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LITTLE ROCK — An Arkansas judge has left office and agreed to never serve on the bench again after a disciplinary panel threatened to administratively charge him with trading sexual favors with female defendants in exchange for their release.
The case marks the second time in a little over a year that an Arkansas judge has faced sexual misconduct accusations.
Carroll County District Court Judge Timothy Parker denied the sexual misconduct charges when he resigned Saturday on the last day of his current term in office, the Judicial Discipline and Disability Commission said Tuesday. The panel said Parker admitted to releasing and lowering bail for defendants who were friends or former clients and, in some cases, giving rides to defendants in his own vehicle after he released them.
Parker, who was appointed to the judgeship in 2013, also faces a criminal investigation over the accusations. Jason Barrett, a special prosecutor appointed to investigate the case, said Tuesday that he was reviewing JDDC's evidence to see if charges were warranted.
The panel said it had video statements from more than a dozen women, recordings of conversations Parker had in jail with women and text messages that back up the allegations. The allegations were outlined in a letter, made public Tuesday, that the board sent to Parker.
"Bonds would be set, or release of the women on their own recognizance was ordered by going to the jail or via telephone. The bonds or release of these women or their family or friends were done by their request in exchange for sexual favors," David Sachar, the panel's executive director, said in the letter dated Saturday.
Parker denied the sexual favor allegations when contacted by The Associated Press Tuesday. Asked why he didn't contest the allegations before the panel, he responded: "I have young children and I don't want them exposed to that kind of crap."
Parker's resignation comes just months after another former Arkansas judge was charged with giving lighter sentences to defendants in exchange for sexual favors. Former Cross County District Court Judge Joseph Boeckmann was indicted in October on several federal charges, including wire fraud and witness tampering.
Former Gov. Mike Beebe appointed Parker to the part-time judgeship in 2013. Parker told a local newspaper at the time that he wanted to look into using community service for misdemeanor offenders.
"I am a small man with a small ego," he told the Carroll County News. "There is no room for ego on the bench. I plan to be a humble judge that follows the law. It's justice with compassion."
Read Wednesday's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for full details. |
British pair deported at LAX after ‘jokingly’ texting they were going to...
Some jokes are best kept to oneself….
It seems like a British pair, Leigh Van Bryan and Emily Banting may have received the short end of the stick after being stopped at Los Angeles’s International airport (LAX) pursuant to texts the Department of Homeland Security (yes them again kids) interpreted as a potential threat to national security. The texts?
‘Free this week, for quick gossip/prep before I go and destroy America’.
Free to gossip, but not free to be allowed entry into the country? Kids, can we step back for a moment. Since when did publicly communicating amongst ones twitter followers about an upcoming holiday merit the attention of Homeland Security. Really, if you were going to ‘destroy’ America would you do it via twitter? You’d take a national ad in the LA times to give Los Angelos time to quickly evacuate the city.
Of course one has to wonder, if these two were foolish and stupid enough to acknowledge a legitimate desire to ‘destroy’ America wouldn’t authorities have come across a couple of surface to air missiles in Ms Banting’s handbag? Then again, for someone who has spent a considerable time in the UK, the term ‘destroy’ is often used as an affectionate adjective to party the town. Not that you would know if haven’t spent time in the UK.
dailymail.co.uk: After making their way through passport control at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) last Monday afternoon the pair were detained by armed guards.
Despite telling officials the term ‘destroy’ was British slang for ‘party’, they were held on suspicion of planning to ‘commit crimes’ and had their passports confiscated.
Leigh was also quizzed about another tweet which quoted hit US comedy Family Guy which read: ‘3 weeks today, we’re totally in LA p****** people off on Hollywood Blvd and diggin’ Marilyn Monroe up!
Marilyn Monroe? Kids, well that does it for me. After all you all know she was a trainwreck and an underground truant bent on hell raising and destroying the country. Right? And she did sleep with the president too…hmm.
But it gets better….don’t nightmares always get better?
Federal agents even searched his suitcase looking for spades and shovels, claiming Emily was planning to act as Leigh’s ‘look out’ while he raided Marilyn’s tomb.
Kids, really when was the last time you travelled with a shovel in your suitcase? Really? Not even a designer shovel would in your wildest dreams make it in your handbag. Right?
After being quizzed for five hours, the pair were handcuffed, and put into a van with all the other vagrants you have come to loathe and fear. Yes, illegal immigrants.
After spending 12 hours in separate holding cells the pair were then put on plane back to Disneyland England.
Remarked Ms Banting:
‘They asked why we wanted to destroy America and we tried to explain it meant to get trashed and party.
‘I almost burst out laughing when they asked me if I was going to be Leigh’s lookout while he dug up Marilyn Monroe.
‘I couldn’t believe it because it was a quote from the comedy Family Guy which is an American show.’
Kids, tell me you’re not jumping out the window with me? Tell me that our Department of Homeland is in very serious need of brain cells. Tell me that this is not the Monty Python show. Please someone…. |
When I first started hearing people on the political left describe themselves with some frequency as progressive back in the 1990s, the term did not seem tethered to the epoch-defining, early-20th-century spasm of moral crusading and government centralization that helped give us everything from trust busting to Prohibition to the Federal Reserve. As articulated by champions like Ralph Nader and Molly Ivins, the progressive label was both a way to get out from under the generation-old baggage of liberal-a term Ronald Reagan and others had turned into an epithet-and to differentiate lefties from seemingly apologetic triangulators like Bill Clinton and that now-vanished tribe known as the New Democrats.
From a libertarian perspective, '90s progressives were good on issues the New Democrats stunk up (particularly criminal justice and the drug war) and bad on those that made the Clintonites worthwhile, such as lowering trade barriers and restraining federal budget growth. At their best, such as at the "shadow conventions" organized by Arianna Huffington in 2000, progressives of the era challenged both parties to address long-neglected issues and reverse government policies that actively damaged people's lives.
Since many of the people who self-identified that way came of political age in the '60s and '70s, progressives on the whole clearly belonged to the longhaired side of the culture war. They were the ones mocking the squares, pushing the envelope on free expression, and taking up arms in the sexual revolution. The more progressive the publication, the kinkier the sex classifieds in the back.
If you could put a date on when modern-day progressives fully re-inhabited the moral rigidity of their Progressive Era forebears, it might be September 24, 2012. That's when Village Voice Media, the country's biggest chain of alternative newsweeklies, split off its online classifieds site Backpage.com after a years-long, progressive-led campaign to shutter the site over claims that it facilitates "sex trafficking."
"If street pimps go to jail for profiteering on under-age girls, should their media partners like Village Voice Media really get a pass?" New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, the country's most prominent progressive scold, wrote in a March 2012 column that blamed Backpage for the 2003 peddling of a 16-year-old prostitute, even though the site didn't exist in 2003. "Paradoxically, Village Voice began as an alternative newspaper to speak truth to power. So it's sad to see it accept business from pimps in the greediest and most depraved kind of exploitation."
Kristof had the paradox almost exactly backward. It is he and his fellow crusaders, not the buyers and sellers of controversial products and services, who are aggrandizing power at the expense of the little guy and mangling truth in the service of that unseemly goal.
Take e-cigarettes. In March, the 15-member Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously to outlaw vaping in all the places that cigarette smoking is currently banned, including parks, beaches, and restaurant patios. Among the anti-scientific reasons cited by councilmembers was the nastiness of secondhand smoke (even though inhaling vaporized nicotine instead of the byproduct from burning leaves does not create any of the stuff) and the horrors of long-term cigarette addiction (which vaping is tailor-made to prevent).
Look around the country and you'll find a strong correlation between e-cigarette bans and progressivism. Los Angeles joined New York, Boston, and Chicago with its prohibition, and now D.C. is threatening to get into the act with regulation from the Food and Drug Administration. The same moralizing impulse is leading to blue-city bans on everything from plastic bags to fried chicken joints to bottled water.
Banging the journalistic drum loudest for these buttinsky interventions is modern progressivism's hometown newspaper, The New York Times. In a series of breathless front page scare stories, the Times this year has warned darkly that the "emergence of e-hookahs and their ilk is frustrating public health officials who are already struggling to measure the spread of e-cigarettes, particularly among young people."
Senior Editor Jacob Sullum summarized the newspaper's alarmism at reason.com: "E-cigarettes are bad because they look like cigarettes. E-hookahs are worse because they don't. Using either of them might lead to smoking, although we can't find any real-life examples of that. Fruity flavors show these products are aimed at children-or maybe at young women, middle-aged actresses, or old Arab men. But the point is, they are aimed at somebody, and the companies selling them clearly are trying to make them appealing, which cannot be tolerated."
One reason that turn-of-the-century Progressivism lost its attractiveness as a self-label was its inextricable linkage to the disaster of alcohol prohibition. Yet many modern-day progressives have seemed to forget those policy lessons as well.
Kristof in 2012 advocated the boycott of Anheuser-Busch on the grounds that the brewer was selling too much beer just outside the alcoholism-ravaged Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. And in February of this year, the columnist made the amazing claim that prostitution can finally be nipped in the bud if only we got serious about locking up johns. "Police increasingly recognize that the simplest way to reduce the scale of human trafficking is to arrest men who buy sex," he wrote. "That isn't prudishness or sanctimony but a strategy to dampen demand."
Au contraire, as Thaddeus Russell demonstrates on "Sex Slaves and the Surveillance State" (page 62). Not only were prudishness and sanctimony vital to the Progressive Era project of cracking down on the chimera of "white slavery," but that misguided strategy to dampen demand helped give rise to the modern FBI and a host of illiberal laws, which were deployed like clubs against disfavored populations. And instead of learning from that history, modern-day progressives are repeating it with their factually untethered ranting about "human trafficking."
This issue of reason is filled with such stories about progressivism gone terribly wrong. In both the cover story by Sonny Bunch (page 44) and the economics column by Veronique de Rugy (page 20), the Progressive Era bureaucracy known as the Department of Commerce comes under fire for crony capitalism, mission incoherence, and indestructibility.
Jim Epstein's "Port Authoritarians" (page 26) explains how the real villain of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's bridge scandal is an unaccountable, corruption-wracked agency that was once held up as a model for enlightened Progressive Era governance. The bad news is that even a prolonged national outrage isn't shining a critical light on the Port Authority. The worse news is that the agency has spawned literally thousands of imitators across the country. And on page 76, Thaddeus Russell is back with a provocative essay ("'That Kind of Luxe Just Ain't for Us'") about how progressive pop culture congratulates itself by sneering at the consumption choices of lower classes.
The transformation of modern-day progressives from transgressives to scolds was on display after the death in February of legendary comedic writer/director/actor Harold Ramis, of Animal House, Caddyshack, and Ghostbusters fame. Over at Salon.com, professional sourpuss Thomas Frank offered up the unintentionally comic headline, "Baby Boomer Humor's Big Lie: Ghostbusters and Caddyshack really liberated Reagan and Wall Street."
"Each of the films," Frank wrote, "features some prudish or strait-laced patriarch who is spectacularly humiliated by a band of slobs or misfits or smart alecks. With their dick jokes and cruel insults, these movies represented, collectively, the righteous rising-up of a generation determined to get justice for the little guy. [But] the dick joke is not always what it seems to be. The dick joke is not always your friend."
The skill and dedication of our puritan progressives should not be underestimated. If you can take the fun out of Caddyshack, you can take the fun out of anything. |
As you read this, the Formula 1 teams will be arriving in Monte-Carlo for the 71st Monaco Grand Prix.
The McLaren guys probably won’t be expecting to win it, which is a pity, because their MP4-28 isn’t yet as quick as I’m sure it’ll become in time. It’s a pity, as I say, but it’s also a surprise, because McLaren remains one of the greatest teams in Grand Prix history, having won eight Constructors’ World Championships and 12 Drivers’ World Championships, the first of them in 1974, which I remember very well because I was the driver who won it with them.
Of all the Grands Prix I ever dreamed of winning, the two I wanted most were the Brazilian Grand Prix, my home race, and the Monaco Grand Prix. I won the Brazilian Grand Prix twice – once in 1973, for Lotus, and once in 1974, for McLaren – but a Monaco Grand Prix victory always eluded me. Even now, at 66, I still feel a bit sad about that.
Read
How did McLaren beat Ferrari for the first time?
10.04 2013
And the reason I feel a bit sad about it is that I adored Monaco. It was and still is a uniquely challenging circuit from a driver’s point of view. There’s no room at all, so you have to be very precise yet very aggressive. That’s a difficult mixture to manage – aggression and precision aren’t natural bed-fellows – but if you can’t achieve it you simply won’t be quick.
You also need powerful brakes and strong traction, as well as a fast steering rack and a chassis set-up for quick turn-in. If you’ve got all that, you can approach the corners in a distinctive way, unique to Monaco. As you brake for each turn, you have to deliberately tease the car into a controlled attitude of turn-in oversteer, so that your car is already beginning the turn-in before you actually turn in. If you get it right, you should arrive at the corner’s apex at the climax of a measured four-wheel drift, your rear wheels describing an arc just a few degrees wider than your fronts, a small amount of opposite-lock and throttle modulation keeping the drift progressive. Do that, and you’ll exit the corner perfectly, your car already lined up for a smooth and fast exit. I used to describe it like this: you need to set-up the back end to help the front end, so as to maximise the radius of the corners.
But that’s not all you need to be quick at Monaco. Because it’s so narrow, and because its walls are so close, you have to be prepared to brush the Armco very gently on almost every exit. I always used to say that you knew when you’d driven a quick qualifying lap at Monaco because your tyres’ sidewalls would be scuffed white all the way around, indicating that you’d brushed the walls frequently but consistently on almost all the turns.
“If you get it right, you should arrive at the corner’s apex at the climax of a measured four-wheel drift, your rear wheels describing an arc just a few degrees wider than your fronts, a small amount of opposite-lock and throttle modulation keeping the drift progressive.”
You also need to be aware of what’s happening to the grip of all four tyres, all the time, because Monaco is so bumpy, so undulating, and so full of uphills and downhills and cambers and dips. Nowadays, because today’s Formula 1 cars have so much downforce, all four wheels stay planted on the Monaco asphalt at all times. But in my day it was different. We had much less downforce, so the uphills and downhills and cambers and dips used to cause our cars’ front wheels to jump and skip. We used to set our front anti-roll bars soft and our rear anti-roll bars stiff, to counteract that tendency. Graham Hill always used to like his rear anti-roll bars extremely stiff, on any circuit, and he won the Monaco Grand Prix five times. I don’t think that was a coincidence.
Watch old footage of a 1960s or 1970s Formula 1 car exiting Casino Square, and you’ll see two things: its left-rear tyre will brush the exit Armco, and its right-front tyre will jump into the air. That’s a very difficult process to manage simultaneously, but it’s the kind of challenge that Monaco, and Monaco alone, sets every driver who attempts to lap it quickly.
And, last but not least, you need stamina to do well at Monaco. In my day Formula 1 cars had manual gearboxes, and at Monaco you’d be changing gear roughly every two seconds, which meant 45 gearchanges per lap, which worked out at 3600 gearchanges during an 80-lap race.
My first Monaco Grand Prix was the 1971 event. I qualified 17th and my clutch failed at the start. Even so, I kept my Lotus going to the finish, and ended up fifth at the end. When I took off my right glove, it was full of blood from the blisters that had been caused by my having to pull the gearlever so hard to change gear without the softening effect of a clutch.
The following year, 1972, I put my Lotus on the pole, ahead of Jacky Ickx (Ferrari), Clay Regazzoni (Ferrari) and Jean-Pierre Beltoise (BRM). Just before the race was about to start, it began to rain heavily. As I exited the tunnel on lap one, I was behind Clay, and he missed the braking point for the Harbour Chicane and went down the escape road. I was unsighted by the spray from his Ferrari’s rear tyres, also missed my braking point, and had no option but to follow him down the escape road.
We had to wait for the whole field to go past before we could rejoin. I managed to fight my way back to third at the end, behind Jean-Pierre and Jacky. Clay crashed on lap 52, and I’m not surprised because it was unbelievably slippery that day. Five other drivers also had shunts: Henri Pescarolo, Mike Hailwood, Howden Ganley, Tim Schenken and Peter Gethin.
I finished second at Monaco in both 1973 and 1975, and in many ways they were very similar races for me. In 1973 my Lotus 72 was a bit quicker than Jackie Stewart’s Tyrrell 006, and 10 laps from the end I caught him. But Jackie was always brilliant at Monaco, and fantastic under pressure, and I simply couldn’t find a way past him. I always used to say that if you thought you were going to overtake Jackie by waiting for him to make a mistake, you were going to have to wait a very long time – years, probably. Basically, Jackie just didn’t make mistakes – period. I finished 1.3 seconds behind him that day.
In 1975 it was the same story. My McLaren M23 felt superb that day at Monaco, and towards the end I was right behind Niki Lauda’s leading Ferrari 312 T2. But Niki was a bit like Jackie in the sense that he also made very few mistakes, and I finished 2.8 seconds behind.
Read
From motorbikes to McLaren
14.03 2013
My last five Monaco Grands Prix were a little less enjoyable, because I was driving for my and my brother Wilson’s Copersucar-Fittipaldi team, which never fielded a car that was capable of winning Grands Prix. Having said that, I finished sixth in both 1976 and 1980, but sadly I scored no points in 1977, 1978 and 1979.
Monaco is the only true street circuit in modern Formula 1 – although parts of Albert Park in Melbourne and the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal encompass some public roads – but in the 1970s we also raced at Montjuic (Barcelona) and Long Beach (California).
I first competed in a Spanish Grand Prix run at Montjuic in 1971, but I failed to finish that race because my Lotus’s suspension broke on lap 55. Two years later, in 1973, I won there, also for Lotus, and I have to say it was a wonderful feeling to have triumphed on such a formidable racetrack. Montjuic was much faster than most street circuits, very challenging and very technical. It was a place where good drivers could really make a difference.
However, in 1975 – by which time I was a McLaren driver, having won the World Championship the previous year, also for McLaren – I didn’t race there at all. As I went jogging around the circuit on the Thursday before the Grand Prix, I noticed that many of the guardrails had been tethered with very thin wire. I told Teddy Mayer, McLaren’s boss at the time, that I was prepared to face what I called “normal risks” but that the level of protection at Montjuic that year was totally unacceptable.
The then FIA President, Jean-Marie Balestre, said I had to race or I would be banned from the next Grand prix – Monaco. So I did – I drove exactly one lap – and then I pulled into the pits and retired.
I then drove to Barcelona airport and caught a flight to Geneva, because I was living in Switzerland in those days. As I walked out into the arrivals hall, I was stopped by dozens of TV reporters. I assumed they wanted to ask me why I hadn’t raced – but in fact they wanted to ask me what I thought of the fact that the race had been stopped after just 29 of its scheduled 75 laps, and that there had been only eight finishers, and that there had been a large number of big shunts, and that one of them had caused the deaths of five spectators.
So I was right to have criticised the race organisers, and justified in having defied Balestre. Predictably, given that it was clear that I’d been spot-on and he’d been at fault, he didn’t ban me from competing in Monaco after all.
The other street circuit that was used for Grands Prix in my era was Long Beach, California. I never raced there in a race-winning Formula 1 car, because the first United States Grand Prix West (as it was called) was held in 1976, by which time my Lotus and McLaren days were behind me and I’d started racing for Copersucar-Fittipaldi.
Long Beach was a very good circuit, but it was easier than either Monaco or Montjuic. It was wider, and the run-offs were more generous, so it forgave your mistakes whereas Monaco or Montjuic would always punish even small errors. But, as at Monaco, you had to be precise yet aggressive, and good drivers tended to shine there. I scored my first World Championship point for Copersucar-Fittipaldi at Long Beach, in 1976, finishing in sixth place, and I stood on my last ever Formula 1 podium there too, in 1980, having finished in third place.
Read
2013 Monaco Grand Prix preview
20.05 2013
But I remember the 1980 United States Grand Prix West for a different reason, and it makes me shudder to recall it, even now, 33 long years later. On lap 51 I was following Clay, who was 40 years old by then and had been let go first by Ferrari and then by Williams, for both of which teams he’d won Grands Prix over a long and successful career, and was driving for the tiny Ensign team.
As I braked at high speed for Queens Hairpin, which was the slow corner at the end of the super-fast Shoreline Drive, Clay didn’t slow at all, because his brake pedal had snapped under his right foot. As I turned in, I could see his Ensign rushing towards a concrete barrier at undiminished speed. Even though I was turning right, I still looked left, aghast. As I rounded the corner, I turned my head to the right again, so as to sight the apex, and at that moment I heard an almighty bang.
Even though I was wearing a fireproof balaclava and a helmet padded with fire-retarding padding and sound-proofing material, and even though my Cosworth V8 was revving at high decibels just a few inches behind my back, I could still hear the sickening impact of Clay’s Ensign smashing into that concrete barrier. Thinking about that sound now, the best word I can use to describe it is ‘explosion’. I’ll never forget it.
I was certain that Clay had been killed – and, even as I continued to race flat-out, I felt a shocking nausea in the pit of my stomach. I’d known him and raced him throughout my Formula 1 career. I’d made my Formula 1 debut in 1970, and so had he. I’d won my fourth Grand Prix, and he’d won his fifth. He and I had fought out the 1974 Drivers’ World Championship, he for Ferrari and I for McLaren, right down to the very last round, the United States Grand Prix at Watkins Glen. And now this. I remember how I felt, all alone in the cockpit of my Copersucar-Fittipaldi, sure that my old rival had perished.
Even so, I continued to race as hard as I could, because that’s what we did in those days, even when tragedy struck. And I finished third. And when I got out of the car, I was told that Clay hadn’t been killed, but that he’d been badly injured. In fact, as we soon learned, he’d been paralysed, and would never walk again.
But he’d race again, because he was a fighter, always was, always would be. In fact he became one of the first disabled drivers to race specially adapted cars in professional motorsport, competing in events such as the Dakar Rally and the Sebring 12-Hours. In 1994, when he was 55, he even raced a specially adapted Toyota at Long Beach, the circuit on which he’d hit a concrete wall at 150mph 16 years before.
He died in 2006, driving a specially adapted Chrysler road car, on an autostrada, near Parma, Italy.
That was Clay: flat-out all the way, and never mind the consequences. God bless him. |
Felix Hernandez feels "so-so" after playing catch, but James Paxton, Steve Cishek and Mitch Haniger are making progress in their recoveries.
TORONTO — Like many managers in baseball, Scott Servais doesn’t enjoy providing daily injury updates for players on the disabled list, wanting to focus on the guys available. But with so many key players on the DL, he has no choice but to do so.
Friday’s update yielded good and bad news for Mariners’ fans.
The bad news was that right-hander Felix Hernandez didn’t feel great after playing catch on back-t0-back days and will take a few days off from throwing. Hernandez is recovering from bursitis in his shoulder and had been making progress in the strengthening aspect. He started playing catch earlier in the week.
“He felt just so-so,” Servais said. “So we’ll back off. I don’t think he’s going to throw today.”
There was some hope that Hernandez might be able to join the Mariners in the coming weeks. But he has yet to really test the arm beyond playing catch. He still needs to ramp up the intensity and graduate to long toss, then throwing off a mound and at least one rehab outing. Realistically, he might not be back in the rotation until June.
The good news was that reliever Steve Cishek (hip surgery), starter James Paxton (forearm strain) and outfielder Mitch Haniger (strained oblique) have made steps in their recoveries.
“The other guys are moving along pretty well,” Servais said.
In his second rehab stint with Class AAA Tacoma, Cishek pitched a scoreless inning on Thursday night at Cheney Stadium, striking out two batters and walking one.
“Cishek threw well last night,” Servais said of the report. “The ball was coming out of his hand better. There was more life to his pitches. So that’s definitely moving in the right direction. He’s probably going to have one more rehab (outing) and then we’ll evaluate where he’s at when come off the road trip.”
Paxton played catch for the first time since going on the disabled, throwing at 60 feet. Because he’s only been on the disabled list since May 5, there is some hope he could return soon.
“He’s going to need an extended appearance, whether it’s a simulated game or a rehab start,” Servais said. “We’ve got to stretch him out a little. He hasn’t been down that long, but I’ll lean on the medical people and Mel (Stottlemyre).”
Haniger has been swinging a bat in the pool, but was cleared to start hitting off a tee. That’s the first test in what will be followed by light swings in the cage, then full swings and batting practice. He’ll also need a handful of rehab games to get his timing back.
Servais hopes that Cishek could be available to return on the upcoming homestand, while Haniger and Paxton could return sometime on the brutal road trip in the final week of May that starts with three games against the Nationals (May 23-25), three against the Red Sox (May 26-27) and then two at Coors Field vs. the Rockies (May 29-30). |
The older I get the more seasons there are to look back on - and the more blank looks I get from team-mates as I try to remember stats and facts. But my favourite season yet has to be 1994-95: my first season as unchallenged number-one keeper at Liverpool. We finished fourth that year - not great, not terrible - but we won the League Cup and, very best of all, Manchester United didn't win a sausage. It was the third season of the Premiership and they had expected to make it a hat-trick of titles. They lost every competition they entered.
Not that I always got the Liverpool-Man United rivalry. Joining Liverpool in 1992 was a major shock for me, as a 21-year-old more used to Watford, the family club. I was never a big football fan in those days so the rift between Liverpool and United was completely alien to me. It was only on hearing the supporters - they had this ferocity about them on derby days - or the local lads in the dressing room that I began to adapt. I could never say I hated any United players just for being United players. But the rivalry became a habit, I suppose; on England trips Liverpool lads would eat at one table, United boys at another. There was tension there and we avoided one other.
Going into the final game of that season was interesting - the title went to the wire. We were playing Blackburn at home and had they lost or drawn, United could have won the title, had we lost, Blackburn would automatically have won the title. That wouldn't have been a bad thing according to some people on Merseyside, but everyone else would have thought it a carve-up. We wanted to win that game, whatever the conspiracy theorists say. We went a goal behind at the start but pulled it back to win 2-1 at the death. United gave away the title with a draw at West Ham.
That last-minute excitement made it a great season. And for once the underdogs were up there, not just Blackburn - who despite their financial advantage under Jack Walker were few people's tip for the title - but also Nottingham Forest, finishing third in their first season back after relegation in 1993. Twelve years later they're down in League One. Who would have thought it? At the other end of the table it was also tight, as four teams were sent down to accommodate the new 20-team structure of the league.
Despite being pleased with ourselves that season, not one of us could deny that Liverpool should have done better. On paper, man for man, we were as good as United. Robbie Fowler was coming through for us: he was named PFA Young Player of the Year and scored 25 goals, including a hat-trick in five minutes against Arsenal. But United always had that competitive edge. You could see it even in a simple game of piggy in the middle on the training field. It stood out a mile. United don't want to get beaten by anyone, ever. They're like that ugly guard dog - if you slow down for a minute they'll catch you. That season they gave Blackburn a run for their life and it was tight. For the past 15 years, United have not changed.
Liverpool, to their detriment, were more relaxed, and in the end it showed. We allowed ourselves too many distractions and once we'd won the League Cup all but switched off. We were seduced by things peripheral to football. I remember Robbie Williams travelling down to Aston Villa with us on the team coach, and he was strolling about on the pitch before the game. He was a decent bloke but what the hell was he doing being allowed on the team coach? Unlike Roy Evans, Fergie would never have let that happen.
It was a strange time then. Football was exploding. Sky Sports raised the stakes with more games being broadcast live on TV, there was round-the-clock media attention and all that money being thrown about. The English game had always had big names, but the spotlight had never been so bright. Chris Sutton at Blackburn became an overnight superstar, and world-class foreign players such as Jurgen Klinsmann arrived in England for the first time. How was football going to cope? It had always been a working man's game. I remember once mentioning the word 'psychologist' at Liverpool. I was later told quietly in a corridor that it was never going to happen, we were Liverpool, and to forget it - all because of some archaic identity that we could never change.
The game had a ubiquitous drinking culture then, too, but football's new image demanded professionalism, so at Liverpool we had curfews 48 hours before a game. There were always a few on the edge, though, pushing those boundaries.
People say earning thousands of pounds a week isn't pressure, but that's a huge sum of money to live up to. I remember players being sick in the dressing-room toilets before, during and after matches. Sick from nerves. My nerves manifested themselves in more convoluted ways - me and my 48 pre-match rituals, a hellish list of tics and superstitions I went through before each game.
Perhaps it was the pressure, in part, that led to the headlines that year: Eric Cantona's kung-fu kick at Palace; Dennis Wise's trial, conviction and acquittal on appeal for assault; Paul Merson admitted into rehab for alcohol, drugs and gambling addictions; Chris Armstrong banned for smoking cannabis. There was also George Graham's sacking at Arsenal, although I didn't pay much attention to it at the time. Now it's very vogue, the topic of bungs and managers' misconduct, but Graham's actions prove it has always been there. Did the scandals ruin the season? I don't think so. Most fans seem to love excitement in the tabloids and if every footballer were an angel life would be pretty boring.
The Cantona thing was bizarre, though. We were shocked. No one had ever seen anything like it, there was no precedent. Would he get a life ban? Could he play again that season? As United's rivals, we weren't particularly saddened by Cantona's eight-month ban. On the other hand, there was the bigger picture - Cantona's actions raised a question mark over the reputation of the game. I remember Babbsy made a comment in the press, agreeing with the punishment Cantona received. Next thing he knew he had hate mail, razor blades in one letter.
I'm sure there were many players who could empathise with Cantona's feelings in that moment of madness, without condoning his actions. Some fans are so disgusting it's difficult to rise above it. Being a famous footballer is a magnified, pressured existence that sometimes threatens to make you boil over. Some of us had reached that point before.
Then there was Cantona's philosophical response. His seagulls quote was ridiculed, but had he been a more loveable character it would have been seen as genius. Personally I thought it was profound, although I wasn't allowed to say anything nice about him because he was a United player. There had been talk of him leaving English football at the time. The way the FA Cup final worked out the following season it would have been nice if he had.
This season has the potential to be as exciting as 1994-95, because there are a few teams looking to shake up the old hierarchy. Liverpool are genuine contenders, Arsenal have their exciting young players and there are teams on their way up like Aston Villa, Tottenham, Reading and of course Portsmouth. I also think Sven will do well with Manchester City - whatever the press say, I like the man. United set the standard last season and Chelsea will challenge again, naturally, but my real hope is that a team will come along and do what Blackburn and Forest did back in 1994. That's what would really make this season special for me.
David James fee for this article will be donated to charity. |
MILWAUKEE -- It's just the kind of news you don't need to hear on a busy traffic Friday.
A semi-trailer jackknifed on the Mitchell Interchange Friday, spilling 48,000 pounds on the roadway, causing traffic backups and road closures that have plagued the Milwaukee-area freeway system for miles.
According to Milwaukee County Sheriff's Office, the Jackknifed semi and concrete debris caused the closure of all lanes from the north to the west in the Mitchell Interchange, along with the southbound Layton off-ramp.
After hours of work, crews have managed to open one lane of traffic. It should also be noted that 5 lanes are funneled to the one open lane, so backups remain extensive.
Traffic is backed up for miles because of an accident at the Mitchell Interchange in Milwaukee.
Deputies also putting down oil dry. Ray's Heavy Tow working on removing the jackknifed semi and the spilled load.
Median wall still needs to be righted/repaired.
image credit: Wisconsin Department of Transportation Traffic Cameras |
Narendra Modi said force would not resolve the situation in Kashmir in a speech marking 70 years of Indian independence.
The Indian prime minister's comments on Tuesday came amid an upturn in fighting between Indian soldiers and separatist fighters in the Himalayan region and angry protests against Indian rule.
"Abuse and bullets will not solve the Kashmir issue," Modi said, adding "embracing Kashmiris will".
Just two days earlier in south Kashmir's Shopian area, three local fighters, two soldiers, and two civilians were killed in a firefight that led to street protests that wounded more than a dozen people.
The situation in Kashmir continues to be tense, particularly in its southern areas.
Indian forces have launched a major operation that has resulted in the deaths of more than 130 fighters and civilians, officials say.
'Different reality'
Sheikh Showkat Hussain, a Kashmiri political analyst, said statements such as Modi's about Kashmir rarely lead to improvements for its residents.
"Experts on the ground say the situation speaks of a grim reality and the government has been dealing with the civilian population with an 'iron fist'," Hussain said.
"This is not the first time that such statement is being made on Kashmir. What we see practically is more oppression and humiliation. These statements never get translated on the ground."
Hussain said young men are regularly killed in Kashmir in "fake encounters", or incidents where security forces shoot unarmed protesters and later claim they were armed attackers.
"Young boys who have joined militancy just for 10 days or a week are being killed. Modi gives these soft statements just for the media coverage and to wash away his past sins," Hussain said.
Parvez Imroz, a leading rights activist in Kashmir, told Al Jazeera that the government in Kashmir has turned more offensive in recent years and they are adopting what he described as "Israeli tactics".
"The reality on the ground is totally different to what Modi said today," he said. |
From Cascade Brewing – We will be releasing 750ml bottles of our Foudre Project #1 at 4: 30pm on Thursday Sept. 18th at the Barrel House and Raccoon Lodge. No bottle limits, no distribution at this time. $25 per bottle. Celebrate the commission of our new foudre (large oak tank) with this limited, first-run edition. Foudre Project #1 is a NW Style sour ale that is a blend of Triples aged in one of our foudre. Look for aromas of sweet candy, apple and subtle hints of citrus as you draw the glass near. Sweet candy and oak mingle on the palate and lead to a soft, round, sweet finish with a lingering oak note. 9.2% ABV. Also on draft.
We will be releasing 750ml bottles of Elderberry at 4:30pm on Thursday, Sept. 25th at the Barrel House and Raccoon Lodge. No bottle limits, no distribution at this time. $22 per bottle. |
Craig Shakespeare insists the offence was a 'genuine mistake'
UEFA have announced a charge of improper conduct for Leicester's sports scientist Tom Joel, who was sent to the stands during his side's Champions League 1-0 defeat against Atletico Madrid.
Joel was spotted handing out energy supplements on the touchline at the Vicente Calderon on Wednesday night and in doing so, he encroached into Diego Simeone's technical area.
Simeone then flagged up the offence to officials and Joel was removed from the pitch area.
Craig Shakespeare is adamant the offence was a "genuine mistake, nothing sinister" and insisted that Joel was simply passing water to Marc Albrighton, who was suffering from stomach cramps during the game.
Players are occasionally given gels which act as carbohydrates with an instant boost of 100-150 calories per mouthful to raise blood sugar levels to combat muscle damage and fatigue.
The dismissal may have been because Joel was in front of the Atletico dugout and outside the permitted area for Leicester's coaching staff.
The Foxes host Atletico in the second leg at the King Power Stadium on April 18. |
CLOSE The Cincinnati Bengals opened up their rookie mini-camp at Paul Brown Stadium on May 5, 2017. The Enquirer/Jim Owczarski
Cincinnati Bengals offensive guard Christian Westerman feels he made progress from his rookie season. (Photo: Kareem Elgazzar)
Paul Alexander smiled, but it was the kind of smile you have when you’re about to acknowledge an uncomfortable truth. For the first time in a long time, the longtime offensive line coach of the Cincinnati Bengals is overseeing an overhaul of his starting five, beginning with two new starting tackles and a familiar face learning a position at right guard.
But as voluntary workouts conclude on May 15 and with the first organized training activity beginning on May 23, Alexander will also be without starting left guard Clint Boling, who is recovering from offseason shoulder surgery.
With former starting right tackle and recently re-acquired free agent Andre Smith getting the first crack at right guard, someone will have to take most of the reps on the left side as Boling recover. He is expected to be full-go by the time training camp opens.
“Yeah, to be honest with you, we’re going to have so many new guys in there that I kind of wish Clint was in there,” Alexander said through that slight smile. “This is like a makeover.”
Alexander has options, but they are largely unproven – at least at that position.
“We don’t exactly know,” he said. “Andre’s working in there with the first group right now and I anticipate it’s going to go well for him, but we’ve got other guys that are doing well too. It’s a competitive thing and we’ll see how that goes.”
T.J. Johnson is the most experienced potential fill-in, but he has been Russell Bodine’s backup at center for the last three seasons. Johnson did sign a two-year deal this offseason as a restricted free agent and finished last year starting at left guard in the finale against Baltimore.
“Who knows what’s going to happen,” Johnson said about how reps may shake out. “I’m going to let the cards fall where they are. I’m just going to come in and give it everything I got and we’ll see what happens.”
Second-year player Trey Hopkins, who has been on the practice squad for the most part since 2014 and appeared in one game last year, will also be in the mix inside.
Christian Westerman, a fifth-round pick out of Arizona State last year, never made the active 46 on a game day in his rookie season. The 24-year-old sees some opportunity this year and hopes the equivalent of a redshirt season he experienced in college has him ready to seize it.
“I understand that that process sucks but I also understand that I redshirted and then I ended up being a guy a couple years later getting drafted,” Westerman said. “My point here is, we’ll call it a redshirt year my first NFL year and in a couple years I’m hoping to be one of the best, top guys, top guards.”
In that year, Westerman said he learned the ins and outs of pro football, but his biggest growth was mentally with understanding NFL blocking schemes and the offense. Physically he’s cut out carbohydrates and sugars and hopes to enter the year with an additional 10 pounds of muscle than from a year ago.
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Then there’s Alex Redmond, an undrafted free agent out of UCLA last year who spent the season on the practice squad. Like Westerman, he also used a year practicing, working out – and watching – to reshape himself mentally and physically and put himself in a position to open Alexander’s eyes this spring.
“You’re a professional now and it’s totally different,” Redmond said of the eye-opening experience 2016 was for him coming out of college “I need to know everything. Because if not I’m putting myself at a disadvantage, which I was before. So this year before I’m trying to make sure that’s not a thing. I’ve been in my playbook every day, every night. Just patiently waiting my time.”
Across the board, the Bengals’ interior linemen see an opportunity – and it’s all they can ask for.
“There’s always competition,” Johnson said as he leaned forward to tie his boots. “That’s part of what is so beautiful about the whole thing is that we each compete with each other and the best guy’s gonna play.” |
MOSCOW -- Vladimir Zhirinovsky, also known as the “Trump of Russia,” just won big in recent elections. And he hopes to be celebrating again in November.
“If Mr. Trump is a president of the United States, it would be a holiday for Russia,” he told CBS News.
The ultra-nationalist leader is one of Donald Trump’s most vocal supporters in Russia. Even his opinion of Hillary Clinton matches the more radical fringe of Trump supporters.
Vladimir Zhirinovsky CBS News
“Madame Clinton has all the signs of Parkinson’s illness. It’s a very bad illness,” Zhirinovsky said.
Trump has lavished praise on the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, and said he’d cut back on U.S. involvement in NATO. Putin has made plain he’d prefer a Trump White House.
Trump's comments on Putin spark outrage
But Russia’s meddling in the American election is more than just talk. Russia is accused of hacking the Democratic party’s server.
If you want to know what Putin is thinking, you talk to Sergei Markov. His political think tank has a direct line to the Kremlin, which sort of denies the hacking allegations.
“The word of [the] Central Intelligence Agency in the United States means no. Zero. Nothing. They lied. Just forget about them,” Markov said.
Putin has said the hacking of the DNC was a good thing.
“I agree,” said Markov. “He believes for a couple of billion people who believe it’s very good. Hackers’ attacks of politicians, very good.”
But how would Putin react if his own United Russia Party had been hacked?
“Negatively,” Markov said. “Because it’s his party.” |
MSU and UM coaches to wear headsets with #AmazonDetroit logo Saturday
The Twitter hashtag was created to lure Amazon's $5 billion second HQ to Detroit
Millions are expected to watch the rivalry game during primetime on ABC
The team trying to lure Amazon.com Inc.'s HQ2 to Detroit is taking to the football field to get attention for the effort.
Both UM head coach Jim Harbaugh and MSU head coach Mark Dantonio will don headsets with the Twitter hashtag #AmazonDetroit on each earpiece for Saturday's nationally-televised game at Big House in Ann Arbor.
More than 100 American and Canadian cities are vying for the $5 billion Amazon investment, including Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, Philadelphia, New York and Los Angeles.
Amazon issued a request for proposals on Sept. 7 with a detailed criteria for the location, including a city with a population of at least 1 million with direct access to mass transit for a real estate footprint starting at 500,000 square feet and possibly growing to as much as 8 million.
Detroit quickly coupled with Windsor and Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan anointed Gilbert, chairman of Quicken Loans and downtown Detroit's largest real estate owner, to lead a team to draft an effective proposal to lure the tech company.
Gilbert's team at Bedrock created the #AmazonDetroit hashtag as part of a 30-second hype video that promotes the city directly to Amazon in response to the Seattle-based e-commerce giant's unusual publicly issued request for proposal for a $5 billion second headquarters. Gilbert leads the team, which includes many of the city's and state's top business executives and politicians, to attract the investment.
Quicken signed on as a headset sponsor for the game, for an undisclosed sum, and used its space for the #AmazonDetroit logo. FCA US LLC's Ram brand donated part of its ad space on the other side of the sets for the campaign.
The move is expected to raise awareness nationally and locally on Detroit's bid for Amazon's "HQ2," said Whitney Eichinger, Rock Ventures' vice president for communications.
Nearly 4.7 million watched last weekend's Saturday Night Football on ABC game Clemson University at Virginia Tech.
UM (4-0) is ranked seventh in the nation on the AP Top 25 poll, while MSU (3-1) is unranked. Coverage begins at 7:30 p.m. on ABC. |
MYSTERY surrounding the whereabouts of deported asylum seeker Majid Ali has led to fears that he may have been killed on return to Pakistan.
The Glasgow student sought asylum in the UK in 2011 after his brother was "disappeared" by authorities in Pakistan. His uncle and cousin were also killed. Ali was an peaceful opponent of the Pakistan government.
Campaigners in Scotland last night feared he has met a similar fate after he was forced onto a military plane and deported.
Despite repeated attempts, none of his friends in Glasgow have been able to make contact with Ali and the use of a "non-commercial flight" late on Tuesday night has set "alarm bells ringing".
Human rights activist Gary Spedding, who has been working on Ali's case, told the Sunday Herald: "Majid was forced onto a non-civilian flight, which didn't appear on any departure list.
"He isn't a criminal, he doesn't have any convictions and he is not a security risk, there was no need to use this kind of flight.
"Friends of Majid have heard nothing from him and his phone number no longer rings when called.
"We think Majid has been detained by security forces upon arrival in Pakistan as he had agreed to email his lecturer to let us know he was safe, but he has failed to do so.
"The best case scenario is he's been detained in prison and is being questioned.
"The worst case scenario is he has been taken away, tortured and killed."
Spedding added: "We are all extremely worried about Majid and devastated that we have not heard from him.
"If he has been killed, we will take legal action against the Home Office. They made the decision to send him back to Pakistan.
"But, we're not giving up. We want to use this case to ensure this doesn't happen to anyone else."
Two months ago, Ali's family home was allegedly raided by government forces, and his uncle and cousin were shot and killed.
Language student Ali claimed asylum in 2011, after telling the Home Office that officials in his home province of Balochistan enforced the "disappearance" of his brother.
A legal source claimed the use of a military plane to deport asylum seekers was "highly unusual" while Ali's supporters described the development as "worrying".
The source, who wished to remain anonymous, said: "There would be no real reason to use a military plane, there are regular commercial flights from the UK to Pakistan.
"Arriving in Pakistan on a military plane would have attracted real attention and I would expect the person to be detained by authorities and interviewed, which would be very dangerous for Majid."
The use of the military plane - which is usually reserved for the deportation of dangerous criminals - has set alarm bells ringing among Majid's friends and supporters.
Scotland's Minister for External Affairs and International Development, Humza Yousaf, wrote to Home Secretary Theresa May seeking "urgent clarification and assurances" about Ali's safety.
He said: "The asylum system in this country is inhumane and the decision to deport Majid Ali is deplorable and beyond understanding."
Meanwhile, Chris Stephens, the SNP MP for Glasgow South West, where Ali was living, branded the decision to deport him "barbaric".
Stephens said he was told by Ali's supporters, who were at Heathrow when he was deported, that the student was deported on a military plane.
He said: "As far as I am aware, there has been no contact made with Majid since he was deported on Tuesday evening.
"His friends are still to establish contact with him, which is very worrying. I don't think he should have been deported, that's my judgment.
"There was sufficient evidence, new evidence in fact, as some of Majid's relatives had been killed, and sufficient grounds to certainly delay deportation."
Stephens had sponsored a petition to halt the student's deportation, which was signed by 67 MPs, and had urged the Home Secretary to urgently review Ali's case.
He said the Home Office had rejected his request for an urgent review and he had met with Balochi activists at his Westminster office who said they believed Ali could be in danger if he went back to Pakistan.
Ali's constituency MP vowed to fight to bring him back to Scotland.
Stephen said the Home Office had also ignored his point of order on Tuesday asking for the home secretary, Theresa May, to make a statement.
He added that immigration minister James Brokenshire had not responded to his request for a meeting.
"It really brings home to me, as a newly elected MP, how barbaric the system is," Stephens said.
NUS Scotland president-elect Vonnie Sandlan said that the City of Glasgow College student's detention had happened very suddenly.
He was detained immediately after he went to the local Home Office to sign some papers on Friday.
She said: "He had his phone taken away and hasn't been in contact since.
"He never even got a chance to say goodbye to his friends and loved ones.
"We are extremely concerned for his wellbeing."
Before leaving for Scotland, Ali was a student activist in the troubled region, Balochistan, and his legal team had earlier claimed he believed his life would be in danger if he were to return.
Activists in the south-west region have demanded a larger share of the area's natural resources, and even full independence.
Several separatist groups are considered terrorist organisations by Pakistan. There is no suggestion Ali had any association with such groups.
Last week, more than 40 students staged a demonstration at the Scotland Office in Edinburgh and the hashtag #DontDeportMajid was trending on Twitter.
A Home Office spokesman said: "We do not comment on individual cases." |
BRISTOL, England, Dec. 1 (UPI) -- British researchers say women are more likely than men to give women's bodies a visual once-over.
Researchers at Bristol University came to their conclusions after asking volunteers to examine a range of different images, including pictures of couples in films, The Daily Telegraph reported Friday.
They found women spent 61 percent of their time looking at the women in the pictures, and only 39 percent on the men, while men seemed to spend just over half -- 53 percent -- of their time looking at the women.
"This is counter-intuitive from a sexual perspective if you are thinking about desire, but it's not surprising if you look at it in terms of sexual competition," said Felix Mercer Mos, a computer science doctoral student who led the study. "The women might be checking out their sexual rivals and comparing themselves with them."
He noted: "That's speculation of course -- I've no proof whatsoever."
The study also found that while men concentrated on the faces of the women, women's eyes tended to roam around the whole figure.
Kate Figes, author of books on relationships, said she wasn't surprised by the study's findings.
