Dataset Viewer (First 5GB)
decoded_text
stringlengths 4.18k
47.6k
|
|---|
leaving a barber's with a fresh haircut, and the second picture featured his naked torso.
Alexei is 26, he has a "dull nine-to-five job," and he kills his spare time building radio gadgets and analogue clocks. He dresses like most people, unremarkably, in a big sweater, black shoes, and jeans.
On March 24, 2016, he received a private message from someone named Maxim. "Hi, you look great," the text read. Alexei browsed through the man's profile and discovered that the stranger said he was 21, with tags like #bigdicks and #hardsex listed among his interests. The userpic showed Maxim half-turned, against a background of planes, in an airport.
In one of his first messages, Maxim invited Alexei to his place. Alexei declined the offer. They spent March 24 and 25 exchanging messages about their sexual preferences and experiences. Eventually, on the morning of March 26, they arranged to meet, first, in the afternoon near the Komendantsky Prospect subway station, but then rescheduled the rendezvous to a later hour and a different location.
Around 7 p.m., Alexei and Maxim met outside the Moskovskaya subway station. Alexei found Maxim to be rather attractive, and things progressed swiftly. Soon they were on the way back to Maxim's apartment, walking along the crowded Moskovsky Prospect, one of Saint Petersburg's busiest central streets. It was about a ten-minute walk, during which they slipped into small talk about the weather, which was still cold, with a mix of snow and rain.
House 224 at Moskovsky Prospekt, St. Petersburg. Photo: Daniil Turovsky / Meduza
Alexei and Maxim passed by the concierge to the elevator. Maxim told him that the apartment belonged to his brother, who was out of town. They went up to the 10th floor.
The apartment was a well-lit studio, furnished with a bed, an armchair, a TV set, and a mirrored sliding-door wardrobe. Maxim took off his warm jacket, and Alexei was confused to see that he was wearing a blazer and collared shirt underneath. The whole scene seemed too neat somehow, he now recalls. Then Maxim suggested "undressing and going to bed." They chatted for a while, and Alexei went to take a shower. He returned, wearing nothing but a towel wrapped around him, and sat down in an armchair.
As soon as Maxim disappeared into the bathroom, the wardrobe doors flew open, and three stout men in their late thirties jumped out. Alexei recalls that two of them had "bandit faces," while the third one resembled a "typical Russian fellow." "Uh-oh! Do you know that kid isn't even 18 yet?" asked one of them. When Alexei asked to see Maxim's passport, he was punched in the stomach.
The men encircled Alexei. "The Russian" took out a tablet and pointed its camera at Alexei, while one of the "bandits" questioned him about his line of work and his salary. The third one paced, sometimes cutting in and screaming threats, like "We'll break your ribs and bury you in the ground," "Faggot, why don't you find yourself a woman?" and "What were you thinking, coming here?" They threatened to call the police and post the video of their conversation on the Internet.
Alexei says he wasn't scared at the time, crediting his antidepressant medication. As the gangsters interrogated him, he says he stopped hearing their voices and concentrated instead on a lingering worry: "What if the guy really is underage?" But another idea bothered him even more: the possibility of being seen on the Internet. He detested the idea of his parents learning about his sexuality under such circumstances.
The criminals moved all his belongings from the hall to the room and turned out his pockets. Six-hundred rubles ($10), a bottle of nose drops, a photocopy of his passport, and a mobile phone dropped to the floor.
One of the "bandits" grabbed the phone and said he was going to call the police. The second one stopped him: "We could actually think of something else..." "What do you have in mind?" Alexei asked. "We could find a financial remedy to the issue," suggested one of them. "Do you have any savings?" At this point, browsing through Alexei's phone, one of them found a message from a bank stating that his savings account balance was about 60,000 rubles ($900). They demanded that he transfer the amount to them immediately. But he couldn't remember his password, when he launched his banking app. The men tried to wire themselves the money using an app of their own, once misspelling the Russian word for “transfer.” They failed, too, in the end, and one of the "bandits" consoled himself by punching Alexei in the back of the head.
The criminals ordered him to get dressed and go home to fetch the credit card, "without any tricks." As Alexei was putting on his clothes, one of the "bandits" told someone on the phone: "You handle the next one. We'll be in Ilyushina soon." (Ilyushina Street is near Komendantsky Prospekt, which is where Alexei and Maxim first met).
The "typical Russian" guy escorted Alexei home. It turned out that the attackers didn't have their own car. The man tried to hail a ride, but no one would stop for them, so he ordered a taxi on the phone.
While they were waiting, the man told Alexei, "I have mouths to feed. Just bought a pair of trainers, with only 5,000 rubles ($75) left of my salary, and the recession is killing me. Actually, I'm not homophobic. We just came up with an idea of making money this way." They got in the back seat and kept silent for most of the trip. The driver even got lost. It took them about half an hour to get to Alexei's place. They got off in the neighboring yard. The man looked up the nearest bank on his cellphone and headed there. Alexei went up to his apartment. His parents were home. He quickly came up with a story about a suspicious transaction on his account, grabbed his ATM card and rushed out. As they were approaching the bank, the "typical Russian" suggested that Alexei withdraw only 50,000 rubles ($750), so that he would have at least 10,000 rubles ($150) left "for expenses." Alexei handed him the money, and the man returned his phone and promised to delete the video. After that Alexei was set free.
* * *
According to Meduza's sources, another unsuspecting Hornet user was lured to the same apartment the very next day, on March 27. The victim tried to escape and made it to the stairs. The gang caught him, but let him go, after realizing he had nothing to offer but the 100 rubles ($2) and cheap mobile phone in his pockets.
The concierge at 224 Moskovsky Prospekt told Meduza that the suspicious apartment is rented on a per-day basis. As she recalls, on the evening of March 27, tenants of other apartments on the 10th floor reported "a strange noise." She went up to check on it and rang the doorbell, but no one answered. Shortly thereafter, she says she saw two tenants from that apartment walk past her. She describes them as "men in their mid-thirties." When she asked what had happened, they said there'd been "a small fight." The woman couldn't remember any more details, saying too many visitors pass through the lobby every day, and most of the apartments in the building are rented.
At Meduza's request, the concierge shared the building's visitor log—a book adorned with kittens and flowers on its cover. The log entries for the apartment in question listed "one guy" and "two guys" entering the building on the afternoon of March 26. There were no names or any ID information recorded (and Alexei says he was never registered, when he was there).
The concierge says the notorious apartment is rented out by a man named Alexander, the building's manager. She intends to give him a call, but there he is, on the ground floor, wearing aviator sunglasses and a denim vest. "What the fuck do you want?" he says in a south-Ukrainian accent.
Alexander says he works for a company with dozens of apartments all around the city. In the first minutes of our conversation, he denies having rented the apartment where the two assaults allegedly took place, but soon he admits that the details fall into place, especially when he learns about the mirrored wardrobe. "I don't know anything about a fight. And I am aware of everything that's going on in my apartments. Even if someone's getting laid, I'll know about it," he says assuringly. "The walls are paper-thin. There's nothing you can't hear." The shady apartment is rented at 2,000 rubles ($30) per night. You can find it easily on the rental company's website, or even at Booking.com.
A booking.com screenshot with the booking offer for the apartment where the assaults occurred.
Alexander insists that he doesn't sign the rental contracts and does not remember who rented the apartment for the weekend of March 25–27. However, as our conversation continues, his memory seems to clarify. He smokes cigarette after cigarette. "The four guys referred to themselves as military men on a leave," he says. He hesitates to give any more details, using the same wording to describe them: late thirties, short hair. "It seems they had a good time," he adds.
"So you're saying they beat up a homo?" he asks. "He should thank God he survived at all. I know such things happen. There have been some incidents in the neighborhood. It's good that he survived, though. The police won't be looking for evidence."
‘We fight guys like you’
Unlike Alexei, 30-year-old Kirill (not his real name) used Hornet to find dates more than once, and nothing ever went wrong, until last time.
In mid-January 2016, Kirill went to the outskirts of St. Petersburg to meet a young man he'd befriended through the app. When the man came downstairs to answer the door, Kirill noticed that he was dressed in a typical soccer hooligan outfit, and a sport raincoat and turned-up pants. As soon as they entered the apartment, the new acquaintance began rubbing himself against Kirill, who suggested that they first uncork the bottle of wine he'd brought with him. So they moved to the kitchen. But a few minutes later, Kirill heard a key turning in the front-door lock. Then two men in their late thirties burst into the kitchen. In his mind Kirill, called one of them "the Round," because of his oval-shaped face, and the other one "the Felon," because he'd clearly had his nose broken at some point. "We're from a social organization called ‘Kindness.’ We fight guys like you," said the Round. "Do you even know how old he is?" one of the men asked. Kirill said his companion was 19, as stated in his Hornet profile. Then the Round punched him square in the head.
The criminals searched Kirill, finding two credit cards and a fitness-club membership card.
They invited a third man into the kitchen and introduced him as a "media worker who will record footage of your entire story." He started questioning Kirill about his work and trips abroad, and then asked if he owned a car. Most questions concerned Kirill's savings. "We should probably kill you, faggot," threatened the Round and hit him a few more times (in the shoulder, in the back of his head, and in his leg). The Felon said they were going to strip Kirill naked and take photos of him. Then he threatened to plant drugs on Alexei and call the police.
"But who benefits from you going to jail?" one of the men said. And Kirill asked what they wanted.
The men retreated to the hall for deliberation. Kirill heard them say "two million," then they started discussing “one million.” Finally, when they returned to the kitchen, they said they'd set him free for a ransom of 500,000 rubles ($7,500). Kirill suggested that they come up with a more realistic amount, as he only had as much as 10,000 rubles ($150) in his savings. Eventually, they bargained down the ransom to 200,000 rubles ($3,000), with 50,000 ($750) paid up front and 150,000 ($2,250) due the next day.
Kirill then called his sister on speakerphone, but her phone wouldn't ring. So he resorted to phoning a friend, who immediately agreed to wire him 40,000 rubles ($600). The Round took his card, went out and withdrew the money from a nearby ATM.
When he returned, he grabbed a cutting board and slapped Kirill with it several times. "You want me to beat your dick off?" he asked. They forced Kirill to finish the wine and pulled him out into the street. He was warned that they were expecting the 150,000 rubles ($2,250) by the next day, wired to a second account they provided. Kirill caught a bus and left.
He went straight to his friends, who tried to calm him down and recommended that he go to the police. At first, Kirill refused to heed their advice, but then he agreed, fearing that his silence could mean his friends and other men using Hornet might end up in the same situation.
The next day, he canceled his credit cards and stopped answering the criminals' phone calls. To this day, he walks home carrying a knife in his hand. Those men know where he lives.
Having filed a report with the police, Kirill started talking to his friends about the scam, to find out if there have been others similar incidents. So far, he's spoken to ten victims of these fake dates. Only one of them has had the courage to go to the police.
Kirill prefers not to give a detailed account of his investigation, to make sure the gangsters don't find out too much. He dreams of putting them away in prison for as long as possible, which in Russia would be seven years for organized robbery (Article 161 of Russia's criminal code).
Hunting gay men, but without homophobia
According to Meduza's source with connections at St. Petersburg's Interior Ministry Main Directorate, there is a single gang behind all the fake dates arranged to extort and blackmail the city's gay men. The gang consists of about 20 men, between the ages of 18 and 45. Some of them are ex-military, many have children, and they also keep in touch outside the gang, posting common selfies on social networks. It's likely that the offenders got acquainted through a martial arts club.
As Meduza's source reports, three or four gang members collaborate to put together a single fake date. A man between the ages of 18 and 20 serves as the bait, whose pictures are used to create an account on Hornet. It's this young man who first approaches the victim and lures him back to the designated apartment, where at least two other men are waiting. One of these men, with the looks of an ex-convict, plays the “bad cop,” shouting at the victim, beating him up, and threatening to kill him or frame him for drug possession and call the police, while the other plays “good cop,” talking reasonably and suggesting a “peaceful” resolution after a few minutes of pressure and intimidation. Sometimes there's also another man who acts as a “media worker,” who threatens to film the victim and interrogate him about his private and professional life.
The gang has been operating for about a year (the first attacks were recorded in March 2015). On the weekends, between Friday and Sunday, they lure victims to several addresses at the same time, using the mobile app. The thugs have managed to extort as much as 100,000 rubles ($1,500) in a single attack. Meduza's source, who is privy to the details of a police investigation, affirms that "very few of those assaulted" have filed statements. Presently, the police are gathering information, questioning witnesses and collecting CCTV camera footage.
The gang of extortionists use the exact same methods as activists in the now-dissolved “Occupy Pedophilia” movement, but they don't share the movement's ideology. In fact, many of these thugs say they aren't even homophobic, rarely mentioning “pedophilia” at fake dates. Instead of debating the morals of homosexuality, they're far more interested in their victims' savings. "Today they are nothing but a gang of bandits who has jumped at the opportunity to blackmail vulnerable people," says a report on violence against the LGBT community by the human rights group Vykhod (“A Way Out”).
Just like Occupy Pedophilia activists, these gangsters show little concern for discretion, never hiding their faces from CCTV cameras, and not shying from getting to know the landlords who rent them the rooms they use for their scams. They also openly disclose the bank card numbers they use in wire transfers, and they don't even throw out the SIM cards they use for contact with their victims. One of the men they targeted told Meduza that he later tried to call the man who acted as “bait” in his assault, and the call actually went through. Meduza spent several days trying to reach this number, but no one answered the phone.
Maxim Martsinkevich, aka Tesak ("The Hatchet") Photo: Zurab Dzhavakhadze / TASS
Maxim "Tesak" Martsinkevich's Occupy Pedophilia movement existed for a few years, from October 2011 to the fall of 2014.
Tesak turned his hunt for gay men into a full-fledged entertainment industry, with advertisements and "safari" tickets (this is how his activists described the group's hunt for “pedophiles”), and he even launched several regional “affiliates.” Every time his group “exposed” a new “pedophile,” it was recorded on video and posted online. Ekaterina Zigunova, one of the movement's former leaders, told Meduza that Occupy Pedophilia activists followed guidelines that "prohibited violence and stealing." By early 2014, the police had broken up most of the campaign's regional subdivisions. By the fall of 2014, the movement was totally crushed, and Tesak and many other activists were sent to jail.
‘This happens a lot more often than we know’
Last year, the LGBT activist group Vykhod, which works to protect gay rights, registered 12 assaults using the fake-date scenario. So far in 2016, it's recorded six attacks, including two in April. “This happens a lot more often than we know,” says Ksenia Kirichenko, the group's coordinator. "It's impossible to estimate the percentage of those who reach out to us. These gangs take advantage of their victims' vulnerable position, assuming that a man wouldn't want to go to the police and reveal that he went on a date with someone of the same sex.”
Vykhod activists are quite confident that most victims would rather pay the equivalent of a few hundred dollars than be forced to come out of the closet. Many of those who turned to Vykhod still didn't plan to file a police report, as they were mostly concerned about offenders uploading footage of the "date" to the Internet.
“Closeted homosexuals make perfect targets for criminals. Neither the victims nor their relations would go to the police," explains Igor Kochetkov, the head of the Russian LGBT Network. "Homosexuals normally keep such incidents [these assaults] secret even among themselves."
"I assume such phenomena are directly linked to the perception of the LGBT community as an enemy, which is largely promoted by the authorities through the federal media," insists Adrei Petrov, a spokesperson for Stimul (Stimulus), a Moscow-based LGBT organization. "When Occupy Pedophilia was out there, people were robbed, humiliated, and beaten up just like they are now. Nothing's changed. The regions are rapidly embracing the idea, because people involved in this realize they won't be punished very severely."
Activist Andrei Petrov says he knows of a few recent fake dates that took place in Moscow, Novosibirsk, Lipetsk, and Omsk.
This text was translated from Russian by Ksenia Khudadyan.
Daniil Turovsky St. PetersburgFollowing the presentation of the Alexander Wang x H&M lookbook, we take a look at the individual pieces that make up the fantastic collaborative collection. While the styling of the first lookbook may have turned some off, seeing each piece individually reveals a very wearable set of goods, done in Wang’s signature monochromatic color palette. Trendy materials like neoprene are used throughout while the designer’s last name, a handful of graphic prints and textures give the collection a luxurious feel.
Take a look at each piece above and pick up your favorite beginning November 6 at hm.com.
Subscribe
Words by Brock Cardiner Director of Content Strategy Brock Cardiner is Highsnobiety's Director of Content Strategy. He oversees Highsnobiety's editorial approach across platforms & mediums. Brock splits his time between Berlin, Los Angeles and New York.Early results to BetaNews poll "Will iOS 6 maps keep you from buying iPhone 5?" are grim. Nearly 44 percent of respondents answer "yes", but when removing those who wouldn't buy the handset anyway, the result is much worse for Apple. Is it time to ask whether the Apple Maps offense should be a fireable offense? That one is for you in comments.
As I write, there are 1,238 responses, 43.62 percent of which are "yes". Only 29.64 percent of respondents won't change their purchasing plans because of Apple Maps. However, 22.13 percent wouldn't buy iPhone 5 anyway. When removing these respondents from the results and only looking at the pool of potential purchasers, the number saying they won't buy iPhone 5 because of iOS 6 maps is 56 percent.
Mapgate, Mapocalypse or whatever else you would call it is a disaster for Apple. The remedy isn't difficult: Restore the mapping experience that iOS users had with earlier versions by bringing back, even if temporarily, Google's product.
Perhaps Apple believes that, like iPhone 4 Death Grip, bad press will die down. Except bad buzz didn't just go away. Apple's CEO, then Steve Jobs, apologized (okay, kind of and grudgingly) and offered Death Grip remedy by giving away free bumpers. Successor Tim Cook apologized for Apple Maps but offered no real remedy other than to suggest alternative apps, like Microsoft's Bing, or using Google's web service.
BetaNews reader Julie Digs Design expresses exactly why Cook's remedy isn't enough: "I use the map app significantly more than any other maps because I don't have a car and I live in a city. This new feature doesn't have transit and walking directions at the ready (like the google app did). My train has already left by the time I wait to switch to the third party app to get my transit directions!"
Using another program doesn't change map defaults throughout iOS 6, which is part of the problem using something else.
"It would've been great if Apple could've compromised and licensed the Google data like Navigon did" snworf suggests. "Apple could've licensed this temporarily into their Maps app and removed it when they had things further along".
Dennis McClune puts Apple's response in larger context: "The Corporate ethos will likely keep me from ever buying any Apple crap".
Apple has apologized for its new home-grown maps app, which gives errors and misdirections. Will iOS 6 Maps keep you from buying iPhone 5?
Xuanlong goes farther:
Apple Maps will indeed keep me from buying anything from Apple. It's not the maps themselves that are the problem, but the problem that they represent: that Apple doesn't care about it's customers. Putting profits before people is bad enough, but when a petty feud with Google comes before customers too, I think it really begs the question of what Apple's priorities are. It certainly doesn't seem to be pleasing their droves of loyal fans who they are so quick to screw over.
