacting on each shot. It may result in more uncontrolled save responses or worse easy goals against that seem to just go through the goalie since their brain was halfway caught between controlling the puck or stopping the puck. Trying to do too much can be as disasterous as doing too little. Goalies who are not ready to control pucks make a conscious effort to do too much. (2) The goalie ends up going into pure blocking robot mode. Hey, kids! Don't be a robot!Every shot on net ends with nearly the same result: a stopped initial shot but garbage in and around of the net that the team has to contest. And face it, if thirty shots result in twenty contested rebounds, the defending team is going to lose about half of them. The end result is 10 good secondary scoring chances. The save percentage on secondary chances is only about 80% at best. That could equal two unnecessary goals a game.
Practice as you would in a game. Don't a be just a "game goalie". Even practice is a game and it should be played with the same intensity and attention to detail as you would in a game.
In my follow up posts, I plan to move away from the puck-control aspect of goaltending and dive into idea that the goalie's job is to "prevent goals" and not just "stop pucks. While puck-stopping and puck-control are elements of "preventing goales". Other facets of that point are brought into an important light. Preventing goals as a goaltender explores the idea about what goalies can do in and around their net to manage the game both individually and with their teammates. |
The national board of directors for SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) has called a strike starting at midnight on October 21 for members performing video game work. This includes voice actors, mo-cap actors, and more. The union is currently in contract negotiations with game publishers, and hopes to address actors' working conditions.
The two sides return to the bargaining table today through October 19, but the union says, "Based on past experience, we are not confident management is willing to make the changes necessary to bring this contract up to the standards of our other agreements."
According to SAG-AFTRA, the sticking-point issues include royalties, stressful vocal sessions, and more transparency about jobs. For their part, the publishers want to fine actors for tardiness or "inattentiveness," fine agents who don't send clients out to all requested auditions, the ability to hire non-union voice actors, and more.
The strike order specifically mentions publisher/developers such as Electronic Arts, Take 2, Activision, and WB Games, among others, but SAG-AFTRA members working on games in production as of February 17 are exempt from the order.
For a rundown of the entire issue, check out this helpful feature.
[Source: SAG-AFTRA (1), (2)]
Our Take
As has been said before, this is all part of the negotiating dance, so it's hard to predict what may or may not happen. As the feature itself points out in several places, everything is a bargaining chip. |
It’s been an emotional few days for the Denver music community. On Sunday afternoon, Gary Lee Bomar — owner of Gary Lee’s Motor Club and Grub — passed away at a Denver hospital after sustaining a severe head injury earlier this week.
Bomar was in Mexico on a vacation, traveling in a small town between Cabo San Lucas and La Paz. On Wednesday, he was on the phone with his mother, when he said to her, "Hang on, there's an accident, I need to call you back." After not hearing from him, his mother called back an hour and a half later and was told that Bomar was in an ambulance.
Bomar underwent surgery in Mexico, and after his family was able to pay the medical bills — thanks in a large part to a gofundme page that raised over $30,000 in a matter of hours — he was medevaced to Denver on Thursday. His condition continued to worsen, though, with Bomar on life support as of Friday evening. He passed away on Sunday afternoon, in the hospital, surrounded by family. |
DBT Self-Help Resources: Emotions List
Using an Emotions List to help Label an Emotion
Some people are more adept at labelling their emotions than others. Some people just can’t seem to name what they are currently feeling. They might say that they felt bad or upset, but pinning down what that actually means for them is more challenging. Many people walk around in this kind of emotional fog.
Unfortunately, if you don’t know what you are feeling, you can’t do much to change it. People who can name their emotions are more capable of managing them, so it is important to become more familiar with your emotions and learn to identify them.
Once you are more capable of naming your emotions, you’ll have more choices in terms of what to do with an emotion if it makes you feel uncomfortable and you would prefer to at least reduce its intensity. Many people with emotion dysregulation grow up without learning this important information, so for some people it takes a lot of time to get the hang of naming their emotions. Be patient. If you get frustrated, reframe this process as if you are learning a new language. In fact, that’s exactly what is happening: you are learning the language of emotion.
Anytime you are unable to identify the emotion you are experiencing refer to the Emotions List. Reading through it, you should be able to find a word that closely describes the emotion that you are experiencing. |
Author: Troy Stangarone, KEI
In South Korea’s recent presidential campaign, the candidates put forward a variety of positions on issues of the day, with one exception. Trade — the lifeblood of South Korea’s economy — was conspicuously absent from the discussion.
Now that Moon Jae-in has secured the presidency, he should build South Korea’s trade policy around the need for strong rules that protect international trade and investment. This includes increasing South Korean competitiveness and minimising the ability of countries to retaliate against South Korea for political reasons as China has done over the contentious Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) system. To achieve these goals, the Moon administration should join a revived version of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and push for more ambition in the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).
Trade matters immensely to South Korea’s economic growth — according to the OECD, trade accounts for 85 per cent of South Korea’s GDP. But while exports have grown in recent months, they are down 13.5 per cent since 2014 and total trade is down 18 per cent over the same period.
Some of the decline in South Korean trade can be attributed to a corresponding decline in commodity prices. But South Korea is also increasingly facing greater international competition and uncertainty in its trading relationships. In a number of key areas, including automobiles, home appliances, shipbuilding, steel and semiconductors, China is more competitive than South Korea on price, negating South Korea’s diminishing advantage in quality and technology.
For much of the Park Guen-hye administration, the focus was on RCEP and concluding a free trade agreement (FTA) with China. That FTA with China gave South Korea increased market access to its largest trading partner, and uniquely placed South Korea as the only significant global economy that has FTAs with the United States, China and the European Union. The advantage of RCEP over the TPP was its potential to increase trade within the region by upgrading South Korea’s FTAs with ASEAN and India. Seoul already had fairly high standard agreements with most other TPP countries, which made the agreement less attractive.
Recent events, however, have demonstrated that focusing primarily on the economic benefits of tariff cuts at the expense of trade rules can have economic costs. While China has not formally stated that it is sanctioning South Korea over its decision to deploy the THAAD missile defence system, it is clear that China is trying to pressure South Korea into reversing its decision through economic means.
The clearest example is the Lotte Department store chain — after the company agreed to a land swap with the South Korean government for the deployment of THAAD, Lotte has seen the temporary closure of 80 per cent of its stores in China for supposed fire and safety reasons. Lotte estimates the monthly loss from these store closures at US$66 million. If Lotte sticks it out in China, those losses could extend to more than US$660 million for 2017.
Lotte hasn’t been the only target for Chinese retaliation. In March, China informally forbade group tours from going to South Korea, resulting in a 40 per cent drop in Chinese tourists in just a few weeks. China has also taken steps against highly popular Korean dramas and other creative content — losses in these and other areas could reach US$7.5 billion this year.
The THAAD experience should be instructive for the new Moon administration. Some will argue that this demonstrates why South Korea must tread carefully with China on security matters. That would be the wrong lesson to take. Instead, it should demonstrate to Seoul the need to ensure strong trade rules.
While China is not a party to the TPP and the agreement would not address every issue that South Korea has faced with China, it is an important step in strengthening international trade and investment rules — rules that China may one day adopt. As South Korea increasingly moves into creative industries such as entertainment — where the Korean Wave has made South Korea the world’s fifth largest exporter of audio-visual services — the rules of trade, the protection of intellectual property and behind-the-border issues will affect South Korean trade more than tariffs.
If rules similar to the TPP had been in effect with China during the THAAD dispute, China would have been obligated not to discriminate against Korean digital content and Chinese consumers interested in Korean content would benefit from the agreement’s provisions on cross-border dataflow provisions. Of course, the TPP is not perfect. In any future regional negotiations, China will no doubt seek to maintain as much autonomy as possible — but recent events demonstrate how that autonomy can be abused.
By joining other Asian nations’ efforts to revive the TPP without the United States and push for higher standards within RCEP, Seoul can create much-needed competition to improve the efficiency of South Korean firms. At the same time, pushing to join a high standard agreement such as the TPP would begin to create standards in international trade that would help protect Korean firms and send a signal about the type of trading system South Korea envisions — one where fair play matters.
Troy Stangarone is the Senior Director for Congressional Affairs at the Korea Economic Institute of America. The views expressed here are the author’s alone. |
When police seize a gun that was owned illegally, should they destroy it or auction it off?
Some cities around the country would like to destroy them, but can’t because more than a dozen states have passed laws forcing city governments to put the guns up for auction.
Gun rights advocates helped get the state laws passed, arguing that destroying old guns is wasteful. But officials in cities like Tucson, Ariz., and Savannah, Ga., are pushing back against those laws, saying they need to destroy the guns to prevent more violence.
Tucson has destroyed nearly 5,000 seized guns since 2013, despite a law that, the state government claims, bans doing so. After the state threatened legal action, the city voted this month to stop destroying guns while it challenges the law in court.
In Savannah, city council members have launched an effort to get permission from the state to destroy guns, rather than sell them.
“I favor destroying those weapons. I don’t want them sold to pawn shops or gun dealers. These guns seem to always wind up in the poor neighborhoods,” City Councilman John Hall told FoxNews.com.
He admitted that it is likely to be a tough fight.
“We are facing an uphill battle to get that changed because of the heavy gun lobby in the state,” he said.
Gun advocates who helped get the bill passed argue that re-sold guns should be treated just like new guns.
“The holy grail of gun prohibitionists, the background check, will be employed when a person purchases one of these firearms,” Jerry Henry, executive director of GeorgiaCarry.org, told FoxNews.com.
“There is absolutely no reason to destroy a perfectly good legal item just because the item was stolen and is now in the hands of law enforcement,” Henry said.
Hall does not agree.
“A lot of people say these guns won’t end up in the hands of the wrong people. These guns do,” he said. Asked if he had a specific example of that, he said he did not – but knew that it happened.
Asked if re-selling the guns might provide a cheap alternative for people looking to buy a gun for self-defense, Hall said, “Most people who buy for legitimate purposes – they buy new weapons. That’s what I believe.”
Alan Gottlieb, the founder of the pro-gun rights Second Amendment Foundation, noted that destroying guns would benefit gun manufacturers.
“If there’s a demand to buy firearms, and the city has destroyed these guns, it just helps the firearms industry selling new guns … If you’re anti-gun it backfires in your face.”
While neither Hall nor other proponents of destroying seized guns argue that the point is to prevent weapons manufacturers from turning a profit, Gottlieb sees the cities’ efforts as part of a campaign against guns in general, “because they hate guns and don’t want anybody to own one.”
Gottlieb added that the group isn’t looking to help the gun manufacturers. “We’re here to help the consumer. And if consumers can buy a firearm at a lower price, that’s what we’re here to do.”
For his part, Hall doesn’t understand why anyone would oppose destroying guns and other anti-gun laws.
“I had an older brother who was murdered in 1984 by a handgun,” Hall said. “It’s downright disgusting to me how people argue against common sense legislation. Did you know that a 12-year-old can walk down the streets of this city with a long gun? That’s legal. We live here in a state where you can carry a gun in church or in a bar. We have gun nuts here who just aren’t for any common sense gun control.”
Those “gun nuts” believe that restrictions on weapons nearly always backfire.
“The only people they ever injure with their gun-control laws are law-abiding citizens. Criminals will always have their firearms, regardless of laws,” Henry said. |
On September 9th, 2016 prisoners across the United States will be conducting work stoppages, hunger strikes and other forms of action in a call to end prison slavery. The call was originated by organizers from the Free Alabama Movement. A national coalition of community groups associated with the IWW’s Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee, Anarchist Black Cross chapters and others throughout the country have come together to build a national support network to push for a final end to prison slavery.
To achieve this goal, we need support from the international community. We hope that prisoner support groups in the across the globe will hold solidarity demos and inform prisoners they are in contact with about the September 9th day of action. This spring and summer will be seasons of organizing, spreading the word, building networks of solidarity and showing that we’re serious and what we’re capable of. We ask that you organize some sort of solidarity action and help spread the word to prisoners in your area. We hope that the fires of prison rebellion spread from the United States to prisons across the globe! With one unified voice of rebellion we can send a strong message to captors across the globe that the iron bars of their cage cannot contain our thirst for freedom!
Over the next month members from the Anarchist Black Cross in the United States will be traveling Europe and available to do presentations or talk with your collective if you have the time/if our itinerary has us come through your area. It would also be most helpful if folks could help us get in contact with other groups throughout Europe to spread the word and who might be interested in meeting with us while we are in their area.
Dare to Struggle
Dare to Win
Portland ABC
pdxabc.org
More info on the Sept. 9th Day of action.
supportprisonerresistance.noblogs.org/s…/
FreeAlabamaMovement.com
iwoc.noblogs.org
unityandstruggle.org/2016/05/05/incarce…/
If you or your collective are interested in meeting with us we will be in the following European cities on the following dates. We would love to do a presentation or share about the national prisoner strike with your group. If you have connections to prisoner support groups in any of the following cities it would be greatly appreciated if you could connect us!
July 6-10th: Berlin
July 10th-15: Barcelona
July 15-20th: Naples
July 20th-24: London
July 24-29th: Paris
July 29-August 6: Athens
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The Self Insert
Life had always been without magic. That's why he wrote — because the real world, while it could be interesting, didn't have any magic. He wasn't quite a man of science, but instead a man of rationality. And so, he wrote: to add a little magic, a little horror, a little interest to a dull, humdrum world.
It wasn't until he fell through a hole in his world — from the real world to a world filled with the things he'd written — that he started believing. It all began so simply. He had been walking through the stock room at Wal-Mart, headed for break; when he turned the corner, he didn't see what he expected to see: bleak grey shelving filled with boxes of product were replaced with sterile, white walls. He stopped walking, trying to take it in. Turning in place, he was shocked to discover nothing behind him but the same white walls.
A psychotic break? Maybe. But you have to work within the laws of whatever universe you find yourself in, and so he began to walk, an eerie feeling shivering down his spine. The first door he came to was marked with a familiar symbol — and that feeling just got worse. He was here, in the Foundation. Not as a doctor, researcher, or agent, but as just…himself.
He was screwed.
He wouldn't blend in. He couldn't, not in blue jeans and a blue shirt. And despite being a writer, the man who would come to be known by the three-letter acronym of TDM was not as clever as those he wrote about. He had one chance, he thought. If he could get out, get away from this Site, he might be able to lose himself in the world. Might.
A passing researcher gave him a curious look as he continued to stroll down the hall. An agent gave him the same look, but closer, as if scrutinizing his face. A glance, risked over his shoulder, saw them both pointing him out to a security guard. He cursed under his breath as the guard called out for him to stop. So much for chances. Time to see if his writing had ever been any good.
He turned to the nearest locked door, addressing the panel beside it. "Open. Authorization O5-6. Alpha-Omega-13." And, amazingly, it worked. The door slid open, and he dashed through, closing and locking it behind him with the same authorization codes. It might not hold long, but would it be long enough?
Down another hall. Left at a doorway. Push past the old man with the beard. Locking every cross portal he came across, sealing every blast door. When he came to a computer, he logged in, using passcodes he'd once typed out just for the heck of it. Now, it felt so much more dangerous. He was at… Site 19. Damn it. Used to contain humanoids…no easy exits like 23 had. No… wait. There, down low, an O5 meeting room. If he could get there, he could get out. The O5s always had special escapes built in.
He wasn't a hacker — he wasn't even particularly computer savvy. Which was why he was glad he'd always written the Foundation as using touch screens. Level Five status allowed you to pull off a lot of fun tricks. Including initiating a Keter level breach alert, on the opposite side of the site. Hopefully, that would distract the guards. Hopefully.
It didn't matter. He'd locked the nearest stairway, and it was damn near a straight shot down to that room.
Eleven floors later, he was cursing the fact he'd never had enough money to get a gym membership. Being an internet writer wasn't exactly the type of work that gave you fantastic muscles. Or, you know, any muscles whatsoever.
Thirteen floors after that, he was gasping for breath, and wishing he'd quit smoking cigars when his girlfriend had asked him to. But, finally, he'd made it where he was going. Down another hall, and open this door…
TDM slumped against the wall, defeated. Sitting in the room, almost as if they had been waiting for him, was an old man and his two bodyguards. Of course he'd have to show up on a day an O5 was actually here. "Well, fuck."
The old man stared at the intruder, then shook his head just slightly at the man in the gas mask beside him. He considered the look in the man's eyes, the tone of his voice, and came to a startling — to him — conclusion. "You know who I am." There should only have been a handful of people who could recognize him on sight. "Interesting. Sadly, I do not know who you are. Which is intriguing, considering you have been using my security codes to throw this site into an uproar. You appear to have not been expecting me, and so are unlikely to be an assassin." A slight pause. "And your condition certainly helps prove that. My people tell me you appeared in the middle of a hallway, which could make you a teleporter, but I think an out of shape teleporter would not have walked down all those stairs. Which means someone sent you here. Against your will, maybe? You were coming to this room… to escape, yes? That doesn't tell me how you know there IS an escape route here. Well, do you have anything to say?"
Through labored breathing, TDM muttered something. "You'll have to speak up," the old man replied. "I am getting up there in years."
TDM sat back, and spoke again, louder this time. "Jack. TJ. Sarah. Claire. Mich-"
For an old man, the fellow known as Cowboy could still move amazingly quickly. In the twinkling of an eye, he had moved forward. TDM's pale throat stood in contrast to the glittering silver blade pressed against it, seemingly drawn from Cowboy's cane. "Those are words that guarantee you a swift death."
"But I can save them!" the bearded man gasped out, eyes locked on the blade. He gulped reflexively, and the razor sharp tip nicked his throat, a single drop of blood welling up.
"You're not helping your case. Many have claimed as much over the years. But, if you know anything about the Foundation, you should know, there are-"
"-no happy endings," the bearded man finished in unison with the O5. His thoughts raced, looking for anything that might save him. His eyes fixed on the bodyguard with the gasmask, and a spark fired somewhere in his brain. It would ruin his favorite story, but save his life. He cleared his throat, hoping to get the accent right. "H'lyiah, Cho'tp'k?"
The man known as Thompson's eyes widened behind the gas mask he always wore. His gaze shifted slightly, and his head tilted slightly before returning to its perfect orientation. O5-6 frowned. "What did you just say? Are you trying to work some memetic agent? I'll have you know, my men are well-shielded against such things. I do believe I shall simply kill you."
Taking a deep breath, he tried his best to get it all out at the same time.
"BlackhasbeenbrainwashedbyMannandhe'sgoingtokillyouifyoudon't-"
Not quite quick enough. Even as he spoke, the unmasked bodyguard's eyes glazed over, and he began to raise his gun. Not towards the unknown man, but towards the O5. Unfortunately for Agent Black, Thompson was prepared, having been prewarned. His brass knuckles struck twice in as many seconds, and the brainwashed minion was sent to the floor, unconscious.
"Like that," TDM finished lamely.
"Interesting." Six stared at his once-trusted protector, a deep frown creasing his lips. "And you knew this…how?"
"I wrote it."
Time passed, as it does. The newcomer was tagged as a Black Box SCP, known by a descriptor, not a number. The Duck Man, or "TDM" for short. He was very busy for the first, oh, hour or twelve, telling Six everything he knew about Mann's plans. He was then placed in a Humanoid Containment Chamber, and ignored for a couple of weeks, as Six routed out all of the mad doctor's plans and puppets.
But after all that, it came time to decide what to do with him. Jack Bright and O5-6 stood in the observation lounge, watching as TDM stared upwards, trying desperately to entertain himself in between feedings.
"What did he just say?" Six leaned forward, turning up the volume.
"I think it was something along the lines of 'Wow. 12 meters high. I didn't think they actually did that.'" Jack fiddled with his amulet, staring at the man before them. "Do you think this guy is on the level?"
"He's not a Bixby, if that's what you're asking. I've had people testing him, covertly. If he could alter reality, he'd have done something by now. Tests show him to be completely human, identical on a quantum level to a man currently living in the United States. All the ID he had on him when we put him in here is identical to the real one. Well, with one difference. The him on the outside is a millionaire. Won a lottery or something. This one worked at Wal-Mart."
"Thought you said he wasn't a Bixby? Sounds like some major wish fulfillment to me."
"Enh. Might have been something like that. But this guy? He can't do anything now. Except make use of the things he's 'written' in before."
"So you think he really created us?"
"No. I'm not that pessimistic. I think in his universe, he had some, we'll call it a connection. It lets him know way too much about us, but he's not a god, or a creator of any kind." Six pauses to pull out a cigar and light it up. The smoke alarm begins to go off, but a quick glare from Six and the alarm is rapidly silenced.
"Do you really have to do that?"
"What's the point of having power, if you can't abuse it?"
"And you think he can fix me? And TJ? And…" Bright swallows. "Sarah?"
"I think he can. He knows the shortcuts, he said."
"What does he want?
"Protection. He doesn't want anyone to know he's here. He says he gets nightmares thinking about what MC&D, or the CI would do to him. He also seems to think if he does too much, people from his world will notice him, and …get rid of him. He calls it deletion. He's scared to death of Kondraki and Clef, thinks they'll 'decommission' him. He's willing to help us with whatever we want, as long as we keep him fed… and entertained."
"Entertained?"
"He knows he can't have access to the outside world." Six blows a smoke ring. "So he wants games. Computer, video, all that sort. And books. Something to keep him healthy." His mouth curls in a half-smile. "And SCP-1004."
Jack can't help but double take. "One thousand four? Does he know what it does?"
"He seems to think he can handle it." Six found himself smirking. "And if he can't, well… We'll have found out all he knows by the time it makes him incapable of proceeding."
"You're an asshole. I love it."
Now. At this point, we could go on about the things The Duck Man did. The SCPs he fixed. The plots he stopped with his information, or the other things he told people that they shouldn't have known. Instead? I think it best to end this tale with a small view of what the guards watching him see.
Agent Klein sat down beside Senior Agent Hanks, sliding his card into the station to clock into his assignment. "All right, sir. I'm here to take over observation duties from you. Anything I need to know?"
"This guy masturbates more than anyone. Ever. Seriously, it's disgusting. I don't even want to know what he's looking up on that thing. The sounds are bad enough." Hanks shakes his head. "Look, this is an easy job. The skip isn't dangerous. He just sits there, playing video games, and watching porn. Your main duty is to poke him every now and then, make him get active. That's what the treadmill and weights are for. The Overseers want him to stay healthy."
"Is he talking to himself in there?"
"Same thing he always says. I don't get it, but here, listen." Hanks leaned forward, turning up the volume so the two could hear the words The Duck Man would be repeating for the rest of his long life.
"Please don't downvote me. Please don't downvote me. Please don't downvote me." |
Voting in the Liberal leadership race grew steadily Tuesday, at a pace that indicates the number may soon push towards the 50 per cent mark, even though registered voters have until Sunday afternoon to cast their ballots.
In an effort to make the voting process more transparent, the Liberal Party on Sunday began publishing the number of votes cast and the number of registered voters by province.
By late Tuesday afternoon, more than 55,000 — or 44 per cent — of the 127,122 party members and supporters eligible to vote had cast ballots, according to the party's website.
Officials say the numbers will continue to be updated regularly throughout the week. And with each campaign making a final push to get out the vote, voter turnout was over 20 per cent in each province, with Quebec and Ontario posting higher showings of over 40 per cent.
Registered Liberal voters by province British Columbia: 16,098
Alberta: 9,301
Saskatchewan: 2,700
Manitoba: 4,444
Ontario: 59,475
Quebec: 14,574
New Brunswick: 6,889
Nova Scotia: 7,426
P.E.I: 2,611
Newfoundland and Labrador: 3,148
Nunavut: 58
Northwest Territories: 176
Yukon: 223 Total: 127,122
For a time Monday, the number of registered voters per province on the party's website added up to a number considerably higher that the 127,122 total posted beside the interactive map on the site.
The total on Monday morning, when totals for each province and territory were added together, came to 128,777, which, oddly, was a little higher than the128,351 who cast ballots in the NDP leadership race that elected Tom Mulcair a year ago..
By Monday afternoon, the party had lowered the tally in almost every province so that the numbers added up to 127,122.
Coding program updates made
In an email, party spokesperson Sarah Bain said, "We've made coding program updates and as we've always said the number could be updated due to reviews and mail delays."
Last week, party president Ian McKay said some voters hadn't received their voter IDs and PIN numbers that had been sent by mail.
Voters who cast ballots online can do it quickly if the system is working. Each voter enters his or her voter ID, PIN number, date of birth and a CAPTCHA — a type of test, usually copying a series of letters, used in computing as an attempt to ensure that the response is generated by a human being.
Voters then enter their preferential choices for each candidate, ranking them by first choice, second, third and so on. It is possible for a voter to enter only a first choice.
Race is almost over
The leadership race that began in November is almost over, and all official campaign events have finished.
The six candidates vying for the leadership of the Liberal Party are:
MP Justin Trudeau.
MP Joyce Murray.
Former Toronto-area MP Martha Hall Findlay.
Former cabinet minister Martin Cauchon.
Toronto lawyer Deborah Coyne.
Retired military officer Karen McCrimmon.
Trudeau, the perceived frontrunner, made a passionate plea on Saturday to restore the Liberals as a viable choice for Canadian voters, saying he would put forward an "irresistible alternative" to the Conservatives in time for the next general election in 2015.
A volunteer with the Trudeau campaign told CBC News that campaign staff members were not letting up their efforts to get out the vote, be it from call centres or in kitchen tables.
"It's still an election and we're not taking anything for granted," said volunteer Annamaria Nunziata.
Brad Lister, a volunteer with Joyce Murray's campaign, told CBC News they are hoping to do the same and "extol the values of Joyce."
Hall Findlay, who conceded she was the "underdog" during her speech, is counting on undecided voters.
"That undecided conversation is an important one to have," Angus Rennie, a volunteer for the Hall Findlay campaign, told CBC News.
Registered voters attending the showcase were able to cast their ballots after the candidates finished their speeches, while others began voting Sunday, online or by phone.
Voters have until Sunday at 3 p.m. ET to cast a ballot. The final results are expected to be announced after 5 p.m. that same day.
Labrador byelection
The next leader will be elected through a preferential ballot based on a points system that gives each of the 308 ridings across the country 100 points for a total of 30,800 points.
The winner will have to obtain 50 per cent plus one, or a total of 15,401 points.
The first test for the new Liberal leader will come with a byelection in the riding of Labrador on May 13.
Liberals are hoping to regain the seat they lost to the Conservatives by 79 votes in the last federal election.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper had until September to call the byelection, but chose to call it early.
Another challenge for the new leader will be to figure out where in the country they are going to focus their rebuilding efforts.
Nik Nanos, president and CEO of Nanos Research, told CBC Radio's The House on Saturday that "what the Liberals lack is a regional base."
Nanos added: "Mathematically, if a party wants to win a federal election, it must have a regional base… and right now it's slim pickings." |
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The Atlantic’s Andrew Sullivan was on the syndicated Chris Matthews Show today, and he said that the Beck, Palin, Limbaugh and Fox News are calling the government illegitimate, and are committing sedition. Sullivan said, “This is about the moment when America’s divides go right up to calling the government, not wrong, but illegitimate.” Let’s examine the law and see if the right wing is behaving seditiously.
Here is the video courtesy of Media Matters:
This all started with Joe Klein’s comments last week:
Sullivan agreed with Klein and reinforced his point, “I’m more with Joe than I am with the Fox News Republican National Committee coalition machine, sort of this great machine spewing out an alternative reality to reality every minute of the day. Look, dissent is great and important, and I believe, I am free speech absolutist, but this essentially accusing the president, the duly elected president, of being illegitimate and even treasonous, with respect to what the United States is, and it’s important to recognize that is what they are saying. It’s what they believe. Sarah Palin’s little husband was a part of a secessionist movement, there’s been secession movements in the South. This is a replay. You know this is Confederate history month. This is about the moment when America’s divides go right up to calling the government, not wrong, but illegitimate.”