"We are always sizing ourselves up against the competition," she said. "It's because we feel threatened. It's quite a basic animal state. I'm sure if the gender states were reversed, men would do exactly the same." |
Donald Trump asks how Hillary Clinton can claim to be a friend of women and LGBT Americans while accepting millions of dollars in donations to the Clinton Foundation from oppressive countries.
"She's no friend of women and she's no friend of LGBT Americans. No friend believe me," Trump said at a Tuesday night campaign rally in Greensboro, North Carolina.
"We want to live in a country where gay and lesbian Americans and all Americans are safe from radical Islam. Which, by the way, wants to murder and has murdered gays and they enslave women," Trump said. "Now, Hillary Clinton talks about women and she talks about how she's going to do -- she plays the women card more than any human being I've ever seen in my life, and, frankly I don't even think women like her, from everything I see."
On Tuesday night's broadcast of Hannity Trump asked how Clinton could take money from countries that "throw gays off buildings."
Former President Bill Clinton told Bloomberg News that there would be changes at the Clinton Global Initiative if his wife is elected, however, "Clinton didn't detail how the foundation might evolve or what planning was being done."
It was the worst terrorist attack since September 11th and the worst mass shooting in our country's history. We want to live in a country where gay and lesbian Americans and all Americans are safe from radical Islam. Which, by the way, wants to murder and has murdered gays and they enslave women. Now, Hillary Clinton talks about women and she talks about how she's going to do -- she plays the women card more than any human being I've ever seen in my life, and, frankly I don't even think women like her, from everything I see.
And yet she's taking, she's taking $25 million from certain countries -- and much more than that when you add it up -- that treat women horrendously, that kill gays. And, you know what's going to happen folks? And you know what are we are going to do right now? Let's call for Hillary and Bill Clinton to give back the 25 plus million dollars to the countries that we're talking about.
Since 9/11 the United States has admitted more than half a million immigrants from countries where being gay is punishable by death. Hillary Clinton, crooked Hillary as we all know her by, which is what she is, wants to increase the immigration numbers very very substantially. She's no friend of women and she's no friend of LGBT Americans. No friend believe me.
How can you be a friend when you take millions and millions, tens of millions of dollars, $25 million from one country they think? And how can you be a friend when these countries are oppressive to LGBT, they're oppressive to everybody? How can you be a friend? How can you be a friend to women when you take that kind of money from people that enslave women? How can you be a friend?
Trump: Clinton is "no friend of women and she's no friend of LGBT Americans."Watch the full rally: |
Nancy Pelosi: Donald Trump Hasn't Said Anything That Republican Members Of Congress Haven't Said "Over And Over"
In an interview on CNN's 'New Day' on Friday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said that Donald Trump has not said anything that Republican members of Congress haven't said "over and over."
REP. NANCY PELOSI: There's nothing that Donald Trump has said, whether it is about birther, whether it is about immigrants, whether it is about Mexicans --as he said. Whether it is about Muslims, about women. None of the things he has said haven't been said over and over again by members of Congress on the Republican side.
Not all of them.
This issue, whether it is put to rest or not, the damage is done, in terms of him evoking a response from a certain element in our country.
CNN HOST: Don't you think that Republicans in Congress are following his lead?
PELOSI: No, I think he is following theirs.
I think that in Congress, if you look at the public record, on, for example, immigration, there are worse statements made by Republican members of Congress that they tried to implement into law, in terms of Muslims. Shocking language used by Republicans in Congress. He is a reflection of them...
He has pulled back the veil... What Donald Trump is saying is not shocking to us. |
US exports to Iran have risen dramatically during George Bush's years in office in spite of his tough rhetoric against Tehran and the imposition of fresh economic sanctions.
Analysis of US government trade figures published yesterday by Associated Press revealed a near tenfold increase in US sales to Iran over the past seven years. Goods included cigarettes, aircraft spare parts, bras, musical instruments, films, sculpture, fur, golf carts and snowmobiles. Although the sums involved are small, the disclosure is a political embarrassment for the US, coming at a time when it has been putting pressure on European governments, banks and companies to cut ties with Tehran.
John Rankin, a US treasury spokesman, yesterday acknowledged there had been an increase but attributed this mainly to a change in legislation in 2000 that allowed the export of agricultural and medicinal goods. Before then trade had been effectively zero. He played down the exports as "miniscule" amounting to a quarter of 1% of all Iran's imports.
AP found data suggesting military equipment had been exported, even though there are sanctions to prevent this. The Treasury is still investigating but Rankin said initial findings indicated there had been no such sales and described the data as a "clerical error".
US government figures showed exports to Iran from 2001 to 2007 totalled $546m (£273m). It exported roughly $146m of goods last year, compared with $8.3m in 2001, Bush's first year in office.
The US has had sanctions in place against Iran since the Tehran embassy hostage crisis almost 30 years ago. During Bush's presidency, relations with Iran have become increasingly strained, with Washington claiming that Iran has embarked on a programme to build a nuclear weapon, which Tehran denies.
One of the Bush's administration's main instruments for putting pressure on Iran has been sanctions. Yesterday the White House announced fresh financial sanctions against Iranian officials and companies allegedly involved in its nuclear programme. But Tehran is awash with US goods mainly imported indirectly, usually through the United Arab Emirates.
Karim Sadjadpour, an Iranian specialist at the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said: "You can get everything from an iPod to a Chevrolet in Tehran. I think this is a good thing. The more the Iranian population is exposed to American culture, which includes American products, the better for Iranian progress."
The US treasury received at least 4,523 licence applications for Iran exports in the past seven years, of which it approved at least 2,821 and denied only about 178. US export records show $148,000 worth of weapons and other military gear were exported, including $106,635 in rifles and $8,760 in rifle parts and accessories shipped in 2004. At least $13,000 in equipment needed to launch jets from aircraft carriers were also exported.
The treasury suggested yesterday the data had been reported incorrectly by officials. Rankin denied there was a contradiction between the rise in US exports and calls on Europe to cease trading with Iran. He said European companies were involved with finance but US exports involved food and medicine. He said: "Food and medicine are not tools we are going to use to put pressure on the regime."
Most wanted
US exports to Iran include:
· Cigarettes: $158m (£80m)
· Commercial aircraft parts: $620,000
· Bras: $101,000
· Perfume: $8,900
· Cosmetics: $96,000
· Musical instruments and parts : $30,000
· Sculpture: $175,000
· Golf carts and snowmobiles: $21,000
· Movies: $4,000
· Fur: $3,300 |
While three scandal-ridden state senators await their legal fates, all Californians face the challenge of cleaning up our ethically challenged Capitol.
This leads to the Los Angeles News Group Opinion pages’ Question of the Week for readers: What should be done to prevent corruption in state politics?
Our editorial board had its say about the spate of scandals on Sunday. Now it’s your turn.
The three current scandals are different. Sen. Rod Wright, D-Inglewood, is due to be sentenced in May for living outside the district he was elected to represent, and lying about it. That’s run-of-the-mill political crime compared with the allegations against Sen. Ron Calderon, D-Montebello, who was indicted on charges he and his brother took bribes to shape legislation. And those cases lack the wow factor of what Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, is accused of doing — accepting campaign donations in exchange for doing favors for an arms trafficker.
In response, lawmakers have proposed several reform-minded bills, aiming to limit legal gift-giving to politicians, rein in lobbyists’ activities, and require more frequent disclosure of campaign fundraising and spending.
Political watchdogs have said the scandals draw attention to the need to reduce the influence of money in politics.
As we said in Sunday’s editorial, it’s hard not to think the dominance of Democrats in state politics raises the temptation for unscrupulous people to try to influence them, and perhaps emboldens members of the majority party to take advantage of the situation.
Should the scandals influence voters in this year’s elections? If it’s time to throw the bums out, how do you tell the bums from the honest leaders? After all of the reforms of recent years — including term-limits changes, “open” primaries, and redistricting by a citizens panel — would more new rules improve California politics?
The state’s elected officials would probably welcome your suggestions. At least the clean ones would.
Send your thoughts to [email protected]. Please include your full name and city or community of residence. Also, provide a daytime phone number.
Or, if you prefer, share your views in the comments section that accompanies this article online.
We’ll publish as many responses as possible on Sunday. |
A former dancer for the Milwaukee Bucks is suing the team, saying it pays sub-minimum wages to its dancers. Lauren Herington, 21, filed a lawsuit in Milwaukee federal court Sept. 24, according to the BizTimes.The Bucks' dancers perform at home games, make appearances at corporate functions and charity events, and appear in an annual calendar.According to the report, dancers practice five to 10 hours per week, work out 15 to 20 hours per week and must arrive 2.5 hours before each of the 41 home games.Dancers reportedly receive $65 per home game, $30 for practices and $50 for special appearances.Herington appeared on Good Morning America on Oct. 27. She said she was a dancer during the 2013-14 season. She is seeking class action status in hopes of representing all Bucks dancers and cheerleaders from the current and past three seasons. She alleges that she was paid sub-minimum wages for her work, far less than federal and Wisconsin minimum wage requirements."I decided to take a stand and realized that it is something that can be changed, and girls don't have to lose out on their dreams and all their accomplishments all because the NBA doesn't want to pay them enough," Herrington said. Stephan Zouras of Chicago, who is representing Herington, said he has not calculated specific damages that the women in the class-action suit could be seeking.The Bucks have said they will contest the allegations.
A former dancer for the Milwaukee Bucks is suing the team, saying it pays sub-minimum wages to its dancers.
Lauren Herington, 21, filed a lawsuit in Milwaukee federal court Sept. 24, according to the BizTimes.
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The Bucks' dancers perform at home games, make appearances at corporate functions and charity events, and appear in an annual calendar.
According to the report, dancers practice five to 10 hours per week, work out 15 to 20 hours per week and must arrive 2.5 hours before each of the 41 home games.
Dancers reportedly receive $65 per home game, $30 for practices and $50 for special appearances.
Herington appeared on Good Morning America on Oct. 27. She said she was a dancer during the 2013-14 season. She is seeking class action status in hopes of representing all Bucks dancers and cheerleaders from the current and past three seasons. She alleges that she was paid sub-minimum wages for her work, far less than federal and Wisconsin minimum wage requirements.
"I decided to take a stand and realized that it is something that can be changed, and girls don't have to lose out on their dreams and all their accomplishments all because the NBA doesn't want to pay them enough," Herrington said.
Stephan Zouras of Chicago, who is representing Herington, said he has not calculated specific damages that the women in the class-action suit could be seeking.
The Bucks have said they will contest the allegations.
AlertMe |
New research from Cell Metabolism magazine says woman with bigger hips and bottoms have a lower risk of heart attack, stroke and type 2 diabetes than those who store fat around their mid-section.
“It is better for people of normal weight to be pear-shaped rather than apple-shaped, so that weight is carried on the bottom half of their body rather than around the middle,” explains lead author, Dr Norbert Stefan.
The composition of fat in the lower body is different than that stored in the abdomen, as abdominal fat is more likely to release fatty acids into the blood, resulting in higher cholesterol and diabetes. Visceral fat sits closer to the body’s vital organs, contributing to inflammatory changes in the body that are associated with conditions like heart disease, diabetes, cancer, fatty liver disease, polycystic ovarian syndrome and more. You may have heard it referred to as ‘middle-age spread’, as it’s something that can increase as we age.
“In pear-shaped people, these areas work like a sponge, with fat stored in fat cells where it cannot do much harm.” |
Disclosure: Mama Smith is a brand ambassador for Brooklyn Bean Roastery and is provided with monthly samples. All opinions expressed are 100% her own.
Brooklyn Bean Roastery’s Breakfast Blend has a rich texture and sweetness that is perfectly combined with lighter flavors to make for a nice balance in your cup. Reach for Breakfast Blend every morning – its lively, crisp flavor makes it that much easier to get into your day… one sip at a time. Trust us, we know Brooklyn isn’t known for being anything close to mild; but we’ve toned it down for you. Enjoy!
Brooklyn Bean Roastery Single-Serve Breakfast Blend coffee cups are available in a convenient 40-count box with an easy to make opening in the front. Just stand it up next to your one serve coffee brewer and you are ready to go in the morning! We know that mornings can be tough, but BBR is here to save the day!
All of Brooklyn Bean Roastery’s delicious individual blends include:
Highest quality of coffee beans; 100% Arabica coffee beans available in 12 specialty blends.
Revolutionary “Roast2Cup” processing for extra freshness and premium flavor. You are guaranteed a fresh-brewed cup every time.
Crafted with pride in the USA.
Compatible with many popular single-serve coffee machines.
About Brooklyn Bean Roastery
They’re three guys from Brooklyn who love coffee. They grew up with an appreciation for quality, originality, and local pride, and base their company on those values. What we’re saying is…they demand the best of everything and don’t hesitate to tell you what’s what. Brooklyn Beans Roastery is the first independently owned, single-serve coffee company using ‘Roast2Cup’ technology, a process that ensures the best cup of coffee every time you brew. Not your everyday cuppa Joe, see?
Unwavering Quality
Five separate, important quality-control checks are performed with every batch they make:
Visual inspection – only the best coffee beans make the initial cut. Supervisor-monitored grinding – A little secret: if it’s too coarse, it won’t brew properly; if it’s too fine, the coffee gets bitter. Portion quality control – precisely the right amount is packed to ensure the best brew every time. Filled and sealed pods are individually hand-checked for perfection. Brewed coffee samples are consistently taken for aroma and taste testing checks (of course this is their favorite part of the job!) At Brooklyn Beans Roastery, we’re not happy unless your last cup of coffee is as good as the first one of the day.
Purchase a 40 Count of Brooklyn Bean Roastery Breakfast Blend Coffee KCups here.
Still not sold on BBR Coffee? Check out what a couple of my fellow Honorary Brooklynites think about it:
“I like drinking Brooklyn Bean Breakfast Blend because it is strong enough to get me going in the morning but it does not have a bitter taste, which is not what you want to drink first thing in the morning.” ~ Bonnie
“I recommend Brooklyn Bean Roastery Breakfast Blend decaf because there are some nights I crave that great Brooklyn Bean Roastery taste but can’t have the caffeine. This makes my taste buds very happy!!” ~ Dianne
Connect with Brooklyn Bean on Social Media:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BrooklynBeanRoastery
Twitter: https://twitter.com/BrooklynBeans1
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/brooklynbeans/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brooklynbeanroastery/
Enter to win a 40 count box of Brooklyn Bean Roastery Breakfast Blend coffee using the Gleam form below. Be sure to check out my other giveaways while you are here and GOOD LUCK.
Brooklyn Bean Roastery Breakfast Blend 40 Count KCups |
Apple’s announcement today that it has lifted restrictions on its third-party developer guidelines has direct implications for Adobe’s Packager for iPhone, a feature in the Flash Professional CS5 authoring tool. This feature was created to enable Flash developers to quickly and easily deliver applications for iOS devices. The feature is available for developers to use today in Flash Professional CS5, and we will now resume development work on this feature for future releases.
This is great news for developers and we’re hearing from our developer community that Packager apps are already being approved for the App Store. We do want to point out that Apple’s restriction on Flash content running in the browser on iOS devices remains in place.
Adobe will continue to work to bring full web browsing with Flash Player 10.1 as well as standalone applications on AIR to a broad range of devices, working with key industry partners including Google, HTC, Microsoft, Motorola, Nokia, Palm/HP, RIM, Samsung and others. |
This past weekend, British DJ collective Livin' Proof hosted a party called "Livin' DOOM", which was meant to feature a DJ set by DOOM himself. As XXL reports, that allegedly didn't quite happen. According to a Facebook post from the promoters, the rapper sent what seems to be a masked imposter to the show. (Check out a picture of the alleged imposter, who indeed does not look like Daniel Dumile, here).According to the statement from Livin' Proof, there were a number of complications leading up to the appearance. Read the full statement below.
When contacted by Pitchfork, a representative for DOOM offered no comment.
DOOM has been accused of sending imposters to shows before. The rapper addressed the issue in a rare interview with Rolling Stone in 2009:
"Everything that we do is villain style. Everybody has the right to get it or not get it. Once I throw it out, it's there for interpretation. It might've seemed like it didn't go well, but how do we know that wasn't just pre-orchestrated so that we're talking about it now? I tell you one thing: People are asking more now for live shows and I'm charging more, so it must've worked somewhere...I tell you one thing: when you come to a Doom show, come expecting to hear music, don't come expecting to see."
In other, less controversial news, DOOM's collab album with Jneiro Jarel as JJ DOOM, Key to the Kuffs, is out now via Lex Records. Watch a video for a song from that LP, "Guv'nor", below.
Livin' Proof statement:
To everyone who came down to our Livin’ DOOM event on Saturday and are questioning whether that was the real DOOM – we are in the same position as you. We had a legitimate contracted gig from his official booking agent and were in contact throughout the booking process with his US management, and label. We were even talking and working with the promoters of DOOM’s forthcoming London live shows in October and November. As far as we were concerned, the real DOOM was going to appear… we received news from DOOM’s management on the morning of the gig that DOOM wanted more money or he would not show up. This show was done and intended as a very special and intimate show which was not about making money but putting on an incredible party in a very small capacity venue. As we wanted the show to go ahead and was left to ransom to this extortionate request, we agreed this even though this was a breach of our agreed contract. In hindsight, we should have cancelled the show then and there… At 9.30pm after we had open the doors, we were told by management that he would appear but would not DJ and was just going to sign autographs. We said this was unacceptable as we had agreed and paid for a DJ set… 10 minutes later we received a call saying that he would DJ… Or that’s what we were led to believe. As many of the people in the venue noticed, there is a very strong possibility the person that was finally sent down was not DOOM himself. Doing this show has taught us a lot about how some artists operate and how they feel they can treat others and, most importantly, their fans. As fans of DOOM ourselves, this has left a very sour taste in our mouth. Anyone who has been to Livin' Proof parties always know that we do our utmost to provide the best quality show and we are so sorry for anyone who came down and were disappointed by the DJ set from the artist supposedly meant to be DOOM. We will do our utmost to make this up to anyone who purchased a ticket for this event. We paid the fee upfront to Daniel Dumile’s bank account and have the receipts to prove this. We will be seeking legal advice and are doing our best to get his show fee refunded from DOOM and his management and will then take suitable steps after this action. All the best,
Livin’ Proof Crew.
Embedded content is unavailable. |
Blogger Edmund Standing has some interesting background on connections between the British National Party and extreme right-wing (in fact, wacko-wing) Christian groups, with insight into why the BNP and other Eurofascists claim to be pro-Israel: Gott mit uns: British fascists and ‘Christian’ racism.
Following the recent leak of the BNP membership list, it may have come as a surprise to find that some members were listed as active Christians. Among these, we find a ‘“Born Again” Protestant Christian’, a ‘Devout Christian lay preacher’, a ‘Minister of Religion’, a ‘Member of the Assemblies of God Pentecostal Church’, and a ‘Practising Catholic’. One member lists himself as a member of the ‘British Israel World Federation’ and another as ‘Founder/organiser of Durham British-Israel Fellowship’.
The founder and organiser of Durham British-Israel Fellowship can be safely named as Colin Farquhar, for he is quite public about his support of the BNP and happy to advertise his home address as the contact point for the Fellowship. In addition to believing that ‘[t]he theory of evolution is based on tales, not on fact’, Farquhar also holds some unusual views on the identity of the Biblical Israelites and is rabidly anti-Catholic. In an article posted on a ‘British Israelism’ website, he states:
Let us also pray for, and warn Christians within the Protestant Church to shun the works of darkness and the institutions of Satan no matter what holy guise they appear to be shrouded in. Let us warn them especially regarding the deceitfulness, error and darkness of the Antichrist Roman Catholic Church; and those organisations such as the World Council of Churches and Churches Together that seek to bring about unity with this Satanic institution.
In order to unravel the bizarre beliefs of Farquhar and the other (listed) BNP member of the British Israel World Federation (BIWF), let’s first have a look at what the BIWF teaches.
Founded in 1919, and currently Registered Charity No. 208079, the BIWF is an organisation that promotes an esoteric interpretation of the Bible, in particular of ‘prophetic’ passages in the Old Testament, which was first popularised in the ‘glory days’ of the British Empire. According to the theory of British Israelism, the British, and other European peoples, are in reality the so-called ‘lost tribes’ of Israel, the Northern Kingdom of Israel, who were expelled during the Assyrian Captivity. It is claimed, meanwhile, that the Kingdom of Judah went on to make up modern day Jewry, although Jews are deemed by many to be ‘ethnically mixed’ and consequently no longer ‘pure’ Israelites.
This pseudo-historical belief system allows white nationalists to claim that the Bible is a book written by Europeans, about Europeans, and for Europeans, for according to this theory, Europeans are the Biblical Israelites. British Israelism, then, is a ‘Christian’ religion that promotes Eurocentricism and opposes ‘race mixing’ as an affront to ‘God’s plan’. |
About The Author Dirk Jesse is the developer of the CSS framework YAML and the prototyping tool Thinkin’ Tags. He’s an engineer, editor, front-end developer, … More about Dirk…
Flexible Layouts: Challenge For The Future
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The new generation of web browsers — Firefox 3, Opera 9.5 and Internet Explorer 7 — provides a feature which seems to save a lot of work for web-developers in the future, namely the Full Page Zoom. Instead of allowing users to increase and decrease the font size on a given web-site, browsers now enable users to literally scale the rendered layout including visuals and background images. Consequently, every fixed, pixel-based layout becomes “scalable”; the content area always remains within the layout box it is supposed to be in and there is no chance of producing overlapping boxes as we’ve seen in previous generations of web-browsers.
This article is a guest post written by Dirk Jesse, the developer of YAML (Yet Another Multicolumn Layout), an (X)HTML&CSS framework which explains his motivation for YAML in the last paragraph of the article. This article is supposed to initiate the discussion about the need for more flexible layouts in modern web design and explain why flexible designs are still important — even despite the Full Page Zoom-functionality implemented in most modern browsers.
The new generation of web browsers — Firefox 3, Opera 9.5 and Internet Explorer 7 — provides a feature which seems to save a lot of work for web-developers in the future, namely the Full Page Zoom. Instead of allowing users to increase and decrease the font size on a given web-site, browsers now enable users to literally scale the rendered layout including visuals and background images. The whole design layout is scaled proportionally according to some adjusted zoom-factor, with all the elements of a page’s layout expanding equally. Consequently, every fixed, pixel-based layout becomes “scalable”; the content area always remains within the layout box it is supposed to be in and there is no chance of producing overlapping boxes as we’ve seen in the previous generations of web-browsers.
However, is the new zoom-technique indeed so advanced that we don’t need flexible layouts any longer? Just as this question is extensively discussed in the blogosphere, it is extensively answered with “yes”. And there is a good reason behind it. The coding of a fixed layout is much easier and, when used properly, produces exactly the results a designer is willing to achieve. With fixed layouts, designers can ensure the exact positioning of each pixel (a dream of many graphics designers comes true!) and the user can adjust the size of the layout with a scaling zoom on demand. No wonder that it’s tempting to motivate the switch to fixed layouts. However, as professionals, we need to consider how reasonable it is from the professional point of view.
In the following let’s discuss why we strongly believe that this paradigm won’t lead web design to more user-friendly and accessible web-sites, why flexible layouts still remain important today and why they will become even more important in the future.
Where Full Page Zoom doesn’t help at all
The main difference between fixed (px-based) and flexible (%-based) layouts is the simple fact that flexible layouts can better adapt to user’s viewing preferences. With flexible solutions, the width of the layout depends on the viewport of the browser and can perfectly fill the viewing space without any manual adjustments from the user’s side. Fixed layouts can’t do that. Full page zoom, when applied to fixed layouts, enables users to manually adjust the design after it has already been rendered.
Meet Smashing Book 6 — our brand new book focused on real challenges and real front-end solutions in the real world: from design systems and accessible single-page apps to CSS Custom Properties, CSS Grid, Service Workers, performance, AR/VR and responsive art direction. With Marcy Sutton, Yoav Weiss, Lyza D. Gardner, Laura Elizabeth and many others. Table of Contents →
Another important aspect which is worth keeping in mind: Internet Explorer 6, probably the nightmare of every web-developer out there, has a market share of almost 40% — and it doesn’t support zoom at all.
According to w3schools.com, the larger and wider screen resolutions (larger than 1024×768px) will become a standard in the future.
More problematic is the overwhelming confidence of developers that the individual decision-making is better for users from the accessibility point of view. When applied to fixed layouts the web-developer delivers a clear message:
Dear users, your browser can zoom my fixed layout - so please help yourself if you want or need to!
From designer’s perspective with this argument it is tempting to switch to a more comfortable (fixed) design solution at expense of accessibility. Why should a user adapt his viewing preferences to a web-site? Shouldn’t a web-site rather adapt itself to the viewing preferences of its users? If you think about it for a second, you have the same situation as in a cloth store where you are offered cloth only in some very specific size. If the size doesn’t fit to you, it’s your problem, not store’s owner. And if you want to you can take a needle, some fabric and create the cloth of its own choice for free. That is not user-friendly.
Even more crucial is the simple fact that full page zoom isn’t really feasible in practice. Let’s assume that the designers has a fixed layouts with the width of 960px. To zoom it using a 150% scale factor and still browse the page without horizontal scroll bar, users need to have at least the screen resolution of 1440px and a browser opened in the full-screen-mode. Is it really a path for the Web to take in the years to come? As Nancib states, “problem is that sometimes the font on a page is friggin’ tiny without zooming it in, but zooming the page (with the images) doesn’t just make it more readable.”
Web developers often tend to argue that flexible layouts are too complex and with full page zoom every fixed layout is becoming scalable anyway. That’s right, scalable, but not flexible. Why should a browser correct the mistakes a developer or designer has done when creating a site layout?
Flexible layouts are hard to control? That’s not true!
Whenever designers argue against flexible layouts they tend to use the following argument:
In flexible layouts the text flows in the width when expanding the browser window, making the content hard to read. This text flow is hard to control.
Wide text flow is definitely not a nice thing to offer your visitors. However, text flow doesn’t need to flow in the width when the browser window is expanded. To achieve attractive flexible designs one can use the properties min-width and max-width . Of course, Internet Explorer 6 doesn’t support both of them — just as it implements both hasLayout-model and the Float-model incorrectly. However, this is not the reason to not use floats for your design layouts, right?
To simulate max-width and min-width you can use various workarounds (JS Expressions); and to simulate min-width you can even use a pure CSS-solution. But what happens if the user’s browser doesn’t support JavaScript? Well, in this case a flexible Layout without max-width doesn’t necessarily destroy the layout, although the text flow may be too wide. But this is what the Progressive Enhancement is all about, so this is not that problematic.
How to find an ideal width for a flexible layout?
Let’s consider how wide the layout should be for an optimal flexible layout:
Layout width: use width:auto or any %-value to make sure that the layout makes use of the available width of the browser windows automatically.
use or any %-value to make sure that the layout makes use of the available width of the browser windows automatically. Minimal width: use some px-value (e.g. 760px). This lower bound should be used for all pixel-based layouts, so the content remains readable when displayed in the minimal screen resolution.
use some px-value (e.g. 760px). This lower bound should be used for all pixel-based layouts, so the content remains readable when displayed in the minimal screen resolution. Maximal width: use an em-value (e.g. 90em). Thus the text flow doesn’t grow in width in an uncontrollable fashion, but remains constant for various screen resolutions. Side effect: the maximal width is scaled according to the font-size of the browser.
Also keep in mind that we, designers, don’t really have the design layout (whether fixed or flexible) under control as the presentation of our layouts depends on the browser, font size adjustments, operating system, alternative user-stylesheets etc.
The Holy Photoshop Mockup
The most frequent argument used to motivate the fixed layout solution is the fact that customers are confident that a perfect Photoshop mockup would look best when displayed 1:1 in user’s browser. Indeed, it is hard to explain to the customers that flexible solution, although looking differently in different context, has some advantages. After all, if the design doesn’t look as expected on senior project manager’s wide screen laptop, then this is not something the customer would agree on.
However, following customer’s decisions blindly you neglect your professional responsibility to develop accessible, user-friendly websites. It’s your duty to complement your customer’s wishes, compromise and seek the best possible solution for users and not for the senior manager. A brief argument that a user-friendly solution that doesn’t look best at some particular configuration would bring more satisfied customers and consequently more money in a long run usually suffices.
The end-result layout isn’t supposed to be used as a nice screenshot for one single portfolio. It has to serve users’ needs and enable them to get to the content of the site as quickly and as painlessly as possible. Take your time and go through some of the layouts presented in numerous CSS-showcases. In way too many cases the attractive pixel-based design breaks down completely when the browser window is resized or the content is scaled. A Photoshop Mockup isn’t necessarily easy to convert into a flexible design layout. However, it is worth consideration. Transparency, patterns and background images can lead to impressive and flexible results.
In most cases we design websites not to present some design, but to let the design help users to achieve some objectives such as finding the information they are looking for. Graphics-heavy flexible layouts are not easy to achieve and require planning, patience and confidence that the results are worth it. However, these efforts improve user experience and make the design medium-independent.
Mobile Browsers – Why flexible is better
Just one year ago my old mobile phone could access the Internet. However, it was extremely hard to browse web pages, read them and navigate. With the improved user interface of iPhone it has completely changed. Mobile web browsers (e.g. Opera Mini or Safari on the iPhone) have dramatically improved over the last two years — at the moment, it is almost natural that they render web pages without any considerable display errors.
My iPhone has no problem showing flexible layouts in the landscape format or portrait format; in fact, it automatically adjusts them to the best format that fills the whole iPhone window. At the same time I often experience problems when loading fixed layouts — from time to time they need to be zoomed in to fill in the whole browser window.
What holds for mobile devices also holds for printing devices. Ironically, nobody argues about the advantages that flexible layouts for print layouts manage to deliver. Flexible design allows to use portrait / landscape - formats for optimal printing.
The decision for flexible layouts against fixed layouts doesn’t only improve the accessibility on Desktop-PCs, but also creates robust and flexible medium-independent layouts which can be easily adapted to any output devices. After all, with flexible rules (relative measure units, minimal margin, and padding, alignment, etc.) instead of fixed rules (px) rendering engines can better consider the properties of the used media.
The future, the unexplored land
As mentioned above, the mobile Web is becoming more and more important. Are we now going to optimize layouts for 640×480 or 800×600? The screen resolutions are increasing, the prices for high-resolution displays are decreasing. At the same time the physical resolution of devices as well as the spatial printing resolution (dpi). Consequently, the absolute size of one pixel decreases. No wonder that pixel-based definitions are becoming less expressive.
The gap between low-resolution displays and high-resolution displays hasn’t bridged over the last ten years. On the contrary: the gap has increased dramatically. Websites are viewed in hundreds of possible screen resolutions while each user may have his preference for the viewport of his browser. This consideration alone explains how important flexible design layouts are today and how important they will be in the future. Consequently, fixed layouts won’t make the cut in the future as designers will need to consider more and more different devices to optimize the design for. What we need in web design to come to grips with all this variety are dominating relative measurement units.
Flexible Layouts with YAML
YAML (“Yet Another Multicolumn Layout”) is an (X)HTML/CSS-framework which was developed especially to meet the requirements of flexible and user-friendly design layouts. Since June 2007 YAML is available in English and provide an extensive documentation. Most CSS-Frameworks like Blueprint CSS or YUI Grids offer designers a predefined system of CSS-classes to create grid-based layouts visually. To create a layout designer needs to create a HTML-structure of the site and to assign CSS-classes to containers. The rest is automatically taken care of.
YAML takes a different route. The Framework supports the development of grid-based layouts as well as the development of the grid system - with the emphasis on flexible layouts. If a designer wants to create a grid-based layout he can use the basic skeleton with three columns, header and footer. Each element can be removed or adjusted to user’s needs. The actual design, the positioning of the columns, is done using CSS-definitions (and not HTML-structure as it is done in other CSS-frameworks). The benefit for designers: with YAML one has better options for defining his own system of classes, using any measurement units and getting clean code.
Based on the HTML-structure of YAML, the framework includes layout presets which already prevent IE-bugs; thus the framework makes it easier for designers to create a layout which works in both modern and older browsers. Layout examples provide an overview of what is possible with YAML and may deliver some ideas for your future layouts. Apart from that, YAML offers a set of flexible grid-components which you can use to create columns within columns and thus design a more complex but flexible Grid-layouts.
YAML Example: a demonstration of YAML's flexible grids.
Consider the example above. BluePrint CSS has a demo-page which displays a layout created with Blueprint CSS. And this is the result of the very same template created using the flexible grid-elements of YAML. The scaling works even in IE 5.5, including min-width and max-width .
Apart from layout design, YAML also delivers style sheets for print layouts, as well as components for horizontal and vertical navigation. YAML requires some time to climb the learning curve: the tool offers a variety of functions, and user-friendly flexible layouts are not easy to build.
The concept of YAML is, however, well documented in the online- and PDF-documentation and my provide beginners and professional with an excellent introduction to the framework. For practical purposes, you can also use YAML-Builder, a handy tool for visual development of YAML-based CSS layouts which allows you to put the containers of the design visually together via drag-n-drop. The valid HTML- and CSS-code is generated automatically on the fly. |
British PM Theresa May denounced the 'discriminatory' prohibition instituted by 16 Muslim countries against the entry of Israelis.
Donald Trump's controversial ban on the entry to the US of citizens of seven Muslim countries has also drawn attention to a less known prohibition instituted by 16 Muslim countries against the entry of Israeli citizens into their territory. The issue reached the British parliament on Wednesday, where British Prime Minister Theresa May denounced the discrimination against Israelis and called on Opposition Leader Jeremy Corbyn to join her in denouncing the discrimination.
At a Prime Minister’s Questions session in the House of Commons Wednesday, May was asked about the issue by Conservative MP Theresa Villiers.
May answered that “it is absolutely right that this house should be aware of the discrimination and the ban that exists around the world…particularly for those who are Israeli citizens.”
“We are consistent with our approach. We don’t agree with that approach [of banning entry to countries by citizens] and it’s not an approach that we will be taking. And I wait for the day when the right honorable gentleman opposite actually stands up and condemns it, too.”
Corbyn has been accused in the past of anti-Semitic statements, such as when he appeared to compare Israel to the Islamic State in a speech against anti-Semitism within the Labor party.
The list of nations that bar entry to Israeli nationals include six of the seven countries targeted by Trump’s action.
Photos showing the list — including Algeria, Bangladesh, Brunei, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Oman, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, United Arab Emirates and Yemen — have gone viral on Facebook in recent days. |
Claytronics is an abstract future concept that combines nanoscale robotics and computer science to create individual nanometer-scale computers called claytronic atoms, or catoms, which can interact with each other to form tangible 3D objects that a user can interact with. This idea is more broadly referred to as programmable matter.[1] Claytronics has the potential to greatly affect many areas of daily life, such as telecommunication, human-computer interfaces, and entertainment.
Current research [ edit ]
Current research is exploring the potential of modular reconfigurable robotics and the complex software necessary to control the “shape changing” robots. “Locally Distributed Predicates or LDP is a distributed, high-level language for programming modular reconfigurable robot systems (MRRs)”. There are many challenges associated with programming and controlling a large number of discrete modular systems due to the degrees of freedom that correspond with each module. For example, reconfiguring from one formation to one similar may require a complex path of movements controlled by an intricate string of commands even though the two shapes differ slightly.[2]
In 2005, research efforts to develop a hardware concept were successful on the scale of millimeters, creating cylindrical prototypes 44 millimeters in diameter which interact with each other via electromagnetic attraction. Their experiments helped researchers verify the relationship between mass and potential force between objects as “a 10-fold reduction in size [which] should translate to a 100-fold increase in force relative to mass”.[1] Recent advancements in this prototype concept are in the form of one millimeter diameter cylindrical robots fabricated on a thin film by photolithography that would cooperate with each other using complex software that would control electromagnetic attraction and repulsion between modules.[3]
Today, extensive research and experiments with claytronics are being conducted at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania by a team of researchers which consists of Professors Todd C. Mowry, Seth Goldstein, graduate and undergraduate students, and researchers from Intel Labs Pittsburgh.[4]
Hardware [ edit ]
The driving force behind programmable matter is the actual hardware that is manipulating itself into whatever form is desired. Claytronics consists of a collection of individual components called claytronic atoms, or catoms. In order to be viable, catoms need to fit a set of criteria. First, catoms need to be able to move in three dimensions relative to each other and be able to adhere to each other to form a three-dimensional shape. Second, the catoms need to be able to communicate with each other in an ensemble and be able to compute state information, possibly with assistance from each other. Fundamentally, catoms consist of a CPU, a network device for communication, a single pixel display, several sensors, an onboard battery, and a means to adhere to one another.[1]
Current catoms [ edit ]
The researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have developed various prototypes of catoms. These vary from small cubes to giant helium balloons.[5] The prototype that is most like what developers hope catoms will become is the planar catom.[citation needed] These take the form of 44 mm diameter cylinders. These cylinders are equipped with 24 electromagnets arranged in a series of stacked rings along the cylinder’s circumference. Movement is achieved by the catoms cooperatively enabling and disabling the magnets in order to roll along each other’s surfaces. Only one magnet on each catom is energized at a time. These prototypes are able to reconfigure themselves quite quickly, with the uncoupling of two units, movement to another contact point, and recoupling taking only about 100 ms. Power is supplied to the catoms using pickup feet on the bottom of the cylinder. Conductive strips on the table supply the necessary power.[6]
Future design [ edit ]
In the current design, the catoms are only able to move in two dimensions relative to each other. Future catoms will be required to move in three dimensions relative to each other. The goal of the researchers is to develop a millimeter scale catom with no moving parts, to allow for mass manufacturability. Millions of these microrobots will be able to emit variable color and intensity of light, allowing for dynamic physical rendering. The design goal has shifted to creating catoms that are simple enough to only function as part of an ensemble, with the ensemble as a whole being capable of higher function.[7]
As the catoms are scaled down, an onboard battery sufficient to power it will exceed the size of the catom itself, so an alternate energy solution is desired. Research is being done into powering all of the catoms in an ensemble, utilizing the catom-to-catom contact as a means of energy transport. One possibility being explored is using a special table with positive and negative electrodes and routing the power internally through the catoms, via “virtual wires.”
Another major design challenge will be developing a genderless unary connector for the catoms in order to keep reconfiguration time at a minimum. Nanofibers provide a possible solution to this challenge.[8] Nanofibers allow for great adhesion on a small scale and allow for minimum power consumption when the catoms are at rest.
Software [ edit ]
Organizing all of the communication and actions between millions of sub-millimeter scale catoms requires development of advanced algorithms and programming languages. The researchers and engineers of Carnegie Mellon-Intel Claytronics Research Lab launched a wide range of projects to develop the necessary software to facilitate communication between catoms. The most important projects are developing new programming languages which work more efficiently for claytronics. The goal of a claytronics matrix is to dynamically form three-dimensional shapes. However, the vast number of catoms in this distributed network increases complexity of micro-management of each individual catom. So, each catom must perceive accurate position information and command of cooperation with its neighbors. In this environment, software language for the matrix operation must convey concise statements of high-level commands in order to be universally distributed. Languages to program a matrix require a more abbreviated syntax and style of command than normal programming languages such as C++ and Java.[9]
The Carnegie Mellon-Intel Claytronics Research Project has created two new programming languages: Meld and Locally Distributed Predicates (LDP).[citation needed]
Meld [ edit ]
Meld is a declarative language, a logic programming language originally designed for programming overlay networks.[10] By using logic programming, the code for an ensemble of robots can be written from a global perspective, enabling the programmer to concentrate on the overall performance of the claytronics matrix rather than writing individual instructions for every one of the thousands to millions of catoms in the ensemble.[11] This dramatically simplifies the thought process for programming the movement of a claytronics matrix.
Locally distributed predicates (LDP) [ edit ]
LDP is a reactive programming language. It has been used to trigger debugging in the earlier research. With the addition of language that enables the programmer to build operations in the development of the shape of the matrix, it can be used to analyze the distributed local conditions.[12] It can operate on fixed-size, connected groups of modules providing various functions of state configuration. A program that addresses a fixed-size module rather than the entire ensemble allows programmers to operate the claytronic matrix more frequently and efficiently. LDP further provides a means of matching distributed patterns. It enables the programmer to address a larger set of variables with Boolean logic, which enables the program to search for larger patterns of activity and behavior among groups of modules.[2]
Distributed watchpoints [ edit ]
Performance errors for thousands to millions of individual catoms are hard to detect and debug, therefore, claytronics matrix operations require a dynamic and self-directed process for identifying and debugging errors. Claytronics researchers have developed Distributed Watchpoints, an algorithm-level approach to detecting and fixing errors missed by more conventional debugging techniques.[13] It establishes nodes that receive surveillance to determine the validity of distributed conditions.[14] This approach provides a simple and highly descriptive set of rules to evaluate distributed conditions and proves effective in the detection of errors.
Algorithms [ edit ]
Two important classes of claytronics algorithms are shape sculpting and localization algorithms. The ultimate goal of claytronics research is creating dynamic motion in three-dimensional poses. All the research on catom motion, collective actuation and hierarchical motion planning require shape sculpting algorithms to convert catoms into the necessary structure, which will give structural strength and fluid movement to the dynamic ensemble. Meanwhile, localization algorithms enable catoms to localize their positions in an ensemble.[15] A localization algorithm should provide accurate relational knowledge of catoms to the whole matrix based on noisy observation in a fully distributed manner.
Future applications [ edit ]
As the capabilities of computing continue to develop and robotic modules shrink, claytronics will become useful in many applications. The featured application of claytronics is a new mode of communication. Claytronics will offer a more realistic sense to communication over long distance called pario. Similar to how audio and video provide aural and visual stimulation, pario provides an aural, visual and physical sensation. A user will be able to hear, see and touch the one communicating with them in a realistic manner. Pario could be used effectively in many professional disciplines from engineering design, education and healthcare to entertainment and leisure activities such as video games.[16]
The advancements in nanotechnology and computing necessary for claytronics to become a reality are feasible, but the challenges to overcome are daunting and will require great innovation. In a December 2008 interview, Jason Campbell, a lead researcher from Intel Labs Pittsburgh, said, "my estimates of how long it is going to take have gone from 50 years down to just a couple more years. That has changed over the four years I’ve been working on the project".[17]
See also [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
a b c Goldstein (2005), p. 99-101 a b De Rosa (2009) ^ Karagozler (2009) ^ Goldstein (2010b) ^ Karagozler (2006) ^ Kirby (2005), p. 1730-1731 ^ Kirby (2007) ^ Aksak (2007), p. 91 ^ Goldstein (2010a) ^ Ashley-Rollman (2007b) ^ Ashley-Rollman (2007a) ^ De Rosa (2008) ^ Rister (2007) ^ De Rosa (2007) ^ Funiak (2008) ^ Goldstein (2009), p. 29-45 ^ Byrne (2008)
References [ edit ] |
Kirstie Trup and Katie Gee, both 18, were taken to the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital by ambulance as soon as their chartered medical evacuation flight landed at RAF Northolt in Middlesex.
Katie’s mother Nicky Gee said the families had been through a “terrible ordeal”, and a family friend said the 18-year-olds were “as well as can be expected”.
Andy Williams, consultant burns and plastic surgeon at the hospital, said the extent of the teenagers’ injuries was still being assessed four hours after they arrived.
“Both girls are well and their families are with them,” he said. “They will be staying at Chelsea and Westminster. Both families would like to thank everyone that’s helped to bring the girls back.”
Katie sent a tweet to friends from her hospital bed saying: “Thank you for all your support x.”
As the two friends arrived back in London, Mrs Gee said: “I am worried sick. I am just glad she is home. We spoke this morning and she said she was OK. I can’t say any more.”
The family friend said: “They seemed OK. They were pleased to be coming home. Katie is on pain relief.”
A picture of Katie’s injuries, showing burns to her chest, neck and lower face, was released by her family.
Katie Gee after the acid attack in Zanzibar
The teenagers, who were on a month-long break volunteering for a charity when two men on a moped threw the acid over them, suffered injuries to their faces, hands, legs, backs, necks and chests.
Moments after they were attacked in Stone Town, Zanzibar, they ran into the Babu Cafe on the waterfront, screaming and tearing off items of their clothing, said Noonan Babu, the restaurant owner.
"[Katie] came in crying and shouting, ‘my face, my face, my face’, and she ran straight to the toilet to splash herself with water," Mr Noonan said.
"My staff and other people helped her by giving her big bottles of water from the fridge to cover herself with and wash off the liquid. It was all over her. [Kirstie] ran straight to the sea to try to wash it off.
"They were so shocked, really they were frantic."
Meanwhile suspicion grew that a hardline Islamic group called Uamsho may have inspired the attack.
The group, which wants Zanzibar to become fully independent from Tanzania and impose strict Muslim rules, is thought to be behind anti-Christian leaflets distributed in recent weeks telling Muslims to prepare for “a call” to action.
Uamsho is suspected of being behind an acid attack in November on a moderate imam and the shooting dead of a Catholic priest in February.
Rev Cosmas Shayo, parish priest of St Joseph’s Catholic Cathedral, whose predecessor, Father Evarist Mushi, was murdered, said: “These people are dedicated only on bringing chaos to further their aims.
“They want to make the islands only Muslim, and first they wanted to scare Tanzanian Christians, and now they want to scare tourists, who they see as all Christians as well.”
Kirstie Trup (left) and Katie Gee (Barcroft)
One of Uamsho’s key supporters is the Muslim cleric Sheikh Ponda Issa Ponda, who has spent the last two weeks in Zanzibar urging Muslims to rise up “like in Egypt”.
Tanzania’s director of public prosecutions, Elieza Feleshi, said: “Such behaviour is intolerable. We hope the police will exercise their powers wisely and arrest Ponda.”
Mkadam Khamis, regional police commissioner in Zanzibar, said his detectives were exploring “many avenues of investigation, including Uamsho”.
Five men were questioned as witnesses yesterday, but no arrests were made despite a reward of £4,000 being offered by police.
The teenagers, both from north London, had been attacked twice before – once when a Muslim woman hit Katie Gee in the face for singing during the holy month of Ramadan, and once when they got into an argument with a shopkeeper days before the acid attack.
Kirstie’s father Marc Trup said they were both well aware of the need to dress modestly and had been told not to wear any symbols of their Jewish faith, such as the Star of David.
Miss Trup, of Hampstead, north London, is hoping to read history at Bristol University and Miss Gee, of East Finchley, a former pupil at the £5,375-per-term Francis Holland School in Chelsea, intends to study sociology at Nottingham University.
Both girls’ families spent Thursday at the home of Kirstie’s father Mark Trup, a dentist and former director of Bupa Dental Services, where they later issued a joint statement saying they were “extremely upset and distressed at this completely unprovoked attack on [our] lovely daughters who had only gone to Zanzibar with good intention”.