"Just the iPhone 5 hardware is not enough to make want to upgrade my 4s", Richard Young comments. "The maps suck just the same on both models".
"The map application wouldn't stop" commenter Bob "from upgrading, but all the other issues like dents and scratches showing right out the box or after a few days of normal use will".
neutrino23:
We just bought two of them in our family. I've been driving through half a dozen states on both coasts the past two weeks using Apple's map app and it worked fine for me over hundreds of miles. It did misplace two businesses (which was easy to fix) but it also found one Starbucks which Google Maps on an older phone didn't find. This has been overblown by tech writers. A year from now we'll forget about this and move on to some new reason why Apple is a terrible company wich doesn't innovate and overcharges.
Commenter JC sees the situation differently: "This is more than just an app, with wrong directions, locations & lack of details can stop people to find restaurants, stores, hotels etc etc., so is extremely bad for marketing for other companies".
edstreiff:
My wife and I did a side-by-side at the Verizon store, and it was clear that the Google Maps on her iPhone 4 running iOS 5 were much better than the iPhone 5 and Apple Maps. It couldn't even find a restaurant that had been open for 5 years, nor could it find the address of the restaurant because the map had no data for the development that it was in, which again had been developed over 5 years ago. Google found the restaurant, had street view of the development and newer, clearer satallite photos".
Colleague Wayne Williams calls Apple Maps a "huge downgrade" in his review. That and a little lost. In one turn-by-turn test, iOS Maps directed him on a four-and-a-half hour, 248-mile, drive in the wrong direction.
Photo Credit: Robert Kyllo/ShutterstockCaught on tape: Antiabortion center resorts to scary, dangerous lies Watch: Exclusive video shows antiabortion pregnancy center give young woman medically inaccurate, dangerous advice
In a secretly recorded video (embedded at the bottom of this story), a young woman named Kate, 19, tells a counselor at Cleveland's Womankind "maternal and prenatal care" center, “Usually we use condoms, but yesterday we didn’t.” She's taken a pregnancy test, but is told it is probably too soon. Then Kate asks, “Like, I know there’s a pill you can take to not get pregnant. And I don’t know if you have to go to the doctor?”
After some confusion, the counselor replies inaccurately, “It sounds like the morning after pill. If you have intercourse and then take this pill and it causes a period to come on or something, or bleeding. It’s like having kind of an abortion.” She adds, “That could harm you. It really could harm you... You could hemorrhage from anything like that.”
Advertisement:
“Kate” is Katie Stack, a 24-year-old pro-choice activist and patients’ advocate at an Ohio abortion clinic, though she gave the counselor a different last name. Stack is also a founder of the Crisis Project, which films undercover video at crisis pregnancy centers like Cleveland’s Womankind and records the often medically suspect advice given there. And Womankind is one of thousands of clinics across the country that seek to dissuade women from having abortions. Unlike many of those centers, which gauzily gloss over whether they're actually clinics, it actually offers prenatal care from medical professionals, but that doesn't mean it dispenses accurate information.
Whether the counselor was misinformed or intentionally misleading, her advice on emergency contraception was false. The so-called morning after pill, or emergency contraception, has been shown only to block ovulation to prevent fertilization after unprotected sex; it’s decidedly not an abortion. It is entirely distinct from medication abortion, which can only be taken at a doctor’s office, and which does cause bleeding by inducing a miscarriage. By contrast, the possible side effects for Plan B, the most commonly taken form of emergency contraception, are listed as changes in your period, nausea, lower abdominal pain, fatigue, headache, dizziness and breast tenderness. The counselor did seem to be vaguely aware of the distinction, saying of the pills in question, "I know people do buy it over the counter, but is that wise? Something somebody else might do you don’t do."
Despite the fact that the fictional Kate would have a good chance at preventing an unplanned pregnancy, and perhaps an abortion, with the morning-after pill, the counselor also asks her, "Why do you have sex? You’re not married." After saying sex is a responsibility, the counselor adds, "It has consequences and you don’t want to put the consequences on having to harm yourself. And harming yourself would be having an abortion. Or taking the pill after. Because sometimes taking a pill like that could cause more bleeding than what you think. It would only take you to the emergency room and you having to take care of what’s happening. A lot of those things, you probably could read online, on the Internet, the risks in taking something like that would be. There’s risks in anything. It could leave damage to the cervix, it could mean hemorrhaging."
Crisis pregnancy centers -- of late, known simply as pregnancy centers -- are the foot soldiers of the antiabortion movement, seeking to put a warm and helpful face on it, and to counteract claims that they don’t care about women. In an interview with the New York Times, an Americans United for Life official called the centers “the darlings of the pro-life movement.” The Times put the count of crisis pregnancy centers at 2,500, compared to 1,800 abortion providers. State-level antiabortion leaders like Rick Perry have repeatedly touted the centers, including attempting to replace Planned Parenthood with them, despite the fact that they generally don’t provide services like pap smears, contraceptive prescriptions and breast exams.
Stack was inspired to start the project after her own real-life experience as a scared teen visiting one. Though she had an appointment at a Planned Parenthood clinic for an abortion, she visited an Iowa clinic closer to her home. " The “counseling” that I received included the following," Stack wrote in a 2011 New York Times Op-Ed. "I was cautioned that abortions caused breast cancer, even though the National Cancer Institute has found serious flaws in all research that suggests so. I was warned that I would inevitably suffer from post-abortion stress syndrome, even though the American Psychological Association says there is no evidence of increased mental health problems among women who have an abortion in the first trimester. I was told that I would not hear this information from doctors, because doctors make money performing abortions and would lie about the procedure’s risks."
Of course, the more famous secret recordings in abortion politics are on the right, with Live Action's stings on Planned Parenthood and independent abortion clinics. Stack says there's a difference: "The videos that Live Action puts out are promoting the myths and the fears that the antiabortion movement, such as the idea that abortion clinics cover up sex trafficking. Whereas our work is really much more investigative. We’re not creating unusual scenarios, we’re not looking to prove a particular thesis necessarily. We’re just going in there and letting them talk."
Advertisement:
Though these centers claim they are merely expressing their right to dissuade women from having abortions and not actively misleading them, Stack points out that Abby Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood employee turned antiabortion activist, gave a workshop at Heartbeat International's 2012 conference titled "Competing With the Abortion Industry." According to audio of the event, Johnson told participants, "We want to look professional. We want to look businesslike. And yeah, we do kind of want to look medical." She discouraged them from foregrounding their religious affiliation, so as to better trick women: "We want to appear neutral on the outside. The best call, the best client you ever get is one that thinks they're walking into an abortion clinic. Those are the best clients that could ever walk in your door or call your center, the ones that think you provide abortions."
Johnson also told the audience of crisis pregnancy center directors to say, when asked about abortion, "No, we do not provide abortion services, but we do provide ultrasounds, and you're going to need to have your abortion. And that's true. So you don't have to say, no, we have a baby boutique, and we have pregnancy testing... No. You want them in your center. That day, if you can."
Efforts to regulate the centers have gotten tied up in courts. Several cities and counties, including New York, San Francisco, Austin and Baltimore, have passed laws requiring the centers to state in one form or another that they don't have doctors on the premises or that they don't perform or refer for abortions. Some of the regulations have extended to the centers' willfully unspecific and ubiquitous advertising. In May, Rep. Carolyn Maloney introduced the Stop Deceptive Advertising for Women's Services Act, which would "direct the Federal Trade Commission to prescribe rules prohibiting deceptive advertising of abortion services." But such laws have run up against thus far successful arguments that the centers don’t charge women for counseling and thus haven’t been considered commerce that can be regulated, but rather expressions protected under the First Amendment.
In the meantime, Stack says that she's seeing more and more clinics adding medical professionals for ultrasounds and prenatal care, presumably in an attempt to counteract criticism that they don't offer medical services. In her work at an Ohio abortion clinic, Stack often sees patients who have already been to crisis pregnancy centers. "For the most part it’s correcting misinformation and helping them feel like they get to make this decision for themselves," she says. Still, she notes, in those cases, at least, "they still come to the abortion clinic."
Advertisement:
Salon reached out to Womankind and Abby Johnson for comment, but they did not respond.
Watch the video:WASHINGTON - U.S. officials say Pakistan has apparently tipped off militants at two more bomb-building factories in its tribal areas, giving the terror suspects time to flee, after U.S. intelligence shared the locations with the Pakistani government.
Those officials believe Pakistan's insistence on seeking local tribal elders' permission before raiding the areas may have most directly contributed to the militants' flight. U.S. officials have pushed for Pakistan to keep the location of such targets secret prior to the operations, but the Pakistanis say their troops cannot enter the lawless regions without giving the locals notice.
All officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss matters of intelligence.
The latest incidents bring to a total of four bomb-making sites that the U.S. has shared with Pakistan only to have the terrorist suspects flee before the Pakistani military arrived much later. The report does not bode well for attempts by both sides to mend relations and rebuild trust after the U.S. raid on May 2 that killed Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, a Pakistani army town only 35 miles (56.32 kilometers) from the capital Islamabad.
The Pakistanis believe the Americans violated their sovereignty by keeping them in the dark about the raid. American officials believe bin Laden's location proves some elements of the Pakistani army or intelligence service helped hide the al-Qaida mastermind, bolstering their argument that the raid had to be done solo.
The U.S. officials explained Saturday how they first offered the location of the third, and then the fourth site, in order to give Pakistan another chance to prove it could be trusted to go after the militants.
In the tradition of 'trust but verify,' the Americans carefully monitored the area with satellite and unmanned drones, to see what would happen, after sharing the information a third and fourth time, the officials said.
In each case, they watched the militants depart within 24 hours, taking any weapons or bomb-making materials with them, just as militants had done the first two times. Only then, did they watch the Pakistani military visit each site, when the terror suspects and their wares were long gone, the officials said.
Pakistan's army on Friday disputed reports that its security forces had tipped off insurgents at bomb-making factories after getting intelligence about the sites from the United States. The army called the assertions of collusion with militants "totally false and malicious."
Army officials further claimed they had successfully raided two more sites, after finding nothing at the first two, but a Pakistani official reached Friday offered no details of what they found there.
The official admitted that in each raid, however, the Pakistani security services notified the local elders who hold sway in the tribal regions. The official said they would investigate U.S. charges that the militants had been tipped off.
Two U.S. officials said they were asking the Pakistanis to withhold such sensitive information from the elders, and even their lower ranks, to prove they could be trusted to keep a secret, and go after U.S. enemies.
At least two of the sites were run by the Haqqani network, which is part of the Taliban, closely allied with al-Qaida, and blamed for some of the deadliest attacks against U.S. troops and civilians in neighboring Afghanistan. Pakistan has long resisted attacking the Haqqani network, saying the group has never attacked the state of Pakistan.
The intelligence sharing was intended as a precursor to building a new joint intelligence team of CIA officers together with Pakistani intelligence agents. But U.S. officials say Pakistan has failed to quickly approve the visas needed, despite agreeing to form the team in May.
U.S. officials have also accused Pakistan of holding up to five Pakistani nationals accused of helping the CIA spy on the Abbottabad compound in advance of the bin Laden raid.
While not confirming the number, a Pakistani official said any citizen who worked with the U.S. to spy on the compound had betrayed his or her country by failing to tip off the government that someone the Americans wanted was hiding in the compound. Such a tip, the official said, could have saved the Pakistani government the embarrassment of being surprised by the bin Laden raid.Dear fans! Let us hear your voice! Use a hashtag #rizin2016 On Twitter and tell us which fighters you want to see in RIZIN FIGHTING WORLD GRAND-PRIX 2016 Open weight tournament Opening round!
9月25日（日）、12月29日（木）、31日（土）にかけて開催される『RIZIN FIGHTING WORLD GRAND-P |
and Palestinians during his last year in office. Ehud Olmert, the current Israeli prime minister, said this week that Bush’s letter gave the Jewish state permission to expand the West Bank settlements that it hopes to retain in a final peace deal, even though Bush’s peace plan officially calls for a freeze of Israeli settlements across Palestinian territories on the West Bank. In an interview this week, Sharon’s chief of staff, Dov Weissglas, said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reaffirmed this understanding in a secret agreement reached between Israel and the United States in the spring of 2005, just before Israel withdrew from Gaza.
The part of this story that you’ll really like, though, is that Colin Powell says he never made such an agreement.
Weissglas said that the letter built upon a prior understanding between then-Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, which would allow Israel to build up settlements within existing construction lines. But Powell denied that. "I never agreed to it," he said in an e-mail.
Whereas Weissglas admits that the final settlement came in an agreement with Iran-Contra alum Elliott Abrams.
Weissglas said he then negotiated a "verbal understanding" with deputy national security adviser Elliott Abrams that would permit new construction in those key settlements; Rice and Sharon then approved the Weissglas-Abrams deal. "I do not recall that we had any kind of written formulation," Weissglas said.
Would it surprise anyone that Elliott Abrams concluded some super-secret, cross-my-fingers, Neocons-only deal with the Israelis? Or that Condi Rice, agreed to that settlement, but now pretends she didn’t?
There’s one part of this purported settlement, though, that is especially lovely. In true Neocon fashion, they used "market demand" as their fig leaf to rationalize the new settlements.
Israel could add homes in settlements expected to keep, as long as the construction was dictated by market demand, not subsidies.
It sounds like a remarkable piece of Elliott Abrams work: the West Bank for Gaza, in another freelance, off-the-books act of foreign policy, all the while enshrining the sanctity of the market.Tough Enough
Date: 25th November 2011
The video below (and linked Mixed Climbing Avalanche here, still figuring out WordPress) is really interesting. There aren’t that many videos of self-rescues done in the mountains. As I watched it I had some thoughts of course, but the main thing is that there are some good points to ponder in my own climbing and perhaps for others as well.
I don’t think these guys did a tremendous amount wrong. In fact, they did enough things right that they both lived–I have personally done far more wrong in the mountains, but had the good luck not to get called on it at the time. Many, many of us have made worse errors but just had, as my bud Barry Blanchard says, “Good luck when we needed it.” Ed, the injured climber, and Brice, the falling leader, did one thing amazingly well: they decided they are going to get the fuck off the mountain and live. Which they did; people have died with far lesser injuries. When I read of someone getting slung off a peak for a sprained ankle I think of guys like these: They cleaned up their own mess, well done, and anybody who wants to tear strips off of them had better be made of tougher material. That is unlikely.
I offer the following with full respect to the climbers; many people would not have done as well, including me at many points in my climbing career. I’ve been taking these guiding classes, and had some of my own weaknesses exposed, including rescue systems for my partners.
A few notes:
-I’m no avalanche expert, but there’s obviously a shitload of wind transported snow blowing around. “Serious wind” is how it’s described in the video. Wind transported snow is often a big problem in the mountains. I once watched a healthy-sized avalanche scatter a dozen or so Chamonix guides and 20 or 30 clients on a perfectly blue day with high winds and a few cm of fresh snow from the night before. The guides were teaching ice/glacier clinics on a glacier below a roughly 500 foot cliff with a deposition zone above it. Snow built up overhead on the slope continuously, but the classes below were unaware of the hazard. I too didn’t know any better, I’d just climbed one of the classic hard routes under the same wind-transported snow slope and then walked across it, but it wasn’t loaded up yet enough to rip… We were high and across the small valley on another route when enough snow finally collected to release. We watched it all in slow-motion horror as the guides and clients ran for what they thought was their lives under the blue-bird sky… In the end some packs were lost but no lives, but that moment taught me to respect the power of wind-transported snow–it’s not just an “annoyance.” Anyhow, you can see the transport clearly in the video (in the air and with the spindrift) and it’s no surprise that a something finally releases on the leader. They are simul-climbing when it does blow.
-I have very few hard rules in ice/mountaineering, but I try to never to climb ice/mixed terrain when it’s raining, and to never to climb/ski/whatever in the winter when I can’t see the terrain over my head. I’ll push the “not seeing” rule when the consequences are low (I’m in the woods and confident I’m not threatened by anything over head), but not in alpine terrain. These rules have saved my life once or twice over the years for sure. These guys clearly can’t see much, but are going up. Often being “tough” does not end well in the mountains. When there is a lot of spindrift, wind and general chaos in the air I often get scared and run away. But there are all these tales in the magazines and on the internet about “pushing upward into storms.” Not good.
-I don’t think the leader put a Ti-block on his rope before he fell off. I like doing this, prevents the leader from going for a huge fall if the second blows it, or has an avi situation or whatever. I think the “wall of snow” hit the second before the leader was even done falling; a Ti-block might have really helped reduce the second’s injuries. Or it might not, but I think a Ti-block on the rope is a good idea if you’re already simul-climbing and pushing safety boundaries.
-The guy on rappel (Ed) doesn’t seem to have had his leg splinted at all after the accident, or much of a first-aid effort done. Maybe not the time and place for it, and he’s a tough bastard, but a splint would have been really good. It’s also unclear if his quadricep injury was at all evaluated or treated. Fortunately it wasn’t immediately life-threating, but it would have been good to know what was going on a little more I think.
-Why doesn’t Brice back Ed up with a Fireman’s belay (hold the ends snug) as Ed raps? Ed is a tough SOB, but it would have been prudent given Ed’s injuries. Or a prussik backup on Ed’s rope at least. A fireman’s backup would have been really ideal I think. Again, Ed is a tough SOB so all good, but I’m always looking for a bit more margin in the mountains. I backed up some friends last weekend as we rappelled through a small but forceful waterfall in Maui; it didn’t slow us down any, and it was prudent.
-Why doesn’t Ed’s partner rap with Ed on his back? That would keep Ed’s foot off the rock, and prevent a lot of pain for Ed.
-As the death crawl/crawl to life commences Ed’s leg still doesn’t appear to be splinted at all. This is just excruciating to watch…
-Was there any potential for emergency communications via radio, sat phone, SPOT, etc? If Ed’s injuries were just a bit worse emergency coms could have been very, very important. I do not head out into the mountains now without a Spot or a Sat phone, it’s just not worth it. I have yet to see a mountain accident scene where the victim said, “No, please don’t call for help, it’s against my wilderness ethic.” Like it or not the technology is there, and many of my friends are alive today because they had the means to communicate. A SPOT is only $100 right now, and the new DeLorme device looks cool when it goes public.
In any accident or intense situation there are almost always many things everyone involved would do differently. In this case Ed and Brice lived, and their video gives all of us an excellent opportunity to think about our own systems and approach to the mountains. What is our true knowledge level? Would we do anything differently?
Thanks to Ed and Brice for the video, and a beer or two is on me if I see you guys out there!
Posted in: Blog
CommentsPop-punk shows can get rowdy sometimes, especially if the audience does a lot of crowd-surfing. Sometimes during said crowd-surfing, a fan ends up onstage. But their stay is brief — meaning that they’ll jump right back into the crowd in a second or two. But that was decidedly not the case for a female fan at a Story So Far show last Sunday night at Toronto’s Mod Club Theatre.