He later blasted the idea that Beck and Limbaugh should be excused because they are entertainers, “Look, I’m tired, I have to say of this notion that someone like Beck and Limbaugh can be excused because they are entertainers, as if that is an excuse for saying substantively what they are saying and for controlling the Republican Party. Look, who in the Republican Party have actually pushed back against Beck or Limbaugh or these other nut cases? I mean, that’s the truth and because there is no resistance in the Republican Party, the Republican Party is Fox News. That’s the head of the Republican Party.”
Here is the definition of sedition according to the US Code:
” If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both. “
Are Beck, Palin, Limbaugh, and Fox News conspiring to overthrow, put down or destroy the US government, or are they electioneering in order to put the Republican Party back in power? My own personal view is that when they start calling for revolution, they are walking the line towards sedition, but by the letter of the law, I don’t think they are engaged in seditious activity. The path they are currently on could easily slip into sedition if they get more extreme and start calling for armed revolution or rebellion.
Kelly O’Donnell had it all wrong though. Beck and Limbaugh should not be simply dismissed as entertainers, because their audiences don’t view them that way. To the people who are loyally devoted to Beck, Limbaugh, Fox News, and Palin, they are trusted sources of information, and in almost every case the only source of information that these individuals turn to. They should not be dismissed. Their misinformation and propaganda should be refuted at every turn. Ignoring them and leave their lies unchallenged will only allow their misinformation to take root.
If you’re ready to read more from the unbossed and unbought Politicus team, sign up for our newsletter here! Email address: Leave this field empty if you're human: |
Last week, archaeologists in Kent, England, discovered the body of a girl believed to have been killed by Roman soldiers around 50 A.D.
Archaeologists excavating near a former Roman settlement in the English county of Kent made a startling discovery last week: Lying in a shallow trench amid ancient military gear thought to be left behind during the first-century Claudian invasion was the skeleton of a young woman between 16 and 20 who died under violent circumstances.
Fragments of pottery date the grave to about 50 A.D., four years after Claudius began his conquest of the British Isles, and suggest that the victim belonged to the area’s indigenous population, said Paul Wilkinson, leader of the dig and director of the Kent Archaeological Field School (KAFS).
Last summer, Wilkinson and KAFS trainees made a number of significant finds at the same site, which once bordered a Roman town built in the first century along Watling Street—a Roman road that once extended across England and Wales—and is now part of Syndale Park in the town of Faversham. They uncovered Roman military ditches containing late Iron Age pottery as well as Roman ceramics and horse harnesses from the mid-first century A.D. Based on this evidence, the team hypothesized that Roman soldiers busy sacking Britannia under orders from Claudius had discarded these items after capturing the surrounding area and before heading to their next target.
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“It seems that when the army moved on they dug pits and buried their broken equipment,” Wilkinson explained.
Returning to the site on April 22 for additional work that is still ongoing, Wilkinson and another group of trainees stumbled upon something else that the Romans might have considered equally dispensable. “The body of a young girl with a dramatic wound to the back of her head was literally dumped in and just actually buried and covered over,” Wilkinson said.
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In good health at the time of her death, the woman was probably felled by a Roman sword while in a kneeling position, he conjectured, adding, “This poor girl was obviously of use to them while they were camped there, but her usefulness ran out when they moved on and they killed her.”
While ancient Roman texts describe how invading armies plundered British towns and slaughtered their inhabitants, little evidence has been found of such widespread carnage. One of the most noteworthy examples is the famous British archaeologist Mortimer Wheeler’s discovery in the 1930s of a mass grave at Maiden Castle in which people had been buried after suffering violent deaths. The placement of the young girl’s corpse and the ostensible circumstances of her death provide insight into how the Roman invaders may have treated indigenous Britons, challenging one classic theory that Britain prospered and advanced under foreign rule.
Two years ago, Wilkinson and a team of archaeologists unearthed another young female victim—a teenager who had been decapitated, possibly because she was accused of witchcraft—near a church in Rochester, Kent. She was given a funeral service and proper burial some 700 years after her death. The remains of the Faversham girl will be reburied at the site where she was found.
“In this small evaluation trench on the corner of a potential marching camp we come across a little cameo of tragedy, really,” Wilkinson said, reflecting on his most recent discovery. |
Mr. Romney’s career at Bain Capital, which he owned and ran as chief executive, is a cornerstone of his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination — a credential, he argues, that showcases the management skills and business acumen that America needs to revive a stalled economy. Creating jobs, Mr. Romney says, is exactly what he knows how to do.
The White House, though, is already preparing a less flattering portrayal, trying to frame Mr. Romney’s record at Bain as evidence that he would pursue slash and burn economics and that his business career thrived by enriching the elite at the expense of the working class.
From 1984 to 1999, Mr. Romney and his deputies made fortunes by investing in, acquiring and then selling about 150 companies. It was high-stakes work that shaped Mr. Romney’s values and views, taught him the art of salesmanship and negotiation and took him deep inside the boardrooms and factories of American business.
Because financial data for many of the acquisitions are not publicly available, it is difficult to fully tally the wins and losses, the jobs created and the jobs eliminated on Mr. Romney’s watch. But the experience with Dade, Bain’s biggest transaction at the time, shows how Bain managed its investments, structuring deals so it would be hard for Mr. Romney and his partners not to come out ahead.
Bain and a small group of investors bought Dade in 1994 with mostly borrowed money, limiting their risk. They extracted cash from the company at almost every turn — paying themselves nearly $100 million in fees, first for buying the company and then for helping to run it. Later, just after Mr. Romney stepped down from his role, Bain took $242 million out of the business in a transaction that, according to bankruptcy documents and several former Dade officials, weakened the company.
Even some people who benefited from that payday and found it reasonable at the time now question it. “You would have to say, looking back, that it was too large, because it pushed us into bankruptcy,” said Robert W. Brightfelt, a former Dade president who collected more than $1 million.
Bain Capital declined to comment specifically on the Dade acquisition, but cited a long history of improving companies’ performance in both “good and challenging economic conditions.” A campaign spokeswoman, Andrea Saul, defended Mr. Romney’s tenure at Bain, saying that “while not every business was successful, the firm had an excellent overall track record and created jobs with well-known companies.”
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In recent years, Mr. Romney has acknowledged having second thoughts about some of the deals he drove, saying his post-Bain career in government had sensitized him to the consequences of his decisions as a businessman.
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But Romney the candidate can still frequently sound like Romney the C.E.O. On the campaign trail, he has taken a tough-love approach to the economy, suggesting that the best remedy for the housing market is to allow foreclosures to “hit the bottom”; railing against wasteful spending by the government-backed solar company Solyndra; and arguing that companies with poor strategies, like General Motors, should be allowed to go bankrupt, without a federal bailout.
It was the same approach he took with Bain, as he explained in an interview with The New York Times in 2007, when asked about layoffs at the companies he bought.
“Sometimes the medicine is a little bitter,” he said, “but it is necessary to save the life of the patient.”
Quick Riches
In the early 1990s, as the American economy rebounded from a recession, the biggest names in the buyout business hungrily eyed Dade, then a little-known maker of medical technology based in Deerfield, Ill.
It was ripe for a takeover. Its main product, copy-machine-size units that ran blood tests in hospitals, laboratories and doctors’ offices, was widely used but rife with problems. Dade’s owner, the giant health care company Baxter International, was ready to dump its aging diagnostic division.
Bain impressed Baxter’s management with its vision for how to fix the ailing business. Mr. Romney, who began Bain Capital in 1983, prided himself on turning around companies like Dade — not just polishing them for sale, as their quick-buck Wall Street colleagues did.
It was the Bain Way, reflecting the firm’s roots as a spinoff of the venerable consulting firm where Mr. Romney had been a star performer, Bain & Company. At age 36, Mr. Romney was asked by the founder, William W. Bain Jr., to jump into the relatively new, risky and extraordinarily profitable business of private equity.
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The idea was tantalizing: raise money from a pool of investors, like wealthy families and public pensions; buy a struggling company using a small amount of cash and a lot of financed debt; improve its operations; and then sell it for a profit.
By marrying traditional financial engineering with management consulting, Bain Capital produced much higher returns than its rivals.
“They were unusual in doing that in the ’80s,” said Steven N. Kaplan, a professor of finance at the University of Chicago, who has studied the private equity business. “Romney figured it out, and everyone else copied it.”
Bain Capital was a partnership, but there was no question who was in charge: as the owner of all the voting stock, Mr. Romney controlled the profits and the power.
He did not act like a big shot — he bypassed his secretary to make photocopies himself and left the building to buy himself lunch. But his values prevailed: he insisted on cheap, spartan office decorations (the original desks contained no wood) and introduced fines for executives who arrived late to meetings (when he once had to pay a $20 penalty, he looked physically pained, a co-worker recalled).
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Colleagues remember him as a heavily perspiring, deeply anxious presence for much of the first year, constantly worried that he might tarnish the good name of Bain & Company by fumbling at Bain Capital.
“There was enormous pressure on Mitt not to have any bad investments,” recalled Geoffrey S. Rehnert, an early managing director at Bain Capital. The message from Bain & Company was “don’t do anything that embarrasses us.”
Mr. Romney did not. In just a few years, Bain Capital made eye-popping sums of money in deal after deal — “the golden goose” that was laying “golden eggs,” as he would later call it.
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Mr. Romney nurtured startups like the fledgling office supply chain Staples, at times over the objections of skeptical Bain partners. Its 1986 investment of about $2 million netted Bain Capital $13 million.
Some of the first buyouts were even more lucrative. Bain Capital earned $34 million, 34 times its 1986 investment, in Calumet Coach, a manufacturer of medical equipment, for example. It made $55 million, 16 times its 1990 investment, in the Gartner Group, a technology research firm, according to documents sent to potential investors.
Young executives became wealthy overnight. “It was a heady experience,” Mr. Rehnert remembered. “It was life altering, because we could pay down mortgages or buy bigger houses or new cars at a stage in life when those were big luxuries, ahead of our peers.”
As Bain Capital expanded, Mr. Romney cut back his travel to the headquarters of companies, assigning to lower-level executives the task of scouring balance sheets and interviewing managers. But he reviewed the numbers and signed off on major acquisitions, like the Dade purchase.
“He certainly approved the deal, understood it, had presentations made to him regarding it,” recalled Scott Garrett, Dade’s chief executive at the time. “He became quite knowledgeable about the business.”
In the waning days of 1994, a small group of investors led by Bain Capital, including Goldman Sachs, paid $450 million for Dade. Bain invested about $30 million.
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Dade employees could always tell when Bain Capital executives were in town: their bosses worked longer hours.
“The thing Bain brought was urgency,” Mr. Brightfelt said. “It was 24 hours a day. It never stopped.”
At Dade’s headquarters, the men from Bain — young, nattily dressed Bostonians — exerted themselves in ways big and small as the new owners. They took a majority of seats on the board of directors. They interviewed candidates for high-level jobs. They negotiated crucial contracts with suppliers. And they requested reams of data.
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In 1995, Bain officials debated whether Dade should buy a competitor, a diagnostics division of DuPont Medical Products that owned technology vital to Dade’s future. Some Bain executives advocated quickly selling off Dade for a tidy profit. Others counseled patience, arguing that Bain could collect even more by investing in the company for a few years.
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Mr. Romney, in Bain’s boardroom in Boston, listened intently to both sides and rendered a verdict: Dade should acquire the DuPont unit. Mr. Romney “wanted to double down on Dade,” Mr. Garrett recalled.
In back-to-back acquisitions, Dade bought the DuPont diagnostics division in 1996 and a German medical testing company, Behring, in 1997, whose products replaced or improved upon Dade’s.
Renamed Dade Behring, it became an industry leader, just as Bain Capital had intended. With its overseas acquisition, the company’s labor force swelled to 7,400 workers.
The business invested in and refined products, like a test that rapidly detects whether a heart attack has occurred, that became widely used. From 1995 to 1998, Dade’s annual sales rose to $1.3 billion from $614 million. Its assets grew to $1.5 billion from $551 million. But another number was climbing just as fast — Dade’s long-term liabilities, which surged to $816 million from $298 million.
Layoffs and Cutbacks
Cost-cutting became a mantra inside the company. After his employer, DuPont, was bought by Dade, William T. Mowrey, a field engineer, said his generous pension plan was replaced by a 401(k); his salary was cut by $1 an hour, costing him $2,000 a year in income. When he filed for overtime, he said, his new bosses refused to pay it. “They were just trying to milk as much out of us as they could,” he said.
Mr. Mowrey, now 54, quit. Many workers, like Mr. Shoemaker, the Dade employee in Westwood, and his wife, a temporary employee at the same plant, did not leave on their own terms. When they lost their jobs in 1997, they had to abandon plans to buy their first home together. “It created a lot of stress,” said Mr. Shoemaker, 59, who had earned more than $80,000 a year.
For some, the emotional effects of the layoffs outweighed the financial repercussions. Soon after Dade bought the DuPont unit, it closed a plant in Puerto Rico; all but a few of its nearly 300 workers were laid off.
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Arsenio Muñiz Rosado, a 51-year-old father who had spent 23 years at the plant, starting out as a groundskeeper, sank into a debilitating depression. Still jobless six months after he was let go, he tried to commit suicide with a bottle full of Xanax pills. It was the first of several attempts.
For all intents and purposes, he said of the plant, “I died in there.”
Cindy Hewitt, a human resources manager, had been instructed to persuade about a dozen of Mr. Rosado’s co-workers to move to Miami, where Dade had another plant.
Not long after the workers arrived, the company said it would close that factory, too. Ms. Hewitt tried to help several workers return to Puerto Rico, but she said Dade insisted that they first repay thousands of dollars of moving costs. “They were treated horribly,” she said. “There was absolutely no concern for the employees. It was truly and completely profit-focused.”
Ms. Hewitt said she was so disillusioned by the experience that she left the corporate world.
Executives involved in the decisions said that to make Dade a success, they had combined companies in need of overhaul. And the mergers created redundant work forces that had to be winnowed.
“It’s not done because they love cutting jobs,” said Mark Wolsey-Paige, a former senior vice president at Dade. “It ultimately made those companies stronger.”
He added: “Something even worse would have happened if they had remained as they were before Bain bought them. It would have been a steady stream of cuts and layoffs.”
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Tipping Into Bankruptcy
By 1998, Mr. Romney and his restless colleagues at Bain began looking for a way to cash out of the firm’s investment in Dade.
A hefty offer arrived. Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company, a rival buyout firm, proposed buying Dade Behring for $1.9 billion, according to documents filed in the bankruptcy case. But Bain executives rejected it, disappointed by the price, the documents indicate.
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Bain settled on a common tactic in private equity: In April 1999, it pushed Dade to borrow hundreds of millions of dollars to buy half of Bain’s shares in the company — and half of those of its investment partners.
Bain pocketed the $242 million. Goldman received $121 million. Top Dade executives got $55 million, records show. The total payout to shareholders reached $420 million — nearly as much as the purchase price for Dade.
The money was hard to resist, acknowledged Mr. Brightfelt, the former Dade president. “We were all glad to get some cash out,” he said, “and we thought we deserved it.”
A few months before the payout, in February 1999, Mr. Romney retired from Bain Capital to oversee the Olympic Games in Salt Lake City. He nevertheless benefited from the transaction, a financial disclosure form indicates. It shows that until at least 2001, he owned 16.5 percent of the Bain Capital partnership responsible for the Dade investment.
Even as the investors prospered, Dade cut 367 more jobs in 1999, documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission show.
The strategy of sharply increasing Dade’s debt alarmed several executives. Mr. Garrett, the former chief executive of Dade who stood to gain from the transaction, said he had argued unsuccessfully against it.
“It was too aggressive,” Mr. Garrett said. “It was done right up to the limit of what the company could borrow.”
With the amount of money that Dade owed to creditors and vendors at nearly $2 billion, some executives worried that the company would have little maneuvering room if its financial situation suddenly deteriorated.
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Soon enough, it did. Interest rates rose, increasing Dade’s debt payments. The value of the euro, then a new currency, slid, reducing Dade’s European revenue. And a new distribution center had unexpected delays.
Creditors, unsettled by deteriorating finances and high debts, began to pounce. More layoffs followed. And in August of 2002, Dade filed for bankruptcy protection.
The creditors threatened litigation against Bain and its investment partners, accusing them of “professional negligence” and “unjust enrichment,” according to bankruptcy documents. Bain and the other investors argued that the claims were baseless, but agreed to forgo about $68 million owed to them by Dade. And seven years after buying the company, Bain forfeited its remaining ownership stake.
Dade emerged from bankruptcy two months later and the stock soon began trading publicly.
Over the next four years, its revenues and share price surged, and in 2007, Siemens, the German conglomerate, paid $7 billion to buy Dade Behring. The Dade name disappeared, but the company survived.
Bain’s strategy, as painful as it was with plant closings and layoffs, had ultimately worked, executives said. The bankruptcy “does muddy the story,” said Mr. Wolsey-Paige, the former Dade executive. “Over all,” he said, “it was very positive.” |
Seeking to put distance between himself and President Obama, Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Bernard Sanders fired off a letter Thursday demanding the administration halt its new round of raids designed to find and deport illegal immigrants who are ignoring judges’ orders that they leave the country.
Mr. Sanders, a Vermont independent who is running as a Democrat, urged Mr. Obama and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to declare Central America so unsafe that people from that region are allowed to stay and work in the U.S. — a policy known as temporary protected status.
“I urge you to immediately end these raids and not deport families back to countries where a death sentence awaits,” Mr. Sanders wrote.
The raids, which netted 121 illegal immigrant parents and children who’ve were flouting judges’ deportation orders, have proved to be a political land mine for the administration.
Mr. Sanders and fellow Democratic presidential candidate Martin O’Malley have vehemently denounced the raids, while former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been more muted, expressing concerns but not criticizing Mr. Obama or immigration officials.
Immigrant-rights advocates have said Mrs. Clinton will need to be more vocal if she wants to rally Latino voters.
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Former al-Qaida terrorist and confessed killer Omar Khadr has filed an affidavit this week to seek more lenient bail conditions.
He wants to have unlimited access to the internet and the freedom to move anywhere in Canada.
He also wants complete visitation rights with his sister, Zaynab Khadr — a woman who has consistently praised al-Quada, Osama Bin Laden and suicide bombers.
Omar Khadr made international news when the Trudeau government gave him $10.5 million dollars and a formal apology as “compensation” for his time in Guantanamo Bay.
He was there because he confessed to killing U.S. Army special forces medic Sgt. Christopher Speer with a grenade and blinding Sgt. Layne Morris in one eye.
But, as The National Post reports, Khadr is making news again — this time for his desire to reopen communication with his radical sister.
She actually attempted to justify the 9/11 terrorist strikes, telling a 2004 CBC documentary on the Khadr family that Bin Laden was focussed on punishing the American government “where it will hurt, not the people. But sometimes innocent people pay the price. You don’t want to feel happy, but you just sort of think, well, they deserve it, they’ve been doing it for such a long time. Why shouldn’t they feel it once in a while?”
CBC has removed that documentary from its website but a sidebar story is still there where Zaynab relates, “We believe dying by the hand of your enemy because you believe in…you’re doing it in the way of Allah, that it’s the best way to die,” said Zaynab.
She has provided revealing interviews with the U.S. media, including one with the PBS current evens program, Frontline.
Zaynab described suicide bombers as “very, very brave” but admitted that she doesn’t “have the guts to do that yet.”
“Sometimes you want to hurt somebody,” she said. “I don’t think whoever did that really wanted to kill all these people, or to kill people who had nothing to do with anything. But he really wanted to hit the American government where it will hurt it.”
Zaynab continued: “I mean sometimes innocent people pay the price … The Iraqis who hated Saddam are being killed nowadays for I don’t know for what reason, although they hated Saddam and they probably had nothing against the states and they are still dying for it. Most of the time innocent people are paying the price.”
Omar Khadr’s sister today resides in Sudan and is living with her fourth husband. In addition to the comments, the RCMP has accused her of assisting al-Qaida, and she even had Bin Laden as a guest at her second marriage. She appeared as witness on behalf of the Toronto 18 terrorists when they were in court.
She is reportedly planning a visit to Canada, according to CBC.
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The divorce of Amber Heard and Johnny Depp is now final, and one thing’s for sure: Heard didn’t get any money out of it.
She settled the divorce out of court for $7 million, all of which she has now donated to charitable causes. She’s splitting the sum between the American Civil Liberties Union’s efforts to battle violence against women and the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles, where she’s volunteered for the past 10 years.
And in a joint statement, both Heard and Depp affirmed that "neither party has made false accusations for financial gain."
In other words: Heard is not a gold digger, and she did not accuse Depp of cutting off part of his finger and then using the stump to finger paint the words "Easy Amber" on a mirror because she thought that would be a cool quick way to make some cash.
It’s a shame Heard felt the need to be so emphatic about the fact that she isn’t lying about her domestic violence claims, but it’s not surprising. Ever since she first filed for a restraining order against Depp in May, Heard has done everything we say domestic abuse survivors should do. She went to the police. She provided copious documentation. She went above and beyond to prove she wasn’t in it for the money.
People still insisted she was lying.
The history of Heard’s domestic violence allegations spans at least two years
On May 21, Heard says she asked a friend to call the police after Depp hit her with an iPhone and struck her. When they arrived, Heard told them she and Depp had only been arguing — which she now says was an attempt to protect Depp’s career. (It’s extremely common for victims of domestic abuse to feel the need to protect their abusers.)
According to text messages obtained by Entertainment Weekly, the May 2016 incident wasn’t the first time Depp had attacked Heard. Dated two years earlier, in May 2014, the messages detail an incident in which Depp kicked Heard. They also refer to a history of abuse. "He’s done this many times before … and I always stay," Heard writes. "Always believe he's going to get better...And then every 3 or so month [sic], I'm in the exact same position."
The day after the May 21 call to police, Heard and Depp separated. A day later, Heard filed for divorce. And a few days later, Heard filed for a restraining order.
Gossip coverage was immediately skeptical
TMZ broke the news of Heard’s request for a restraining order with a deeply skeptical post, whose second sentence reads, "Sources connected to Johnny are calling BS, saying Amber ‘is an affront to real victims of domestic violence.’" The story also notes, coyly, "It's interesting ... she's asking for a temporary restraining order claiming there's an immediate threat of harm, but Depp has been out of town since Wednesday promoting his new movie."
The comments left by readers are more than skeptical. "Everything is a made up story from Amber's mouth," one says. "She is so vindictive-what is it she really wants? No. couldn't be all this is to get money!"
"She has proved time after time she is after the money," another says. "its a shame that she would try to get so much publicity from something soo serious."
Then the evidence emerged: pictures of the bruises on Heard’s face, the broken champagne bottles Heard said Depp threw at her, the shattered glass on the floor.
TMZ’s commenters were having none of it.
"She’s in it for the money," wrote one.
"I don’t believe a word this whore has to say," said another.
Not long after, TMZ published an article alleging that Heard had absolutely no bruises on her face two days after Depp supposedly attacked her. "She is a lying piece of poo," one commenter opined.
Meanwhile, the comedian Doug Stanhope had published an op-ed at the Wrap stating that Heard was in fact the villain in the situation. "Johnny Depp got used, manipulated, set up and made to look like an a–hole," Stanhope wrote. "And he saw it coming and didn’t or couldn’t do anything to stop it."
It’s true that no one would think TMZ’s comment section is the place to look for feminist-friendly debate. But TMZ is also one of the biggest and most influential sites in the gossip industry. Its writers regularly break news — including the fact that Heard was seeking a restraining order — and their coverage sets the tone for the rest of the culture. If they suggest a woman is probably lying about domestic violence, that becomes the dominant narrative for a good long while afterward.
The gossip press’s response painted Heard as the villainous wife from Gone Girl
What emerges from this type of coverage is a narrative in which a young woman fabricates a story about domestic abuse and cynically manufactures several years’ worth of evidence to support it, which she then leaks slowly to the police and the public in a vicious attempt to slander her husband and steal all his money.
It’s a narrative in which it seems implausible that a woman who is frequently followed by paparazzi might have covered her bruises with makeup when she went out in public. No, she must have inflicted the bruises on herself just before she went to the police station.
In other words, this is a narrative in which people are more willing to believe that Gone Girl is a documentary than that Heard is telling the truth, and that her much older, richer, and more powerful husband abused her. We’re about five minutes away from someone suggesting that Heard killed Neil Patrick Harris mid-coitus — that’s how desperate some people are to ignore the fact that the evidence against Depp is extremely compelling.
The "Heard is lying" narrative is an extremely familiar one
It’s not really surprising that so many people think Heard is lying. That’s what usually happens when a woman accuses a powerful and beloved man of hurting her. But it’s telling that this narrative persists even after Heard went out of her way to knock it down.
Traditionally, when a woman accuses a famous man of hurting her, the responses are 1) there’s no proof, and 2) she’s just doing it for the money and the attention. It’s a ready-made narrative we return to over and over, so there are many versions of it, but here’s a nice clear example in National Report’s fervent defense of Bill Cosby:
Most of these depreciated old skanks will fabricate some ludicrous tale of sexual assault decades after they claim the incident(s) occurred. This way they can destroy reputations, smear an individual’s successful career, and in this case taint Cosby’s good name by rousting a bunch of dizzy unattractive lesbians [I am cutting this for length as the description of angry feminists goes on for quite a few lines] … though no evidence exists to support their fabricated malicious and destructive fictional accounts of abuse. And in today’s digital age where any moron can claim anything they want and spread it across the Internet we’re already seeing the damning effects of groundless accusations. In spite of not having a single shred of evidence against Cosby, Netflix, NBC and TV Land have terminated future projects involving Cosby, or have removed Cosby entertainment from their programming. These inconsequential women well know the wreckage they can cause by making unsubstantiated and baseless allegations. They also know important luminaries who’ve earned their wealth and reputations through hard work, education, charitable works and living a moral life in the footsteps of Jesus will settle out of court to avoid enormous legal fees, courtroom drama and bad press.
This passage is the logical underpinning for comments like "she is a lying piece of poo" or "she is after the money." The woman is always after the money; she didn’t go to the cops when it happened; there’s no evidence; she’s just trying to destroy a good man’s life; and we know all this because it’s always what we say when a woman accuses a famous man of hurting her.
And we repeat the same story on a smaller scale when non-famous women accuse non-famous men of hurting them. We say these women are almost always liars, that they weren’t really hurt, that they’re just trying to destroy innocent men. Statistically, that’s almost never true, but we say it anyway.
Heard’s experience is a perfect example of how poorly we treat victims of domestic abuse
Here’s the thing: Heard did go to the cops when it happened. She went to the police with fresh, visible bruises on her face.
She did provide evidence. She provided photographs and witness testimony and text messages that back up her story.
She’s not after the money. She gave it all away.
She was, in every way, exactly the kind of victim we say women should be if they want us to believe them.
It didn’t matter. We still said she was lying.
Heard ultimately dropped the domestic violence charges and settled the divorce out of court. When TMZ reported that she would be donating her settlement money, the commenters reacted exactly the way you would expect by now:
Her lies are all around. She said she earned $10,000 a month but spent $50,000 so she needed alimony from JD to live her lifestyle, but now she's giving all this money to charity? Really??? Crazy and liar....
Our treatment of Heard proves that it doesn’t really matter how women act when they accuse men of hurting them. We don’t really care. We’ll find a way to call them liars no matter what they do. |
The Uttar Pradesh administration has asked people to inform them if they came across any objectionable content on social networking websites.
