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Zulus who were supposed to have behaved treacherously".[42]
Victoria Crosses and Distinguished Conduct Medals [ edit ]
Eleven Victoria Crosses were awarded to the defenders of Rorke's Drift, seven of them to soldiers of the 2nd/24th Foot – the most ever received for a single action by one regiment (although not, as commonly thought, the most awarded in a single action or the most in a day: sixteen were awarded for actions at the Battle of Inkerman, on 5 November 1854; twenty-eight were awarded as a result of the Second Relief of Lucknow, 14–22 November 1857).[45]
Four Distinguished Conduct Medals were also awarded. This high number of awards for bravery has been interpreted as a reaction to the earlier defeat at the Battle of Isandlwana – the extolling of the victory at Rorke's Drift drawing the public's attention away from the great defeat at Isandlwana and the fact that Lord Chelmsford and Henry Bartle Frere had instigated the war without the approval of Her Majesty's Government.[46]
Certainly, Sir Garnet Wolseley, taking over as commander-in-chief from Lord Chelmsford later that year, was unimpressed with the awards made to the defenders of Rorke's Drift, saying "it is monstrous making heroes of those who, shut up in buildings at Rorke's Drift, could not bolt and fought like rats for their lives, which they could not otherwise save".
Several historians have challenged this assertion and pointed out that the victory stands on its own merits, regardless of other concerns. Victor Davis Hanson responded to it directly in Carnage and Culture (also published as Why the West Has Won), saying, "Modern critics suggest such lavishness in commendation was designed to assuage the disaster at Isandhlwana and to reassure a skeptical Victorian public that the fighting ability of the British soldier remained unquestioned. Maybe, maybe not, but in the long annals of military history, it is difficult to find anything quite like Rorke's Drift, where a beleaguered force, outnumbered forty to one, survived and killed twenty men for every defender lost".[47]
Awarded the Victoria Cross:[48]
In 1879 there was no provision for the posthumous granting of the Victoria Cross, and so it could not be awarded to anyone who had died in performing an act of bravery. In light of this, an unofficial "twelfth VC" may be added to those listed: Private Joseph Williams, B Coy, 2nd/24th Foot, who was killed during the fight in the hospital and for whom it was mentioned in despatches that "had he lived he would have been recommended for the Victoria Cross".[49]
Awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal:[50]
Sgt Frank Bourne, DCM, in 1905
Gunner John Cantwell; N Batt, 5th Brig Royal Horse Artillery (demoted from bombardier wheeler the day before the battle)
Private John William Roy; 1st/24th Foot
Colour Sergeant Frank Edward Bourne; B Coy, 2nd/24th Foot
Second Corporal Francis Attwood; Army Service Corps
On 15 January 1880, a submission for a DCM was also made for Private Michael McMahon (Army Hospital Corps). The submission was cancelled on 29 January 1880 for absence without leave and theft.[50]
Depictions and dramatisations [ edit ]
The events surrounding the assault on Rorke's Drift were first dramatised by military painters, notably Elizabeth Butler and Alphonse de Neuville. Their work was vastly popular in their day among the citizens of the British empire.
In 1914, a touring English Northern Union rugby league team defeated Australia 14–6 to win the Ashes in the final Test match. Depleted by injuries and fielding only ten men for much of the second half, the English outclassed and outfought the Australians in what quickly became known as the 'Rorke's Drift Test'.[51]
In 1914, the Edison Company made a two-reel silent film titled Rorke's Drift starring Richard Tucker.
The 1964 film Zulu produced by Stanley Baker is a depiction of the Battle of Rorke's Drift.[52] The film received generally positive reviews from the critics. Some details of the film's account are, however, historically inaccurate (for example, in the movie the regiment is called the South Wales Borderers but the unit was not in fact called that until two years after the battle, although the regiment had been based at Brecon in South Wales since 1873).[53] While most of the men of the 1st Battalion, 24th Regiment of Foot (1/24) were recruited from the industrial towns and agricultural classes of England, principally from Birmingham and adjacent southwest counties, only 10 soldiers of the 1/24 that fought in the battle were Welsh. Many of the soldiers of the junior battalion, the 2/24, were Welshmen.[54] Of the 122 soldiers of the 24th Regiment present at the Battle of Rorke's Drift, 49 are known to have been of English nationality, 32 were Welsh, 16 were Irish, one was a Scot, and three were born overseas. The nationalities of the remaining 21 are unknown.[55]
In 1990 the game developer Impressions Games released a video game based on the historical battle. The battle was also featured by Mad Doc Software in its 2006 strategy game Empire Earth II: The Art of Supremacy as one of its "turning point" battle modes.
S. M. Stirling's 2000 novel On the Oceans of Eternity depicts a battle between the small garrison force defending a Republic of Nantucket supply base and a massed force of Ringapi warriors; not only are the defensive tactics taken almost directly from Lt. Chard's plan for the defense of Rorke's Drift, but the battle itself later becomes known as "The Battle of O'Rourke's Ford".
Tanya Huff's first Confederation series book Valor's Choice, includes a battle based on the battle of Rorke's Drift.