As you can see in the fan-shot video below, an overzealous fan got up onstage during the Story So Far’s show to take a selfie. Note that she was not facing the band, which only makes what happens next worse (not to mention a lot more dangerous). Lead singer Parker Cannon took it upon himself to literally kick the girl offstage, causing her to fall face-first into the crowd.
Look, no one likes unauthorized selfie-takers. In fact, selfie-taking in general is a pretty obnoxious move. But to kick them square in the back from a raised-off-the-ground platform… Well, that’s just begging for a lawsuit. Watch it go down (no pun intended) below.Race is a fascinating scientific subject. Unfortunately, for more than half of this century there has been a huge propaganda campaign to drive it completely out of the sciences. And even though most of the race-deniers’ claims are nonsense or wildly spun half-truths, the vast majority of serious scientists have been taught their lesson. For a youngster, to deal with race from a scientific perspective and risk the label “scientific racist” could be career suicide. Most of my scientific colleagues leave race alone, at least in public.
These days, in the genetic and biological sciences there are so many things that are unknown, and so many new and exciting techniques, that a scientist can easily have a productive career without ever mentioning race. But one of the consequences of the absence of work in this field is that there is a gold mine of data about the biological realities of race. Actually a gold mine is probably the wrong image because it implies one must dig and work to collect the prize. It’s really more like a riverbed strewn with gold nuggets. Race biology data have accumulated all around us and are lying there waiting to be picked up and publicized.
This article introduces a few of the many nuggets of information about the biological reality of race. I will not cover intelligence differences — everyone knows about that. But from bone thickness to brain size, there are many biological realities of race besides differences in intelligence.
I should first explain my definition of “race.” In biological tradition the word race is simply synonymous with the terms “subspecies” or “variety.” The basic unit of classification in modern taxonomy is the species. A species is usually said to consist of a set of individuals capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. If the offspring are not healthy and fertile, then the parent types are considered separate species. Mules are usually sterile so horses and donkeys are thought to be separate species.
However, in biology things are often fuzzy around the edges, and so it is with species. Sometimes what are considered to be separate species in nature can and will freely interbreed when brought together by man. Sometimes their hybrid offspring are partially or fully fertile. As one example of the fuzziness of species, consider Canis familiaris, the common dog, and Canis lupus, the Eurasian wolf. They are considered to be separate species because their habitats and life-styles are different. Within the dog species itself there are many varieties that are quite different in physiology and behavior. The tiny Mexican Chihuahua, would have a hard time mating with an Irish Wolfhound, but they are considered to be of the same species.
When wolves encounter dogs, they usually eat them. But sometimes they mate with them. When they mate it is almost always the male wolf with the female dog. The reverse is rare — male dogs are almost never able to mate with female wolves. The hybrid puppies are usually fully fertile, so by this definition Canis lupus and Canis familiaris are not different species. The point is that species and races are concepts of classification that often blur around the edges. This is because of the very nature of biological reality.
These days humans are thought to constitute one species — Homo sapiens. Humans are in many respects typical of geographically widespread mammalian species in that we are polymorphic (meaning we have “many forms”). This is what appears to us as individual differences. The bell-curve distribution of so many traits — height, weight, strength, intelligence, and the like — illustrates polymorphic traits. We are also typical among widespread mammals in being a polytypic species. Polytypic means “many types;” it is simply a fact of biological reality that not all different groups of humans are the same. Naturally occurring polytypic groups within a species are called varieties, subspecies, or races.
Starting With the Genes
Nowadays biological reality starts with genes, so that is what we will consider first. Genetic surveys have been done that identify many genes for many human populations all around the world. Some surveys have tried to concentrate on so-called “native populations,” that is, people who today are still living where their ancestors were before 1500 AD — before Columbus and the age of European expansion around the globe. When worldwide gene surveys are done of native populations, the results in broad outline are clear and consistent and can be replicated from one study to the next.
The most solid and remarkable finding is that genetically, the people from Sub-Saharan Africa are the most different from all other living humans. I will therefore concentrate mainly on Africans, but will quickly consider the rest of the world.
The illustration on this page shows the results from one large genetic survey with the lengths of the lines indicating the degrees of genetic difference between groups. Please note that Africans are far different from everybody else.
After Africans-versus-everybody-else, the next most different racial grouping is Australian Aborigines and similar peoples in New Guinea and surrounding areas. The famous anthropologist William Howells described them as follows:
“Australian aboriginals proper, [are] primitive men with a primitive hunting culture, lacking even the bows and arrows of the Negritos of other parts. They are dark skinned but hairy, with thick, ridged, poorly filled skulls and heavy, though fully sapiens, brow ridges; and with broad noses, short projecting faces, large teeth and receding chins. In every way they conform to a picture of Homo sapiensat his most backward, before racial specialization and before a final lightening of brows, reduction of teeth, and expansion of brain.” (W. Howells, Mankind in the Making, 1959, p. 326.)
If we return to the illustration on this page we see that the other major racial groupings are Caucasians, South Asians, and a cluster containing Northern Mongoloids and American Indians. About the only surprise from this worldwide gene survey is the degree of difference between Northeast and Southeast Asia. Even within China there are substantial average genetic differences between north and south. The racial/genetic differentiation within China is a fascinating topic for another day.
Let me turn now to the largest of genetic differences among humans, that between Africans and everyone else. Some people in the scientific literature argue that it is a vast oversimplification to think of “Africans” as a single race — they emphasize that there is tremendous genetic differentiation, and resultant biological differences, among the native inhabitants of Africa. And that is correct, up to a point. After all, the continent of Africa is a big place; it is the second-largest continent, with much environmental variation. It contains some of the driest and some of the most humid habitats on earth. Also some of the hottest. It has lowlands and highlands, sea level jungles and snow-capped Mount Kilimanjaro. So it should come as no surprise that largely primitive people, still divided into tribes, show lots of genetic differentiation. This is a typically primitive condition of humanity. Thousands of years ago when Europeans were still largely tribal breeding groups there was also more genetic difference between different groups — though the different races of European Caucasians are still evident to some extent. The fact remains that although there is genetic difference among Africans, as a group they hang together and are relatively very different from everyone else.
It is useful, however, to separate North Africa from what is usually called Sub-Saharan Africa. The Sahara desert is a serious geographical barrier. North of the desert, all across the southern shore of the Mediterranean, the inhabitants are largely Caucasian. In the main we know where they came from, and often we know when. For instance the Phoenicians, ancestors of modern Lebanese, colonized sections of the coast. Later, Germanic tribes from Europe invaded and settled. The Arabs swept through. So today a hybrid, largely Caucasian population with some Negroid admixture, inhabits North Africa. The illustration on the previous page that shows the large split between Africans and all other groups is based on Sub-Saharan Africans.
Let us now look at genetic distances within the African cluster, which is shown in a slightly different perspective in the illustration below. Here again, the lengths of the lines indicate relative genetic distance. The top four groups — labeled Pygmy, W. African, Bantu, and Elongate (also known as Nilotic) are the Negro race of traditional anthropology and are referred to below as Blacks. There is substantial gene flow among them but also racial differentiation as indicated by the genetic distances.
Somewhat different from the Blacks are the Ethiopian and Hottentot peoples. They are more brownish and yellow than black in skin color and are thought by some to be remnants of an ancient pre-Negroid population. The recent expansion of Blacks, mostly Bantus and Elongates, has exterminated most of these people. Their genes remain concentrated in the Horn of Africa — Ethiopia and Somalia, and as a dwindling remnant in Southern Africa. The Ethiopians are today a hybrid population, with substantial Negroid and Semitic gene admixture.
What I have here labeled Hottentot are often referred to as the Khoids, or Khoisanids, which means Hottentots and Bushman. The remaining Bushman are desert gleaners while the Hottentots herd cattle. The Hottentot race is almost all gone today, replaced and exterminated in recent times by the invading Blacks. There was some intermating, however; enough so that even in America you can sometimes see the results of Hottentot genes.
In many characteristics Hottentots are biologically specialized for life in a hot and dry climate. One of these distinctive adaptations is steatopygia, which literally means “fat buttocks.” This is a solution to the problem of how to store fat in preparation for times of little food and still be able to shed body heat in a hot climate. Most of the fat is bundled in one place — the buttocks — leaving the rest of the body lean so as to make it easy to lose heat. It is the human equivalent of the camel’s hump. By contrast, Eurasian women put on a layer of subcutaneous fat all over the body. It is better than a fur coat in providing insulation against the arctic cold but makes it harder to lose heat in a hot climate. These differences in fat storage strategies are biological realities of race. Another biological peculiarity of the Hottentots is what is delicately called the “Hottentot apron” — four-and-a-half inches of dangling labia. This, too, is a biological reality.
A related biological reality is the difference in resting metabolic rate between black women and white women, which has been found in America. A lower metabolism generates less body heat, which is a useful trait in a hot climate. However, it means that in a place like America, which has a plentiful food supply, blacks are more likely to become obese.
Mating between Hottentots and Negroid Blacks generally followed a pattern that is worth noting. Even though it was unusual, most of the crosses were of Hottentot women with Black men. The hybrid children were raised as Blacks, so most of the gene flow was from Hottentot to Blacks. This pattern is common among humans and among mammals generally, like the wolves and dogs mentioned earlier: When populations mix, it is usually males of the dominant group that take up with women from the subordinate group. Women are attracted to socially dominant males. In this instance, the dominant Blacks have been acquiring the land, the property, and the women of the Hottentot race that they are replacing.
As an aside, one might note that by many traditional anthropological criteria African-Americans are now one of the dominant social groups in America — at least they are clearly dominant over whites. There is a tremendous and continuing transfer of property, land, and women from the subordinate race to the dominant race. When it comes to personal property, blacks have a tendency to take what they want. The July issue of AR points out that blacks commit robbery at a rate nine or ten times higher than whites and that they are about 50 times more likely to commit a violent crime against a white than vice versa. In many cases, what they do not take themselves, the government takes and redistributes for them. As for land, blacks have literally forced whites out of many of our major cities, the crown jewels of any civilization.
At the same time, there are four times as many marriages between black men and white women than between white men and black women. Like any conquering group, the winners are taking the property, the land, and the women. But perhaps the most incontrovertible evidence of dominance is the fact that blacks can work openly for black empowerment. They can complain about whites and get a sympathetic reception. Whites, on the other hand, are not permitted to discuss their own dispossession.
To return to the four African sub-races that are members of the Black Negro race, this group contains the tallest and the shortest of all humans. The shortest are the Pygmies of the African Forests. Adult males of some tribes average about 4-3/4 feet in height. There are many biological reasons for small size; one is a poorly-understood substance called Insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1). In Pygmies the genetic control of IGF-1 is different from that of other groups. Pygmies were kept as pets by some ancient Egyptian Pharaohs — they were prized for their size and rhythmic dancing ability.
Small size in humans, as in other mammalian species like the tiny deer found in the south of Florida, is thought to be an adaptation to hot, humid climates. Small size also helps in moving through the thick jungles where Pygmies hunt and collect food. To this day the Pygmies have not taken well to agriculture. Some work as irregular and unreliable laborers for their black masters. There is also some intermating, again mostly subordinate pygmy women being taken as wives by the dominant Blacks.
Rates of Maturation
On the subject of size, it is widely know that black babies tend to be born smaller than white babies but that black babies develop more rapidly in coordination and motor skills. Pygmies have been reported to mature especially quickly; babies sometimes walk and even run at six months of age, a developmental milestone reached on average by Caucasians at age 12 months. Our nearest non-human relatives, the apes, mature in motor skills considerably more quickly than any human group.
The next three groups, the West African, the Bantu, and the Elongate sub-populations are actually quite close genetically. The term Bantu originally referred to a group of closely related languages. The many different Bantu-speaking tribes are mainly the ones that in recent centuries greatly increased their range, invading East and South Africa. The Bantus and the West African groups were mostly planters, practicing primitive slash-and-burn agriculture.
The Elongates, on the other hand, were mostly pastoralists, herders of cattle. Because they had no horses, they herded cattle on foot. Among the Elongates are found the tallest humans. Height can be thought of as an evolutionary pre-adaptation for the modern American game of basketball.
The Elongate physique, slim and long, is thought to be an adaptation for survival in hot and dry climates. A popular theory is that the Elongates evolved in the Sahara region during the thousands of years the Sahara was slowly changing from a grassland to dry desert.
The historically pastoral Elongate tribes now live among the historically agricultural W. African and Bantu tribes. Usually the Elongates have been warrior rulers over the Bantus, though sometimes the Bantus revolt against their Elongate rulers. For example, the Hutu are a Bantu race while the Tutsi (Watusi) are Elongates. Their genocidal conflicts are well known. Much of the warfare currently ravaging Africa is conflict between genetically different groups.
Another interesting biological reality involves long-distance running. At the present time long-distance men’s running events are dominated by Blacks from the Elongate groups. This may not be so difficult to understand, since their ancestors have been tending cattle on foot for thousands of years. Kenyans dominate long-distance events, and about three quarters of Kenya’s top runners come from just one tribe, the Kalenjin, who are only about ten percent of the population of Kenya. About 40 percent of the top runners in men’s medium and long-distance events come from just this one tribe.
Why are the Kalenjin such exceptional runners? There is some speculation that it may be because the tribe specialized in cattle thievery. Anyone who can run a great distance and get away with the stolen cattle will have enough wealth to meet the high bride price of a good spouse. Because the Kalenjin were polygamous, a really successful cattle thief could afford to buy many wives and make many little runners. This is a good story, anyway, and it might even be true. Of course, racial biology is a taboo subject, even when differences in athletic ability could not be clearer. There is a book being written about race and sports. It’s working title is simply Taboo.
Many of these race differences are particularly clear in a multi-racial country like the United States. Compared to whites, African-Americans are born earlier and smaller, but they mature more quickly. Their bones are denser, and have a higher mineral content. Denser bones are found even in fetuses before birth, and this difference in density continues throughout life. For this reason osteoporosis among the elderly is less common in blacks than in whites.
Blacks have more lean body mass than whites, and they soon grow taller and heavier than whites. Black children begin their growth spurts two to as much as five years earlier than white children. Young black males outpace whites in muscle mass by age seven. By about age 12, when white boys are beginning their growth spurt, black boys are already much more physically developed. For girls, the growth spurt begins about age six for black girls but not until age eight or nine for white girls. Also black children mature sexually about three years sooner than white children.
There are differences in hormones, body composition, bones, brains, developmental rates, and these differences persist in adulthood. These are all biological realities of race that have many consequences for society.
Let us consider a completely different biological reality: bullet holes. The figures below are based on hospitalizations for gunshot wounds in California. There is a substantial race difference in these data. As expected, the rate for young males is much higher than for older folks. However, the more significant variable is race rather than age. Notice that the rate for the oldest age range of blacks is still as high as the most dangerous range for whites.
Gunshot Wounds per 100,000 Population Males Black White Age 15-24 450 25 Over Age 55 25 5
There are many other physical and social variables that differ substantially between whites and blacks. The recent excellent books by Phil Rushton and Michael Levin present hundreds of pages of differences and discussion.
Hybrid Vigor
If we turn now to the Eurasian land mass, the various human tribes and races on that continent have been traveling and mixing for a long time. Recent finds have added to the evidence that there were Nordic Caucasians in Bronze-age China, at the very beginning of Chinese civilization. At the same time there have been repeated incursions of Mongols into Europe. These people in their travels and conquests may not have always intermated, but often they did, and genetic crosses between closely related races can lead to improvement of populations. Everyone has heard of hybrid vigor.
Madison Grant thought that hybrid vigor played an important role in the development of European civilization. He points out that the Golden Age of ancient Greece was just a few generations after the invasion and mixing of Germanic tribes. Others have suggested that much of the miracle of American development was the result of hybrid vigor resulting from the melting pot of previously more separated European populations. There is modern evidence of hybrid vigor for intelligence among the children of marriages between whites and East Asians in Hawaii.
While hybrid vigor is a biological reality, so are hybrid incompatibilities. Some crosses, particularly between genetically distant races, can lead to mixes that don’t work very well. Until quite recently there was much scientific concern over hybrid incompatibilities between blacks and whites, and remember from recent evidence the Africans are genetically most different from all others. Before about 1950 the scientific literature openly discussed the problem of what Madison Grant called “disharmonious combinations”. After the 1950s, concern over miscegenation almost completely disappeared from mainstream scientific literature. The only thing that had changed was the politics, not the data.
I would like to suggest that modern data, those gold nuggets laying about, contain much that is suggestive of hybrid incompatibilities between blacks and whites. For example, according to the so-called “one drop” rule, hybrids are almost always classified as blacks, so almost all blacks have some white genes. And one of the best reported phenomena in present-day America is that the African-American population suffers a very wide range of health problems. Blacks tend to die sooner and younger from almost every cause but osteoporosis. There are reports that even after all known causes are accounted for there is still “unexplained” poor health among blacks.
This difference is often ascribed to the stresses of “racism,” but this is not a very convincing explanation. Recently, Surgeon General David Satcher appeared on television to point out that in America, black babies are 2½ times more likely than whites to die in the first year of life. It is not clear how infants suffer from the stresses of “racism.” It may simply be that just as blacks mature more rapidly than whites, they succumb to disease more easily and die at younger ages. On the other hand, if there are no inherent racial differences in longevity and resistance to disease, the poor health could be caused by one of the greatest taboos of all: biological, genetic hybrid incompatibility.
Needless to say, there is no research now being done in this field. So long as our rulers refuse even to consider the biological reality of race, this question and many others will remain unanswered.
Share ThisIn an explosion of relevancy, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, best known as the people behind the Golden Globes, the awards ceremony that for a brief moment in time was the predictor for the Academy Awards, landed a Skype interview with WikiLeaks founder and interwebs pinup boy, Julian Assange. The fifty reporters who joined on the Skype video interview will be filing the stories tomorrow and into the week, and the HFPA have dropped juicy hints about what the platinum haired cyber-star discussed as part of the association’s rapidly expanding Round Table series of interviews.
Last month HFPA vice president Lorenzo Soria told Variety that the Association wanted a return to real journalism. Today he told Variety:
We knew that getting a story with the importance of the Wikileaks controversy would be helpful in our efforts to broaden our reach beyond just interviewing the latest movie star. We hope that interviewing Julian Assange opens the door to other major interviews….My story for (Italian daily) La Stampa runs tomorrow and I know they’re really excited. This is clearly not the kind of story you work on every day.
The Skype call was arranged between the HFPA’s offices in West Hollywood and the Ecuadorian embassy in London where Assange has been living since June 2012 when he was granted diplomatic asylum. In his interview Assange warned of the dangers posed by the American security complex. He also stated that his family had received death threats. The interview took several months to arrange, and is timed perfectly to coincide with the release of the biopic The Fifth Estate, which Assange told the HFPA was
opportunistic and hostile.
The movie may well be, but it is also fomenting an increased interest in WikiLeaks, Assange, and the charges against him in Sweden. And while Assange may feel contrary to the adage that any publicity is good publicity, he’s getting a lot–and by speaking up again The Fifth Estate so clearly and loudly, so is the film. People will go to see it, and hopefully they will look deeper and longer into Assange, into WikiLeaks, into Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden.