Copy of the FIR filed at the Saharanpur police against the baseless allegations/rumours spread on social media. pic.twitter.com/3jvsJnRmOe — Government of UP (@UPGovt) October 4, 2015
In order to take effective action against circulation of 'baseless' content on social media, the Akhilesh Yadav government in Uttar Pradesh has asked social networking site, Twitter, to remove some objectionable content in connection with the Dadri mob attack, which led to the death of a 50-year-old man for allegedly eating beef last week.A First Information Report (FIR) has been filed by the state police.According to officials, some tweets were made from a twitter handle being operated from Noida with the motive of disturbing communal harmony and spreading hatred."The Chief Minister has directed to take stern action against elements creating disharmony and inciting hatred by circulating baseless content on social media, especially Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter," said a Samajwadi Party spokesperson.The state administration has also asked people to inform it on 9454401002 if they came across any such cases on social networking websites and applications. The identity of the informer would be kept secret. The district authorities are faced with another problem of hacking with trouble makers using fake identities to spread rumours. With many leaders making a beeline to the village, entry of politicians or others who could create ruckus has also been restricted. |
I know how overwhelming it feels to look for the best design tools out there only to end up confused with so many options. But don’t worry, I looked for the best 100 design tools so that you wouldn’t have to. Whether you are looking for colour or font generators, templates, prototyping & wireframing tools or infographics, I’ve got your back!
Colours, patterns, palettes
1. UI Patterns
UI design patterns. Each pattern comes with fully interactive examples, downloadable source code and can be used on mobile devices.
2. Brand Colors The biggest collection of official brand color codes around.
3. LOL Colors Curated color palette inspiration.
4. Flat UI colors
Color Palette from Flat UI Theme.
5. Coolors The super fast color schemes generator for cool designers.
6. Pictaculous Upload your image and get a color palette.
7. Color Hunt A curated collection of beautiful colors with daily updates.
8. TinEye Labs A tool for image recognition and search.
9. ColorZilla
Advanced color and style tools and goodies for web developers and graphic designers.
10. (Un)clrd
(un)clrd is a browser plugin that removes all color information of a given website and turns the entire world wide web into black and white.
11. Paletton A designer tool for creating color combinations that work together well.
12. Colicious A delicious online color generator.
13. Colorfavs Generate color palettes from images, url’s or randomly.
14. Adobe Color CC
Create color schemes with the color wheel.
15. ColorDrop
A collection of great looking color palettes.
16. Material Palette
Choose your favorite colors and get your Material Design palette generated and downloadable.
17. Palettr Generate fresh, new color palettes inspired by a theme or a place.
18. Colllor Turn one color into an array of alternative ones.
19. Colourcode Online designer tool, which allows you to easily and intuitively combine colours.
Typography
20. TypeFace app
Font manager for Mac, that helps you pick the perfect font by focusing on quick and accurate font previews.
21. Font Pair A tool to help you pair Google fonts together.
22. Adobe TypeKit Typekit partners with the world’s leading type foundries to bring thousands of beautiful fonts to designers.
23. Font Squirrel Font Squirrel scours the internet for high quality, legitimately free fonts.
24. Flipping Typical Type in some words and they instantly display in the typefaces you have installed.
25. Google Web Fonts Typographic Project This collaborative project offers inspiration to pair Google fonts together.
26. Fontstruct
A free, easy, online editor for creating modular typefaces.
27. Fontface Ninja A plugin you can install in your browser to recognize, try and buy any fonts on the Internet.
28. 1001 Fonts
15646 free fonts in 8914 families.
29. Fontflame
The tinder for font pairing.
30. Typewolf
An independent typography resource that helps designers choose the perfect font combination.
31. Webtype Preview how websites will look with fonts from Webtype.
32. Gridlover The tool to establish a typographic system with modular scale and vertical rhythm.
Templates
33. Freebiesbug
Hand-picked resources for web designer and developers.
34. Flypixel
A collection of free PSDs, site templates, and other awesome design freebies.
35. TemplateGarden High quality website templates, built using Bootstrap HTML5 framework.
36. Start Bootstrap Free HTML templates and themes for Bootstrap 3.
37. W3 Layouts Free responsive mobile website templates.
38. Bootstrap Zero
Responsive, open-source templates & themes for Bootstrap 3 & 4.
39. Templated
A collection of CSS, HTML5 & Responsive site templates.
40. Snappa
Design graphics and templates, simple to use with unlimited possibilities.
41. Template Stash (Product Hunt)
A curated collection of best free themes & website templates.
42. Bjango
Design resources that include different kinds of templates.
43. GrapesJS
Open-source, multi-purpose, web builder framework.
Template.net More than 25K free design templates. Needs email to download.
Prototyping
44. UXPin Collaborative design for everyone, to design, share and test prototypes.
45. Origami Studio
A tool for designing modern interfaces, to explore, iterate and test ideas.
46. Webflow Build dynamic, responsive websites without writing code.
47. Proto.io Create fully-interactive prototypes in minutes, no coding required.
48. Framer Design with a powerfully simple code editor.
49. Vectr Labs Collaborative free vector graphics software.
50. Atomic Cloud prototyping for product, UX and UI design teams.
51. Easee Web animation tool for designers.
52. InVision App
A prototyping, collaboration, and workflow platform for designers.
53. Principle
An animation, interaction and prototyping tool for user interface designers.
54. Adobe Comp CC Comp CC converts your rough shapes and lines into crisp graphics.
55. Just In Mind
All-in-one prototyping tool for web and mobile apps.
56. Flinto Quickly make interactive prototypes of mobile, desktop, or web apps.
57. Marvel App Turn sketches, mockups and designs into app prototypes.
58. Axure Prototypes, specifications, and diagrams in one tool.
59. Mock Plus An UX and UI design tool that make you prototype faster.
60. Sketch App
The ultimate tool for designing user interfaces, websites, and icons.
61. HotGloo A UX, wireframe and prototyping tool designed to build wireframes for web, mobile and wearables.
62. Savah App Transform your static screens into code-free, quick interactive prototypes for web and mobile.
63. Pidoco A collaborative online tool for easily designing interactive wireframes and UI prototypes.
64. Helio Makes it easier to get feedback on your designs.
65. Evolus Pencil Pencil provides a free and open-source GUI prototyping tool.
66. Form Build and customize native prototypes directly on device.
67. Prott An intuitive, fast and collaborative prototyping tool.
Wireframing
68. Balsamiq Rapid wireframing tool that helps you work faster & smarter.
69. Frame Box
Lightweight online tool for creating and sharing mockups.
70. Wireframe.cc A simple tool to create and share simple wireframes of websites and mobile apps.
71. Wirefy Everything you need to rapidly create functional wireframes.
72. Lucidchart Wireframe and mockup tools make it easy to design, share, and test your ideas.
73. MockFlow User Interface drawing and UX tools for designers.
74. Gliffy Online diagramming SaaS that makes it possible for anyone to diagram like a boss.
75. Mockingbird
An online tool that makes it easy for you to create, link together, preview, and share mockups.
A/B Testing
76. Adobe Target Adobe Target removes the coding and setup hassles of A/B testing, so it’s easy to see your visitors’ responses to content variations in real time.
77. Google Analytics Optimize Optimize offers website testing and personalization features you need to create online experiences that engage and delight your customers.
78. Google Analytics Experiments The Google Analytics experiments framework enables you to test almost any change or variation to a website or app to see how it performs in optimizing for a specific goal.
79. Unbounce Build high-converting landing pages and overlays for your marketing campaigns without the need for developers.
80. Leadpages Create and test responsive landing pages, sales & conversion pages.
81. VWO One-stop A/B testing and conversion optimization platform.
82. Optimizely Experimentation platform that enables experimentation and personalization across websites, mobile apps and connected devices.
83. Convert AB Testing and personalization solution for data driven decision in high-traffic websites.
84. AB Tasty Helps marketers tailor UX and increase conversion rates through A/B testing and content personalization.
85. Sentient Ascend Sentient Ascend makes multivariate testing accessible for sites that were previously only able to run A/B tests.
86. Qubit Testing solutions for any kind of project, AB/n, multivarate and third party evaluation.
87. Kissmetrics Get, keep and grow more customers with Kissmetrics behavioral analytics and engagement platform.
88. Five Second Test Optimize the clarity of landing pages by measuring people’s first impressions.
89. Oracle Marketing Cloud Using Maxymiser, marketers can deliver the most relevant, personalized experiences with simple A/B testing, complex multivariate campaign deployments, advanced customer statistics and server side testing.
Infographics
90. Easelly Create and share visual ideas online.
91. Piktochart An easy-to-use infographic platform that helps non-designers create beautiful visuals.
92. Infogram Create visually engaging infographics, charts, reports and maps.
93. Venngage Create beautiful infographics, reports, posters and other graphics.
94. Gephi Network visualization and analysis platform.
95. StatSilk
Transforming data into interactive dashboards, graphs & maps.
96. Highcharts Highcharts makes it easy to set up interactive charts in your web pages.
97. Canva Create beautiful designs and professional graphics with Canva.
98. Visually
Create engaging infographics, videos & ebooks.
99. Visme One easy to use online tool to create engaging visual content.
100. Zanifesto
Create your own custom infographics with this easy to use online tool.
Conclusion
This list wouldn’t be complete without the free stock pictures resources and the guide to creating graphics, so make sure you check them out and I promise your design work will definitely take the leap. |
Good Artists Copy, Great Artists Steal.
– Steve Jobs
Anyone who spent a reasonable amount of time with both OS X and Ubuntu with its recent iteration of design changes (aka Unity), can see without doubt the OS X design features and elements that have been heavily copied by (or helped to inspire) Ubuntu.
What often gets lost in discussions on how everyone else is ripping off apple design ideas is the fact that apple itself is not immune to this fault (if you would call it that). For instance, let’s just talk about the OS X dock. I always reposition my OS X dock to be on the left-hand side of the screen, it works well for me that way and I have seen others who use it like that.
With Unity, Ubuntu introduced dock and positioned it on the left-hand side. And it’s fixed, in default setup you can’t change the dock’s position. It works pretty much how you would expect a dock would work. What some people may not know is that there were Linux DE docks even before Unity docks, as a package, with all kinds of options to customize it.
There were similar looking docks in other OS even before it was first introduced in OS X in 2001. In one form or another, there was a dock on NEXTSTEP (which was later bought by Apple), OS/2 3.0, Windows 98, AmigaOS, MorphOS, BeOS. But the first OS that most likely introduced it was RISC OS in 1987 (was called Icon Bar), curiously enough Steve Jobs’ NEXTSTEP picked up the design element a year later without much fuss.
In Apple’s credit, they almost always repackaged an existing idea by making it look good. But their ideas itself are not always original as the fanboys would like you to believe.
The original Dock in RISC OS in 1987: |
The Buffalo Bills will work out quarterbacks Pat White and Dennis Dixon on Sunday morning as they look for a replacement for EJ Manuel, sources told ESPN.
Whoever signs with Buffalo could wind up starting next weekend at home against the Cincinnati Bengals, coach Doug Marrone said Friday. Manuel, who sprained his LCL in Thursday's loss to the Cleveland Browns, is expected to be out for several weeks.
The Bills are also talking with Josh Freeman, sources told ESPN.
Freeman was released by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers this week after being benched and deactivated for last Sunday's game. He started 59 games for the Buccaneers after they drafted him in the first round in 2009.
The Bills were impressed with what they saw from White, who played against Buffalo in the preseason. White, a second-round pick in 2009, was released by the Washington Redskins last month.
Undrafted rookie Jeff Tuel replaced Manuel against the Browns and is the only healthy quarterback on the Bills' roster. |
DUNEDIN, Fla. – On the far aisle in the clubhouse, the first two lockers belong to Kendrys Morales and Lourdes Gurriel Jr. It is a logical juxtaposition. They are new to the Toronto Blue Jays, but not to each other.
They first met 15 years ago, back home in Cuba, when Gurriel was eight years old. Morales was 18 and the country’s best baseball player. Gurriel was the youngest member of the first family of Cuban baseball, a callow kid with a distinguished pedigree.
His father is a legend in his homeland. That connection, ironically, played an important part in the son escaping from Cuba and becoming a Blue Jay.
Now Morales and Gurriel share a clubhouse and an agent as well as a homeland. One is a veteran designated hitter, the other an aspiring shortstop who also has played a lot of outfield. Both escaped Cuba to chase their dream, Morales in 2004 on a crowded raft across the Florida Straits, Gurriel in 2016 on a serpentine road through five countries.
Soon, if the stars align for Gurriel, he will add a sixth country to the list: Canada.
Long before he defected, he had connections to Canada. A historic agreement between an independent Canadian team and the Cuban government allowed one of his brothers to play in Quebec. Serving as a translator in those negotiations was a former minor-league catcher who played for that Quebec club. Subsequently, the same translator would play a key role in bringing Gurriel to the Blue Jays.
The story of Lourdes Gurriel Jr. and his zig-zag path out of Cuba is a tad complicated, and there were tense moments along the way, but no serious hitches. He was lucky.
Kendrys Morales had a much tougher time. Morales lacked Gurriel’s connections and family financial support. It took Morales eight tries before a boat finally took him and 18 others to Florida.
Gurriel, however, is paying a lot more in cash to pursue his dream.
He is paying his smugglers.
“It’s in the seven digits,” he says. “It’s in the millions.”
And it’s in installments. His specificity stops there. When pressed, he will say only that he considers it a fair price.
The Blue Jays are paying him $22-million over seven years. He has not yet played a professional game outside of Cuba. But his contract is guaranteed.
So are the payments to his smugglers, minus the paperwork.
The Blue Jays and Major League Baseball have nothing to do with that. Not directly, anyway.
***
The Blue Jays signed Lourdes Gurriel Jr. this summer. The team is paying him $22-million over seven years. Photo by John Lott.
In early February a year ago, Lourdes Gurriel and his older brother, Yulieski – a longtime star in Cuba – sneaked across the border from the Dominican Republic to Haiti. Their entry, through a secluded forest, was illegal. Their shadowy escorts guided them through every step to the freedom and wealth they could only imagine growing up in Cuba.
For years, the Gurriel sons had remained loyal. Over the previous decade, major-league clubs coveted Yulieski, and he knew it. But he stayed home.
And in 2015, as the U.S. and Cuban governments began to move tentatively toward rapprochement, he hoped he would become the first player to leave his homeland legally to play in the States.
But a year ago, Yulieski was approaching his 32nd birthday. He decided he could wait no longer. Lourdes Jr., then 22, had been playing professionally in Cuba since he was 16. He too was ready to leave.
They played their last game for Cuba in the Caribbean Series, held in the Dominican capital of Santo Domingo in early February.
Earlier, they had made certain arrangements.
“Everything started in the Dominican,” Gurriel says. “We approached people and we told those people, ‘Listen, we would like to defect. Is that possible?’”
It’s possible, the people replied. Are you sure you want to do this?
Yes, we’re sure.
Then, the people replied, you must do everything that we say.
The family of Lourdes Sr., now living in Miami, paid the required up-front money. The remaining millions owed would come from the newly rich Gurriel brothers.
***
As he recounts his story in Spanish, Gurriel sits in an otherwise vacant meeting room across the hall from the Blue Jays’ spring-training clubhouse. Alongside is team translator Josue Peley, who also happens to be a friend of the Gurriel family. Peley’s translation skills have helped bring one Gurriel brother to Quebec, and now another to the Blue Jays.
The interview lasts an hour. Gurriel is relaxed and animated, his hands darting as he speaks, his upper body weaving like a boxer’s, his expressions by turn serious, side-eyed and jovial. He knows he is telling a good story and he is enjoying it. He smiles easily, and often laughs as he banters with Peley in Spanish.
Gurriel is relaxed and animated during his hour-long interview. Photo by John Lott.
But while they were far luckier than many other Cuban defectors, the Gurriel brothers’ flight to freedom was no joy ride. Gurriel’s tone turns solemn when he discusses the lead-up to his escape.
When a Cuban team leaves the country for a tournament, government officials have eyes on every player.
“We were under a lot of pressure,” he says. “We had people with us at all times to make sure we didn’t go anywhere. In Cuba, people try to leave the team to follow their dreams. They knew we were trying to leave.”
How did they know?
“They all want to leave,” he says.
Ultimately, that included the Gurriel boys, whose legacy, up until a year ago, was loyalty and patience.
Their father, who passed on his name to Lourdes, is the Babe Ruth of baseball in Cuba. He was a famous slugger, then a longtime coach of the national team. He took that team all over the world. His three sons became stars too.
As a result, the Cuban government rewarded the family. By Cuban standards, the Gurriels were well-to-do. The boys grew up in a nice house, in contrast to the poverty endured by so many in Cuba.
“The Cuban government knew how loyal my dad was,” Gurriel says. “He’s a legend over there. Not only my dad, but my brother (Yulieski). Since he was 21, my brother got so many offers from big-league clubs, and he never left.”
Last summer, Yulieski quickly became a starting infielder for the Houston Astros, who are paying him $47.5-million over five years. Lourdes Jr. says he realizes he must be more patient, but after receiving an invitation to big-league camp, he can feel his big-league dream edging closer to reality.
***
Gurriel comes from Cuban baseball royalty. Photo by John Lott.
During their flight from Cuba, Gurriel and his big brother had some anxious moments. Especially in Haiti.
Which, ironically, is where they made a new, if odd, Canadian connection.
Their smugglers took the brothers to a house on a beach somewhere in Haiti, where they stayed for approximately a month, while certain other arrangements were made. Gurriel’s understanding of those arrangements is vague. His smugglers kept them in the dark.
The brothers could not leave the house, except for occasional brief visits to the beach. Gurriel says they were prisoners. He accepts that it was for their own good.
Asked how that month felt, he replies, “Super difícil.”
“It’s really, really hard,” he says. “You know you’re in Haiti but you don’t know where and you have no idea of what’s going to happen. Zero. No idea at all. We didn’t have contact with anyone.”
But their handlers had agreed to one condition.
“That was one of our rules, my brother and I, to at least have a TV with video games and movies,” he says.
What did you watch on TV?
“Netflix!” he says with a laugh.
One of their favourite series was Arrow, based on the DC Comics character Green Arrow. Much of the series was shot in Vancouver.
And in retrospect, Gurriel says with a grin, “it was funny because the main character was Canadian.”
That would be Toronto-born actor and ardent sports fan Stephen Amell, who in 2015 used his celebrity to spearhead a campaign to get out the all-star vote for Blue Jays’ third baseman Josh Donaldson.
But that was long before Lourdes Gurriel Jr. started to think of himself as a Blue Jay. First, he had some traveling to do.
***
Gurriel said the Blue Jays were his favoured organization to sign with. Photo by John Lott.
To qualify for free agency under Major League Baseball rules, a Cuban defector must first establish legal residency in another country. If he is younger than 23, his potential cash windfall is limited by the cash pool MLB assigns each club for international signings.
But after age 23, he truly becomes a free agent and his contract details fall outside a team’s international pool limit.
Gurriel was 22 when he left Cuba. He would turn 23 on Oct. 19. He would work out, showcase his talents for big-league scouts, let negotiations begin and wait for his birthday to pass.
MLB’s policy has enticed many of Cuba’s brightest stars off the island and made some players and smugglers very rich. Rightly, critics call it human trafficking. There have been cases – Yasiel Puig’s and Leonys Martin’s are perhaps the most infamous –where the smugglers’ price has gone up mid-trip. Players have been kidnapped and terrorized, and their families threatened. In some cases, organized crime figures are involved.
MLB’s official stance on this matter is condemnation. But while MLB and club owners prefer an international draft to keep costs down, teams continue to benefit from the status quo – the bidding wars that break out after such players as Aroldis Chapman, Jose Abreu, Puig and the Gurriels establish residency outside the U.S.
And occasionally, a smuggler gets caught, which is how Abreu became a star witness in a Miami courtroom last week.
MLB says it hopes the easing of diplomatic tensions between the U.S. and Cuba can lead to a formal agreement whereby Cuban players can legally leave the island. Talks started last year. Should that process eventually put Cuban stars in an international draft, their signing bonuses would plummet in comparison to the free-agent deals enjoyed by the most prominent defectors.
That undoubtedly was on the minds of the Gurriel brothers when they chose to defect. Their window for a windfall was closing. Yulieski was already past 30. Lourdes was young, but a hint of change was in the wind. And they would find comfort in their company.
After watching Netflix for about a month, and after certain arrangements were made, their smugglers sent them to Haitian officials to complete their applications for residency. Once that was in place, they went to the American consulate and were approved for temporary visas to the U.S. There were trips to Miami, where their parents were now living and where they could find good places to work out.
Then it was back to Haiti to wait. Since Haiti – their official residence – lacked workout facilities, and the brothers were impatient to showcase their talents for MLB clubs, they moved to Panama, where they trained and eventually staged workouts for MLB scouts.
Meanwhile, Gurriel twice returned to the American consulate in Haiti to renew his U.S. visa.
“My friends and family were saying, ‘You’re getting risky. Who gets two visas in two months to get into the States?’ I said, ‘No, it’s fine. They even knew me in Haiti. It was like, ‘Hey man, you’re back.” And they did my paperwork so I could go.”
For Lourdes’ big workout in Panama, he thought every team sent scouts except the Blue Jays. He was wrong.
“There were well over 100 scouts there,” says Blue Jays’ vice-president Andrew Tinnish, “and we were there too.”
Tinnish liked what he saw. This spring in Dunedin, he says, he likes what he’s seeing even more.
And for reasons he cannot quite explain, Gurriel had developed a bit of a soft spot for the Blue Jays.
Perhaps it started with a T-shirt.
***
Gurriel has played shortstop, second and third as well as the outfield. Photo by John Lott.
Somewhere in the Gurriel family archives is a photo of Lourdes Jr. wearing a Jose Bautista T-shirt. It did not inspire instant devotion, but he admits it might have planted a seed.
“I liked the Blue Jays,” he says. “Nothing special, but I saw them on TV. Two years ago, I have a picture of me with a Jose Bautista T-shirt on. So I liked them a little bit.’
After the Panama showcase, Gurriel says, the Blue Jays were high on his list, even though he thought they had not seen his workout. But he says his agent had not even heard from them.
The Jays, however, had scouted Gurriel in international tournaments at least six times before the Panama showcase. They had video of him. And they knew he had batted .344 with a .967 OPS in his last season in Cuba.
Their conclusion: Guirriel is lean (6-foot-2, 185 pounds) and raw, but with potential to be what Tinnish described as “a solid, everyday major-league player.”
His swing is compact. He is a gap hitter who should show greater power potential as his body fills out. He runs well. He has played shortstop, second and third as well as the outfield.
At the Panama showcase, Gurriel focused on hitting line drives early in his batting practice, then began to hit long balls in Rod Carew Stadium, which Tinnish called “massive.”
“It wasn’t an unbelievable look,” Tinnish says. “It was a good, solid look. The other thing that struck me was the way he interacted with the young players around him. It was really impressive. Here he is, 22 years old, and he had kids 15 to 18 working out with him, and you just got the feeling that he was a good teammate. A kid made a nice defensive play and he was excited. A kid has a nice round of BP and he was fist-pumping him. You could see it was pretty genuine.”
A private workout for the Blue Jays was set up in Miami. But the day before, Gurriel fouled a ball off his ankle. He was despondent. They had to cancel the workout.
But the Jays agreed to a meeting anyway. It left both sides feeling buoyant.
Tinnish and Dana Brown, a special assistant to general manager Ross Atkins, represented the Blue Jays, along with area scout Matt O’Brien and video co-ordinator Brandon Bishoff. Josue Peley, just finishing his first year as the team’s official translator, served as intermediary.
“I was translating the whole time. It was rock and roll that day,” Peley recalls.
Tinnish: “It really clicked in when we met with Lourdes in Miami. His father was there as well. You could see where he gets a lot of his character and his discipline and love of the game.”
Gurriel: “I was ready for that meeting because I did a lot of them with other teams. I really felt like I was wanted. They asked questions that other teams didn’t ask. I felt like they really wanted to get into me. And it was easier because I was talking to Josue. I knew everything I said was going to translated accurately. I trusted him.”
Gurriel with Blue Jays translator Josue Peley (left). Photo by John Lott.
Indeed, Tinnish says that was evident when the two sides first met at a Miami hotel. Gurriel and Peley immediately embraced. Negotiations don’t usually start that way.
That trust took root three years ago when Peley was catching for the Quebec Capitales in the independent Can-Am League. Born in Venezuela and raised in Montreal, Peley handled the translation when the Capitales met with Cuban officials to arrange permission for a Cuban player to join the Quebec team in 2014. After the season, he was part of the negotiations to bring four Cuban players to the Capitales in 2015.
One was the middle Gurriel brother, Yuniesky. While in Cuba, Peley twice stayed at the Gurriels’ home. Back home in Quebec, he became Yuniesky’s teammate.
This spring, his locker is a few feet away from the youngest brother’s.
“When we hired Josue last year, it had nothing to do with whether or not someday we could sign a Gurriel brother,” Tinnish says. “It was about hiring a talented guy who’s trilingual, who’s Canadian, who we have great makeup reports on from a guy who I really trust a lot, (team president) Michel Laplante with the Capitales. Michel raves about him. It’s worked out really well. So there’s no question that Josue was definitely a factor in this.”
***
The Jays won’t say where Gurriel will make his pro debut, but it won’t be in the majors. Photo by John Lott.
Gurriel says the Cardinals started the bidding at $18-million. In the end, Toronto and St. Louis made similar offers, but all along, he says he leaned toward the Blue Jays.
His father and brother counseled caution, urging him to learn more about the organization, the city and his chances to advance through the system. Ultimately, everyone agreed.
“It was a family decision,” Gurriel says.
His deal pays him $22-million over seven years, with $3-million up front. If Gurriel can make a relatively quick trip to the majors and stick, it will be a bargain for the Jays.
Tinnish is careful to strike a cautious tone when he discusses Gurriel. This is not a can’t-miss prospect. He is a year removed from competition. He is adapting to a new culture and struggling to learn English.
But the raw talent and the pedigree are unmistakable.
“Obviously, you need to have skills,” Tinnish says. “But if you have the makings of good footwork, good hands, and you’re athletic and you have good makeup, then you’ve got a chance.”
Pollyannas in the fan base greeted Gurriel’s signing with speculation that he could be playing left field at the Rogers Centre by mid-season. He was primarily an outfielder during his last season in Cuba, but his favourite spot is shortstop. That’s where he has been working out in Dunedin.
“Where is he going to play long-term? I don’t know,” Tinnish says. “Time will tell. But I think for now, you play him at short. You probably move him around a little bit so he’s comfortable in other spots.”
The Jays won’t say where he will make his pro debut, but it won’t be in the majors. Meanwhile, Gurriel is prepared to stay patient.
“Since I was really young, my dream was to play in the big leagues,” he says. “I don’t know where I’m going to start. I don’t know where I’m going to finish. First of all, I’ve got to show them that I can play here in spring training. If it’s not this year, then it will be next year or the year after, but my main goal is to play in the big leagues as soon as possible.”
The entire Gurriel family now lives in a big house in Miami. Yuliseki and Lourdes paid for it.
Meanwhile, they’re paying their smugglers too. |
After a comfortable trip to Goa, you could soon board the high-speed Tejas Express to travel from Mumbai to Ahmedabad.
While flagging off the first Tejas Express train between Mumbai and Karmali station in Goa on Monday, railway minister Suresh Prabhu announced the introduction of the new service between Mumbai and Ahmedabad.
“Very soon Tejas express will start running on Mumbai -Ahmedabad route. It will be launched in some other states as well,”said Pradhu, adding that the rail travel experience in India will be redefined with the introduction of Tejas .
Earlier, the railways had planned to introduce the service on the crowded Mumbai-Surat route.