The girls were working for a month at the St Monica nursery school in Zanzibar’s capital, Stone Town, for the Art in Tanzania charity on a trip organised by the Kent-based travel firm i-to-i.
The day before the attack Miss Gee had excitedly tweeted that she had met the former US president Bill Clinton, who was on the island promoting the anti-malarial work of his Clinton Health Access Initiative.
But the girls had also had run-ins with local people.
Oli Cohen, a close friend of Katie, said: “The girls were walking through the town singing during Ramadan when a Muslim lady came up to her shouting. She lost her temper and reacted violently - and hit her in the face for singing.
“They were both extremely shaken up by it. I think white north London Jewish girls walking around in Zanzibar always make them a target as it's a Muslim country.”
Bashir Ismail, of Art in Tanzania, said the girls had argued with a nearby shop owner a few days ago when they went for groceries.
He said that when the attack happened at around 7pm on Wednesday: “The two attackers passed by several white tourists in the area and threw acid after reaching closer to them which raises suspicion of a planned attack.”
Jakaya Kikwete, Tanzania's president, visited the two teenagers at the Aga Khan Hospital in Dar es Salaam, to which they had been flown from Zanzibar, and described their ordeal as “a shameful attack that tarnishes the image of our country”.
A medical orderly who helped treat the two women on Thursday said he expected them to make a full recovery with the right treatment.
"It has not penetrated deep tissue, it would have been painful but they'll likely make a full recovery," he said.
Miss Trup and Miss Gee pictured after the attack (Sky News)
The attack on the women came at the end of the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan, and as people began to celebrate the Eid holiday.
Zanzibar has long been a favoured holiday destination for foreign tourists, and there have rarely been tensions between the majority Muslim population and holidaymakers relaxing in bikinis on beaches or drinking in bars.
The semi-autonomous Zanzibar archipelago lies 20 miles off the Tanzanian mainland.
The Foreign Office travel advice for Tanzania warns that although most visits to the country are trouble-free, "violent and armed crime is increasing".
The advice on its website says: "Mugging, bag snatching (especially from passing cars) and robbery have increased throughout the country."
It adds: "In Zanzibar incidents have taken place in Stone Town and on popular tourist beaches."
A street in Stone Town, Zanzibar, listed as a world heritage site by UNESCO (AFP/Getty Images) |
Following the deadly attacks in Norway, anti-Muslim bloggers immediately tried to distance themselves from right-wing anti-Muslim terrorist Anders Breivik.But now some of these anti-Muslim activists are beginning to vilify the participants in the progressive youth summit near Oslo where scores were killed and the burgeoning multicultural youth political culture that they embodied.
Daniel Greenfield of the David Horowitz Freedom Center wrote in Horowitz’s FrontPageMag that the Labor Party youth camp was filled with “indoctrination of hate” and that Breivik would’ve fit right in:
How can we make sense of this? Glenn Beck compared the Workers Youth League camp to a Hitler Youth camp. He was close, but not entirely right. The roots of the Workers Youth League are actually Communist. Norway’s Labour Party was a member of the Communist International. The Workers Youth League was formed by the merger of the Left Communist Youth League and the Socialist Youth League of Norway. We often use “Communist” as a pejorative– but in this case the Utoya camp, literally was a Communist youth camp. The day before the massacre, Norwegian Foreign Minister Gahre-Store visited the camp and was greeted with banners calling for a boycott of Israel, and Gahre-Store responded with an Anti-Israel speech to cheers from the campers. There is something ominous about such indoctrination of hate. It is not quite on the level of the Hitler Youth, but neither is it a world apart. In the 1930′s, Germans were encouraged to blame their problems on the Jews. In this decade, Norwegians are encouraged to blame their problems on the Jews. There are few children of workers at the Workers Youth League camp. They are for the most part the children of the party, the sons and daughters of bureaucrats and party leaders, training the next generation to perpetrate the Labour Party state. Breivik came from that same background. The son of the left wing elite. And if his parents’ marriage had not collapsed, with the young boy allotting a share of the blame to the Labour Party, he would likely have a comfortable spot in the socialist state. Breivik may have turned against his roots, but the idea that terroristic violence is a legitimate solution is one that he could have easily picked up on the left.
Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs labeled the youth camp an “anti-Semitic indoctrination center” that is “not far off” from the Hitler Youth. Lee Fang at Think Progress notes that a photo caption in Geller’s original blog entry – which has since been edited — lamented that the campers’ faces “are more MIddle [sic] Eastern or mixed than pure Norwegian”: |
CLOSE President-elect Donald Trump praised Russian President Vladimir Putin for deciding not to retaliate against U.S. sanctions over Russian hacking during the election.
President-elect Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin (Photo11: AP)
Donald Trump praised Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday for holding off on retaliation for U.S. sanctions regarding Russian hacking during the presidential election.
"Great move on delay (by V. Putin) - I always knew he was very smart!" the president-elect tweeted mid-day.
Great move on delay (by V. Putin) - I always knew he was very smart! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 30, 2016
The Russian embassy in the United States retweeted Trump's post.
The praise came a day after President Obama, responding to Russian efforts to intervene in the 2016 election via cyber-espionage, announced economic sanctions on Russian intelligence officials and institutions, the expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats suspected of being spies, and the shuttering of two Russian facilities in the United States.
While Russian officials recommended expelling U.S. officials from their country, Putin announced Friday he would not do so, partly in deference to the incoming Trump administration.
Trump has questioned whether Russia was involved in hacking the emails of Democratic Party officials, and he brushed off the sanctions imposed by Obama.
“It's time for our country to move on to bigger and better things," Trump said in a statement Thursday night.
He added, "nevertheless, in the interest of our country and its great people, I will meet with leaders of the intelligence community next week in order to be updated on the facts of this situation."
That briefing will be scheduled for next week, Trump transition spokesman Sean Spicer said.
Read more:
U.S. intelligence officials have accused the Russians of hacking Democratic emails in an effort to help Trump win the election.
While Putin and Russia deny the allegations, the Obama administration is a preparing a report on the cyber attacks, and Congress is likely to conduct an investigation of its own.
During the campaign, Democrats said Trump was too friendly with Putin; Trump said he only wants to improve U.S.-Russian relations.
Trump tweeted about the Russian leader on a day in which he continued to hold meetings at his Mar-a-Lago estate in South Florida about plans for his inauguration and administration.
The president-elect has four Cabinet-level slots to fill: director of National Intelligence, secretary of Agriculture, U.S. trade representative and secretary of Veterans Affairs.
Trump is also planning a New Year's Eve reception at Mar-a-Lago, with guests including Sylvester Stallone and Quincy Jones.
The president-elect is scheduled to return to New York City on New Year's Day.
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2hADn5m |
Historical Timeline — Farmers & the Land
17th-18th Centuries
17th century
Small land grants commonly made to individual settlers; large tracts often granted to well-connected colonists
1607
First permanent English settlement at Jamestown, Virginia
1619
First African slaves brought to Virginia; by 1700, slaves are displacing southern indentured servants
18th century
English farmers settle in New England villages; Dutch, German, Swedish, Scotch-Irish, and English farmers settle on isolated Middle Colony farmsteads; English and some French farmers settle on plantations in tidewater and on isolated Southern Colony Farmsteads in Piedmont; Spanish immigrants, mostly lower middle-class and indentured servants, settle the Southwest and California.
1776
Continental Congress offers land grants for service in the Continental Army
1785, 1787
Ordinances of 1785 and 1787 provide for survey, sale, and government of northwestern lands
1790
Total population: 3,929,214; farmers 90% of labor force; U.S. area settled extends westward on average of 255 miles; parts of the frontier cross the Appalachians
1796
Public Land Act authorizes Federal land sales to the public in minimum 640-acre plots at $2 per acre of credit.
1800
1800
Total Population: 5,308,483
1803
Louisiana Purchase
1810
Total population: 7,239,881
1819
Florida and other land acquired through treaty with Spain
1820
1820
Total population: 9,638,453 ; Land Law allows as little as 80 acres of public land for a minimum price of $1.25 an acre; credit system abolished
1830
Total population: 12,866,020 ; Mississippi River forms the approximate frontier boundary
1830-37
Land speculation boom
1839
Anti-rent war in New York, a protest against the continued collection of quitrents
1840
1840
Total population: 17,069,453; farm population; 9,012,000 (est.); farmers 69% of labor force
1841
Pre-emption Act gives squatters first rights to buy land
1845-55
Potato famine in Ireland and the German Revolution of 1848 greatly increase immigration
1845-53
Texas, Oregon, the Mexican cession, and the Gadsden Purchase added to the Union
1849
Gold Rush
1850
Total population: 23,191,786; farm population; 11,680,000 (est.); farmers 64% of labor force; Number of farms: 1,449,000; average acres: 203
1850s
Successful farming on the prairies begins; with the California gold rush, the frontier extends to the Pacific coast
1850-62
Free land is a vital rural issue
1854
Graduation Act reduces price of unsold public lands
1860
1860
Total population: 31,443,321; farm population: 15,141,000 (est.); farmers 58% of labor force; Number of farms: 2,044,000; average acres: 199
1862
Homestead Act grants 160 acres to settlers who have worked the land 5 years
1865-70
Sharecropping system in the South replaces the old slave plantation system 1865-90 Influx of Scandinavian immigrants
1866-77
Cattle boom accelerates settlement of Great Plains; range wars develop between farmers and ranchers
1870
Total population: 38,558,371; farm population: 18,373,000 (est.); farmers 53% of labor force; Number of farms: 2,660,000; average acres: 153
1880
1880
Total population: 50,155,783; farm population: 22,981,000 (est.); farmers 49% of labor force; Number of farms: 4,009,000; average acres: 134; Most humid land already settled; heavy agricultural settlement on the Great Plains begins
1880-1914
Most immigrants are from southern and eastern Europe
1887-97
Drought reduces settlement on the Great Plains
1890s
Increases in land under cultivation and number of immigrants becoming farmers boost agricultural output
1890
Total population: 62,941,714; farm population: 29,414,000 (est.); farmers 43% of labor force; Number of farms: 4,565,000; average acres: 136; Census shows that the frontier settlement is over
1891
President authorized to set aside public lands as forest reserves
1900
1900
Total population: 75,994,266; farm population: 29,414,000 (est.); farmers 38% of labor force; Number of farms: 5,740,000; average acres: 147
1900-20
Continued agricultural settlement on the Great Plains
1902
Reclamation Act
1905-07
Policy of reserving timberlands inaugurated on a large scale
1905
Forest Service created
1910
1910
Total population: 91,972,266; farm population: 32,077,000 (est.); farmers 31% of labor force; Number of farms: 6,366,000; average acres: 138
1909-20
Dryland farming boom on the Great Plains
1911-17
Immigration of agricultural workers from Mexico
1916
Stock Raising Homestead Act
1920
1920
Total population: 105,710,620; farm population: 31,614,269; farmers 27% of labor force; Number of farms: 6,454,000; average acres: 148
1924
Immigration Act greatly reduces number of new immigrants
1930
1930
Total population: 122,775,046; farm population: 30,455,350; farmers 21% of labor force; Number of farms: 6,295,000; average acres: 157; irrigated acres: 14,633,252
1932-36
Drought and dust-bowl conditions develop
1934
Executive orders withdraw public lands from settlement, location, sale, or entry; Taylor Grazing Act
1940
1940
Total population: 131,820,000; farm population: 30,840,000; farmers 18% of labor force; Number of farms: 6,102,000; average acres: 175; irrigated acres: 17,942,968
1940s
Many former southern sharecroppers migrate to war-related jobs in cities
1950
1950
Total population: 151,132,000; farm population: 25,058,000; farmers 12.2% of labor force; Number of farms: 5,388,000; average acres: 216; irrigated acres: 25,634,869
1956
Legislation provides for Great Plains Conservation Program
1960
1960
Total population: 180,007,000; farm population: 15,635,000; farmers 8.3% of labor force; Number of farms: 3,711,000; average acres: 303; irrigated acres: 33,829,000
1960s
State legislation to keep land in farming increases
1964
Wilderness Act
1970
1970
Total population: 204,335,000; farm population: 9,712,000; farmers 4.6% of labor force; Number of farms: 2.780, 000; average acres: 390
1972
Clean Water Act
1980
1980
Total population: 227,020,000; farm population: 6,051,000; farmers 3.4% of labor force; Number of farms: 2,439,510; average acres: 426; irrigated acres: 50,350,000 (1978)
1980s
For the first time since the 19th century, foreigners (Europeans and Japanese primarily) begin to purchase significant acreages of farmland and ranchland
1986
The Southeast's worst summer drought on record takes a severe toll on many farmers
1987
Farmland values bottom out after a 6-year decline, signaling both a turnaround in the farm economy and increased competition with other countries' exports
1988
Scientists warn that global warming may affect the future viability of American farming; one of the worst droughts in the Nation's history hits Midwestern farmers
1990-2000
1990
Total population: 261,423,000; farm population: 2,987,552; farmers 2.6% of labor force; Number of farms: 2,143,150; average acres: 461; irrigated acres: 49,404,000 (1992)
1991
Farm entrepreneurial population: 5,024,000
1998
Number of farms: 2.19 million; average acres: 435
1990
Rural counties gain population after losing ground in the 1980s |
“Game of Thrones” ruled the 2016 Emmys with 12 wins, including awards for Best Drama Series, Best Directing (Miguel Sapochnik) and Best Writing (David Benioff and D.B. Weiss) for “Battle of the Bastards.” That ties the record it set last year, when it scored the most Emmy wins for a series in a single season. The show now also holds the record as the scripted primetime series with the most wins (38 in total), beating “Frasier,” which had 37.
“We loved ‘Frasier’ and he had a long run,” showrunner David Benioff joked backstage after the show’s Best Drama win. “We’re sure someone will come along and take [the record] from us, but hopefully not until we’re all dead.”
Anticipation is high for Season 7, and when asked what we can expect from the penultimate year of the show, Weiss wryly said, “it will be bigger, and it will be better, and it will also be worse, but mostly better.”
When asked about the possibility of a prequel or spinoff following the end of the series, Benioff tempered expectations — asking reporters to pose that question to author George R. R. Martin, and implying that he and Weiss would bow out of the show once “Thrones” reached its conclusion: “It’s a great world, I’m sure there will be other series set in Westeros, but for us, this is it.”
Related Emmys: The Good, The Bad and the WTF - Watch Video 'Game of Thrones' Final Season, 'Deadwood' Movie, 'Watchmen' Series Teased in Trailer
Martin allowed that there might be a possibility for another series somewhere down the line, noting, “I do have thousands of pages of fake history of everything that led up to ‘Game of Thrones…’ There’s a lot of material there and I’m still writing more. But for now we still have two seasons to finish and I still have two books to finish, so it’s all speculation.”
The show entered this year’s Emmy Awards ceremony already leading the pack, having won nine statues from the Creative Arts Emmys last weekend, a haul that allowed “Thrones” to surpass “The West Wing” and “Hill Street Blues” and claim the record for the drama series with the most wins in Emmy history.
The HBO drama fell short in the acting categories, though stars Peter Dinklage, Kit Harington, Emilia Clarke, Lena Headey, and Maisie Williams got nods in their supporting roles — potentially cancelling each other out, with “Downton Abbey’s” Maggie Smith and “Bloodline’s” Ben Mendelsohn taking the gongs.
“Thrones” nabbed eight awards at last year’s Creative Arts Emmys and four during the Emmys telecast, including its first win for Best Drama, and a second prize for Supporting Actor Peter Dinklage, who previously won for his role as Tyrion Lannister in 2011.
The show will return for Season 7 in the fall of 2017. |
Want to meet Ivan Rakitić when he comes to Des Moines? Here’s everything you need to know to make that happen! One of the game’s rising stars, Ivan is a key part of the Croatian national team and the world’s most famous team – FC Barcelona. Since joining Barça in 2014, the midfielder has scored 20 goals, including this one in the 2015 UEFA Champions League Final. Oberto Brands is the presenting sponsor of his visit, hosted by the Menace in partnership with Elite Soccer Experiences. THE SCHEDULE Friday, June 16 – First day of Ivan’s camp at Aliber Soccer Complex
Friday, June 16 at 11:30 a.m. – Ivan meets with media at Aliber Soccer Complex
Saturday, June 17 – Second and final day of the camp
Saturday, June 17 at 4 p.m. – Gates open at Valley Stadium
Saturday, June 17 at 5 p.m. – Iowa High School All-Star Game (boys)
Saturday, June 17 at 6 p.m. – Bidding opens for Silent Auction of items autographed by Ivan
Saturday, June 17 at 6:30 p.m. – The start of the V.I.P. experience at Valley Stadium
Saturday, June 17 at 7:30 p.m. – Des Moines Menace vs. Thunder Bay Chill
Saturday, June 17 at approximately 8:15 p.m. – Ivan makes an appearance on the field during halftime.
Saturday, June 17 at approximately 8:45 – Bidding for the Silent Auction closes (60 minutes into the Menace's match)
Saturday, June 17 at approximately 9 p.m. – Silent Auction winners announced (by the 75th minute of the match) THE CAMP Boys and girls, ages 7-19, are invited to join Ivan for two mornings of camp.
Camp times are 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. for ages 7-10; 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. for ages 11-14; and 10 a.m. to noon for ages 15-19.
Sign up here to join Ivan at camp!
Each participant will receive an autograph, a ticket for the June 17 game, and a training top provided by Soccer Master.
Online registration closes at 5 p.m. on Thursday, June 15. You can register at the camp site for an additional $20 ($180 total). THE V.I.P. EXPERIENCE Register here for your chance to meet Ivan on June 17 at Valley Stadium.
Your V.I.P. experience includes a game ticket, an autograph and a photograph.
All participants age 6 and older must have an individual V.I.P. pass to be part of the line for autographs and photographs.
Ivan will be meeting with V.I.P. members from 6:30 p.m. until halftime of the Menace’s match against Thunder Bay.
Menace staff will greet V.I.P. members at a check-in table on the east side of the stadium (near the Kids’ Zone).
Order by Monday, June 12, and we’ll mail your ticket(s) and V.I.P. pass(es).
Online registration closes at 5 p.m. on Friday, June 16. If you register from June 13 to June 16, we’ll have your ticket(s) and pass(es) at Will Call on June 17.
At the game on June 17, fans can purchase a $40 V.I.P. pass (not including a game ticket) by 8 p.m. at the ticket window or the merchandise stand.
Please plan on supplying your own camera or smartphone; a Menace staff member will be available to take pictures.
Click here to buy additional tickets ($10 for ages 6 and older). THE SILENT AUCTION On Saturday at Valley Stadium, from 6 p.m. until the 60-minute mark of the Menace's match, fans will have the opportunity to bid on exclusive items autographed by Ivan
Signed items will include two FC Barcelona jerseys, two Croatia national team jerseys and two pair of Ivan's cleats.
We will announce the silent-auction winners before the end of the match.
Proceeds benefit the Menace Soccer Foundation. ONE MORE WAY TO GET IVAN'S AUTOGRAPH Play Chuck-for-a-Buck during halftime of the Menace's match.
Each of the night's Chuck-for-a-Buck winners will receive a Menace soccer ball signed by Ivan, in addition to the respective sponsor's prize. LINKS Ivan’s bio page on FCBarcelona.com
The Menace’s announcement
Follow @IvanRakitic on Instagram (8 million followers)
Follow @IvanRakitic on Twitter (680,000 followers)
Video: Ivan’s goal in the 2017 El Classico |
Microsoft Launches Tool to Make It Easy to See All Its Patents
Just ahead of a self-imposed deadline, Microsoft on Thursday went live with an online tool to search and view the company’s patents.
General Counsel Brad Smith had said last month that the Patent Tracker would be available by April 1.
“Transparency regarding patent ownership is an important part of a well-functioning patent system,” Smith wrote in a blog post. “One of the fundamental objectives of the patent system is to provide notice regarding inventions — not only the nature of what has been invented but who owns the patent.”
The tool appears to have more limited search capabilities than the patent office’s own tool, however, limiting searches to the patent name, number, region and whether it is directly assigned to Microsoft. The company is also making available all of its patents in one big downloadable list.
Microsoft is among the biggest applicants for — and recipients of — U.S. patents. The company has over the past decade worked to build a sizable business licensing out its technology and has also signed a slew of patent cross-licensing deals.
The software maker has sought to license its technology for those providing rival operating systems that it says make use of Windows technology including both Linux and Android.
Where companies have not been willing to license, Microsoft has been known to go to court, including in its ongoing battle with Google’s Motorola Mobility unit. |
October 14, 2011
The author’s son tucks into the Challah french toast, a great example of Sabrina’s ample portions.
Judging by the buzz on community listserves, Sabrina’s Cafe‘s new location at 34th and Powelton already has fans in the area. The two older Sabrina’s locations – the Italian Market and Fairmount/Art Museum district – get rapturous word of mouth (and many 4-star reviews by Google users). Except among those who hate waiting for Sunday brunch, Sabrina’s has a reputation for delicious, vivid, and generously portioned meals.
Last Thursday at noon, it appeared that the new Sabrina’s Powelton location had already become a Drexel faculty favorite. Amongst the student/advisor pairs were larger groups of research teams or faculty committees. On the pleasant enclosed wrap-around porch, service was brisk, friendly, and professional.
I ordered the Islander sandwich ($12.99), grilled Ahi tuna on brioche. The generous portion of fresh tuna was perfectly cooked to order (mine: medium rare), and topped with balsamic-spiked caramelized onions and wasabi mayo. The brioche was fresh (breads are by LeBus and Sarcone’s). I substituted polenta fries (additional $1.79) for the usual potato fries, and found they were no crispier than average fried polenta, and more fork- than finger-food. The slaw was strictly for show: colorful but underdressed. My companion’s Southwest Buffalo Chicken Cobb Salad (large: $14.89), dominated the table with its spicy buffalo garlic chicken on a mountain of fresh veggies – including hot jalapeno slices – tossed with chipotle blue cheese dressing. After a bite of that exploded on my palate, my wan polenta fries faded into obscurity. The Southwest salad exemplified the Sabrina’s aesthetic: bright colors, intense flavors, and an almost overwhelming volume of food. Expect leftovers (or order the small version for $9.99).
All-day breakfast is another Sabrina’s thing. At one point a waiter swept by with plates of stuffed French toast the size of nine-inch layer cakes. My son and I made a repeat visit the following Saturday to try it. Until a regular brunch crowd coalesces at Powelton, the full brunch menu with the Phillies-themed specials will not be available — expect just the daily breakfast menu, plus two specials. We ordered the thick-cut Challah french toast ($11.95) stuffed with cream cheese, caramel, cinnamon bun pieces, orange preserve, pecans, and butterscotch chips(!), served with peach-honey syrup. It was magnificent. The cinnamon bun pieces were MIA (or maybe mushed up in the filling?) but so much was going on that we hardly missed them. The other special was pumpkin pancakes topped with raspberry pound cake topping and crumbled golden oreos, served with raspberry-cinnamon butter and berry orange syrup ($11.94). I was temped, but I had to dial it back. The small fruit cup ($3.99) of fresh-cut pineapple, cantaloupe, and supermarket strawberries provides a decent place-holder for dieters, sharers, and minimalists.
Overall, the kitchen and waitstaff are attentive and careful, the dining areas are clean and cheerful, and the menu is amped-up diner food with fresh ingredients and a touch of whimsy. It’s comfort food: if you are not worrying about your waistline or fretting about the politics of consumption, you will love your experience at Sabrina’s.
There’s two-hour street parking, but you’d be better off biking or taking the Green Line followed by a short hike through the Drexel campus. Also note that they don’t take reservations but they do provide daily call-ahead seating, which bumps you to the front of the line when you arrive. Also, unlike the other two locations, the Drexel location doesn’t allow BYOB, so leave the bloody mary mix at home. Two minor requests to management: round up the prices (I know it’s a $13 sandwich — skip the 99 cents nonsense) and don’t forget to water the hanging plants!
– Jen
Sabrina’s Cafe, 227 N 34th St.
Breakfast & Brunch Restaurant
Hours: Tuesday – Thursday (8 a.m. – 9 p.m.); Saturday – Friday (8 am – 10 p.m.);
Sunday & Monday (8 a.m. – 4 p.m.)
BYOB: No
Take Out: Yes
Kids-friendly: Yes |
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Employees of United Airlines marched through Denver’s city streets on Sunday to take part in the city’s annual LGBT Pride Festival.
This is the first of many Pride parades in which United employees will participate, including Chicago, Houston, New York City and San Francisco, cities that host United hubs.
Reuters quotes the executive vice president of communications and government affairs at United, Nene Foxhall, saying: “Pride Month is a special time to recognize the diverse and talented employees who make United a great place to work. We are proud to join our co-workers in celebrating this important month and will continue to build a workplace where all employees feel valued and supported.”
United has a history of supporting programs that promote LGBT awareness, inclusion and equality. The company is the official airlines of the 2014 Gay Games in Cleveland this August.The company also has partnerships with a range of LGBT organizations, including the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce, Equality Illinois and the International Gay and Lesbian Travel Association.
Human Rights Campaign named United as a “Best Place to Work,” earlier this year as well as a 100-percent rating in this year’s Corporate Equality Index for the third consecutive year as well as accolades from a number of other organizations local and national, which support equality and inclusion for LGBT employees. |
Introducing Moment 2.0 for iPhone and Pixel.
We believe that the future of photography is in your pocket. The best camera is the one you have with you, and that camera is your phone. At Moment, we want to make your phone work more like a camera.
These are our best products yet!
Battery Photo Case - The first battery case for mobile photography.
Photo Case - A thin, lens mountable case for picture takers.
All New Wide Lens - Our new aspherical lens that captures stunning images with edge to edge clarity.
Google Pixel
We are excited to finally announce new backer levels for Google Pixel and Pixel XL.
Our new Wide Lens captures stunning images on Pixel and with our new Photo Case, you can make your phone an even better camera. We are blown away with how sharp the Pixel camera is with our new Moment Wide Lens.
Wow, we've already received a lot of feedback to add devices beyond iPhone 7/7+, 6/6+, and Pixel/XL. To help guide us, please vote for what device you want us to support next.
Pick a reward, become a backer, and help us bring these new products to life. To say thank you, we offer the lowest possible price and deliver to you before anyone else.
Battery Case | Photo Case | Wide Lens | Design | Status | We Are Moment
Battery Photo Case
The more we shoot, the more battery we require. Constantly on the go, we don’t always have time to find a wall plug, or space to carry a pocket full of power banks. So we created a new type of battery case that brings power and photography together like never before.
Power To The People
Starting with the battery, we wanted a case that let you shoot all day. One that delivered on the promise of power without the extra bulk.
Using a custom design, the iPhone 7+ Case packs a 3500 mAh battery and the iPhone 7 carries a 2500 mAH battery. This translates into more than a 100% recharge of your phone. Using all the available length and width within the case, we focused on adding the thinnest possible battery with maximum performance.
Beyond battery size, we wanted to make the case easy to use. It automatically keeps your phone charged whenever it’s inside. Because we like to provide a little extra control, you can turn charging settings on and off inside the Moment App, something most other battery cases don’t provide.
A Fast, DSLR-Like Shutter Button
Shooting with a button can be faster than tapping the screen, especially if your subject is moving. When you’re shooting with one hand, it’s always awkward trying to hold onto the phone and touch the screen at once.
Using the Moment App, you can half-press the shutter button to lock the subject and full press to shoot. In the Apple camera app you can full press to shoot. In both apps, pressing and holding unlocks burst mode.
In the first Moment Case we had a bluetooth shutter button. In this case, we got rid of bluetooth and redesigned the experience to use the lighting connector. This makes the Moment Shutter button 75% faster than our previous case, now matching the speed of the native camera app.
Our engineers have worked hard to make the shutter button incredibly responsive, just like you would expect from a high end camera.
Attach The World’s Best Glass
We made the mounting of a Moment lens easier, stronger, and more reliable.
The larger lens diameter on the iPhone 7 and the dual lenses on the the 7+ forced us to redesign the Moment lens interface. Slightly larger, we now have enough room to make an interface that clicks into place. Not only is it easier to mount a Moment lens, but for the first time you can put our glass over the Wide or Tele lens on the iPhone 7+.
This opens up the ability to take even more creative shots.
Wear Your Camera
Cameras are meant to be worn, and a phone camera is no exception. No longer stuck in your pocket, you can wear your case on your wrist, around your neck, inside your jacket, or outside your dress.
Thin, Strong And Easy To Shoot
When designing the Battery Photo Case, we wanted to create a camera body that added minimal bulk to your phone, provided enough protection for adventure, and enabled one handed shooting.
The location of the shutter button is always within reach, even for ‘tiny hands.’ While the finely textured surface provides better grip in every kind of weather.
Having spent months iterating on the smallest of details, we believe this the thinnest, most usable battery case for people who love to take pictures.
Works With Your Apple Accessories (except lighting headphones)
Where other battery cases use a micro-USB connector and their own power cables, we designed the Battery Photo Case with a lighting connector, enabling you to use your standard Apple cables. Plug your case into the wall to recharge or into your laptop to recharge and sync.
There is one universal limitation for all third party battery cases... audio can not pass through the connector. This means you can’t use headphones that plug into the lightning port. You can use wireless headphones, which Apple already recommends for the new iPhone 7 devices. We are sorry in advance, as we would have loved to support this.
No random USB cables to forget, just plug in and hit the road.
The Details
iPhone 7 Case Comparison
iPhone 7+ Case Comparison
Photo Case The Photo Case is everything we love about minimal photography. Adding only 3mm in thickness to your phone, this is the thinnest lens mountable case we’ve ever made. It’s slim and unobtrusive in your pocket, yet readily available when you want to shoot.
To all the customers who asked for a thin, non-electronic Moment case — this one’s for you.
Wide Lens
Moment lenses have always been about combining world class lens design with cinema quality glass, to create the best image possible. Our new Moment Wide is without a doubt the best lens we’ve ever made.
When Apple introduced iPhone 7, they changed the landscape of mobile photography. Their use of high speed F/1.8, next generation 12MP sensors, and optical image stabilization brought a new level of image quality to your pocket. Although our existing lenses will work with iPhone 7, we ultimately learned that we were maxing out their optical capability. In order to deliver the best quality imaginable, our only choice was to redesign our glass from the ground up.
Sharper Edge To Edge
Using our proprietary design process, we have created a stunning aspheric lens that delivers exceptional edge to edge image quality. This all-glass asphere improves on our already class-leading distortion correction and maintains razor sharp images on iPhone’s F/1.8 aperture.
We went through many design iterations until we came to what we believe is the best mobile photography lens in the world.
Photos by: Jonathan Sweet, Alex Tran and Matt Rick
A Touch Bigger
In order to accommodate the larger iPhone aperture, we made this lens slightly bigger, enabling us to take advantage of every photon without compromise. A larger lens also makes the optics more tolerant to misalignment, so unwanted dark corners are a thing of the past.
By opening up the optics with this lens, we are now able to deliver edge to edge clarity on iPhone 7, Google Pixel, and the Galaxy S7.
Easier To Align
Thank you to our amazing customers we received plenty of feedback about how to make the new lens interface easier to use. With slightly larger tabs, better visual markings, a spring loaded detent, you will have more confidence when installing and shooting with Moment.
The new lens interface doesn’t just apply to the new Wide Lens. We’ve brought this new interface to our Tele, Superfish, and Macro Lenses.
But don’t worry, if you are an existing Moment lens owner we have created a custom adaptor so your existing lenses will now work with the new cases.
New Wide Lens Specs
Existing Moment Lenses
Same glass, better mounting interface.
Along with the new Wide Lens we are upgrading all of our existing lenses to the new mounting interface. This means if you select the Tele, Superfish, or Macro lens with your backer level, it will include the new and improved V2 interface.
If you are an existing Moment lens owner, don’t worry. We have created a small adapter which you can permanently attach to your existing lenses, making them compatible with both the Photo Case and the Battery Photo Case. If you back the project, we will provide this adapter free of charge.
Design Process
Every Moment product starts with the customer. From capturing to sharing, we’ve spent the past three years connecting, listening and learning from thousands of our own customers. Each with slightly different needs, but all with a shared desire to capture better images, faster. This research started in the field with people who love to shoot with their phones. From amateurs to professionals, picture takers to filmers, we studied their entire customer journey well before we started designing any solutions. Our research resulted in a few consistent patterns. It gave us the insight that customers either wanted their case to do more, or they wanted it to do less. From this, two new projects were born… the Simple Case and Super Case. Improved Ergonomics Phones continue to get thinner and thinner, which is perfect for our pockets but challenging for those of us who like to take pictures. The thinner they get, the harder they are to hold, especially in varying weather conditions. Going back to original cameras we spent a lot of time re-studying how people hold a camera versus a phone. How they use a button versus their fingers. And when they shoot in landscape orientation versus portrait. We created dozens of different prototypes, testing button locations, sizes, orientations, shapes, and forms. We looked at sharp phone edges versus rounded curves. Pronounced grips versus subtle ones. We also spent time testing these in the wild, to understand how they worked in various temperatures and weather conditions. Minimizing Size Different from traditional cameras, thickness is everything when it comes to mobile photography. Because the phone lives in our pocket for most of the day we realized that every millimeter added to the back of the phone would matter. The Simple Case was a study in subtraction. Starting with the thickest part of the case, the lens interface, we started concepting a new interface that was both thinner and stronger. Next we rethought the strap attachment, creating solutions that made the attachment easier to use while the phone is inside. Lastly we explored how much plastic versus TPE rubber would be required to provide enough protection from the occasional drop, without adding unnecessary bulk. The Super Case started with a study of batteries. The entire architecture of the case was based on the different battery shapes available and how we could minimize thickness. Going through dozens of off-the-shelf batteries, we came to realize that a custom solution was the only way to achieve the thinness we desired. Fix What’s Weak In making the first Moment Case, one of the core lessons we learned is that reliability is everything. Moments can’t be missed because a lens doesn’t attach or a case doesn’t connect. Tearing down our own products and reading through hundreds of customer emails, we looked at every weakness in our current user experience. Of everything we decided to tackle, the lens interface and shutter button were our biggest design challenges. The wider lenses on the iPhone 7 and the dual lenses on the 7+ forced us to rethink our metal on metal lens interface. A solution that enabled Moment lenses to work with and without a case, its limitations could be seen over time. Now by removing the thin metal plates were free to rethink how we could make the interface easier to use, stronger to locking a lens into place, and less likely to wear over time. Wanting to deliver the speed of a DSLR shutter button we started over with the Moment shutter button. From the shape of the button, to how it sits in the phone, to the technology behind it, we iterated through dozens of electro-mechanical solutions. The addition of a battery enabled us to explore the lighting connector, something that dramatically improved speed and removed any potential issues with connectivity. At the same time, we looked at new parts and a different mechanical structure to deliver the half-press and full-press that we know and love from our DSLR cameras. Let The Glass Speak When designing mobile lenses, size is the number one discussion. The larger the lens, the more glass you can use, and the better the image quality. The desire for more glass is in direct contrast to the convenience for your pocket. Looking at our current lenses we went back to making models of different lens sizes. From small to really large we put these models in pockets, hands, and bags to see how their size impacted the user experience. At the same time our lens engineers started redesigning the wide lens against the new F1.8 aperture. By being able to widen the first element, we had a lot more opportunity to improve the quality of the lens. Battling with size versus image quality, we went through many design iterations until we came to what we believe is the best wide angle mobile lens in the world. Project Status
This is the most ambitious project we have ever embarked upon at Moment. Our team has made more complicated products at previous companies, but manufacturing hardware is still hard. We recognize that not everything will go according to plan. Our promise to you is that we will always be transparent and honest about the details of the project.
Before coming to Kickstarter we made multiple prototypes of each product, went through rounds of manufacturing feedback with our partners, and built out a detailed schedule. All of this work gives us confidence in our ability to deliver the project.
Despite all of this, there are still risks ahead. The Battery Photo Case is the most technically advanced product with complicated tooling, rigorous testing, certifications, and MFI compliance. We have attempted to layer in sufficient time for each phase, but if we fail along the way it could delay our delivery date.
We are now ready to kick off tooling and start the manufacturing process.
We Are Moment
We love Kickstarter.
This amazing community enabled us to turn an idea into a small company of 20. Each of us from different backgrounds, we hold a shared purpose to empower the creative in everybody.
Coming back to Kickstarter to launch our latest project is both exciting and nerve racking. The next chapter of Moment has been a work in progress for many months, and we’re excited to hear what you think about it.
We have poured our hearts, minds, and weekends into this project because deep down we believe that once you use these products you will fall in love with mobile photography all over again.
We hope you join us on this journey to make your phone an even better camera.
Manufacturing a new product is the riskiest and most expensive phase of the journey, so the money we are raising goes directly towards covering our tooling and upfront manufacturing costs.
With your support, we can take the next step together in making it even easier to take better pictures with our phones.
We would love to thank our family, friends, and everyone who has helped throughout the journey. Your feedback, support, and positive encouragement has been incredibly inspiring.
James Barkman, Henry Romano, Nathan Yoder, Garret Van Swearingen, Jamie Finch, Kari Davidson, EJ Haynes, Kyle Babcock, Jessica Vorng, Jessie Zou, Maïka Collette, Casey Warren & Mindcastle
Video Credits
Lead Camera: Caleb Babcock
Secondary Camera: Zach Reed
Edit: Caleb Babcock
Music: Icelanders, Utah
Photography Credits: Julia Manchik, Erica Simas, Zach Reed, Melissa Leith, Audrey Louchart
Disclaimer - iPhone, Apple, and Apple logo are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. |
We talk a lot about the ways in which data science affects various businesses, organizations, and professions, but how are we actually preparing future data scientists? What training, if any, do university students get in this area? The answer may be obvious if students focus on math, statistics or hard science majors, but what about other disciplines?
I recently spoke with Drew Conway (@drewconway) about data science and academia, particularly in regards to social sciences. Conway, a PhD candidate in political science at New York University, will expand on some of these topics during a session at next month’s Strata Conference in New York.
Our interview follows.
How has the work of academia — particularly political science — been affected by technology, open data, and open source?
Drew Conway: There are fundamentally two separate questions in here, so I will try to address both of them. First is the question of how academic research has changed as a result of these technologies. And for my part, I can only really speak for how they have affected social science research. The open data movement has impacted research most notably in compressing the amount of time a researcher goes from the moment of inception (“hmm, that would be interesting to look at!”) to actually looking at data and searching for interesting patterns. This is especially true of the open data movement happening at the local, state and federal government levels.
Only a few years ago, the task of identifying, collecting, and normalizing these data would have taken months, if not years. This meant that a researcher could have spent all of that time and effort only to find out that their hypothesis was wrong and that — in fact — there was nothing to be found in a given dataset. The richness of data made available through open data allows for a much more rapid research cycle, and hopefully a greater breadth of topics being researched.
Open source has also had a tremendous impact on how academics do research. First, open source tools for performing statistical analysis, such as R and Python, have robust communities around them. Academics can develop and share code within their niche research area, and as a result the entire community benefits from their effort. Moreover, the philosophy of open source has started to enter into the framework of research. That is, academics are becoming much more open to the idea of sharing data and code at early stages of a research project. Also, many journals in the social sciences are now requiring that authors provide replication code and data.
The second piece of the question is how these technologies affect the dissemination of research. In this case blogs have becoming the de facto source for early access to new research, or scientific debate. In my own discipline, The Monkey Cage is most political scientists’ first source for new research. What is fantastic about the Monkey Cage, and other academic blogs, is that they are not only ready by other academics. Journalists, policy makers, and engaged citizens can also interact with academics in this way — something that was not possible before these academic blogs became mainstream.
Let’s sidestep the history of the discipline and debates about what constitutes a hard or soft science. But as its name suggests, “political science” has long been interested in models, statistics, quantifiable data and so on. Has the discipline been affected by the rise of data science and big data?
Drew Conway: The impact of big data has been slow, but there are a few champions who are doing really interesting work. Political science, at its core, is most interested in understanding how people collectively make decisions, and as researchers we attempt to build models and collect data to that end. As such, the massive data on social interactions being generated by social media services like Facebook and Twitter present unprecedented opportunities for research.
While some academics have been able to leverage this data for interesting work, there seems to be a clash between these services’ terms of service and with the desire for scientists to collect data and generate reproducible findings from this data. I wrote about my own experience using Twitter data for research, but there are many others researchers from all disciplines that have run into similar problems.
With respect to how academics have been impacted by data science, I think the impact has mostly flowed in the other direction. One major component of data science is the ability to extract insight from data using tools from math, statistics and computer science. Most of this is informed by the work of academics, and not the other way around. That said, as more academic researchers become interested in examining large-scale datasets (on the order of Twitter or Facebook), many of the technical skills of data science will have to be acquired by academics.
How does data science change the work of the grad student — in terms of necessary skills but also in terms of access to information/informants?
Drew Conway: Unfortunately, having sophisticated technical skills, i.e., those of a data scientist, are still undervalued in academia. Being involved in open-source projects, or producing statistical software is not something that will help a graduate student land a high-profile academic job, or help a young faculty member get tenure. Publications are still the currency of success, and that — as I mentioned — clashes with the data-sharing policies of many large social media services.
Graduate students and faculty do themselves a disservice by not actively staying technically relevant. As so much more data gets pushed into the open, I believe basic data hacking skills — scraping, cleaning, and visualization — will be prerequisites to any academic research project. But, then again, I’ve always been a weird academic, double majoring in computer science and political science as an undergrad
How does the rise of data science and its spread beyond the realm of math and statistics change the world of technology, either from an academic or entrepreneurial perspective?
Drew Conway: From an entrepreneurial perspective I think it has dramatically changed the way new businesses think about building a team. Whether it is at Strata, or any of the other conferences in the same vein, you will see a glut of job openings or panels on how to “build a data team.” At present, people who have the blend of skills I associate with data science — hacking, math/stats, and substantive expertise — are a rare commodity. This dearth of talent, however, will be short-lived.
I see in my undergrads many more students who grew up with data and computing as ubiquitous parts of their lives. They’re interested in pursuing routes of study that provide them with data science skills, both in terms of technical competence, and also in creative outlets such as interactive design.
How does “human subjects compliance” work when you’re talking about “data” versus “people” — that’s an odd distinction, of course, and an inaccurate one at that. But I’m curious if some of the rules and regulations that govern research on humans account for research on humans’ data.
Drew Conway: I think it is an excellent question, and one that academe is still struggling to deal with. In some sense, mining social data that is freely available on the Internet provides researchers a way to sidestep traditional IRB regulation. I don’t think there’s anything ethically questionable about recording observations that are freely made public. That’s akin to observing the meanderings of people in a park.
Where things get interesting is when researchers use crowd sourcing technology, like Mechanical Turk, as a survey mechanism. Here, this is much more of a gray area. I suppose, technically, the Amazon terms of services covers researchers, but ethically this is something that would seem to me to fall within the scope of an IRB. Unfortunately, the likely outcome is that institutions won’t attempt to understand the difference until some problem arises.
This interview was edited and condensed.
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Mario games in film. For films based on the Mario games, see This article is about references to thegames in film. For films based on thegames, see List of television series and films
Due to the popularity of the Mario games, they have been commonly referenced in pop culture. Below is an incomplete list of times Mario or anything relating to the series has been mentioned or seen in a movie.
The kids are seen sitting in front of a television set playing World 5-1 in Super Mario Bros. 3 for the NES.
In one early scene, Donkey Kong can be heard in the background.
In the Dream Graveyard, a picture of Bowser losing while playing Game Boy can be seen alongside an NES controller.
When Alex goes to the toy store for gadgets, some DS games can be seen. The games are WarioWare: Touched!, Yoshi Touch & Go, Super Mario 64 DS, and Mario Kart DS.
In one scene, Alvin says to Ian, "It is on like Donkey Kong!"
At one point, Stifler says "It's on like Donkey Kong".
In one scene, Ted is seen playing Super Mario Bros. 3 on the NES. A copy of Donkey Kong Classics can also be seen on a shelf.
During a scene in the lunchroom, Billy (played by Adam Sandler) and one of his first grade peers get into a debate over Mortal Kombat and Donkey Kong.
Kid: Mortal Kombat, on the Sega Genesis, is the best video game ever. Billy: I disagree. It's a very good game, but I think Donkey Kong is the best game ever. Kid: Donkey Kong sucks! Billy: You know something? You suck! Kid: Mortal Kom- Billy: SHUT UP!
The Viruses which infect Wittgenstein resemble the ones seen in the Dr. Mario series.
In a scene, a chained trap being pulled out of Professor Poopypants's briefcase acts like a Chain Chomp.
During an interview with Mae Holland, the interviewer asks, "Mario or Sonic?", to which Holland replies, "Early Sonic, late Mario."
Sounds and music from Super Mario Bros. 3 can by heard while Kathy Winslow's brother plays NES.
When challenged by Gru to a dance fight, Bratt responds by saying "It's on like Donkey Kong!"
One scene has Rodney James playing Mario Kart DS on his Nintendo DS.
Also, when Greg and Rowley wear the patrol gear, Bowser's voice from Mario Kart 64 can be heard.
Before Greg enters Player Expo in Indianopolis, Mario, Luigi, Peach, and Toad appear on a giant poster, using their artwork from Super Mario 3D World.
The name Mario is mentioned in the middle of Michol's song, with Dooly costumed as Mario.
At one point in the movie, the Once-ler makes a reference to Donkey Kong while speaking with Ted.
A parody of Super Mario Bros. was shown in this movie. The parody is called Super Mustachio. The game design looks a lot like New Super Mario Bros. Wii. Also, the song that plays sounds like a vague parody of the theme from Super Mario Bros. There is also a parody of Mario Kart.
When Ernest is told by Old Lady Hackamore about how he is responsible for the release of Trantor the troll and how he must defeat him, Ernest says, "Yeah, but, I'm me, and he's he, and we're talkin' real danger here. Stand and deliver, firing line, moment of truth, end of the line, eighth-level Mario Brothers!"
On the elevator to the race, Twinkie asks Sean what DK (Drift King) stands for, to which Sean replies "Donkey Kong?"
The film starts out at a Halloween party where one of the guests is dressed up as Luigi. The main characters are later seen playing Mario Kart 64.
In a flashback, the cancer support group leader Patrick is shown playing Super Mario Kart on the Wii at his mother's house after being treated for testicular cancer.
Shane has a Mario poster in his bedroom.