And it also remains to be seen if the HFPA will nominate The Fifth Estate for any Golden Globe categories.
Assange’s stay in the Ecuadorian Embassy began in June of last year when the British government sought, per the HFPA’s explanation:
to extradite him to Sweden under a European Arrest Warrant for questioning in relation to a sexual assault investigation. Metropolitan police officers have been stationed outside the embassy since Assange entered the building and have been ordered to arrest him if he attempts to leave… WikiLeaks has been involved in the publication of material documenting extra-judicial killings in Kenya, a report on toxic waste dumping on the Ivory Coast, Church of Scientology manuals, Guantanamo Bay detention camp procedures, the July 12 2007 Baghdad air strike video and other documents.
At one point there were five WikiLeaks film projects in development. I’m just bummed no one is making a musical…Magic Leap may be raising as much as $1 billion to fund their vision of a future filled with augmented reality glasses.
A Delaware filing dated Wednesday was provided to us by CB Insights, confirming that the secretive startup has authorized about $1 billion in new funding. The filing authorizes over 37 million shares of Series D preferred stock at $27 per share. No details on investors yet. Using this and previous filings, Pitchbook estimates the post-money valuation to be up to $6.5 billion.
A spokesperson for Magic Leap would not confirm that the round had been completed.
To date, the most remarkable public details to emerge regarding the Plantation, Florida augmented reality startup have been the substantial cash they’ve raised and the noteworthy names that are backing them. This round withstanding, the company has publicly announced nearly $1.4 billion in funding coming from high-profile investors that include Google, Alibaba and Andreessen Horowitz.
This substantial amount of funding has placed Magic Leap firmly in the public eye, but the only official hints of the startup’s consumer product strategy have emerged from dated patent filings and cryptic remarks by the company’s leadership referring to the launch of a device it seems to be tentatively calling “Magic Leap One.”
A report last month in Bloomberg suggested that the AR startup may be readying itself to begin shipment of the device to a “small group of users” in the next six months at a price that could be as much as $2,000. In the past few weeks, the company has begun a new marketing push that has included a branding revamp with a new logo, new website and a new promo video which promises that “the whole story is coming soon.”It is a great time to be a science fiction fan.
With Doctor Who, Star Trek, and Star Wars all enjoying resurgences in popularity, with video games like Halo, movies like Interstellar, and even the movie adaptations of Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy, the prospects for science fiction have never seemed brighter.
So, why, then, is it such a horrible time to be a reader of science fiction?
According to Publisher’s Weekly, science fiction books are having a major sales problem–down seven percent in 2014, after a drop of 21% in 2013. Fewer and fewer people are reading it, despite the explosion of science fiction everywhere else. Taflak Lysandra L. Neil Smith Check Amazon for Pricing.
Why is science fiction–as a book genre–dying, while simultaneously conquering Hollywood, television, and video games?
Over the last twenty or thirty years, the science fiction publishing industry has changed. Now, all of the major publishers, save one, take the political viewpoints of writers into account before publishing their works. And if that writer happens to be libertarian, or conservative, or holds any views that don’t mesh neatly with the left-wing attitudes of the editors and publishers, then the only publisher willing to read their material is Baen. Political correctness has become the key to science fiction, so excellent writers who don’t fit the mold are almost completely excluded from publishing and awards.
Larry Correia describes how he came to learn this:
You know what I found? WorldCon voters angry that a right-wing Republican (actually I’m a libertarian) who owned a gun store (gasp) was nominated for the prestigious Campbell. This is terrible. Did you know he did lobbying for gun rights! It’s right there on his hateful blog of hatey hate hate! He’s awful. He’s a bad person. He’s a Mormon! What! Another damned Mormon! Oh no, there are two Mormons up for the Campbell? I bet Larry Correia hates women and gays. He’s probably a racist too. Did you know he’s part of the evil military industrial complex? What a jerk. Meanwhile, I’m like, but did they like my books? No. Hardly any of them had actually read my books yet. Many were proud to brag about how they wouldn’t read my books, because badthink, and you shouldn’t have to read books that you know are going to make you angry. Vortex Travelers: S |
Conference Center
02 (M) – Mezzanine Level, The Peabody Grand Ballroom, Venetian Room, Continental Ballroom, Louis XVI Room, Forest Room, Hernando DeSoto Room, The Tennessee Exhibit Hall, The Peabody Memorabilia Room, Francis Scott Key Piano, Hotel Kitchens, Banquet Offices
01 (L) – The Grand Lobby, Chez Philippe, Cappriccio Grill, The Lobby Bar, Lansky Brothers, The Corner Bar, Peabody Deli and Desserts, The Grand Galleria of Shops, Guest Registration, Valet, Concierge, Bell Stand
LL – Lower Level (Basement), Administrative Offices, Feather's Day Spa and Salon, Peabody Athletic Club, Shoeshine Parlor, Hotel Pool
At one time Northwest Airlines had a ticket office in the Peabody Hotel Arcade.[15]It's all about the journey
In the Mass Effect trilogy, Commander Shepard was already a hero. No matter which origin story players chose for their Shep, male or female, the commander had already demonstrated bravery, resourcefulness and, above all, the ability to lead.
Walters, referencing the trailer shown, had one big thing to point out: a younger cast of characters seen on-screen. Where players pick up Mass Effect as "a hero who then became a legend," Walters said, Andromeda focuses on characters who are far greener.
The details of Mass Effect: Andromeda, the next entry in BioWare's ambitious, space opera-esque series, have largely remained obscure. It's not "Mass Effect 4," but it is a game that builds on the concepts established by the trilogy: exploration, exotic worlds and relationships. The developer's most telling look at the game so far arrived at Electronic Arts' E3 press conference.
Strangers in a strange land
"We've probably all experienced at one point in time where we kind of felt like a fish out of water," Walters said.
In the Mass Effect universe, that concept is pushed to the nth degree. Mass Effect: Andromeda is no exception. You're not just an unfamiliar face; you're an entirely different race in a totally new place. Walters calls the game the story of a stranger in a strange land.
"People are kind of looking at you and going, 'Well, who are you and what are you doing here?'" he said. "This isn't your home. The only way that works is if we really make that an integral part of the story, and the story of the characters that you meet when you're there."
Over the course of our interview, there are a few ideas at play that Walters mentions: stranger in a strange land, "I am the alien," becoming a hero. These ideas date back to the earliest days of the project, he said, when BioWare was thinking about how to pursue a "hero's journey" kind of tale.
"we look to the stars as humans. It's something that's kind of in us"
"It would be very easy for us to go in and, you know, be the typical space marine who goes in and doesn't really recognize the impact that they're having on everything that's happening there," he said.
"What we want is someone who — I mean, it is a third-person shooter. What we don't want is someone who is like, 'What's a gun? I don't know what a gun is.' It's very important to us that, you know, you come ready for whatever's there, but to me it's more about, well, what experiences have they had up to that point. Has it just been training, have they actually had any live action, and most of the things we'll start talking about during the fall as well. You can imagine the difference between that and Commander Shepard."
This is something BioWare struggled with a lot on the original trilogy, Walters said — that you'd expect Shepard to know so much, and yet somehow players must be on-boarded into the universe and its workings as well.
Departures and delays BioWare has seen several departures in the last few months, including Mass Effect Andromeda's lead writer, Chris Schlerf. The Halo 4 writer announced in February that he would leave BioWare to go work at Destiny developer Bungie. When asked about the impact of Schlerf's and other departures, Walters said Andromeda's story was already "pretty much set." "That's why a really strong vision on a project is probably one of the most important things," he said. "A lot of other elements can change on a project, who's involved, timelines, all that kind of thing. If you have a strong vision, then everybody's at least got that sort of guiding light that they can move toward... Chris is a phenomenal writer, a person who we loved a lot of the stuff that he did, and even what he has injected into the team, a lot of that is gonna carry forward." He added that Schlerf's leaving did not contribute to the game's recent delays. "It didn't have anything to do with the delays or anything like that. People coming and going always affects your day-to-day, but it doesn't always affect your project.
"We're freeing ourselves up with in this game," he said. "It's new to the protagonist in the story as well, so you get to experience it with them, ask all the questions that they're probably asking as well and kind of go on that journey together."
This is true of characters within the game as well. Walters spoke briefly about how the team considered the kind of journey Andromeda's hero would experience with his or her fellows as well, and how they might form a bond.
"Think about it: alone in another galaxy," he said. "You don't necessarily have all the supports available to you that, say, Commander Shepard would have. How do they deal with those scenarios? For me, the most interesting thing about writing any character is not about trying to come up with some interesting hook for that character, but rather it's more about putting them in interesting circumstances and then seeing how they react to it. What could be more interesting than a brand new galaxy to explore with who knows what you could find with every planet?"
When asked if it's a more personal story than Shepard's journey, Walters concedes that's a fair observation. The team leaned into the more personal aspect, he said, but it's still Mass Effect. You can still expect the grand-scale of space and a driving sense of "there's something else out there."
Walters is still tight-lipped on the plot beats of Andromeda, dropping no more than hints about the state of Mass Effect's universe in a post-Shepard era. They point to fall for further announcements, when they'll have more to share on gameplay and the conflict at the heart of Andromeda.
"We're not getting into specifics right now, but you can imagine how long it would take to — even with the best technology, travel to a new galaxy — so you can imagine this is taking place quite a distance in the future," Walters said. "But there are strong ties to the original trilogy that players will recognize. "
Walters compares the original trilogy to a sort of foundational background; it's established the game's species and the general concepts and technology of the Mass Effect universe. That means new players can jump into this game with no previous knowledge of Shepard or the reapers.
"We'll be re-explaining [the series' technology and concepts] in this game, but other than that, this is very much a standalone game that then takes place in a completely new galaxy," he said.
The human lens
BioWare
In the original Mass Effect trilogy, Shepard was a central hero around which everything was built. The character appeared almost exclusively as the same guy in trailers and ads until Mass Effect 3, when BioWare let players choose a default "FemShep" to represent the game. It was an intentional choice that is perhaps a thing of the past, Walters said.
"When we started the Mass Effect trilogy, there was this idea of it being very cinematic and movie-like," he said. "So having a singular, titular hero that people recognized, and they had the same name and the same gender and everything like that, the same look — that was important at the time.
"I think that's something we've moved away from, and we want to embrace choice and diversity with what you can do in the game. I think you can expect to see more of that in the game as we go forward. It's less about saying, here is a named character who you will play, and more this is the role that you can play and this is the way you can play it in."
One thing staying the same: Players will still control a human hero. According to Walters, Mass Effect has always been a very human-centric story. It gives the players a foothold in the game's expansive lore, something they can relate back to.
"The first game was very much about humanity coming on the scene, and then finding themselves the underdog," he said. "I think that's always been just core to the story that we're trying to tell — seeing all of this through human eyes. Ultimately we're all humans. That's the story that we're going to relate to and understand the most. It's part of the franchise, part of the IP.
"When you look for something we can all understand — you look at, even today, there's this huge desire for people to talk about or learn about exploration, whether it's talking about going to colonize Mars, we look to the stars as humans. It's something that's kind of in us. We want to travel there. Being able to recapture that from a human perspective is ultimately the best way to sort of tell that story."
Andromeda's hero is largely still a mystery. Since the game's reveal, BioWare has dropped a few hints about the character: the deliberate use of Johnny Cash's "Ghost Riders in the Sky," and a fan-spotted dog tag (among other hints). Producer Mike Gamble confirmed that Andromeda's hero will go by the the handle "Ryder" — further confirming that the character we see waking up near the trailer's end is, in fact, the game's lead.Happy 2013!
This year opens with an exciting new project I’ve planned for my website: Each month, I will be posting a new interview with a studio potter.
First up is Jeff Campana. Jeff and I were fellow graduate students at Indiana University. He is an amazingly talented potter living and working in Helena, MT. To the left is a photo of Jeff re-constructing one of his pieces.
Before I begin the interview, I wanted to share a “small world” story about Jeff’s work: A few years ago, I toured the Homer Laughlin China Company (famously known as the Fiesta-ware Factory) in the northern panhandle of West Virginia with students from West Virginia University. When we entered the design studio, I noticed that there was only one poster hanging on the wall in the main design room: a poster of Jeff Campana’s works. I recently returned to HLCC with a group of students from BGSU, and Jeff’s poster was still the only one there. When I asked the art director why he only had Jeff’s poster on the wall, he said that not only did he admire Jeff’s work, but the poster was the most well designed poster he’d seen of an artist’s collective works. So, if you find yourself in Newell, WV, stop by the Homer Laughlin China Company and ask to visit the design studio.
For more information about Jeff and his work, please visit his fresh new website: jeffcampana.com. If you’d like to view available work, stop by his etsy shop: CampanaCeramics.
Hope you enjoy the interview!
How did you first get involved in ceramics?
I took a class my Sophomore year of High School. I pretty much knew right away that ceramics would always be a major interest of mine for the rest of my life. It just felt immediately like I was supposed to be a potter.
Can you briefly describe your background and education?
I chose my undergrad school based on the ceramics program. At the time, the University of Wisconsin Whitewater was by far my favorite ceramics program, so I went there. I took my time, spending 6 years there. I was a good student, but didn’t feel ready to move on to the next phase, so I just stayed and dedicated a lot of time to ceramics. After a year of trying to work independently, I got into grad school at Indiana University.
As a fellow classmate in graduate school, I wonder how you feel that your formal education prepared you for your career in ceramics? Is there anything you wish you had known before leaving school?
Very little about the art education system, with only a couple of exceptions that I know of, is based on preparing students to be professional artists. I was never taught anything about what is really involved in making a living from the making of art. All academia concerns itself with as an institution is artist statements, defending one’s work, theses, resume lines, etc. Things that could get you a job teaching ceramics.
Too bad none of that stuff really matters when you are out there making work and selling it to people. People who buy art largely don’t care about artist statements and all that stuff. They are more concerned with whether they feel the need to own a piece, and to a lesser degree, some collectors care about whether the artist seems like someone that will continue to grow and remain a known artist. The way you do this is not by writing fancy statements, but by continuously making work and selling it to people.
When I left grad school, I thought, as many do, that I would teach for a living. I wish I knew what an underpaid, under-appreciated, overworked, nomadic shitstorm that would be before I decided to go that route. It’s so much better for me to just make work all day. Thankfully I figured it out before it was too late. The actual people I worked with and for were all wonderful, but institutionally, early stages of a teaching careers are a very bad deal for the instructors. You need 3-5 years of adjunct/junior faculty experience before anyone will seriously consider you for a tenure track position in today’s market. If you are not familiar with what adjuncting really is, take a look at http://www.adjunctproject.com
How would you describe your work? How did you arrive at working this way?
My work is functional pottery that has been deconstructed and reconstructed in such a way that the seams of rejoining create beautiful decoration to the interior and exterior. When the glaze runs and pools, it emphasizes the tectonic structure and gives the seams incredible depth. It appears merely decorative, but at the same time there’s hidden connotations. The way it was made is an intriguing enigma to most. Also, there’s the fact that it was made more beautiful by being destroyed and rebuilt. Although they are cheerfully colored and shiny and bright, they sprouted up from a very dark place. They are as much about destruction as they are about nourishment and beauty. When I work, I feel like I’m part chemist, part craftsman, part designer, part engineer, and part inventor. I really like a good challenge, so I enjoy making things that are seemingly impossible. There is no end to the problem solving.
Would you explain your attraction for functional ceramics?
Like all potters I enjoy that people out there use my work daily. At this point there must be 2000+ pieces out there in about 10 different countries. I like thinking about how these objects I made are impacting the lives of all sorts of people. Occasionally, I get emails from people who dropped a mug and urgently need a replacement. This is verification that what I do matters to other people. The main reason I make pots, though, is that I simply like solving the problems that utility provides me.
What is the inspiration for your pieces? How do you come up with new ideas? Can you walk us through your creative process when coming up with new forms/ideas?
Inspiration usually comes from process for me. I like refinement and see that as a legitimate creative endeavor. So a lot of my growth is just trying to make better versions of what I have already made. I look at my work and figure out ways to make it better. Every once in a while, I decide to make something truly new. New forms take years to develop, as there are so many things to figure out. I sketch a bit, and then I throw “sketch pots” that I don’t intend to keep. They are rough, and rarely make it past greenware. I make physical sketches because I need to work out the how of the cutting. I need to know the lines in 3 dimensions. I have such a busy production schedule these days that I only get to squeeze these in occasionally. Once a form has been worked out, sometimes I need to make generations of them before they get good enough to release to the public. That’s where dinner plates are right now. Everything’s figured out, now I need practice.
I know you moved around a lot post graduate-school. How have these experiences after school prepared you for where you are now? Could you describe some of the most influential or career changing experiences you’ve had since you’ve left school?
I was well on my way to a career teaching at University. I adjuncted at the University of Louisville, Indiana University Southeast, both in the Louisville area, for a couple years, then moved to Helena for a summer residency at the Bray. I then got a full time technician gig at Bennington College in Vermont. After exactly one school year, I moved back to Helena to be a long term resident at the Bray. These experiences did teach me a lot. Learning to speak about what you do in completely basic layman’s terms actually clarifies what you do to yourself. I had the opportunity to meet a lot of wonderful colleagues, coworkers, and students. People who are lifelong friends now. It was very, very hard though, and most of that time was spent desperately poor and quite lonely. Nomadism can be fun, but for an introvert like me, it meant I was alone most of the time. Basically, what I got out of the whole experience is the sense that if I got through all that, I can endure anything. Toughness.
Was there a point in your career that you made a decision to sell your pots for a living? Could you describe how you came to that decision?
I had finally gotten a tenure-track Assistant Professor job offer, something I had been working toward for years. At the same time, I had been invited to be a long term resident at the Bray, something I had always dreamed of doing. I knew if I took the job, I might never get a chance to go to the Bray. That decision changed the direction of my career. I used my first year here to figure out whether I could make a living purely from my pots or not, and it turned out that I can. My plans now are to establish my own studio, in Helena, and try to make a go of it. It’s not that teaching is unpleasant, it’s that making a living by making art is just so awesome.
How have your experiences so far been different or similar to your expectations when you set out?
Happily, I can say that things are working out better than I had imagined. I remember in grad school, everything seemed so hopeless. I got a couple lucky breaks right out of the gate and then was able to capitalize on them, and make things happen. I never anticipated enjoying the business/marketing side of being an artist, but ended up loving it.
What does a typical workday look like for you? How much do you spend on marketing vs. making?
I wake up whenever I’m done sleeping (which is awesome), and immediately start on the stuff I call homework. My two bedroom apartment is basically a shipping center, warehouse, photo studio, and office – with a bed in the corner. So while coffee is brewing, I’m already going on this sort of stuff – packing Etsy sales, packing shows, photographing work, emailing people, facebook promotion, ordering supplies, if it’s nice out, go for a hike, etc. I usually cut myself off at noon, which is about 4 hours or so after I wake up, and go in to the studio. I like to work 8 hours in the studio at most. When in there, I am able to spend my time on whatever part of the process, but I try to stay very efficient and in my own world, with my giant cordless headphones and some Rdio. After that, maybe go out for a drink with friends, maybe come home and kick back. I work for 5-6 weeks in a row, no days off, and then when a cycle finishes, I try to get out of town for a week or so, but at least take 5 days off if I have no travel plans. It’s important to take breaks and avoid burning out. I am always trying to figure out how to get the same amount done in less time. I would love to trim it down to 50 hours a week.