According to western railway officials, the plan was dropped as the train will cover the distance between the two cities in less than six hours and will be out of use for a long time.
Currently, Mumbai and Ahmedabad are connected via Shatabdi express and double-decker express trains.
Railway officials are hopeful of a good response, as businessmen and merchants might prefer travelling on the ultra-luxury premium train which is capable of running at a speed of 200kmph.
Along with WiFi, GPS and CCTV, the Tejas Express has several unique amenities such as automatic doors, secured gangway, infotainment screen for each passenger, reading lights for each seat, vaccum bio-toilets, e-leather cover seats and touch free taps in toilets.
The train also has tea- and coffee-vending machines, along with local cuisine in catering service and staffers in local attire of Goa.
First Published: May 23, 2017 10:32 IST |
Special Report: Light Rail LRT Divide is Based on Ideology, Not Facts Government spending is about demonstrating values. The discussion around the LRT project is no different. By Ian Borsuk
Published April 05, 2017
As we approach yet another contested Light Rail Transit (LRT) council meeting that is bound to be jam-packed with deputations by people arguing both for and against the project, the discussion has turned into a flurry of facts, statistics and numbers.
Those in the Yes LRT camp can confidently back up their positions with said facts and numbers, and they are doing so, while the No LRT side relies mostly on speculation - or as some would call it, FUD.
While these discussions around the specific details of the project are certainly important, I fear Hamilton will lose out on this transit project because those on the Yes side aren't making a strong enough case based on values.
To put it frankly, much (if not most) of the opposition to the LRT project is ideological. It's not a coincidence that many who have spoken out against the project online and in council chambers are the type to crusade against Big Government of all kinds, or to describe taxation as someone "taking my money".
When either side of the LRT issue uses facts and figures, they aren't using them because the data is what influences their position, they're using them because it reinforces their position.
The LRT project will drastically change downtown Hamilton. This is the basic fact we can all agree upon. The No LRT argument for many is based on the belief that this change will be bad.
The idea that government (it doesn't matter which) would spend a billion dollars to intensify the downtown core, and all the changes that go along with that, is simply something they cannot agree with.
It's important to note that the arguments against LRT often are the same arguments that come about when we talk about bike lanes, traffic calming, social programs, and so on.
It's also important to note that the main alternative transportation vision that LRT opponents bring up is based on free-market innovation completely devoid of any government involvement.
It doesn't matter that Hamilton (unlike other cities, such as Toronto) has done zero research on self-driving vehicles in any capacity. It also doesn't matter Ontario is the only region in the country to have a currently-approved automated vehicle pilot project, which won't be over until 2027 (three years after the LRT would be fully functional).
All that matters is those who are opposed to the project find it more appealing to bank on a speculative techno-utopian future than doing the hard work now to ensure Hamilton grows sustainably.
The best strategy that those on the Yes LRT side can take is to continue to bring in and amplify new voices. This has begun to happen. I've already received confirmation that first-time delegates have registered for April 19 who will be speaking in favour of the project.
We need to do more to appeal to those who are not inherently, ideologically opposed to LRT. As one councillor has said about the budgetary process, government spending is about demonstrating values. The discussion around this project is no different.
Ian Borsuk is a young community organizer and activist. He is a Climate Campaign Coordinator at Environment Hamilton.
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I am currently working on a project where we need to create a database that will be primarily used to store data for reporting and forecasting. In the past, I have mostly worked with databases used for typical CRUD (create, retrieve, update, and delete) operations of data with some limited reporting features. When performing CRUD operations, normalization is important; while in analytics, a de-normalized structure is generally preferred.
Here is a simple example of a normalized order table:
As an example, I will create two simple products which can be included in an order: a Mountain Bike and a City Bike. Then I will create two orders; one of which contains 2 Mountain Bikes + 1 City Bike, and the other one which contains 1 Mountain Bike + 3 City Bikes. The tables required for these transactions would look like the following:
Product ID Name 1 Mountain Bike 2 City Bike
Order ID Created 1 2014-11-15 2 2014-12-16
Order_Item ID Order_ID Product_ID Product_quantity 1 1 1 2 2 1 2 1 3 2 1 1 4 2 2 3
Here is a simple of example of how we could store the same information in a de-normalized database:
Again, showing the rows for these two orders:
Product_Orders SK Order_ID Order_Created Product_ID Product_Name Product_quantity 1 1 2014-11-15 1 Mountain Bike 2 2 1 2014-11-15 2 City Bike 1 3 2 2014-12-16 1 Mountain Bike 1 4 2 2014-12-16 2 City Bike 3
As you can see information is duplicated across rows (Order_Created and Product_Name). The duplication is not a problem. A typical question asked in an analytics application is: were there more Mountain Bikes or City Bikes sold during each month of 2014? Answering this type of question is very fast since you only need to retrieve a few rows to get the complete order. No information is required from other tables so there will be no joins in the query. Once the data is inserted into this table, it is not modified so you don't have to worry about update anomalies.
Transactional Versus Analytical
CRUD applications are called on-line transactional processing (OLTP), while analytics applications are usually called on-line analytical processing (OLAP). OLAP is a somewhat new area for me. Of course, most of my OLTP database work also included analytics such as reports and simple analysis of data. However, in OLAP, the main focus of the database itself is simply to store data for analysis. There will be no real maintenance of data: no screens and transactions for creating, updating and deleting data. With this in mind, I thought it would be interesting to consider the difference in requirements between the OLTP world and the OLAP world.
The main difference between an analytical and transactional database is the nature of the application which is using the data. A transactional database is designed for an application where the user is more interested in CRUD, i.e., creating, reading, updating, and deleting records. With an analytical database, the user is more interested in analysis, reporting, and forecasting. Analytical databases have fewer inserts and very few updates; the main goal is to retrieve and analyze data as quickly as possible. Therefore, it is important to consider the nature of the usage of the data that you are designing your database for.
OLAP Versus OLTP
For a transactional database in OLTP, typically, the data structures are created in a highly normalized manner. However, you can't use a highly normalized database in OLAP. The normalization can quickly lead to issues with performance.
In other words, if you think inserts, updates, and deletes are more frequent and require the best performance then go for a normalized table design; if analysis and reports are more important, consider using a de-normalized table design with a flat table structure.
Of course, data must still be inserted into a database used for analytics, but the performance of insert operations can be lower than for a database used for transactional processing. Analytical databases might have their data inserted/updated once per month or once per year, in a batch process.
Challenges
To oversimplify a bit, the main challenge when designing an analytical database is to “unlearn” the rules and practices that we typically follow when designing a transactional database – or, at least, put them on hold while working on the analytical database design. De-normalization will improve performance as there will be fewer joins of tables than in a highly normalized structure.
At the same time, recognize that you are making a trade-off by having a de-normalized data structure.
Analytical
Typically, when working with data that will be used in analysis, reporting and forecasting, we consider a dimension and fact design by creating a fact table connected with dimension tables using foreign key relationships.
Fact tables group metrics that can be aggregated (“sum of …”, “count of …”) into business facts (referred to as measures) with foreign keys to dimension tables. Dimension tables contain attributes that are used to generate groups and filters for the data.
As mentioned, the fact tables should link to dimension data to allow filtering, e.g. “the sum of costs between 2010 and 2014.”
For example, we might have a fact table that records specific sales events. We might also have different dimension tables with many columns to facilitate analysis of time, geography, product, or some other dimensions, depending on our query requirements. For example, we might need a query that analyses the store locations that sold the most Mountain Bikes each month, or which cities or states had the most sales of City Bikes, or which day of the week has the highest bikes sales.
Another benefit of a dimensional model is that it will more easily accommodate unexpected data in the future. Existing tables can be modified by adding new data rows into the table or altering the table with little or no impact. Queries and applications that use the data do not need to be modified to accommodate changes; existing queries and applications work as previously and obtain the same results as before the change.
OLAP has a lot more flavors: there is multi-dimensional OLAP, relational OLAP, hybrid OLAP and other evolving acronyms in the OLAP space. I will not talk about them here. You can find more information here on Wikipedia and other resources (search for “Online analytical processing”, “OLAP Cube”, “MOLAP”, “ROLAP”, “HOLAP”).
Conclusions
Working on a project to create an application that is focused on analytics, reporting, and especially forecasting, has forced me to recognize the different requirements between transactional and analytical database design.
I would be interested to hear your experiences about working in an analytics world versus working in a transactional world. |
The sign outside the Wells Fargo & Co. bank in downtown Denver April 13, 2016. REUTERS/Rick Wilking
(Reuters) - Wells Fargo & Co (WFC.N), the largest U.S. bank by market capitalization, said on Tuesday it would eliminate all product sales goals in retail banking, starting next year.
The move comes days after the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and two other regulators fined the bank $185 million over abusive sales practices.
The bank paid another $5 million to customers for creating more than two million fake accounts for products like credit and debit cards to meet aggressive sales targets.
Customers should know that Wells Fargo retail bankers are always focused on their best interests, Chief Executive John Stumpf said in a statement on Tuesday.
The enforcement action caught the attention of U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who on Friday applauded the CFPB, censuring Wells Fargo for what she called “outrageous behavior.”
On Monday, five lawmakers wrote a letter to U.S. Senate Banking Committee Chairman Richard Shelby calling for an investigation.
Credit rating agency Moody’s Investors Service also commented, saying the “embarrassing episode” would have a negative impact on Wells Fargo’s outstanding debt.
Wells Fargo said it had fired 5,300 employees involved in the sales practices described by the settlement. |
10 Weird Cat Behaviors
Cats. You’ve seen them doing weird and outrageous stuff all over the Internet and their absurd behavior has made them the poster children of the most cute and insane pets one could own. The common house cat will surprise their owner with weird behavior that is sometimes indescribable and alien-like. All of the attention-seeking behavior boils down to their greatest trait – being able to manipulate owners into getting what they want (See Great Sphinx of Giza). Weird behaviors in cats have been studied with little to no real explanation, expect for the thought that when a kitten is removed from its mother at too early of an age it develops strange psychological behaviors, such as pulling out a gun on you.
1. Kneading
Was your cat a baker in another life? No, your cat is most likely recalling its kitten days when it would knead the nipples of its mother to get milk. The kneading motion consists of the cat pushing in and pulling out on material, like a soft blanket, with its front paws. A popular theory for why cats knead is that the cat was most likely taken from its mother too early. Another theory is that kneading is an inherited trait from ancestors to make a specific area for resting comfortable. The cat is calm, content and affectionate when kneading and will often purr loudly and possibly suck on the blanket that it is kneading.
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2. Sucking
Some people may think that dogs rule and that cats suck. Well, some cats suck. Your cat may lick and suck on your wool or cotton materials. This really isn’t a problem if you don’t mind a little cat spit. This unexplained behavior is also theorized to come from early weaning of kittens. This behavior isn’t dangerous as long as your cat doesn’t ingest lint, wool or other materials when sucking. A cat will also often encourage you to pet it while it sucks. However, most cats grow out of this behavior and move on to much stranger, unexpected behaviors.
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3. Head Butting
When your cat gives you a head butt, consider it like receiving a high five from your furry little friend. No, your cat wasn’t a ram in a past life either. This is just another way that some cats show affection. Go ahead and head butt your cat when is starts to slowly charge its head to you. Not too hard though, just enough to reciprocate the strange affection.
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4. Immediate Cleaning
So, you go up to a cat and pet it a couple of times and then it quickly licks the area of fur you just petted. Don’t feel offended; cats are animals that love to be clean. Just as some people don’t like cat scents, some cats don’t like people scents. It’s a popular theory that cats have the urge to rid themselves of human smells as often as possible, especially when they are not in the mood to be pet. However, if you’re an optimist you could go with the theory that the cat just wants to indulge in the taste of your scent.
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5. Burying
You may see you cat pretending to bury the area near its food bowl after its done eating. Perhaps you cat is just being imaginative or maybe your cat is trying to say it doesn’t like the food. No one really knows why a cat acts out a burying motion, but many believe the behavior comes from an ancient instinct that has been passed down genetically. Cats are known for burying their feces in their litter box, so maybe they’re telling you that the food you’re giving them is no better than cat poop. Pretty rude, huh?
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6. Catnipping
Catnip, or nepeta, is a plant that most commonly grows near railroads and is known for its mesmerizing effect on cats. Some cats may sniff a little bit of this stuff and act like they have taken a hallucinatory drug, and some cats might act like they have a harsh buzz by aggressively attacking other cats and objects. Often cats will roll over on their backs, eat the catnip or simply ignore it. Often non-effective with kittens, the catnip phenomenon is hereditary in different breeds of cats, but simply amusing to owners when it is effective.
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7. Sneering
You may wonder why your cat is putting on an Elvis impression after it has sniffed something. The behavior that makes a cat appear as if it is sneering is known as flehming, and it happens when a cat smells something intriguing to its senses. The upper lip of the cat will curl back and the odor will draw further into the roof of the cat’s mouth, known as the Jacobson’s organ. In my own experience, I’ve seen one of my cats sniff another cat’s butt and then sneer.
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8. Drinking from Faucets
Your cat loves running water whether you know it or not. Many cats secretly love water as long as it is on their terms. If water is dripping from a faucet your cat may try to lick all the water that comes out of it. Cats love fresh water, but the sound and sight of running water can put some cats into a euphoric trance. You may even see your cat move their paw around in their water dish at times. This is because they love the motion of the moving water so much.
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9. Human Grooming
Your cat knows you too well. Your cat comes up behind you while you’re sitting on your sofa and begins licking your hair. You are one with your cat now as your cat thinks you are a cat too (or just some tall, weird cat that can bring it food). Some cats may even try licking your legs, arms, hands or face. It’s another one of their strange ways of showing affection, but it’s also free bath.
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10. The Surprise Attack
Just when you thought you and your cat were the best of friends (face licking, kneading, head butting, etc.), your cat surprises you with a full on ninja attack as you put your socks away into your dresser drawer. Cats like to sleep in dark, hidden places and sometimes you may startle them to the point where they may jump out at you. Another scenario is that your cat has been waiting, crouched in your bathtub all evening for you to enter butt naked. Yes, cats are unpredictable and strange creatures. That’s why I shower with my clothes on.
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Written by Greg Lindberg – Copyrighted © www.weirdworm.com |
As protests have rocked Turkey over the past few days, three Turkish professionals in the U.S. decided on Sunday that they had to take some action. Turning to their technology backgrounds, the trio launched a crowd-sourced fundraising campaign on Indiegogo to buy a full-page ad in the front section of the New York Times in support of their fellow Turkish citizens who've clashed with the government across dozens of cities. In just a matter of hours, they'd jump-started the fastest major politics funding campaigns in Indiegogo's history.
The campaign received donations from 50 countries at a clip of over $2,500 per hour over its first day, crossing its $53,800 goal in about 21 hours, according to Indiegogo, and it's at over $85,000 just 36 hours after launch. That makes it the fastest politics campaign to hit a goal of higher than $6,000 in the history of the crowd-funding platform.
The team behind the campaign aren't expert activists or fundraisers, though--they're self-described tech geeks who just felt compelled to act. Murat Aktihanoglu isn't known for politics—he’s known in the NY tech community as an entrepreneur and investor, the founder of Entrepreneurs Roundtable and its related startup accelerator. Oltac Unsal is an angel investor and adviser to the World Bank. And the youngest of the campaign’s founders, Duygu Atacan, is a user experience and interface designer in New York. But watching protesters occupy Gezi Park and face government backlash over what many see as heavy-handed actions by an autocratic regime, all three techies felt the need to take action.
“I was seeing everything going on over social media,” Atacan says. “But calling up my grandparents and finding out they hadn't heard that anything was going on was very frightening.” Searching for a symbolic way to counteract a lack of coverage of events in the Turkish press, the group decided on a full-page print ad in a U.S. paper of record that they could then share globally over social media (and pick up some global press coverage.) They chose the New York Times over the Washington Post because of the promise of a placement in the front section (A-2, even) by Thursday or Friday.
The trio took to Twitter, which many protesters have used to organize and spread information to each other and contacts abroad through accounts like @OccupyGezi—social media that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called society’s “worst menace.” The group’s idea, says Unsal, was to use crowd funding and a crowd-sourced effort to draft a message, add graphics, and get the results into the Times’ pages by the end of the week.
Keeping to the crowd, Aktihanoglu asked his Twitter followers where to raise money for their plan and was pointed to Indiegogo. In five minutes, the campaign was online; in just 18 hours, donors had reached the $53,800 needed for an ad. Just how fast did donors across the world get the campaign funded? Speedily enough that the campaign team got a phone call Monday from Indiegogo’s surprised cofounder and CEO, Slava Rubin. “He wanted to know who we were and how this happened as one of the fastest raises in Indiegogo history,” says Aktihanoglu. “And all we did [to spread awareness] was put out updates on our Twitter accounts.”
To maintain a feeling of transparency and democratic participation, the group has used Google docs for its real-time edits, with as many as twenty people working on the copy, many from writing backgrounds. Designer supporters crowd-sourced the digital work. Then four thousand people voted for their favorite of half a dozen versions of the ad; a run-off between the two favorites ran between 6pm ET and 8:30pm ET on Tuesday night. The version "A" above, "What's happening in Turkey," was the winner.
The fast pace at which the campaign has moved has left its founders short on sleep and time for their day jobs. Unsal concedes that their positions within the tech community may have helped the credibility of their project compared to full-time political activists who might have met a more polarized response. But overall the trio maintains that anyone could have had their idea.
“It’s not about us, it’s about a crowd coming together,” Unsal says. “We want to show [the protesters], we heard you. This is an experiment, and I don’t know if it would work for a new [Turkish] constitution, but I’d like to see it.”
The group has had one problem—the campaign continues to receive donations and is already over $30,000 over its funding goal. To solve that problem, the campaign has stuck to the crowd: Turning to a forum on Reddit to ask where the extra money should go, its founders now plan to also fund a film documentary about the protests. Online and over social media, volunteer film crews are already reaching out.
Follow Alex Konrad on Twitter here:
Follow @alexrkonrad
Update: Here is the ad as it appeared in Friday's New York Times: Turkish Crowdfunding Ad |
Hardware
The Computational CellScope hardware involves a custom-built domed LED illuminator attached to an inverted variant of the CellScope smartphone-based microscope platform (see Fig 1). The CellScope used here is a finite-conjugate transmission microscope coupled to an Android-based Nexus 5 smartphone (LG Electronics/Google) as described in in Skandarajah, et al. [14]. Our domed illuminator hardware is compatible with all smartphones and tablets that are used with the existing CellScope, including the iPhone 4S, 5, 5S, and 6 (Apple, Inc.), as well as several Android devices. Phones are mounted via modular 3D printed mounts adapted to each specific smartphone model. Hardware changes were entirely on the illumination side, where we have replaced the original single LED light with our domed illuminator consisting of 508 individually addressable broad spectrum (white) LEDs. Our domed LED arrangement was inspired by the opto-mechanical geometry of the AWARE gigapixel camera [31]. LEDs are uniformly distributed in an (approximately) hexagonal packing pattern across a 77 degree cone of angles corresponding to an illumination NA of 0.62. Thus, darkfield imaging is feasible for objectives with NA smaller than 0.62 (as illustrated in Fig 2F), and both phase and digital refocusing are possible for all objective NAs. The dome assembly was is secured to a custom stage that attached to the top of the CellScope objective; the stage and circuit board holders were 3D printed using low-cost ABS plastic. In general, the design is modular and features simple electronics, including the use of the inexpensive and widely used Arduino micro-controller platform. Phone mounts can be swapped out for upgrading to new models and objectives can be replaced for varying the magnification of the system. While our addition involves custom LED drive circuitry and a 3D printed structure, complexity was kept low to preserve the low-cost nature of CellScope. Part counts, cost and especially size may be further reduced in design-for-manufacture. The size of the illuminator could be reduced to essentially the dimensions of the dome itself, and cost could be comparable to the price of a modern smartphone, matching and improving upon the functionality of a full-size microscope at a fraction of the cost.
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larger image TIFF original image Download: Fig 1. Computational CellScope. A. Device observing a sample using a Nexus 4 smartphone. B. Optical schematic of the CellScope device with our custom-made domed LED illuminator. C. CAD assembly of the dome. D. Assembled dome and control circuitry. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0124938.g001
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larger image TIFF original image Download: Fig 2. Domed LED Illuminator. A. Visual comparison of a planar LED array with a domed array. Since the intensity of a spherical wave drops as a function of the inverse square of radius, the illumination at the sample depends on the distance between the LEDs and the sample. In the planar case (left), LED distance r increases as a function of illumination angle, causing weaker illumination at higher angles. A domed LED array (right) eliminates this variation (r is constant). B. Normalized mean pixel intensities measured at the sensor for the planar and domed arrays. Intensity decreases as a function of angle in both cases, but much more strongly in the case of the planar geometry. Values were normalized to the central LED’s brightness in both cases. C. Illumination pattern used to acquire dark field images with a 0.25 NA objective. D. Illumination pattern used to synthesize differential phase contrast images with a 0.25 NA objective. E. Illustration of the arbitrary illumination patterning capabilities of the device. F. Plot illustrating the relative objective NA for several common magnifications, as compared to our dome’s LED placement (small black circles). G. Normalized measured intensity falloff as a function of angle relative to the optical axis for the domed and planar LED arrays. Falloff is proportional to cos θ for the domed geometry and ∼ cos4 θ for the planar geometry. Black lines are cos θ and cos4 θ fits for the domed and planar geometries, respectively. The domed geometry exhibits significant improvements in intensity at large angles of illumination. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0124938.g002
The domed LED arrangement provides significantly better light efficiency than the planar LED arrays used in previous work, enabling shorter acquisition times and more efficient power use. These advantages could be crucial for mobile microscopy applications where power is a scarce resource, and shorter exposure times reduce motion blur artifacts due to unstable experimental conditions. The power benefits are a result of two phenomena, shown in Fig 2A. The first is that off-axis LEDs in a planar array will have a larger LED-to-sample distance and thus decreased intensity at the sample. For example, if we assume that each LED is a point emitter, the intensity falloff due to increased distance can be expressed as I(θ) = I 0 cos2 θ, where I 0 is the intensity at the sample from the on-axis LED and is illumination angle. The second improvement in light efficiency comes from the fact that LEDs have significant angular variation in intensity (typically emitting more light in the forward direction). In a planar array, the LEDs at higher angles provide less effective illumination, a problem corrected by the dome geometry, where all LEDs are radially oriented. In both the domed and planar geometries we note that intensity further decreases with a final factor of cos θ due to the smaller profile of objective window when viewed off-axis; combining these factors and assuming a Lambertian (∼ cos θ) angular dependence for physical (non-point-source) LEDs results in an expected intensity falloff of ∼ cos4 θ for the planar geometry but only ∼ cos θ for the domed geometry, a vast improvement at high incidence angles. Thus, the difference between geometries is proportional to cos3θ, or a factor of > 50% at 40° and 99% at 77° incidence, having a substantial impact on required exposure times. Such behavior matches well with our experimental measurements (Fig 2B–2G), where the measured intensity is shown for both geometries out to 40 incidence. Variations in intensity between LEDs may also come from electrical variations such as batch differences in controller chips and resistor tolerances.
Multi-Contrast Imaging. To achieve brightfield, darkfield and phase contrast simultaneously, we time-multiplex images taken with different LED patterns and post-process them on the smartphone to synthesize pseudo-real-time multi-contrast imaging, as in [21]. Brightfield images correspond to illumination by LEDs that lie within the cone of angles described by the objective numerical aperture (NA). Darkfield images are obtained by illuminating the sample from angles beyond the angular acceptance of the objective (Fig 2C) [19]. Since different objectives have different NA, one must specify in the software which objective is being used, with larger NA corresponding to a larger brightfield region of LEDs. Our dome is designed to enable darkfield contrast for any objective of NA < 0.62, roughly corresponding to a typical 40× objective. Phase contrast can be achieved in a single-shot image by any asymmetric illumination pattern [32, 33]. Here, we choose to employ a differential phase contrast (DPC) scheme [20, 23, 24, 34], which requires two images having complementary illumination patterns, because it gives good phase contrast at all spatial frequencies and can be quantitatively interpreted. The method involves sequentially illuminating the sample with the two opposite halves of the brightfield circle while capturing an intensity image for each. For example, one may first take an image, I R , with only the right half of the LEDs on and then a second image, I L , with only the left half of LEDs on (see Fig 2D). The two images are processed as follows to obtain brightfield and phase contrast: (1) where I BF is the brightfield image and I DPC is the phase contrast image. Since the LEDs are mutually incoherent, adding the two images gives an equivalent brightfield image and subtracting them produces phase contrast, due to asymmetric clipping in Fourier space. The intensity of the DPC image can be shown to be approximately proportional to the first derivative of phase along the direction of illumination asymmetry [34], and different axes of rotation can be programmed by changing the LED array pattern accordingly. Typically, we capture an additional two images in order to compute both the Left-Right and Top-Bottom phase derivative results representing both orthogonal directions. DPC images are qualitatively similar to Differential Interference Contrast (DIC); however, the latter is not a quantitative method. To obtain quantitative phase from DPC images, we solve the inverse problem [23, 29] using a simple deconvolution in Fourier space, as shown in Fig 3. PPT PowerPoint slide
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larger image TIFF original image Download: Fig 3. Image Results Compared to a Standard Microscope. Computational CellScope acquires brightfield and darkfield images of similar quality to a standard upright microscope (Nikon TE300) without the use of hardware inserts. Additionally, it enables phase imaging using Differential Phase Contrast (DPC), which contains similar information to standard phase contrast imaging, and can be inverted to obtain quantitative phase of the sample (bottom row). Differences in color shades are caused by the relative differences in hue of the halogen lamp and the white LEDs. Note the additional dark features in DIC results, as compared to DPC, illustrating mixing of phase and absorption information in DIC. In the rightmost column, we show images for an unstained transparent sample, illustrating the utility of phase imaging methods for label-free imaging. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0124938.g003 Thus, by acquiring two (or four) half-brightfield images and a single darkfield image for each time point, we can synthesize brightfield, darkfield, and phase contrast modes in near real-time. Users have the option of saving and post-processing time-multiplexed frames or viewing a live multi-contrast display of the sample, though display speed is significantly faster in the latter case. We developed an application to stream these four contrast modes size-by-side while updating each frame sequentially as the illumination pattern cycles through the different patterns (Fig 4A). The user may touch any of the four images for a live full-screen display of that contrast mode only, and the illumination pattern cycle will update to reflect this. PPT PowerPoint slide
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larger image TIFF original image Download: Fig 4. Android Application Workflow. A. Schematic of streaming multi-contrast LED patterns. Here we vary the LED pattern in time and acquire and process images on the smartphone, producing a streaming multi-contrast display of a sample without any further post-processing. The user can touch any image to zoom in and stream an individual image. Total cycle time is 2.3 seconds. B. Overview of workflow for digital refocusing mode. Table shows example processing and acquisition times for a typical dataset reconstruction. Axial Resolution is determined by the range of illumination angles sampled (defined by the objective NA). The number of z-steps were chosen such that refocus blur does not exceed 20 pixels. Processing and acquisition time can be reduced by selecting fewer refocus planes or by sparsely sampling LEDs, trading axial resolution for faster acquisition time. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0124938.g004 Some image results for each of the contrast modes are shown in Fig 3, using different objective magnifications and samples. For comparison, we show the same samples imaged in a commercial inverted microscope with traditional hardware. Darkfield was obtained by using a Ph3 condenser aperture in combination with objectives having NA smaller than the sine of the half-angle of the Ph3 annulus inner diameter. Since DPC is not currently commercially available, we instead compare our DPC phase contrast images to (similar-appearing) DIC. Both provide images whose contrast is related to the first derivative of phase along a single direction; however, DIC mixes absorption and birefringence information with phase, so that dark features in the image may result from either absorption of the sample or phase contrast interferences. In the DPC images, on the other hand, the image is related purely to the sample phase distribution (see Fig 3), which can be inverted to reveal quantitative phase, as shown in the bottom row. Provided in a portable package, these multi-contrast video and streaming methods have the potential to allow clinicians to view a sample with three separate contrast methods at once, enhancing the information available for diagnosis and disease discrimination. |
BREAKING: Tourism board rejects push to create nude beach
Palm Beach County tourism officials on Thursday rejected a proposal to make clothing optional along a stretch of beach in the southern part of the County, pointing to marketing efforts to promote the region as a family-friendly destination for vacationers.