While talking about how much he spoils his stepson, Frankie, Gabriel states that he's at the point of spoiled where he walked up to Gabriel saying, "Hey dad, I'm bored with my Nintendo Wii, can I give it to my friend, Angel?" After Frankie told him that his Wii wasn't broken, he had it for four years, and he has over 300 games on it's hard drive, Gabriel tries his best to tell him that he's so lucky with the new modern technology, but to no avail. He even explains to his audience that he had experiences with the Nintendo Entertainment System, and the difficulties of having to play a game on it. He makes an analogy saying that getting an NES to work, is like performing an operation at a hospital. Then, he states, "And, if you were lucky, IF you were lucky, you'd hear the magical sound," and he hums the first few seconds of the Super Mario Bros. overworld theme.
In the theatrical trailer for the film, an advertisement for the unreleased game Donkey Kong Coconut Crackers can be seen above some of the aisles. This does not appear in the actual film, as the hard drives containing this early version of the movie were reportedly stolen.
One of the characters played the game Donkey Kong.
Soon after being sucked into a NES game by Freddy, Spencer enters a red colored Warp Pipe. Later on, in order to combat Freddy in the game, Spence eats a fruit (resembling the ones from Super Mario World) to power-up and become "Super Spencer".
At some point, Ti Man and Chun May enter in an Arcade version of Super Mario Bros.:[1]
Ti Man wears a red cap with an "M" upside-down, similar to Mario's; Chun May wears the same in green, similar to Luigi's.
Ti Man wears a green shirt under blue overalls, similar to Luigi's; Chun May wears a red shirt similar to Mario's, with a blue skirt.
A man wearing a green cap, a right shirt, and blue overalls can be seen in the background.
There are Brick Blocks, Warp Pipes and ? Block with stars on them in the background.
A turtle tries to run into them but they jumped over it; Ti Man later says that if it bumps into a big character, he will become small again. That's what happens near the end.
The overworld theme from the game can be heard.
Ti Man hits a kind of ? Block à la Mario; however, he does so with his head, rather than with his fist.
When they smell flowers, they become big, the flower having the same effect as a Super Mushroom.
They get out of the arcade machine when the Time Limit reaches zero.
At one point, when Janine and Louis are babysitting Oscar, Louis suggests that they could play Super Mario Bros..
The second scene showing the new batch of Gremlins has the Coleco Donkey Kong machine being played by Stripe. On it is Mario, Donkey Kong, and Pauline.
Near the end of the film, two men dressed up as Mario and Luigi appear during the party.
In one scene, an ice-cream truck has a Mario ice-cream pop.
During a montage of songs being played on a banjo, a character plays the classic Mario theme, Super Mario Bros. overworld.
Hot Tube Time Machine. The arcade cabinet displayed in
When Adam, Nick, Jacob, and Lou unwittingly travel back in time to 1986, they notice a lot of technology and media that was popular at the time, including someone playing an arcade cabinet that displays the logo for New Super Mario Bros.. While VS. Super Mario Bros. was an arcade game released in 1986, New Super Mario Bros. was a Nintendo DS game released in 2006. The artwork featuring Mario and Luigi was also pulled from different sources, with Mario being from Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels (released in Japan in 1986, albeit not for an arcade cabinet), and Luigi being from the Super Mario Bros. pinball machine (released in 1992). The Red Band trailer for the film also features a deleted scene in which the main characters are playing a Super Mario Bros. arcade cabinet, with a Mario Bros. cabinet to the side.[2] The game can be clearly seen, and the Game Over jingle is audible. The artwork on the side is also anachronistic, displaying the same art of Mario and Luigi, as well as Princess Peach and Bowser (who use their modern designs, which first appeared in 1986, but in illustrations from more contemporary games), and Yoshi (a character who did not materialize until the Super Nintendo Entertainment System game Super Mario World, released in 1990).
The film sometimes shows footage of the original Super Mario Bros.. Also, the Mario series itself is often referenced.
When Gadget discover he has tools on his figures, his face resembles Donkey Kong.
When asked about her driving skills, Kaye says that she learned from "Mario Kart".
The Promotional Poster.
This film is a 2007 documentary based around the classic 1981 arcade Donkey Kong. The film revolves around an unassuming high school teacher named Steve Wiebe and his struggle to attain the world's highest score in Donkey Kong. After being obsessed with the game for many years, Steve is suddenly thrust into the competition for the world's high score. He runs afoul of the current record-holder, Billy Mitchell, a successful entrepreneur.
Steve Wiebe actually plays the game Donkey Kong, but he plays it in a Donkey Kong Jr. cabinet. In 2018, Mitchell was found to have used modified software, and all of his records, including in Donkey Kong, have since been revoked.[3]
During the scene where Emmet explains the plan to get in the Octan Tower, there is a piece of paper with a Mario-like minifigure on it.
In the scene where Anakin, Padmé, C-3PO, and R2-D2 are in the droid factory in 16-bit form, the characters' jump sound resembles Mario's. Also, R2-D2 hits blocks with coins, stomps on battle droids the way Mario stomps on a Goomba, and goes into what appears to be a Warp Pipe while hovering.
A Nintendo 64 box with a picture of Mario on it can be seen in the background of Jackie Dee's store.
John Grogan mentions that before he went into college, he had no expectations for himself, having spent his time doing bong hits (inhaling marijuana through a bong) and playing Donkey Kong.
After the credits it is revealed that a midget dressed up as Mario, minus the cap, and sporting a mustache (referred to as the Slapping Dummy Man) has been controlling the "Slapping Dummy".
In the scene where Megamind (disguised as "Space Dad") is training the newly created "Titan", Minion is seen stomping in place at the top of a construction site throwing flaming barrels down at Titan (in a similar manner to Donkey Kong), who jumps over them, trying to get to the top of a 25m-like stage.
At one part, one of the students of Haunted High can be heard saying "they want to suck us in vacuums", referencing the Luigi's Mansion series.
During the opening scene, a Mario figurine can be seen on the desk.
In the scene where Teddy and Pete come up with rhymes for the phrase "bros before hoes," Teddy says "Mario and Luigi before Thelma and Louise-y" at one point.
In a brief shot with Ruth in the RV, an SNES with Super Mario World in the cartridge slot can be seen.
Acording to IMDb, Super Mario Galaxy can be seen in one of the stores.
When the heroes go to Las Vegas Hotel & Casino, a Mario Bros. arcade cabinet and a Donkey Kong one can be seen among other arcades.
Pixels. Donkey Kong (in original form), as he appears in the film,
Main article: Pixels
Donkey Kong makes an appearance in the film in his original form from Donkey Kong. Early in the film, Mario as he appears in Super Mario Bros. can be seen on Ludlow's shirt, and later on in the film during the final battle scene, Mario can be seen chasing a man across the screen (in his original Donkey Kong form).
Mario was originally going to appear in the post-credits scene as the last surviving Pixel standing on top of a damaged Washington Monument, but this was later cut out, and is not present in the released version of the film.[citation needed]
8-bit ? Blocks with designs based on those from Super Mario Bros. can be seen in J.P. Spamley's base of operations as well as when Ralph is searching for his medal. An icon resembling a Super Mushroom also appears.[4]
Near the end of the movie, after Ralph obtains an insecurity virus named "Arthur" from Double Dan to try and sabotage the game Slaughter Race to try to persuade Vanellope to leave the Internet and return to the arcade with him, just right before Arthur finds Vanellope and scans her insecurities to destroy the game, Vanellope briefly sees an inflatable gorilla resembling Ralph. This could be a possible reference to Donkey Kong, whom Ralph appears to be based off of.
In an interview, director Rich Moore stated that if a sequel to Wreck-It Ralph were to be produced, he intended to give Mario an actual role.[5] However, during an interview with InsideTheMagic in October 2018, story artist Jason Hand states that Mario had to be cut because the rights could apparently not be obtained[6], though despite this various other Mario elements can be seen in trailers. Bowser also does not reappear.
A Donkey Kong Jr. poster can be seen in a young girl's room.
The Super Mario Bros. main theme plays at one point.
In the beginning, when Jamie and his friends are having a snowball fight, a snowman that resembles Mario can be seen.
Dennis has a Donkey Kong arcade cabinet in his office. At one point early in the film, Lonny plays it briefly. When he loses, he shouts "Nobody puts Donkey in the corner!".
The way Jeane Claude's Robo-Snail mech swings the Reptar mech is similar to Mario swinging Bowser from Super Mario 64.
Young Neil is playing Super Mario Bros. 3 on his Nintendo DS at one point (but it can only be heard). As in the graphic novel the film is based on, the band Scott plays in is named "Sex Bob-omb", and Super Mario 64 was the inspiration for the star-emblazoned doors that Ramona uses to enter subspace (similar to Super Mario Bros. 2).
During the scene where Miles Morales is fighting Kingpin, the former grabs the latter, before swinging Kingpin in multiple circles and tossing him away, similar to the throw Mario uses against Bowser in Super Mario 64 and its Nintendo DS remake.
A turtle belonging to the "Flushed Pets" is capable of curling inside his shell and bouncing back and forth, hitting anyone in his path, much like a Koopa Troopa, even making the Koopa shell sound from the Mario games.
In the car, Tim Avery was playing Mario Kart: Super Circuit as Luigi.
Super Mario Bros. can be seen in the background of the arcade.
Near the start, Derek describes his muscles as "Hammer Bros.", like the enemies.
One of the villains the Toxic Avenger fights in Japan is a man dressed like Mario.
A Mario Bros. cabinet can be seen at the arcade. Also, music from Donkey Kong can be heard as Sam approaches the Tron cabinet.
At one point in the trailer, Topher Grace's character is seen playing Super Mario Bros.
At the beginning of the Le Cross match, Poppy states "This is on like Donkey Kong."
Main article: The Wizard
The climax of The Wizard is known for featuring Super Mario Bros. 3 as the final game in the Video Armageddon tournament.
Bowser's fire breath, as seen in the movie.
The video game-inspired Wreck-It Ralph appropriately includes cameos by many video game characters, including Bowser, who appears alongside several other antagonists as part of a "Bad Guys Anonymous" group, wherein villains lend each other moral support and promote the acceptance of their somewhat difficult roles in the games. Mario is mentioned by name when Felix hears the doorbell at his party and remarks "I'll bet that's Mario! Fashionably late, per the norm." Later, while Ralph is looking through the Lost & Found, he comes across a Super Mushroom. However, he swiftly discards it.
Ralph, holding a Super Mushroom.
The Mario series is also indirectly referenced a number of times. When Felix is hit by a piece of falling ceiling, he jumps up, spins once than falls with his legs up, similar to Mario's death animation in Donkey Kong. Felix's jump noise sounds similar to Mario's. The game that Ralph and Felix hail from, Fix-It Felix, Jr., seems to be based on the original Donkey Kong in overall design, with Donkey Kong 3-like gameplay aspects as well (like Fix-It Felix bearing a passing resemblance to Stanley), and with Donkey Kong Jr. inspiring the name. Furthermore, the gameplay of Sugar Rush bears some resemblance to the Mario Kart series, such as players potentially stalling out if they messed up a boost at the beginning of the race, and how they drive through sugar cubes to acquire items to use against other racers. The title card for Sugar Rush even has what appears to be Nintendo's logo. The camera-wielding floating marshmallows who follow the players around the track appear to be a parody of the Lakitu enemies. In addition, the font used for the "Select your kart" text is nearly identical to that used in some Mario game logos. In the movie's credits, at one point the characters (now shown in 8-bit form) move around collecting floating medals, recalling coin-filled rooms in classic Mario platformers, and in another scene, they exit an area via a large grey Warp Pipe-like structure.
Though it is commonly believed that Mario's non-appearance in the film was due to a high licensing fee laid down by Nintendo, it was actually because the producers could not find a way to work Mario into the story, apparently deeming him too important to have only a cameo.
In a scene early on Adam, after a successful audition for "Nintendo Records", is informed personally by Mario and Luigi that he will be taking Mario's place in the Mario series as "Awesome Adam". Throughout the remainder of the movie, Mario motifs such as Mushrooms and ? Blocks are used to represent the subplot exploring Adam's life as a video game character.
During the credits, there is an animated segment which depicts silhouettes of Yogi, Boo Boo and Ranger Smith running around in a Super Mario Bros.-inspired setting. |
KISSIMMEE, Fla. – James Riley was content in Southern California, happy to be a member of Chivas USA even while many of his teammates were unceremoniously being shown the door.
Riley signed a new lease. His girlfriend took a job. He was laying down roots with the expectation, reinforced by a handshake deal with head coach José Luis Sánchez Solá, that he wouldn’t be another one of the casualties.
Then, as quickly as Chivas USA had professed their desire to make him a integral part of their squad, Riley was packing up his belongings, shipped to D.C. United on Wednesday for a second-round draft pick in the 2015 Supplemental Draft.
To say Riley was surprised is an understatement – “It honestly could be a book, what happened,” he says – after a turn of events that might astonish even those who’ve paid close attention to the roster purge that has accompanied the club’s identity shift to better align itself with the mothership in Guadalajara and the makeup of its fan base in SoCal.
READ: Zemanski thrilled for fresh start with former mentor Porter
“I had a meeting with [Sánchez Solá] and he said he wanted to keep me, how I was in his starting XI, a core member of the team as obviously I’d played a lot of games in this league,” Riley told MLSsoccer.com following his first appearance for D.C. United at the Disney Pro Soccer Classic on Saturday. “So I said, ‘If you want me here, I’ll be here. Fantastic.’
“We shook hands on it. We also discussed a new contract just to kind of secure things because it was a pretty volatile situation. Guys were in and out. So he went and spoke to the president for me and confirmed it was going to be a new deal. No problems within the league … Then it changed over 48 hours.”
As of time of publication, Chivas USA had not responded to an MLSsoccer.com request for comment. But Sánchez Solá, on Saturday night declared via Twitter that "I don't know what Riley said. I dedicate myself to coaching. I have nothing to do with contracts."
@blackarmy1850 no se de que me hablas ni tampoco q dijo Riley. Yo me dedico a entrenar. En contratos no tengo nada q ver — José Luis Sanchez (@Elchelis) February 17, 2013
But Riley doesn’t seem bitter. Not even in the least, emphasizing that he wished the Goats and their fans only the best.
However, he was forthcoming about the manner in which Chivas USA’s roster upheaval has affected the locker room. Riley is simply the latest player to find himself on the way out after Ben Zemanski was traded to Portland the same day, Casey Townsend was also shipped to D.C. and Shalrie Joseph was told he’s surplus to requirements.
“I think until guys kind of feel secure contractually, to be honest, they’re always going to have one foot in, one foot out,” Riley said. “At the same time, until management goes both feet in, it’s kind of hard for players to go both feet in as well. Without a doubt, we spoke about it every day – who is going to be the next to go? Zemanski and I were one and two there in 24 hours, back-to-back. Obviously, guys have their head on a swivel. That’s professional sports. It happens.”
REPORT: DC zeroing in on Buzzard Point for new stadium
United certainly won’t complain, as they’ve added a veteran right back with 192 MLS starts to provide competition for Chris Korb and Daniel Woolard following Andy Najar’s move to Anderlecht.
Riley, meanwhile, said he’s ready to dive right in and force DC manager Ben Olsen to make a tough decision come March 2.
“Obviously, [Chivas USA] were trying to do something different. The coach brought in some good energy,” Riley said. “It was interesting. It was fun to be there. It was good. But if you’re not in the plans, you want to be somewhere where you are wanted. It changed, and fortunately D.C. was there ready.” |
Conservationists urge countries to give imperilled species the highest level of protection at the global Cites summit opening on Saturday to prevent them becoming extinct in the wild
A global wildlife summit opening on Saturday is a “do or die” moment for endangered animals around the world, say conservationists, from iconic species such as elephants and lions to lesser known, but equally troubled, creatures such as devil rays and the psychedelic rock gecko.
The summit in Johannesburg brings together 181 nations to crack down on wildlife trafficking, currently a $20bn-a-year criminal enterprise, and to ensure the legal trade in food, skins, pets and traditional remedies does not threaten the survival of species. The member nations of the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) will vote on proposals to toughen or loosen trade bans and regulations for over 500 species.
A total trade ban is being sought for pangolins, an exotic scaled creature, which is now the world’s most trafficked mammal, while more protection for sharks, parrots and frogs are also on the table. The most controversial proposals are for elephants: some southern African nations want to overturn the ban on selling ivory while a rival proposal from 29 other African countries aims to make protections even tougher.
Pangolins: the world's most illegally traded mammal – in pictures Read more
“With so many of our wild animal and plant species facing serious threats from rapacious poaching and commercial trade, this Cites meeting represents a ‘do or die’ moment,” said Teresa Telecky, wildlife director of the Humane Society International. “Either countries do the right thing and give these imperilled species the highest level of protection possible against unsustainable exploitation, or we risk seeing them die out altogether in the wild.”
The proposals are based on scientific evidence, but national political agendas loom large too. “The stakes are high for so many species and we must make certain that sound science and the precautionary principle are deciding factors and not short-term political or economic interests,” said Azzedine Downes, president of the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW).
Others are concerned that high-profile rows over the elephant proposals, which could all fail to pass, will distract from work on enforcement to end the scourge of poaching. Over 140,000 of Africa’s savannah elephants were killed for their ivory between 2007 and 2014, wiping out almost a third of their population. Elephants are still being killed every 15 minutes on average.
Nations where poaching, trafficking or illegal sales take place should have submitted action plans but Cameroon, Ethiopia, Gabon and Nigeria have not, and could face sanctions on all their wildlife-related trade.
“We are concerned that the summit is likely to be a rerun of the old pattern, with proposals and counter-proposals on legal international ivory trade diverting attention from the real issues,” said WWF in statement. Swaziland has also proposed to legalise the sale of horn from rhino, whose populations have plummeted, but will face fierce opposition.
The species being evaluated for protection at Cites span the land, ocean and skies. African lions ought to get the strongest protection, according to scientists at the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) while Jan Creamer, president of Animal Defenders International, said the big cat’s survival was at stake: “It is clear that we are at risk of being the generation that allowed a magnificent species to disappear from the wild.”
Pangolins, whose scales are sold in China and Vietnam as a supposed medicine, could also get stronger protection. More than a million have been taken from the wild in the past decade, according to WildAid, decimating Asian populations. As a result, poaching has also ramped up in Africa and in June over 11 tonnes of pangolin scales were seized in Hong Kong in just two shipments from Africa. “We could very soon see this amazing species disappear, if the unsustainable trade continues,” says Mark Hofberg, IFAW’s pangolin expert.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Silky shark populations have been hit by the fishing trade. Photograph: Georgette Douwma/Getty Images
In the seas, stricter protection is on the table for silky and thresher sharks, both heavily hit by the fin trade, and for devil rays, whose gills are sold in China. “Devil rays grow very slowly and produce just one pup about every two years, making them intrinsically susceptible to overfishing,” said Sebastián Pardo, at Simon Fraser University in Canada.
The nautilus could also get its first trade protections, as it is being overfished for its beautiful shells which are used for jewellery and ornaments. Many turtle species are eaten in Asia and have suffered heavily as a result, and flapshell and softshell turtle proposals will be voted on during the two-week summit.
In the air, African grey parrots, which are extraordinary vocal mimics, may get the highest level of protection. Scientists estimate that two to three million African greys were captured from the wild between 1975 and 2013, and despite successful captive breeding, populations have decreased by between 50% and 90% and in some places they are locally extinct.
There are many proposals for better protection for reptiles and amphibians. “A lot of lizards and frogs are traded illegally,” said John Scanlon, secretary general of Cites. “They are being taken primarily for the illegal pet trade, and primarily to Europe. We need to get this under control, as these animals are also a critical part of the ecosystem.”
The psychedelic rock gecko, found only in Vietnam, is in line for better protection along with others including the Hong Kong warty newt and both the tomato frog and the false tomato frog.
Lizard traffickers exploit legal loopholes to trade at world's biggest fair Read more
Cites, which began in 1975, is increasingly regulating the timber trade too and could introduce protection for the entire genus of rosewood species. The market for luxury furniture made from the wood has exploded in recent years, with the rosewood trade soaring by 65 times between 2005 and 2014, and is now worth over $2bn a year.
Some species are already protected, but remain prone to illegal logging. With Asian rosewood numbers crashing, the focus of loggers has increasingly moved to Africa and central America, where they “capitalise on unstable situations in fragile states, moving swiftly from country to country creating devastating ‘boom-and-bust cycles’,” according the Forest Trends group.
A minority of the Cites proposals are to loosen restrictions on the international trade in species that have recovered from previously precarious positions. The total bans protecting the peregrine falcon and the Cape mountain zebra may be lifted.
“The recovery of species like the peregrine falcon shows that Cites can work and that populations can bounce back thanks to trade bans and conservation efforts,” said Ginette Hemley, head of WWF’s delegation to Cites. “If the world takes decisive action in Johannesburg, we can look forward to more success stories in the future.”
Scanlon said: “We have made significant progress since the last Cites summit in 2013, politically, financially and technically. More governments are taking action and increasing the penalties for wildlife crime, which can be seen as low-risk for criminal and terrorist groups.
“This is not purely about wildlife, it’s also about the impact on local people and communities, security and on national economies,” he said. “We haven’t got there yet but, if we persist, we will win.” |
CEO of the world's second largest online travel agency by market capitalization Ctrip, based in China, praised the increase in Russia-China tourism this year and said her company intended to launch a Russian-language website in an interview with Sputnik on the BRICS summit sidelines.
XIAMEN (China) (Sputnik) — Jane Sun said that the number of tourists from China to Russia increased significantly in 2017, with 1.5 million people visiting the country. Ctrip has enjoyed an over 50-percent year growth in tourist flow this year compared to the same period of 2016.
"The Russian government was very smart in lifting visa restrictions for Chinese citizens. These people have lots of money, they want to spend it in Russia, it creates job opportunities. So I am very positive about travel between Russia and China," Sun said.
Now that Ctrip has bought the Skyscanner travel company, famous for its online ticket reservation services, the travel agency wants to create a Russian-language website, she added.
The Ctrip CEO also said that the international tourism can contribute to peace in the world, because "the more people travel around the world, the more understanding they develop."
Executive Director of Russia's Tourist Association Mir Bez Granits (World Without Borders) Alexander Agamov said in June that both Moscow and Beijing should aim to increase the number of tourists to 4 million per year from China to Russia and vice versa. According to Agamov, one million Chinese tourists visited Russia in 2016 and 1.7 million Russian tourists traveled to China. |
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights in Asia are limited in comparison to many other areas of the world. Same-sex sexual activity is outlawed in at least twenty Asian countries. While at least eight countries have enacted protections for LGBT people, only Israel and Taiwan provide a wider range of LGBT rights - including same-sex relationship recognition.
In Afghanistan, Brunei, Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen, homosexual activity is punished with the death penalty.[1][2] The legal punishment for sodomy has varied among juristic schools: some prescribe capital punishment; while other prescribe a milder discretionary punishment such as imprisonment. In some relatively secular Muslim-majority countries such as Azerbaijan, Jordan, and Turkey, homosexuality is legal, but usually socially unacceptable.
Egalitarian relationships modeled on the Western pattern have become more frequent, though they remain rare.[2][3][4] Cambodia, East Timor, Hong Kong, Israel, Japan, Mongolia, Nepal, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam and Cyprus (excluding Northern Cyprus) are viewed as the most open to the LGBT community in Asia. Japan, Israel, Thailand, Taiwan and Nepal are the major players in legislation. As of 2018 , only the British Overseas Territories of Akrotiri and Dhekelia and the British Indian Ocean Territory have legalized same-sex marriage.
In a 2011 UN General Assembly declaration for LGBT rights, state parties were given a chance to express their support or opposition on the topic. Only Armenia, Georgia, Cyprus, Israel, South Korea, Japan, Mongolia, Nepal, Thailand, and East Timor expressed their support. They were later joined by Vietnam and the Philippines. State parties who expressed opposition were Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, the Maldives, North Korea, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Yemen, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, Syria, Afghanistan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan. Other Asian parties did not show support or opposition.
The first and only LGBT political party in the world, Ladlad, was established in the Philippines in 2003.
In 2016, during an African-led coalition to dislodge the recently established UN expert on LGBT issues, the majority of Asian nations backed to retain the role of the UN LGBT expert, with only Muslim nations, with the addition of China and Singapore, declaring their opposition.
Asia
Same-sex sexual activity legal Marriage Other type of partnership Unregistered cohabitation Foreign same-sex marriages recognized No recognition of same-sex couples Restrictions on freedom of expression Same-sex sexual activity illegal Not enforced or unclear Penalty Life imprisonment Death penalty
Legislation by country or territory
This table:
Central Asia [ edit ]
LGBT rights in: Same-sex sexual activity Recognition of same-sex unions Same-sex marriage Adoption by same-sex couples LGB people allowed to serve openly in military? Anti-discrimination laws concerning sexual orientation Laws concerning gender identity/expression Afghanistan Illegal
Penalty: Long imprisonment or death penalty (No known cases of death sentences have been handed out for same-sex sexual activity after the end of Taliban rule).[1] Kyrgyzstan Legal since 1998[1] Constitutional ban since 2016[5] Requires sex reassignment surgery[6][7] Tajikistan Legal since 1998[1] Requires sex reassignment surgery[8][7] Turkmenistan Male illegal
Penalty: up to 2 years imprisonment.
Female always legal[1] Uzbekistan Male illegal
Penalty: up to 3 years imprisonment.
Female always legal[1]
Eurasia [ edit ]
West Asia [ edit ]
South Asia [ edit ]
East Asia [ edit ]
Southeast Asia [ edit ]
See also [ edit ] |
The Stanford and Texas women will match unbeaten swim records on Thursday when the two perennial powers meet in a nonconference dual meet at Stanford's Avery Aquatic Complex.
The Cardinal (2-0) enters the meet (4 p.m.) with a pair of Pac-12 victories over Utah and Oregon State, respectively. Stanford won 11 of 12 events against the Beavers last Friday, including three individual first-place showings from freshman Simone Manuel, who starred as a prep in Texas.
Cardinal freshmen have combined for 15 individual wins during the first two meets.
Unranked Texas (3-0) will be racing its first dual of the 2014-15 slate, although the Longhorns faced Indiana, Michigan and Louisville in a two-day quad meet in Ann Arbor, Mich., last weekend. Texas handled all three opponents with Michigan providing the closest final result of 199-154.
The Cardinal is No. 13 in the first Collegiate Swimming Coaches Association of America (CSCAA) poll. USC comes in at No. 1, Georgia is No. 2 and Florida rounds out the top three. Other Pac-12 teams in the poll include USC, No. 4 California and No. 10 Arizona.
Stanford has won 12 straight dual meets dating to Feb. 16, 2013. Head coach Greg Meehan is 19-2 in his Stanford tenure, which began during the 2012-13 season.
Then-No. 3 Stanford started the 2014 calendar year with a 154-146 win over No. 8 Texas Jan. 4. The meet came down to the last event when the Cardinal won the 400-yard freestyle relay to produce the eight-point edge.
Stanford held a 143-140 lead before the 400 free relay, meaning that the winning relay team would clinch the victory for its squad. Maddy Schaefer, Felicia Lee '14, Julia Anderson and Lia Neal put together a 3:18.98 and beat Texas' best group by almost 2.5 seconds.
Thursday's meet will be a "Pink Out", with both teams racing in pink caps to help raise awareness for breast cancer.
Fans are encouraged to ditch their cardinal or burnt orange in favor of pink attire. For every fan wearing pink, Meehan will donate $1 to charities and Texas head coach Carol Capitani has vowed to match the total. Half the sum will go to Susan G. Komen for the Cure and the other 50 percent will go to the Movember Foundation. |
Illustration by Peter Schrank
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THE usual fate of populist presidential candidates is to burn brilliantly for a moment and then fizzle out. This happened to Pat Buchanan when he rattled George Bush senior in New Hampshire in 1992. And it happened to John Edwards when he won a strong second place in Iowa in 2004.
This year the populist flame is burning brighter and longer. America has seen not one but two significant populist insurgencies. On the right, Mike Huckabee pitched himself as a “Boys and Girls Club Republican” rather than a “Country Club Republican”—a man who grew up in poverty, worked his way through college, and regards the Olive Garden chain as the height of fine dining. On the left, Mr Edwards again presented himself as the son of a mill worker who knows what it means to see factories shuttered and people thrown into the dustbin.
The two men frequently sounded the same themes on the election trail. Mr Huckabee criticised bosses who ship jobs overseas while stuffing their own pockets. Mr Edwards argued that American politics has been hijacked by “a small band of profiteers that has sold out America in selfish service of their greed and power”. They both railed against NAFTA, free trade, mortgage companies, oil companies and spiralling health-care costs. These torchbearers were joined by a number of pygmy populists. Tom Tancredo crusaded against illegal immigration. Ron Paul raised surprising amounts of cash by demonising the Fed and other sinister forces. Dennis Kucinich continued his perennial presidential campaign against the corporate war machine.
The past few weeks have seen some big setbacks for the populist cause. Mr Edwards dropped out of the race after South Carolina rejected him. Mr Kucinich has returned to Cleveland thoroughly trounced, and is confronted with a revolt among his fellow Ohio Democrats who are tired of his quixotic runs for the presidency. Meanwhile, the front-runners all wear some of the marks of the establishment. John McCain is an orthodox free-trader. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are both respected senators.
Yet this has been far from a rout. Mr Kucinich did not belong on the national stage in the first place. Mr Edwards's failure had more to do with the messenger than the message. It is hard to be taken seriously as the scourge of the “two Americas” when you live in a 28,000-square-foot house and spend $400 on a haircut. And Mr Huckabee did surprisingly well on Tuesday night, winning five states and a useful bank of delegates. This was a remarkable achievement for a man who is loathed by the business establishment, who has little in the way of money and organisation, who questions the theory of evolution and who calls for a constitutional ban on abortion and homosexual marriage.
Messrs Obama and McCain have been sounding some populist notes of their own. Mr Obama styles himself the leader of a mass uprising against a dysfunctional political system. Mr McCain is closer to Teddy Roosevelt than to George Bush: he believes in using the power of government to control overmighty corporations and lobbyists. In 2001-05 he scored some of the lowest ratings from the Chamber of Commerce of any Republican senator. He also bills himself as “one of the great enemies of the pharmaceutical companies in Washington”. On the Democratic side, Mr Obama likes to break from his uplifting rhetoric to criticise bosses who “dump” employee pensions while “pocketing bonuses”. Mrs Clinton talks of a “trap-door economy” in which families are just one lay-off away from falling through the floor. Nor is this just a matter of rhetoric. Mrs Clinton and Mr Obama have both run to the left on trade—they say they want to amend NAFTA and they both oppose a recent trade deal with South Korea. They have also put more emphasis on poverty, in a bid to win Mr Edwards's voters.
Meanwhile, conservative populists have humbled the business wing of the Republican Party over immigration. Mr McCain now agrees—through gritted teeth—that America needs to strengthen its borders before giving immigrants the right to earn citizenship. Mitt Romney sounds more like a Minuteman than a Harvard MBA when he talks about immigration. Mr Tancredo has left the presidential race but his poisonous spirit lives on.
No end in sight
There is good reason for thinking that the populist mood will last for some time. Even before the recent economic slowdown, Americans were feeling sour. The 2007 Pew Global Attitudes Survey showed that America has seen the biggest rise in opposition to globalisation of any of the 47 countries studied. Only 59% of Americans think international trade is benefiting the country, compared with 78% in 2002. Three-quarters of them want to see further immigration restricted, and boiling rage about illegal immigration fires the Republican right.
Those fears are likely to be exacerbated in the next few months. The economy is sputtering. Employment is faltering. House prices are dipping. All these worries are particularly marked among one of the most important swing groups in the presidential election—blue-collar voters who are drawn towards the Republican Party on moral and defence issues but who worry about job losses, mortgage foreclosures and the rising costs of health care and college tuition.
This is not to argue that the next president will bow to the populist mood. Mrs Clinton and Mr Obama are both economic centrists who have been showered with businessmen's money. Mr McCain's quarrels are with people who try to fix the playing field rather than with those who are merely very rich. But the populist wind will continue to blow. Although that will be good for the cause of health-care reform, it will make it harder, even for a President McCain, to advance free trade or fix America's broken immigration system. |
Citi Research Politicians aren't known for being the most honest of people.
But with the rise of digital media, they can now more easily get away with fudging the truth.
"Innovations that have occurred in social media ... have had a negative effect upon public trust," a Citi Research team led by Tina Fordham observes.
"While digital media can be a great source of information, there are numerous sites with false information, conspiracy theories, and invented statistics. This allows for politicians to make claims that are not factually correct but are circulated by Twitter."
Using data from the fact-checker PolitiFact, the Citi team found that the percentage of politicians' statements that were "true or mostly true" ranged from 4% (Ben Carson) to 53% (Bernie Sanders) — which can be seen in the chart above. On the flip side, the percentage of politicians' statements that were "mostly false to 'pants on fire'" ranged from 84% (Ben Carson) to 24% (Martin O'Malley).
And for what it's worth, the team found that only 7% of Republican front-runner Donald Trump's statements were factually correct, compared with 21% for Ted Cruz and 51% for Hillary Clinton.
Citi Research
But more importantly, the Citi team argues that the proliferation of digital media and the ease with which one can spread incorrect information are further pushing people to be less trusting of "the elites."
Nowadays, people are increasingly likely to consider their friends, families, and inner circles as their "most trusted sources" of information.
In fact, regular folks are more likely to trust "a person like themselves" over a non-governmental-organization rep, a financial (or other industry) analyst, or a CEO or government official, according to the 2015 Edelman Trust Barometer.
The big takeaway here is that these two charts reflect regular people's frustration with and distrust of the perceived elites and large institutions — whether a big bank or a political party.
And that has led (and could continue to lead) to a rise in anti-establishment sentiment and political parties that break from the mainstream, which could eventually affect business and investment environments, according to Citi.
But it will also be interesting to see any side effects of people listening only to people like themselves — and whether that will lead even more wrong information to be spread.
Especially considering that this analysis by Citi suggests the biggest antiestablishment stars in the GOP race (Trump and Carson) tell fewer true statements than the in-house candidates. |
Version 1.3
to add any folder to the Computer/This PC folder. Really any.
to remove any folder from the Computer/This PC folder.
to change the icon for any folder inside Computer/This PC.
to add any shell location like Administrative tools, God Mode, Network Connections
you can pin or unpin Computer/This PC items from the Navigation Pane of Explorer in Windows 8.1, Windows 8 and even in Windows 7!
You can remove or add any item from the Folders category inside the Computer/This PC folder.
to restore defaults with one click.
This PC Tweaker in action
Before you will report bugs
1. If you will remove the Pictures folder but add Pictures\Screenshots, then Pictures will appear in This PC anyway. This is the same for all default folders in This PC. Do not report this bug, this is not a bug, it is the default Explorer behavior in Windows 8.
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- my brand new work.Attention to all This PC Tweaker users, the Navigation Pane editor feature was dropped from the RTM release of This PC Tweaker 1.0 due to bugs and stability issues. It will be released as a separate app very soon.is available, please download a new version with Windows 10 support!This application allows you to customize items inside the "Computer/This PC" folder and many other thingsWith This PC Tweaker, you will be able to perform the following customizations:You can get something like this with just a few mouse clicks:And sure, in Windows 7 too:This PC Tweaker has access to all usable shell locations in Window and provides them for you. You will be able to add even God Mode to the "computer" folder.if God Mode (All tasks, all settings items) does not showing in This PC/Computer, you should log off/log in back or restart Explorer supports Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 completely.Windows 7:Windows 8:This PC Tweaker has translatable UI and you can translate it with simple text file. Just rename the Languages\English_template.ini to YourLanguage.ini and translate strings in that file. That's it. Feel free to send me your translations - I will include them with application zip archive.English - out-of-box support.Russian - by Winaero.Czech - many thanks to "moderate".French - many thanks to Gérald Beau.German - many thanks to Andrea Goetz.Spanish - many thanks to RoTcE.Polish - many thanks to Dariusz Kępiński.Portugese - many thanks to Gutierrez PS.This is fixed in v1.1.2. You cannot change the icon of special shell locations added to This PC, you can only change the icons of custom folders you add yourselves. I designed this intentionally to prevent you from breaking Control Panel. Believe me, this is required.- the application supports Windows 10 now. I tested it on Windows 10 build 10122, so that build and above are supported.Bug fixed: In Windows 8.1/Windows 8 x64, if you remove standard folders from This PC and then restore defaults, This PC folder may become broken for 32 bit (x86) apps. Due to bug, the app was not be able to restore registry properly and this could cause the empty This PC folder for x86 apps in the open/save file dialog.It is strongly recommended to upgrade the app to version 1.2.0.1.To fix the broken keys,* Bug fixed: In Windows 7, you were not be able to open added folders to Computer* Bug fixed: when you add a custom folder to This PC/Computer, the New Folder button inside this folder was not available.* Bug fixed: Removed shell folders like Downloads, Pictures may re-appear in This PC, if you add any of their subfolders.Ability to rename the folder you added.* The application was rewritten from scratch.+ Added ability to add any folder+ Added ability to change icons+ Added navigation pane pinning support for Windows 7+ Added proper Windows x64 handling+ Added translations support* Fixed many bugs+Windows 8.1 RTM support.+Added Windows 7 support+Added the "Navigation pane" featureInitial release with This PC tweaking feature only.The application's icon was created by. Many thanks for his hard work.Use the following options from Winaero Tweaker: |
Walt Disney Animation Studios has announced that Jemaine Clement (The BFG), Rachel House (Hunt for the Wilderpeople), Temuera Morrison (Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones), Alan Tudyk (Zootopia) and Nicole Scherzinger have joined Dwayne Johnson and Auli‘i Cravalho in the cast of the upcoming animated feature Moana.
“Our assembled voice cast for this film is beyond our wildest dreams. We are so fortunate to have this group of talented actors, many from Oceania, breathing life into their characters,” said co-directors Ron Clements and John Musker. “We are so thankful to have found such extraordinary people who not only capture the voices of these characters, they elevate them in every way.”
· JEMAINE CLEMENT provides the voice of TAMATOA, a self-absorbed, 50-foot crab who lives in Lalotai, the realm of monsters. The conceited crustacean wants to be more than a “bottom feeder” and overcompensates for this perceived shortcoming by covering himself in all things shiny.
· RACHEL HOUSE lends her voice to GRAMMA TALA, Moana’s confidante and best friend, who shares her granddaughter’s special connection to the ocean. Although her son Tui, the chief of Motunui, is a no-nonsense leader, Gramma Tala most definitely dances to the beat of her own drum.
· TEMUERA MORRISON voices Moana’s father, CHIEF TUI, the gregarious and well-respected leader of the people of Motunui Island. Chief Tui wants Moana to follow in his footsteps as leader of their people, but fears his daughter’s draw to the ocean and the world that lies beyond their reef.
· NICOLE SCHERZINGER voices Moana’s mother, SINA, who always has her daughter’s back. Playful, sharp and strong-willed, Sina appreciates Moana’s longing to be on the water, but also wants to protect her daughter from the fabled dangers beyond the reef.
· ALAN TUDYK, Walt Disney Animation Studios’ lucky charm, is behind the voice of HEIHEI. Heihei is one dumb rooster—the village idiot, in fact. When the clueless chicken accidently stows away on Moana’s canoe, he lands a front-row seat for her epic journey.
SEE ALSO: New international trailer for Disney’s Moana
Three thousand years ago, the greatest sailors in the world voyaged across the vast South Pacific, discovering the many islands of Oceania. But then, for a millennium, their voyages stopped – and no one today knows why. From Walt Disney Animation Studios comes “Moana,” a sweeping, CG-animated adventure about a spirited teenager who sails out on a daring mission to prove herself a master wayfinder and fulfill her ancestors’ unfinished quest. During her journey, Moana (voice of Auli’i Cravalho) meets the once-mighty demi-god Maui (voice of Dwayne Johnson), and together, they traverse the open ocean on an action-packed voyage, encountering enormous fiery creatures and impossible odds.
Moana sails into the U.K. cinemas on December 2nd 2016. |
York Regional Police have killed a black bear that had been roaming suburban Newmarket, Ont., about 50 kilometres north of Toronto, over the past several days.
Officers encircled the bear in the backyard of a home on London Road, near Yonge Street and Davis Drive, around 7 a.m. ET.
They used loud noises to get the bear to climb a nearby tree as they waited for officials from the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry who were supposed to arrive around 8:45 a.m., but were apparently late.
Police said they were forced to shoot the bear after it began climbing down from the tree. Officers were concerned because many children in the neighbourhood were walking to school.
"Bear began coming down from a tree and became a risk to people in the area. Officers have shot the bear due to having no other options," the force tweeted shortly after the incident.
"Officers do not have tranquilizers or other options for dealing with wildlife. We could not let the bear harm a person while waiting for MNR [Ministry of Natural Resources]."
Residents frustrated
Some residents who were watching the incident unfold from a nearby street expressed frustration that the Ministry of Natural Resources had been aware of the bear for several days, but was unable to send anyone to the scene on time to tranquillize and transport the bear to another location.
John Almond, a supervisor with the ministry, said he received a call from police at his home in Bradford on Monday around 6:20 a.m. ET and immediately began preparing to travel to Newmarket.
"We have a lot of equipment that has to come and we have a lot of staff that need to be mobilized," he told reporters outside the property where the bear was killed, as some local residents berated him from behind news cameras.
He added that ministry staff could not attempt to "chemically immobilize" and move the bear earlier because it would have had to be stationary for long enough to respond, but this particular bear was moving around a lot until Monday morning when police cornered it.
'Terrible and wrong'
The bear caused a stir on social media over the weekend as residents in the area posted photos and video online. On Monday, people took to Twitter and other platforms to decry the bear's death as unnecessary and criticize police for not trying to subdue the animal first.
"It was out there for more than 24hrs and didn't do a thing. Let animal services deal with it. This is just terrible and wrong," @poisonivy2425 wrote on Twitter.
"Unimpressed with newmarket @YRP and the killing of the #newmarketbear. Killing him/her wasn't the answer," said @SicilianaBeauty.
A few came to police's defence, saying the safety of humans must come first.
"Bear was coming down the tree - House 500m from elementary school - kids were walking to school and in playground safety first #newmarketbear," @dunk14 said.
Monday's shooting had some expressing concerns about the fate of a peacock that has been on the loose since it escaped from a Toronto zoo last week.
"Look out #HighPark #peacock @PeelPoliceMedia are shooting animals today #Toronto #newmarketbear," one person tweeted.
The peacock went unseen for part of the weekend, but CBC's Peter Armstrong saw the peacock at around noon on Monday near a restaurant on Roncesvalles Avenue.
A city spokeswoman said staff were planning to set out a feeding station for the peacock in local parks in order to draw him to a location where he could be contained.
"The bird is frightened by all of the attention and has been selecting roof tops and trees to perch," said Nancy MacSween."Once grounded, we will try to corral into corner or channel and secure." |
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DC’s Hanna-Barbera comic books have been fantastic for the most part. The curious collaboration continues to surprise people with quality reading. This week, they kick it into high gear with a number of crossovers. The Green Lantern/Space Ghost book ends up being a golden cosmic partnership.
Of the four crossover annuals, this one made the most sense on the surface. It easily could have been handled poorly, but writer James Tynion IV clearly cared about both characters and took full advantage.
While answering a mysterious transmission asking for help, Hal Jordan and Space Ghost cross paths in the search of space justice. After butting heads initially (duh), the two join forces to help liberate a planet full of oppressed dreamers. Before parting ways, the two heroes inspire the planet’s inhabitants to reach for the stars.
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The final page of this story closes with “The Beginning.” I would have no problem with continuing adventures with these two cosmic heroes. Space Ghost and Hal Jordan riff off of each other effectively, building a strong chemistry in just one short story. Given how many portals Space Ghost has traveled through in Future Quest, it’s not out of the realm of possibility to see these two space cops team-up again.
Green Lantern/Space Ghost is a lighthearted tale about what inspires us to achieve our goals. It’s about the human spirit, and how any obstacle can be conquered by working together. Space Ghost’s Batman-like demeanor meshes well with Hal’s wisecracking. Even when the book falls into comic book tropes, it’s brief and a lot of fun. What could have been an over-the-top cheese-fest ends up being a minimum eye roll experience.
The only factor keeping this from being a perfect crossover experience is the art. The photo-realistic approach was a curious one. It’s really effective and beautiful when they’re in space. Unfortunately once they touch down on the planet’s surface, things get ugly. The backgrounds do no favors for the characters in the forefront, in fact they overpower them in every panel.
The back-up story in all of these crossover annuals is to set up the next wave of DC’s Hanna-Barbera initiative. Ruff ‘N’ Ready is about a down-on-their-luck comedy duo during the golden age of television comedy. It’s a much different direction than the original cartoon.
It’s a funny, vulgar, and perverted story that visits a fun time in history. Much like Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, it’s a joy to put old school cartoon’s in adult situations, just much darker.
What did you think of Green Lantern/Space Ghost? How many of the ongoing DC/Hanna-Barbera titles have you read? Let us know in the comments below! |
The arriving icebreaker Aurora Australis is the last chance to open up a passage to open water for Akademik Shokalskiy
Passengers aboard the Akademik Shokalskiy, the ship stuck in ice off the coast of Antarctica since Christmas Day, were told on Sunday morning they would have to be evacuated by air if icebreaker ships could not get to them within 48 hours.
The Russian-operated ship has about 50 passengers – including scientists and paying members of the public – and 20 crew on board. It became stuck in the ice near Cape de la Motte in east Antarctica, abouit 1,500 nautical miles from Hobart in Tasmania, after strong blizzards hit the vessel on Christmas Eve. Surrounding pack ice was pushed by strong winds against the Antarctic landmass, pinning the Shokalskiy in place.
On Friday, the Chinese icebreaker Xue Long tried to battle through the thick ice towards the Shokalskiy but had to turn back after 12 hours and within 8.5 nautical miles of the Russian vessel, because the going was too difficult. The Aurora Australis will arrive at the edge of the sea ice, which is about 20 nautical miles from the Russian ship, in the early hours of Monday local time (about 1pm Sunday GMT).
“What we're depending on is the extra grunt of the Aurora Australis,” said Greg Mortimer, co-leader of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition (AAE), which has chartered the ship. “It's a more traditional icebreaker hull, which is like a bathtub with a big engine inside it – it can push over the ice and lay down on top and work its way like that.”
Until the ship gets into position, it is unknown whether it will be strong enough to crack through the ice – which is four to five metres thick in places after storms in the area last week – and make it to the Shokalskiy.
If that proves impossible, the only option would be air evacuation.
“We're always making contingency plans,” Mortimer said. “That would happen by the Chinese vessel sending their helicopter to us, us preparing a helipad on the ice next to the ship and flying passengers from that ice onto the other vessels. Then taking them home via the Ross Sea or [Australian Antarctic base] Casey base by ship.”
Those on board the Shokalskiy will know within 12 hours of the arrival of the Aurora Australis whether the icebreaking mission is likely to be successful. Mortimer said the decision to evacuate would be in the hands of the captains of the icebreakers.