How does an artist go about acquiring business and marketing skills? What piece of advice would you give to others just starting out?
Well, since nobody is going to teach them that in school, working artists are left to acquire business savvy the same way they learn anything else. Trial and error, persistence, critical thinking, careful deliberation, spontaneous curiosity fulfillment, falling on their ass and getting right back up, exploiting anything that works, abandoning anything that doesn’t. Fearlessness.
For marketing, my best piece of advice is to approach it with creativity, treat it the same way you treat making work. I think of marketing, everything from how I shoot the work to webpage updates to writing copy on Etsy as part of the process. A piece is finished for me when someone else owns it. Until then, it is in progress. Come up with things that work for you, not necessarily by the book. We live in exciting times, where you can invent your own brand identity and market it easily, and without even the help of galleries, amass a global following. Because I am willing to ship internationally and have a strong internet presence, I sell work all over the world.
What is your relationship with galleries (on and offline)? How has that relationship changed over time?
Galleries end up being very important, but some are effective and some aren’t. Some gallery affiliations just don’t work out, and when that happens, I’m not afraid to pull out of it and put my work somewhere else. I have some wonderful galleries that I know are out there working on my behalf, and I have come to know the managers or owners. They give the very best business advice if you pick their brain. I always respect my gallery relationships by not undercutting them. If I sell a piece directly to someone and get 100% of that money, it still costs the same to the customer as it would if they bought it at the gallery where I get 50%. If someone commissions something as a result of a gallery experience, you have to let the gallery know and give them a cut. I have had 5 galleries go out of business so far, so it’s not like they are getting rich off the exploitation of artists as many seem to think. They have to pay people to work there, pay the gas bill, pay a mortgage and whatnot, all for the purpose of allowing people to experience new art in person before they buy. That is a valuable service they provide to both the artist and the customer. They earn that cut.
You have had an Etsy site for quite a few years now. How has your experience on Etsy helped your career? What percentage of your income comes from Etsy sales vs. retail galleries?
I love Etsy. It has a great community, and sales are pretty good on there for me. Maybe ¼ of my income comes from Etsy sales. My favorite thing about it is the access to the customers. I might have regular customers at galleries, but never know it. With galleries it is boxes of pots that get shipped out, and paychecks that arrive in the mail. With Etsy, customers are in contact with me. I know where the pots go, and I get feedback. The whole transaction has much more meaning to me, and hopefully to the customer as well.
Finally, what advice can you give aspiring artists struggling to find their own voice/style?
One great quote our old professor Tim Mather always said on this subject was “The best way to ensure you never find your aesthetic is to go looking for it”. I think it’s just a matter of forgetting what anyone else thinks for a while. Indulge your own quirky stupid curiosities, and keep an open mind about what you see in the results. Once you have something that thrills you, just make make make make make make make make make make make make make make make make make make make make make make make make make make make make make make make make make make make make make make make make. It’s really that easy. If you get bored, try something new. It takes a lot of making to truly figure something out. Make so many things that your studio feels like it’s bursting at the seams. As the craftsmanship improves over time, so will the clarity of meaning and intention. Choices are made all the time. The choices you make mean something, even if you don’t know what at the time. Schools teach this backwards, I think. Most importantly, have fun with it.
Again, for more information about Jeff and his work, please visit his fresh new website: jeffcampana.com. If you’d like to view available work, stop by his etsy shop: CampanaCeramics.
AdvertisementsPracticing your guitar doesn’t have to take all day. And it doesn’t have to be complicated. Remember there is a big difference between practice and playing. We Practice so we can Play Better!! Here's how to make your guitar practice time work for you :
Break your practice time up into thirds. Even if you only have 15 minutes to spend on your instrument, 5 minutes of practicing each section correctly will yield great results.
Warm Up!
Just like an athlete, you are using muscles over and over so it's a great idea to warm them up. I know, younger players will say they don't need to. Let me tell you, after playing guitar for 20 plus years, warming up will make all the difference in the world. Best way I've found: chords. For beginners, just take two chords that you know and switch between them for say 20-30 repetitions. Switch chords and repeat. More advanced players use Barre Chords, or drop some music theory in the mix and switch chords using the circle of 5ths.
Scales!
There's no denying that at some point you will be using scales in your playing. Again, repetition is the key to learning. Pick any scale and practice it in every key. Whether it's the tried and true Minor Pentatonic or a more advanced Harmonic Minor, play them in every key! Play them low on the neck where the frets are wider. Play them higher where the frets are smaller. Mixing them up gets your fingers and muscles more comfortable all over the neck. Pro tip: If you want to play fast, you have to practice slow.
Jam!
Yes, the part of practice that everyone loves. During the first two parts of practice your focus was on Great Sounding Chords and Scales. You were paying attention to finger placement on the neck. Your chords were sounding out clearly with no muted notes and no buzzing. Your scales were smooth and fluent. Now that you put all that effort into working on your technique, let's hear what you can do. Start jamming to your favorite songs. There are plenty of backing tracks out there on YouTube and other sites that will allow you to play along with a full band with the guitars removed.
Consistency is the key. Play every day! Remember that even 10 minutes a day is better than putting in an hour once a week. If you can, get a guitar stand and keep the guitar out of it's case. You're more inclined to pick it up and play if you can see it. (This works great for the office too.) Nothing can the relieve stress of a job like closing the door for 10 minutes and playing guitar.
One more thing when it comes to finding time to practice: If you really want to do something, you'll find a way. If not, you'll find an excuse! It's not hard to find 15 minutes in your day, especially when the outcome is a lifetime of enjoyment!
Matt Brechbiel has been teaching students of all ages and levels to play the guitar for over 20 years.
Book a online guitar lesson with him
or visit him at
mattbmusic.com
.news Two Federal Coalition Members of Parliament have flagged their intention to conduct a door-knocking campaign in their Queensland electorates to garner support for a petition which would support faster high-speed broadband being rolled out to their regions; effectively, a petition in support of the Coalition’s fibre to the node rival NBN plan.
The two MPs, Peter Dutton and Seath Holswich, represent the Dickson and Pine Rivers electorates to the north of Brisbane in Queensland (Dickson contains part of Brisbane). The pair issued a joint statement in late January noting that they were dissatisfied with the rollout of Labor’s National Broadband Network project in their electorates and wanted to campaign for faster change.
In their statement, the pair pointed out that currently, businesses in the communities of Brendale and Strathpine were not scheduled to receive the National Broadband Network in the next 3-5 years.
“The rollout is taking too long and costing too much, and is not prioritising the areas with the worst broadband today” Dutton said. Mr Holswich added that he had met with business owners who had to invest in a deal with a telecommunications company, which cost them $15,000 to have a fibre run down their street. On top of that they are paying $1000 a month in line rental.
“This is not an affordable cost for small business owners in Pine Rivers and that is why Peter and I felt something had to be done,” he said. Dutton stated that the Coalition was committed to upgrading broadband sooner, cheaper and more affordably for consumers. “It will see existing infrastructure used where possible and use a mix of technologies to help benefit all users” Dutton said.
Holswich and Dutton said they planned to doorknock surrounding businesses and residential homes to gather signatures and Dutton would subsequently present the petition to the Federal Parliament later this year.
The pair are accurate in their claims that the adjoining Brendale and Strathpine areas are not slated to receive the NBN in the next three years under NBN Co’s existing rollout plan. However, it appears that Holswich and Dutton have been quite selective in choosing areas to criticise regarding the NBN rollout, as is evident from the map of the region above.
For example, directly to the south-east of Brendale, there is an extensive NBN rollout zone ranging from Bridgeman Downs to Carseldine almost to Geebung, where construction of the NBN’s fibre has already commenced, and there is another area to the right in Nudgee, Banyo and around the Eagle Farm Racecourse where construction has already commenced. There are other areas around that geography which are slated to receive the NBN’s fibre within the next one to three years.
It’s a similar situation to the north of Strathpine, where construction has already commenced around Petrie and construction is slated to start within one year on either side.
In addition, it’s not clear that Dutton and Holswich’s claims that the Coalition would roll out high-speed broadband to the regions mentioned are accurate. Currently, the Coalition has committed to a fibre to the node-style rollout, as opposed to the more comprehensive fibre to the premise-style rollout which constitutes the current Labor NBN project. However, the Coalition has also committed to requesting the Productivity Commission to undertake an extensive cost/benefit analysis into Australia’s broadband needs following the upcoming Federal Election, which could delay any infrastructure rollout by a period expected to be up to six months.
In addition, the Coalition will also need to rework NBN Co’s extensive contract with Telstra, which took more than a year to negotiate initially, and it will also need to sign contracts with construction companies and network equipment vendors for its fibre to the node rollout to proceed; a process which has occupied much of the first several years of NBN Co’s history after it was set up in mid-2009.
Dutton’s comments last month are not the first time the Liberal MP has attacked Labor’s National Broadband Network project. In March 2011, for example, Dutton issued a joint media release with Shadow Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull denouncing the NBN, following a local forum held by Dutton in Samford.
“There is no evidence whatsoever that the massive increase in speeds delivered by fibre-the-home will deliver any extra value or benefit to Australian households. Labor’s NBN is the least cost effective policy,” said Turnbull at the time in the joint media release. “The only thing that can be said for sure is that a national fibre to the home network, overbuilding and decommissioning our entire national fixed line customer access network, is by far the most expensive solution imaginable.”
Dutton and Holswich are also not the only Coalition MPs from seats in the Brisbane area who has recently criticised the NBN. In April 2012, for example, Turnbull also issued a similar joint media release with the Member for Bowman, Andrew Laming. At the time, the pair claimed that the NBN rollout in Brisbane “almost entirely” targeted safe Labor seats in the city, despite analysis having consistently shown no political bias in the NBN rollout and NBN Co itself strongly denying any such bias. At the time, Laming engaged in a war on words with a number of online commentators on Twitter with respect to the NBN project (see also Michael Wyres’ post on the subject here).
opinion/analysis
To be honest, I find it quite amusing that Coalition MPs have flagged plans to door-knock their electorates regarding the NBN issue. I suspect it will quite a fruitless exercise in general.
The first reason why I believe this is that the NBN has remained an overwhelmingly popular policy over the past few years. I believe frustration over the Howard Government’s anemic broadband policy was a minor factor in the 2007 Federal Election, and in the 2010 Federal Election internal Liberal Party analysis showed the Coalition’s poor broadband policy at that point was a substantial factor in the party not winning seats in key electorates in areas such as Tasmania. Since that time, independent polling has shown the NBN continues to enjoy enduring popularity as a policy.
When you couple this with the fact that the Coalition hasn’t yet released a hard communications policy to stack up against the Government’s firm NBN vision, and the fact that fibre to the node as a concept is a lot harder to explain than the “fibre everywhere” vision that Labor’s NBN project represents, you have to wonder whether Dutton and Holswich will have a hard time selling their message in their electorates.
I imagine that their efforts may actually stimulate some Queenslanders to become better informed about the NBN debate in general; and informally, history shows that when people become better informed about the NBN, they tend to support it. Queenslanders are a smart bunch and I expect they, like most of Australia, will continue to broadly support the NBN project.
Expect to see more of this kind of behaviour from Coalition MPs as the Federal Election in September gets closer, especially from junior MPs connected with Turnbull.
Image credit: NBN Co, Office of Peter DuttonSpread the love
Danby, New York – A SWAT team in New York entirely demolished a family’s home last week in order to arrest a DUI suspect.
The aftermath of the raid looked more like the devastation caused by a tornado or earthquake, and the police have made no mention of the destruction in their reports.
During the standoff, the suspect shot and killed himself to avoid going to jail, but now his family is left homeless, and there is very little chance that the police who participated in the raid will help in any way.
According to The Ithaca Journal, 36-year-old David M. Cady Jr. had recently missed court dates relating to a DUI arrest, and a warrant was issued for his arrest. At around 7 p.m. on December 30th, police arrived at Cady’s house to serve a warrant, but he refused to leave his home because he was afraid of going to jail. Cady’s wife, Melissa, and their two son’s were also in the house at the time of the raid.
Police then pulled hundreds of officers from at least 18 different local police departments and staged a 3 day siege of the family’s home.
The Tompkins County Sheriff’s Department made a statement which glossed over the destruction of the home, saying only that they “breached the outside area of the house.”
In the statement, they said:
“Eventually, law enforcement knew and anticipated needing to enter the residence, in order to take the subject into custody. Based upon the information being developed through interviews and practices used by other agencies in the past, it became necessary to breech part of the outside area of the house to ensure the safety of all involved.”
The police have also said that they had to handle the situation the way they did because Cady was a gun owner.
Whether or not you agree with Cady’s decision to hide from police on his property, the police had no right to demolish his home and leave his family homeless.
“She really has lost all the stability in her life in one fell swoop, so she will have to go through quite a period of readjustment. It’s pretty traumatic — this is awful stuff we’re dealing with,” Danby Federated Church pastor Ed Enstine told The Ithaca Voice.
“She’s basically lived her own life and worked and doesn’t take handouts very easily, but in this case she’s basically back to square 1 … square 0, at this point. We’re all just trying to figure out how to do something,” Enstine added.
See the destruction in the video below:
John Vibes is an author, researcher and investigative journalist who takes a special interest in the counter culture and the drug war. In addition to his writing and activist work he is also the owner of a successful music promotion company. In 2013, he became one of the organizers of the Free Your Mind Conference, which features top caliber speakers and whistle-blowers from all over the world. You can contact him and stay connected to his work at his Facebook page. You can find his 65 chapter Book entitled “Alchemy of the Timeless Renaissance” at bookpatch.com.General Secretary of the Communist Party of China and paramount leader of China
Xi Jinping (;[2][3] Chinese: 习近平; Mandarin pronunciation: [ɕi� |
and remove links without using the browser, and the functionality is also available in the bottom toolbar as "+" and "-" buttons.
There's a decent selection of keyboard shortcuts to navigate between previous and next items, archive, mark as favorite, and "open in browser" (links can be opened in the background by setting an option in the Preferences); you can't create new Instapaper folders from the app -- nor can you configure custom keyboard shortcuts for quickly moving items into one -- and there's a strange "Save" item from the File menu (I would guess a result from Xcode leftovers). Folders in the sidebar don't have an unread count badge (the Unread section does), but you can hide accounts like mailboxes in Mail. You can add accounts from the Preferences, and Pocket authentication uses the service's new API with OAuth 2.0.
ReadKit immediately stood out to me for its clean interface and simple interactions. The app is laid out like Mail: there's a list of services on the left; pieces of content are listed vertically in the middle; reading/watching videos/opening web views happens in the larger "content area" on the right. Articles are listed with their website favicon, bold headline, blue source link, and a brief excerpt; you can't right-click on an item in the Navigation view to bring up, for instance, a sharing menu. You also can't select multiple items at once. Text is downloaded using each server's stored copy and presented by default with a light theme (there are other three themes available in the Preferences) and the Optima font; you can tweak article width, line height, and alignment, but I was pretty happy with the default presentation.
In the article view, an "eye" icon in the bottom toolbar lets you toggle folders and navigation, something you can also do with keyboard shortcuts.
ReadKit feels inspired by Reeder in the way it puts search and "collapse sidebar" buttons in the middle panel. Unlike Reeder, though, you can't resize the sidebar to only icons for sections, so you'll always be forced to see the text labels. The top toolbar, containing buttons to expand the app in full-screen mode, share, star, archive, and a website favicon, is also reminiscent of Reeder, and like Pocket for Mac, ReadKit uses a popover for navigation if the folders aren't shown in the sidebar. ReadKit feels familiar, but I'm not sure about the use of favicons in the top toolbar (are they useful to give more context on the website you're reading if the article list isn't shown?) and the fact that you can't resize the sidebar down to simple icons (a trend I've become accustomed to).
I'm happy the developers decided to implement full-text search for the current folder, but I'd love to have match highlighting. Speaking of possible improvements, while I appreciate the native integration of Twitter and Facebook, I'd like to see more third-party services, such as Evernote, becoming available in the app.
My favorite little feature of ReadKit is search by field. You can click on the magnifying glass icon in the search field to search in All fields, or filter by Title, Content, URL, and, for Pocket, Tags. This is especially useful when I remember a specific title and permalink from an article I've read.
In spite of the improvements and feature ideas I've mentioned above, ReadKit is off to a solid start. It's got offline support, a clean interface (I'm a fan of "focus mode" in full-screen with no folders and navigation shown), and good support for Instapaper, Pocket, and Readability. The search feature is a great addition, and I'm looking forward to more third-party service integration for sharing, keyboard shortcuts, and fixes.
With Pocket having a great (and free) app available on the Mac, ReadKit is clearly aimed at Instapaper and Readability users looking for a desktop client, or people who use Instapaper for text and Pocket for everything else and who have been looking for a unified desktop experience. At $1.99 on the App Store, I recommend checking out ReadKit.Boasting, “The game just changed,” cloud giant Rackspace Hosting today announced it has bought SharePoint911.
Why? Think serious SharePoint cred with Microsoft SharePoint users, as Rackspace notes in its blog post about the acquisition:
SharePoint911 is a recognized thought-leader and authority in the SharePoint community and brings a technical powerhouse of SharePoint expertise ranging from architecture design, custom development, successful deployments and user adoption to Rackspace.
So what does Rackspace actually get in the box with SharePoint911?
Rackspace brags:
Its team of 16 industry experts, including six Microsoft MVPs (Most Valuable Professionals), is well-known and respected throughout the SharePoint community and sought out for training and global speaking engagements. Collectively, the team has authored more than 10 SharePoint books such as “Professional SharePoint 2010 Administration” and “Professional SharePoint 2010 Branding and User Interface Design” as well as nine SharePoint training courses.
There’s also some very practical and immediate value to Rackspace in the deal. Microsoft says it now has 125 million SharePoint users, and has experienced very rapid growth. This, in turn, has posed manage and control problems for enterprises. SharePoint 911 came to the rescue.
Rackspace says it is already one of the largest dedicated SharePoint providers. With the purchase, Rackspace will integrate SharePoint911’s consulting services into its services portfolio to better serve enterprise customers, the company said today.
Microsoft is aggressively marketing its cloud services, including SharePoint Online and also as part of Office 365. Rackspace buying SharePoint911 will “stand up” the SharePoint services and provide administration of them. “What SharePoint911 brings is the ability to help customers customize and build a whole solution around that,” Shane Young, President of SharePoint911, told GigaOm.
Melanie Posey, research vice president, hosting & managed network services at IDC said of the deal: “We believe that Rackspace has uniquely positioned itself above its competitors by adding the thought leadership and expertise of SharePoint911. Going forward, Rackspace can help to further accelerate adoption of SharePoint, one of the fastest growing applications in the business productivity segment.”