The county’s Tourist Development Council on Thursday voted unanimously to recommend against a push to turn the north end of Gulfstream Park into a nude beach. The recommendation will be sent to county commissioners, who will ultimately decide the fate of the proposal.
RELATED: A nude beach in Palm Beach County? It could happen
The Palm Beach County Freedom Beach Initiative, a grass-roots group led by county resident Karl Dickey, approached county officials last month about creating a nude beach at the 7-acre park between the coastal towns of Briny Breezes and Gulf Stream and the cities of Boynton Beach and Delray Beach.
Dickey has said the change would drive tourism and generate revenue for the county and surrounding cities. There are no nude beaches in the county.
But members of the tourism board questioned the economic benefit.
“The only justification for doing it is the economic impact, and I don’t think there is any economic impact that we are going to benefit from,” said Don Dufresne, a member of the tourist council.
Read the full story HERE. |
We’ve had a chance to talk to Daniel McKay, a great 3d artist, who just recently started studying Unreal Engine. In this post, Daniel gives a breakdown of ‘Deserted Station‘ and shares some tips on his work with UE4.
Introduction
Hi all. First up, my name is Daniel McKay, and I am currently employed as a Motion Graphics Designer and 3D Generalist at a post production company named TOYBOX. I have a background in design, having studied for 4 years and gaining an Honours degree in Computer Graphic Design. Back then (early 2000’s), 3D was still quite a difficult medium to explore, with all sorts of hardware limitations, as well as super slow internet and a lack of information/tutorials online. My first experiences with 3D was learning Electric Image Universe and a tiny bit of Maya. On graduating, I did a mix of jobs in the television industry, but nothing of great mention. I decided to make the move to London around 2008, and the opportunities that arose on various freelance projects (as well as working alongside some amazing talent!) really pushed me to further myself and my skills. Some of the highlights were: a brief stint with Territory Studio working on Killzone 3 cinematics, working with the talented folk at SPOV, and an extended ‘permalance’ gig working with the fine folk at Flock. Throughout all these jobs, I dabbled in anything 3D, using Maya and Zbrush, as well as motion graphics bits and pieces, predominantly in After Effects. Since 2013, I have been based back in New Zealand (Auckland) and am currently interested in learning Unreal Engine and furthering my knowledge in real-time technology. If anyone’s interested, most of my latest works end up here as well as more frequent updates on stuff/experiments here.
Learning Unreal Engine 4
Unreal is one of those packages that I always knew about, but always figured it was out of my reach. Being a generalist, you always try to be a ‘jack of all trades’ but you can definitely feel overwhelmed at times with all the new software coming out, and you have to be really selective about what you want to invest your time in learning. I decided to start looking into Unreal when I started watching the odd speed level design time lapses on youtube. It was amazing to me that people were building these incredible ‘living’ scenes in mere hours, with a full arsenal of powerful tools at their disposal. I was always a big Mental Ray user, and was in the habit of ‘add a light… wait for the render… rotate a little bit… wait for the render… tweak the intensity… wait for the render… etc, etc’, but seeing people just using these things on the fly blew me away. Not to mention the real-time feedback of such usually time-heavy features, like glossy reflections, volumetric lighting, dynamic forces, etc. Also, for some time, I had been working with Quixel for my texturing, and it was great to be able to see these PBR textures really coming to life in a gaming engine.
I’m also a fan of following trends in the industry, and with the sharp uptake of VR/AR/360 videos, and the like, I wanted to find a means to ‘join the party’. I believe there will always be the need for 2D content, but I think there is so much potential with the immersive experiences Unreal can provide, I felt it was a good time to get on board.
Peculiarities
I’ve only started scratching the surface on what Unreal is even capable of, but so far (about 3 months in) I’ve find it to be very intuitive and user-friendly. Of course, I’ve run into a million and one problems along the way, but to date, I’ve found the support base online to be nothing short of amazing. There seems to be an answer for everything, and everyone seems really happy to help out. A real community spirit, which is great!
The gaming side of it is still something very new to me, and something that I intend to delve into deeper as I keep learning more and more. Admittedly, I’ve always been more the front-end user, and anything under the hood usually flies straight over my head. Again, I’ve found the initial gaming blueprints (third person, first person, et) a great place to start, and more than meet my needs for the time being.
My background has always involved modeling assets from scratch, retopology, UVing, and texturing, so these requirements were nothing new to me. I’m more cautious now with just how low poly I can make things, however, and creating a second UV set for lightmaps was a new one for me too. Texture-wise, ‘packing’ textures was again, something new to me and following tutorial videos online from the likes of Tor Frick was a huge help for me.
Deserted Station
So, for this scene, I was looking online for some inspiration of an environment I could model and I came across the works of Masahi Wakui. This shot in particular caught my eye, and although it didn’t end up looking the same, you can see where a lot of the shapes, and layout came from. I find reference images a huge help when I’m creating an environment, and love that the initial idea can evolve into something completely new by the time you hit that final render button.
The final feel of the scene was to be something quite moody, and eerie. Again, the ‘post-process volume’ feature of Unreal is just incredible. A few tweaks of settings here and there can really change the whole feel of a piece in an instant. Coming from a Maya/AE background, I was used to putting out 10 or so render layers, mattes, etc, and then compositing in post and grading to get something I was happy with. This work flow is great in that you have control over minute details of your sequence, as opposed to Unreal which is more ‘what you see is what you get’. But again, Unreal is a completely different beast for a completely different purpose. I love that I can tweak settings with realtime feedback, shift the camera and boom! It’s all there with no waiting around.
This station scene is actually the first ever scene I have built in Unreal. I shelved it at one point to work on the sci-fi corridor but decided to revisit it and finish it off.
All up, I probably spent about 2 weeks on the station scene in my evenings, and was a really insightful little lesson in learning how to NOT do things! Or at least, how to do things better. It was here that I mostly learned the techniques of packing textures, creating tileable UVs that could also have a lightmap assigned to them, and how to use the foliage tool! The Unreal Marketplace is another amazing feature, and the likes of the free kite demo (or even just the starter content, for that matter) have been invaluable in learning how to make the most of the program.
Modeling Low Poly Assets
As described above, the use of reference imagery is always a helpful way to keep you on track, and not wasting time wondering what to do next. I try and be as smart as possible in terms of working out early on just which objects will need to be modeled, and how I could group them to save on texture space (for example grouping all the modular piping together, and UVing them in one tile).
Maya has always been my go to 3D program, so building my assets here was a no-brainer. I generally start with a blank scene and make sure I have my units set to cm (so they import at the correct scale to Unreal). For a project like this, I start with a 250x250cm plane that acts as my base tileable surface. Any variations of geometry (such as door frames, gutters, smaller walls, etc) I try and keep within these dimensions, or an easy division (such as 10cm or 50cm increments). This works well once the assets are imported into Unreal, so I can turn on snapping to 10/50cm increments respectively, and can drag and drop any combination of the assets and know that they’re not going to intersect.
When I model assets, I try and pay attention to which pieces will be the ‘hero’ elements (will be seen up close or front and centre) and make sure that their geometry holds up accordingly. Of course, performance is key here, so the lower poly count, the better, but really bad faceting can make or break a scene! I also get rid of any unseen faces that will only add to your poly count, or waste UV space. Again though, I’m only new to all this gaming stuff, so maybe my techniques aren’t as great as I think!?! If you have any words of wisdom, please… let me know!
Materials
Building the materials has become one of my favorite things to do in Unreal. I admit, when I saw some of the complex node networks people were building just for a simple surface, I freaked out and thought I wouldn’t cope. But thankfully, after watching some great tutorials on youtube, I quickly learnt that Quixel works in a way to really help streamline that whole process. You have the beauty of Unreal presets when using DDO (Quixel’s texturing program), Unreal lighting set-ups in 3DO (Quixel’s realtime renderer), and you can add/remove whichever maps you require. Next, the ‘RGB packing’ technique has been an invaluable bit of information I have learned that has really streamlined the way I do things. For any given object, I generally end up with 3 textures: Albedo, my RGB packed masks image, and a normal map. I have a bit of a system now where I have Roughness in the R channel, Metalness in G, and any particular sort of mask I require in B (AO, paint layer, rusty patches, etc). * See above tutorial pics for general work flow.
One of the things I love in Unreal is the Emissive element of a material. I’ve had a lot of fun experimenting with this feature, and when combined with a post-process bloom effect, I find it a great way of adding a bit of life and interest to an otherwise flat texture. Being a station platform, the emissive feature worked great on making those little details pop just that little bit more.
Example material set-up for the sign elements.
I also made use of decals during my final pass on the look of the environment. This included such elements as the manholes and some graffiti patches here and there. I find these an easy way to break up that ’tiled’ look, helps add more life to the scene, and has a small impact on performance.
One final tip that might help someone out there: when it comes to rendering out a Sequencer animation, turn off ‘Texture Streaming’ in your project settings. I ran into some headaches where textures would render all blurry, but this little trick stopped that happening.
Keep this guy ticked off for Sequencer renders.
Import Assets in UE4
The import process into Unreal has become very streamline and pain-free these days, but started out pretty dismal for me to be honest. There was a lot of back and forth: trying to get the uv’s right, normals weren’t softened enough in some areas (another new concept to me as I was used to everything being smoothed at render time in Maya), and I had some rotation headaches to sort out. Again, the online community seems to be very accommodating for a noob like me, and before long, was able to see where I was going wrong. Generating my own second uv map for the purposes of lightmaps was one of the key things I learned, as I rely a lot on tileable uv’ed geometry. I bring in assets as FBX and if I have generated my own lightmap UV’s, I make sure to turn off the ‘Generate Lightmap UVs’ tickbox. Otherwise, if I have a clean UV tile with no overlapping islands, I can just leave this switched on. Before exporting geometry from Maya, I add simple Lambert materials onto each section that will require a new material in Unreal. This allows Unreal to detect the different material requirements, and then you can add textures accordingly.
The assets that I built for the scene were low poly enough that I was able to run it on my old (since upgraded) machine at work, running a GTX760, smoothly and with no lag. It was only when I dotted in a bunch of foliage assets (as well as the downloaded train) that I felt Like I was giving in to the look over performance. I had made the initial decision that this was a learning exercise, and was not ultimately concerned with realtime frame rates, so I was comfortable with going a bit overboard with ‘extras’. Having said that, when it came down to it, it was still running super smooth (just under 100 fps) on the ol’ 760.
Lighting
Funny enough, the lighting is as simple as you could get. I used my main directional light as the sun (with light shafts and bloom switched on). I also used a SkyLight to capture a little bit of extra ambient light. I had some spotlights running down either side of the platform to add a bit of interest onto the main pillars, and some atmospheric fog to give it that moody sort of look I was aiming to achieve. And that is truly all the lighting that was used.
My ‘Lighting’ folder showing all the lights used for the Station scene.
The real star here though was the post-process volume, where I tinkered with tints and blooms to make the scene come alive. The bloom helps those emissive materials pop, as well as a few of the old tricks I learned from grading in After Effects over a number of years… vignettes, grain, etc.
I should also point out that I used the dust particles and the steam from the starter content as well, to help add a bit of drama to the scene. These little elements are quite subtle, but they help add a bit of drama to the overall look.
Conclusion
This scene would undoubtedly be fine in a game, albeit a small scale environment. As previously mentioned, the initial build was done with performance in mind, so the basic geometry would hold up no problem. If I was to go ahead with a full immersion scene, however, I would revisit some of the foliage assets and make sure I was placing them strategically, as opposed to just filling up the space. For example, some areas you don’t even see from the platform, but I still went about mapping out some grass assets there anyways (the beauty/danger of the foliage editor…). Also, I’d rethink that train I have sitting in there. On reflection, the style doesn’t feel right and I’ve always felt a bit uncomfortable using assets that I didn’t create myself.
I am still yet to get an HTC Vive, but look forward to getting inside my environments when I finally get one. For now, it’s been PanoCam renders and watching through a cheap headset on my mobile phone!
Again, if anyone’s interested, I post my completed projects here.
I post regular updates and tests to my instagram account.
And, if anyone has any specific questions, or feedback on how I can do my stuff better, let me know on my email.
Thanks!
Daniel McKay, 3D Generalist and Motion Graphics Designer |
This has been the best exchange, I love Jim Henson's work and I LOVE my gifts thank you so much to my Santa!
I got the cutest Hama bead keyring with the Cookie Monster and his poison of choice which is already on my keys and making me smile every time I see it. Gonzo socks! I love these! I really wanted to do the sock exchange last time but was unable to do it so Muppets socks are really just the perfect thing, and Gonzo as well! I love these! And having the last laugh with his perfect brand of Dad joke humour is the wonderful Fozzie Bear teddy who I adore!
I've just started a new job and returned home today absolutely exhausted, this parcel has completely made my day. Now it just remains to defend these lovely things as my own without my son sneaking Fozzie into his own collection! (Or my dog and those socks!) |
The Senate plans to finish work this week on a defense bill containing controversial provisions regarding the detention of terror suspects, which has drawn a veto threat from the White House.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid Harry Mason ReidBottom Line Brennan fires back at 'selfish' Trump over Harry Reid criticism Trump rips Harry Reid for 'failed career' after ex-Dem leader slams him in interview MORE (D-Nev.) plans to hold a cloture vote Wednesday for the defense authorization bill, and the Senate hopes to wrap up the bill with a final vote by Thursday, Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin Carl Milton LevinListen, learn and lead: Congressional newcomers should leave the extremist tactics at home House Democrats poised to set a dangerous precedent with president’s tax returns The Hill's 12:30 Report — Sponsored by Delta Air Lines — White House to 'temporarily reinstate' Acosta's press pass after judge issues order | Graham to take over Judiciary panel | Hand recount for Florida Senate race MORE (D-Mich.) said Monday.
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The march forward pits a Democratic committee chairman against the White House in an escalating dispute over new rules for military custody of al Qaeda terror suspects.
After the Armed Services Committee passed the bill 26-0 earlier this month, the White House threatened to veto it if the detainee portions were not altered.
Following two months of negotiations, the White House and Levin have not resumed talks over the detainee provisions since the bill was voted out of committee, Levin and an administration official told The Hill.
Levin is not backing down from the fight, and he took it public on Monday along with ranking member Sen. John McCain John Sidney McCainGOP lobbyists worry Trump lags in K Street fundraising Mark Kelly kicks off Senate bid: ‘A mission to lift up hardworking Arizonans’ Gabbard hits back at Meghan McCain after fight over Assad MORE (R-Ariz.), as the pair penned a Washington Post op-ed calling their approach to terror detention a “balanced” one.
“The United States has struggled to craft laws and procedures to prosecute the unprecedented kind of war that came to our shores on Sept. 11, 2001,” Levin and McCain wrote in the op-ed. “The courts, Congress and two presidential administrations have gradually, often ad hoc, developed a system that seeks to uphold our values and honors our Constitution while protecting national security.”
The original defense authorization bill, a piece of legislation that’s passed for five decades straight, had been stalled for months over the detainee provisions. But two weeks ago Levin and McCain made a deal to move forward with new language that addressed some administration concerns — but not enough to win the White House’s approval.
The biggest dispute concerns a provision saying terror suspects should be taken into military custody. It also provides a national security exception for the executive branch to move them under the jurisdiction of federal law enforcement.
The White House says that the waiver ties the hands of law enforcement officials, placing overly burdensome and bureaucratic restrictions on them and harming counterterrorism efforts.
Levin and McCain have disagreed, arguing their legislation gives the administration “broad authority to decide who is covered by this provision and how and when such a decision is made.”
The White House and Armed Services panel have also quarreled over the handling of detainees in Guantánamo Bay. The committee changed an indefinite restriction on transferring detainees out of Guantánamo to a one-year restriction, but the administration has said it doesn’t want the provision at all.
Levin and McCain are now looking to press on this week, and with a busy December ahead, Reid appears ready to move the bill through the Senate. Levin and McCain talked on the Senate floor Monday about their eagerness to move quickly through a slew of more than 100 amendments.
“We’re not going have more than this week for this bill,” Levin said.
Many of those amendments seek to alter or strip out the detainee provisions from the bill. Sen. Mark Udall Mark Emery UdallGardner gets latest Democratic challenge from former state senator Setting the record straight about No Labels Trump calls Kavanaugh accusations ‘totally political’ MORE (D-Colo.), an Armed Services member, has said his amendments would prevent a veto. But McCain and Levin oppose any major changes to the legislation’s detainee provisions, including Udall’s amendments.
If the defense bill passes the Senate, it would then be sent to conference committee with the House, whose version of the defense authorization legislation drew a veto threat as well. |
There is tremendous excitement – some would say hype – around driverless cars. Just this month, GM @General(gm) and Lyft announced plans to test a fleet of driverless electric taxis within a year, and Fiat Chrysler and Google (goog) announced plans to develop 100 self-driving minivans.
One key aspect of this driverless revolution, though, has until recently been largely ignored: the role of cities. Yet cities and their policy makers play a tremendous role in setting the playing field for driverless cars. How do they look at this ongoing mobility revolution?
Through my work at the World Economic Forum, I have been impressed with how city leaders around the world, including Atlanta, Boston and Kansas City, have embraced bold ideas around autonomous vehicles and ridesharing app models. Some particularly innovative city leaders are considering how to enable a massive transformation to a new mobility system. Why are city mayors so enthusiastic about driverless cars and ready to completely rethink their transportation systems?
I would submit five reasons – none of which are directly related to transportation.
Cities with driverless cars will attract talent and prosper
The movement of people and goods is the lifeblood of cities, and cities with clogged streets are like people with clogged arteries. This is not just about the economic costs associated with the wasted time of congestion. The more insidious cost of congestion is the impact that it has on labour markets. When cities are congested, the pool of talent available to fill jobs in a given location shrinks, which saps economic competitiveness. As mobility throughput increases, the radius of prospective employees for any given job increases. That matters a lot, because talent, skills and capabilities – not capital – are now the critical factors of production. Those cities that attract and retain the talent for the jobs of tomorrow will be winners in the global economy. And in order to attract talent, cities need to be mobile and liveable.
Driverless cars can decrease the gap between the haves and have-nots
The last thing mayors want in their cities is a mobility divide – a split between those who can afford mobility and those who can’t. The vicious circle of economic entrapment that results from such a divide is just as harmful as from an education divide. Recent studies from Harvard and New York University have found that transportation can be the single largest factor in escaping poverty. Transportation accounts for roughly 17% of after-tax income for the average US household – more than any other category except housing. This burden is even higher for lower-income households. If new mobility systems based on autonomous vehicles can offer an affordable and better (faster and more comfortable) transportation option, then that single mother can take the job.
Driverless electric cars could make housing more affordable
One of the most fascinating questions around autonomous vehicles is how they will impact urban sprawl. San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee told the World Economic Forum that he sees a third advantage in terms of land use and housing coming from driverless cars: they will free up the land currently occupied by gasoline stations, as it is widely expected most driverless cars will be electric. That, in turn, would allow cities to reuse these spaces for affordable housing. “Right now, I can’t buy the land occupied by gasoline stations because of the high value the owner derives from its current use,” he told us. “When gas stations become redundant, that space could open up and be used for affordable housing.”
There will be more space for bikes and parks with driverless cars
Shared autonomous vehicles could allow large amounts of on-street parking to be repurposed for green space, bicycle lanes, or anything other than parking. Imagine the value of all the on-street parking in in cities, such as Los Angeles or Chicago. If even a small share of that can be repurposed, it presents huge opportunities to create value in the cities.
Driverless cars will improve public health
Approximately 1.25 million people are killed on the world’s roads each year and many millions more are injured. Increasingly, such traffic crashes are preventable incidents. If driverless cars go mainstream, far fewer people will be killed and injured on our roads.
There is also the broader linkage between health and mobility. Let’s be frank, sitting in a car – just like sitting at a desk – is generally not the healthiest activity. If that on-street parking is repurposed for safe bicycle lanes (where there is a clear boundary between the pavement for cars and the pavement for bicycles), then far more people would be encouraged to cycle, which in turn, would improve public health.
Making the vision a reality
Until recently, many people had reservations about the concept of driverless cars. Could they be trusted? Were they safe? Was it even realistic given the current design of most cities? While these questions are still important, we’re now starting to focus on the opportunities as much as the challenges. Research done at the World Economic Forum found that 58% of city dwellers said they were either likely or very likely to take a ride in a self-driving car. This did not surprise me.
What surprised me was when we asked why. The number one reason was ease of parking. This demonstrates how much the automobile is part of a broader mobility system – a system that I am convinced will change more in the next ten years than in the previous one hundred.
I believe we will see at least one city make significant progress toward implementing a fleet of shared autonomous vehicles that meets most of its mobility demands. I don’t know if that city will be Chengdu in China, Gothenburg in Sweden or Austin in the US, but I believe it will happen within the next ten years. Watch this space.
John Moavenzadeh is head of mobility Industries at the World Economic Forum. |
8 Ways to Save Some Dough on Thanksgiving Meals
Is it your turn to cook the Thanksgiving dinner this year? Maybe it is your responsibility every year to cook this large dinner. If you have a large family, it can be quite expensive to cook a whole Thanksgiving dinner. Last year, the average Thanksgiving dinner for 10 people cost about $44. Even if you have a small family, you might be interested in reducing your Thanksgiving dinner costs, and many people tend to overspend when it comes to preparing for Thanksgiving dinner. The following are a few tips that you can use to have a fun, affordable Thanksgiving dinner.
1. Buy Stuff Early
So many components of a traditional Thanksgiving dinner can be bought days, weeks or even months ahead of time. Canned goods such as cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie filling last for years, and you can start buying them before Thanksgiving. Some stuffing mixes also last for a very long time. By buying some stuff early, you can help spread out the cost over a few months.
2. Put Your Family to Work
Ask family members to bring a dish to the Thanksgiving dinner, and this will help you to reduce costs. If you have enough family members or if people can bring more than one dish, you might just have to cook the turkey and the stuffing.
3. Use Coupons and Promotions
Check your paper for coupons especially during November. Stores want to sell their Thanksgiving related goods, and you can often get pretty good deals on certain brands if you take the time to look for the coupons. You can also find coupons online at websites like www.couponsuzy.com. Some stores run promotions for things like free turkeys or hams around Thanksgiving. Your local paper is a good place to find information about promotions like this.
4. Try the Local Grocery
Sometimes your local grocery will have better deals, especially around the holidays, than the big box grocery stores like Super Wal-Mart and Kroger. This isn’t always the case, but it is worth it to take a shopping trip to the local supermarket. Even if you do not find that the savings are much different, you’re supporting local business.
5. Go Veggie
This does not necessarily mean that you need to break out the tofurkey, but having more vegetarian side dishes can reduce your Thanksgiving dinner costs. Meat prices are high, and most of your dinner costs will go into buying meat. So, if you normally have a ham and a turkey every Thanksgiving, why don’t you just try turkey this year?
6. Decorations
If this is your first time hosting your family’s Thanksgiving dinner, you might feel like you need to go out and buy festive fall decorations. While cute decorations will certainly make your house look great, you shouldn’t have to spend too much money on them. First, you can try borrowing decorations from a friend or relative. Maybe they have some old decorations that they will not be using this year. Second, if you have kids, especially young ones, you can put them in charge of decorating for dinner. Check out this hand and feet turkeys – http://crafts.kaboose.com/hands-and-feet-turkey.html.
7. Eat Your Leftovers
Get creative with your Thanksgiving leftovers so that you will actually use everything before it goes bad. If you aren’t crazy about eating leftovers for a week, you can also send food home with your family. Check out these turkey leftover recipes – http://allrecipes.com/Recipes/Meat-and-Poultry/Turkey/Leftovers/Top.aspx.
8. Don’t Overspend
Try not to overspend on Thanksgiving dinner. You want to know how many people are coming and cook for that many people. If you are new at cooking for large groups talk to friends and relatives who have done it before, and they can help you determine the right portion size for your dishes. You do not want to cook too much more than you need because then you’re stuck with a bunch of leftovers. And one last tip for saving money on your Thanksgiving dinner is to check your pantry before you shop. Sometimes you already have what you need.
Crystal’s Comments: We have been hosting a Thanksgiving dinner at our house for about 10 people for the past 3 years and it always ends up costing us about $50-$60 since we do splurge on ham AND turkey. Plus we make our own dressing from scratch, sweet potatoes, pineapple stuffing, and homemade apple pie. And as if that wasn’t enough, everyone else brings their favorite dish too…yay for potlucks! |
I had a conversation on my Tumblr about how if Wind Waker had been made with a more Majora's Mask-esque storytelling and colour scheme, it would have been a very different kind of game than what people actually see while playing it. Many people think that Wind Waker is surprisingly happy for a Zelda game, but in reality it's probably up there with the other darker games in the series -- it's the style and bright colours that sets it off so the tragic and grim elements are far less noticeable.So, I started a little mini-series: what if wind waker had different storytelling? It's a very fun concept to play with. First up is redeads fucking shit up in the Earth Temple, also known as hell on earth second only to the Wind Temple.Enjoy! |
Wikimedia Commons This is really thrilling.
An arcane idea that started on finance blogs in the summer of 2011-- that Tim Geithner should mint a trillion dollar platinum coin to avert the debt ceiling -- is now seriously taking off.
The premise of the idea is this: Although the Treasury can't just create money out of thin air to pay its bills, there is a technicality in the law that says the Treasury has special discretion to create platinum coins of any denomination, and the thinking is that Tim Geithner could make the coin and walk it over to the Federal Reserve and deposit it in the Treasury's bank account.
The first blog to really promote the idea was Cullen Roche's Pragmatic Capitalist. We jumped on it soon thereafter, as did others. Of course, once the debt ceiling was solved, people forgot about it.
But there's a new debt ceiling looming, and this time, LOTS more people are talking about it.
We noted our surprise back in early December that an actual 3rd party research firm brought up the idea.
Now it's going even more viral.
Paul Krugman discussed it yesterday.
In an interview with Capitol New York, Representative Jerry Nadler came out in favor of the solution (Nadler has an above-average understanding of economics in our experience).
Josh Barro at Bloomberg is now endorsing it, and that's spread a huge conversation about it among DC journalists and policy folks on twitter.
Barro explains why it's the perfect "solution" to the debt ceiling fiasco:
Hitting the debt ceiling isn't an option. It's no way to run the country, and Republicans know that. So, a debt-ceiling increase shouldn't count as a "concession," and it's nutty for Obama to have to give substantive policy ground to get one.
Monetizing deficits through direct presidential control of the currency, in lieu of borrowing, is also no way to run a country. It's silly, and it's perfectly legal. Agreeing not to do so is therefore the ideal "concession" for Obama to offer in return for Republicans agreeing to end the threat of a debt-default crisis.
This is basically the right way to think about it. Yes it's silly to think of funding yourself with a coin, but it's even sillier to think that defaulting might be a good idea, so you might as well do it.
Now quick detour into economics that must be addressed: Lots of people, when they hear the idea, say one of two things:
This would cause massive inflation!