On Sunday afternoon, the Xue Long sent a helicopter to the Shokalskiy to survey the sea ice around the ship and look for any open water in the area.
Mortimer said the ship was safe and there was no threat to life or limb.
“The pressure at this point in time is one of time – that artificial contrivance of, well, we must get out of this situation as quickly as we can. But we don't have to, we're OK.”
A helicopter from the Chinese icebreaker Xue Long runs reconnaissance over the Akademik Shokalskiy. Photograph: Laurence Topham
That would change, he said, if an iceberg began moving towards the ship. The closest icebergs are several nautical miles away at present. If one came close, the Shokalskiy would have a day or two's notice to carry out any necessary evacuation.
When it got stuck the Shokalskiy was just over two weeks into its month-long expedition, from Bluff in New Zealand to Commonwealth Bay in east Antarctica. The passengers on board are following in the footsteps of the great Antarctic explorer and scientist Douglas Mawson, leader of the original AAE of 1911, repeating his wildlife, ocean and weather observations to build a picture of changes over the past 100 years.
Over the weekend, members of the AAE were allowed off the vessel to take scientific samples of the ice, build igloos in the fresh snow or just stretch their legs and take pictures in the sunshine. The mood on board has remained calm, with expedition leaders regularly briefing the rest of the passengers about the various options to get them out of the ice.
Mortimer, a veteran of Antarctica with more than 100 visits to the continent under his belt, said he was not surprised by the difficulty the Shokalskiy has faced this week.
“The combination of elements is really unfortunate – a couple of blizzards and many, many days blowing in the wrong direction has piled heaps of trouble on our shoulders,” he said. “The power of the forces at work, that's the constant reminder – how overwhelmingly powerful the natural forces are here. That's the fearsome, gnarly-teeth side of Antarctica and its great beauty as well, its allure.” |
"Dust" and "Midway" - Codenames for Upcoming D&D Hardcovers
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was codenamedwasandwas(or vice versa). Now two new codenames have emerged, spotted by EN World memberis dated 19 Sep 2017, hardcover, $49.95, andis dated 21 Nov 2017, hardcover, $49.95. These have both appeared over on edelweiss' catalog . They do not match the four unnamed RPG Accessories on Amazon . Engage speculation mode - two new hardcovers later this year!Typically the September release has been an adventure, and the November release a rules book (). WotC has been hinting at a "major rules expansion" for a while now.My guess? Take it with a massive truckload of salt, but I'm going to guess thatis fey or fey wild related. Possible the thingPendleton Ward helped with. But it really is a wild guess.Wizards RPG TeamFRONTLISTOn Sale Date: 19 September 20179780786966103, 0786966106Hardcover$49.95 USD, $63.95 CADWizards RPG TeamFRONTLISTOn Sale Date: 21 November 20179780786966110, 0786966114Hardcover$49.95 USD, $63.95 CAD |
Netflix's newest original series, Captive is a true-crime docuseries that dives head first into some of the most famous cases of kidnapping around the globe. The series is told from all angles of the crimes, including the offenders themselves. It gives insight into the mindset of the victim, their families, the police, and the kidnappers during the time of the captivity in question. Episode 2 will focus on what they refer to as, "The Cola Kidnap." Brazilian Coca Cola CEO, Corinne Coffin was kidnapped and her family was extorted for ransom in 1991. But, what is Corinne doing now all these years later?
Well, it is certainly understandable that someone that has been through what she went through would not want their information public ever again. Any searches for her recent activity turn up nothing and she is not available on any social media platforms. She has essentially disappeared from the internet since her release in 1991, and I really can't blame her. This is why is it astounding to see her tell her harrowing tale in her episode of Captive. She is calm, controlled, and remembers her experience in great detail, which makes it that much more fascinating to hear her recall.
As the Netflix docuseries shows, Coffin was held hostage in her kidnappers' hideout for 12 days and claims she even had a stroke while there. Viewers hear from the lead kidnapper, Ronaldo Monteiro, in the documentary, and he explains that Coffin's wealth was the number one reason for her becoming a target. Coffin herself admits that she lived an extremely privileged life saying, "I lived in a high-rise apartment building, I had a maid and a driver and could afford to have my children study at a private school. So, I had a wonderful life." Of course, being wealthy doesn't make you deserving of having it taken from you. Her success simply made her a more attractive target for extortion.
In the most disturbing parts of the interview, Ronaldo goes on to explain how he and his colleagues watched Coffin's routine for weeks before they finally stopped her driver on her way into work and kidnapped her in the middle of a crowded street. Coffin says of this experience, "I thought why did I not tell my husband I loved him this morning? Why did I not hug my kids one more time? I kept thinking about how I might never be given that chance again." This makes it pretty clear why she stays under the radar today. Once someone has spent weeks watching your every move, you probably want to keep away from social media.
It is very clear that Coffin is a strong woman who doesn't let anyone get the best of her. Simply from her own story, a picture is painted of a heroic stoicism during her captivity that actually led to Ronaldo feeling some compassion for her. He said himself that he was taken back by her demeanor and that she was unlike any victim he has ever encountered. Coffin says, "I very early on did not want to show them any weakness. I didn't cry in front of them." She later says that although they had taken her hostage and were keeping her from her family, she would not let them take her dignity.
Whatever she is up to these days, one thing is for sure: She is certainly still a strong, successful, inspiring woman to be able to endure that experience and still be able to talk about it today.
Images: Mark Wolf/Netflix(2) |
How do you explain Bitcoin? What is a blockchain? What’s so great about it and if it is that great why hasn’t it take over the world yet? You think that you know? I thought so too.
I’ve been surrounded with Bitcoin for 4 years now. I’m an experienced software developer and consider myself an advanced Bitcoin enthusiast. And I recently joined Colu, a company that is building the digital equivalent of physical cash.
So, I work with Bitcoin full-time. And I’ve been explaining it to friends and family for years. But it wasn’t until I attended the Scaling Bitcoin conference that I finally understood what it is.
It is hard to explain Bitcoin to newcomers. But last week I learned it’s even harder to explain Bitcoin to bitcoiners. Allow me to try.
It’s all about consensus, stupid
The best feature of the bitcoin blockchain is reaching and maintaining consensus. All nodes can come to an agreement on what happened, and just as important, on what didn’t happen.
The most common application of this is the bitcoin currency itself. It allows all nodes to agree that a certain amount of coins were sent to Alice. They can also agree that Alice spent some part of that amount. Finally they can agree that she did not spend another part.
It is by being able to agree on what Alice did not spend, that we are able to prevent double spend attacks.
You can also put DNS records on the bitcoin blockchain. You can prove that a domain name belongs to Bob, but also that another domain name doesn’t yet belong to anyone.
Affordable consensus
Did he though? Well, that depends on who you ask.
Agreeing on what happened, and what didn’t happen, is hard. Look at this election season. Did Trump say Obama wasn’t American, or didn’t he? Did Clinton? And who said it first? That probably depends on who you ask.
So the problem with having everyone in consensus, is that they all need to know everything. To agree on who owns which bitcoin, the network requires all nodes to be aware of all the transactions ever made. It turns out that this is a lot of data to handle, so it takes a long time, and it’s expensive.
And remember, Bitcoin is not really a payment network. It’s a tool that helps us (faulty) humans reach consensus. So what do we really mean when looking for ways to “scale bitcoin?” What we are looking for is ways to make reaching consensus affordable.
Here are 3 ways to do that, that were mentioned out at Scaling Bitcoin:
1. Bitcoin fungibility: how about some privacy?
According to Wikipedia:
Fungibility is the property of a good or a commodity whose individual units are capable of mutual substitution.
So for Bitcoin to be fungible, one bitcoin must be completely identical to any other bitcoin. Currently that’s not the case, as all bitcoins have a public history. One bitcoin could conceivably be worth less than another, if it is known to have “dubious” history.
I won’t get into the influence of this on bitcoin economics here, but it’s important to note how privacy and anonymity in bitcoin go hand in hand with making it fungible.
How is all this related to making consensus affordable (or “scaling bitcoin”)? Well, turns out that the most efficient way to maintain your privacy is to just keep some things to yourself, and limit the things we must all agree on.
One interesting idea presented at Scaling Bitcoin is MimbleWimble. MimbleWimble is a design for a new blockchain. Instead of agreeing on the history of all transactions, let’s only agree on the current state!
A few months ago, an anonymous author published the whitepaper detailing the crypto magic required to make this work. Once miners process transactions, the entire blockchain history can be compressed to only the current state. And so the entire blockchain that weighs 100GB today could be compressed to less than 1MB, and you won’t be able to tell who sent how much to who. For more on MimbleWimble, check out the Scaling Bitcoin presentation or the less technical Crypto Show podcast.
Another idea is using the Lightning Network for privacy…
2. Lightning Network: Need-to-know basis
A lot has been said about Lightning. It’s a second-layer network that should enable bitcoin users to transact without writing to the blockchain, that is, without reaching worldwide consensus. It’s helpful for privacy and fungibility, but also much more.
Instead of registering transactions on blockchains, users transact with cryptographic proofs (think of them as IOUs). These show that they intend (and are able) to settle the payment in the future. Whenever Alice wants to convert the IOUs she received to bitcoins registered on the blockchain, she can ask Bob to pay up.
If he refuses, Alice can submit these IOUs to the blockchain, which will act as a “judge” and automatically make sure Bob pays and Alice gets her fair share.
But the trick is, Alice only has to do this if for some reason she wants everyone to have global consensus about her ownership of these coins. If she doesn’t want (or care for) everyone to know, she might very well never register that transaction on the blockchain.
She can continue to transact with other users on the Lightning Network and perhaps neither of them will ever cash out!
(Some of you probably noticed that I’m oversimplifying. But you can’t really explain how Lightning works in a few paragraphs. Bitcoin Magazine has a great three-parter on this subject: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)
The Lightning protocol still needs a lot of work, and the 3 related presentations at the conference (I recommend watching them all) raised a lot of questions.
At Colu, we will provide our users the benefits of the Lightning network as soon as it launches. Expect to hear more very soon!
3. Client side validation
The final presentation was given by Peter Todd, who, for me, finally drove the point home.
He named the most revolutionary blockchain feature for consensus Proof of Publication (remember? That’s agreeing on what happened, and on what didn’t happen). Then he asked the surprising question:
If miners are validating blocks, what are full nodes doing?
or in other words:
Do miners need to validate blocks?
Protocols like Colu’s Colored Coins take care of all validation on the client-side, on full nodes. Miners don’t care about the transaction data created by colored coins implementations. We pay them in bitcoins to put the data in the blockchain and they are happy to take the deal.
The idea of client-side validation for bitcoin is: why do miners need to even validate bitcoin transactions at all? Bitcoin could be transitioned to become an asset in a future protocol like Colored Coins. Miners could ignore all transactions and their validity (except for transaction that pay them directly).
They can dump all data they receive in blocks, as long as they are being paid enough. The upside is that miners don’t even need to be able to read the data! That allows all sorts of tricks with encryption, compression, aggregation, etc.
Full nodes will take care of validations and ignore all data that is invalid. And if they want to go for a new set of rules or features, they don’t need to seek approval from miners!
Today, Bitcoin as an ecosystem is deeply rooted in the idea of miners validating blocks. But going forward, I think discussions on the notion of client-only validations could be very interesting.
Final thoughts: the inefficient blockchain
People keep saying “Blockchains provide an efficient way to make payments”. This couldn’t be further from the truth, and Scaling Bitcoin was unapologetic about this. Blockchains are inherently inefficient. They are slow and expensive by design. And their capacity for growth is, compared to other data structures, limited. The reason they were made this way, was because their only true goal is to reach consensus.
The way to scale bitcoin, isn’t to make it faster or easier to agree on everything. It’s using non-blockchain, second layer protocols, to limit what we must agree on.
During the coming weeks, expect to hear more from us at Colu on our plans for the world’s first network of digital fiat currencies — using the blockchain for consensus where it makes sense, and second layer protocols where it doesn’t. Stay tuned…
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Image copyright Unicef
For the first time since the Ebola outbreak was declared in Sierra Leone, the country has recorded zero new infections.
There were no new Ebola cases reported last week according to the WHO.
At the height of the outbreak Sierra Leone was reporting more than 500 new cases a week. Last week, for the first time since May last year, there were zero new cases.
But authorities are warning against complacency.
OB Sisay, Director of the National Ebola Response Centre (NERC), said: "This does not mean Sierra Leone is suddenly Ebola free.
"As long as we have one Ebola case we still have an epidemic. People should continue to take the public health measures... around hand-washing, temperature checks, enhanced screening."
In Sierra Leone currently:
two Ebola patients are still being treated
81 people who have been in contact with infected patients are being monitored by authorities
four contacts are currently missing, according to the World Health Organization
Nightclubs re-open
Restrictions on public gatherings, travel and trade have been eased in the last couple of weeks. Nightclubs and theatres have re-opened and markets are allowed to stay open for longer.
"People are really happy," said OB Sisay.
"The jubilations haven't started yet because we are constantly on the radio saying it's not over yet, but people are extremely pleased that they are [starting to] see the end of this."
Officially though, the end of the outbreak will only be declared six weeks after the last Ebola patient either dies or tests negative for the virus. Whilst neighbouring Guinea continues to report a small number of cases, this final goal remains out of reach.
Guinea identified three new infections last week. Liberia has been on zero new cases since 23 July.
On Friday, President Ernest Bai Koroma lifted the quarantine on one of the last villages to be cordoned off to help stop the spread of the virus, marking the moment as the beginning of the end of the outbreak in Sierra Leone.
Deadliest outbreak
Image copyright Getty Images
Over 11,000 people have died from Ebola since the epidemic erupted in 2014 - a six-fold increase of victims since its discovery in 1976.
The World Health Organization declared the outbreak an international emergency on 8 August 2014 - more than seven months after it began.
Some scientists say there's a risk the virus may become an ever-present disease in West African society.
Timeline: How we lost control of the Ebola virus
The World Health Organization said the use of rapid response teams and strong community involvement in tracing sick people and their close contacts is helping to finally bring an end to the outbreak.
It said the focus is now on tracking each and every chain of Ebola virus transmission, and closing them down as quickly as possible.
Tracking chains of transmission means finding every single person who has been in contact with someone infected with Ebola, monitoring them closely for 21 days and then quickly moving them to a treatment centre if they develop symptoms.
Dr Anders Nordstrom, WHO Representative in Sierra Leone said: "We have to keep doing this intensive working with communities to identify potential new cases early and to rapidly stop any Ebola virus transmission.
"It's important for Sierra Leone that we have come this far, but it's not over for the region until we are at zero for 42 days in all three countries." |
RENTON, Wash. -- Russell Wilson is a little embarrassed to say so now, but the last time the New Orleans Saints played the Seattle Seahawks, Wilson just might have been wearing a Saints cap.
"I probably did," Wilson said, obviously wanting to downplay it.
That was three years ago, only 11 days after Wilson was the MVP in the Champs Sports Bowl after leading North Carolina State to a 23-7 victory over West Virginia.
It was long before Wilson had any idea he would become a Seahawk, but he had a good reason for wearing a Saints cap. The man Wilson idolizes, a man he wants to pattern himself after, on and off the field, is the starting quarterback for New Orleans -- Drew Brees.
Russell Wilson said he admires Saints QB Drew Brees for his poise under pressure, not just Brees' gaudy numbers. Joe Nicholson/USA TODAY Sports
"I followed him a lot," Wilson said. "I watched him in his college career [at Purdue] and I remember my dad being like, 'Man, you’ve got to watch this guy. This guy is awesome.'
"But I really started following him a lot and studying him my junior year of college, and also my senior year of college. When I went to Wisconsin [senior year], I had tons and tons of film on him. I just watched every throw, pretty much that he had thrown in the NFL. I studied his footwork, studied what he does, and obviously, everybody compares our height."
Brees is listed at 6-foot, which might be a slight exaggeration. Wilson is listed as 5-11, which also might just a touch optimistic.
It's part of the reason Wilson looked up to Brees, figuratively speaking, and thought: If he can do it, I can do it.
"But the thing I admire about him the most is his leadership," Wilson said of Brees. "It’s his attention to detail, his competitive nature. He's very clutch and he's very poised in big situations. You see that on TV. You see that when you meet him. That's when I really learned a lot about him."
Wilson will go head-to-head with his idol for the first time Monday night at CenturyLink Field, a game that could decide home-field advantage in the NFC playoffs. But the first time Wilson and Brees met was the Pro Bowl last January.
"That was my first opportunity to be around him," Brees said. "I think he's an exceptional person. I saw him at the Super Bowl down here in New Orleans the week after that. We exchanged numbers and we've texted back and forth from time to time throughout the season, just checking on each other. I think very highly of him, not only as a player, but as a person."
Brees first learned about Wilson from Saints receiver Nick Toon, who was Wilson's teammate at Wisconsin in 2011.
"Nick had told me that Russell was a fan of mine," Brees said. "So I was waiting for the opportunity to meet him, and sure enough, we had that week together at the Pro Bowl. I couldn't have been more impressed. You can tell the guy loves football. We talked a lot of football. We talked about a lot of other stuff, too, but he's a student of the game. He wants to be great, and I think he was just soaking it all up."
Seattle coach Pete Carroll said he knew about Wilson's admiration for Brees, adding that he heard Wilson "puppy-dogged" Brees around the hotel Pro Bowl week.
"But I know Drew was really good to him," Carroll said. "They had nice conversations and [Wilson] felt like he really took some things away from that week that have helped him."
Wilson could write a technical guide on Brees and his skills.
"He’s so accurate with the football," Wilson said of Brees. "He has a purpose to everything he does, whether it's his footwork or the type of throw that he's making. And he lifts the other players up. He makes the other 10 guys in the huddle better.”
It's safe to say that Russell Wilson has a fan in Drew Brees. "He's a great competitor and the sky's the limit for a guy like that," Brees said of Wilson. Ronald Martinez/Getty Images
That's what many people say about Wilson, who celebrates his 25th birthday Friday. Wilson is having a remarkable second season for the 10-1 Seahawks. He never has lost at home, a perfect 13-0, and he is one touchdown pass away from becoming only the fourth player in NFL history to throw 20 TD passes in each of his first two seasons.
At age 34 in his 13th NFL season, Brees has passed for 3,647 yards and 28 touchdowns in leading the Saints to a 9-2 record. Brees has a 107.3 rating, one spot above Wilson’s 105.1.
If the MVP of the league were selected today, it likely would be Peyton Manning first, Brees second and Wilson third.
New Orleans coach Sean Payton said there's a simple reason why both Wilson and Brees are successful.
"You start with the fact that they're winners," Payton said. "Wilson understands what it takes to win and I think Drew is very much the same way. But you probably also have two players that had that chip on their shoulders a little bit."
Both men have proved their doubters wrong, scouts and NFL experts who felt they were too small to get the job done over the long haul.
"There are a lot of similarities between us," Brees said. "Maybe with the way that we entered this league, being that we weren’t first-round draft picks or anything like that. There were question marks about our size and all of those things, and yet, you just find a way to overcome it when given an opportunity. You make the most of it.
"Certainly [Wilson] has done that. He's been fun to watch. He's a great competitor and the sky's the limit for a guy like that. Watching from afar, those are the kind of guys you root for. He deserves all of the success in the world."
Wilson found NFL success, in part, by looking up to man who already achieved it.
"I love watching him play," Wilson said of Brees. "Playing with him in the Pro Bowl was a special moment for me, seeing how he goes about his business on a daily basis.
"I would look at him and say, 'That’s what I want to be like one day.' I’m a constant work in a progress and I’ve got a long way to go. But he's definitely a great person to look up to."
And what about that Saints cap he has? Wilson said he hid it.
"I don’t wear it anymore," Wilson said laughing. "Obviously, I love the Seahawks now. This is a special place to play." |
The River Glaven in the eastern English county of Norfolk is 10½ miles long and flows through picturesque North Norfolk countryside to the North Sea. Rising from a tiny headwater in Bodham the river starts 2½ miles before Selbrigg Pond where three streams combine at the outfall. The scenic value of the Glaven valley is important to the tourist industry in North Norfolk. The River is also 15km long and is one of over 200 chalk rivers in the world and one of 160 in the UK.[citation needed]
Geography [ edit ]
The river has a catchment area of approximately 115 km2 and from its source falls 50 metres to the present tidal limit at Cley sluice. The sub-surface geology is predominantly chalk and in parts of the lower valley the river runs over chalk beds. The land adjoining the river consists of a mixture of arable farm land and, in the upper reaches near Edgefield, coniferous plantations. In the middle reaches there are grazing meadows and low-lying washlands especially below Glandford Mill. The Glaven has two major tributaries: Stody Beck joins just above Hunworth Mill (Map Ref TG 066 356), and the Thornage Beck joins close to the unbridged ford on the Thornage to Hunworth road (Map Ref TG 062 363).
The river meanders across water meadows between Letheringsett and Glandford
Lakes and pools [ edit ]
There are three "on-stream" lakes associated with the main channel, these being Hawksmere (Hempstead mill pond), Edgefield Hall Lake and Bayfield Hall Lake. The long, thin lake at Bayfield Hall in many ways epitomises the beauty of the lower Glaven valley. It was dug in the late eighteenth century for ornamental purposes. In the late 19th century an "extravaganza" tunnel was built into the valley side so that the Glaven could be partly diverted around the lake.
This tunnel stopped operating in 2010 when the Bayfield hall project set out to create a new 1.2 mile long river channel to save the wildlife including many species of fish, especially Trout. The project was completed in 2014. It was very successful and this is the longest manmade river stretch in the UK.[citation needed]
Watermills [ edit ]
At the time of the Domesday Book the River Glaven had 19 watermills. Today the Glaven has six: in order of river descent they are Hempstead, Hunworth, Thornage, Letheringsett, Letheringsett Brewery mill and Glandford. Letheringsett mill is still in use and is the only working watermill in Norfolk, grinding corn to make flour which is on sale at the mill shop.
Wildlife [ edit ]
Water voles are present in the Glaven, in good numbers. Otters are difficult to see, but they make good use of the river. This could be one reason why mink are absent as otters are thought not to tolerate them. Both red deer and roe deer are seen.
The bird population reflects the range of habitats available, and the total number of species present is around 126, of which 68 have bred (these figures do not include birds of the coastal wetlands north of the coast road (A 149) at Cley).
The kingfisher
Birds seen locally include kingfisher, barn owl, common buzzard and osprey. The last uses the Glaven Valley as a flyway on its spring and autumn migration and it also sometimes stays to fish. Common buzzard breed in small but increasing numbers and can be seen wheeling overhead. Barn owls frequently hunt during daylight hours. As winter approaches flocks of pink-footed geese and brent geese fly from the coast to feeding grounds on the farms inland.
Fish [ edit ]
Fish in the river include three-spined stickleback, bullhead, stone loach, brown trout, sea trout, brook lamprey, roach, rudd, perch, eel, pike, gudgeon, carp and tench.
Insects and dragonflies [ edit ]
Emperor dragonfly
Some insects and dragonfly to be seen on the river include banded demoiselle, emerald damselfly, scarce emerald damselfly, large red damselfly, red-eyed damselfly, small red-eyed damselfly, azure damselfly, common blue damselfly, blue-tailed damselfly, migrant hawker, southern hawker, brown hawker, emperor dragonfly, four-spotted chaser, broad-bodied chaser, black-tailed skimmer, keeled skimmer, common darter, ruddy darter, common hawker, Norfolk hawker, hairy dragonfly, red-veined darter, yellow-winged darter, black darter and the variable damselfly.
Small mammals [ edit ]
Hedgehog
Small mammals seen in or near the river include hedgehog, mole, common shrew, pygmy shrew, water shrew, noctule bat, pipistrelle bat, Natterer’s bat, Daubenton’s bat, rabbits, brown hares, grey squirrel, bank vole, short-tailed field vole, water vole, wood mouse, house mouse and the brown rat.
Larger mammals [ edit ]
Red deer, roe deer, muntjac, red fox, badger, otter, stoat, weasel and feral cats.
Gallery [ edit ] |
Chelsea & Yamir Chelsea fills her mom in on Yamir's big audition and the shocking revelation that he probably won't be able to have a career as a famous musician in Galesburg, Illinois. Uh, duh. But, Chelsea says, she doesn't think she can afford to live in Chicago, since I guess that would require, you know, GETTING A JOB? Much like Meat Loaf, Chelsea will do anything for love, but she won't do that. Chelsea's mom gently points out that Yamir has sacrificed a ton to come live in the U.S., and that Chelsea should maybe consider not being a selfish asshole for a minute, and move to Chicago. Chelsea seems unconvinced, but decides to sit down with Yamir to discuss. He tells her he feels "hopeless" in Galesburg because there aren't a ton of (read: any) opportunities for him to do his music there. Eventually, Chelsea does agree to move to Chicago so that Yamir can pursue his dreams. Well. That resolved itself suspiciously easily.
Justin & Evelin It's Evelin's birthday, so Justin is surprising her with a hot-air balloon ride. I get that hot-air balloon rides are supposed to be a thing people like, but I'm not sure why, since they seem simultaneously terrifying AND boring. Anyway, while they're floating high above the Earth, Evelin brings up the idea of Justin's mom attending their wedding, and Justin reluctantly agrees. When they tell her she's invited, Justin's mom immediately starts pushing for the inclusion of other family members (namely, Justin's horrible brother and sister-in-law). To everyone's surprise, Justin is suddenly amenable to his family attending the wedding, as long as he doesn't have to plan anything. So all of that sturm und drang about how he didn't want his family there under any circumstances was just a bunch of hot air (pun intended)? 'Kay?
Brett & Daya Brett wants some alone time with Daya now that Cassidy has gone back to her suspiciously attractive mother. Noting that they have zero privacy in their current digs, Brett brings Daya to look at apartments. Daya's impressed by the modern conveniences in the apartment they visit, and the fact that it doesn't come with two aging female roommates.
Amy & Danny Amy and Danny have decided to get married right away because Danny definitely wants to have sex with a female person, as soon as possible! Tout de suite! Bring on the heterosexual intercourse already! Amy's family arrives in Norristown from Cape Town, and Amy is nervous for them to meet Danny's racist turd of a dad. When Danny's parents show up, his mom exchanges hugs with Amy's family while his dad shakes their hands and frowns disapprovingly at their brownness. It's pretty uncomfortable! At the rehearsal dinner, Danny gives a speech in which he tries to smooth over the awkwardness between the two families. He acknowledges the fact that he and Amy are "crossing boundaries that some people don't like" by getting married, but emphasizes that people are all the same and that their marriage represents unity. Danny's mom, we learn, is totally prepared to treat Amy as her own daughter, whereas his dad is not on board and considers Danny and Amy to be "on the outer fringes" of his life. These disparate reactions make me wonder how the hell Danny's mom and dad ever got together (and why they are still together), since she seems like a sweet lady and he seems like a horrid troll, but I guess that's a question for another TLC show! At dinner, one of Danny's relatives asks about wedding traditions in South Africa. This leads to a discussion of dowries, and once again, the fact of Amy's virginity is trotted out, this time in the context of how many cows it'd be worth in her hypothetical dowry. But it's all good, because everyone at the table has a good chuckle about it, so the families are bonding, I guess? In any case, Amy should be used to everyone and their mom (literally) discussing the status of her hymen at this point, so no biggie.
Cassia & Jason Jason brings Cassia to the type of depressing auction where he gets a lot of the creepy merchandise that he resells online. The items at this auction seem to consist mostly of old washing machines, bulk candy, and pillows. Fun for everyone! Cassia is not excited about being there, and she storms out mid-auction because Jason is "working too much." She starts crying in the parking lot, maybe because the full reality of what she's gotten herself into, Jason-wise, has finally hit her. When Jason eventually wanders out to see what's up, Cassia tells him that her sitting by herself at an auction doesn't count as their spending quality time together. He seems utterly confounded by this. Later, Cassia tries again to explain to Jason why she was upset, and he says he understands, but that someone needs to be trolling the estate sales if they ever want to be able to finance their shark-themed dream wedding. |
Disclaimer: This is intended as a brief overview of how the game plays and my general thoughts on it. This does not include complete rules and some mistakes may have been made. I’m happy to correct any mistakes pointed out in the comments.
Components
The brown pepper on the wood
background can be difficult to see
especially from across the table
I love the names on the recipe
cards but the cost can be difficult
to see due to the small size of the cards.
Set Up
Look at all the lovely bits
Gameplay
Auction Phase
The bottom spots are the turn track
the upper spots are temporary housing while
determining the new turn order.
Just because you won the auction
doesn't mean you'll get to choose
one of these auction cards first.
Planting Phase
Harvesting Phase
A successful harvest.
Fulfillment Phase
Time Check….err phase?
Final Scoring
My Thoughts |
Ken Levine, director of BioShock, is making an interactive live-action film based on The Twilight Zone.
It will "explore the spaces between movies and games", Levine told Wired.
The Twilight Zone is an American sci-fi and fantasy TV show famed for each episode's unexpected twist.
Levine is working with a tech company called Interlude, which will let viewers decide what the characters do.
"Playing my games, you can probably tell Twilight Zone is something I grew up with," Levine says. "They speak to a larger truth. They're morality plays, fables, and often they're about a character who is going through an experience that's central to their life but also speaks to a larger part of the human condition. I don't think [Rod] Serling, at the beginning, set out to be a science-fiction writer. But he found that this is a great medium to do metaphor."
Wired revealed Sam Barlow, creator of indie hit Her Story, is also working with Interlude. He's helping to make a digital short based on the WarGames.
Back to Levine, who says he's still working at BioShock publisher Take-Two on his next game. The Twilight Zone film is a side project - and it's early days.
As for Levine's next game proper, little is known about it, save that it features a small-scale open world.
That's as of December 2015, anyway, when Levine said he was trying to work out how to increase the replayability of top-notch narrative games.
"The AAA, single-player narrative game is starting to disappear," Levine explained. "Kind of games like BioShock. There's fewer of them being made.
"The real reason is they're very expensive to make and I think gamers are saying pretty loud and clear that if they're going to spend $40, $50, $60, they want an experience that lasts more than 10-12 hours. That's a lot to ask somebody to spend."
BioShock Infinite was the final title from Levine's Irrational Games studio as we knew it. The developer has since been rebooted with a small team of veteran staff.
The studio is still part of publisher 2K, which is also exploring new options for the future of BioShock - likely, a new game made by a developer other than Levine.
"We started this experiment after we finished BioShock Infinite," Levine continued, "which was, 'How do you make a narrative game feel like the kind of games we've made before but make it replayable and make it extend and make it react to the players?'
"[You] make it replayable by giving players different ways to approach the problems and really letting them dictate the experience. That is not a simple problem to solve."
While Take-Two has yet to announce Levine's next game, it looks like a remaster of the BioShock games is in the works. |
cuz police Weiss is a good Weiss 8DI was reading the fanfiction "The Rose Thief" by Navyrants(link here: www.fanfiction.net/s/10700277/… and I just had the idea of how they would look. Yeah I know there's a description for the characters and I know Ruby should have goggles and a mask on but I wanted to show her cheeky smile(Also Weiss manages to attach a police hat on while still donning a side ponytail xD I can see her doing it)Drawing Ruby was easy, I'm used to that character design; Weiss on the other hand.. required a bit of research.I probably spent a good 20 minutes on just drawing Weiss' legs ==" I had to look up how to draw a policewoman outfit, handcuffs, and heels.I know that heels and skirts would probably be more of a hindrance than do any good as a police.. but dammit, I wanted Weiss in a skirt!I've only been doodling on my breaks.. but I'll see if I have the time to colour this as well.EDIT: 09/28 DONE AND FRIGGIN' COLOURED. Haah! Take that sleep! I didn't need you anyway!! @_@ (currently 5:18AM) |
Philanthropic economist Gareth Morgan is calling for the eradication of cats from New Zealand.
"The fact is that your furry friend is actually a friendly neighbourhood serial killer," his new Cats to Go website, set up by the Morgan Foundation, says.
The site says cats have contributed to the extinction of nine native bird species and impacted on 33 endangered native bird species.
CLAWS OUT: Gareth Morgan wants action.
It goes on to say that killing cats is not necessary but is an option.
"We appreciate the fact that you have an emotional connection with your pet and that pet ownership is a rewarding experience.
"But there's a real problem with cats - they kill for pleasure, and most of that killing is out of your sight so probably out of your mind.
"If you think New Zealand's native species are precious and should be fostered then it's important you be a responsible cat owner.
"That means keep them inside 24 hours a day and if that's impractical then when the time comes ensure this is the last cat you ever own."
Morgan also suggests other ways to reduce the impact cats have on native bird populations.
"I am advocating responsible pet ownership, not for people to bop their pets on the head. To me a responsible pet owner has their cat neutered, keeps it well fed and indoors as much as possible, and puts a bell on them. Then when their cat dies I think people should consider not replacing it".
Councils also need to step up and manage cats like they do already with dogs, he said.
"All cats should be registered, chipped and neutered, while setting live capture cage traps on your property and turning the miscreants over to the local authority should be encouraged." |
A batch of studies further confirms medical cannabis patients are right to try cannabidiol-rich marijuana products to treat intractable seizure disorders.
Three studies presented at the American Epilepsy Society’s 69th Annual Meeting in Philadelphia Dec. 7th found a marijuana-derived extract slashed pediatric seizures in half, and completely stopped seizures in nine percent of cases.
Sixteen clinics in the U.S. — including one in San Francisco — are giving a marijuana extract rich in the molecule cannabidiol (called Epidiolex) to a total of 261 people — mostly children with incurable epilepsy, a sometimes deadly seizure disorder.
“After three months of treatment, the frequency of all seizures was reduced by a median of 45 percent in all participants. Almost half (47%) of the participants in the study experienced a 50 percent or greater reduction in seizures and nine percent of patients were seizure-free. Among specific patient populations, DS patients had a 62 percent reduction in seizures and 13 percent were seizure-free. Patients with LGS experienced a 71 percent reduction in atonic seizures,” stated a release from the American Epilepsy Society. “We are pleased to report these promising data on significant numbers of children,” stated lead author Orrin Devinsky, M.D., of New York University Langone Medical Center’s Comprehensive Epilepsy Center, in a release. “These data reinforce and support the safety and efficacy we have shared in previous studies. Most importantly it is providing hope to the children and their families who have been living with debilitating seizures.”
Epidiolex is generally not available in the United States, due to the federal War on Drugs. Instead, medical marijuana providers are making CBD-rich formulations in the 23 medical marijuana states. The U.S. government has spent hundreds of millions of dollars arresting and prosecuting such providers, advocacy groups say.
Congress passed a law in December 2015 banning the use of federal funds to interfere with state marijuana laws. However, the U.S. Department of Justice continues to prosecute patients and providers.
Doctors including Sanjay Gupta say the federal government has institutionally misled the public and doctors about cannabis’ efficacy, and medical formulations should be available in every pharmacy in the U.S. About 80 percent of the public supports access to medical cannabis, and researchers say ongoing federal pot prohibition is leading to the unnecessary deaths of thousands of sick children and adults.
The data further confirms what doctors have known since biblical times — cannabis is a powerful tool in the treatment of seizures. The plant was banned in the U.S. in 1937 over the objections of the American Medical Association at the time. Until recently, the AMA has towed the federal line that cannabis has zero medicinal value and is among the most dangerous drugs in the world.
Over the past several decades, countless cell, animal, and experimental reports have confirmed cannabis’ relative safety and efficacy in treating seizures. Pot is non-toxic, has no overdose, and major side effects include dizziness, appetite, and sleep. |
If #OpenStreetMap had an award for the most used tag for the sole purpose that something shows up on the map, highway=bus_stop would be a promising contender. The headline a common phrase in the German OSM community says just that: Mapping for the render engine.
I’ve been mapping for 3 months now and after finishing all the house numbers in my village POIs and Bus stops where next on my list and I had never been more confused.
highway=bus_stop is widely used to mark the position where passengers await for a bus service […] however there is not complete agreement within the community on this matter, and some users advocate using highway=bus_stop as a node within the highway=* at the place where the vehicle stops.
Great so what now? A 3rd opinion? What about the German Wiki entry:
This use is incompatible with the new public transport schema and should be avoided.
So I started to look further into this and the next stop obviously was public_transport=, which then also lead me to highlights like:
Use public_transport=platform and/or highway=bus_stop to identify the places where passengers wait for the service.
Digging a bit further I found the to this day most informative page on the whole issue…
Proposed features/Public Transport
20th April 2011: 43-3 a overwhelming majority approves of the “new” public_transport= tagging scheme.
After reading through all of that I can say that there is one sentence above I stand 110% behind, the German Wiki:
This use is incompatible with the new public transport schema and should be avoided.
PLEASE support public_transport=
It doesn’t matter if you are mapper or developer. But I especially appeal to all the people responsible for rendering map tiles, because I won’t be able to get people to use public_transport=stop_position if it doesn’t show up on the map. And thanks if you already do!
Right now the “or” basically means add public_transport=stop_position to highway=bus_stop if you like or don’t, but not that you can use either of those with the same result.
The main reason I write this is because I hope more people will support and use the new schema as there have been several post in the German Forum over the last weeks and it was even discussed in the German Podcast 01:09:30 and the only thing consistent in all discussions is inconsistency.
Wipe off highway=bus_stop from the surface of OpenStreetMap!
…that’s my personal opinion. Redirect the Wiki entry to public transport, replace all the tags in the database and remove it from every editor and render engine.
In 22 days it has been 3 years since that proposal was approved…
Btw. if your prefer Reddit’s comment style check out /r/openstreetmap: http://www.reddit.com/r/openstreetmap/comments/21ouxz/public_transport_wipe_off_highwaybus_stop_from/ |
Posted 01 April 2012 - 08:59 PM
Compilations? Of What? A bunch of shit OF songs? You never put ANYTHING good or anything people want on those, not giving arm and hammer though? That's fine, honestly this is worth the ban I suppose. But like I said, the only thing that would be worth all the trouble of not leaking the tracks is Arm and Hammer, but I guess you feel Lucky Charms and others being in the general public's hands is better than giving one person arm and hammer, then fine, so be it.
"The guys have asked for you to not do any more digging for unreleased songs. Apparently you are finding really old stuff that they don't want out.
Thanks"
I am looking for the following rare Tyler tracks, willing to trade (and possibly buy) them.
909
A Milli Freestyle (FOUND)
Annie (FOUND)
AWOL
Baking Soda
Blow (Edited)
Chlamydia
Comrade Creator
Fat Drunk Bitch
Get Fresh (FOUND)
Green Purse
I'm Beamin' by Lupe Fiasco (Remix) feat. Tyler, The Creator & Taco Bennett
Lucky Charms (FOUND)
Llama Featuring Earl Sweatshirt
Prism
Sleep Freestyle
Tiko
Trap
Yorks
You're Drunk
I also have some rare Earl / Frank
The ones that say (FOUND) are the ones I have, PM me and we will talk about details, also I am not part of OFT or any other forum sites, I found all the tracks myself, thank you.
Who's got em? I have other rare odd future tracks/unreleased Dr. Dre music/unreleased Dilla beats I'd be willing to trade IF you have any of these tracks or other unreleased Tyler, The Creator tracks not mentioned in this list.
- 909 (RARE/UNLEAKED)
- A Milli Freestyle (FOUND)
- AssMilk feat. Earl Sweatshirt (Extended Version) (prod. by Tyler, The Creator) (RARE/UNLEAKED)
- AWOL (RARE/UNLEAKED)
- Baking Soda (RARE/UNLEAKED)
- Car by BranDun Deshay (prod. by Tyler, The Creator) (RARE/UNLEAKED)
- Chlamydia (RARE/UNLEAKED)
- Comrade Creator (RARE/UNLEAKED)
- Fat Drunk Bitch (RARE/UNLEAKED)
- Gettin' Money Nigga by Cam'Ron (Remix) feat. Tyler, The Creator (RARE/UNLEAKED)
- Green Purse (RARE/UNLEAKED)
- I'm Beamin' by Lupe Fiasco (Remix) feat. Tyler, The Creator & Taco Bennett (RARE/UNLEAKED)
- Jasp by Jasper Dolphin feat. Tyler, The Creator (RARE/UNLEAKED)
- Lucky Charms (FOUND)
- Llama Featuring Earl Sweatshirt (RARE/UNLEAKED)
- Mushrooms (RARE/UNLEAKED)
- Potu Freestyle By BranDun Deshay And Ace The Creator (RARE/UNLEAKED)
- Prism (RARE/UNLEAKED)
- Sleep Freestyle (RARE/UNLEAKED)
- Sleepies (RARE/UNLEAKED)
- Tiko (RARE/UNLEAKED)
- Trap (RARE/UNLEAKED)
- Yorks (RARE/UNLEAKED)
- You're Drunk (RARE/UNLEAKED)
Sorry, no April Fools ( proof )........It's really done, we appreciate the support some of yall gave and we put in too many hours of work to make yall happy, we obviously couldn't make everyone happy though (the same type of people who have ruined it for everyone). We put up with trolls, ungrateful haters, shit-talkers and even extortionists, and we still wanted to keep it going for the fans who were appreciative that others would spend hours of their time to bless them with shit they wouldn't hear any other way. But it's done now. Some people couldn't just be happy with waiting for us to release what we have. I guess they felt like we owed it to them to give them whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted, now, unfortunately all of that is over. We started this because we were unselfish, and ironically, it was the selfishness of others that have killed it.Let me fill you in on what's been going on.Well first, we were approached bywho said that he had the Goblin-leftover "Lucky Charms." Apparently, he got it from a guy who got it from Tyler himself at some point. Cool. We made sure that it was legit and we traded him "A Milli" for it. We did this because it was a freestyle that Tyler has once uploaded himself, and we knew that it would not appear on WOLF. Regardless, not knowing if we could trust him, we made a cover for it so that we could put it out as a single if he decided to leak it (which he did).Then vehement started going around saying he was "in the unreleased crew," asking us for lists of our tracks (which we never sent) and trying to send us fake tracks to get more tracks from us. They were easy to spot, they were clips from youtube, fake Tyler-sounding instrumentals labeled as Eargasm tracks, etc. We eventually got tired of him trying to play us and told him we were going to end any trading between us..This pissed him off and not only did he start going around making up false rumors (saying people were selling tracks, and acting like he had inside information based off of one trade with us), but he also said "what until April 1st, I'm gonna leak everything." We asked him not to, and even told him that he could possibly be banned for it, but he did not care.We have been over here and KTT telling everyone who had Lucky Charms (that they got from vehement or someone who got it from him) not to leak it. Tyler has stated that he does not want it leaked. Once again, it is important to note, that not only are we not the origin of this track, we are also not the people who leaked it. That title belongs to vehement. He traded it to us (we didn't leak it at all) and he leaked it to some people over at KTT. We tried our best to keep it unreleased as Tyler wanted. You don't know how many times I've pasted his formspring and twitter messages regarding that track.I don't even know if it is leaked, but I know more than a few people have it. And vehement is the reason why. He was never in our group, we just did one trade with him. However, all he had was "Lucky Charms" to trade us. Then, after he leaked "A Milli" (or gave it to someone else to leak), we threw up the single on our website. We get no credit, but whatever.Then after this, I'm getting about 4-5 private messages a day with people trying to trade/extort tracks from us. Somessages the other day and basically says either we let him in the group or give him "Arm & Hammer" or he is leaking everything he has. I told him to wait for our Vol.5 compilation and not to leak anything, especially "Lucky Charms"...He writes me:That's the extortion attempt (and saying we never put anything on our compilations that people want.....ignorance...). If I don't give him "Arm & Hammer," he's leaking "Lucky Charms" to the public. Now out of all of the bullshit, I've had to put up with trying to make others happy on this site, this here is just...unreal. I basically told him that "I don't negotiate with terrorists."So apparently, he leaks a bunch of shit over at KTT yesterday under the name "Enigmatic Presents Unreleased"... trying to be an internet hero, because we didn't meet his demands and pay his ransom. It is once again, important to note that he didn't get any of that from us (we do have "Git Fresh" though, apparently someone at KTT had it as well). The origin of "A Milli" is from us (it was our single anyway, no loss there) and he got "Lucky Charms" from vehement. The rest of his compilation is Youtube clips and stuff from the "I Smell Panties" myspace.So really we haven't done anything wrong at all. But this idiot just fucking leaked "Lucky Charms" like a dummy to the public and you think Tyler's gonna let that shit slide?Here's what we got from Kevin (OFT owner) today:You see, we had absolutely nothing to do with this, but the fact that Enigmatic and vehement is leaking shit Tyler doesn't want released puts the axe on anyone putting out unreleased tracks. It's over.Now people can talk shit, you can do what you want. But we gave you shit you wouldn't hear elsewhere. We put up with a lot of shit and nothing to show for it either. We did this for yall. And now two idiots (who we asked time and time again not to release shit, just wait for clearance) go and mess everything up for everyone. They even said "they don't want you all to dig for any more tracks," when we were not the origin of them. So it is what it is.Greedyness is truly the reason we can't have nice things. They want everything right then, when they don't understand what goes on behind the scenes to get this stuff out to you guys. They bypassed every method of "clearance" and in the process fucked it up for everyone. Sorry yall, we wanted to keep it going even after the extortion bullshit, the haters, people attacking us, etc. But in the end, Odd Future wants it to be done, then it's done.Edit: vehement and Enigmatic, both want to cry innocent, here are their threads over at KTT trying to trade the tracks (when they weren't supposed to) before they just decided to leak them:Enigmatic http://www.kanyetoth...hp?topic=204536 Note: His "Annie" is fakeread the last part and tell me if he's a liar or not.....vehement: http://www.kanyetoth...?topic=202850.0 |
ROSEBURG, Ore. (Reuters) - A gunman opened fire at a community college in southern Oregon on Thursday, killing 13 people and wounding some 20 others before he was shot to death by police, state and county officials said, in the latest mass killing to rock a U.S. school.
There were conflicting reports on the number of dead and wounded in the shooting rampage at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, which began shortly after 10:30 a.m. local time.
The state’s attorney general, Ellen Rosenblum, told the local NBC affiliate that 13 people had been slain and 20 wounded. Rosenblum’s office did not return calls from Reuters seeking comment.
Governor Kate Brown said the suspect was a 20-year-old man but he was not identified further by authorities. CNN reported that four guns belonging to the shooter were recovered from the scene.
The massacre is the latest in a series of mass shootings at U.S. college campuses, movie theaters, military bases and churches in recent years. The killings have fueled demands for more gun control in the United States, where ownership of firearms is protected by the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and better care for the mentally ill.
President Barack Obama, speaking just hours after the rampage, said the mass killing should move Americans to demand greater gun controls from elected officials.
“Somehow this has become routine,” a visibly angry and shaken Obama said. “The reporting is routine. My response here, at this podium, ends up being routine. ...We’ve become numb to this.”