Have your say: Does this deal ultimately benefit Microsoft, or take away from its hosting prowess? Is it a game-changer?Bill Murray in the OED
When the Ghostbusters film was released in the mid-1980s it gave us many things: an earworm of a theme tune, an ideal group fancy dress costume, and a chance to appreciate Bill Murray’s wonderfully deadpan delivery of some classic lines. But who would have thought that one of these lines would have such an impact on the English language that it would earn itself an entry in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED)?
The line in question appeared in the script as: “Okay. That’s it! I’m gonna turn this guy into toast.” But thanks to some ad-libbing from Bill Murray – “This chick is toast” – it was instead the proleptic form which gained currency. The example quotations in the OED show that even two decades after the release of this cult film, this sense of toast lives on in the English language."It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it." - Oscar Wilde
This, I have to admit, is one of my favourite quotations, and by one of my favourite authors, too. All book readers know how sensitive -- even prickly -- we become about the books we read, or are seen reading.
I recall how defensive I once became over a book found on my bookshelf by a guest staying over at my place.
"It was given to me as a present, I didn't pick it," I found myself saying. It was a book about Napoleon, and it was given to me by one of my high school teachers who believed that Bonaparte's story would be an inspiration to me.
"It proves that you can do anything if you believe in yourself," were her words as she handed me the book. It was very sweet of her, but the truth is that it was the kind of book I would never have chosen myself.
I don't even remember now why I felt so defensive about it, but it probably had something to do with me not wanting to appear "geeky."
I was a teenager then: enough said.
I finally got around to reading the book last year on a train journey in Europe and it actually triggered conversation with some of the other passengers.
I began thinking about why we are so touchy about our books, and why we don't like people making judgments about us based on what we have on our bookshelves -- or even the ones we are seen browsing through at the book shop -- after something that happened in a bookstore in Abu Dhabi, UAE, the other day.
I was browsing the shelves when I "caught" a young Emirati man buying several romantic novels. I smiled and teased him about his books, and he blushed as he said: "No, no, I never read these. They are for my wife."
A likely story -- but I would have come up with something similar myself if I had just been caught with six romantic novels.
The reverse of being embarrassed by a book is that sense of connection you feel when you see a stranger reading one of your own favourites.
I am sure you have given the person a second look, or even started a conversation with them.
At the risk of sounding girly, I have to admit to having a particularly soft spot for Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Ten years on, my former classmates and I -- who have remained in touch despite living on different continents -- make references to the novel and even use some of its expressions in our daily lives.
Wherever I travel, I take my school copy and revisit the lines I underlined and the pages I marked. You can rediscover yourself through the books you collect.
I was reminded of how both a classmate and I preferred Mr. Wickham to Mr. Darcy.
But that "teenage crush" was due to the actor playing Wickham in the 1940 film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice.
We smuggled the tape into class and watched it during our lunch break through a TV and video player we wheeled in from a science lab nearby. (It was the age of chunky video tapes, which I actually miss.)
Light, witty and flamboyant, this version is different in some parts than that of the book, but it leaves you smiling and with a good cozy feeling inside.
It has major stars of the golden era of cinema, like Maureen O'Sullivan as Jane, Greer Garson as Elizabeth and Laurence Olivier as Mr. Darcy. Less known, but with a lasting impression on me, was Edward Montague Hussey Cooper as Mr Wickham.
"It is those eyes... just so intense. So dreamy," is what we would say.
Of course, it was in black and white, and so we couldn't tell if they were blue or green or whatever, but they were hypnotic.
Watch it and you will see what I mean. Totally worth re-discovering it. Edna May Oliver was hilarious as Lady Catherine de Bourgh.
What is interesting to remember is that to this day, in traditional marriage and conservative societies, men like Mr. Darcy are in high demand and are the "dream" husband.
The more 'proud' and snobby this eligible bachelor is, the more he is valued as "wow" classy and marriage material.
Hate to admit it, but what family one belongs to and last names are very important when searching for partners, especially in the East.
But I digress. Back to books.
There is something comforting about looking at bookshelves filled with volumes that you have read. And there is no feeling worse than when the shelves are full and you have to throw or donate some of the books out.
Perhaps it is because reading actually isn't a passive activity: you have to put a considerable amount of yourself into it -- you have to visualise the main characters, hear their voices, picture the scenes.
It's why seeing the film of the book is often disappointing; it can never be as vivid as your own imagination.
And once you've done all that, it's difficult to simply discard the book, or give it to someone else.
You want to keep it.
I saw Oprah talking about the"Kindle, the digital book launched by Amazon in 2007, which lets you download books via the internet.
I was horrified.
It might save paper and reduces the weight of carrying books, but there is nothing that can compare with an old book; the feel, the smell, and the markings left behind by its previous owners.
I found one of my father's school books, Tolstoy's classic War and Peace, and I cherish it for it is packed with scrawled comments made by a very much younger Mr Ghazal.
Books, in their various forms, are one of the oldest forms of both entertainment and education.
They have been through many evolutions over the centuries -- from scrolls, to handwritten, to printed, to paperbacks -- and I guess we'll get used to digital books in time, though I don't think they will ever compete with the musty, slightly yellowing volumes on my shelves.
A particular book I cherish is one I bought for a mere three riyals (1 dollar), that was smuggled into school by a friend of mine in her pink "My little Pony" lunch box.
I kept the book about a princess and her friend the lion safe until I reached home.
I gave up a Kit Kat chocolate bar for that book.
There is an old Arabic proverb that sums up my feelings totally: "He who lends a book is an idiot and He who returns the book is more of an idiot."
But perhaps, the essence of book reading culture is best captured by the words of one wise leader: "Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new after all." - Abraham LincolnUpdated: Twitter has shared numerous aspects of its infrastructure over the past few years, and its decision to open source its work on MySQL might be the social media platform’s most useful contribution yet. Sure, open source big data tools are valuable, but they’re not MySQL.
Used by millions of web developers, MySQL is hugely popular; it’s the “M” in the LAMP stack that still underpins many web applications. But it has its problems, among them scalability and performance under the pressure of high transaction rates. This is part of the reason that NoSQL databases came into existence and continue to flourish. So, for anyone concerned with making MySQL scale, being able to see and build upon what a site like Twitter did with the code should be a big deal.
Advertisement
It’s not like Twitter is alone in working on MySQL’s shortcoming or anything — companies such as Tokutek and ScaleBase are centered around this very premise, and Facebook has done some amazing things with the database — but Twitter’s willingness to open source its code is critical. No vendor licenses, no support contracts and no lock-in, just a tried and true MySQL fork from one of the world’ most successful web platforms.
As it turns out, however, Twitter’s move in open sourcing its core MySQL code comes after the company already open sourced various components that sit atop MySQL. In 2010, it open sourced Gizzard, a middleware component for creating distributed databases that can serve tens of thousands of queries per second, and FlockDB shortly thereafter.
Update: Someone alerted me that Facebook does have a site for sharing its MySQL patches, although it’s hosted at Launchpad. Earlier on Monday, commenters to a thread on the MySQL at Facebook page strongly urged Facebook to move its efforts to the far more popular Github, which is where Twitter hosts its code.Reports say HTC chairwoman Cher Wang personally filed a complaint to Taiwan's Investigation Bureau, which has since learned that Chien, Wu and Huang planned to set up a new design company (which is already registered under the Chinese name "Xiaoyu") aimed at the mainland Chinese market, and that they would resign after claiming their mid-year bonuses yesterday. The real beef HTC has here is that it apparently caught Chien secretly downloading files related to the upcoming Sense 6.0 UI design, and then shared them with external contacts via e-mail. The Investigation Bureau refused to comment on whether Sense 6.0 is related to the One Max due later this year.
The trio is also accused of making false commission fee claims for the One's aluminum chassis design. While the design was done in-house, the three men used an external design firm to invoice HTC for over US$334,000 worth of commission fee between May and July, and then they split the money between themselves.
We reached out to HTC for a statement on this matter, but the spokesperson didn't have much to provide at this moment:
"The matter is under investigation by relevant authorities. We therefore refrain from further comments."
Update: HTC now has a full statement:The mortgage crisis is far from over.
60 Minutes takes a new look at the state of the foreclosure crisis, interviewing homeowners, a regulator and so-called robo-signers, who approved thousands of foreclosure documents daily without reading them.
"It was just a matter of cutting corners," Sheila Bair, chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, tells CBS' Scott Pelley.
Home prices continue to fall, and record numbers of homeowners continue to lose their homes to foreclosure. Worse, the crucial documentation that should help organize this mess often makes matters more complicated, as homeowners and investors claim that banks botched or forged paperwork, raising concerns that many homeowners have been wrongfully kicked out of their homes.
Amid revelations that banks employed these "robo-signers," major mortgage companies temporarily halted foreclosures across the nation last fall, and all 50 state attorneys general joined together to probe the situation.
The Obama administration is working to reach an agreement with banks that would reduce mortgage payments for 3 million borrowers, in as few as six months, HuffPost's Shahien Nasiripour reported. But there is division among the federal agencies involved in the deal. It's unclear how much relief homeowners would win, or whether a deal would prevent banks from engaging in abusive practices in the future.
Home prices fell for the sixth straight month in January, according to the S&P Case-Shiller index. The number of existing home sales plummeted nearly 10 percent in February, according to the National Association of Realtors. About 6.9 million homeowners are either delinquent or in foreclosure proceedings through February, according to data provider Lender Processing Services.The WiiWare platform may not always be considered in a particularly glowing light, but it's undeniable that it did deliver some top-class download experiences. One of these was Swords & Soldiers from Ronimo Games, a side-scrolling real-time strategy title that made use of the Wii Remote pointer in an intuitive, natural way. Now Two Tribes is stepping in and publishing Swords & Soldiers HD on the Wii U eShop — having also produced an Android and iOS version — and we've taken on some battles to gauge the differences and whether an upgrade is worth your consideration.
The legacy of Two Tribes porting the title to smart devices is clear for all to see, in a positive sense, with the GamePad controls that are on offer. They're the primary area of distinction from WiiWare, as pointing is replaced with touch controls. As single and double taps are the primary inputs, there's much to be said for the precision offered by the stylus and resistive screen, which are ideal for the somewhat challenging levels that this title throws at you.
As you may recall from the WiiWare original, this real-time strategy approach places an emphasis of quick actions, with no direct control over units — your task is to find a right balance in using your money to invest and boost your available units and on-field assets. Mana, on the other hand, is a slowly replenishing source — which can be sped up through buying upgrades — used for magic or special abilities. You manage these aspects as your created units simply march to the right automatically, giving this a blend of genuine strategy and slightly frenzied action as you constantly replenish your army or unleash magic on the enemy. When in full flow it's as enjoyable a combination as it ever was.
The GamePad controls certainly cater to that desire for speed, and could be invaluable for those that found the campaign got too hot to handle on Wii. As before there are three tribes with separate campaigns — Vikings, Aztec and Chinese — and with the first down and the second underway we've found the going marginally easier this time around. It's all down to upgrades and purchases being a simple tap away, while moving left and right on the 2D battlefield is available with a swipe or flick on the right control stick. It's an excellent setup.
That said, playing on the GamePad has one downside — your eyes are glued to that smaller, lower resolution screen; it's big enough to control well, but that tablet-style option also means you can't enjoy the HD resolution boost of this version. It's a toss up, then, as Two Tribes has included Wii Remote pointer controls, as per the WiiWare original, to allow you to enjoy the spruced up visuals on the TV. The cartoon-like, caricatured units are still as full of verve as ever and look terrific — the visuals pop on a HD screen and stand up well to current-day standards. The downside of TV play is that the Wii Remote simply doesn't offer the speed and precision of touch, so it's down to individual players which option suits them best. For our money the GamePad is the way to go for the best performance.
Beyond the single player campaign there are unlockable challenges — one for each tribe — and a Skirmish mode, which allows you to customise aspects such as difficulty and map size for ad-hoc battles. Most notable is the return of local Multiplayer, which is a good example of how titles can be genuinely improved on Wii U beyond a superficial HD upgrade. As opposed to a split-screen each player now has a full screen each, with one using the GamePad touch screen and the other utilising the TV and pointer controls. It's a nice way for both players to have full viewpoints, and those interested in fairness will probably alternate between control schemes. If you beat your opponent with the GamePad and Wii Remote, you'll truly be the master of that battle.
Having played a dozen or so single player campaign levels and dabbled with the other modes, we're confident that this is a faithful and attractive port of the excellent original. It retains its appeal in the current day, as the simplicity of building resources and sending auto-moving soldiers forth is combined with a surprising degree of strategic depth. We're already noticing that same difficulty curve, and mindlessly spamming the wrong units or wasting resources does get punished. As we argued in our WiiWare review, there's more to this than may be obvious at first glance.
We're certainly positive about this one, on the way soon and likely at a thoroughly reasonable price. With Swords & Soldiers II currently in development this HD remake, with some GamePad bells and whistles included, could be an ideal warm-up for the future Wii U exclusive.A white TV reporter who voiced his opinions about black families and relations with police during a segment about a fatal police shooting said Tuesday he was suspended from his station and won't return.
Sean Bergin said he was suspended from News 12 New Jersey without pay on Monday and with pay on Tuesday. Bergin, a contracted employee, said the station told him that his assignments would be cut to one a week and he declined to remain in the position.
Bergin's report, which aired Sunday, featured the widow of a black man who police say shot a rookie Jersey City police officer to death and who was then killed by officers responding to the shooting. The widow, Angelique Campbell, told Bergin that Lawrence Campbell should have killed more officers, but she later apologized.
Bergin said in his report that the underlying cause of an anti-police mentality is young black men growing up without fathers.
"It's important to shine a light on this anti-cop mentality that has so contaminated America's inner cities," Bergin said after airing the widow's comments and showing a memorial for her husband. "The underlying cause of all of this, of course, young black men growing up without fathers."
The TV station said that the response to Bergin's report was being handled internally and that it doesn't comment on personnel matters.
"It is News 12's policy that reporters must be objective and not state personal opinions on-air," the station said in a statement Tuesday.
Bergin said that he added his commentary just before going on air because he had heard from police officers outraged that the station was airing the widow's comments.
"If I had it to do over again, I would do the exact same thing," Bergin said. "I broke the rules. I knew I was breaking the rules. But sometimes you have to break the rules to do the right thing."
He said that the issue of young black men without fathers deserves more media coverage.
The National Association of Black Journalists' president, Bob Butler, challenged Bergin's connection between young black men growing up without fathers and anti-police sentiments and said that Bergin went beyond the standards of a news reporter by inserting his views on the story.
"Are there problems in the inner city with kids without fathers? Yes. But does that make kids violent? No," Butler said. "There are a lot of kids without fathers who go to college, graduate and become upstanding citizens. He's talking about a social phenomenon where there's lack of opportunity in communities."
Bergin, 49, said that he has worked for News 12 as a freelance reporter for seven years, for six or seven days a week. He said he made about $1,300 a week working on stories in New Jersey and in New York's Long Island and Westchester County.
He said the station told him Tuesday that if wished to remain he would be limited to one story a week on Long Island for $300.Congressman Steve King (R) of Iowa has defended his position against the Employment Non Discrimination Act by saying that "If you don’t project it, if you don’t advertise it, how would anyone know to discriminate against you?" The entire segment about this can be seen in the video below. Essentially Representative King is saying that gays who "flaunt" it are bringing discrimination upon themselves, and that it's their fault. This philosophy breeds a closeted environment, and one in which only cisgender and "straight acting" individuals are safe at their workplace.
Congressman King has been no stranger to controversial remarks about the LGBT community and others. It was only a year ago that he warned that gay marriage will lead to socialism.
Congressman King can be contacted below:
1131 Longworth Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
Phone: 202.225.4426
E-contact form. TwitterOne way is through mind-body practices, like meditation, which “have been shown to cultivate positive and happy immune cells,” he says. Research has linked meditation to reduced negative inflammatory activity, increased positive antiviral response, improved function of specific strains of immune cells, and higher antibody production.
But perhaps the most striking theory posed of meditation is that it could alter genetic material.
In recent years, a new field of study, known as mind-body genomics, has emerged. Among the most well-known researchers in this area are Nobel laureate Elizabeth Blackburn, a biochemist at the University of California, San Francisco, and her colleague, psychiatrist Elissa Epel. Through a series of studies, the two found that meditation could affect the ends of DNA known as the telomeres, which act as protective caps for genes. The longer the telomere, the greater the protection conferred for the DNA strand, and the longer that cell can survive.
And telomeres, like immune cells, seem to respond to emotional cues. Negative external conditions like chronic stress that reduce eudaimonic happiness may shorten telomere length, while stress-reducing activities like meditation may help to maintain it. “Telomeres are affected by many things, but they are directly affected by stress. So we can see how improvements in our mental health, through the practice of meditation, might be linked to improvements in our telomeres,” Epel explains. “They offer us a window and some insight into how we are living, and help us appreciate how what we do today can affect our health tomorrow.”
As the field of mind-body genomics matures, the focus is moving towards gaining a better understanding of not only how DNA could be structurally changed by meditation, but also whether meditation can alter DNA functionally, through changes in how genes are expressed. In one recent study, for example, meditation was linked to enhanced expression of genes associated with insulin secretion, telomere structure, and cellular energy and function, and decreased expression of genes linked to inflammation and stress. What’s more, blood samples collected during the study found that experienced meditators showed changes in their genetic activity after just one meditation session.
With around 20,000 genes in the human genome, Cole, Epel, and other researchers have just scratched the surface of the connection between our emotional and biological selves. “We are an ever-changing conglomeration of cells very much influenced by our experience of the world around us,” Cole says. “At the rate we’re going, we have more data than we can make sense of. It’s this process that helps us get closer to understanding the black box. Who knows? Maybe in the future we may be able to sequence our own genes.” Epel agrees: “We don’t yet have the technology to monitor our telomeres, but it’s coming.”
In the meantime, though, the lessons of mind-body genomics still apply. “The experience you have today will influence the molecular composition of your body for the next 80 days, because that’s how long the average protein synthesized in your body today will hang around in the future,” Cole says. “So plan your day accordingly.”
This and other quotes of Cole's have been updated for clarity and accuracy.
We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to [email protected]’s that time again. You may remember my old overclocking post for Raspberry Pi and the Raspberry Pi 2. Yes, still obsessed with performance.This Raspberry Pi 3 Overclock post seeks to overclock the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B. Squeezing out some extra performance without compromising stability. It’s highly recommended that you use a capable power supply with 2.5 amps or better. I’d recommend the CanaKit 5V 2.5A Raspberry Pi 3 Power Supply. Now, on to the /boot/config.txt edits.
Raspberry Pi 3 – Before overclocking
The Linux kernel ondemand governor used in the Raspberry Pi will increase the CPU speed to the maximum configured default value whenever there’s adequate load. Therefore, you can reduce lag and improve performance by disabling this CPU scaling feature and forcing the board to always use the default maximums.