Well if we did this, why not a $100 trillion dollar coin? |
Conservative news outlet Breitbart News has so far avoided addressing a bombshell Buzzfeed report that exposed the website’s role in fostering the racist alt-right movement and former Breitbart tech editor Milo Yiannopoulos’ direct connection to both the wealthy billionaires who fund Breitbart and to white supremacists, one of whom “all but line-edited” Yiannopoulos’ infamous “guide to the alt-right.”
The report reveals emails and personal messages that show a coordinated effort from billionaire conservative donors to turn Yiannopoulous into a pop culture icon, reveal Yiannopoulos’ cozy relationship with the alt-right and also reveal former White House adviser and Breitbart executive Steve Bannon’s role in the effort.
But if you got all your news from Breitbart, you would have no clue about any of this.
On this morning’s episode of the SiriusXM program “Breitbart News Daily,” host Alex Marlow talked to guests about bump stock gun accessories, the Catalonia independence referendum, a report revealing decades of sexual harassment accusations against movie producer Harvey Weinstein, clashes within the Republican Party, foreign policy, job creation and efforts to pass tax cuts. But there was not a single mention of Yiannopoulous or the Buzzfeed report.
Likewise, a search of articles posted to Breitbart’s website since the publication of Buzzfeed’s report reveals the site has not acknowledged the revelations. The last article mentioning Yiannopoulous was written on September 27.
Yiannopoulos said he met with Bannon in September, giving an indication that the relationship between the right-wing provocateur and the top brass at Breitbart is still intact. |
Leather
Thickness and Weight Conversions
Irons (another way to gauge thickness)
6 oz is 4.5 iron
13-14 oz is 10 iron
16 oz = 1/4" = 12 iron
As a general rule, each ounce of thickness is roughly equal to 1/64 of an inch in thickness.
As an example, 8 oz leather is 8/64" thick, which is the same as 1/8".
Some simple examples of thickness based on US coins:
A dime = 3 oz
A penny = 3.5 oz
A quarter = 4 oz
A nickel = 4.25 oz
So, dig this: 6 oz leather is like two dimes stacked one atop the other.
8 oz is two quarters stacked together.
12 oz is three quarters stacked together.
If you'd like to study some common leather terms or are having trouble falling asleep click here.
You can sound like an expert once you learn to sling the lingo.
Brettuns Village Leather Home |
Facebook Twitter Google+ LinkedIn Photos: 75th Sturgis Motorcycle Rally Fullscreen Post to Facebook Posted! A link has been posted to your Facebook feed. Interested in this topic? You may also want to view these photo galleries: Replay Autoplay Show Thumbnails Show Captions Last SlideNext Slide
Motorcycles stretch down Main Street in Sturgis, S.D., on Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2015, for the landmark 75th Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. (AP Photo/James Nord) (Photo: James Nord, AP)
The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally crash death toll has risen to 13 after a Minnesota man died in a crash Saturday afternoon.
Larry Kaduce of St. Peter, Minn., was driving a motorcycle northbound on South Dakota 79 seven miles north of Sturgis when he attempted to pass two pickups pulling campers, the Highway Patrol said. Kaduce collided head-on with a southbound semi truck. He was separated from his motorcycle and was pronounced dead at the scene.
Kaduce was not wearing a helmet, the Highway Patrol said. The semi truck driver was not injured, and no charges will be filed.
Meanwhile, a Hill City man was identified as a victim of a Friday night crash on SD 244 file miles west of Mt. Rushmore. James Peterson, 56, was driving a motorcycle west on SD 244 when he lost control while entering a gradual curve. The motorcycle left the roadway and struck a rock outcropping. Peterson was pronounced dead at the scene. Alcohol does not appear to be a factor in the crash. Peterson was not wearing a helmet, the Highway Patrol said.
Meanwhile, the Highway Patrol announced that 220 DUI arrests have been made as of Sunday morning. There have been 203 misdemeanor drug arrests and 99 felony drug arrests. Fourteen vehicles have been seized and $28,735 in cash has been seized. The HP says 152 injury crashes have been reported.
The 75th Sturgis Motorcycle Rally officially ends Sunday.
Saturday Injury Crashes
At 1:48 a.m., on Alkali Road, Buffalo Chip Entrance, Evan Marshall, 31, Houston, TX was driving a 2015 Dodge Ram pickup that rear-ended two motorcycles. One of the motorcycle drivers, Tyler Hutchison, 33, Lead, SD, received minor injuries. He was not wearing a helmet. Marshall was wearing a seatbelt and was not injured. Marshall was arrested for DUI, possession of a controlled substance and careless driving.
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At 9:50 a.m., on SD 87, mm 43, Mark London, 60, Barbeton, OH, was driving a motorcycle northbound on SD 87 when he lost control going around a curve and went into the ditch. London suffered serious non-life threatening injuries. Speed and alcohol were not factors. He was not wearing a helmet.
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At 11:24 a.m., on US 14A, mm 46, seven miles west of Sturgis, Jodi Maradell, 45, Johnstown, CO, was driving a motorcycle eastbound when she failed to negotiate a curve and ran off the road. She received minor injuries. Maradell was wearing a helmet.
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At 1:13 p.m., on US 14A, mm 48, 10 miles west of Sturgis, Gary Reed was driving a motorcycle east on US 14A. He lost control of the motorcycle going around a curve and struck the guardrail. Reed suffered serious non-life threatening injuries. Speed was not a factor in the crash. Reed was wearing a helmet.
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At 2 p.m., on US 83, mm 24, Ricky Conn, 53, St. James, MN was driving southbound on US 85. Conn was attempting to pass another vehicle when he saw a northbound vehicle. Conn attempted to swerve back into his lane and lost control of the motorcycle. Conn was thrown from the vehicle. He suffered life threatening injuries. Conn was not wearing a helmet.
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At 5:44 p.m., on US 212, mm 2, 12 miles west of Belle Fourche, Leland Wilson, 70, Hamilton, MT, was driving a 2005 Hyundai Elantra eastbound on US 212 when he drifted over the centerline and collided with a westbound 2014 Freightlinger Truck driven by Steve Smith, 51, Springfield, SD. Wilson suffered serious non-life threatening injuries. He was not wearing a seatbelt. Smith received minor injuries. He was wearing a seatbelt. Wilson was charged with driving on the wrong side of the road and not wearing a seatbelt. Alcohol appears not to be a factor in the crash.
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At 5:52 p.m., on I-90, mm 78, James Schmidtknecht, 40, Mondovi, WI and Calvin Douglas, 58, Blue Springs, MO, both were driving pickups west on I-90 pulling campers. High winds tipped over both trailers. Seatbelts were used in both vehicles. There were no injuries. Both westbound lanes were closed for a time.
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At 8:30 p.m., on US 212, mm 202, five miles west of the Missouri River on US 212, Cory Schultz, 38, Eden Valley, MN, was driving a 2011 Chevrolet Surburban westbound pulling a fifth wheel. During a rain storm, high winds blew over the vehicle and fifth wheel. Schultz received minor injuries. All five occupants in the vehicle were wearing seatbelts.
Read or Share this story: http://argusne.ws/1TaAxSq |
Story highlights The Journal News unplugs an online map listing gun permit holders
The map has served its purpose, publisher says
Newspaper said it didn't cower to vocal critics
A New York newspaper removed an interactive map from its website following a public outcry over the revealing of names and addresses of handgun permit holders in Westchester and Rockland counties, the publisher said Friday.
The newspaper last month defended the online information culled from public records, but The Journal News publisher Janet Hasson on Friday said the map had served its purpose.
The database was published in the wake of the elementary school massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, where 20 children and six adults were killed. The gunman, 20, had earlier killed his mother in their home; he killed himself after the school rampage.
"Today The Journal News has removed the permit data from lohud.com ," Hasson said in a public letter on the website.
The newspaper wasn't caving to public pressure, and the decision wasn't an acknowledgment that it made a mistake, Hasson said. In fact, she said, many community members applauded publication of the permit data.
"Our decision to do so is not a concession to critics that no value was served by the posting of the map in the first place," Hasson said.
"Nor is our decision made because we were intimidated by those who threatened the safety of our staffers. We know our business is a controversial one, and we do not cower," Hasson said.
"But the database has been public for 27 days and we believe those who wanted to view it have done so already. As well, with the passage of time, the data will become outdated and inaccurate," she said.
Hasson acknowledged a legislative climate in New York that favors making private any information about gun permits.
"As a news organization, we are constantly defending the public's right to know," she said. "But we are not deaf to voices who have said that new rules should be set for gun permit data."
The online map allowed readers to zoom in on red dots that indicated which residents were licensed to own pistols or revolvers.
Blue dots indicated permit holders who "have purchased a firearm or updated the information on a permit in the past five years."
The published data outraged many gun permit holders and privacy advocates, who posted angry comments online. Some threatened to cancel their subscriptions or boycott the publication.
At the time, Hasson defended the decision.
"One of our roles is to report publicly available information on timely issues, even when unpopular. We knew publication of the database (as well as the accompanying article providing context) would be controversial, but we felt sharing information about gun permits in our area was important in the aftermath of the Newtown shootings," she said last month.
On Friday, the newspaper pledged to continue "to report aggressively" on gun ownership and will press its request for data from Putnam County and additional information from Westchester and Rockland counties once it's released publicly.
"And we will keep a snapshot of our map--with all its red dots-- on our website to remind the community that guns are a fact of life we should never forget," Hasson wrote. |
Mark Hunt‘s short national nightmare apparently is over.
The heavyweight, slated for the co-main event this Saturday at UFC 160 in Las Vegas, had been stuck in Australia due to a visa issue, threatening his trip to the States to compete in what amounts to the biggest fight of his MMA career.
But on Sunday, Hunt posted on his Twitter account that he has obtained his visa, clearing the way for him to head to the other side of the world for Saturday’s fight. Hunt also this past Friday received his license from the Nevada State Athletic Commission for the bout.
Hunt (9-7 MMA, 4-1 UFC) will fight former heavyweight champion Junior dos Santos (15-2 MMA, 9-1 UFC) at MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas in what is expected to be a title eliminator, with the winner very likely moving on to meet the winner of the night’s main event current champ Cain Velasquez and top contender Antonio Silva.
The UFC 160 main card airs on pay-per-view following prelims on FX and Facebook.
With Hunt still stuck in Australia this past week, he participated in a conference call with media members and said he was hopeful the situation would be sorted out. And UFC officials said a team was working on the problem and was confident Hunt would be in the United States by week’s end.
That timetable won’t quite prove to be accurate, but at the very least Hunt should be in Las Vegas by the UFC’s standard fight week time table, which typically has fighters arriving on Tuesday for a Saturday event.
That may not be exactly ideal for Hunt, who has said that a previous fight in Las Vegas that had him in town just four days ahead of the fight had him feeling sluggish.
“I’m just running out of time to get over there and acclimatize,” Hunt said on this past Tuesday’s media call.
Hunt said the problem leading to his visa issue arose from “a stupid misunderstanding” and “something that happened a long time ago,” apparently a past legal issue that was holding up the process.
But with the visa hurdle cleared, the former PRIDE fighter and standout kickboxer now is set for his fight with Dos Santos – with the knowledge that UFC President Dana White has said a dominant performance could earn Hunt a shot at the belt. The New Zealand native, who now lives in Australia, has won four straight, including a “Knockout of the Night” win over Stefan Struve in March.
Hunt stepped in for Alistair Overeem, who was scheduled to fight Dos Santos, but pulled out with an injury.
For the latest on UFC 160, stay tuned to the UFC Rumors section of the site. |
Tony, Peta and Niki — and the silence of the press gallery
The most significant messages from the latest political exposé The Road to Ruin released this week, have been ignored by the mainstream media. Alan Austin reports.
NOW THE FRISSON of tawdry excitement caused by Niki Savva’s Canberra insider book has passed, the lesson remaining is this: the press gallery serves primarily the interests of the media proprietors.
Most members seek to preserve the power of the Coalition. Most have little regard for the wellbeing of the community, the functioning of a healthy democracy or the right of voters to know what is actually happening.
Here’s the critical question: Would Niki Savva and her employer, The Australian, have made these revelations about perceptions of an extra-marital relationship had Tony Abbott still been PM?
No, they wouldn’t. How do we know? Because they didn’t when he was.
Would Savva and The Australian have made those revelations immediately about perceptions of an affair had it been a Labor PM? Almost certainly.
We now know that in February 2015 a senior Senator, Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, confronted both PM Tony Abbott and his influential chief of staff Peta Credlin with advice that (a) many colleagues believed they were sleeping together, (b) this perception was damaging the Government, and (c), hence Credlin should be removed.
So why has it taken until now – more than a year later – for this significant conversation to be reported?
Niki Savva on the relationship between Tony Abbott and Peta Credlin #insiders #auspol https://t.co/HWrIy0aXIf — Insiders ABC (@InsidersABC) March 5, 2016
Was Savva the only press gallery “reporter” to know of Fierravanti-Wells’ confrontations? If she was, then the others were not doing their job. If others knew, then they were complicit in withholding this information.
A fair dinkum journalist would have gone to his or her editor the moment the exchange was discovered. It would have led the next day’s news. This happens in most functioning democracies. It used to happen in Australia.
The Fierravanti-Wells intervention was not the only significant event revealed this week which the press gallery has hidden. Others include Abbott urging Warren Truss to stay on as Nationals leader to prevent Barnaby Joyce taking the role, Credlin’s edicts side-lining Abbott’s wife after the 2013 election, Credlin’s unprecedented absences from crucial cabinet meetings and her 2013 veto of Abbott meeting PNG prime minister, Peter O’Neill.
Savva almost admits she would not have written anything damaging about Abbott had he still been PM.
She wrote in the prologue:
‘I certainly never thought I would write a book about Tony Abbott’s brief prime-ministership. When he got there, I thought his career would outlast mine. Ten months into his tenure, after he tackled me at The Australian’s dinner, I got fired up.’
A dinner in July 2014 celebrated The Australian’s 50th anniversary. Savva recalls Abbott’s greeting thus:
In the middle of our handshake, he said, "Now, Niki, can you please stop criticising my chief of staff." "Why?" I asked. "Because," he said, "Sometimes when ministers tell you things, they are not true." "You know what, Tony? Sometimes they are."
Abbott and Credlin tried to get leftard Niki Savva sacked from #theirAustralian. Chris Mitchell wimped out. https://t.co/ENJG2k6EG0 #auspol — LuvToneyAbott (@NerksF) December 1, 2015
Savva claims Abbott sought to have her sacked:
Thanks to a prime minister acting like a raging bull and full of it, my days as a columnist could have ended early, if not for the support of the paper’s then editor-in-chief, Chris Mitchell, who endured regular expletive-laden complaints about my contributions from the prime minister.
So the revelations in Savva’s book may not have come to light at all had she not taken personal offence at Abbott’s conduct towards her at that dinner.
The night provided me with two important insights. The first was that Abbott took more offence of criticism of Credlin than himself; the second, that he took her word above that of his colleagues. They lied; she told the truth.
Which brings us to an even more critical revelation this week: that the Canberra press gallery knew Abbott ministers were liars but, again, failed to report that adequately.
Most commentary on Savva’s book seems to accept as valid her reason for not seeking responses from Abbott or Credlin while writing it — because they would lie, and quoting what they said would be repeating falsehoods.
In a candid comment to Fairfax this week, veteran reporter Laurie Oakes affirmed Savva’s judgment:
‘I would check things with Abbott's office and be misled. One press officer even boasted openly about fooling members of the press gallery.’
To be fair to Oakes, he has on at least one occasion highlighted Abbott’s porkies. Two academics did so for Fairfax in 2014. So has Independent Australia, consistently. Few Canberra press gallery reporters have, if any.
If the press gallery knows what Abbott knows – that ministers say things that aren’t true – then several questions follow:
Which ministers? All of them, or just some? Names, please.
To whom do ministers lie? Cabinet colleagues? The parliament? Other governments? Or just voters?
What things have they said which are not true?
Why do ministers lie routinely?
If this Westminster convention is habitually violated, what other principles are routinely trashed?
These are pretty relevant questions in a liberal democracy. The press gallery – including Savva and Oakes – has shown no interest in exploring them with the thoroughness they require.
This pattern of reporting only what suits the newspaper proprietors and the Coalition parties is well-entrenched.
Throughout Julia Gillard’s prime ministership, damaging reports based on malicious cabinet leaks were published, notably by The Australian. The identity of those providing the leaks was assiduously concealed.
If it was former PM Kevin Rudd leaking against his successor – as he has since admitted – then that was a far more important story than the mostly trivial internal Labor scuttlebutt those leaks alleged. In failing to report Rudd’s identity – while reporting the content of his leaks anonymously – the press gallery continued to place the interests of the media organisations and the Coalition above those of readers and voters.
The timing of this week’s release of Savva’s book clearly bolsters the Turnbull Government. Just when ministerial blunders are increasing and polls declining, attention shifts to Turnbull’s predecessor and crushes any ambition he may have to return.
Australia is indeed on the road to ruin. Its media is setting the direction.
You can follow Alan Austin on Twitter @AlanTheAmazing.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
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“I Think For Myself” Credlin Tells Abbott To Say https://t.co/NoPsXRLqlP — Michelle Pini (@vmp9) March 9, 2016
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Why does your rent keep rising? It’s all about supply and demand. Few apartments are available as the rental vacancy rate in Milwaukee is the lowest its been in a decade.
Milwaukee’s apartment vacancy rate is more than a percentage point below the national average according to the United States Census Bureau. In the fourth quarter of 2015, the Milwaukee metro area recorded a rental vacancy rate of 5.6 percent, while the national average hovered at 7 percent.
As the graph here shows, the rental vacancy rate can jump back and forth but has mostly declined over the last decade, except for a spike upward to 17 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012. The vacancy rate plunged to as low as 2.8 percent — the seventh lowest rental vacancy rate in the nation — in the third quarter of 2015. The region averaged a vacancy rate of 4.55 percent for all of 2015, exactly matching its performance from 2014; both figures are the lowest in at least 10 years.
Milwaukee, in line with the rest of the nation, has seen a steady decline in the apartment vacancy rate since 2005. This comes at the same time thousands of apartments have recently opened in Milwaukee and the rest of the region. Yet, as we’ve reported, thousands more apartments are still coming to the market and the Census Bureau figures suggest the still booming demand will absorb the new units quickly. This is in line with individual buildings we’ve profiled, including The North End, which is 96 percent occupied and the Brix Apartment Lofts which is 100 percent full.
Where are all these renters coming from? Certainly the Great Recession and the foreclosure crisis that came with it was a big factor, but the changing demographics and preferences caused by a wave of Millenials coming of age is also a contributing factor.
Also at play in Milwaukee is a low rate of homeownership relative to the rest of the country. Renters are nearly as prevalent as home owners in the region, with 45.6 percent of residences being rented, versus 55.4 percent being owned. According to survey data for the fourth quarter of 2015, the only metro areas with a lower rate of homeownership than Milwaukee are Las Vegas, New York City, San Diego, Los Angeles and San Jose.
About the Data
The rate is compiled as a single figure for the four-county, Milwaukee metropolitan statistical area, which includes Milwaukee, Waukesha, Washington and Ozaukee counties. The population for this region according to a July 1, 2014 release from the Census Bureau is 1,572,245, a 1.05 percent increase from the 2010 census reported amount of 1,555,908.
For those that love a good spread sheet, the Census Bureau makes all of the data publicly available.
Projects Under Construction |
Compulsory preferential voting returns to Queensland as Parliament passes bill for more MPs
Updated
Major voting changes have been passed in Queensland, with Parliament approving four more MPs and a return to compulsory preferential voting.
Key points: 'Just vote one' scrapped in surprise laws
ALP would have got 8 extra seats in 2015 under compulsory preferential voting
LNP outraged over lack of consultation
It will now be compulsory to number every square on the ballot box, a move which would have given Labor an extra eight seats and a majority government in last year's election.
In what was a see-saw battle for control of the legislative agenda, Labor managed to force through an amendment to a Liberal National Party (LNP) bill.
The LNP's Electoral (Improving Representation) and Other Legislation Amendment Bill to increase the number of seats from 89 to 93 was set to pass with crossbench support.
But in a surprise move, Attorney-General Yvette D'Ath proposed an amendment to also include the reintroduction of compulsory preferential voting.
Katter's Australian Party and independent MPs supported the bill to number all boxes.
Act of 'corruption and bastardry'
The LNP accused Labor of being opportunistic and undemocratic by rushing through changes without it going to committee for review.
"This is the most disingenuous act of corruption and bastardry that I've ever witnessed in this Parliament," Ros Bates said.
If the party won the next election, Opposition Leader Lawrence Springborg said they would move to change the system back.
"We would put it to a proper consultative process to the people," Mr Springborg said.
Leader of the House Stirling Hinchliffe defended the lack of consultation, adding that the LNP's bill to add more electorates had no consultation either.
"This change to increase the size of the House to 93 members happened in an unheralded and unprecedented way as a consequence of the Opposition's actions and the majority of the Parliament's actions," he said.
"So we've seen a majority of the Parliament also move to take up compulsory preferential voting."
Changes benefit Labor, analyst says
The ABC's election analyst, Antony Green, said the ALP could have won eight extra seats and been able to form majority government if compulsory preferential voting had been in place at the last state election.
Those seats include Albert, Burdekin, Gaven, Glasshouse, Mansfield, Mt Ommaney, Redlands and Whitsunday.
"What we've seen in recent years is that optional preferential voting has worked against Labor because it gives Green voters another option," Mr Green said.
"They can choose to sit on their hands and not direct preferences.
"And increasingly Labor is more and more reliant on Green preferences."
Mr Green said the Government's argument that reintroducing the compulsory preferential voting would lead to fewer informal votes, was also questionable in light of recent elections.
Topics: state-parliament, laws, alp, liberal-national-party, minor-parties, public-sector, brisbane-4000, qld
First posted |
CAIRO -- Dozens of men close their eyes in prayer and throw their hands up in the air toward the night sky. Barefoot and focused, their bodies sway to the rhythmic chanting booming from a loudspeaker at the mass outdoor religious celebration. And around their necks, lanyards bear the portrait of former military chief Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, the man likely to be the next president.
The men practice Sufism, a moderate and mystical interpretation of Islam followed by at least 15 million of Egypt's 90 million residents. In the wake of the country's 2011 revolution, they've faced increased persecution, with a rise in attacks on Sufi holy sites by Islamist hardliners. But as the country gears up for presidential elections early next week, they say they have found new hope in el-Sissi, who led the ousting last July of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi and is expected to win the elections in a landslide.
“I’m a lover of the [2011] revolution, but I feel there was more of a movement after June 30,” said Tareq Yassin el-Rifa’i, sheik of the country's largest Sufi order, in reference to the mass protests leading up to the ousting of Morsi. “Egypt at this point cannot be ruled by anyone other than a military man.”
Sufis in Egypt have long clashed ideologically with hardline Islamist groups, especially Salafis, or strict, ultraconservative Muslims who follow a more literal interpretation of the Quran. Opponents of Sufism decry metaphorical interpretations of Islam and say the religion's public gatherings rich with dancing and singing are indulgent and un-Islamic. After the revolution began and hardline Islamist groups gained more power, attacks on Sufis' religious shrines increased at startling rates, as did hate speech directed at minority religious groups.
Men listen to religious music at a Sufi celebration in Old Cairo.
“We’ve been called a lot of things,” el-Rifa’i said from his office in one of Cairo’s grand old mosques, adorned with aged photographs of him and other religious leaders. “Infidels, shrine worshippers, like we’re not even people of the book."
El-Rifa’i and other Sufi leaders say they believe el-Sissi will put a stop to the persecution, stomp out the extremism that flourished after the revolution, and end the near-daily bombings and attacks on security personnel across the country. He says el-Sissi has already come to their aid, pointing to his recent attempt to curb hate speech by imposing state-sanctioned themes for Friday sermons in mosques.
El-Sissi paraphernalia, like the lanyards bearing his portrait, and chants in favor of the strongman are now common at Sufi religious celebrations known as mawlids. And earlier this month, the leader met with a delegation of Sufi leaders who applauded his presidential bid, rallying behind his crackdown against hardline Islamists and the now-banned Muslim Brotherhood, the group behind Morsi's rise to power.
“Morsi gave Islamists the green light to attack our shrines and burn churches,” said Alaa Madi Abul-Azaeim, sheik of the prominent Azmeya Sufi order. “I support [el-Sissi].”
A Sufi shrine at Cairo's Al-Rifa'i Mosque.
El-Sissi, who often speaks publicly of his own piety, has slammed the notion of an Islamic state touted by ultra-conservative Muslims, insisting Islam is a way of life and not a political path. His wife covers her hair and has been seen wearing a black abaya, a garment for conservative Muslim women. And on his forehead he has a zebiba, or a dark spot from decades of pressing his head down in frequent prayer.
Yet despite his public pronouncements and the optimism of many Sufis, el-Sissi has been labeled authoritarian by critics who say he is poised to be Egypt’s next dictator. He and his military-backed interim government have launched an extensive campaign to imprison tens of thousands of people, including Muslim Brotherhood leaders and supporters, journalists, academics, lawyers, and revolutionary activists who have spoken out against the government. Just last summer, he orchestrated a violent clearing of a pro-Morsi Islamist sit-in that left as many as 900 people dead. It has been called the largest mass killing in Egypt's modern history.
But despite the heavy criticism leveled against el-Sissi, Azaeim defends the leader’s tight-fisted rule, saying he has pulled Egypt from the brink of disaster.
“[El-Sissi] stood with the people even though he could have been killed,” he said. “He protected the Egyptian people from terrorism.”
A portrait of Alaa Madi Abul-Azaeim, sheik of the Azmeya Sufi order, hanging in his Cairo office.
Palming white prayer beads, he offers a simple explanation as to why the man expected to be Egypt’s next president has his vote: “He loves Egypt and we love him.”
Azaeim proudly recalls giving speeches on religious coexistence during the initial protests in Tahrir Square more than three years ago. Though some Egyptians critical of the government lament a revolution they say has failed, he believes it will be revived after security is restored and extremism is suppressed.
While Azaeim has no doubt that el-Sissi will meet the people’s expectations, it's impossible not to notice a twinge of nervous hope in the voices of others.
“Sufism is on the right track. It will play a bigger role in society,” insists el-Rifa'i, pausing to think for a moment. “I just hope [el-Sissi] has the right people behind him."
May Kamel contributed reporting from Cairo. |
A man pretending to be a child psychologist used his boyfriend’s blood to pass an HIV test and land jobs at two colleges in Singapore.
On March 1, Mikhy K. Farrera-Brochez has been sentenced to 28 months in prison for drug possession, lying to a public servant, and using forged educational certificates, among other offenses.
Farrera-Brochez, 32, moved to Singapore in 2008, one year after starting a relationship with Ler Teck Siang, a doctor he met online. To work in the country, he was required to take a to take an HIV test by the Ministry of Manpower. Foreigners with HIV are not allowed to work in the country, so Farrera-Brochez, who is HIV-positive, visited a clinic where his boyfriend was on duty to take the test.
Ler, who is negative, used blood he had drawn from his own arm earlier in the day and labeled it as his partner’s. As a result, Farrera-Brochez received his employment pass and was hired as a lecturer at a polytechnic.
Getty
“The fact that the blood test was supposedly performed by a doctor and issued by a clinic gave it an aura of authority, making it virtually certain that MOM would be deceived,” said prosecutor Suhas Malhotra. “His conduct evinces a blatant disregard for the authority of our laws.”
In 2010, Farrera-Brochez made news as the youngest registered psychologist in the history of the American Psychological Association. The son of psychologist Teresa King, he claimed he was a child prodigy and could speak eight languages. But an investigation discovered that his educational bona fides, including one from the University of Paris, were forged. Last year, Farrera-Brochez was also found guilty of possession of ketamine and cannabis.