Kortney Moore, 18, told the local News Review newspaper that she was in her writing class in Snyder Hall when a gunshot came through the window and struck her teacher in the head.
Moore said the gunman told people to get on the ground, then asked them to stand up and state their religion before he started shooting.
Student Cassandra Welding told CNN that she heard 35 to 40 shots.
Student Brady Winder, in a posting on Facebook, said he was in a classroom in Snyder Hall, next door to the room where the shooting began and ran, along with his classmates, when they heard the gunfire.
“I ran to the edge of the campus, down a hill and waited. From talking with a student in the classroom where it happen, almost every person in the room was shot by a man with four guns,” Winder wrote.
First responders transport an injured person following a shooting incident at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon October 1, 2015. REUTERS/Michael Sullivan/The News-Review
“I’m still shaken up ... I can’t wrap my mind around this. Please just pray for the families and parents of these students,” he posted.
PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center emergency room doctor Hans Notenboom told reporters three patients were flown to the hospital in Riverbend by helicopter, and two were moved directly into operating room.
The hospital said in a statement that the three victims were women between the age of 18 and 34.
Survivors were transported to a local fairgrounds and some family members were left waiting for hours to see if their loved ones would be among them.
“We have grief counselors waiting for those parents who have no children getting off that bus,” said the college’s president, Rita Calvin.
The college, which began its fall term this week and serves more than 13,000 students, 3,000 of them full-time, said it would be closed until Monday.
Agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were on their way to Roseburg.
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Recent episodes of gun violence in the United States include the massacre of nine people at a South Carolina church in June and the killing of five U.S. servicemen in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
In 2012, seven students at the small Christian college Oikos University in Oakland, California, were shot dead by a former student, marking the deadliest outburst of violence at a U.S. college since April 2007, when a student at Virginia Tech University killed 32 people and wounded 25 others before taking his own life. |
Watch the world’s best players compete for $110,000 prize pot
EGX, the UK’s biggest games event, and Gfinity, the leading eSports organisation formed by gamers and with the backing of successful investors, are thrilled to announce they will be hosting two tournaments for more than $100,000 at this year’s EGX, running at the NEC, Birmingham from 24th to 27th September 2015.
The Gfinity stand will give EGX attendees a comprehensive eSports experience, allowing them to meet some of the top pro-gamers in the world, plus see them in action competing for more than $100,000 in prize money across Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) and StarCraft 2, the largest ever prize pot in EGX history.
The $100,000 Gfinity Champion of Champions event will see the top four teams from previous Gfinity events - fnatic, Ninjas in Pyjamas, Team EnvyUs and Virtus Pro - compete on Saturday 26th and Sunday 27th for the coveted title of Gfinity CS:GO Champions 2015. Prior to the weekend, the final Gfinity Summer Masters for StarCraft 2 will see eight of the world’s best players compete live from the show floor.
“We are very excited to announce that we'll be partnering with EGX to bring elite level eSports to the event for the first time”. Said Martin Wyatt, Head of Partnerships at Gfinity. “Following our successful debut at the show in 2014 we have decided to bring the culmination of our CS:GO and Starcraft 2 seasons to the NEC and 80,000 people. With over $100,000 to play for and the very best playing talent in the world in attendance this is an amazing opportunity for the EGX crowd to witness world class eSports live and in person".
David Lilley, Managing Director of Gamer Events, added, "eSports is exploding worldwide and we're delighted to be working more closely with Gfinity to bring the UK's premier eSports experience to EGX. Visitors will see the world's finest gaming stars compete at the highest level and may even pick up a trick or two to help them win next year's prize pot".
EGX will take place at the NEC, Birmingham from 24th to 27th September 2015. For more information about all the activity at the event, including eSports, hundreds of playable games and dozens of exclusive developer announcements, please visit www.egx.net/egx. |
The social history of the piano is the history of the instrument's role in society. The piano was invented at the end of the 17th century, had become widespread in Western society by the end of the 18th, and is still widely played today.
Early years [ edit ]
At the time of its origin around the year 1700,[1] the piano was a speculative invention, produced by the well-paid craftsman and inventor Bartolomeo Cristofori for his wealthy patron Ferdinando de Medici, Grand Prince of Florence. As such, it was an extremely expensive item. For some time after its invention, the piano was largely owned by royalty (e.g. the kings of Portugal and Prussia); see Fortepiano for details. Even later on, (i.e. throughout the 18th and early 19th centuries), pianos were financially beyond the reach of most families, and the pianos of those times were generally the property of the gentry and the aristocracy. Visiting music masters taught their children to play the piano.
Pianos and women [ edit ]
Both Parakilas[2] and Loesser[3] emphasize a connection during this period between pianos and the female gender; piano study was apparently more common for girls than boys.[4] Despite this, women were discouraged from playing the piano professionally and were encouraged not to take their musical aspirations too seriously. Nevertheless, women were considered more attractive and desirable if they could play the piano. The piano was a symbol of social status, and the ability to play the piano stood as a testament to a woman's marriageability.[5]
Emma Wedgwood Darwin
Women who had learned to play as children often continued to play as adults, thus providing music in their households.[6] For instance, Emma Wedgwood (1808–1896), the granddaughter of the wealthy industrialist Josiah Wedgwood, took piano lessons from none other than Frédéric Chopin, and apparently achieved a fair level of proficiency. Following her marriage to Charles Darwin, Emma still played the piano daily, while her husband listened appreciatively.
A number of female piano students became outright virtuose, and the skills of woman pianists inspired the work of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, who dedicated difficult-to-play works to their woman friends.[7] However, careers as concert musicians were typically open only to men (an important exception was Clara Schumann).
The spread of the piano [ edit ]
When the piano was invented in 1700, it failed to catch the public's attention due to its expense and the fact that the harpsichord was the preferred instrument of the time. Very few people knew of the piano until after the Seven Years' War when a young man named Johann Zumpe fled Germany for London. While there he refined Cristofori's piano, introducing separate sections of black keys as well as treble and bass capabilities. This new piano was extremely difficult to play, and very few people learned how to play the instrument because of this. That changed when Zumpe convinced Johann Christian Bach, the personal music master to Queen Charlotte and an international celebrity, to purchase and play on a Zumpe piano for the first ever Zumpe piano concert in 1768. Because of Bach's fame, the piano soon replaced the harpsichord as the predominant instrument of the time, and later composers such as Mozart and Beethoven chose to play on a Zumpe piano.[8]
Bach's fame and the interest of Queen Charlotte helped the piano become a symbol of social status. The turn of the 19th century also saw the rise of the middle class in the Western world. This middle class was eager to showcase their social status, and it became the proper Victorian man's goal to shower his wife and daughters with leisure time and leisure activities, as leisure was a symbol of social status. Consequently, the piano, which was often used for leisure, stood as a testament to a family's position on the socioeconomic ladder.[9]
Over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, the middle class of Europe and North America increased in both numbers and prosperity. This increase produced a corresponding rise in the domestic importance of the piano, as ever more families became able to afford pianos and piano instruction. The piano also became common in public institutions, such as schools, hotels, and public houses. As elements of the Western middle-class lifestyle gradually spread to other nations, the piano became common in these nations as well, for example in Japan.
To understand the rise of the piano among the middle class, it is helpful to remember that before mechanical and electronic reproduction, music was in fact performed on a daily basis by ordinary people. For instance, the working people of every nation generated a body of folk music, which was transmitted orally down through the generations and sung by all. The parents of Joseph Haydn (1732–1809) could not read music, yet Haydn's father (who worked as a wheelwright) taught himself to play the harp, and the Haydn family frequently played and sang together. With rising prosperity, the many families that could now afford pianos and music adapted their home-grown musical abilities to the new instrument, and the piano became a major source of music in the home.
Amateur pianists in the home often kept track of the doings of the leading pianists and composers of their day. Professional virtuosi wrote books and methods for the study of piano playing, which sold widely. The virtuosi also prepared their own editions of classical works, which included detailed marks of tempo and expression to guide the amateur who wanted to use their playing as a model. (Today, students are usually encouraged to work from an Urtext edition.) The piano compositions of the great composers often sold well among amateurs, despite the fact that, starting with Beethoven, they were often far too hard for anyone but a trained virtuoso to play well. Evidently, the amateur pianists obtained satisfaction from coming to grips with the finest music, even if they could not perform it from start to finish.[10]
A favourite form of musical recreation in the home was playing works for four-hand piano, in which the two players sit side by side at a single piano. These were frequently arrangements of orchestral works, and in the days before recordings served to spread knowledge of new orchestral music to places lacking an orchestra. Sometimes members of the household would sing or play other instruments along with the piano. This practice was often a part of courtship, for performing music together—particularly in the presence or at least earshot of other members of the household—was one of the few "respectable" ways for a young man and young woman from "good" families to be together.
Parents whose children showed unusual talent often pushed them toward professional careers, sometimes making great sacrifices to make this possible. Artur Schnabel's book My Life and Music[11] vividly depicts his own experience along these lines, which took place in the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the late 19th century.
Decline [ edit ]
The piano's status in the home remained secure until technology made possible the enjoyment of music in passive form. First the player piano (c. 1900), then the home phonograph (which became common in the decade before World War I), then the radio (in the 1920s) dealt severe blows to amateur piano-playing as a form of domestic recreation. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, piano sales dropped sharply, and many manufacturers went out of business.
Another blow to the piano was the widespread acceptance in the late 20th century of the electronic keyboard. This instrument, in its cheaper forms, is widely considered to provide only a poor substitute for the tonal quality of a good piano (see piano for why), but it is more easily portable, cheaper, much more flexible and in many ways better suited to the performance of popular music.
Nevertheless, the piano survives to this day in many 21st-century homes. The pianos being bought today tend to be of higher quality and more expensive than those of several decades ago, suggesting perhaps that domestic piano playing may have concentrated itself in homes of wealthier or better-educated members of the middle class. It is unlikely that ability to play the piano contributes much these days to the marriageability of daughters, but many parents still feel today that piano lessons teach their children concentration and self-discipline, and open a door into the world of classical music.
Notes [ edit ]
References [ edit ] |
Two of Canada's largest pension funds are cashing out of some of their Vancouver office properties as workspace prices soar amid an influx of offshore capital.
Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan (HOOPP) is selling Willingdon Park, a one-million-square-foot, nine office-tower business park in Burnaby, B.C., according to people familiar with the deal. In the same area, Ivanhoé Cambridge, the real estate investing arm of Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, last week brought to market Metrotower 1 and 2, the people said, asking not to be identified because the negotiations are private.
The funds are seeking about $400-million for each property, the people said. HOOPP couldn't be reached for comment and a representative for Ivanhoé Cambridge declined to comment, as did brokerage CBRE Group Inc., which represents both pension funds in their deals.
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Vancouver's office buildings are a hot commodity, with deals driving valuations beyond other North American cities this year. Transactions include Brookfield Property Partners LP's sale of the Royal Center for $428-million, and the purchase of the Bentall Centre, which was valued at more than $1-billion, by Anbang Insurance Group Co. of China.
Capitalization rates, a measure of yield on property investments, have fallen to as low as 3.5 per cent in downtown Vancouver from 4.3 per cent a year ago, according to a second-quarter report from Colliers International. That's one of the lowest in North America. The cap rate, or net income divided by property price, drops as buyer demand rises.
The surge in commercial valuations come as residential prices also soar, prompting the government of B.C. to impose earlier this month a 15-per-cent tax on foreign investors in Metro Vancouver's housing market.
Willingdon Park opened in 1985. HOOPP purchased the remaining 50-per-cent stake in the property in 2004 for $80-million. Ivanhoé Cambridge is looking to sell its remaining stake in the three-tower Metrotower office complex, after selling a building to Metro Vancouver, the regional government, for $205-million last year. Metrotower 1 and 2 are 28 storeys and 30 storeys tall, respectively, and have about 616,000 square feet. |
Single molecular layer and thin silicon beam enable nanolaser operation at room temperature (Nanowerk News) For the first time, researchers have built a nanolaser that uses only a single molecular layer, placed on a thin silicon beam, which operates at room temperature. The new device, developed by a team of researchers from Arizona State University and Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, could potentially be used to send information between different points on a single computer chip. The lasers also may be useful for other sensing applications in a compact, integrated format.
This is the first demonstration of room-temperature operation of a nanolaser made of the single-layer material, said Cun-Zheng Ning, an ASU electrical engineering professor who led the research team. Details of the new laser are published in the July online edition of Nature Nanotechnology ("Room-temperature continuous-wave lasing from monolayer molybdenum ditelluride integrated with a silicon nanobeam cavity").
In addition to Ning, key authors of the article include Yongzhuo Li, Jianxing Zhang, Dandan Huang from Tsinghua University.
Ning said pivotal to the new development is use of materials that can be laid down in single layers and efficiently amplify light (lasing action). Single layer nanolasers have been developed before, but they all had to be cooled to low temperatures using a cryogen like liquid nitrogen or liquid helium. Being able to operate at room temperatures (~77 F) opens up many possibilities for uses of these new lasers, Ning said.
The joint ASU-Tsinghua research team used a monolayer of molybdenum ditelluride integrated with a silicon nanobeam cavity for their device. By combining molybdenum ditelluride with silicon, which is the bedrock in semiconductor manufacturing and one of the best waveguide materials, the researchers were able to achieve lasing action without cooling, Ning said.
A laser needs two key pieces a gain medium that produces and amplifies photons, and a cavity that confines or traps photons. While such materials choices are easy for large lasers, they become more difficult at nanometer scales for nanolasers. Nanolasers are smaller than 100th of the thickness of the human hair and are expected to play important roles in future computer chips and a variety of light detection and sensing devices.
The choice of two-dimensional materials and the silicon waveguide enabled the researchers to achieve room temperature operation. Excitons in molybdenum telluride emit in a wavelength that is transparent to silicon, making silicon possible as a waveguide or cavity material. Precise fabrication of the nanobeam cavity with an array of holes etched and the integration of two-dimensional monolayer materials was also key to the project. Excitons in such monolayer materials are 100 times stronger than those in conventional semiconductors, allowing efficient light emission at room temperature.
Because silicon is already used in electronics, especially in computer chips, its use in this application is significant in future applications.
A laser technology that can also be made on Silicon has been a dream for researchers for decades, said Ning. This technology will eventually allow people to put both electronics and photonics on the same silicon platform, greatly simplifying manufacture.
Silicon does not emit light efficiently and therefore must be combined with other light emitting materials. Currently, other semiconductors are used, such as Indium phosphide or Indium Garlium Arsenide which are hundreds of times thicker, to bond with silicon for such applications.
The new monolayer materials combined with Silicon eliminate challenges encountered when combining with thicker, dissimilar materials. And, because this non-silicon material is only a single layer thick, it is flexible and less likely to crack under stress, according to Ning. |
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Part 1: The Beginning
It is January 1969.[7] On suspension after the loss of the Hershey account, Don visits the West Coast to salvage his marriage to Megan, while secretly feeding Freddy copy. Peggy is at odds with her new boss, Lou Avery. After a tense first meeting arranged by Ken, Joan convinces Butler Footwear's new head of marketing not to drop SC&P. While Roger is exploring the counterculture, his daughter Margaret tells him she has forgiven him for any past wrongdoing as part of her newfound enlightenment. Pete has embraced the Los Angeles lifestyle, while Ted devotes all his attention to his work.
80 2 "A Day's Work" Michael Uppendahl Jonathan Igla and Matthew Weiner April 20, 2014 ( ) 1.89[9]
It is February 1969. Conflict erupts at SC&P on Valentine's Day. Pete wins the Southern California Chevrolet dealers' association as clients, but the other partners, led by Jim, insist that they get approval from the Chevy corporate office. Peggy wrongly assumes that her secretary Shirley's flowers are for her, from Ted. Lou demands a replacement secretary for Dawn, who is still helping Don outside the office and covertly passing him information. Jim recognizes that Joan is working two jobs and suggests she relinquish the post of personnel head and move upstairs to her own office in Accounts. Joan appoints Dawn as her replacement after Bert objects to having a black woman at reception. Meanwhile, Don and Sally bond when he admits to having been put on leave, and she admits to using a roommate's family funeral partly as an excuse to go shopping in Manhattan.
81 3 "Field Trip" Christopher Manley Heather Jeng Bladt and Matthew Weiner April 27, 2014 ( ) 2.02[11]
It is April 1969.[10] Don flies to Los Angeles, at the request of Megan's agent, and inadvertently reveals to Megan that he has been on leave from SC&P since the previous year. Megan, upset at Don's deception, reacts badly and throws him out, and he returns to New York. He secures a job offer from a rival firm, which he then takes to Roger, telling him that he wants to return to work. Roger relents, telling him to report to the office on Monday. Don arrives at the office only to be met by confusion; Roger has not yet come in and has neglected to tell anyone about Don's return. Roger, Joan, Jim, and Bert meet to discuss the matter, and the latter three are initially in favor of firing Don outright, but Roger points out that this would require buying back Don's shares in the agency, which they are not in a position to do. Don is ultimately allowed to return, albeit under rigid and draconian conditions which he must agree to in writing, with the threat of dismissal and forfeiture of all his shares in the company for even the slightest transgression. After lunch with Francine, Betty begins feeling like she's neglecting her children, and she agrees to accompany Bobby on a school field trip to a farm. The outing begins well but ultimately proves disappointing to both mother and son.
82 4 "The Monolith" Scott Hornbacher Erin Levy May 4, 2014 ( ) 2.14[12]
On a date with Bonnie, Pete runs into George Payton, who tells him Burger Chef is putting McCann in review. Don arrives at the SC&P office to find Jim explaining to everyone that a new office computer will be installed in the creative lounge. Roger tells Don the decision to get a computer preceded Don's return. Roger, Lou, Jim, and Pete discuss business with Burger Chef on a conference call. Ted recommends putting Peggy in charge to appeal to homemakers, and the group decides to put Don on the account, even though Lou feels threatened and says he thinks Don will "implode". Mona and Brooks visit Roger and advise that Margaret has run away to a hippie commune. Mona wants Roger to bring Margaret back, but Roger says Brooks should get her himself. Brooks tries, but ends up in jail. Lou gives Peggy a $100 weekly raise, putting her in charge of Burger Chef. She can pick her own team, which must include Don. She asks Don and Mathis for 25 taglines, each, by Monday. She later vents to Joan that Burger Chef was given to her in the hopes that she or Don would fail. After Bert tells Don that SC&P has done fine without him, Don grabs a bottle of liquor from Roger's office, pours some into a soda can in his own office, and gets drunk. He invites Freddie to a baseball game who later, at Don's apartment, tells Don to sober up and do the work, or he won't get his old job back. Roger and Mona arrive at a rundown farmhouse. Margaret, now calling herself Marigold, welcomes them, saying she's happy now and Ellery cannot be happy if she's not. Roger tries to force her off the farm, saying her son needs her. She refuses: Roger did it to her, so she can do it to Ellery. Back at SC&P, Don arrives and begins typing the Burger Chef tags for Peggy.
83 5 "The Runaways" Christopher Manley David Iserson and Matthew Weiner May 11, 2014 ( ) 1.86[13]
Stan finds a folder of cartoons Lou is drawing, and the creative team jokes about them. After Sally and some classmates "sword-fight with golf clubs", she is sent home from boarding school with an apparent broken nose. Stephanie, Anna Draper's niece, who is pregnant out of wedlock and running out of money in L.A., calls Don for help. Don asks Megan if Stephanie can temporarily stay with her. Megan accepts, but feeling insecure when she sees how beautiful Stephanie is and by Stephanie's claims to know all of Don's secrets, Megan writes her a check for $1,000 and encourages her to leave. When Betty voices her opinion on the Vietnam War at a dinner party, Henry tells her to limit conversations to "how much you hate getting toast crumbs in the butter". Don visits Megan in L.A. but is disappointed that Stephanie has left. Megan hosts a party for her acting friends that Harry Crane unexpectedly attends. Sensing the awkwardness, Harry and Don go out to a bar, where Harry suggests Don should be working in L.A., because Ted Chaough is "useless" and Lou and Cutler are pursuing Commander cigarettes, a Philip Morris brand. Harry also warns that Don's job is at stake. After the party, Megan involves Don in a threesome with her and her friend Amy. The new office computer triggers Ginsberg's paranoia, which culminates in a psychotic break, leading him to cut off his own nipple and give it to Peggy in a box, before he is hauled away from the office on a stretcher. Back in New York, Don interrupts Lou and Cutler's meeting with Philip Morris executives, who are wary about the agency after Don's anti-smoking letter. Don states he wrote that letter to save his business and is now the only experienced cigarette man with knowledge of the competition. He suggests they "force" him into service. After the meeting, when alone in the street, Cutler glares at Don, accusing him of attempting to save his own position at the firm.
It is June 1969.[14] Bob Benson visits SC&P with two executives from Chevy, ostensibly to meet about the still-secretive XP project. He later receives a call in the middle of the night from one of the executives, who was arrested for soliciting an undercover male officer. After Bob posts bail for him, the executive confides to Bob that Chevy only signed SC&P for evaluation purposes, and they will be moving the XP project "in house", but Bob will soon be offered a job at Buick as a show of appreciation. Bob arranges a Sunday date with Joan, tells her about Chevy and Buick, and proposes marriage so he can be viewed as a family man, she can have companionship and stability, and her son can have a father figure, but Joan rejects him. Pete takes Bonnie to New York for a vacation but leaves her in the city, when he goes to visit his daughter in Connecticut. He becomes annoyed when Trudy is not present to greet him and fights with her when she returns. Pete and Bonnie have an argument, and she returns to California without him. Peggy visits several Burger Chef locations and prepares a media campaign that impresses Lou, Pete, and Don. Pete later insists that Don give the pitch to "close" the deal with Burger Chef, although Lou and Don disagree with him. Peggy later asks Don his opinion of her pitch, and Don offers his support, but after being pressed by Peggy admits that a different perspective might be explored. This causes Peggy to doubt the whole strategy and revisit it at the office over the weekend. Don stops by and assures her that her pitch is solid. Peggy then admits that part of her doubt is about having recently turned 30. Don says he also has had his share of doubts over the years and gives her a comforting embrace as they dance to the song "My Way". On Monday, the partners meet and learn the news about Chevy, causing Roger and Jim to argue. Jim suggests that the agency respond by publicizing their IBM computer and announcing that Harry Crane has been named a partner. Roger and Joan object, but the others endorse Harry.
85 7 "Waterloo" Matthew Weiner Carly Wray and Matthew Weiner May 25, 2014 ( ) 1.94[16]
Jim Cutler attempts to have Don fired for breach of contract, but Don quashes the effort with Roger, Pete and Bert's support. Later, the characters gather in various locations to watch the first moon landing. Sally seems smitten with the older son of one of the Francis' house guests, but after a phone call with Don she instead kisses the boy's younger, bookish, and more motivated brother. Meanwhile, Bert passes away on his couch shortly after witnessing the landing. Consequently, Don's status in the company is uncertain, and he decides Peggy should lead the presentation to Burger Chef. Peggy nails the pitch, winning the account. Don suggests to Megan that he could move to California to be with her, to which she hesitates and they decide it is over between them. As a counter to Cutler's plans to out-vote Don from the company, Roger holds a secret meeting with McCann Erickson, negotiating a deal to sell 51% of SC&P and make it an independent subsidiary of McCann. Roger, Don, Joan, Pete, and Ted each sign five-year contracts, while Jim is let go from the company with a share of the sale price. After learning from Peggy that they have won the Burger Chef account, Don has a vision of Bert performing "The Best Things in Life Are Free" with a chorus of secretaries. Don, disoriented, leans on a desk.
Part 2: The End of an Era
86 8 "Severance" Scott Hornbacher Matthew Weiner April 5, 2015 ( ) 2.27[17]
Picking up in April 1970, Don has resumed his womanizing ways as a bachelor. He has a cryptic dream about Rachel Menken and attempts to reconnect with her, only to learn she recently died of leukemia. He also encounters a waitress named Diana at a diner, convinced they have met before, but she insists they are strangers. Peggy and Joan attend a business meeting at McCann Erickson, during which Joan is sexually harassed; this results in an argument between Peggy and Joan after the meeting. Roger and Ferg Donnelly fire Ken Cosgrove, who subsequently takes over his father-in-law's position at Dow Chemical and informs Roger and Pete that he will actively make Dow a difficult client to them, out of spite. Peggy goes on a date with Johnny Mathis' brother-in-law. The date goes well, and the two make impromptu plans to travel to Paris, but these plans are put on hold as Peggy cannot find her passport. The next morning she dismisses the experience as drunken foolishness.
87 9 "New Business" Michael Uppendahl Tom Smuts and Matthew Weiner April 12, 2015 ( ) 1.97[18]
Betty reveals to Don that she is pursuing a degree in psychology. Pima Ryan, a famous commercial artist collaborating with SC&P, seduces Stan and unsuccessfully attempts to seduce Peggy. Megan, who is struggling to find work, rejects a sexual proposition from Harry, then accepts a million dollar check from Don, as a divorce settlement. Marie helps Megan move her belongings out of Don's apartment and, ignoring Megan's instructions about the few items to take, removes all of Don's furniture, summons Roger to pay the movers, and then has sex with Roger in the apartment. Don continues pursuing a relationship with Diana and learns more about her: she abandoned one daughter after the other died. Diana ultimately rejects Don because he makes her forget about them. After leaving Diana's apartment, he comes home to find his own apartment emptied.
88 10 "The Forecast" Jennifer Getzinger Jonathan Igla and Matthew Weiner April 19, 2015 ( ) 1.87[19]
It is May 1970. Don sells his apartment. At work, Johnny Mathis fumbles a pitch and seeks Don's advice. When Don advises him to make a joke, Mathis' attempt goes over horribly, and he blames Don for it, lashing out at him. Don fires Mathis. Joan goes on a trip to California and begins an affair with a retiree named Richard (Bruce Greenwood). Richard initially rejects her when he learns Joan has a child, but later makes amends. As Sally prepares to go on a 12-day school trip, she is unexpectedly visited by Glen Bishop, who reveals that he is shipping out to Vietnam. At first he claims he is doing so for ideological reasons, but later he reveals to Betty that he flunked out of college and attempts to make a move on her. After witnessing inappropriate flirtation between Betty and Glen, and later between Don and one of her friends, Sally is further disillusioned with both parents.
89 11 "Time & Life" Jared Harris Erin Levy and Matthew Weiner April 26, 2015 ( ) 1.77[20]
It is June 1970. What at first appears to be a failure to pay the lease on time leads to SC&P's discovering that McCann's plan is to close down their office and move everyone into the parent company's headquarters. Don devises a plan to move to California as "Sterling Cooper West" and manage the lucrative contracts that conflict with McCann's portfolio. However, Ken enjoys toying with his former co-workers before telling them he won't sign on. Eventually, McCann's CEO lets Don, Roger, Joan, Pete, and Ted know the absorption into McCann is going to happen and they should appreciate their "victory". Elsewhere, Peggy's emotions surge when a group of children are at the office for a focus group. Pete and his estranged wife Trudy (Alison Brie) reunite after a crisis arises involving Tammy's preschool application. After a scuffle upon which Pete socks a pedantic headmaster, he and Trudy find some friendly common ground while pondering their past and future. She reveals regret about forcing him to leave the city for suburbia. Now as a single mother, she's hit on by the men she encounters but notes, ironically, as she ages no one will notice her. Pete tells her she's ageless. Don tries to find Diana again. Joan has praise from her co-workers and a new love interest, but a very uncertain professional future. As rumors fly, Don's secretary pressures him to make an announcement. The partners call the rest of the staff into the lounge and announce the coming move. Though Roger and Don try to spin the news positively, the partners quickly lose the crowd's attention as employees wander away in disappointment.
90 12 "Lost Horizon" Phil Abraham Semi Chellas and Matthew Weiner May 3, 2015 ( ) 1.79[21]
At McCann Erickson, Joan is mistreated by McCann's chauvinist executives and finds that her accounts are being jeopardized by the careless incompetence of a male McCann colleague. She ultimately takes her complaint to Jim Hobart, who offers to buy out her $500,000 stake in the company for 50 cents on the dollar. Joan threatens legal action and bad publicity, but eventually capitulates. Peggy also experiences mistreatment; while all her male colleagues and subordinates have been moved to McCann's premises, she alone is left without a new office. On principle, she refuses to leave the SC&P offices until this is remedied, and during the interim she bonds with Roger, who also lingers at the remains of his agency. She makes her eventual triumphant entrance to the McCann offices acting like a brash male: hung over, sporting dark sunglasses, smoking, and carrying Bert Cooper's 19th Century Japanese print of The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife that Roger gave her. Don is invited to a kickoff meeting with Miller Beer focused on how to market the company's forthcoming "diet beer" product (not yet known as Miller Lite). As a younger employee captures the attention of the legions of redundant admen, with a vivid description of the product's core target consumer (the kind of presentation that Don used to star in), Don quietly leaves the meeting and starts driving west. In the middle of the night, he becomes so tired behind the wheel that he hallucinates holding a conversation with Bert Cooper. After arriving in Racine, Wisconsin, he goes to Diana Bauer's former home, hoping to find her but instead finding Diana's ex-husband's new wife. Don spins a tale about needing to deliver a contest prize to Diana, but is found out when Mr. Bauer arrives. Bauer tells Don he is not the only broken heart Diana has left behind and forces Don to leave. Don continues driving west and picks up a hitchhiker on his way to St. Paul, Minnesota.
91 13 "The Milk and Honey Route" Matthew Weiner Carly Wray and Matthew Weiner May 10, 2015 ( ) 1.87[22]
Don continues his journey West and has a nightmare where he's pulled over by police, who say they've been looking for him. He stops for several days in Alva, Oklahoma when his car breaks down. Don is mildly hustled by a young man who gets an extra $10 for finding him some alcohol, and later Don reluctantly attends a veterans' fundraiser to repair one of their homes. Don becomes nervous when introduced to fellow Korean War veteran, Jerry, but is relieved when Jerry says his tour took place after Don had gone home. Don recalls for them how he killed his C.O. after dropping his lighter, causing a fatal explosion. Another vet shares his horror story of World War II. The vets later discover that the $500 they raised has been stolen. They assume Don stole it and beat him up, demanding that he return the money and taking his car as collateral. Don demands the cash back from the young hustler who set him up, and gives the boy advice about the difficulty of having to be someone you are not. Don returns the cash for his car, and grants the young man's request for a ride to the bus stop. Don then surprises him by giving him his car, disposing of yet another material possession, after which Don waits for the bus. Betty feels sick while at college and suffers a broken rib when she collapses; X-rays reveal she has advanced lung cancer and may live up to a year, but only if she accepts debilitating treatments. Henry wants her to do that and asks Sally to try to convince her, but Betty stands firm: she gives Sally instructions for dressing and grooming her corpse, and heads back to class. At McCann, Pete gets an unwelcome visit from Duck Phillips that turns into a genuine opportunity for both a career with Learjet and a fresh start with Trudy and Tammy, if they will move with him to Wichita. Trudy agrees.
92 14 "Person to Person" Matthew Weiner Matthew Weiner May 17, 2015 ( ) 3.29[23] |
The Escapist takes on the the line-wide relaunch at DC Comics, which releases its first major round of books today, in a video that discussing the half-reboot of DC Universe continuity (not actually less confusing) but also why they believe the biggest obstacle facing comics isn't continuity, but rather marketing :
Comic books in America do not have some big, doom-bringing, apocalyptic continuity problem. What they have is a marketing problem. I mean, think about it. People get into serialized storytelling in the middle all the time... Every day thousands of people tune into a TV show for the first time near the middle or even end of its overarching story. Do you think everyone who's into Doctor Who or Lost or Mad Men or whatever started watching it with the first episode? No! Every other continuity and/or mythology-driven narrative medium in popular fiction draws new readers and viewers just fine without constantly hitting the reset button... How do they do this? Because new readers and viewers and other potential fans hear about them and can easily find them... You don't need to reboot to get more people reading comic books. You need to tell them why they should consider reading comic books, and then put comic books where they can buy them.
Incidentally, if you want to buy any of the new #1 DC Comics out today ( like Detective Comics, Action Comics, Batgirl, Animal Man, Swamp Thing , and more) you can purchase them digitally right now at ComiXology . |
Former Australian Prime Minister John Howard has given his support to the UK leaving the European Union (EU) in June’s referendum, saying that Britain has lost its sovereignty.
In an interview with the Financial Times, Mr Howard said: “The European project is fundamentally flawed. I think its best days are probably behind it and there will be increasing tensions [over migration]. Britain can’t control its borders — it is ridiculous to say it can.”
“If I were British, which I’m not, I’d vote to leave,” he added. “You have lost your sovereignty.”
Mr Howard said that although he was not campaigning in the referendum, he does believe leaving the bloc is in Britain’s best interests.
“In 1975 the idea of Europe being a counterweight to the US had a lot more force than it does now,” he said. “The future of the world is now so much more in the Asia-Pacific region and in a way the British, because of their long history with the rest of the world, could perhaps take better advantage of that acting on their own.”
He added that while Britain stays in the EU it is not free to agree its own trade deals.
“We [Australia] have just completed three trade agreements [China, South Korea and Japan] and Britain can’t do that… it has to go through Brussels.”
Around 100,000 Australian citizens live in the UK, but thanks to EU free movement rules they have a much harder time settling permanently in Britain than EU citizens, despite cultural, linguistic and historical ties.
“One of the consequences of being in the EU is that if the British are going to keep the migration numbers down they have to squeeze the non-EU migration,” Mr Howard said. “They can’t stop EU migration, and that affects Australians.”
John Howard was Australian Prime Minister from 1996 to 2007, leading his conservative government to four general election victories. He also oversaw a monarchist victory in a 1999 referendum when Australians voted to maintain Queen Elizabeth as head of state and rejected becoming a republic. |
The weekly Monday evening meetings of the parliamentary Labour party are normally routine events in which the party leadership rallies the troops, sets out the whip for the week and allows the usual malcontents and obsessives to air their grievances. Monday night’s meeting, according to some of those who attended, was one of the most fractious ever held. A well of anger that has been building up since before the party conference was unleashed.
The initial cause was an email sent to Labour MPs by the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, saying he was to reverse his two-week-old policy of accepting George Osborne’s fiscal charter. He had announced that he would accept the charter in a Guardian interview on the Saturday before the party conference, and had confided to shadow cabinet members beforehand. His stance had been surprising, but it was assumed that McDonnell felt his anti-austerity credentials were so strong, he needed to show the new leadership was committed to bringing down the deficit, so long as there was room for investment.
The interview was not that long, but at the time it seemed possible that McDonnell, barely a week into the job, had not read Osborne’s revised charter that closely. For instance, he said the charter did not define in any meaningful way what “normal times” meant – the period when a government, according to Osborne, would be required to run a budget surplus. His interviewers pointed out that there was in fact a clear definition in the charter, but the point was glossed over.
John McDonnell's fiscal responsibility U-turn sends wrong message – Labour MP Read more
Just after lunchtime on Monday, members of the shadow cabinet received phone calls saying McDonnell had changed his mind due to the downturn in the world economy and would now be urging fellow Labour MPs at the parliamentary party meeting that evening to reject the charter.
A lengthy email was then dispatched setting out the reasons for the U-turn. There was no attempt to say he had been misquoted and no attempt to simply admit he had made an initial political misjudgment.
Instead, he argued, economic circumstances had changed in the past two weeks due to the decline in the position of emerging markets. He added he had not been allowed to amend the charter.
A lot of Labour MPs found this explanation somewhere between specious and incredible. Many have found themselves in a dilemma since Jeremy Corbyn’s election as Labour leader. They feel the Corbyn–McDonnell leadership is not simply amateurish, but sinister and unelectable. They also know the party membership, especially the new membership, do not yet share that view, and quite possibly never will.
But that the party’s economic policy was abandoned within two weeks of its declaration has left them furious, especially since many do not believe there is any evidence that voters would have trusted Labour more in the 2015 election if it had proposed more borrowing.
So the McDonnell U-turn became a catalyst for the anger inside the parliamentary party at Corbyn’s leadership.
It did not take much earwigging for reporters outside the meeting to hear much of what was being said on the other wide of the wooden door, including McDonnell’s ill-received explanation for his volte face. As reporters tweeted what they had heard, Emily Thornberry loudly complained, erroneously, that MPs were disloyally messaging reporters with quotes.
Chris Leslie – a mild-mannered, but increasingly steely centrist who acted as shadow chancellor during Harriet Harman’s interim leadership – led the criticism of McDonnell.
Leslie told MPs there were finely balanced arguments on either side of how to vote on the charter, but McDonnell had lost credibility by advancing both sides of that argument in the space of two weeks. He said if the leadership argued it was changing its mind because of developments in world economic circumstances in the past fortnight – when there had been no such developments – then it would not be surprising if people were cynical about leadership claims that they were offering straight-talking politics. He said it was possible for Labour to have constructed some tests on the charter, and come to a centrist position. Instead the party had lurched from one extreme position to another.
John Mann, the Labour MP for Bassetlaw, predicted McDonnell would be shredded by both the Tories and the SNP if he went into the Commons chamber voting for the charter. He described McDonnell’s stance as a joke.
At this point the arguments spread to other issues. Ian Austin, once an aide to Gordon Brown and now MP for Dudley North, said it was time Corbyn started acting like a leader of the opposition and not like a student union president. The leader was also told to stop prevaricating over joining the Privy Council.
Grimsby MP Melanie Onn launched a thinly veiled attack on Diane Abbott over her online criticism of Jo Cox, the MP who is trying to advance a new strategy for Labour on Syria featuring safe havens to protect civilians from President Assad. Onn said it was bad enough being constantly attacked online by the public, but it was a new low when this was coming from fellow members of the frontbench.
Corbyn and McDonnell face major Labour backlash after fiscal charter U-turn - Politics live Read more
Mary Creagh, the former international development secretary, then challenged Corbyn to explain why he and the leadership were supporting a new social movement being run by his backers called Momentum. Creagh has already voiced fears this represents a “party within a party”. Richard Burgon, one of Corbyn’s more loyal followers, offered a lengthy defence, saying Momentum was intended to do no more than the Fabian Society or Progress. One MP said: “He went on for ages and no one believed him. It’s a Jeremy entryist movement. We are not naive.”
Birmingham Yardley MP Jess Phillips, demanded that the party debate Syria rather than simply be ordered to vote against action, a point she had raised in a Huffington Post blog.
Tom Blenkinsop, the MP for Middlesbrough South who is desperately fighting to keep the Redcar steelworks alive, then asked why the steel union Community had been voted off the National Executive in favour of the leftwing Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union.
Emma Reynolds, the former shadow Europe minister, asked why the shadow foreign secretary, Hilary Benn, had been ejected from the NEC in favour of a Corbyn loyalist, Rebecca Long Bailey, the MP for Salford and Eccles. Angela Smith, the MP for Stocksbridge, questioned why Corbyn’s hand-picked parliamentary aide was still on the NEC when he had initially been elected to represent the parliamentary Labour party.
So it went on.
Although Corbyn’s press aides claimed the meeting had been positive, one MP rang the Guardian to describe it as “a complete and utter shambles and the worst meeting I have ever seen for the party leadership. The problem is that Jeremy has never met anyone in his life that disagrees with him and he runs away from any discussion or political argument; he is completely unsuited to being a party leader.”
All this may well be dismissed as process, as Abbott did in a sometimes-haphazard BBC Radio 4 Today interview on Tuesday morning. It is also true that McDonnell, given his personal politics, may belatedly have arrived at the right place in rejecting the charter, but the route to this position has been unnecessarily painful.
Karim Palant, Ed Balls’s former head of policy, writing in the Guardian, raises the prospect that McDonnell had not read the revised charter, including its restrictions on borrowing for investment.
Either way, he concludes: “The result is that he has been forced to backtrack on the first major decision he has ever taken.
“A shadow chancellor’s fiscal stance is fundamental to credibility and trust. This kind of chaos less than a month into the job is the kind of blow even significant political figures struggle to recover from.” |
A homeowner fired shots at two intruders on Mandery Avenue early Monday morning.The homeowner told police he was sleeping when the intruders got on top of him and a struggle ensued.According to police, the victim grabbed a gun and the intruder took it from him. The victim grabbed another gun and shots were fired between the two.According to a police report, one intruder was hit.A short time later, police responded to a call about a teenager shot in the thigh.Police said they are trying to connect the two incidents.
A homeowner fired shots at two intruders on Mandery Avenue early Monday morning.
The homeowner told police he was sleeping when the intruders got on top of him and a struggle ensued.
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According to police, the victim grabbed a gun and the intruder took it from him. The victim grabbed another gun and shots were fired between the two.
According to a police report, one intruder was hit.
A short time later, police responded to a call about a teenager shot in the thigh.
Police said they are trying to connect the two incidents.
AlertMe |
Talk about the right marketing at the right time. Electrolux is taking advantage of our collective (and justified) fixation on the ocean by launching Vac from the Sea, an initiative that will turn plastic pollution from the ocean into Electrolux vacuum cleaners.
Electrolux is recruiting trained volunteers to gather plastic, either by diving after it or scooping it up from waves, from a variety of locations in the Pacific, Indian Ocean, the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, and the Baltic and North Sea. Collection started in Sweden two days ago, according to Cecilia Nord, Vice President, Floor Care
Environmental and Sustainability Affairs, Electrolux. Once enough plastic has been collected, Electrolux will press it together into a series of concept vacuum cleaners (see above).
“Depending on what plastic we actually find, every vacuum cleaner will look unique,” Nord says. “If we’re in Sweden, the kind of garbage we’ll get is from Northern Europe. When
we’re collecting plastic in Thailand it will look completely different. The vacuum cleaners will be a bit of a mosaic.”
Hans Stråberg, the President and CEO of Electrolux, explains the reasoning behind Vac from the Sea:
Our oceans are filled with plastic waste. Yet on land,
there is a shortage of recycled plastic. The supply of sustainable raw
material, such as recycled plastic, is crucial for making sustainable
appliances, and assisting consumers in making their homes greener. I
therefore hope people will join us in raising awareness about the
threat plastic poses to marine habitats, and the urgent need for taking
better care of the plastic that already exists.
In reality, the whole thing is probably meant to highlight Electrolux’s new Green Range of vacuums. But if Electrolux demonstrates in the process that plastic pollution can be turned into useful products, that’s fine with us. |
It’s good to be back and I’m grateful to serve alongside you as Secretary of Defense. Together with the Intelligence Community we are the sentinels and guardians of our nation. We need only look to you, the uniformed and civilian members of the Department and your families, to see the fundamental unity of our country. You represent an America committed to the common good; an America that is never complacent about defending its freedoms; and an America that remains a steady beacon of hope for all mankind.
James Norman Mattis (born September 8, 1950) is a retired United States Marine Corps general who is the 26th United States Secretary of Defense, serving in the Cabinet of Donald Trump. Mattis was previously the 11th Commander of United States Central Command during the presidency of Barack Obama, and was responsible for American military operations in the Middle East, Northeast Africa, and Central Asia.
Quotes [ edit ]
December 31, 2018 DOD memo [ edit ]
Message sent from Mattis on 31 December 2018, his last day as Secretary of Defense, to all members of the U.S. Department of Defense.[citation needed]
MEMORANDUM FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE SUBJECT: Farewell Message On February 1, 1865, President Lincoln sent General Ulysses S. Grant a one sentence telegram. It read: "Let nothing which is transpiring change, hinder, or delay your military movements, or plans." Our Department's leadership, civilian and military, remains in the best possible hands. I am confident that each of you remains undistracted from our sworn mission to support and defend the Constitution while protecting our way of life. Our Department is proven to be at its best when the times are most difficult. So keep the faith in our country and hold fast, alongside our allies, aligned against our foes. It has been my high honor to serve at your side. May God hold you safe in the air, on land, and at sea.
Letter of Resignation [ edit ]
Letter to President Donald Trump outlining Mattis' resignation as Secretary of Defense, submitted 20 December 2018. [citation needed]
Dear Mr. President, I have been privileged to serve as our country's 26th Secretary of Defense which has allowed me to serve alongside our men and women of the Department in defense of our citizens and our ideals. I am proud of the progress that has been made over the past two years on some of the key goals articulated in our National Defense Strategy: putting the Department on a more sound budgetary footing, improving readiness and lethality in our forces, and reforming the Department's business practices for greater performance. Our troops continue to provide the capabilities needed to prevail in conflict and sustain strong U.S. global influence. One core belief I have always held is that our strength as a nation is inextricably linked to the strength of our unique and comprehensive system of alliances and partnerships. While the US remains the indispensable nation in the free world, we cannot protect our interests or serve that role effectively without maintaining strong alliances and showing respect to those allies. Like you, I have said from the beginning that the armed forces of the United States should not be the policeman of the world. Instead, we must use all tools of American power to provide for the common defense, including providing effective leadership to our alliances. NATO's 29 democracies demonstrated that strength in their commitment to fighting alongside us following the 9-11 attack on America. The Defeat-ISIS coalition of 74 nations is further proof. Similarly, I believe we must be resolute and unambiguous in our approach to those countries whose strategic interests are increasingly in tension with ours. It is clear that China and Russia, for example, want to shape a world consistent with their authoritarian model - gaining veto authority over other nations' economic, diplomatic, and security decisions - to promote their own interests at the expense of their neighbors, America and our allies. That is why we must use all the tools of American power to provide for the common defense. My views on treating allies with respect and also being clear-eyed about both malign actors and strategic competitors are strongly held and informed by over four decades of immersion in these issues. We must do everything possible to advance an international order that is most conducive to our security, prosperity and values, and we are strengthened in this effort by the solidarity of our alliances. Because you have the right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours on these and other subjects, I believe it is right for me to step down from my position. The end date for my tenure is February 28, 2019, a date that should allow sufficient time for a successor to be nominated and confirmed as well as to make sure the Department's interests are properly articulated and protected at upcoming events to include Congressional posture hearings and the NATO Defense Ministerial meeting in February. Further, that a full transition to a new Secretary of Defense occurs well in advance of the transition of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in September in order to ensure stability Within the Department. I pledge my full effort to a smooth transition that ensures the needs and interests of the 2.15 million Service Members and 732,079 DoD civilians receive undistracted attention of the Department at all times so that they can fulfill their critical, round-the-clock mission to protect the American people. I very much appreciate this opportunity to serve the nation and our men and women in uniform.
January 19, 2018 DOD memo [ edit ]
Message sent from Mattis on January 19, 2018, as the U.S. government prepared to shut down due to a failure to pass a budget bill on time in U.S. Congress.[citation needed]
MEMORANDUM FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE SUBJECT: Guidance on the Government Shutdown Our government will shutdown at midnight tonight. We in the Department of Defense will continue carrying out our fundamental responsibility to defend our Nation and the American people. We will continue to execute daily operations around the world – ships and submarines will remain at sea, our aircraft will continue to fly and our warfighters will continue to pursue terrorists throughout the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia. While training for reservists must be curtailed, active forces will stay at their posts adapting their training to achieve the least negative impact on our readiness to fight. I recognize the consequences of a government shutdown. You have my personal commitment that the Department’s leadership will do our best to mitigate the impacts of the disruptions and any financial burdens to you and your families. Steady as she goes – hold the line. I know our Nation can count on you. STAY ALERT.