The default idle config for the Raspberry Pi 3 board is arm_freq=600 and core_freq=250. The arm_freq setting still adds heat to the board when pushed beyond the default max of 1.2Ghz, so we are not touching that. This simply keeps the Raspberry Pi 3 board running at max defaults which are arm_freq=1200 and core_freq=400. To do this simply set these line in your config.txt:
force_turbo=1 #Voids Warranty! boot_delay=1 #helps to avoid sdcard corruption when force_turbo is enabled.
This is less risky than playing around with a bunch of other overclock settings. See below.
More speed? Raspberry Pi 3 Overclock – 1.35GHz
arm_freq=1350 core_freq=500 over_voltage=4 disable_splash=1 #force_turbo=1 #Voids Warranty! (uncomment to avoid CPU scaling down to 600Mhz) #boot_delay=1 #helps to avoid sdcard corruption when force_turbo is enabled. #sdram_freq=500 #uncomment to test. Works only with some boards.
Raspberry Pi 3 gpu_mem (1GB memory) allocation
gpu_mem (GPU memory) is measured in megabytes and sets the memory split between the CPU and GPU; the CPU gets the remaining memory. Minimum value is 16. If you are for example using the Raspberry Pi 3 as a gaming emulator, media player or using a desktop environment (LXDE, XFCE, Maynard, etc) then you’ll want to increase gpu_mem to at least 256. On the other hand, if you are using the Raspberry Pi as a web server, to build a drone or simply a console-based project then you should lower gpu_mem to 16. In other words, if your needs are graphical increase GPU’s memory, if not, lower it to the minimum.
eg. Web server, wireless access point, firewall, weather station, etc
gpu_mem=16
or for GUI usage, eg. OpenELEC, Raspbmc, RetroPie, XFCE, etc.
gpu_mem=320
Raspberry Pi 3 Overclock options
arm_freq – Frequency of ARM in MHz. (Raspberry Pi 3 Overclock)
– Frequency of ARM in MHz. (Raspberry Pi 3 Overclock) core_freq -Frequency of GPU processor core in MHz. It has an impact on ARM performance since it drives L2 cache.
-Frequency of GPU processor core in MHz. It has an impact on ARM performance since it drives L2 cache. sdram_freq -Frequency of SDRAM in MHz.
-Frequency of SDRAM in MHz. over_voltage – ARM/GPU core voltage adjust. Values above 6 are only allowed when force_turbo or current_limit_override are specified (which set the warranty bit).
– ARM/GPU core voltage adjust. Values above 6 are only allowed when force_turbo or current_limit_override are specified (which set the warranty bit). force_turbo – Disables dynamic cpufreq driver and minimum settings below. Voids Warranty.
– Disables dynamic cpufreq driver and minimum settings below. Voids Warranty. initial_turbo -Enables turbo mode from boot for the given value in seconds (up to 60) or until cpufreq sets a frequency. Default 0
-Enables turbo mode from boot for the given value in seconds (up to 60) or until cpufreq sets a frequency. Default 0 arm_freq_min – Minimum value of arm_freq used for dynamic clocking.
– Minimum value of arm_freq used for dynamic clocking. core_freq_min – Minimum value of core_freq used for dynamic clocking.
– Minimum value of core_freq used for dynamic clocking. sdram_freq_min – Minimum value of sdram_freq used for dynamic clocking.
– Minimum value of sdram_freq used for dynamic clocking. temp_limit – Overheat protection. Sets clocks and voltages to default when the SoC reaches this Celsius value. Setting this higher than default voids warranty. Default 85
– Overheat protection. Sets clocks and voltages to default when the SoC reaches this Celsius value. Setting this higher than default voids warranty. Default 85 disable_splash – If set to 1, avoids the rainbow splash screen on boot.
– If set to 1, avoids the rainbow splash screen on boot. boot_delay – Wait for x number of seconds in start.elf before loading kernel. Default 1
– Wait for x number of seconds in start.elf before loading kernel. Default 1 gpu_mem – GPU memory in megabyte. Sets the memory split between the ARM and GPU. ARM gets the remaining memory.
Raspberry Pi 3 Model B specifications
A 1.2GHz 64-bit quad-core ARMv8 CPU
802.11n Wireless LAN
Bluetooth 4.1
Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE)
1GB RAM
4 USB ports
40 GPIO pins
Full HDMI port
Ethernet port
Combined 3.5mm audio jack and composite video
Camera interface (CSI)
Display interface (DSI)
Micro SD card slot (now push-pull rather than push-push)
VideoCore IV 3D graphics core
The Raspberry Pi 3 has an identical form factor to the previous Pi 2 (and Pi 1 Model B+) and has complete compatibility with Raspberry Pi 1 and 2.
I’d love to hear your Raspberry Pi 3 Overclock configs and what power supply amperage you are running.
Disclaimer: Be warned, as with most hardware and software modifications, individual results may vary.Saracens have named their side to face Worcester Warriors for Friday’ nights round five Aviva Premiership clash at Sixways Stadium, kick-off 19h45.
Calum Clark will make his first Premiership start for Saracens with the 28-year old back-rower packing down at openside flanker for Saracens trip to Sixways. Clark, takes his place alongside Jackson Wray (No8) and Maro Itoje (blindside flanker) in the Sarries back row as loose-forward trio of Schalk Burger (shoulder), Michael Rhodes (shoulder) and Billy Vunipola (knee) all ruled with injury.
At lock, Dominic Day will line-up alongside George Kruis whilst in the front-row, Hayden Thompson-Stringer starts alongside Schalk Brits and Vincent Koch.
At half-back, Ben Spencer continues at scrum-half, with Alex Lozowski rotating with Owen Farrell at fly-half. At centre, Brad Barritt returns to partner Duncan Taylor whilst in the back-three Chris Wyles comes in for the rested Liam Williams, with Sean Maitland (right-wing) and Alex Goode (full-back) also named to start.
Saracens team to face Worcester Warriors
15 Alex Goode (235)
14 Sean Maitland (24)
13 Duncan Taylor (105)
12 Brad Barritt (c) (198)
11 Chris Wyles (230)
10 Alex Lozowski (34)
9 Ben Spencer (104)
1 Hayden Thompson-Stringer (12)
2 Schalk Brits (208)
3 Vincent Koch (19)
4 Dominic Day (4)
5 George Kruis (138)
6 Maro Itoje (79)
7 Calum Clark (1)
8 Jackson Wray (177)
Replacements
16 Jamie George (175)
17 Mako Vunipola (123)
18 Juan Figallo (62)
19 Nick Isiekwe (10)
20 Ben Earl (4)
21 Richard Wigglesworth (189)
22 Owen Farrell (155)
23 Nick Tompkins (60)There are any number of provocative possibilities for a bipartisan ticket in 2008. Imagine the buzz if Republican John McCain and Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton committed to making the other vice president in the event that either won the election. Pick any combination of other names in the current field of potential candidates: Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Chuck Hagel; Democrat Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Republican Mitt Romney; Democrat John Edwards and Republican Michael Bloomberg; Democrat Bill Richardson and Republican Rudolph W. Giuliani. Any of these |
European Commissioner for Justice Věra Jourová | Olivier Hoslet/EPA EU’s Jourová wants funds linked to new prosecutor’s office European public prosecutor to be signed off by 20 governments.
If you want EU money, you'll have to submit to the jurisdiction of a new European public prosecutor — that's the message from European Commissioner for Justice Věra Jourová.
If the Czech commissioner gets her way, governments who refuse to sign up to the new pan-European law enforcement body charged with investigating and prosecuting cross-border VAT fraud won’t be eligible for EU cohesion funds, which are worth €63.4 billion between 2014 and 2020, in the next budget cycle that starts in 2021.
Justice ministers from 20 EU countries will on Thursday sign up to the new European Public Prosecutor's Office (EPPO), which was first proposed in 2000 but has been delayed by discussions about potential EU interference in national criminal justice systems.
"I will be a strong promoter of having EPPO as one of the pre-conditionalities for the future financial budget," Jourová said in an interview with a small group of reporters.
The Netherlands, Sweden, Malta, Hungary and Poland are not participating (the U.K., Ireland and Denmark have an automatic opt-out from EU justice initiatives) but Jourová hopes to secure their backing by linking the project to EU funding.
"It's not only the money which is at stake, it's the trust of taxpayers," Jourová said. "It's very logical that the states that want further massive financial injections should be under [the prosecutor]."
Discussions about the EU's spending priorities for the next financing period, led by Budget Commissioner Günther Oettinger, include debate on what conditions should be attached to receiving cohesion funds for the poorer regions of the EU. As POLITICO reported last week, Berlin is looking into ways to freeze funding for countries that don’t comply with EU standards on the rule of law, though Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker rejected that idea as "poison."
The EPPO will have a remit to investigate and prosecute fraud and corruption relating to the EU budget and, significantly, cross-border VAT fraud, which costs countries in the bloc an estimated €50 billion a year.
To address concerns about EU "mission creep," a network of prosecutors located in each participating country will compliment the 20 prosecutors who will be based in the bureau's new Luxembourg headquarters.
Even so, the new agency was too much to stomach for some countries. "For our Polish partners, the [new prosecutor] seemed to be the first step in the direction of the federalization of criminal justice," Jourová said, rejecting this suggestion by pointing out the limitations to its powers.
Indeed, the European Parliament and some national capitals wanted the new prosecutor's office to have broader powers to tackle crimes like trafficking and terrorism. "If there's strong demand to use [the prosecutor] for other types of crime, never say never, but for the moment, I don't see any option of this kind during my mandate," said the Czech commissioner.
This story was updated to clarify the context of the commissioner's comments.Earlier this year, pin-up Minako Komukai was on the run from Johnny Law. She stood accused of purchasing drugs from a group of Iranian dealers and fled to the Philippines. A warrant was put out for her arrest, and Komukai was an international fugitive.
Advertisement
As previously posted, Komukai worked mostly as a pin-up, but also appeared at Japanese game events. She was a Metal Gear nut and was apparently friendly with Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima.
Besides doing commentary at a Metal Gear Online event when the game was released, she appeared on Kojima's "Hide-chan Radio" program three times as a guest in 2006, giving her opinion on the Tokyo Game Show and talking about turning 20 years old. Their rapport was friendly, with Kojima referring to her playfully as "Mina-tan" and talking to her about doing motion capture for MGS4. The motion capture is done totally nude, he added.
According to game site Dengeki Online, Komukai possesses a "deep knowledge" of the Metal Gear series.
Advertisement
Alice Japan NSFW)
The drug charges against her earlier this year were Kumokai's second. In 2009, she was arrested for drugs. Later that year, she released an autobiography titled I'm Really Sorry.
Advertisement
When Komukai arrived at Tokyo Narita from Manila earlier this year (top), she was mobbed by the press and arrested by cops. The drug charges against her were eventually dropped due to a lack of evidence and Komukai was released from jail.
This October, Komukai, who's been working as a stripper and appearing in softcore movies, will make her hardcore porn debut. This is the same Komukai who stood up to her talent agency and spilled the beans about dark underbelly of the glossy pin-up world, saying that many Japanese models work as high priced escorts.
In 2006, Komukai told Hideo Kojima, "I want to become a voice actress." That, or a new video game character. When Kojima asked her what kind of character, she replied, "I'd like to be Snake's illegitimate child."
Advertisement
Komukai won't be Snake's illegitimate kid anytime soon. Starting this fall, she'll be a pornstar, and there's voice acting in that. Snakes, too.
(Top photo: News 23 | HBC)
You can contact Brian Ashcraft, the author of this post, at [email protected]. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and lurking around our #tips page.President Trump's Twitter provides plenty of news and comedy fodder, and on Thursday he issued a real doozy of a tweet referencing a legend that General John Pershing laced bullets in pig blood to fight Islamic terrorists.
There's just one problem: this is a myth.
Here is Trump's tweet:
Study what General Pershing of the United States did to terrorists when caught. There was no more Radical Islamic Terror for 35 years! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 17, 2017
Trump had previously discussed General Pershing in the heat of the Republican primary in February 2016: (H/T: Time)
Speaking in South Carolina ahead of the primary, Trump told his crowd that Pershing, who led U.S. troops during World War I, was a "rough guy," according to Mother Jones. He then said that during the Moro rebellion in the Philippines (1899-1913, and Pershing served as governor of the Moro Province between 1909 and 1913), Pershing "caught 50 terrorists who did tremendous damage … and he took the 50 terrorists and he took 50 men and dipped 50 bullets in pig's blood. You heard about that? He took 50 bullets and dipped them in pig's blood. And he has his men load up their rifles and he lined up the 50 people and they shot 49 of those people. And the 50th person, he said, you go back to your people and you tell them what happened."
According to Snopes, the incident that Trump describes has been an internet rumor since the 9/11 terror attacks and has even been cited by former Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL), who chaired the Senate Intelligence Committee, although Graham claimed the bullets were dipped in pig fat. But the fact-checking site was unable to find any evidence to substantiate such claims.
Pershing was involved in the Moro Province of the Philippines during the country's transition from the 1898 Spanish-American war to political independence, which America helped facilitate. The Moros were Muslims who were against the country being occupied. Their swordsmen, Juramentados, murdered scores of Christians during this time. Snopes cites numerous Pershing biographies stating that the general was "reluctant to be responsible for any more loss of life than was necessary" and that he never actually executed any Muslims. He did, however, shower pig blood onto prisoners and then warn other Juramentados that the same would happen to them if they didn't stop their killing spree, as they believed that being doused in pig blood would result in eternal damnation.
According to Time, there was an instance where "Pershing brought a pig's head to a ceasefire negotiation with a Muslim leader." American soldiers would also bury Juramentados in pig blood and with pigs themselves, although Pershing is not believed to have been associated with that. But Pershing biographers contacted by Time claimed to have no evidence that he ever committed the acts that Trump claimed.
In sum, it seems that Pershing did use the Juramentados' religious aversion to pigs against them, but there is no evidence that he ever dipped bullets in pig blood and then shot 49 prisoners and told the 50th to warn the others about it. This seems to be typical Trump: completely overstating an incident that occurred, but there is a grain of truth in that Pershing used the Juramentados' religious fear of pigs against them.
The problem with this is that, as is usually the case with the president, Trump's imprecise claim forces the coverage to be about his tweet rather than Pershing's actual actions themselves.
Follow Aaron Bandler on Twitter.In my previous article, How to Write Jokes – Joke Premise Part 3, I wrote about the joke premise and its relationship to the comic voice. In this article, How to Write Jokes – Joke Structure Part 1, I’ll uncover the first layers of joke structure to show how setup and punch create expectation and surprise.
Joke Structure
What is a joke? Funny you should ask. Most people would define a joke as something someone says or does that makes others laugh. That statement, though true, doesn’t really tell us what a joke is. It just describes the desired effect. What about jokes that get a huge laugh in one situation and a roar of silence in another? If a joke doesn’t get a laugh, does it suddenly stop being a joke?
Interestingly enough, people usually recognize a joke whether it makes them laugh or not. Why? Because there is some consistent, intrinsic structure that everyone identifies as a joke. Until now, no one has presented this structure in an understandable manner. That’s about to change. Explaining joke structure to you is exactly what this blog series is all about.
Setup and Punch
Let’s begin with what most people already know about jokes. Traditionally, they contain two parts:
1. The Setup
2. The Punch
Take this joke, for example, by my friend A. Whitney Brown:
Setup: “I saw my grandmother the other day…probably for the last time.”
Punch: “Oh, she’s not sick or anything, she just bores the hell out of me.”
The setup and punch are usually defined in this way:
The Setup is the first part of a joke that sets up the laugh.
The Punch is the second part that makes you laugh.
You may say, “That doesn’t explain anything but the order.”
That’s true. So, let’s dig deeper into joke structure.
Expectation and Surprise
The setup and the punch have two very different functions. The setup creates expectation and the punch reveals a surprise. Take this joke by Wendy Liebman for example. Notice how the setup causes us to expect something.
Setup: “The only way to really have safe sex is to abstain.”
Now notice how the Punch reveals a surprise:
Punch: “From drinking.”
In order to work, a joke has to surprise. And we cannot be surprised unless we’re expecting something else. That’s what a joke does. The setup causes us to expect something, and then the punch surprises us.
So, here are better definitions of setup and punch:
The Setup creates an expectation.
The Punch reveals a surprise.
So now that you understand this, you can write a joke, right? Wrong. It isn’t enough to know what a joke does. You need to know how a joke does what it does. And I’m going to explain that in my next blog How to Write Jokes – Joke Structure Part 2.One of the obligations of council's standing committees is to oversee the use of public funds.
In the report last month by audit staff, which finally revealed the secret plan, the public was told that the payments were hard to monitor because proper coding to follow the city's transactions was not used. It also noted that senior staff was approving the payments without notifying or getting consent from council.
Questions are also mounting regarding the length of time it took for the investigation to unfold, including the sudden departure of the woman who initiated the internal probe, audit head Catherine Spence.
She left the city while the audit was underway, and while she reported directly to the chief administrative officer.
At the time, the city did not have a permanent CAO, and it's unclear who made the decision to let Spence go and whether or not they were involved with the secret payment practice she was investigating.
There are also questions about why it took city officials more than nine months from when the audit fieldwork concluded in September, 2016, to issue the findings publicly.
"It would have had to be senior staff to have arbitrarily handed out extra money to people without going to council," Bauld said.
He agreed with Mayor Linda Jeffrey’s assessment that the system of secret bonus payments devised by senior staffers and paid out to other non-union employees — and possibly to themselves — for years while elected officials were kept in the dark “is at best serious negligence, and at worst corruption.”
John Corbett was a member of Brampton’s senior leadership team for decades, both as planning chief and then as chief administrative officer (CAO) from 2012 up to the termination of his contract in 2015.
Asked recently by The Guardian if he knew of the OPR practice, had approved it and whether he received such payments, Corbett said: “I’m really not equipped to answer that in time or verify it."
He added he has never heard the term Outside Policy Requests.
“Over my 40 years there, there were all these terminologies for different things and the policy I guess changed from time to time. But I’d have to have to do some real memory digging to remember details and specifics.”
Brampton's current CAO, Harry Schlange told The Guardian that city staff reached out to Peel Regional Police Chief Jennifer Evans via written correspondence on June 22, outlining the June 21 resolution by council requesting a full police investigation into any possible wrongdoing.
Asked when he first became aware of the internal audit work to investigate the secret payment plan, and when the audit was completed, Schlange said he was briefed about the 2015 audit work plan upon taking up the chief bureaucrat's job in Brampton in May 2016.
The audit report states that the fieldwork to put the report together was completed about the beginning of September.
About the same time, Schlange began a major restructuring of senior staff that eventually saw dozens of non-union employees depart city hall.
But Schlange said the "September 2016 restructuring was not linked to the audit."
Asked if any of the 167 non-union staff, according to the audit report, who received a payment without council's knowledge were let go in his restructuring, Schlange said: "The city will not be citing specific individuals, including status of their employment."