Charges have also been filed against Ler, an infectious diseases specialist who worked at the Communicable Diseases Division of the Health Ministry from February 2012 to January 2014. |
What do self-driving cars “see?” To humans eyes it would look absurd, since people and machines have very different ways of perceiving the world. But for a group of researchers from Moovel Lab, explaining how autonomous cars operate will be an important part of their introduction to society. So they built a hybrid.
Their experimental vehicle puts you in the literal driver’s seat of a driverless car. You lay on your stomach inside of the small buggy, which is outfitted the sensors and cameras you’d find in a normal self-driving car. Meanwhile, you control the buggy with a small steering wheel. The catch? You’re wearing a VR headset, and all you can see is the sensor data an autonomous vehicle “sees.” That includes a stereoscopic map of the surroundings, visual object detection, and readings from the car’s LiDAR sensor, which measures the distances between the car and objects in the world.
These technologies become the only way you can navigate through the world. It’s a far cry from what you’d see looking out a windshield; instead, there’s a hazy outline of objects in a grayscale world. The object recognition software tells you what objects you’re seeing, paired with a percentage denoting how certain the algorithm is about its identification of each object.
One participant’s initial reaction when asked to drive using just this information? “I feel like I’m drunk driving, to be honest with you.”
The project, called “Who Wants to Be a Self-Driving Car?,” is meant as a way to help humans empathize with autonomous vehicles. It’s also an exercise in trust and transparency. As a driver, you can see exactly what kinds of information the car would be using to make real-time decisions on the road as you’re weighing how to make those decisions yourself. For self-driving car makers, building trust with drivers is important, otherwise no one will buy or use their vehicles. But it’s even more important that AV makers ensure drivers understand how self-driving cars operate so people don’t trust cars too much.
The car’s sensors act like the replacement for the driver’s senses–almost forcing each driver to trust that technology will translate the world accurately. For some, this was more than a little uncomfortable. “I don’t want to be a self driving car!” one participant said. Still, zooming through the streets in a sensor-equipped go-cart while wearing a VR headset is one–clever and funny–way to put humans in the driver’s’ seat of the conversation around autonomy and AI. |
Indeed unforgettable, but that was Phil Walsh, forever in football's heart. Crows supporters honour fallen coach Phil Walsh at Adelaide Oval. Credit:Getty Images When the gates opened at 2.30pm, the supporters linked in arms - like players involved in every AFL game this weekend - around the boundary line and beyond, and stared at the simple words on the heritage scoreboard: Vale Phil Walsh 1960-2015. It was a remarkable showing of unity and emotion, fans from the far corners of the football world, dressed in their respective team colours, arm in arm. Of course, reality then began to sink in, and tears flowed freely – fans from all clubs cried as one.
Many had walked in silence from North Terrace, across the bridge to the oval, and hugged supporters from all clubs. Like the AFL players who formed tribute circles of respect, this brought out the best in football. Thousands turned out at Adelaide Oval to pay their respects to Phil Walsh on Sunday. Credit:Getty Images The march was organised by Nathan Craill and Tameika Margetts, who pooled their Facebook pages: Rest in Peace Phil Walsh, which gathered more than 4000 names. They seemed like ordinary football fans. Nathan admitted he was one of those with the habit of getting into other people's faces at the games; you know, the occasionally ugly type, yet he was reduced to tears when he spoke of how supporters of other clubs asked if they could attend this amazing gathering at Adelaide Oval. The siren sounded at 2.50pm ACST, as it would to start the match. Credit:Getty Images
"I told them, of course," Nathan said. "But I said if they came and marched, make sure you wear your guernsey of whatever team you are from because this is not about rivalry but unity. "Look around, you can see people here with Collingwood, Hawthorn and St Kilda guernseys and so on. How good is that? This has brought the AFL community together. This really is something; this is football." Fans marched to Adelaide Oval in silence. Credit:Getty Images Tameika said she heard the news when her dad messaged her early Friday morning, and went into shock. "I thought, oh my god, and I haven't pretty much stopped crying since." But like so many others, her march was silent; no tears or sniffles, but the emotions sure did pour out when the fans were allowed on the oval and they formed the link of football love. |
Growing numbers of teenagers are deserting traditional GCSEs in biology, chemistry and physics because alternative qualifications are an “easier route” to a good grade, it was claimed.
Some teachers said the move – which risked denying pupils access to in-depth tuition – was motivated by the need to boost schools’ rankings in official league tables.
Other staff said that lessons were increasingly formulaic as students “simply learn what the examiner requires” in order to pass tests.
The comments were made in a report by the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance, one of Britain’s biggest examination boards.
Senior teachers and science experts were quizzed as part of an AQA conference on the state of school science and existing qualifications.
A document published on Tuesday - summarising their views - said the “transfer from traditional academic qualifications into more vocational one was seen as leading to a bankrupt system”.
“Some participants believed that it unfairly gave students of any ability the chance to get a good science grade and two participants went further, stating that current assumed equivalency between GCSE sciences and BTEC meant the system had been corrupted,” said the report.
“Others believed that every student should have the ability to engage with science and to achieve, although teachers were honest about the extent to which they acted to bolster league tables.”
Growing numbers of students are actually taking separate GCSEs in biology, chemistry and physics. In physics and chemistry, entries grew by a fifth last year to more than 90,000.
But as many as half of state comprehensives still fail to offer separate science GCSEs.
The majority of teenagers instead take the less-demanding "double award" science, which merges physics, chemistry and biology into one course.
Students can also take alternative qualifications such as BTECs and OCR Nationals.
David Perks, head of physics at Graveney School, London, said: “There is a massive bleeding out of proper academic scientific qualifications into vocational qualifications because they are an easier route to a grade C.”
Other teachers told the AQA that students were “just learning what the examiners were expecting and relying on the revision guides”.
“It was said that the current curriculum was encouraging students to do the bare minimum in order to just get through the exam instead of inspiring a lifelong interest in science and a future career,” said the report.
“Exams, particularly, were accused of having very constraining questions that were sometimes nothing to do with what students were being taught in the classrooms.”
Contributing to the report, Richard Pike, chief executive of the Royal Society of Chemistry said: “Teachers are so frustrated that they just want to get the curriculum out of the way and do the interesting things.
“Teachers cover the curriculum in 60 per cent of their time and spend the other 40 per cent doing really great things like tracking asteroids or doing transgender work in biology.” |
The first Hullabaloo was the summer of 2007. It started out as a cook out/hotrod hang out on Dillehay Street where Kirby Stafford and Richard Sanders shops are. Their thoughts…”man, that was fun. Let’s do it again next year”
It was official. The following summer the 2nd annual Hullabaloo kicked off. This time everyone was invited.
The Hullabaloo was off and running with each years growth the event drew more and more cool Hot Rods, Customs & Bobber’s. The best BBQ and live Rockabilly/ Blues bands were always on the schedule.
Fast forward to Hullabaloo 2012, always coming up with fresh ideas Kirby & Richard decide to add a new attraction. Hoodlum Races! Home built from car hoods these downhill coasters soon became one of the most fun events of the day.
Hullabaloo #7 2013 they asked me once again to join their rowdy bunch and bring our Shelby’s Speed & Kustom booth to Dillehay Street. Selling our T-Shirts and promoting the non-profit “Bringing Awareness to Suicide Prevention”. Lucky # 7 and Shelby’s Hot Rod Get Together had a great day!, very successful and very much a good time, till the end of the day….a conversation with Kirby and Richard revealed that this was the last Hullabaloo. Both of them tired and totally exhausted from months of planning and three days of preparing Dillehay Street in August heat had taken its toll.
After I returned from Shades of the Past the following week, I received a phone call from Kirby, He told me that him & Richard decided instead of letting the Hullabaloo come to a close and disappointing all its fans, They would like to turn the Hullabaloo over to my son Cody & myself and “Shelby’s Way”!
Shelby’s Speed & Kustom is PROUD TO ANNOUNCE… #8 Hullabaloo will be in on Contract Street Lexington Kentucky, Saturday Aug. 30th 2014 !!!
I promised them the Hot Rod Hullabaloo & Shelby’s Hot Rod Get Together will keep all the traditions of the event while Bringing Awareness to Suicide Prevention. With our new team (more to come on that later) and the continued help from Kirby & Richard the Hullabaloo will be around for a very long time.
Kirby, Richard, Cody & myself (Mark Cain) would like to Thank all of our Hot Rod Brothers &
Sisters for helping the Hullabaloo to grow to be such a success. We are looking forward to seeing just how big it will grow with your continued support!
See Ya in Lexington Labor Day weekend 2014
Mark Cain
Stay Tuned into www.shelbysspeedandkustom.com and our Hullabaloo Facebook page for more info on Host Hotels,other Hotels in the area,along with the Bands,Food our Downhill Hoodlum Race!
Special Thanks to the Hullabaloo Host Clubs….Kentucky Crap Shooters from Louisville, Ky and the Bourbon Trail Bombers from Frankfort, Ky. |
Nineteen people were arrested Wednesday while protesting immigration policies outside Speaker Paul Ryan Paul Davis RyanBrexit and exit: A transatlantic comparison Five takeaways from McCabe’s allegations against Trump The Hill's 12:30 Report: Sanders set to shake up 2020 race MORE’s (R-Wis.) office on Capitol Hill.
The individuals were calling for Ryan to bring the DREAM Act to a vote, and were charged with crowding, obstructing or incommoding, a Capitol Police spokesperson told the Huffington Post.
The 19 arrested were representing Asian-American organizations, and were released later on Wednesday.
The individuals were pushing for passage of a “clean” DREAM Act, which would provide a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children without putting measures like additional border security in place, something that GOP lawmakers have insisted on including in an immigration bill.
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Lawmakers have been working to reach a deal on immigration legislation since President Trump announced in September that he would rescind Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), an Obama-era program shielding from deportation thousands of people brought to the U.S. illegally as minors.
Trump gave lawmakers a six-month window to pass legislation shielding those affected by his administration's move to shutter the program.
“The Trump administration continues to stoke fear into our immigrant and refugee communities, and today and every day until white supremacists are out of office, we will protect and defend our family, friends, and communities from hate violence, racism, and xenophobia,” one of the protestors said in a press release.
According to the Huffington Post, about 16,000 Asian immigrants benefit from DACA. |
Artist: Load B
Track: Grey Poupon
Feat. Dust
Producer: Stewart Villain
Album: Escape From Snortlandia
At least according to 1980s television, there's nothing fancier than leaning out the window of your chauffeured Rolls-Royce and asking a complete stranger for mustard. We in the Booth are all about class, so of course we have a little Grey Poupon for you this morning, in the form of Load B's latest feature. On this fresh single, making its world premiere on our front page, the Portland emcee uses the transition from garden-variety yellow mustard to Dijon as a metonym for his ongoing journey from rags to riches. In addition to the headliner's gravelly bars, this joint packs guest rhymes by Dust, who joins the headliner over a grimy beat by Stewart Villain. For more, cop Load B's Escape From Snortlandia LP, slated to drop digitally on the 14th.
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Ever since the Beat Generation, youth culture in America has been a vibrant and rebellious driving force.
The Beats had risky views on race relations, jazz, and pot. The hippies had psychedelic drugs, sit-ins, and protest songs. Punks had mosh pits, spitting in each other's faces, and rivet jackets. Hip-hoppers had gold chains, breakdancing, and guns.
And what is there today? Ravers and EDM dominate American youth culture, and we're probably the wimpiest generation ever.
Continue Reading
It ain't easy being hard when you're rolling face, hugging a Care Bear.
Fist Pumping
Sorry, bro. Fist pumping is not cool and manly. Punching a wall because that drop was so hard? That would be kinda cool. Thrusting your jazz-hand skyward to the infectious, spunky beat? Wimpy. Not to mention, bros are inherently wimpy. A buff dude in a neon muscle tank with big pupils is one of the lamest things you could ever be. Sorry we're not sorry.
Big-Room Builds
Of course, maybe bros wouldn't be moved to such wimpy moves if the music was a little less cheesy. What's with the brogressive house movement? Why does it all have to sound like Jesus came back on a Technicolor spaceship to rain roses over the club? It's really not that epic, yo. It's really all about the same.
Cheesy Vocals About Love
And topping off this audible mountain of awful is always some generic, throwaway vocal track by some girl no one will ever give two shits about, whisper-singing the same vague bullshit we called "poetry" in the 7th grade. Not only is it obnoxiously formulaic, it's soulless and canned. It's like lyrical Spam.
Furry Boots
Did you kill your cat, dye it, shave it, and decide you would honor the corpse by sticking it to your shins? No, because that would actually make you a hard-ass psychopath. What you did do was waste $40 on the dumbest accessory known to man, then actually leave your house looking like you've got an animal fetish. Shit is not cute, girls. Grow the fuck up.
Pacifiers
Speaking of growing up, you have a child's soother in your mouth. Are you surprised security groped you inappropriately? You might as well write "drug user" on your forehead. Why can't you just settle for gum like a normal person? Would you let your baby brother see you like this? Seriously, here is a mirror. Wallow in shame.
Vicks Inhalers
When rappers drink codeine syrup and soda, it makes them lean and look like gangstas. When there are two Vicks Inhalers shoved into your nostrils, you just look like you suffered serious cranial damage as a child, and your mom didn't love you enough to take you to a doctor. Your stupid mask doesn't look cool, either. You're not a ninja turtle, because ninja turtles can beat people up. You're happy beating yourself up with these over-the-counter brain neutralizers.
Druggie Love Declarations
By the end of the night, all this love-drug, furry boot, inhaler nonsense has warped your brain to such an extent, you now feel a closeness with others that won't last until morning. Your friend's shitty boyfriend? You love him. That stranger you just met? You love him. That gum on the floor? It's so beautiful. Really speaks about our broken homes and ruined childhoods. No, your socially hip drug habit does. Tell Molly to take a weekend off once in a while.
Crybaby Deadmau5
Not to mention, this is a top-down kind of situation. Even the heroes of the scene hate themselves and cry about it. Deadmau5 is always mouthing off about something way too publicly. Guess what, bro. No one voted you in as a moral guide for the EDM generation. You don't speak for the movement. You just make OK trance that even you claim "all sounds the same." Take your serious face down ten notches. And stop posting Facebook pics of your girlfriend and your cat.
Buying Likes
But at least Deadmau5's rise to fame was genuine. There's a new trend where DJs, record labels, blogs, and promotional companies are going around actually paying companies in Mexico and wherever else to help them make friends on the Internet. Sometimes, cheating can be hard, but this is just wimpy because it's so totally obvious. Sorry, there's no way you're most popular in Venezuela if you're based in a college town. You're a wimp, and you know it.
Sync Button
Of course, technology is a big part of the scene. Technology is actually really awesome, but EDM-ers find a way to mess all that up too. DJing used to be hard, it used to be for people who learned something. Now, any bro with a laptop can do it. The controversial "sync button" takes beat-matching, the most basic of DJ talents, out of the equation. Inherently, this isn't so wimpy, because it's supposed to free you up to do more intricate and impressive things. But most people are wimpy and use it as a crutch to deliver unenergetic, non-experimental sets. Shame on you.
Follow Crossfade on Facebook and Twitter @Crossfade_SFL. |
In a three-part investigation, CBS News looked into the Wounded Warrior Project, the nation's most recognizable veterans charity. What caught our attention is how the Wounded Warrior Project spends donations compared to other long-respected charities.
For example, Disabled American Veterans Charitable Service Trust spends 96 percent of its budget on vets. Fisher House devotes 91 percent. But according to public records reported by "Charity Navigator," the Wounded Warrior Project spends 60 percent on vets.
The organization has invested heavily in fundraising and says this philosophy best positions it to carry out its stated mission: to honor and empower wounded warriors.
But in Part 1 of the CBS News investigation, Army Staff Sergeant Erick Millette and former WWP employee said the charity is not living up to its mission. Millette said he witnessed lavish spending on staff.
CBS News investigation: How is Wounded Warrior Project spending donations?
"You're using our injuries, our darkest days, our hardships, to make money. So you can have these big parties," he told CBS News.
CBS News spoke to more than 40 former employees who described a charity where spending was out of control. One former employee called WWP's conduct "what the military calls fraud waste and abuse."
Former employees say spending skyrocketed since Steven Nardizzi took over as CEO in 2009. According to the charity's tax forms, spending on conferences and meetings went from $1.7 million in 2010, to $26 million in 2014.
Wounded Warrior Project accused of falling short of mission
Captain Ryan Kules, Director of Alumni for the Wounded Warrior Project, denied excessive spending on conferences or alcohol. "It's the best use of donor dollars to ensure we are providing programs and services to our warriors and families at the highest quality."
In Part 2 of the investigation, former employees of the Wounded Warrior Project said they're concerned that the organization has become more focused on raising money than on serving wounded veterans.
Many of those former staffers believe that after raising more than a billion dollars since 2003, the charity should be providing more comprehensive services to wounded veterans. They also raised concerns that WWP was not doing enough to follow-up with warriors.
"A lot of the warriors I saw needed mental health treatment. They don't get that from Wounded Warrior Project," a former employee said.
Capt. Kules told CBS News that WWP is committing $100 million over three years to a warrior care network in a partnership with four hospitals that will provide outpatient mental health services to post-9/11 veterans.
Kules also said WWP does follow up with veterans. "Wounded Warrior Project contacts alumni and family support members multiple times over the course of the year, we call each and every one of our alumni and family support members on their birth month to be able to ensure and check in, see how they're doing, and see if they need other programs and services."
Watchdog: Not enough Wounded Warrior money spent on vets
Marc Owens, a former director of tax exempt organizations at the IRS, reviewed the Wounded Warrior Project's tax documents at the request of CBS News in Part 3 of the investigation.
"I couldn't tell the number of people that were assisted. I thought that was truly unusual. If the organization is asking for money and purportedly spending money to assist veterans, and talking about it, I would like to know," said Owens.
Wounded Warrior Project says 80 percent of their money is spent on programs for veterans. That's because they include some promotional items, direct response advertising, and shipping and postage costs. Take that out, and the figures look more like what charity watchdogs say -- that only 54 to 60 percent of donations go to help wounded service members.
Charity watchdog Daniel Borochoff says his biggest concern is that the group is sitting on a $248 million surplus -- and not enough of it is being spent on veterans.
"It would be helpful if these hundreds of millions of dollars were being spent to help veterans in the shorter term in a year or two rather than being held for a longer term," Borochoff said.
CBS News investigation into Wounded Warrior Project sparks outrage among vets
The CBS News investigation drew a strong reaction on social media, with many veterans taking to Facebook to voice their frustration. Some even called for the resignation of CEO Steven Nardizzi, who has defended his organization's spending.
The charity has not responded to CBS News' repeated requests to interview Nardizzi, and instead offered Kules, a program director, as qualified to answer questions about the charity.
The Wounded Warrior Project has also responded on their social media pages.
Top donors were also upset by the allegations that their donations were not being spent how they expected.
Fred and Dianne Kane had two sons serving in Iraq, and have helped raise $325,000 since 2009 for WWP. Fred Kane was even honored with an award for being a VIP donor.
Wounded Warrior Project donor demands accountability
"Hearing that there was this waste of money, donor dollars that should have been going to servicemen and women that were injured, and that it was spent on their having a good time -- it's a real disappointment," Dianne told CBS News.
Outraged, the Kanes cancelled this year's benefit tournament and started a petition on Change.org calling for a public audit. Fred also called senior management, and said he thought Nardizzi should be fired.
"Where is this guy? You lead from the front, good or bad, you don't hide," Fred Kane said. "I don't understand how an organization that has many veterans who value honor and service and chain of command can be led by a guy like that."
CBS News learned the Kanes are just some of several major donors who are ending their support and calling for change.
Wounded Warrior Project CEO and COO fired
On Thursday, the WWP board of directors fired CEO Nardizzi and Chief Operating Officer Al Giordanoafter a meeting in New York.
Sources tell CBS News the board has received preliminary results of a financial audit. And there are discussions under way about retired senior military officers who are being considered to take over leadership of the organization.
Full disclosure, a CBS Corporate executive serves on that board. |
Listen folks, I don’t care what you believe, personally, when it comes to this podcast, I just want to get you dancing, or at least bobbin’ your head at your office/put a small hop in your step while out on a walk, but I want you to remember, that these years are all we get. Life is a one time deal and we need not to waste it. We need to spend it pursuing meaningful relationships, entertaining ourselves and spreading joy. Drop needless hate and enjoy every moment you can. I hope that this podcast has brought you some happiness over the last few years (and that it continues on for more), let me know it is always nice to hear from you listeners out there!
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A train carrying crude oil along the banks of the Mississippi River derailed Thursday in a rural area of northwestern Illinois south of the town of Galena, starting a fire and leading the authorities to recommend that nearby residents leave their homes.
Officials from the Jo Daviess County Sheriff’s Department said that the Burlington Northern Railroad told them on Thursday afternoon that a 7,000-foot train carrying Bakken Crude Oil derailed, sending eight cars off the track. At least two train cars burst into flames.
The Associated Press reported that the train had 105 cars, 103 of which were carrying oil. Brandon Kieffer, a spokesman for the sheriff’s department, said that local officials had not been able to assess how much oil had been spilled.
The derailment happened in an isolated location, he said, and due to its remoteness and the intensity of the flames, firefighters were going to let the fire burn off. |
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Scientists have made a significant leap towards mass producing platelets - the part of the blood that forms clots.
The NHS and University of Cambridge team have discovered how to grow the body's platelet factories in the laboratory.
It could provide a new source of platelets to stop heavy bleeding, for example after a car crash.
But the researchers need to make the process more efficient before starting trials.
If you donate blood, then it is separated out into red blood cells, plasma and platelets so patients are given only the component they need.
Platelets are needed after trauma, surgery, leukaemia therapy and in some blood disorders like haemophilia.
"We're totally dependent on blood donation to produce those platelets," said Dr Cedric Ghevaert, a consultant haematologist.
His team has been trying to grow megakaryocytes - the platelet mother cells that live in your bone marrow and manufacture the clotting platelets.
Their breakthrough, reported in the journal Nature Communications, was the discovery of a set of chemical switches needed to create megakaryocytes in the lab.
Dr Ghevaert, from NHS Blood and Transplant, described their results as a "major step forward" and told the BBC News website that "the next big step is to get enough platelets out of each megakaryocyte".
The lab-made cells produce around 10 platelets each. But each one functioning normally in the bone marrow would produce up to 2,000.
It is hoped that recreating the same conditions as in the bone marrow could make the cells more effective.
If the researchers are successful, then lab-grown platelets could be more useful than ones collected in a blood donation.
Dr Ghevaert added: "We can modify the platelets so they can trigger the clotting even better which would have huge advantages indeed for patients who have had a crash or a bleed or even in soldiers who have been injured."
It could also allow doctors to have stockpiles customised to different patients. Platelets come in different forms just as red blood cells come in A, B, O and AB.
And some platelet types, particularly those common in black and Asian ethnic groups, are relatively rare.
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People think that they sell oil, but in fact they are becoming oil.
—Victor Pelevin
How is it possible to be a materialist today, when many proclaim themselves the only true materialists and build their arguments against the wrongness of the materialism of others? It is tempting to call this epic battle for the flag of materialism a return to the “philosophy of nature.” Such terminology sounds anachronistic, to say the least. Any synthesis of knowledge about the living and the nonliving world under the heading of the philosophy of nature summons the specter of classical Western metaphysics; the philosophy of nature is understood to be pure idealism of the very highest grade. And yet the question of nature, or material reality, continues to be a stumbling block for ontology, the philosophy of science, political economy, and psychoanalysis. All of these discourses continue to do “nature philosophy” by other means. The main difference between today’s philosophers of nature and those of the past is that our contemporaries do not present their subject matter as a mirror of spirit, a universe of God’s creation, or even, as Hegel had it, “the falling-away-from-itself of the Idea,” but seek to discover nature as such, to think about the very nature of nature that is naturally independent of thought, if not opposite to it.
About one hundred years ago, Alfred North Whitehead, a famous English philosopher and mathematician, formulated the problem as follows:
Thus in a sense nature is independent of thought. By this statement no metaphysical pronouncement is intended. What I mean is that we can think about nature without thinking about thought. I shall say that then we are thinking “homogeneously” about nature. Of course it is possible to think nature in conjunction with thought about the fact that nature is thought about. In such a case I shall say that we are thinking “heterogeneously” about nature.
Nature is not thought, says Whitehead, and it is difficult to disagree with this statement. Thinking homogeneously about nature is, according to Whitehead, inherent to the natural sciences. It seems that when philosophy follows this attitude and tries to think about nature without thinking about thought, it qualifies itself as materialism, new materialism, or realism. These are new philosophies of nature.
The nature of nature as such can be thought as agential (Karen Barad’s agential realism); as ancestral or as a real that was already there before us (Quentin Meillassoux); or as objectal, when everything, subjects included, turns into objects (Graham Harman), or even into hyperobjects (Timothy Morton) that now, at the end of the world, rise beyond all our measurements (global warming, etc.). It can be described in older oppositions of subject and substance, or subject and object, or subject and thing (materialist dialectics and transcendental materialism, critical Marxism, psychoanalysis). It can be approached as forms of life (vitalism), as bodies (corporeal, transcorporeal, and incorporeal materialisms, or what Alain Badiou ironically calls “democratic materialism”), or as media and technology. It can be dialectically or nondialectically opposed to technology, or identified with it. It can be represented and symbolized as a constant lack—a lack of resources (extractive economy), a lack of desire (libidinal economy), etc.—but at the same time as an irreducible excess; as a realm of need and necessity, or of hyperchaos and contingency; as something to be defended and preserved (ecophilosophy, deep ecology), or as a threat—a complex of unknown, blind, and potentially destructive forces (dark materialism).
In his book In the Dust of This Planet, Eugene Thacker presents a dark materialist philosophy of nature through the lens of horror. The word “world” has, according to Thacker, three different meanings. The first is the world-for-us, or simply the World; the second is the world-in-itself, or the Earth, and the third is the world-without-us, or the Planet. The World is anthropocentric, the Earth is natural, and the horrifying Planet is supra-natural, or fantastic. Regarding the Earth, or nature, that in a significant part is “grounded by scientific enquiry,” Thacker says that it is “a paradoxical concept; the moment we think it and attempt to act on it, it ceases to be the world-it-itself and becomes the world-for-us.” The author is more interested in the last, supra-natural world, from the (non)understanding of which he is trying to remove all the anthropomorphic projections. He claims that thought is not human, that nature is not natural, that life does not belong to living beings but is rather alien to them, and that perhaps the future of philosophy lies in the mysticism of an inhuman, uncanny dark matter. Such a modern mysticism is not theological, but climatological, and devolves “upon the radical disjunction and indifference of the self and the world.”
Without sharing the mystical spirit of Thacker’s philosophy of nature, I generally find this division useful and productive. However, I would like to suggest that the world-for-us, the world-in-itself, and the world-without-us are not three separate entities. I rather imagine them as three concentric circles: the smallest is the World, the next biggest is the Earth, and the biggest is the Planet—although these three circles might actually be the same size and even occupy the same place: their difference is not geometrical, but topological.
The first circle is like the home where we live. In this home, everything is familiar; we are surrounded by things that belong to us. We open the doors of this circle and go out: there is a second circle there, where animals and plants dwell without thinking and being thought. This is nature as such, or the world-in-itself, or—to borrow the name that Quentin Meillassoux gives to things-in-themselves outside any subjective relation—the Great Outdoors. We grab something there (some food, some wood to make a fire, some water, etc.) and go back inside. But we know that there are yet other doors, the doors of nature, that lead towards a Greater Outdoors where even the wildest of beasts do not dare to go, let alone humans. It is populated by gods, demons, dark forces, hyperobjects, and other entities that, for some unspecified reason, we cannot or do not want to explain rationally, even if we created them ourselves.