Remember, I don't have stress; I create it. Speech at the Virginia Military Institute on September 25, 2018
John Dickerson : What keeps you awake at night?
James Mattis : Nothing, I keep other people awake at night. Exchange in an interview between John Dickerson and James Mattis on CBS' "Face the Nation" on May 28, 2017.
: What keeps you awake at night? : Nothing, I keep other people awake at night.
I don't have worry and stress. I cause worry and stress.
"Nothing, I keep other people awake at night." "What keeps you awake at night?""Nothing, I keep other people awake at night."
Combining al Qaeda's significant fighting capabilities with a stronger focus on the administrative capabilities that might permit it to hold ground, the Islamic State copied the latter from Hezbollah's model. Basically, Islamic State is a combined al Qaeda and Lebanese Hezbollah on steroids, destabilizing the region, dissolving borders/changing the political geography in the mid-east, and hardening political positions that make mid-east peace-building more remote by the day. General Mattis [Ret.] speaking about the Islamic State of the Levant in an interview with Business Insider [1]
The first time you blow someone away is not an insignificant event. That said, there are some assholes in the world that just need to be shot.
When you were the commander of the Central Command, how much time, worry did you have on Iran? Was that your primary concern?
I don't have worry and stress. I cause worry and stress. CNN journalist Wolf Blitzer and James Mattis on July 20, 2013, in an interview conducted live on CNN about Mattis, his experiences as a senior commander in the Marine Corps, and his perspectives on modern issues of defense.
I don't have worry and stress. I cause worry and stress.
The first time you blow someone away is not an insignificant event. That said, there are some assholes in the world that just need to be shot. There are hunters and there are victims. By your discipline, cunning, obedience and alertness, you will decide if you are a hunter or a victim. It’s really a hell of a lot of fun. You’re gonna have a blast out here! Addressing a gathering of 200 Marines in al Asad, as quoted in the Armed Forces Journal article "Fiasco", published on August 1, 2006. [2]
There are hunters and there are victims. By your discipline, cunning, obedience and alertness, you will decide if you are a hunter or a victim. It’s really a hell of a lot of fun. You’re gonna have a blast out here!
There is only one ‘retirement plan’ for terrorists.
There is only one ‘retirement plan’ for terrorists. Speaking on the subject of combating insurgents. [3]
Good afternoon, Marines. Thank you for your attention so late on a Friday. I know the women of Southern California are waiting for you, so I won't waste your time. Opening remark made by Mattis in an address of 1st Reconnaissance Battalion Marines at Camp Pendleton in September 2002. As quoted by Nathaniel Fick, One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer (2005), p. 163.
For all the ‘4th Generation of War’ intellectuals running around today saying that the nature of war has fundamentally changed, the tactics are wholly new, etc., I must respectfully say, ‘Not really’: Alexander the Great would not be in the least bit perplexed by the enemy that we face right now in Iraq, and our leaders going into this fight do their troops a disservice by not studying — studying, vice just reading — the men who have gone before us. We have been fighting on this planet for 5,000 years and we should take advantage of their experience. ‘Winging it’ and filling body bags as we sort out what works reminds us of the moral dictates and the cost of incompetence in our profession. Nov. 20, 2003, Addressing the detractors of untested Marine tactics in Iraq. [4]
You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil. You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them. Actually it's quite fun to fight them, you know. It's a hell of a hoot. It's fun to shoot some people. I'll be right up there with you. I like brawling. Panel discussion in San Diego, California (1 February 2005) as quoted in "General: It's 'fun to shoot some people'" CNN (4 February 2005)(For a more contextualized explanation of General Mattis' remarks, see this essay by one of the Marines who served under Mattis: "Breaking the Warrior Code" The American Spectator (February 11, 2005) by John R. Guardiano
For decades, Saddam Hussein has tortured, imprisoned, raped and murdered the Iraqi people; invaded neighboring countries without provocation; and threatened the world with weapons of mass destruction. The time has come to end his reign of terror. On your young shoulders rest the hopes of mankind. When I give you the word, together we will cross the Line of Departure, close with those forces that choose to fight, and destroy them. Our fight is not with the Iraqi people, nor is it with members of the Iraqi army who choose to surrender. While we will move swiftly and aggressively against those who resist, we will treat all others with decency, demonstrating chivalry and soldierly compassion for people who have endured a lifetime under Saddam’s oppression. Chemical attack, treachery, and use of the innocent as human shields can be expected, as can other unethical tactics. Take it all in stride. Be the hunter, not the hunted: never allow your unit to be caught with its guard down. Use good judgment and act in best interests of our Nation. You are part of the world’s most feared and trusted force. Engage your brain before you engage your weapon. Share your courage with each other as we enter the uncertain terrain north of the Line of Departure. Keep faith in your comrades on your left and right and Marine Air overhead. Fight with a happy heart and strong spirit. For the mission’s sake, our country’s sake, and the sake of the men who carried the Division’s colors in the past battles- who fought for life and never lost their nerve -carry out your mission and keep your honor clean . Demonstrate to the world there is "No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy" than a U.S. Marine. Mattis' words in a message to the 1st Marine Division in March 2003, on the eve of the Iraq War, as quoted in "Eve of Battle Speech" in The Weekly Standard (1 March 2003); also quoted in War Stories: Operation Iraqi Freedom (2003) by Oliver North, p. 53
-carry out your mission and . Demonstrate to the world there is "No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy" than a U.S. Marine.
Demonstrate to the world there is "No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy" than a U.S. Marine.
Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet. One of the rules Maj. Gen. James Mattis gave his Marines to live by in Iraq, as quoted in Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq (2006) by Thomas E. Ricks; as excerpted in Armed Forces Journal (August 2006)
Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet.
I come in peace. I didn’t bring artillery. But I’m pleading with you, with tears in my eyes: If you fuck with me, I’ll kill you all. After the invasion of Iraq -and after sending his tanks and artillery home- Mattis sent this message to the Iraqi leaders in every area his men served in, as quoted in Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq (2006) by Thomas E. Ricks; as excerpted in Armed Forces Journal (August 2006)
None of the widely touted new technologies and weapons systems "would have helped me in the last three years [in Iraq and Afghanistan]. But I could have used cultural training [and] language training. I could have used more products from American universities [who] understood the world does not revolve around America and [who] embrace coalitions and allies for all of the strengths that they bring us." Speaking at a professional conference on military transformation, urging the Pentagon to invest in efforts that would "diminish the conditions that drive people to sign up for these kinds of insurgencies." Breaking the Warrior Code (February 2005)
In this age, I don’t care how tactically or operationally brilliant you are, if you cannot create harmony—even vicious harmony—on the battlefield based on trust across service lines, across coalition and national lines, and across civilian/military lines, you need to go home, because your leadership is obsolete. We have got to have officers who can create harmony across all those lines.
In this age, I don’t care how tactically or operationally brilliant you are, if you cannot create harmony—even vicious harmony—on the battlefield based on trust across service lines, across coalition and national lines, and across civilian/military lines, you need to go home, because your leadership is obsolete. We have got to have officers who can create harmony across all those lines. At the May 2010 JFCOM Conference Ares blog, Aviation Week (June 2010)
PowerPoint makes us stupid. Referring to the ubiquitous presentation software at a brief in North Carolina in April 2010, as quoted in We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint (2010) by Elisabeth Bumiller, The New York Times
Treachery has existed as long as there’s been warfare, and there’s always been a few people that you couldn’t trust. In response to a question during a congressional hearing about whether the U.S. should modify its Afghan strategy in response to six U.S. soldiers being killed by Afghan soldiers between Feb. 23 and March 1. As quoted in Key commanders have their say on Afghanistan (2012) by Walter Pincus, The Washington Post
First Message to the U.S. Department of Defense [ edit ]
Message sent from Mattis on January 20, 2017, the day he was sworn in as U.S. Secretary of Defense. Release No. NR-020-17. [citation needed]
It’s good to be back and I’m grateful to serve alongside you as Secretary of Defense. Together with the Intelligence Community we are the sentinels and guardians of our nation. We need only look to you, the uniformed and civilian members of the Department and your families, to see the fundamental unity of our country. You represent an America committed to the common good; an America that is never complacent about defending its freedoms; and an America that remains a steady beacon of hope for all mankind. Every action we take will be designed to ensure our military is ready to fight today and in the future. Recognizing that no nation is secure without friends, we will work with the State Department to strengthen our alliances. Further, we are devoted to gaining full value from every taxpayer dollar spent on defense, thereby earning the trust of Congress and the American people. I am confident you will do your part. I pledge to you I’ll do my best as your Secretary. MATTIS SENDS
Quotes about Mattis [ edit ]
That was real leadership. No one would have questioned Mattis if he'd slept eight hours each night in a private room, to be woken each morning by an aide who ironed his uniforms and heated his MREs. But there he was, in the middle of a freezing night, out on the lines with his Marines. ~ Nathaniel Fick
Jim Mattis I first met when I went to the Pentagon. He was a young colonel. And as Senator Nunn has pointed out, he had a reputation even then. This is somebody to watch. He is young. He is smart. He does not really belong behind a desk, although he may belong there right now, but at that time, he wanted to get out into the field. He is a warrior by nature... But that is really not why we are here. If he were only a great warrior, you would say, well, there are a lot of other warriors as well. He comes because he is a man of thought, as well as action. And sometimes it is said you can judge people by the friends he makes, the company he keeps, but also by the books he reads. General Mattis has some 6,000 books in his library, most of which, if not all of them, he has read, and he can refer to either Alexander the Great, General Grant, Sun Tzu. And I suspect he is probably the only one here at this table who can hear the words “Thucydides Trap” and not have to go to Wikipedia to find out what it means. And so he is a scholar as well and a strategic thinker as well as a great warrior. William Cohen, U.S. Senator from Maine, 1979-1997, in his remarks to the U.S. Senate during Mattis' confirmation hearing for his nomination for Secretary of Defense, held on January 12, 2017.
Farther down the line, in the middle of a gravelly flat near the runway's end, I approached another fighting hole, careful to come from the rear and listen for the verbal challenge. It was an assault rocket team, and there should have been two Marines awake. In the moonlight, I saw three heads silhouetted against the sky. I slid down into the hole with a rustle of cascading dirt. General Mattis leaned against a wall of sandbags, talking with a sergeant and a lance corporal. That was real leadership. No one would have questioned Mattis if he'd slept eight hours each night in a private room, to be woken each morning by an aide who ironed his uniforms and heated his MREs. But there he was, in the middle of a freezing night, out on the lines with his Marines. Nathaniel Fick, One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer (2005), p. 118.
Mattis is kinetic. The troops who knew him from Afghanistan loved him, and everyone else loved him by reputation. Stars on a collar can throw a barrier between leader and led, but Mattis' rank only contributed to his hero status. ~ Nathaniel Fick
General Mattis arrived a few minutes later, clearing the atmosphere like a thunderstorm on a humid afternoon. Mattis is kinetic. The troops who knew him from Afghanistan loved him, and everyone else loved him by reputation. Stars on a collar can throw a barrier between leader and led, but Mattis' rank only contributed to his hero status. Here was an officer, a general, who understood the Marines, who, in fact, was one of them. I caught Wynn's eye and leaned toward him to whisper a question: "You know what Mattis's call sign is?" He shook his head. "Chaos. How fucking cool is that?" Nathaniel Fick, One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer (2005), p. 162-163
Here was an officer, a general, who understood the Marines, who, in fact, was one of them. I caught Wynn's eye and leaned toward him to whisper a question: "You know what Mattis's call sign is?" He shook his head. "Chaos. How fucking cool is that?" ~ Nathaniel Fick
General Mattis closed with a divisionwide directive: no Marine in the First Marine Division would deploy with more personal gear than was allowed to an infantry lance corporal. No cots, no coffeepots, no Game Boys, CD players, or satellite telephones. Every man would sleep on the ground, and every man would shoulder an equal portion of the daily hardship. It was a Spartan concept, quintessentially Mattis, and I liked it. Nathaniel Fick, One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer (2005), p. 164.
The National Security [Council] Staff had, in effect, become an operational body with its own policy agenda, as opposed to a coordination mechanism. And this, in turn, led to micromanagement far beyond what was appropriate... I told General Jim Mattis at Central Command that if Lute ever called him again to question anything, Mattis was to tell him to go to hell. Robert M. Gates, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War (2014), p. 482
If confirmed, General Mattis would have the honor of leading a team of Americans who represent everything that is noble and best in our Nation. Our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines do everything we ask of them and more. They make us proud every day. Our many defense civil servants also sacrifice day in and day out for our national security and rarely get the credit they deserve. I am confident that no one appreciates our people and values their sacrifices more than General Mattis. John McCain, U.S. Senator from Arizona, in his remarks as Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee during Mattis' confirmation hearing for his nomination for Secretary of Defense on January 12, 2017.
Outgoing Defense Secretary Gen. James “Mad Dog” Mattis was famous for quipping, “It’s fun to shoot some people.” It remains a supreme irony that Mattis was widely considered the only “adult in the room” in the Trump administration. Compared to whom? John Bolton, the rabid neocon serving as national security adviser? That would be the epitome of “condemning with faint praise.” Mattis was simply incapable of acknowledging the self-destructive, mindless nature of U.S. “endless war” in the Middle East, which candidate-Trump had correctly called “stupid.” In his resignation letter, Mattis also peddled the usual cant about the indispensable nation’s aggression being good for the world. Ray McGovern in Send the Mad Dog to the Corporate Kennel, Consortium News, (21 December 2018)
Mattis was an obstacle to Trump’s desire to pull troops out of Syria and Afghanistan (and remains in position to spike Trump’s orders).... But withdrawal of ground troops is supremely sane, and Mattis was and is a large problem. And, for good or ill, Trump — not Mattis — was elected president. Ray McGovern in Send the Mad Dog to the Corporate Kennel, Consortium News, (21 December 2018)
The U.S. Constitution and international law suffered a stinging blow last night at the hands of an odd coalition... As was the case 15 years ago when the U.S. and UK launched a war of aggression against Iraq, the pretext was so-called “weapons of mass destruction” (WMD) — this time the claimed use on April 7 of chlorine (and maybe the nerve agent sarin — who knows?) in Duma a suburb of Damascus...
The attacks by the Gang of Three came hours before specialists from the UN Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons were to arrive in Syria to study soil and other samples in Duma. The question leaps out: Why could the Gang not wait until the OPCW had a chance to find out whether there was such an attack and, if so, what chemical(s) were used? U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis could only say that he believes there was a chemical attack and that perhaps sarin, in addition to chlorine, was involved. Serving until now as the only available “evidence” are highly dubious reports from agenda-laden “social media.” What is clear is that the U.S./UK/French Gang wanted to strike before the OPCW investigators had a chance to ascertain what happened. Hmm. All the earmarks of “Sentence first; verdict afterwards.” Ray McGovern in Attacking Syria: Thumbing Noses at Constitution and Law, Consortium News (14 April 2018)
The attacks by the Gang of Three came hours before specialists from the UN Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons were to arrive in Syria to study soil and other samples in Duma. The question leaps out: Why could the Gang not wait until the OPCW had a chance to find out whether there was such an attack and, if so, what chemical(s) were used? U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis could only say that he believes there was a chemical attack and that perhaps sarin, in addition to chlorine, was involved. Serving until now as the only available “evidence” are highly dubious reports from agenda-laden “social media.” What is clear is that the U.S./UK/French Gang wanted to strike before the OPCW investigators had a chance to ascertain what happened. Hmm. All the earmarks of “Sentence first; verdict afterwards.”
Jim Mattis is a rare combination of thinker and doer, scholar and strategist. He understands, respects, and loves the men and women in uniform and their families. He also understands the structure and the organization of the Pentagon, and he knows what the building has to do to give the troops the tools they need to do their job of protecting our Nation’s security. Jim also knows the awesome powers and responsibility of our military forces and the challenges of our complex and very dangerous world. He understands that our military cannot be our primary tool to meet every challenge, and he strongly supports the important role of diplomacy and has been outspoken in the important need of giving the State Department the resources they need to be fully effective. Sam Nunn, U.S. Senator from Georgia 1972-1997, introducing Mattis to the United States Senate at Mattis' confirmation hearing for Secretary of Defense on January 12, 2017.
Mac mentioned a distinguished guest who would soon be joining us. At first I didn’t pay much attention to the name and rank. The room was already full of high-ranking officers, and I was thinking about how normal they all looked. They were not in uniform; they looked like ambitious and enterprising professionals; but one felt that their modest demeanors fronted warlike spirits. Their conversation was quiet, but their laughter was loud. As soon as the guest stepped into the pub—looking like everyone else, trim and neat in his blue jeans, open shirt, and blue blazer—all eyes turned to him. This, I realized, was General James N. Mattis. A four-star general, one of only four in the Corps, he led the rapid, seventeen-day drive toward Baghdad in 2003 and, a few months later, conducted a slower, careful response to insurgent attacks in Fallujah. I’d heard of his forthright manner. He is said to have told tribal leaders in Iraq: “I come in peace. I didn’t bring artillery. But, I’m pleading with you, with tears in my eyes: If you screw with me, I’ll kill you all.” So, how does a run-down professor with unkempt hair shake hands with a renowned warrior? When in doubt, improvise. So I said, “Hi, I thought you’d be taller.” To this he replied, “And I thought you’d look smarter.” Peter W. Schramm, PhD, professor of history and government at Ashland University, from a meeting with Mattis in August 2010. Posted in his online publication series On Principle .
You would not mistake this man for a Roman, or a Russian, or even an English general. An entirely American character, he is disposed to look at things from the inside rather than from without, and certainly not to look down on those of us he is sworn to protect. He understands that in this country all men may rise, that distinction is based only on merit; and he demonstrates gratitude for the opportunity to labor in his field. Peter W. Schramm, PhD, professor of history and government at Ashland University, from a meeting with Mattis in August 2010. Posted in his online publication series On Principle .
When General Mattis asked me about my son and how he is getting along in the Corps, I told him some of what John had said about his work and routines, and added that John felt honored to serve. I also told him that soon after my son joined up I recounted to him the story told about a venerable gunnery sergeant in the 1930s. When he was asked by a young lieutenant how the Corps got its reputation as one of the world’s greatest fighting formations, the sergeant said: “Well, they started telling everybody how great they were. Pretty soon they got to believing it themselves. And they have been busy ever since proving they were right.” “Semper fi,” rejoined the general. Indeed. And God-speed. Peter W. Schramm, PhD, professor of history and government at Ashland University, from a meeting with Mattis in August 2010. Posted in his online publication series On Principle .
One week later Bremer issued CPA Order Number 2 disbanding the Iraqi Army. This too was contrary to what Garner had planned and took CENTCOM by surprise. “We were working with the Army when we were told to disband them,” said Marine Major General James Mattis. Overnight some 385,000 soldiers, plus another 285,000 employees of the Ministry of the Interior- the home of police and domestic security services- were without jobs. Abruptly terminating the livelihood of these men created a vast pool of humiliated, agonized, and politicized men, many of whom were armed. It also represented a major setback in restoring order. As Colonel John Agoglia, the deputy chief of planning at Central Command, said, “That was the day we snatched defeat from the jaws of victory and created an insurgency.” Jean Edward Smith, Bush (2016), p. 373
The fighting in Fallujah was fierce. And the reaction among Iraqis to the American offensive was uniformly hostile. Members of Bremer’s Governing Council threatened to resign if the attack continued, imperiling the handover of authority to Iraqis now scheduled for June 30. At this point Bremer blinked, then Rice blinked, and then Bush blinked. Late on April 8, just one day after his blistering pep talk, the president instructed Abizaid and Sanchez to halt the offensive in Fallujah. The following day, the troops were ordered to stand down. The Marines were furious. Thirty-nine Marines and U.S. soldiers had been killed in four days of fighting, and combat commanders believed they were relatively close to seizing their final objectives. “If you are going to take Vienna, take fucking Vienna,” Mattis snarled at Abizaid, updating a famous comment made by Napoleon. Bush had scarcely provided the robust leadership he advertised. One minute he was tough, the next he knuckled under. General Sanchez called it a strategic disaster for the United States. Jean Edward Smith, Bush (2016), p. 398
General James 'Mad Dog' Mattis, who is being considered for Secretary of Defense, was very impressive yesterday. A true General's General! Donald Trump, in a Tweet on November 20, 2016, following a meeting with Mattis in Bedminster, New Jersey that same day.
The General is a small man in his mid-fifties who moves and speaks quickly, with a vowel-mashing speech impediment that gives him a sort of folksy charm. A bold thinker, Mattis' favorite battlefield expression is "Doctrine is the last refuge of the unimaginative." On the battlefield, his call sign is "Chaos." His plan for the Marines in Iraq would hinge on disregarding sacred tenets of American military doctrine. His goal was not to shield his Marines from Chaos, but to embrace it. No unit would embody this daring philosophy than First Recon. Evan Wright, Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America, and the New Face of American War (2004), p. 10.
In the months leading up to the war on Iraq, battles over doctrine and tactics were still raging within the military. The struggle was primarily between the more cautious "Clinton generals" in the Army, who advocated a methodical invasion with a robust force of several hundred thousand, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his acolytes, who argued for a much smaller invasion force- one that would rely on speed and mobility more than on firepower. Rumsfeld's interest in "maneuver warfare," as the doctrine that emphasizes mobility over firepower is called, predated invasion planning for Iraq. Ever since becoming Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld had been pushing for his vision of a stripped-down, more mobile military force on the Pentagon as part of a sweeping transformation plan. Mattis and the Marine Corps had been moving in that direction for nearly a decade. The Iraq campaign would showcase the Marines' role in Iraq as a rush. While the U.S. Army- all-powerful, slow-moving and cautious- planned its methodical, logistically robust movement up a broad, desert highway, Mattis prepared the Marines for an entirely different campaign. After seizing southern oil facilities within the first forty-eight hours of the war, Mattis planned to immediately send First Recon and a force of some 6,000 Marines into a violent assault through Iraq's Fertile Crescent. Their mission would be to seize the most treacherous route to Baghdad- the roughly 185-kilometer-long, canal-laced urban and agricultural corridor from Nasiriyah to Al Kut. Evan Wright, Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America, and the New Face of American War (2004), p. 11.
Saddam had viewed this route, with its almost impenetrable terrain of canals, villages, rickety bridges, hidden tar swamps and dense groves of palm trees, as his not-so-secret weapon in bogging down the Americans. Thousands of Saddam loyalists, both Iraqi regulars and foreign jihadi warriors from Syria, Egypt and Palestinian refugee camps, would hunker down in towns and ambush points along the route. They had excavated thousands of bunkers along the main roads, sown mines and pre-positioned tens of thousands of weapons. When Saddam famously promised to sink the American invaders into a "quagmire," he was probably thinking of the road from Nasiriyah to Al Kut. It was the worst place in Iraq to send an invading army. Mattis planned to subvert the quagmire strategy Saddam had planned there by throwing out a basic element of military doctrine: His Marines would assault through the planned route and continue moving without pausing to establish rear security. According to conventional wisdom, invading armies take great pains to secure supply lines to their rear, or they perish. In Mattis' plan, the Marines would never stop charging. Evan Wright, Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America, and the New Face of American War (2004), p. 11-12. |
Joseph D. Morrissey, a Richmond lawyer and member of the Virginia House of Delegates, was charged Monday with having sex with a 17-year-old receptionist who worked at his law firm and possessing child pornography for allegedly soliciting a photo of the teen and sharing it with a friend, according to a five-count indictment filed Monday in Henrico County court.
Morrissey (D), a former prosecutor and a criminal defense attorney with a history of public controversies including a courtroom fistfight and a revocation of his law license that lasted a decade, had been under criminal investigation since August, when police found the girl in his home about midnight on a Friday. Police were tipped off by the girl’s father, according to court documents released Monday.
The girl had started working for Morrissey’s law firm about three weeks earlier. Morrissey, who was 55 at the time, took her to dinner more than once, and they engaged in “repeated consensual acts of sexual intercourse” at his office, according to the court documents. After one of the encounters, Morrissey and the girl sent nearly simultaneous text messages to their friends about what had happened, according to the documents.
Morrissey’s five-person legal team called the charges “baseless and without any factual support” and said the teen also denies the charges. The attorneys accused the special prosecutor, Spotsylvania Commonwealth’s Attorney William F. Neely, of a two-decades-long vendetta against Morrissey that included opposition to his reinstatement to the bar.
“The evidence will show that Del. Morrissey never solicited, possessed or distributed any pornographic images. The only obscenity is what Mr. Neely has done by virtue of charging Del. Morrissey,” stated a news release issued by the team, which includes former attorney general Anthony Troy and state Sen. William M. Stanley Jr.
The five-person legal team of Del. Joseph Morrissey (D-Henrico) called the charges “baseless and without any factual support.” (Steve Helber/AP)
Morrissey and the girl, through their attorneys, said their cellphones were hacked and the incriminating text messages planted by a third party; police could not confirm those accounts, according to the court documents.
Neely did not return calls seeking comment. He said in a news release that he called a grand jury after learning that the girl and her mother had been “less than cooperative with the police investigation.”and had given contradictory statements to police.
Morrissey was charged with four felonies and one misdemeanor, including supervisory indecent liberties with a minor, electronic solicitation of a minor, and possession and distribution of child pornography. He faces up to 40 years behind bars.
After the girl left her job at the end of August, Morrissey continued to let her use the company Lexus and helped her buy a new car, according to the prosecutor. They also spent a night together at a Norfolk hotel in October, and they have appeared in public socially as recently as last month, according to documents Neely released Monday.
The girl, a college freshman and part-time receptionist for Morrissey’s law firm, Morrissey & Goldman LLC, was visiting the delegate at his home in August to discuss a “very sensitive legal matter,” Rob Walker, a Richmond attorney for the girl’s mother, said at the time.
The girl had her mother’s permission to go to Morrissey’s house and said that “at all times during the visit, Mr. Morrissey was a gentleman and acted entirely in a professional manner,” Walker said.
Morrissey fought for years to reinstate his law license. Despite his controversial legal career, Morrissey was elected to the House in 2007 and reelected three times since. He is one of his party’s most vigorous floor debaters, relishing verbal sparring matches with GOP opponents.
House Minority Leader David Toscano (D-Charlottesville) said it’s too early to call for Morrissey’s resignation, but noted that the child pornography charges filed Monday are more serious than past allegations of wrongdoing.
“Without knowing more about the facts, all I can say is they are very serious charges. He has a right to presumption of innocence and we need to find out more about what happened before we take any action on it,” he said.
“There is no doubt Joe has gotten himself into hot water in the past, and clearly there are some very serious charges that have been leveled right now,” he said. |
World-leading HIV expert and study leader, Myron Cohen, M.D., available to speak on landmark findings
May 12, 2011— A research study led by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has made a major discovery in the effort to halt the spread of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The study results show that early initiation of antiretroviral treatment in people infected with HIV prevents them from transmitting the virus to their partners.
The study, known as HPTN 052, was designed to evaluate whether antiretroviral drugs can prevent sexual transmission of HIV infection among couples in which one partner is HIV-infected and the other is not. The results are the first of their kind from a major randomized clinical trial.
Led by Myron S. Cohen, M.D., of the University of North Carolina, the research found that treating HIV-infected individuals with antiretroviral therapy (ART) when their immune systems are still relatively healthy led to a 96 percent reduction in HIV transmission to their partners.
This critical new finding convincingly demonstrates that early treatment of infected individuals can have a major impact on the spread of the epidemic.
Study investigators enrolled 1,763 couples who were not eligible for ART by WHO standards in nine countries around the world. Couples were randomly assigned to one of two study groups. In the first group, the HIV-infected partner initiated antiretroviral therapy (ART) as soon as the couple enrolled in the study (the immediate treatment group); in the second group, infected partners did not begin ART until their CD4+ counts fell to between 200 and 250 cells/mm3 or they developed an AIDS-related illness (the delayed treatment group). Couples in both groups received HIV primary care, counseling and condoms.
Results of this research study, which was scheduled to conclude in 2015, are being released early, after the independent data and safety monitoring board (DSMB) determined that the benefits of early treatment were clear.
At the time the study was evaluated by the DSMB on April 28, 2011, the available data show that among all couples enrolled in the study, 28 new cases of HIV infection occurred which were linked through genetic analysis to the infected partner enrolled in the study. Of those 28 cases, only one new infection occurred among couples in the immediate treatment group.
This is the first randomized clinical trial to compare starting ART in people with CD4+ counts greater than 350 cells/mm3 with those with CD4+ counts between 200 and 250 cells/mm3.
The results also demonstrated a clinical benefit of early ART, especially in the prevention of a type of tuberculosis infection outside the lungs (extrapulmonary tuberculosis).
Study participants are being informed of the results, and HIV-infected individuals in the delayed treatment arm are being offered ART. The study investigators will continue to monitor participants for at least one more year.
In addition to leading the research, UNC was one of study sites, enrolling 251 couples at UNC Project-Malawi, the university’s research, care and training center in Lilongwe. UNC has been conducting HIV research in Malawi since 1989.
The research was conducted by the HIV Prevention Trials Network, which is largely funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) with additional funding from the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the National Institute of Mental Health, both part of the National Institutes of Health. Additional support was provided by the NIAID-funded Adult AIDS Clinical Trials Group.
NIAID press release: http://www.niaid.nih.gov/news/newsreleases/2011/Pages/HPTN052.aspx.
THE STUDY: HPTN 052 “A Randomized Trial to Evaluate the Effectiveness of Antiretroviral Therapy Plus HIV Primary Care versus HIV Primary Care Alone to Prevent the Sexual Transmission of HIV-1 in Serodiscordant Couples”
WHO: Myron S. Cohen, M.D., is J. Herbert Bate Distinguished Professor of Medicine, Microbiology and Immunology, and Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He also serves as associate vice chancellor for global health and is director of the UNC Institute for Global Health & Infectious Diseases. Dr. Cohen is recognized as one of the world’s leading authorities on the transmission and prevention of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. Cohen has spent more than two decades building a multidisciplinary team of researchers at UNC devoted to studying the transmission and prevention of HIV/AIDS. Cohen’s team of researchers developed sensitive assays to measure the concentration of the HIV virus in bodily fluids and was among the first to demonstrate that the presence of other sexually transmitted diseases can increase the likelihood of HIV transmission. In 2010 he was appointed the first Scientific Advisory Board of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).
UNC MEDIA CONTACT: To schedule an interview, please contact Jennifer James, (919) 966-7622 or [email protected] |
Donald Trump is a tweeter. Typically, he likes short, aggressive statements with no context. So it’s fitting that the first-ever political protest from space aimed a mean message at the US president in the form of a truncated quote.
Attached to a weather balloon with cameras hovering above Earth, 90,000 feet up in the stratosphere on April 12, was a large printout of a tweet for @therealdonaldtrump. The message read: LOOK AT THAT, YOU SON OF A BITCH.
It’s a reference to a quote by Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell, who was the sixth man to walk on the Moon. The experience turned him from a technician into a humanitarian he said. He reflected on it retrospectively in an oft-repeated quote that appears to have been made to People magazine in 1974:
In outer space you develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the Moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter millions miles out and say, “Look at that, you son of a bitch.”
The political protest in space was a symbolic act of alliance with the April 22 March for Science, planned in Washington. Both are meant to call attention to Trump-administration policies that threaten scientific research and the Earth, ultimately.
Organized by a collective of artists, hackers, scientists, and engineers in Arizona called the Autonomous Space Agency Network, which for now is made up of just one branch in Phoenix, the rebel space agency’s website says it aims to make the final frontier accessible to all by creating independent space exploration organizations worldwide. Basically, the group hopes to democratize space exploration by sharing research and joining forces with other independent would-be explorers to ensure that governments and wealthy entities aren’t the only ones with access to what lies beyond Earth.
It is a lofty goal, but they’re starting small, with symbolic projects like the political protest. The group shared details about the protest on Twitter. Total cost, only $75. |
A woman from the south coast of England is awaiting an apology from U.S. President Donald Trump after he accidentally tweeted to her account while trying to get the attention of the British prime minister.
Trump initially sent a tweet condemning Britain's handling of Islamic terrorism to @theresamay, rather than the British leader, whose handle is @theresa—may.
Trump reached 41-year-old Theresa May Scrivener, a woman from Bognor who had six followers when the mistake occurred. She's since been bombarded by reporters and can't leave her house.
Scrivener told Britain's Press Association that she wanted to stay out of the debate between the UK leader and Trump — but says he should think before tweeting.
She says, "Our profiles are completely different. She runs the country, I'm a mum from Bognor." |
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The non-biting midges do not feed as adults
Nature-lovers are being urged to go to Loch Leven in Perth and Kinross to see an unusually large swarm of midges that have emerged from the ground.
Experts said it was an "amazing" natural spectacle that would only last for a few days.
The non-biting midges or chironomids do not feed as adults and so are only mating while in the swarm.
They will then lay their eggs and, if the climate conditions are right, more will hatch again in three weeks' time.
Gus Routledge, of Scottish Natural Heritage, told the BBC Scotland news website, the mass emergence was even bigger than previous years.
'Fuelling the ecosystem'
"I think this is absolutely brilliant and people should come down to see it.
"It's an amazing spectacle to witness such a huge number of insects, especially when you think they are fuelling the rest of the ecosystem here.
"It's also brilliant seeing all the migrant birds that are swooping through them all to feed on them and loving it. It's a really good food supply for them.
"It is also great news for the trout as they are feeding on them as they land on the water.
"The dragonflies and damselflies will also be feeding off them."
Image copyright Neil Mitchell Image caption A chironomid carving at Loch Leven
He added that Loch Leven has its own species of chironomid called cladontanypatrsus donmcbeani, which was discovered in 2000.
The path where the flies have hatched is about a 45-minute walk between the RSPB car park and Loch Leven's Larder.
Ashleigh Whiffin, National Museums of Scotland's assistant curator of entomology, said: "I would love to see this phenomenon so I am going to go there on Saturday.
"I've not seen this phenomenon before and I would urge others to see it too.
"They don't harm you as they are non-biting midges. Their sole purpose at this stage is to find a mate and reproduce." |
DUBAI, May 3 (Reuters) - Iran has banned the import of Chevrolet cars, a week after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei criticised imports of U.S. autos and asked the government to support domestic production.
The semi-official Mehr news agency quoted an unnamed official in the Ministry of Industry, Mines and Trade as saying on Tuesday that an order of 200 Chevrolet cars, worth $7 million, should be cancelled. Chevrolets are made by General Motors.
"The person who has registered the car orders has been informed that their import is not allowed. The cars are not in the country yet and were only loaded to be shipped to Iran," the official was quoted as saying.
He said the shipment was to have come from South Korea, but did not give details of the seller.
Before its Islamic Revolution in 1979, Iran was a flourishing marketplace for U.S.-manufactured cars and trucks, but a combination of U.S. sanctions barring most trade and Iran's own restrictions blocked sales.
After the nuclear deal which Iran reached with the United States and other world powers last year, and the lifting of most international sanctions in January, Iran listed a few Chevrolet models as cleared for import.
The list, published on the official portal of the industry ministry of Industry, includes only a handful of foreign carmakers such as BMW, Hyundai and Posrche . The name of Chevrolet has now been removed from the list.
Last week, Khamenei denounced the import of foreign products including U.S. cars and said Iranian consumers should support domestic manufacturers instead.
"Even the Americans are not interested in buying such cars because of their weight and high fuel consumption," Khamenei was quoted by his official website as telling hundreds of workers in Tehran.
"Why should we import the cars from a bankrupt American factory? This is very odd."
On Monday, Khamenei criticised rich young people who drove expensive cars on the streets of Tehran, saying they were the result of identity crises and bad education.
Foreign-made cars are available in Iran, but high import tariffs put them out of reach of most buyers. Imports are sometimes restricted if a car is considered "luxury" or "unsafe" by the government.
(Reporting by Bozorgmehr Sharafedin; Editing by Andrew Torchia and David Evans) |
The Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonSanders: 'I fully expect' fair treatment by DNC in 2020 after 'not quite even handed' 2016 primary Sanders: 'Damn right' I'll make the large corporations pay 'fair share of taxes' Former Sanders campaign spokesman: Clinton staff are 'biggest a--holes in American politics' MORE campaign slammed Donald Trump Donald John TrumpHouse committee believes it has evidence Trump requested putting ally in charge of Cohen probe: report Vietnamese airline takes steps to open flights to US on sidelines of Trump-Kim summit Manafort's attorneys say he should get less than 10 years in prison MORE's running mate, Mike Pence, as divisive and unpopular moments after the presumptive Republican presidential nominee made the announcement.
“By picking Mike Pence as his running mate, Donald Trump has doubled down on some of his most disturbing beliefs by choosing an incredibly divisive and unpopular running mate known for supporting discriminatory politics and failed economic policies that favor millionaires and corporations over working families,” campaign chairman John Podesta said in a statement.
If you had any doubts about Trump sticking with his dangerous plan for America, say hello to his VP pick. pic.twitter.com/xuFClfZeLi
After days of speculation, Trump announced on Twitter he had picked the first-term Republican governor from Indiana as his running mate. A formal news conference will follow Saturday at 11 a.m., he tweeted.
Pence had been on a final shortlist for the spot along with former Speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.) and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, according to Trump.
In picking Pence, Trump is selecting a candidate who could improve his conservative bona fides and help appeal to the party's base.
At the same time, privately those in Clinton World said the Pence pick shows a new level of seriousness for the Trump campaign.
"I think it shows he's (maybe) getting serious about running for President," one longtime Clinton adviser said in an email. "We'll see how long that lasts but I'd put this in the side of the ledger where the professionals in the process got their way." Another friend of Clinton's said the preference among most Clintonites probably would have been for Christie or Gingrich. "They're way more colorful." But one Clinton aide said while Pence lacks the name recognition and outsized personalities of Christie and Gingrich, he comes with his own problems. "Trump is so far down in the negatives that even if Pence brought a ton of positives to the table that doesn't get Trump anywhere close ... let alone back on track," the aide said. "It'll be very interesting to see how they get on the same page where there are disagreements." The aide pointed to the difference of opinion between Trump's opinion on banning Muslims from entering the country and Pence's stance. Taking to Twitter last December, Pence wrote, "Calls to ban Muslims from entering the U.S. are offensive and unconstitutional."
The Clinton campaign on Friday quickly raised one of the most controversial moments of Pence's tenure as governor: His handling of a religious freedom law.
Pence's signature on the law in 2015 resulted in nationwide backlash and several companies boycotted the state. The law was later amended to clarify it doesn't allow discrimination against gay people.
"Pence also personally led the fight to defund Planned Parenthood while serving in the House and fought to pass Indiana's 2016 anti-abortion law, with some of the most outrageous restrictions in the country that threatened women’s privacy and limited their choice. And just like Trump, he’s been a long-time opponent of comprehensive immigration reform," Podesta wrote.
Podesta then called Pence bad for the economy, claiming he opposes raising the federal minimum wage.
“Voters deserve better than more of their divisive policies and ‘me-first’ economic proposals. This new Trump-Pence ticket stands in dramatic contrast to Hillary Clinton’s vision of our future — one where we are stronger together, where unity prevails over division and the economy works for all Americans, not just those at the top.” |
Ask most any political pundit a year ago who the 2016 Democratic nominee for president would be and virtually all of them would have told you that Hillary Clinton had the lock. But then something unexpected started happening: Bernie Sanders, the relatively unknown Independent senator from Vermont who was 60 to 70 points behind Clinton started attracting massive crowds to his burgeoning campaign.
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By some key measures, Sanders was even drawing larger crowds than Obama did in 2008. The sizes of the crowds–tens of thousands of people at a time–had everyone asking, including the Washington Post, “How does he do it?” While theories varied–“It’s his charisma!” “It’s his populist appeal!”–depending who you asked, many professional campaign watchers on both sides of the aisle, including the Washington Post, who posited the question, gave much of the credit to Sanders’s social media team. “#FeeltheBern has got to be one of the most creative hashtags I’ve ever seen for a campaign.” “Sanders’ social media campaign gets a solid A-,” says Nikki Usher Layser, assistant professor at the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University, whose latest book is Making News at The New York Times. “#FeeltheBern has got to be one of the most creative hashtags I’ve ever seen for a campaign. That’s got to be one of the best turns-of-phrases for strategic communication–in just one hashtag, you can rally the troops, celebrate an accomplishment–it’s everything.” Layser isn’t alone in her praise for the Sanders campaign’s social media skills or the team’s ability to mobilize voters. Yet ironically there is one person who disagrees with her regarding the importance of Sanders’s digital agency: the man who runs it. “All of these credited things are kind of silly,” says Scott Goodstein, the 42-year-old CEO of Revolution Messaging, the politically progressive digital media agency that powers Sanders’s social media campaign. Goodstein credits the success of Sanders’s social media strategy to the candidate himself. Photo: Flickr user Mark Dixon “You want to make sure that social media and digital all have the same authentic voice and reflect the exact campaign and candidate message—[and Sanders’s message] is amazing. I’m honored to work with not only a team of people that is involved in the day to day, but a candidate who really has a true, authentic message and a desire to get that message broadcast through social media and [one who] uses the medium himself.”
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Still Goodstein does acknowledge that his team’s understanding of how social media campaigning has changed since Obama’s 2008 campaign first leveraged the then-new medium, as well as its willingness to embrace new tools and social media platforms before other candidates, has given the Sanders campaign an edge. Here’s his top takeaways from running one of the most talked-about social media campaigns in recent memory. This Isn’t Obama’s Social Media In 2008 Obama’s presidential campaign was one of the first to dip its toes into the relatively unknown world of political campaigning on social media. But in terms of the capabilities of social media, eight years ago is a lifetime. And if anyone is qualified to talk about the differences between then and now, it’s Goodstein, because he was the external online director of the 2008 Obama campaign, which saw him in charge of all social media and mobile initiatives in Obama’s new media department. “That social media, it was sort of experimental, trying to figure out how these things work,” says Goodstein. “I mean that was a time when we were creating local organizing MySpace pages and Facebook didn’t allow you to have more than five thousand friends in any way, shape, or form. It was very hard to organize a national fundraising day when the most you could have in your one group was five thousand people.” Goodstein also points out that back then there was no advertising on Twitter–even Facebook didn’t have a robust ad network. That’s not even to mention that the number of social media networks were relatively few and the limited types of media those networks let you share meant there wasn’t always an optimal way to engage supporters. “In 2008 [social media] was just a giant microphone where you took a part of the press release and put it on Facebook.” “In 2008 [social media] was just a giant microphone where you took a part of the press release and put it on Facebook,” says Goodstein. “Today platforms are so much more powerful. There’s an advertising component to these platforms, and you can actually engage with hundreds of thousands [of people]. You have more robust tools on places like Facebook that allow you to create quick events and, inside just Facebook alone, appoint different persons in an organizing channel. It’s more than just experimental.” Case in point: In March the Sanders campaign decided to hold a last-minute rally in downtown Los Angeles in just a few days’ time. Using little more than its Facebook assets, email blasts, and text messaging, the social media team was able to organize thousands of supports to show up on short notice.
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“You know how big a task it is to move the rally accordingly based on estimated turnout for attendance, and doing it in two days’ time in a city where nobody likes driving in [to downtown] at five o’clock, to go see a 74-year-old man speak for two hours?” Goodstein says. Supporters of Democratic presidental candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders gather before his rally at the Wiltern Theatre on March 23, 2016 in Los Angeles, California. Photo: Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images But the team pulled it off so well, there were reportedly more than a thousand people waiting outside trying to get into the rally. “That happened because A, his message was resonating with folks and people did want to go and see him speak, and B, we were able to quickly go and engage the right amount of people and the right people who would potentially go and hear him speak through all these different digital channels.” “The Snapchat filters in the lead-up to Iowa were also a major moment for the campaign.” Facebook and email blasts aside, Goodstein notes it’s also a bigger social media world than in 2008 with new networks, and says that the Sanders campaign isn’t afraid to be the first to leverage these platforms. That’s something GWU’s Layser agrees with. She praises Sanders’s social media team’s ability to not only target likely voters on Facebook but to adopt newer social media platforms, including Snapchat, to mobilize young voters, the same target critical in Obama’s presidential runs. “The Snapchat filters in the lead-up to Iowa were also a major moment for the campaign,” Layser says. “These were brilliant–tapping into a key demographic and creating a sense of excitement. It showed the team knew the medium and the audience, and the team showed the irreverent, outside-the-beltway thinking in creating the filters that other candidates took a while to catch on to with Snapchat.” “Any campaign that thinks that these are silly little things that just the kids are doing is missing how powerfully, robustly, and rapidly you can move a message or push facts around the press and rebuttals around debates,” says Goodstein.
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The Repercussions Of Rapid Response Another key difference–and one of the markers of success–in Sanders’s social media strategy compared to Obama’s is that social media is intertwined into every department of the campaign, says Goodstein. “Barack Obama’s campaign–and all of social media campaigns back in 2008–were in a siloed universe. [As external online director of the Obama social media campaign] I was sitting inside one little element of the new media department,” he says, noting that sometimes different elements would have different, even competing, takes on messages across platforms including digital, television, and print. “Any campaign that thinks that these are silly little things that just the kids are doing is missing how powerfully, robustly, and rapidly you can move a message.” “Today, the Bernie Sanders campaign has let the digital team be baked into the entire DNA structure of the campaign. Press and communications are in constant coordination with our social media person, so it’s not competing,” says Goodstein. “The campaign’s organizers have adopted it, the communications folks have adopted it, and the rapid response policy fundraising clearly has adopted it.” But the social media tools available via various platforms like Facebook and Twitter aren’t the only thing every branch of the campaign has adopted. The entire team has also switched over to using the popular Slack instant messaging tool, which helps the campaign make rapid decisions when it comes to promoting various talking points or messages across different media channels to supporters. “Slack means that we’re all now super connected and can upload the stuff directly to each other’s instant message,” says Goodstein. “On debate nights, some of the team will be at the debate while some of the team will be elsewhere in the country, [but we’ll all be] on Slack, participating in the same conversation and moving everything from ideas to design and creative and execution.” Of course such a rapid response to the talking points raised by the other candidates in debates or in the press isn’t without risks, as the Sanders team found out when it incorrectly attributed pictures it tweeted of dilapidated houses in Detroit to free trade policies Hillary Clinton reportedly had a hand in. It turned out the houses were abandoned long before any free trade deal was in place.