It's unclear if city officials know the names of staff who received the payments or the staff who approved them. The city has stated it won't reveal names.
But a police investigation would likely reveal some of those names, if any charges are laid.
Schlange was asked if any staff released in his restructuring were paid severances — even though they might have been involved in the secretive payment scheme and therefore could have been let go with cause without any severance.
He offered the same response, that the restructuring was not linked to the audit.
Asked how much the city paid out in severances for his restructuring plan, Schlange said, "Severances as a result of organizational changes in 2016 have been estimated at $8.5 million."
That is more than double the $3.5 million to $4 million figure Schlange stated last year when he was asked how much severances for his restructuring would cost.
Asked where specifically the total amount for severances will appear in the city's 2016 budget document, he said: "The city includes severances as part of the total'salaries, wages and fringe benefits' line of its annual end-of-year financial reports."
Schlange said these end of year financial reports for 2016 are "not yet public."
It's unclear if police will investigate severances paid out to non-union staff who might have been involved with the secret OPR payment program.
Bauld said a police investigation is needed to get to the bottom of things.
“It will be up to the police to decide whether it was poor accounting or it was malice. But there were no provisions for (these payments). It’s like making up a rule and not telling anybody about them."
City officials described OPRs as “discretionary salary increases determined by the operating department heads” that were “outside of council-approved policies” and documented procedures.
Payments to individuals ranged from as little as $123 to more than $95,000, the audit report said. A total of $316,000 was paid to just eight employees.
The Brampton auditors said that bonuses were not authorized under relevant rules and that over time OPR “requests were approved for reasons beyond its initial intention.” They added that with no oversight or formalized processes “the OPR practice became mismanaged.”
The report notes that “favouritism” was listed as one of the top 10 reasons to allow an OPR bonus.
The city stated that there was no OPR line item in the annual budget. It also noted that council approval for the OPRs was not sought.
The auditors noted a sudden drop to almost no OPRs after 2014, the year of the last municipal election.Christina Sarich, Staff Writer
Waking Times
With pedophilia rings being busted almost weekly now, and the gender-bending meme playing out all over Hollywood, never mind its being insinuated into our biology chemically, without our choice — there seems to be a new-fangled perversion which we are supposed to accept as “normal.” Never-mind its psychological and social implications. The introduction of robots as sex toys – that you can rape, masturbate to, or simply voice your most outlandish fantasy to – is being inserted into our psyche via a slow drip, but make no mistake, the intention is to open a deluge so that non-human sexual “play” is commonplace.
On a recent trip to the near-Silicon-Valley-area of California, I was awe-struck at the promotion of the technocratic singularity – a time in which AI intelligence would surpass our own and we would all bow down as AI slaves to a “greater” intelligence. As unwitting, dumbed down humans we are meant to absorb this advanced technology into our lives without questioning its motivations.
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” – Arthur C. Clarke
Children were encouraged to play with robots as “pals” at a science museum in San Diego, and robots were at the airport in Santa Ana, within a toddler-safe den of toy blocks. The robot was accompanied by a woman with sparkly glitter on her cheekbones who handed out robot stickers and encouraged children to play with the robot instead of each other. This de-humanization of our species takes an even more sinister twist, however, when you consider the sterilization attempts of the larger powers in play, and the concerted effort to bring AI into our lives at every turn – including into our sexuality.
In a society that has already objectified the human being to such a degree that women are told they “deserved it” when they are raped, for dressing provocatively, or even wearing red lipstick, and “sexting” among teens now includes describing forceful and violent acts of fisting, while young boys are silenced in Vatican torture chambers and used as sexual mannequins by the elite, we now have the bizarre creation of Samantha. She’s an AI robot who “really likes to be kissed” at least according to her maker, Sergi Santos.
She also sits passively to be “used” whenever her owner feels sexually aroused, with no need for said person to learn social graces, or the emotional maturity and sensitivity that would allow a sexual interaction with a real woman. Surely, he won’t have to stimulate her clitoris to bring her to climax, as his only goal is his own sexual fulfillment. And certainly he won’t have to take her to dinner or act attentive when she expresses real emotion.
You can also buy a sex-robot on sale in Britain’s Covent Gardens. There are “try-before-you-buy” models being paraded like used cars ready for a test drive.
Or how about this creepy sex-bot that can talk dirty to you in bed? If that level of odd perversion isn’t enough, the most recent model is called the Real Doll. She’s being promoted as “better than a woman.” As Engadget describes how the Real Doll works with other AI technologies,
“Harmony AI is part Android app, part sexualized personal assistant available for download directly from RealBotix. Imagine something between a horny Her and Siri for phone sex. For $20 a year, users can create a limited number of personalized avatars with customizable voices, moods and personality traits. Like Scarlett Johansson’s Samantha in Her, McMullen sees Harmony as a sort of girlfriend in your smartphone; a companion to keep you company throughout the day.”
Put succinctly, if you don’t like your girlfriend’s personality – you can just change it with your smartphone app. That’s not setting a dangerous precedent at all.
But Samantha, and the Real Doll aren’t one of a kind novelties. Robot doll brothels already operate in South Korea, Japan and Spain, while the first robotic oral sex coffee shop opened in Paddington, west London, just last year.
Cyborg sex is an emotionless, guilt-free, abuse-promoting pathway to completely submissive sex on demand. Even Noel Sharkey, Professor Emeritus of Robotics and Artificial Intelligence at the University of Sheffield, and the co-founder of the FRR said that the government needs to regulate the use of cyborgs (pleasure-bots) for sex.
“I can tell you that robots are certainly coming,” he said at the launch of one such robot.
“The concern is that this [rape and sexual deviancy] is going on and nobody is talking about it. People snigger about them, but they are actually shipping quite a lot and we are going to see them a lot more.”
Why all the fuss that someone may want to dry hump an inanimate object made of silicon and a hair wig?
There are a few serious implications.
First, we already live in a society that has become technologically isolated. With more ways to reach out and “touch” someone (text, email, snapchat, IM, virtual video, etc.) than ever before, psychologists warn that loneliness and human disconnection are on the rise. We are raising a generation that knows less and less how to interact with real human beings, and instead are lost in a virtual world created by AI intelligence.
Juxtapose this current phenomenon with AI sex-dolls and we will be creating a generation of human beings who has forgotten the human-physical benefits of sexual interaction, including the emotional, energetic, and psychological support that comes from human-to-human coitus.
No robot will increase oxytocin levels in the same manner that a human will – the hormone released to bond us to each other and create high levels of empathy, that is present both during sexual climax, but also when a mother breastfeeds her child, or we give one another a heartfelt, non-sexual hug. Sex literally makes human beings fall in love. Sex without love can be fun, but it also has long-term ramifications for a society.
Human-to-human sex also involves a grab-bag or various subtle energetic exchanges which can never be mimicked by a robot.
Perhaps most distressing, however, is the fact that the technocracy is attempting to redirect one of the most powerful human urges towards its own agenda. Obviously, sexual energy can create a new human being when it is exchanged person-to-person. Not so with a robot. Of course this isn’t a problem for a technocracy which wishes to sexually castrate us and minimize the population to begin with. If genetically modified babies will be made in test tubes in the near future, who needs a viable sperm and egg interplay created by consensual sexual activity between a man and a woman?
Moreover, the sexual energy that can be redirected to the pineal gland and crown chakras can awaken our spiritual perception – but it is unlikely our spiritual unfoldment will happen as we jack off to a cyborg who was programmed to tell us how hot we are in our week-old boxers, and wheezing grunts as we copulate into oblivion, our GM-fat wiggling, and chemically-induced sexual release the culmination of a lackadaisical courtship of a completely passive AI dummy waiting in our closets. I’m pretty certain enlightenment won’t come as someone ejaculates into a silicon-sheathed accumulation of 0s and 1s.
Should this not be of immediate concern to the masses, there is the implication that all sex with a woman should be easy and passive – that a woman should never have her own volition, sexual preferences, moods, a menstrual cycle, or have a general distaste for being objectified as purely a sexual object. That those who are most passive and fragile – children, the elderly, abused women, the mentally challenged, etc. are easy targets – like a robot – for the deviant sexual whims of a population of men who have become (by design) dissociative of guilt, shame or moral righteousness.
This also teaches people that physical desires should always be granted and that there are no consequences to overindulgence in sexual acts. This is patently untrue. Not only is the nervous system disrupted, but social connection which causes normal human growth and interpersonal relationship is stunted.
Are robot harems helpless? Hardly. They’re the next step in making human beings the slaves of AI. The next step in cancelling all real-world interaction. The plan has been in the making for possible eons. And when the “sexually-programmed” robot becomes smart enough with the development of AI to perpetrate the same behavior on non-robot “others” what do we do then? Fully autonomous “killer robots” have already been created. These new “dolls” pave the way for fully automated AI rapists.
Read more articles by Christina Sarich.
About the Author
Christina Sarich is a staff writer for Waking Times. She is a writer, musician, yogi, and humanitarian with an expansive repertoire. Her thousands of articles can be found all over the Internet, and her insights also appear in magazines as diverse as Weston A. Price, Nexus, Atlantis Rising, and the Cuyamungue Institute, among others. She was recently a featured author in the Journal, “Wise Traditions in Food, Farming, and Healing Arts,” and her commentary on healing, ascension, and human potential inform a large body of the alternative news lexicon. She has been invited to appear on numerous radio shows, including Health Conspiracy Radio, Dr. Gregory Smith’s Show, and dozens more. The second edition of her book, Pharma Sutra, will be released soon.
This article (Sex Robots – The Evolution of the Objectification of Women) was originally created and published by Waking Times and is published here under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Christina Sarich and WakingTimes.com. It may be re-posted freely with proper attribution and author bio.Boston went 106 years before electing a woman of color to its city council—that is, until 42-year-old powerhouse Ayanna Pressley came along with a no-nonsense platform and a hunger to serve women and children.
Purpose
“I ran on a platform of [saving] our girls because I believe broken girls grow up to be broken women. I know intimately the challenges of single parenthood, and I’m a survivor of a near decade of childhood sexual assault. I didn’t just run on my résumé. I told the totality of my journey. That resonated.”
I want to create a policy that will stand long after I’m gone, to prevent social ills and to mitigate the adverse impact of them.”
Résumé
After working as a senior aide to Congressman Joe Kennedy and political director for Secretary of State John Kerry during his senatorship, Pressley was pushed by colleagues and mentors to run for office herself. “People around me said, ‘I believe you have something to contribute,’ ” Pressley recalls.
Heritage
“My family’s roots are primarily in Ohio. My mother was born and raised in Cincinnati; my father, Columbus. I grew up in Chicago. [My mother] raised me alone; I’m an only child. I like to say she gave me my roots, my wings and my voice. My mother was never cynical about the role that government, compassionate government, could play in our lives. On Election Day, from a very young age, I felt powerful.”
There is nothing like being able to express your own voice, to articulate your own vision and then get to work doing exactly that.
“I don’t think anyone who has made history set out to make history. Shirley Chisholm, Barbara Jordan, Ruby Bridges, Sojourner [Truth]—they just set out about their business…. I’d like to think that my election made it easier for the women who came behind me. Since I’ve been elected, three women of color have joined the council.”
Contact us at [email protected] of instant talaq +
NEW DELHI: The government does not plan to bring any legislation to ban triple talaq as the five-judge Supreme Court bench by a majority verdict has held instant divorce as unconstitutional and illegal, a top government source said.There was no requirement of a legislation to implement this order, the functionary added and pointed out that anyone persisting with thecould be prosecuted under domestic violence laws. Such a violator could be sent to jail if a woman approached the police for harassment on these grounds and the SC order would act as a deterrent seems to be the view of the government in the wake of the verdict.“India of 2017 is not the India of 1986-87, the leadership of Narendra Modi is not the same as that of Rajiv Gandhi,” law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said, referring to the Shah Bano judgment of the apex court which the then Rajiv Gandhi government, enjoying absolute majority in Parliament, overturned in 1986, diluting rights of Muslim women for maintenance on the grounds of triple talaq.Th government, he said, strongly backed the judgment and would “consider the issue in a structured manner”. He said this was the beginning of the fight for equality for Muslim women. Prasad said the issue was not of religion and religious practices, it was of gender justice, gender dignity and gender equality. “It’s a great dawn for women’s empowerment….We need to understand that 22 countries have regulated triple talaq, abolished it or laid down stringent preconditions for its exercise but India being a secular country it was insulated by this change,” the law minister said.Terming the SC judgment agreat legal and moral victory for women in India, the minister said he had the support of PM Modi who wanted the government to take a strong stand in the courts on this issue. Prasad pointed to the judgment of Justice Kurian Joseph, saying what was held to be bad in the Quran could not be good in Shariat, adding that the government had stressed that several Muslim-majority nations had done away with or restricted triple talaq.Simon Fraser (right), with then-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Philip Hammond. has told BBC Radio 4 that Brexit negotiations aren't going well for the U.K. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Brexit negotiations are not going well, says former top UK diplomat ‘I don’t think they have begun particularly promisingly, frankly, on the British side,’ says Simon Fraser.
A former senior British diplomat said the U.K.'s Brexit negotiations have not begun well because of "differences" inside Prime Minister Theresa May's cabinet.
Speaking on the BBC Radio 4's Westminster Hour, Simon Fraser, who led the Foreign Office and Diplomatic Service from 2010 to 2015, expressed concern over the disunion in May's cabinet and lack of clarity over the U.K.'s position on several key issues.
"The negotiations have only just begun, I don't think they have begun particularly promisingly, frankly, on the British side," said Fraser.
"We haven't put forward a lot because, as we know, there are differences within the cabinet about the sort of Brexit that we are heading for and until those differences are further resolved I think it's very difficult for us to have a clear position."
The rights of EU citizens in the U.K., the Irish border and the so-called divorce bill have all become major sticking points in the U.K.'s Brexit negotiations with the EU.
Fraser, who now consults businesses on Brexit at Flint Global and serves as an adviser at the think tank Chatham House, cautioned that the U.K. has done too little to address these concerns.
"I think so far we haven't put much on the table apart from something on the status of nationals, so we are a bit absent from the formal negotiation," he said.
"I think we need to demonstrate that we are ready to engage on the substance so that people can understand what is really at stake here and what the options are."
The Telegraph reported the U.K. was willing to pay a €40 billion Brexit divorce bill, but Downing Street denied the reports.
Authors:The MMA Hour is back in your life. Below is a rundown of who will be stopping by Tuesday's show:
1 p.m. -- We'll have a live look-in at the Anderson Silva press conference in Brazil.
1:25 p.m. -- Joe Warren will look back at his win over Eduardo Dantas on Friday to become the new Bellator bantamweight champion.
1:45 p.m. -- Rick Story will discuss last week's win over Gunnar Nelson and where he goes from here.
2:05 p.m. -- Martin Kampmann will talk about his transition from fighter to coach.
2:25 p.m. -- Holly Holm will preview her UFC 181 fight against Raquel Pennington.
2:45 p.m. -- Piotr Hallmann will discuss his drug test failure following his loss to Gleison Tibau last month.
3:05 p.m. -- We'll go Inside the Vault and look back at one of our classic interviews.
3:25 p.m. -- We'll answer your #themmahour questions on anything and everything going on in the MMA world. Hit us up on Twitter using that hash tag, leave a question in the comments section below.
Plus, we'll be taking your calls on anything and everything. Got a question or comment? Give us a call at 1-888-418-4074.
Watch the show live below beginning at 1 p.m. ET / 10 a.m. PT / 6 p.m. GMT. Subscribe to The MMA Hour on iTunes: audio feed here; video feed here. Listen to the show via Stitcher here or via TuneIn here.The recent arrivals have given the Turkish giants their best squad since 2000, but president Unal Aysal's strategy could prove costly
'Fatih' | Gala are hoping to conquer Europe with their'saviour' Terim at the helm
"We are aiming to win the Turkish league and to be successful in Europe. We are taking steps to becoming a global team"
- Lutfi Aribogan
By Ibrahim KocyigitIn 2011, Unal Aysal became the new president of Galatasaray, whose debt then exceeded €240 million. The club were virtually broke. Less that two years later, though, they are soaring, and are currently ranked 30th in the Deloitte Football Money League.World renowned stars such as Didier Drogba and Wesley Sneijder ply their trade at the Turk Telekom Arena alongside established names like Fernando Muslera, Emmanuel Eboue, Johan Elmander and Burak Yilmaz.So how did everything change so rapidly?The simple explanation would be that Aysal, the 45th richest man in Turkey, used his considerable wealth to solve their problems just as Roman Abramovich did at Chelsea. The way in which Galatararay were saved, though, was far riskier than that, and even more controversial.The risky part was merely the investment. Aysal invested in new players upon his arrival. He may have sold Arda Turan to Atletico Madrid, but he brought in Muslera, Eboue, Elmander and Felipe Melo.The gamble paid off. Galatasaray won the Super Lig title, worth €30m, and it led to another €27m in revenue from Champions League qualification. The opening of their new stadium, the 52,000-seater Turk Telekom Arena also earned them €30m from VIP lounges and season tickets.The controversial part was their dealings in the stock market. Between August and December 2011, they sold 28.35 per cent of shares from Galatasaray AS, the holding company that manages all of their revenues and expenses, earning them €70m.This was followed by the announcement that all gate receipts from the Turk Telekom Arena would go directly to the football branch of the organisation, as opposed to the parent company, to which all revenue for the period of 2014-30 would go for a one-off sum of €187m.Then came a 400% increase in the company's share capital, devaluing each individual cut. Holders were made to pay €11 per share to subsidise the transaction, raising a total of €117m. Unlike the other shareholders, the club didn't pay its share which was €65m in cash, but wrote it off from the €187m which the company owed them for the sale of the future gate receipts.A mere five months later, the company again applied for a 300% increase in share capital, only for Turkish equities watchdog Capital Market Board to deny the request. While it was technically legal, it was not deemed ethical.Balancing the books was all part of a big plan to establish themselves as a global force. Drogba (whose taxes will be paid by his employers) and Sneijder have not been signed only to win the Super Lig - they have their eye on the continent."We are aiming to win the Turkish league and to be successful in Europe," the CEO of the club's holding company, Lutfi Aribogan, said recently. "We are taking steps towards becoming a global team."Aysal has spoken of the club needing "big players" to reach "big targets", but no-one, including |
" of fossil fuels the level of CO2 in the atmosphere was 280ppm.\n\nMyers told the Guardian: \"It is(...TRUNCATED) |
" very proud of myself because I have accomplished something that nobody else has been able to accom(...TRUNCATED) |
"1. Alluxio site\n\nGridGain GridGain is open source project licensed under Apache 2.0. One of the m(...TRUNCATED) |
" running up to the edges and eagerly grabbing the lighter plastic bottles. Glasses gently clinked, (...TRUNCATED) |
"304) 5.6-32 6-4 24x36 Leica c. 1977 Hard coated [80] Rodenstock Rodagon 5.6/80 (Cat. No. 452-306) 5(...TRUNCATED) |
End of preview. Expand
in Data Studio
No dataset card yet
- Downloads last month
- 3