The cosmic utopia wants to conquer not only nature, but that Greater Outdoors, too. It wants to make it ours—contrary to mysticism, which keeps it secret: in this sense, Russian cosmism presents an interesting alternative to dark materialism. Revolution is not possible in one separate country, but the worldwide revolution is not enough either, as it only involves humanity. The Bolsheviks dreamed of revolutionizing not just society, but nature itself, for nature was considered a realm of unfreedom, inequality, injustice, need, exploitation, and death. Diverting rivers, blasting mountains, making animals speak: the idea was to transform the Earth by means of technology in order to make it, as Andrei Platonov says, more “kind to us.” But even this does not seem satisfactory, as revolution tends to expand further and to become planetary, or cosmic.
Doesn’t this desire to conquer the Greater Outdoors tell us that the triple circle of the World, the Earth, and the Planet is still structured like a human habitat, with its composite inner and outer spaces connected by doors that lead in and out? In ancient Greece, the outer part of this structure was called cosmos, and the inner one oikos. The latter has several meanings—a house, a household, a family, but also a family’s property, up to and including slaves. Today these meanings are maintained in the paronymous words “economy” and “ecology.” Both economy and ecology are concerned with nature—either as a living world, environment, Umwelt, or as a source and resource. They are conjugate—beyond ecology there is always economy, and vice versa: this is our earthy home, here we keep slaves and exchange oil for money. But this is not the whole story, as beyond the doors of nature, the Greater Outdoors stands and creates anxiety. How is it possible, the world-without-us?
My argument is that this uncanny space or cosmos does not stand out or around the canny space of the oikos that we share with other natural creatures, but paradoxically emerges at the very heart of it. Without is within. What appears to us as absolutely alien and monstrous is to be found there, where we would never think of searching for it. Alenka Zupančič puts it very precisely: “The great Outside is the fantasy that covers up the Real that is already right here.” The fact that it is a fantasy does not mean that it can be neglected. As psychoanalysis teaches us, fantasy is at least as important as what we call reality, and perhaps even more so. The phantasmatic world-without-us is not only attached to the world-for-us, but presents its internal truth. It is uncanny and unhuman and unnatural, where the prefix un- does not merely negate, but produces a kind of displacement or resistance that dialectically turns canny, natural, human, etc., into their opposites, while maintaining the ostensible clarity and significance of the original. This is why these new concepts of nature continue to revolve around an old concept of the human, in various directions, including the transhuman, the nonhuman, the antihuman, the posthuman, or the inhuman. Such concepts seem to start from the dismissal of the human, but often end up with what I would call negative anthropocentrism, i.e., anthropocentrism of a centrifugal, rather than a centripetal, type. While turning away from the hearth of the inner circle, and towards a fantastic/phantasmatic outside that feels uncanny, negative anthropocentrism does not depart from a philosophy of nature that rests on the significance of these same distinctions. It is humanism with a monstrous face, we might say.
The etymologies of the words heimlich (canny) and unheimlich (uncanny), both deriving from das Heim—the home, the domestic hearth—were analyzed by Freud, who underlined the ambivalence of heimlich, which, on the one hand, “means what is familiar and agreeable, and on the other, what is concealed and kept out of sight.” Freud referred to Schelling’s definition of unheimlich as “everything that ought to have remained secret and hidden but has come to light.” According to Freud, the feeling of uncanniness—this special kind of fear—relates to “something repressed which recurs” and thus it is “nothing new or alien, but something which is familiar and old-established in the mind and which has become alienated from it only through the process of repression.” The unconscious is not a mysterious substantial reality beyond our psychic life, but a structural formation of the process of repression which, as Lacan explains, coincides with the return of the repressed. Similarly, the inhuman and unnatural planetary outside of the world can be regarded as the very image of its interior, which returns from the depths of oblivion in a scary shape that we do not recognize. The world constantly turns inside out, and we are the hole through which it does so (by “we” I do not mean exclusively humans, but a much bigger collective of beings that precedes concrete species).
As Georges Bataille writes in his very short essay “Materialism” (1929):
Materialism will be seen as a senile idealism to the extent that it is not immediately based on psychological or social facts, instead of on artificially isolated physical phenomena. Thus it is from Freud, among others—rather than from long-dead physicists, whose ideas today have no meaning—that a representation of matter must be taken.
In this sense, Alberto Toscano is right when he says that Meillassoux’s concept of the Great Outdoors, or ancestral real—indifferent to humans and animals—is “ultimately idealist in form.” Interestingly enough, Simon Critchley evokes Bataille’s spirit in his critique of Meillassoux. He recalls a conversation between Bataille and A. J. Ayer, a British proponent of logical positivism, which took place in a Parisian bar in 1951, and
lasted until three in the morning. The thesis under discussion was very simple: did the sun exist before the appearance of humans? Ayer saw no reason to doubt that it did, whereas Bataille thought the whole proposition meaningless. For a philosopher committed to scientific realism, like Ayer, it makes evident sense to utter ancestral statements such as “The sun existed prior to the appearance of humans,” whereas, for a correlationist like Bataille, more versed in Hegel and phenomenology, physical objects must be perceived by an observer in order to be said to exist.
To be precise, Bataille’s sun does not really need an observer. “Observer” is maybe not the right word here: one cannot, as Bataille constantly repeats, “observe” the sun, at least directly—because it burns the eyes. The sun is that cosmic object that makes me blind, insane, dizzy. The psychological aspect of matter, which Bataille tries to take into account in his own conception of base materialism, should not be underestimated. Matter is principally ambivalent and heterogeneous—as is the unconscious—and cannot be reduced to anything within an epistemic framework. Later, in his book The Accursed Share, Bataille expands his critique of political economy to the planetary scale and articulates the need “to recognize in the economy—in the production and use of wealth—a particular aspect of terrestrial activity regarded as a cosmic phenomenon.” This planetary activity is called “general economy” and is opposed to a “restricted” one that only registers the activity of human beings on Earth. The restricted economy is the movement of labor and accumulation (of goods, of capital), whereas the general, planetary economy consists in expenditure and nonproductive consumption. The more we try to accumulate inside, the more destruction comes from the outside. Eventually, the energy from the sun collects and a volcano explodes. Literally or figuratively, this explosion is definitively beyond our control. An ultimately destructive cosmic activity is totally indifferent to humans, but we are involved in it, much in the same way as one is involved in a crime. If we regard this theory as an economic refraction of Bataille’s earlier base-materialist insights, then we have to admit that the general cosmic activity is material, and corresponds to the unconscious that itself, in Bataille, is perhaps best described as “posthuman.” To put it in more psychoanalytic terms, there is a libidinal dimension of planetary ecology and economy, where a universal death drive underlies all other drives.
In the world-for-us, where things operate according to the domestic laws of restricted economy, the unconscious becomes a capitalist unconscious. Existence under a capitalist regime is bound to a general equivalent, or a value form that can be attached to any piece of living and nonliving matter. The world as we know it consists of commodities, and among commodities there is one for which all other commodities can be exchanged: money. Money is both abstract and real; it is a real abstraction that, even if it does not really exist, produces effects in reality. However, this does not give us an entire picture of the structure of the world-for-us. The fact is that money is not an ultimate commodity. It is not an autonomous being. Behind money, there are three main commodities upon which it grows: the first is matter, the second is labor, and the third is time. All three of these are of principal interest, but here I will only address the first one.
In contrast to money, matter is not an abstraction; otherwise, it would not be matter, but an idea—this is the meaning of what Bataille calls “senile idealism.” Matter as an ultimate commodity is a concrete piece of substance, to which money clings in order to prove that it is real. Such a piece of substance historically stands for the whole material world exchanged for money. It is a material side of the general equivalent, or the Thing of the economy. In old times, the general equivalent was represented by gold. Now such a commodity is—not “officially,” but conventionally—oil.
“Oil is the life-blood throbbing through the arteries of war,” says a fictional Hitler in Julian Semyonov’s famous novel Seventeen Moments of Spring. No one can seriously dispute this today. Thus, in Reza Negarestani’s Cyclonopedia, it is oil that allows us to understand war as a machine, or rather two machines: on the one side there is an Abrahamic monotheism, or jihadist war; and on the other, “Technocapitalist” war, or the War on Terror:
To grasp war as a machine, or in other words, to inquire into the Abrahamic war machine in its relation to the Technocapitalist war machine, we must first realize which components allow Technocapitalism and Abrahamic monotheism to reciprocate at all, even on a synergistically hostile level. The answer is oil: War on Terror cannot be radically and technically grasped as a machine without consideration of the oil that greases its parts and recomposes its flows; such consideration must begin with the twilight of hydrocarbon and the very dawn of the Earth.
Negarestani presents a set of ideas about the nature and origin of oil and its representations. He touches upon a popular comparison between oil and blood and relates it to a theory "according to which hydrocarbons constitute the origin of petroleum.” Both oil and blood contain porphyrin, an organic compound that serves as “evidence of a common lineage, the hydrocarbon,” and, in the eyes of the “advocates of the myth of fossil fuels,” porphyrin proves that oil as the blood of the Earth is not just a metaphor. A politico-economic explication of the theory of fossil fuels states that the sources of oil are finite, and in the petroleum wars, blood is the price of oil. To put it very simply, the fossil-fuel theory suggests that oil was produced from organic matter—from the decomposition of various living or dead organisms, from bacteria to dinosaurs. Negarestani notes very briefly that, “according to the classic theory of fossil fuels … petroleum was formed as a Tellurian entity under unimaginable pressure and heat in the absence of oxygen and between the strata, in absolute isolation,” which, from his perspective, comprises “a typical Freudian Oedipal case.” In contrast, Negarestani outlines, in a post-Deleuzian vein, a theory of the non-oedipal, inorganic unconscious, or inorganic demons that, in a parasitic way, “infiltrate an anthropomorphic agency” and “embed their inorganic sentience within the human host.” Negarestani’s oil is part of a sort of diabolic cosmic conspiracy that underlies the planetary economy and world military politics and brings together all existing narrations. But the very link between oil and the unconscious is what I find important.
An animatronic dinosaur on the set of Steven Speilberg’s 1993 film Jurassic Park.
Speaking personally, my first associations with oil are definitely “oedipal” and “organic.” When I was little, my family lived in Surgut, one of the centers of the oil industry in northwestern Siberia. As a schoolgirl, I was very familiar with the “dinosaurs” origin story. It was my mother who told me that the oil was made of their bodies, which were decomposing beneath the ground and the layers of permafrost. On my way to school there was a shallow swamp. Each time I crossed it I had the feeling that the ground was in fact never really solid, not only there but everywhere. What we think is solid ground in fact just covers this tenacious black liquid, a subterranean cemetery of enormous animals that inhabited the Earth long before us. I even believed that the scary dinosaurs could reemerge from the pools created by oil spills, like the Loch Ness monster protruding from the water. Dialectically, oil retained something from that organic life, the death of which was its origin. The oil of my childhood was neither living nor dead, but a living dead, an undead, or an uncanny and utterly inhuman afterlife of ancestral animals. Was the oil there before we humans came along, as would be suggested by a proponent of philosophical realism like Ayer (or a schoolgirl like me in 1986, shortly before the collapse of the Soviet Union)? Or should we admit, in a Bataillean manner, that this proposition is meaningless, not because this substance must be observed, but because, like the sun, it burns?
“The Black Corpse of the Sun” is one of the names Negarestani gives to oil in his book. It makes me think about the color of oil. I saw it get spilled. Nothing can be compared to the blackness of it. The oil is ultra-black. More black than death.
More black than the blackness constructed to justify slavery in the era of colonialism, when people were taken from Mother Africa and sold to the Americas. More black than the black market today, where human beings, together with drugs and arms, continue to be traded as illegal commodities, whose general investment in the production of value is enormous but whose slave, unpaid, or low-paid “dirty work” (we Russians call it “black work”) is not visible because it is not socially represented. Numerous sweatshops, where migrants and people from poor countries are exploited, are hidden somewhere underground, in basements, bunkers, and tunnels.
A partial eclipse of the sun, 2015. Photo: kulatraxas.
The fact is that blackness here designates that which is gratuitous (in the sense of gratuity), as that which goes uncompensated. As David Marriot writes:
For the white bourgeois and worker, from the nineteenth century to the present, blackness is a degraded form of being that cannot as such conserve itself; or, it is seen as an impoverished way of being that can only be put to work as a supplementary labor (for of course work is niggerdom), which means that it cannot profit from itself as capital. In all these readings, blackness is seen as both exorbitant and impoverished, both decadent and deliriously perverse. Its lack of restraint suggests both the collapse of capitalist values and a threat that puts an end to civic duty: the substitution of private consumption for collective duty is here linked to a more general anxiety about an entity driven to negate the very idea of accumulation—hence the extravagant excess of a being that is seen to come from a nihilistic, menacing, undeserving need to consume everything.
The blackness of the slave is like the blackness of oil in that both are conditions of possibility for surplus, but also incapable of accumulating that surplus themselves, on account of their own, hopeless profligacy.
Remember Marx, who, in his Economic Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, does not really make an essential distinction between a worker and a slave: the point is that exploitation transforms living labor into dead capital. What do a slave, a worker, and oil have in common? The very fact that they are not only the repressed, but the oppressed, not only the unconscious layer of a society in which we exchange matter, labor, and time for money, but that which is exploited, consumed, and burned up in the production of surplus. The worker is exploited as a labor force, the slave is exploited as a “black” labor force, and oil is exploited as a natural resource. If we want to grasp oil, as Hegel would say, “not only as substance, but equally as subject,” not only as the thing from the Greater Outdoors but as “the Real that is already right here,” we must admit that oil—which, like money, now stands for the whole material universe—is not a master, but a kind of ultimately inhuman black slave, one that literally occupies the lowest—and the biggest—strata of the pyramid of exploitation, and creates the very core of our capitalist unconscious.
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Oxana Timofeeva is an Assistant Professor at the European University in St. Petersburg, a senior research fellow at the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Science (Moscow), a member of the art collective Chto Delat? (What Is To Be Done?), a deputy editor of the journal Stasis, and the author of the books History of Animals: An Essay on Negativity, Immanence, and Freedom (Maastricht, 2012), and Introduction to the Erotic Philosophy of Georges Bataille (in Russian, Moscow, 2009).
© 2017 e-flux and the author |
EL SEGUNDO – The Los Angeles Lakers have hired Eddie Jordan, Steve Clifford and Bernie Bickerstaff as assistant coaches, it was announced today by Lakers General Manager Mitch Kupchak.
Jordan, a former NBA player (1977-84) and member of the Lakers 1982 Championship team, most recently spent one season (2009-10) as head coach of the Philadelphia 76ers. Prior to his time in Philadelphia, Jordan, a native of Washington D.C. served as head coach of the Wizards. During his six years (2003- 2009) in Washington, Jordan posted a 197-224 record and in just his second season at the helm, guided the Wizards to their highest win total (45) in 25 years and the team’s first postseason appearance since 1996-97. Prior to joining the Wizards, Jordan served as the lead assistant coach for the New Jersey Nets. During his four-year stint with the Nets, the team made the Finals in back-to-back years (2002 and 2003). Additionally, Jordan spent seven years with the Sacramento Kings both as an assistant coach (1992-97) and head coach (1997-98).
Clifford joins the Lakers after spending the last five seasons as an assistant coach in Orlando. While with the Magic, Clifford helped guide the team to a 259-135 (.657) record, as well as five post season appearances. Prior to his stint in Orlando, Clifford spent four seasons (2003-07) as an assistant coach with the Houston Rockets, and three seasons (2000-03) with the New York Knicks.
The University of Maine at Farmington alum began his coaching career as an assistant at St. Anselm’s College in New Hampshire. After four years at St. Anselm’s, Clifford spent one season as an assistant coach at Fairfield University before joining the coaching staff at Boston University for four seasons. Clifford coached one year at Siena College before being named head coach at Adelphia University. During his four years at Adelphia, the team compiled an 86-36 record and made four NCAA Division II tournament appearances. Following his stint at Adelphia, Clifford served as an assistant coach for one season at East Carolina University before joining the NBA.
Bickerstaff, who brings over 39 years of coaching experience to the team, joins the Lakers after spending the last two seasons working as an assistant coach for the Portland Trailblazers. Prior to joining the Blazers, Bickerstaff worked with the Chicago Bulls as an assistant coach for two years (2008-10). He assumed the role in Chicago after spending four years with the Charlotte Bobcats. During his four years with the Bobcats, Bickerstaff spent one season as the Executive Vice President of Basketball Operations (2007-08) and three years (2004-07) serving as Head Coach and General Manager. Prior to his stint with the Bobcats, Bickerstaff served as an NBA head coach for three different teams (Seattle, Denver, Washington). In addition, Bickerstaff was President and General Manager of the Denver Nuggets for seven seasons (1990-97). Bickerstaff began his NBA coaching career the Washington Bullets in 1973 as the league’s youngest assistant coach. Over the next twelve seasons he helped guide the Bullets to the 1978 NBA Championship, three NBA Finals appearances, 10 playoff berths and a franchise record 60 wins in 1974-75. In 1985 Bickerstaff received his first head coaching opportunity with Seattle. In five seasons (1985-90) with Seattle, he posted a 202-208 record and in 1987 was named Coach of the Year by Sporting News Magazine. As a head coach, Bickerstaff has posted a career record of 414–512 which ranks 33rd all-time among head coaches.
The new Lakers coaches will be replacing Ettore Messina and Quin Snyder, who left the team earlier this summer to join CSKA Moscow, and John Kuester, who has been reassigned to the position of Advanced NBA Scout and will be based on the East Coast. |
Editor's note: This article was originally published on July 17, 2016.
American military personnel favor Donald Trump for president over Hillary Clinton by more than a 2-to-1 margin in an exclusive survey conducted by Military Times ahead of the Republican and Democratic national conventions, but a strong majority of respondents say they are wholly unimpressed with both candidates.
More than 61 percent indicated they are "dissatisfied" or "very dissatisfied" with Trump as the Republican nominee, including 28 percent of those who intend to vote for him. More than 82 percent said the same about Clinton, the Democratic nominee, with 30 percent of those pledging to vote for her voicing displeasure with the choice.
"This is the worst presidential election I have ever seen," said one Air Force master sergeant who responded to the survey. "How in the world could we only have Hillary and Trump as the options?"
Such displeasure reflects the candidates’ high unfavorability ratings among the American public at large, despite both convincingly winning their party’s primary contests. More than half of registered voters in a recent New York Times/CBS pollhad negative views of Trump (55 percent) and Clinton (52 percent).
The survey, conducted July 5-8, elicited responses from 1,915 active-duty service members, reservists and National Guard personnel, all of them Military Times subscribers. The results, while not a scientific sampling of the military as a whole (see our methodology below), is representative of the services' more senior and career-oriented members, those who run the military's day-to-day operations and carry out its policies.
Among the Military Times survey respondents, 23 percent said they intend to vote for a third-party candidate. That’s almost 3 percentage points higher than those who said they’ll vote for Clinton, and about half the 49 percent who say they’ll back Trump.
Nearly 7 percent said they don’t intend to vote at all.
The survey, conducted July 5-8, elicited responses from 1,915 active-duty service members, reservists and National Guard personnel, all of them Military Times subscribers.
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With four months remaining before the November election, these results raise troubling questions as to whether Trump or Clinton will win the military's support as commander in chief. The vast majority of service members intend to cast a vote and believe everyone should do so. Nearly two-thirds of the troops surveyed (63 percent) said it would be wrong to abstain from voting. But the reality is many who will cast a ballot won’t be truly happy with their choice.
"Troops and veterans do believe in exercising their civic duties, and I think many of them will, despite the fact they’ve been given two terrible choices," said John Noonan, an Air Force veteran and national security advisor for two prior Republican presidential hopefuls, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. "I think if most troops did what she did (with classified emails), they’d be tossed in the brig. And his entire national security policy relies on an unrealistic border wall."
TRUMP'S PROMISES, PROBLEMS
All of Trump’s national security plans center around his often-cited accusation that "we don’t win with our military" under the Obama administration. His campaign says that includes the president's fight against Islamic State militants, the Iran nuclear deal, shortfalls in military readiness and a perceived lack of respect from America's allies.
His solution is to rebuild the military, calling a stronger fighting force the most important building block for U.S. national security and economic prosperity. The business mogul has lamented Obama's post-war military manpower reductions, aging Air Force equipment and the Navy's shrinking fleet.
It remains to be seen exactly how Trump will pay for his ambitious plans to revitalize the armed forces. Some funding would come from forcing U.S. allies in Europe and Asia to start covering a greater share of their own defense, his campaign says, or demanding they make direct payments to the U.S. in exchange for providing a military presence overseas.
Top general asked about Donald Trump's torture remarks Rep. Betty McCollum, D-Minn., asks Defense Secretary Ash Carter and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford about Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump's remarks on torture. The exchange occurred Thursday on Capitol Hill.
Clinton’s campaign continues to argue that most of Trump’s foreign policy and national security promises amount to little more than one-liners void of any realistic strategic and budgetary planning. Her surrogates have also savaged him for being too unstable to be trusted with control of the military. Last month, Clinton said Trump "is not someone who should ever have the nuclear codes — because it’s not hard to imagine [him] leading us into a war just because somebody got under his very thin skin."
Trump's rhetoric on the campaign trail has raised concerns within the Pentagon as well. He has called NATO obsolete, argued for banning Muslim immigrants, and at one point suggested that as commander in chief he would advocate the use of torture. Top military officials, including Defense Secretary Ash Carter and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford, have been forced to respond, doing so carefully and often indirectly, mindful that they cannot be seen as influencing the election process.
About 64 percent of troops surveyed by Military Times said they believe Trump has a poor temperament. Even among those likely to vote for him, 35 percent said they have concerns about whether his personality is too volatile for the job.
CLINTON'S CREDENTIALS, CHARACTER
Clinton’s national security and foreign policy promises revolve around "defending America and its core values," a direct attack against Republican rivals who throughout the primary campaigns suggested the Obama administration should be more aggressive in its response to terrorists and unfriendly nations, including Russia, Iran and North Korea.
Obama has never been hugely popular with career military personnel, according to past Military Times subscriber surveys, but his approval among the force has tanked in recent years as he's pushed through controversial social changes while seeking to rein in defense spending and avoid large-scale military commitments overseas. On the campaign trail, Clinton has voiced like-minded support for the president's policies and strategies.
Her website promises "the best-trained, best-equipped, and strongest military the world has ever known." However, there's no specific indication of any inherent weakness in how the force is constructed or maintained today.
As Obama's former secretary of state, much of Clinton's plans include her past diplomatic work, and belief that global coalitions and interdependency is more important than appearing more powerful than any single adversary.
More than 61 percent indicated they are "dissatisfied" or "very dissatisfied" with Trump as the Republican nominee, including 28 percent of those who intend to vote for him. More than 82 percent said the same about Clinton, the Democratic nominee, with 30 percent of those pledging to vote for her voicing displeasure with the choice.
Trump staffers call that past work a legacy of deceit and failure. The business mogul has labeled her "the most corrupt person" ever to run for the presidency, and questions her honesty frequently on the campaign trail.
For the last year, Republican party officials and Trump campaign staffers have been repeatedly hammering the twin scandals of Clinton’s role in the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and her use of a private email server while secretary of state.
Those scandals have taken a toll. More than 83 percent of troops surveyed in the Military Times poll said they question her honesty and trustworthiness. Among likely Clinton voters, 26 percent still labeled her as dishonest.
WINNING HEARTS AND MINDS
Among the troops who participated in Military Times' survey, partisan affiliation appears to be the most decisive indicator for whom they’ll back. About 75 percent of those who identified as Democrats said they’ll back Clinton, and about 77 percent of Republicans said they’ll vote for Trump.
Those who identified as Independents favored Trump by a 34 percent to 21 percent margin, but more than 44 percent said they wouldn’t choose either. Outside experts say that after a year of campaigning, it may be impossible for the major party candidates to convince Independents to believe in them.
br>"It’s clear that defense and foreign policy will be front and center in the campaign," said Mackenzie Eaglen, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. "So both candidates want to express a vision of what their view of national security should be. But we saw with [2008 Republican presidential candidate] John McCain that even if you have one, it might not make a difference."
In that election, economic issues and the housing crisis dominated the final months of a presidential campaign that had focused heavily on U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan in earlier months.
"It's clear that defense and foreign policy will be front and center in the campaign," one analyst said. The question is: How much will that matter with voters?
In the current campaign, much of the day-to-day national security message has been reduced to campaign fights over how to deal with ISIS. Trump has threatened to "bomb the sh-- out of them," while Clinton has focused on coalition building and supporting local forces to deal with the threat.
Trump also has tied the issue of national security to immigration policy. During a speech in June after the ISIS-inspired mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, he pledged to "suspend immigration from areas of the world where there is a proven history of terrorism against the United States, Europe or our allies until we fully understand how to end these threats."
Eaglen said the rhetoric in both cases is more likely to impress voters outside the military than those in the ranks. "They still care about pocketbook and safety issues," said Eaglen, who has consulted with Trump’s campaign. "Benefits and pay are what is going to sway those families. Larger readiness promises aren’t going to be the issue."
Mieke Eoyang, vice president of Third Way's National Security Program, thinks Clinton may be able to convince some troops that she’d be a more stable, professional commander-in-chief as election day nears.
"She has her record, and some notable Republicans have said they’d feel comfortable with her," Eoyang said. "But I think anything Trump does between now and the general election is window dressing. He has built a record out there too, and I think the concerns about what he has said will just grow."
DOES THE MILITARY VOTE EVEN MATTER?
But Eoyang added that winning the military vote may not be on either campaign’s immediate wish list. Troops and families still make up a small percentage of the overall electorate. "And that population," she said, "has never been decisive in past elections."
Noonan disagrees.
"I think in key swing areas like Virginia Beach, Florida, Colorado, they could be important, and [Clinton’s] scandals could really hurt her," he said. "Trump talks like a first sergeant, blunt, and the troops like that.
"But," he added, "he’s utterly clueless on national security strategy."
Noonan was part of a team of operatives that earlier this year attempted, unsuccessfully, to recruit former Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis to mount a third party bid for the White House . Barring a surprise new option, he sees little chance for any candidate to become troops' consensus choice.
In the Military Times survey, more than 23 percent said they’d back a third party candidate. Among the write-in suggestions were Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson (13 percent of the overall survey population), Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (3 percent) and Mattis (1 percent).
But Mattis and other candidates recruited for an November bid have found the prospects too difficult for success. Johnson finished with less than 1 percent of the national vote during his 2012 presidential bid.
Noonan said he’ll be in the voting booth in November, but to back local Republicans in key congressional and state contests, not the main ticket.
"I think voting is important, so I’ll show up, focus on those other races, and just write a name in [for president]," he said. "I don’t feel guilty about not voting for either of them."
OUR METHODOLOGY
Between July 5 and July 8, Military Times conducted a voluntary, confidential survey of subscribers who include verified active-duty service members, reservists and National Guard personnel. More than 63,000 subscribers received e-mail invitations to participate. In total, 1,915 respondents completed the survey.
The sample is not a perfect representation of the military as a whole; it over-represents officers and noncommissioned officers, and under-represents junior enlisted personnel. However, it is representative of the more senior and career-oriented members of the force who run the military's day-to-day operations and carry out its policies.
The voluntary nature of this survey, the dependence on email and the characteristics of Military Times readers may affect the results. Statistical margins of error commonly reported in opinion polls that use random sampling can't be calculated for this survey.
Leo Shane III covers Congress, Veterans Affairs and the White House for Military Times. He can be reached at [email protected]. |
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