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As for the tweet in question, GWU’s Layser says one mistake doesn’t matter much. “It’s one drop in the bucket in a long campaign cycle.” As for Goodstein he says any social media mistake is something you need to learn from and then move on. “It’s like anything else, that’s the good news of social media growing up. For example, how do you deal with a young kid in the field saying something silly or not part of your talking points in a town hall?” says Goodstein. “One way to deal with it is just making sure that you’re having enough education, enough eyes on things.” How Engagement Leads To Strategy Changes The final takeaway Goodstein says his team has learned is be open to social media engagement leading to organic changes in your digital strategy. You never know, your supporters on social media just might have the idea for one of the best hashtags of the campaign season. “With #FeeltheBern, some volunteers had been really pushing the hashtag, so we said, let’s make this part of their campaign, let’s all bring it together, and we adopted #FeeltheBern in fun ways, and slowly brought it into the campaign,” Goodstein says. “[What this lead to is] everybody seeing that what they’re doing is actually making an impact and the campaign is echoing and embracing it.” “We started selling #FeeltheBern coffee mugs and shirts, and other people recognized that and gave us other suggestions for the campaign,” says Goodstein. “[Because of that] other artists have come out and joined the campaign. It’s become this organic team effort, and that’s all from just interacting and engaging in a two-way set of communication with different communities around the Internet.” Photo: Flickr user Michael Vadon And that team effort shows no signs of abating. Sanders is still drawing massive crowds and last Tuesday he achieved a critical victory over Clinton in Wisconsin. Still, Goodstein says, most of the credit for getting those Wisconsin supporters to show up and vote goes to Sanders himself.
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“Campaigning has always been about three variables. It’s always been about time, people, and money. These social media tools we’re leveraging have made it easier for us to spend less time organizing more people, and for less money,” he says. “But the reality is that none of those do well without a candidate who has a powerful message that gets people to engage. I’m honored and lucky to be working with a candidate who is the perfect one in that regard, because Bernie Sanders clearly has an authentic message that resonates.” |
(Reuters) - In Mississippi, a small team of entomologists has begun the first survey of mosquito populations in decades. Experts do not believe the kind of mosquitoes most likely to carry the Zika virus are active in the state, but they cannot know for sure.
By contrast, the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District, has been active since the late 1920s. With an annual budget of over $15 million, it now deploys four helicopters, two airplanes and 33 inspectors covering 125 square miles.
Because they are funded by local taxpayer dollars, U.S. mosquito control programs reflect deep economic disparities between communities, leaving some at-risk locations badly unprepared for the virus that is spreading through the Americas.
First detected in Brazil last year, Zika has been linked in that country to more than 1,300 cases of microcephaly, a rare birth defect defined by unusually small heads.
The outbreak is expected to reach the continental United States in the coming weeks as temperatures rise and mosquito populations multiply. In interviews with Reuters, more than a dozen state and local health officials and disease control experts say they worry they will have neither the money nor the time to plug gaping holes in the nation’s defenses.
They say the poorest communities along the Gulf of Mexico with a history of dengue outbreaks are at the highest risk.
States in the south are “woefully under-invested,” said Dr. Thomas Dobbs, epidemiologist for the Mississippi State Department of Health. “You have these gaping holes in capacity,” he said, with many poor communities mobilizing their first mosquito control efforts in years.
Among the best-prepared is Harris County, Texas, which includes the city of Houston. It dedicates $4.5 million a year to controlling disease carriers, or vectors, such as mosquitoes, ticks or rodents.
The 50-year-old program is considered one of the best in the country. Traps have been set up in 268 areas in the county to capture and catalog mosquitoes and test them for pesticide resistance. It is adding new traps for the Aedes aegypti mosquitoes that carry Zika.
New York City plans to spend $21 million over three years to combat the virus. Aedes aegypti have never been found in the city, so its efforts will target Aedes albopictus, a mosquito believed to be capable of spreading the virus.
At the other end of the spectrum, some communities may only have a “Chuck in the truck” - someone who does spraying runs with a fogger attached to his pickup, said Stan Cope, president of the American Mosquito Control Association. Many municipalities do not even have that much.
The Obama administration has asked Congress for nearly $1.9 billion to fight Zika, including $453 million to assist with emergency response, laboratory capacity and mosquito control. Lawmakers in the House of Representatives and Senate have presented their own funding proposals, which each fall far short of that sum.
STOPGAP FUNDING
To help plug some of the gaps until Congress acts, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is adding $38 million to an existing infectious diseases grant program to expand lab testing capacity and surveillance for Zika.
For the first time, CDC will also provide an additional $15 million to help local programs most in need, CDC entomologist Janet McAllister told Reuters.
A pair of Aedes albopictus mosquitoes are seen during a mating ritual while the female feeds on a blood meal in a 2003 image from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). REUTERS/Centers for Disease Control/James Gathany/Handout via Reuters
She said states’ proposals are due by the end of May and could cover funding for trucks, equipment and chemicals, as well as hiring contractors.
The CDC has also earmarked $25 million for at-risk states and territories, though the funds would primarily go health departments to help them deal with Zika cases.
But the CDC money is not expected to reach states until August at the earliest, late in the game to do mosquito surveillance.
The agency estimates that Aedes aegypti could be present in as many as 27 U.S. states, though the chief worry will be areas with recent dengue fever cases, McAllister said. Those include South Florida, South Texas, Southern California, areas along the U.S. border with Mexico, Louisiana and Hawaii. (Graphic: tmsnrt.rs/1QvaMW6)
Frank Welch, medical director for the office of community preparedness for Louisiana, a state with 64 different types of mosquitoes, said his concern was that federal emergency funding might get delayed until the fall.
“That would certainly be too late for immediate Zika preparedness,” he said.
DIFFERENT ANIMAL
Even communities with established, well-funded insect-fighting programs may lack the tools to prevent an outbreak.
“We don’t feel horribly confident that anybody in the world is very good at controlling these mosquitoes,” said Susanne Kluh, Scientific-Technical Services Director for the Greater Los Angeles County Vector Control District.
One reason is that most U.S. programs are designed to deal with nuisance mosquitoes or those carrying West Nile, which are controlled by spraying at night and dropping tablets that kill mosquito larvae into catch basins.
Confronting Aedes aegypti, a daytime biter that lives in and around homes and breeds in tiny containers of water, is more expensive and inherently less efficient.
“It’s a different animal. It requires a very different method to control,” said Michael Doyle, a former CDC entomologist who directs mosquito control in the Florida Keys.
In 2009, Doyle oversaw efforts to fight dengue, also carried by Aedes aegypti. Inspectors went door to door every week, dumping containers of water in back yards that could serve as breeding sites, spraying pesticides to kill adult mosquitoes and using a liquid non-toxic bacterial formulation to kill larvae. After every rainstorm, they continue to spray 80,000 acres with the larvicide.
That has proved expensive at $16 per acre (0.4 hectare) plus helicopter costs. The efforts have only reduced the Aedes aegypti mosquito population by half since 2010, which Doyle said is not enough to prevent disease transmission.
In California, Aedes aegypti mosquitoes arrived as recently as 2013 and have spread to seven counties from south of Fresno to San Diego. “It has really changed the manpower needs,” Kluh said.
Slideshow (7 Images)
Kluh said her district traditionally treats easily accessible public areas, such as catch basins, storm drains and the occasional swimming pool.
“This battle against these mosquitoes happens in every backyard and in tiny sources as small as a bottle cap filled with sprinkler water.” |
Everyone knows IPCPR is one of the largest cigar events of the year in the United States. Thousands of cigar brands, retailers, bloggers, and other enthusiasts descend to smoke and purchase the newest blends from the hottest brands. Any high-energy, well-publicized event like IPCPR presents a great opportunity for companies willing to leverage social media to get exposure to tens of thousands of cigar smokers on social media.
So who were the top performers at IPCPR this year? The results are below. But first a note: these results are not comprehensive. They do not cover all cigar brands at IPCPR (that would be impossible), nor do they cover all social media platforms. I limited my statistical analysis to the previous 7 days of tweeting activity on Twitter because its open environment allows me to get the most detailed information. Yes, it is one platform among many, but the stats sill tell a solid story. Nonetheless, I have also included a some anecdotal analysis because there were some brands who made some spectacular plays on other networks like Facebook (i.g. Alec Bradley sends first cigars into space). If you’re wondering why I didn’t include more brands (even big ones), it is because this kind of research takes a lot of work and I was looking for representative samples.
Rankings are based on total number of company mentions during the week of IPCPR.
The results
Drew Estate dominated social media this year, with Rocky Patel and Alec Bradley coming in second and third. We’ll go into the how and why’s of it in a minute. But quickly I should explain that the “Total company mentions” column on the right is not the sum of “hashtag mentions” and “ipcpr mentions” – it includes more tweets, like those that @ mention the company, use slang terms for the company, etc. Thus it is the most comprehensive metric, and the one which judged rankings.
How did Drew Estate do it?
Drew Estate crushed it this year for a few reasons:
Drew Estate made a concerted effort to draw their customers into the IPCPR experience using an IPCPR hashtag. Drew Estate motivated their customers to participate in the hashtag by featuring posts on a company webpage designed specifically for IPCPR. Drew Estate posted across multiple platforms – Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, achieving a maximum reach across platform audiences. They were also smart in posting content across platforms (i.e. their Facebook page is full of their YouTube interviews). Company employees were active on social and responded/thanked users who submitted posts with #DEipcpr.
Drew Estate did a fantastic job and all cigar companies could learn a thing or two on how to engage customers and increase brand loyalty.
Honorable mention: Alec Bradley
Alec Bradley didn’t have nearly as much social momentum during IPCPR 2013, but they deserve an honorable mention here for the sheer creativity of their marketing approach. While in Vegas, they made history by launching the first cigars into space. Yeah. The post had 11 shares, over a hundred likes, and a lot of comments. I estimate this post had a viral reach in the tens of thousands, and will be posted around the internet for a long time to come.
Way to go Alec Bradley!
What about Rocky Patel?
I’m a big fan of Rocky Patel cigars – great flavor, incredibly consistent construction, awesome pricing too. Their performance on social this year, however, wasn’t so much the result of the company having a solid social media strategy. A cursory glance around their networks revealed that they didn’t put a lot of effort into getting people involved this year, indicating they were riding on existing brand excitement.
Rocky Patel vs Alec Bradley
If you want to see what a bad approach to social media looks like, just take a look at the Rocky Patel Facebook page as compared to a brand like Alec Bradley. Here is the Rocky Patel Facebook page:
Note that there is no visual content, very little interaction from page fans, and it really ends up just being a feed for events. The page is visually unappealing and doesn’t represent the brand well at all. It is, in short, really boring. Whoever is managing their page needs to correct course if they want to get any value from their Facebook page – right now it is a waste.
Now take a look at Alec Bradley’s stream. They have roughly the same amount of page fans, but look how their rate of interaction is literally 50x that of Rocky Patel’s page:
The lesson? Be creative, use visual content, and try to act like you care about your Facebook fans enough to give them good content!
Congratulations to Drew Estate and Alec Bradley for putting on a stellar performance with social media at this year’s IPCPR!
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CORINNE Diacre has become the first woman to coach a men’s professional football team in a competitive match in France, watching her Clermont side lose 2-1 at Brest in the second division.
Diacre’s managerial stint in men’s football got off to a perfect start when Souleymane Sawadogo finished off a counter-attack in the ninth minute, prompting only a small smile from Diacre in celebration.
But the match changed in the second half when Bruno Grougi converted a penalty for Brest, and Alexandre Alphonse then scored the winner for the home side.
Corinne Diacre directs her players during Clermont’s 2-1 loss. Source: AFP
“It’s never nice to lose, that’s obvious,” Diacre said.
“But Brest played well. We made a couple of mistakes for their goals. But we did good things too, which is a good sign for the future. You can’t ignore Clermont this season.”
Diacre urged her players on loudly from the touchline and Clermont almost equalised but was denied by the woodwork and a fantastic save on the line by Brest goalkeeper Alexis Thebaux.
Corinne Diacre gives feedback to Clermont midfielder Brandon Agounon. Source: AFP
“We didn’t know how to keep the ball today, that was one of our weaknesses,” Diacre said.
“We didn’t use the ball well, we didn’t develop our game as we could have, as we should have. That’s what put us in danger. There are plenty of positive things. I have a young team and I’m happy with my players because they gave everything.”
The former defender also celebrated her 40th birthday and was given a bouquet of flowers and a kiss on the cheek before kick-off by her Brest counterpart, Alex Dupont.
Diacre was appointed as Clermont coach at the end of June, replacing another woman — Helena Costa — who quit before coaching a game after claiming male colleagues sidelined her and used her as a “face” to attract publicity.
French coach Corinne Diacre on the sideline. Source: AFP
Costa had been the first female manager to be appointed in the highest two divisions of any professional European football league. Italian third-division side Viterbese hired Carolina Morace in 1999, but she resigned after two matches.
Diacre made 121 appearances for France and also captained the national side. She served as its assistant manager for three years before taking charge of Soyaux, the club where she spent her entire playing career. |
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Results courtesy of Michael Ornelas:
We are incredibly sold out. Standing room only ticket buyers line the wall. Victoria of Stevie Richards fame is here in the crowd.
Melissa Santos gets a huge pop as a surprise ring announcer, and Chuck Taylor out pops that by coming out to commentary.
Opening match is Brian Cage vs. Aerostar. Both men get great big pops to start. Since we’re in Reseda, I’m going to go ahead and just let you assume everyone gets a big pop unless otherwise noted. Cage worked the power spots that we’ve all come to know and love (elevated apron superplex a la Cesaro, a stalling vertical suplex held for a count of 60, etc.) while Aerostar provided some great dives, including a Falling Star to the floor. He botched several spots, most notably, but didn’t take the crowd out of it too badly. Cage finishes around 7 minutes in with a sick-looking vertical suplex dropped into sit out piledriver.
Next up is Andrew Everett vs. Biff Busick. This should be a fun mix of styles. Match with comedy trying to show each other up with various acrobatic feats with the crowd booing Everett’s very impressive stunts, and cheering a basic forward roll by Busick. Everett controls early with high spots, including a springboard shooting star press to the outside for which Victoria has to look away because she looks genuinely nervous. The match ended up being fairly technical with Everett’s high flying peppered in. The match ended when Everett went for a springboard shooting star from the apron to Biff inside, who countered by catching it with a European Uppercut after the rotation, then hitting a half and half suplex before finishing him with a running European Uppercut around 14:25.
Third match is Mark Andrews vs. Will Ospreay, which is a PWG debut for both men (and personally, my first time seeing either man wrestle, so I’m looking forward to it). Lots of amazing chain wrestling here with cool acrobatic counters I’ve never seen before. Both men greatly impressed, and the closing stretch had some really fun teases before Ospreay picked up the win with an inverted 450 Splash in 10:45 or so. Really good stuff. Seems like the crowd would welcome them back in a heartbeat.
Last match before intermission is Angélico & Jack Evans vs. The Inner City Machine Guns (Ricochet & Rich Swann). The ICMG makes me wish entrances were shown on PWG DVDs because it’s always a blast with everyone singing “All Night Long” by Lionel Richie. They get Melissa Santos to shimmy with gem which was glorious because she’s smoking hot in person (and on TV, as I’m sure you already know). Angélico looks like if Paul Rudd and Dean Ambrose had a baby, and put on AJ Styles’ tights. There’s a little bit of wrestling before Ricochet break dances to challenge Jack Evans to a dance off. He tags in and accepts, and admittedly wins that war. Swann tags in and dances as well before botching a dance move, essentially bumping like a DDT, and Evans capitalizes with an attack, and we’re finally into some wrestling (not that I’m complaining — it’s been gloriously entertaining so far). Both teams alternated heat segments, and I think the fact that it’s 97 degrees and there’s a lot of sweat in the ring is causing a little less crispness to the wrestling tonight overall. Fun match overall — Jack Evans pinned Rich Swann after a 630 Senton after about 20:20 of action.
-Intermission-
First match back is Trent? vs. Trevor Lee, my personal choice to win the tournament. He’s been treated like a star this year, and this would be a great way to cement that. Match starts with intense posturing for control until Trent? takes it early. Back and forth match, but after a German suplex on the apron to Trent?, Trevor holds the control. Trent? makes a pretty valiant comeback before Trevor puts him away with a Small Package Driver at about 14:25. After the match, Chuck Taylor comes out to give Trent? some water and a big “Best Friends” chant breaks out. Then Chuck leaves after they hug. It’s the little things…
Sixth match of the night is Drago vs. Pentagón Jr., which gets a huge reaction upon their entrances. Jr. threatens Melissa Santos which causes Drago to attack him to make the save, and we’re off to the races. This match is exactly what you’d expect — Lucha libre mixed with a Reseda atmosphere including outside dives. At one point, Pentagón downed a fan’s pitcher of beer. Drago did the super-est of super hurricanranas. Match ended with Pentagón Jr. drilling Drago with a Packaged Piledriver around 11:20. Great seeing them in PWG, and they were super over. Match was a little sloppy, but that didn’t really matter.
Our final tournament match of the night before our six man main event is Fénix vs. Matt Sydal. This is the best match on paper, so hopefully it delivers. Both men are treated like heroes in their entrances and shake hands to start. They do some truly great technical chain wrestling to start. It seems like they’re keeping things completely grounded, including teasing some dives but getting back in before the opponent can do it. I don’t know if you can get blue balls from not seeing a tope, but the crowd is pretty close to finding out. Sydal works the leg for awhile before we get our first high flying move of the match (about 10 minutes in) — a springboard missile dropkick from Fénix. Fénix slips on a springboard double stomp but it still hits, technically. Match continues to stay grounded for a bit until Fénix hits a huge corkscrew splash to the outside (before which, Victoria, who was right by the potential landing site kept yelling “holy fuck” as she had arguably no escape options (she was fine though). The crowd went nuts for a nearfall off a springboard Spanish Fly off the top. Sydal finishes a few moments later with the Shooting Star Press around 20 minutes. Definitely the best match of the night so far.
Last up is the main event of Eurotrash (Zack Sabre, Jr., Tommy End, and “Party” Marty Scurll) vs. Mount Rushmore 2.0 (Roddy Strong & The Young Bucks). Pop of the night probably goes to Sabre’s entrance. Mount Rushmore enters to Voodoo Chile by Jimi Hendrix. Cheap shot from Matt Jackson before the bell incenses ZSJ. Melissa Santos goes for introductions during a dueling crowd chant and Strong takes her to task for it, cutting a great heel promo. He then throws the mic at her before she continues. Strong avoids Sabre to start by tagging out immediately. Lots of action, but needless to say, everyone got their hands on everyone. Great moment where Sabre and Scurll interlocked the Bucks’ legs together and flipped them over into a two man camel clutch (as seen in the attached picture). Scurll got worked over by all three men. Eventually, Nick and Scurll were both down and did the SummerSlam Taker/Brock simultaneous sit-up and laugh spot. Then a bunch of Taker signature spots were done by the Bucks on Scurll. Finally Scurll tagged out and Sabre twisted Nick into a pretzel and used his technical wizardry to fight off both Matt and Nick. Tommy End got tagged in and got to run wild with some sick strikes before the match broke down and everyone got their shit in. Match came down to Roddy and Sabre for awhile before Roddy threw Rick Knox in the way of a charge and then gave a low blow to Sabre before Rushmore went nuts with chair shots. Really cool nearfall where Roddy threw Nick up like he would for End of Heartache but transitioned to a 450 on Sabre. End and Scurll made the save, so we then got a double Meltzer Driver on End and Scurll. Sabre is the only one left along with Rushmore, who are all spitting on him. He comes alive and slaps the shit out of all of them until they hit a double superkick/high knee on him. Sick kick from Strong and then End of Heartache finishes around 29 minutes. Phenomenal main event, and match of the night. The crowd applauds Eurotrash’s efforts to close the show.
Quick results:
Brian Cage defeated Aerostar
Biff Busick defeated Andrew Everett
Will Ospreay defeated Mark Andrews
Jack Evans & Angélico defeated The Inner City Machine Guns
Trevor Lee defeated Trent?
Pentagón Jr. defeated Drago
Matt Sydal defeated Fénix
Mount Rushmore defeated Eurotrash |
By Darran Anderson.
“The books we read in childhood don’t exist anymore; they sailed off with the wind, leaving bare skeletons behind…”
Every decision, action, accident causes the universe to split into divergent paths, according to the many-worlds theory of quantum mechanics. Take Franz Kafka as an example. There exists a parallel universe where Max Brod burns Kafka’s papers as instructed (Kafka died believing he was, and would be, virtually unknown as a writer). There is another world where Brod hesitates too long in Prague and is intercepted, briefcase in hand, at the border by the SS. There’s even the possibility of a universe where Kafka avoids contracting the TB that killed him and survives long enough to be shot dead in the Łódź ghetto, starved to death in Terezín, gassed in the deathchambers of Auschwitz alongside his sisters. In each of these scenarios, his work evaporates and the world knows almost nothing of the writer. The world doesnt even know what it has lost. There’d be no The Trial, no Hunger Artist, Metamorphosis, no In the Penal Colony or The Castle. Without Kafka’s influence, there’d be no Paul Auster, Borges or Lanark, no Danilo Kiš or Andrey Kurkov, no Cronenberg or Lynch (at least as we know them). And yet as strange as this seems, something akin to this has already happened, in this universe, not to Kafka, who remains one of the great godheads of modern literature but to another Eastern European Ashkenazi-Jewish writer by the name of Bruno Schulz.
To be as gifted, as visionary a writer and artist as Schulz was and to be forgotten is both terrifying and disgraceful. As his self-portraits suggest, Schulz was a timid, introverted soul, whose world ended at the city limits of his hometown – the Eastern Galician backwater Drohobych. His short story collections Cinnamon Shops (also known as The Street of Crocodiles) and Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass are phantasms in the early mystical-modernist sense; they elude reason (“poetry occurs when reason is short-circuited”) and traditional narrative existing on their own logical terms, in their own world even. His is prose intensified until it becomes poetry, full of harrowing personal events (images of enveloping beds, chamberpots, poverty and illness) turned epic and otherworldly. His writing is florid, expansive, surreal but never transcendent. It may take flight but it never escapes. It’s rooted in the streets of Drohobych. He studies existence like insects under magnifying glass, the heightened scale revealing the inherent wonder and terror in the simplest things. There’s always the sense that Schulz is seeing the world in such high definition that it appears teeming and squirming, even the static is in motion, the inanimate engaged in sinister conspiracies.
Whilst this acute sense of the too-muchness of everything may have paralysed him in life, it’s what sets his writing free. In his letters, Schulz castigated himself for the creating his work from the “miserable state of disintegration and chaos within him” yet it’s precisely this that gives his work it’s power and it’s pathos. From the ruin of man, art can be salvaged. Even in his most extravagant flights of fancy, there is a groundedness. He finds magic in the dirt and grit of the domestic, in the melancholy recollection of childhood, in the mythic everyday. It’s just that the rules that govern reality dissipate in Schulz’s fictional world, where even time itself shakes off it’s restraints (“time, crazy and wild, breaks loose from the daily round of events, and like a fugitive vagrant, flies with a scream, cross-country across the fields”) or breaks down, allowing people to exist in two places at once, or can be wound back allowing the dead to return to life (Schulz was haunted by the long illness and death of his beloved father and tries to reverse in his writing what he could not in life). Kafka the martyr turned himself (in the guise of Gregor Samsa) into a cockroach, who was rejected by his family and ultimately dispatched by them under a shower of apples. Schulz reversed the scenario, turning his father into a crab who the family boil but then cannot bring themselves to eat (he crawls off to wander the earth). In another scene, his father works himself into such a frenzy he transforms, “before we could understand what had happened, he vibrated vehemently, began to buzz, and hovered before our eyes, a monstrous, droning, hairy, steel-blue fly, thrashing in its crazy flight against all the walls of the shop.”
In Schulz’s stories, grown men live under floorboards with insects. Weeds turn feral. Mannequins reinvent the world. Jesters stone mutated birds to death. Specks of dust contain embryos. Forgotten rooms stir unseen into life. Cripples crawl on all fours by moonlight. Old men are carried off into the sky by the wind. Cities turn into labryinths at nightfall. All terrible and fantastic in the original sense of both words. So too is his art. Schulz one of the few creative minds whose art and writing were of comparable genius; the dark eroticism of the drawings (reminiscent in style of Käthe Kollwitz) collected in The Book of Idolatry, mixing pleasure, pain and death, are signs of a major lost talent.
What seems initially like a weakness, his small-town hermitage, in fact, is Schulz’s great strength. For the most local writing is often the most universal (a great many writers are lost posing as cosmopolitans). In focusing and magnifying the claustrophobic minutiae of small-town life, Schulz’s Drohobych joins Joyce’s Dublin, Bulgakov’s Moscow, Kafka’s Prague on the literary map, places we can all recognise without even visiting. Sadly Schulz’s loyalty to his hometown would also seal his fate. Looking back, we interpret the ominous undercurrents in his work as somehow prophetic, that sense that the old certainties were shattered and something terrible is coming (whether detected in the blazing trajectory of an incoming comet or tempest, in the relics of the disintegrated Hapsburg Empire or his feeling that “the gates are closing” with the Nazi assumption of power), a prophecy that for Schulz and millions of others, was all too accurate.
A master of metafiction and magic realism before the terms were coined, Schulz was to find that time, fate and death are less malleable in life than in his writing. Reluctant to flee, Schulz was a bystander, then reluctant participant as Drohobych was invaded first by the Red Army and then the Wehrmacht. In the first instance, he was forced to paint a mural of Stalin for the townhall which, with Schulzian irony, was destroyed by an infestation of crows. Following the Nazi blitzkrieg and their occupation, Schulz, as a Jew, was forced to move into the town’s ghetto. There his artistic skills came to the attention of the SS-Hauptscharführer Felix Landau, the Gestapo officer in charge of the area, a man of refined tastes whose artistic temperament extended to murdering passing Jews from his balcony using a hunting rifle and keeping a diary of his activities, a bible of nihilism in stark contrast to Schulz’s writing. He forced Schulz, who was according to the rations allowed to Jews starving to death, to undertake a series of vanity portraits and a set of murals for his young son’s nursery depicting scenes from Grimm Brothers fairy tales (which the artist subtly subverted by placing himself and members of the Jewish community secretly in the cast). In return, Schulz was spared deportation to the extermination camps. Yet this patronage would eventually cost Schulz his life. Landau had randomly killed a Jewish dentist who was in the service of an SS rival Karl Günther. In retaliation, Günther sought out Schulz during an SS killing spree through the ghetto (a day that cost 300 lives and became known as Black Thursday). He met him on the corner of Czacki and Mickiewicz Streets. Schulz was carrying a loaf of bread and a forged Aryan passport which he had intended to use to escape that very night. Günther shot him twice through the head, left his corpse in the street (a friend would sneak out at night and bury him in an unmarked grave) and relayed a simple message to his rival, “You killed my Jew, I killed yours.”
After his death, Schulz’s “masterpiece” The Messiah, on which he worked for over seven years and which he had left with gentile friends, was lost (rumours it was secreted away to a KGB archive so far seem unfounded). It is known that other collections of his writing were incinerated with the inhabitants of the Warsaw Ghetto and a novella The Homecoming, which had been sent to Thomas Mann, was lost in the post. One remarkable discovery was made, when the paint on the pantry wall of a retired communist party official flaked away to reveal the remnants of Schulz’s fairytale murals (a diplomatic incident occured when the murals were dissembled and exported to Israel for the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum there). Nevertheless his major works remain undiscovered and we can only guess, encouraged by the strengths of his short stories, at the extent of what the literary world has lost.
There is perhaps another universe, a kinder one than this, where Schulz is recognised as the talent he was. There is even another, kinder still (or at least less barbarous) where he did not meet his death the way he did, where The Messiah was released, where he and his work escaped oblivion. In truth, we’ll never know.
More: The Art of Bruno Schulz / The Lost (Searching for Bruno Schulz) / Street of Crocodiles by the Brothers Quay / Alina Skiba – Excerpt from A Street Trade in the Tickets for Time / The Hourglass Sanatorium /
David Grossman on Bruno Schulz / Behind Fairy Tale Drawings, Walls Talk of Unspeakable Cruelty / Painting Under Coercion / A Living Schulz / Who Owns Bruno Schulz? / The Strange Afterlife of Bruno Schulz.
First posted: Saturday, October 2nd, 2010.
There are currently One comment on this post. You can follow all the comments on this post through this RSS feed. |
There are multiple reports on the web that the poster for Star Wars: The Force Awakens will be released just in a few hours time. The poster is expected to hit at noon EST (9am PST, 5pm BST)…
ESPN Caribbean’s Twitter account confirmed that the new poster will be released today as well as that there will be a trailer for the movie during Monday Night’s game between the New York Giants and Philadelphia Eagles.
The tweet has been removed since. Later HeroicHollywood confirmed the timeline for the debuts:
Our sources have revealed to us the timeline for the debuts. Expect the the poster to debut online at noon EST tomorrow. The final trailer will debut during half-time of Monday night’s New York Giants and Philadelphia Eagles game.
Also these reports were backed up by the following tweet from a theater chain in the UK.
There has been an awakening… Star Wars news coming today at 5pm. #StarWars pic.twitter.com/pTivuZQqKg — tynesidecinema (@tynesidecinema) October 18, 2015
There are only less than 5 hours left! Are you ready?
Stay tuned… |
Editor’s note: On Tuesday, April 5, hundreds of schools and community groups will participate in a teach-in on debt, austerity and how people are fighting back. From 2–3:30 pm (EST) a national teach-in will be streamed live from New York City, followed by local teach-ins and strategy discussions around the country. Read the call to action by Frances Fox Piven and Cornel West, check out the organizing guide and join the movement by attending or hosting a teach-in near you. Please see http://www.fightbackteachin.org for more information.
Wall Street Banks, American corporations and their political allies have declared a one-sided war on the American people. This war is being waged at our schools and colleges, the workplace and in our communities.
Today, Americans are working harder and earning less while corporate profits soar. As homeowners, consumers and students we see our wealth being stripped away by banks. Our government plunges into debt waging trillion-dollar wars. Meanwhile, our infrastructure erodes and climate change proceeds unchecked. Schools, daycare centers, senior citizen facilities, clinics, parks and firehouses are starved for funds so that corporations and the rich can get billions in tax breaks! Ad Policy
Corporate America’s unprovoked assault on working people has been carried out by manufacturing a need for fiscal austerity. We are told that there is no more money for essential human services, for the care of children, or better public schools, or to help lower the cost of a college education. The fact is that big banks and large corporations are hoarding trillions in cash and using tax loopholes to bankrupt our communities.
Spending on social needs is not the reason governments at all levels are facing massive budget short falls. Our debt and deficit problems are a direct result of corporate tax rollbacks, and the extortionist policies of banks and financial institutions that are engaged in a coordinated and massive wealth transfer from the American people to their own coffers.
The courageous actions by the citizens in Wisconsin are an inspiring defense of the core values of this country: a civil society based on freedom of association, ensuring that our communities have high quality public services—education, public safety and support for our elderly and most vulnerable—along with good jobs for all. The outpouring of support nationally shows the possibilities for challenging deepening economic inequality and political marginalization of the majority of the American people.
We are on the cusp of a great movement to resist and roll back that corporate domination by banks, energy companies and war profiteers. To join that movement and escalate the activism planned in the days, weeks and months ahead we are organizing a “National Teach-in on Debt, Austerity and How People Are Fighting Back.” The live web-streamed teach-in will be held on Tuesday, April 5, 2011, at the Judson Memorial Church in New York City, beginning at 2 pm (EST). Admission is free. Speakers from schools and communities around the country will be hosted by moderators Frances Fox Piven and Cornel West in New York City through a live webcast that you can join by organizing a teach-in on your own campus.
HOW TO ORGANIZE A PARTICIPATING TEACH-IN ON YOUR CAMPUS
Please join us in organizing this event and building a progressive social movement to fight the destructive power of corporate greed. College campuses around the country will be linked to the New York City teach-in via the Internet. Anyone with a connection can participate. After the web cast, each campus will have its own discussion of how students can join with unions and community organizations to escalate their own local campaigns.
It’s easy to take part. All you need to do is:
Reserve a room with WIFI or an Ethernet connection to receive the webcast feed, and to make sure that you have audiovisual capability to make it available to the audience. The room reservation for Tuesday April 5, 2011, should be for several hours across the afternoon (or starting at 11:00 am Pacific Coast Time). Allot time in your reservation for setting up and testing equipment and your Internet connection and to clean up afterward.
Identify a person who will take charge of the webcast hook-up from your end.
Identify a moderator, even if only to welcome people before the webcast.
Publicize the event. Use social media and seek coverage from local media including newspapers, student papers, radio stations and television.
Organize a few people to help set up and clean up afterwards.
And then add your own teach-in to the national program:
Invite local speakers and activists to address national or local topics following the webcast.
Identify local actions and organizing efforts around student debt, home foreclosures, predatory lending and other destructive actions by banks, increases in college tuition, the Dream Act, cuts in public services, daycare cutbacks, teacher lay-offs, attacks on unions etc. in which students and other community members can participate.
Seek co-sponsorship from student groups, local labor unions, churches and local activist organizations.
Prepare educational materials for distribution at the event and available online. Include information about national, state and local efforts opposing austerity and budget cuts.
Publicize the event—again. |
Jeremy Burgess / Science photo Library
On 11 November 1954, Japanese ecologist Syuiti Mori placed a dark cloth over a captive colony of fruit flies and began one of evolutionary biology's longest-running lab experiments. Sixty-one years and some 1,500 generations later, researchers have now identified dozens of genetic variations that may help the flies’ descendants to cope with life in total darkness1.
The dark flies look just like normal fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster), except for their slightly longer head bristles, which are used as sensory organs. They also seem to have a keener sense of smell, and a superior ability to find a mate in the dark, compared with normal flies. But despite a life shrouded in darkness, the dark flies are drawn to light and retain their circadian cycles, says Naoyuki Fuse, a geneticist at Kyoto University who became the steward of Mori's ‘dark-fly’ project in 2008; Mori himself died in 2007.
In 2012, Fuse and his colleagues sequenced the dark-fly genome, identifying 220,000 single-letter differences in its DNA and several thousand larger DNA insertions or deletions, compared with a normal fruit-fly strain2. (Mori had started a control colony from the same fly population that was kept in normal lighting conditions, but this was lost after an incubator malfunctioned.)
To determine which of the genetic variations might be helping the flies to adapt to total darkness, Fuse’s team bred the dark flies with normal flies and followed how this hybrid population evolved over 49 generations, using genome sequencing. They reasoned that, if the hybrids were reared in the dark over many generations, genetic variants that helped the flies to adapt would become more common over time.
Super sniffers
Fuse’s team came up with a list of 84 candidate genes, including several that are involved in sensing odours and chemicals in the environment, as well as producing pheromones. The results were published this month in the journal Genes Genomes Genetics1. The authors speculate that alterations to these genes could help flies to detect pheromones better, explaining their increased ability to mate in the dark. Fuse hopes to test this hypothesis by inserting the dark-fly gene variations in normal flies using genome-editing technologies.
“It's a really interesting study,” says Richard Lenski, an evolutionary biologist at Michigan State University in East Lansing, whose team has been propagating a strain of Escherichia coli bacteria since 1988, over more than 50,000 generations. Lenski’s team has tracked how the bacteria adapt to new food sources by freezing samples every few months, and analyzing these records. “It's too bad that they don't have, as far as I know, frozen samples of the ancestral population's DNA and samples from all along the way,” he adds.
“I think these types of long-term evolution system are very interesting, and there aren’t that many of them,” says Leonid Kruglyak, a geneticist at the University of California, Los Angeles. It should be possible to identify gene variants that have helped flies to adapt to the dark, but he says that the variants Fuse’s team identified may have changed in frequency because of random ‘genetic drift’, not natural selection. “Bottom line: cool system, they’re asking interesting questions, not clear they’re getting the answers yet," Kruglyak says.
Fuse says that the dark-fly project is important scientific heritage. But because his position at Kyoto University is not permanent, he is uncertain of the project’s future. |
The driver of a semi truck has died after his rig was blown off the Chesapeake Bay Bridge by strong winds on Thursday.
According to Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel director Thomas Anderson, the truck broke through the bridge’s guardrail and plunged into the bay around 12:30 p.m. The driver was spotted standing on top of the floating rig and was picked up by a Navy helicopter around 12:45 p.m. He later died from his injuries while being transported to the hospital.
The accident happened around milepost 15 on the southbound lanes.
Winds up to 40 mph were reported over the bridge at the time of the accident and a level 1 wind restriction was in effect. After the crash, winds up to 47 mph were reported and the wind restriction was elevated to level 2, which prevents tractor trailers hauling less than 30,000 pounds from crossing the bridge.
The name of the driver has not been released.
NBC12 released this footage at the site of the accident.
982983958388255 |
Donald Trump gets his photo taken in Puerto Rico. Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images
After apparently seeing something on the TV, President Donald Trump threatened to pull federal support out of Puerto Rico three weeks into the still hurricane-devastated island’s recovery efforts.
The threat comes as officials in Puerto Rico increased the death toll from last month’s Hurricane Maria to 45, with 113 people still unaccounted for. As of Thursday, 83 percent of the island was without power. According to the Washington Post, local officials expected many of these Americans to be without electricity for another six months.
It was under these circumstances that President Trump cited Sharyl Attkisson, host of the public affairs show Full Measure With Sharyl Attkisson on the right-wing media network Sinclair Broadcast Group, in threatening to pull support out of Puerto Rico.
"Puerto Rico survived the Hurricanes, now a financial crisis looms largely of their own making." says Sharyl Attkisson. A total lack of..... — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 12, 2017
...accountability say the Governor. Electric and all infrastructure was disaster before hurricanes. Congress to decide how much to spend.... — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 12, 2017
...We cannot keep FEMA, the Military & the First Responders, who have been amazing (under the most difficult circumstances) in P.R. forever! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 12, 2017
The threats come at a precarious time for the island, with Congress considering a previously bipartisan measure to extend disaster relief funding for Puerto Rico and other American areas recently struck by a series of devastating climate catastrophes.
The House of Representatives was set to weigh $36.5 billion in new spending, Reuters reports, including $18.7 billion for the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s disaster relief fund and $4.9 billion in loans to ensure local governments in Puerto Rico remain operating beyond the end of this month.
Trump promised two weeks ago that “we will not rest … until the people of Puerto Rico are safe.”
“These are great people,” he added. “We want them to be safe and sound and secure, and we will be there every day until that happens.”
As the Washington Post notes, Vice President Mike Pence made a similar promise earlier this week during a commemoration ceremony for Hispanic Heritage Month.
“I say to all of you gathered here today [and] to the people of Puerto Rico: We are with you, we stand with you, and we will be with you every single day until Puerto Rico is restored bigger and better than ever before,” he said. “Puerto Rico se levanta!”
Here are some more of the problems that remain in Puerto Rico, as the president threatens to pull federal support:
CNN reports that “[a]t least two people have died from leptospirosis, which spreads when the urine of infected animals gets into drinking water.”
About 39 percent of the island’s 313 bank branches are closed.
About 45 percent of the island is without phone service.
The Washington Post reported that 37 percent of the island’s residents are still without clean drinking water and 40 percent of wastewater treatment facilities remained nonoperational.
CNN reports that hospitals have been running low on medicine and fuel and local officials expect the death toll to mount.
Before the storm hit, the American territory of 3.4 million people was facing $72 billion in debt that was being overseen by a federal oversight board.* The U.S. territory, which has no representation in the federal government because it is not a state, has a population larger than 21 American states.
*Correction, Oct. 12, 2017: This post originally misstated the amount of Puerto Rico’s debt. It’s $72 billion, not $72. |
One email , titled "Goldman Sachs paid speeches" and sent on Jan. 23, 2016 from aide Tony Carrk to a handful of other staffers, includes three speech transcripts and notes on potentially problematic areas.
In one transcript, Clinton told Goldman Sachs that she went on a self-described "apology tour" as secretary of State to calm world leaders who felt insulted by State Department information leaks, according to emails published by WikiLeaks.
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In a 2013 conversation with Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, Clinton described the fallout from a WikiLeaks release of diplomatic cables in 2010.
"So out come hundreds of thousands of documents. And I have to go on an apology tour. And I had a jacket made like a rock star tour. The Clinton Apology Tour. I had to go and apologize to anybody who was in any way characterized in any of the cables in any way that might be considered less than flattering. And it was painful," Clinton said, according to the transcript.
With the release of a quarter of a million secret diplomatic cables, WikiLeaks compromised communications between U.S. diplomatic agents abroad and the State Department in Washington.
"Leaders who shall remain nameless, who were characterized as vain, egotistical, power hungry, corrupt. And we knew they were. This was not fiction. And I had to go and say, you know, our ambassadors, they get carried away, they want to all be literary people," Clinton said.
In that speech, Clinton downplayed the importance of the WikiLeaks filtrations, comparing them to the danger of confidential information stolen by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
"So I think that WikiLeaks was a big bump in the road, but I think the Snowden material could be potentially much more threatening to us," she said.
Clinton said that while the leaks had been "embarrassing," Snowden's information had the potential to reveal the process of how the United States collects national security data to foreign powers.
"So I do think that there has been a real loss of important information that shouldn't belong to or be made available to people who spend a lot of their time trying to penetrate our government, our businesses. And even worse, you know, some who are engaged in terrorist activities," said Clinton.
In the same email, Carrk also highlights several other passages that could be troublesome for Clinton. In one, she talks about working together with banks toward economic recovery and suggests the housing crisis and recession became overly politicized.
“And with political people, again, I would say the same thing, you know, there was a lot of complaining about Dodd-Frank, but there was also a need to do something because for political reasons, if you were an elected member of Congress and people in your constituency were losing jobs and shutting businesses and everybody in the press is saying it's all the fault of Wall Street, you can't sit idly by and do nothing, but what you do is really important," she said.
"And I think the jury is still out on that because it was very difficult to sort of sort through it all."
Clinton said she's not interested in "turning the clock back or pointing figures," but calls for more transparency and working together to put confidence back in small and medium-sized businesses and consumers.
Clinton goes on to say that there has to be a balance in how much we regulate banks and said some are too "scared of the other shoe dropping" to do what's needed to spur economic growth. |
There’s a classic Steve Martin bit from A Wild and Crazy Guy…
“I got a great dirty trick you can play on a three-year-old kid… Whenever you’re around him, talk wrong. So now it’s like his first day in school and he raises his hand, ‘May I mambo dogface to the banana patch?’”
I’m not sure if it’s a great idea to take parenting advice from 1970s standup albums, but this always made sense to me.
If you have a kid, why not run experiments on them? It’s like running experiments on a little clone of yourself! And almost always probably legal.
It’s disappointing how many people have children and miss this golden opportunity, usually waiting until they’re in their teens to start playing mindgames with them.
Before my son was born in 2004, I was prepared. I’d brainstormed a long list of sociological and psychological experiments with friends and coworkers, ready to unleash my inner Milgram on my unborn offspring.
My original plan was to raise him thinking he was living in a computer simulation, but sadly, my wife vetoed it. And any other potentially harmful, but funny, life-altering scenarios.
But I managed to sneak one in anyway. |
Harassment breeds harassment.
New York City actress Shoshana B. Roberts documented the over 100 instances of verbal and sexual harassment she received as she spent 10 hours walking the streets of New York recently. Roberts' two-minute video was released Tuesday and immediately went viral, garnering close to 5 million views. But while women's advocates were quick to praise the investigation, it appears the activist is now being targeted online.
According to Hollaback! the nonprofit fighting to end street harassment that put out the PSA, Roberts has received multiple death and rape threats as a result of the clip.
The subject of our PSA is starting to get rape threats on the comments. Can you help by reporting them? http://bit.ly/1wE28y5
The organization's deputy director, Debjani Roy, told Newsday that "the threats on YouTube and they're being deleted" upon being reported. His colleague, director Emily May, optimistically noted that the threats may also "indicate that we are hitting a nerve."
But how disturbingly ironic that in order to expose one kind of harassment, a woman must prepare herself for a whole new kind of gendered hate: online harassment.
What this means: Men, who were called out in the original video for their catcalling, are now harassing Roberts and her supporters in what is perhaps an attempt to discredit the project — or silence it. Both street harassment and online harassment are similar in that they both aim is to limit someone's freedom of movement. The harassers on the streets and the harassers online want to stop, contain and control Roberts and women like her. This is how patriarchy survives — by shutting down its main critics: women.
When women do fight back, the abuse can even turn deadly. This presents a very problematic paradox for activists. In order to survive, will they be forced to silence themselves and curtail their physical movement? We've already seen this happening more and more, whether it's feminist gaming critic Anita Sarkeesian going into hiding or Melissa Harris-Perry silencing her voice on Twitter in order to avoid online harassment.
This is disgusting. Men, it's time to get your shit together. "Woman in 'catcall' video getting rape threats online http://www.newsday.com/news/new-york/shoshana-b-roberts-threatened-after-catcall-video-1.9556016 ..."
Does this surprise anyone even a tiny bit? http://www.newsday.com/news/new-york/shoshana-b-roberts-threatened-after-catcall-video-1.9556016 ...
Grossed out that my gut reaction to this was "of course." "@sarahjeong: http://www.newsday.com/news/new-york/shoshana-b-roberts-threatened-after-catcall-video-1.9556016 ... pic.twitter.com/HW0XXveqJx"
Videos like Roberts' are important because they continue to put pressure on the patriarchy in real, tangible ways. But as the very swift backlash in this case proves, it's unclear how long women will be able to continue such advocacy in the face of such a concerted campaign of misogynistic harassment. Are we as a comity really OK with this? Clearly, a cultural shift needs to happen in America, and it needs to happen now. |
We all know that Apple and Samsung have been at logger heads for the last three years or so, but even with the ongoing court cases (in the US at least) the companies have still worked together on the occasional project. Samsung has supplied displays and chipsets for Apple products in the past. However, we've actually never heard of Samsung working directly for Apple. Until now.
Sam Sung is a former employee of Apple and sees the funny side of it himself. So much so that when one of his old business cards fell out of a book he had picked up, he decided to auction it on eBay for charity. After all, you are very unlikely to see the words Sam Sung and Apple on the same business card anywhere else.
All the proceeds - minus the eBay fees - will go to Children's Wish, BC & Yukon, a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to grant wishes to sick children, Sam Sung's card has been mounted in a frame with his old uniform, which he has signed, and his EasyPay tag.
The auction will run until 15 August and currently stands at 99 cents with just the one bidder. We're sure there will be plenty of others though. Sam is willing to ship worldwide.
It's also worth following Sam on Twitter (@ayesamsung) to find out if he plans to join any other rival companies. Has LG got any jobs going in Vancouver? |
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