The battle of Rorke's Drift was given a chapter in military historian Victor Davis Hanson's book Carnage and Culture (2002) as one of several landmark battles demonstrating the superior effectiveness of Western military practices.[56]
The sixth track of the Swedish heavy metal band Sabaton's 2016 studio album The Last Stand, titled “Rorke’s Drift”, depicts the events of the battle.[57]
"The Tale of Isandhlwana and Rorke's Drift" is an account written by H. Rider Haggard in True Story Book by Andrew Lang. While being a true account of the battle and naming many important figures, the writing omits Surgeon Reynolds, who played a crucial role in the defence.[58]
See also [ edit ]
General
Notes [ edit ]Salvaging a potential free agency disaster, the New Orleans Saints on Tuesday traded future Hall of Fame running back Adrian Peterson to the Arizona Cardinals.
The two teams announced the trade Tuesday, and NFL Network Insider Ian Rapoport reports the Cardinals are sending the Saints a conditional 2018 sixth-rounder in the deal.
"I'm so ecstatic," Peterson texted NFL Network's Stacey Dales following the trade.
Peterson, who has just 27 carries for 81 yards over his first four games with Sean Payton and Drew Brees, will now get a chance to play the featured role he always saw himself best suited for. Down David Johnson, the Arizona Cardinals are desperate for a spark on the ground.
"We are always on the lookout for opportunities to improve our team and we look at this as one of those opportunities," Cardinals general manager Steve Keim said in a statement provided by the team. "What Adrian has accomplished in this league is well-established. Our need for a spark in our running game right now is also obvious and we are excited to give him the chance to provide that."
The move joins the 32-year-old with the NFL's oldest roster. Carson Palmer (38) and Larry Fitzgerald (34) are among the team's most dependable weapons at the moment. The Cardinals were heavily mentioned as a potential destination for Peterson when it was obvious the running back's tenure was coming to an end in Minnesota.
Running back Chris Johnson has been released following the trade, the team announced.
It was clear from the Saints' first game that Peterson was not going to fit with Payton's versatile, high-flying offense. Rookie Alvin Kamara is far closer to the Darren Sproles hybrid that makes the most sense in the pass-heavy scheme.
Peterson, typically best with the quarterback under center in an I-formation or traditional single-back, might have found his match with the old school Bruce Arians.
The move frees the seven-time Pro Bowler but puts him behind an offensive line that has struggled to date. No Cardinals back is averaging more than four yards per carry. At least one analytic grading service -- Pro Football Focus -- rated all five of Arizona's current starters in their lowest category.
Peterson did not shy away from his unhappiness in New Orleans. He was seen on the sideline lobbying Payton to utilize the ground game during a Week 1 nationally televised game. He mentioned that the amount of carries he was receiving was not what he signed up for. His final game as a Saint in London yielded four carries for four yards in a 20-0 win over the Dolphins.
His third NFL team could give the rest of the league a glimpse at the future. For years, Peterson has defied expectations for an aging running back but seems to have settled back down to earth. He rushed back from a serious knee injury last year in Minnesota but did not have the same rampaging style that defined his early career.
Might a glimpse of the old Peterson return in Arizona?PATHUM THANI — In an effort to crackdown on undocumented immigrants, police in Pathum Thani have instructed migrant workers in a major market to wear wristbands indicating they have been properly registered.
Pol.Maj.Gen. Montri Yimyaem, commander of Pathum Thani Police, said that workers from neighboring countries who have registered with police will be required to wear the dark red wristbands in public places.
A foreign worker showing his registered bracelet at Talaad Tai in Pathum Thani, 22 April 2015.
The market, Talaad Tai, has at least 3,500 vendors and is a particularly "risky area," staffed by many unregistered foreign workers, Pol.Maj.Gen. Montri said during an inspection of the market today. Human traffickers are also known to be active in the vicinity.
"Talaad Tai is an area that has problems with human trafficking, uses of alien workforce, prostitution, and begging," Pol.Maj.Gen. Montri told reporters. "We are issuing the wristbands as a model for other areas that have alien workers to reduce crime in the area, and increase security for the people.”
Since dispatching a task force to regulate foreign workers in Talaad Tai on 4 April, police have arrested 171 Burmese, Cambodian, and Laotian nationals on charges related to illegal entry and working without permit in Thailand.
Nine Thai employers have also been arrested for hiring foreign workers without proper permits, while six others have been arrested for providing shelter to illegal migrant workers, said Pol.Maj.Gen. Ake Angsananond, deputy commander of the Royal Thai Police.
Police inspect migrant workers at Talaad Tai in Pathum Thani province, 22 April 2015.
"The commander of the Royal Thai Police has instructed us to take actions in issues about human trafficking and alien workforce," Pol.Maj.Gen. Ake said, "Those issues are considered important problems that must be solved urgently."
He added that any citizen who possesses information about human trafficking, forced labor, or prostitution in the Talaad Tai area should immediately contact police at the 24-hour hotline 1191.
The crackdown on Talaad Tai was prompted by junta chairman and Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha’s instructions earlier this month to eradicate prostitution, illegal immigration, begging, and narcotic sales at the market.
"Officials have been neglecting these problems, in areas around Talaad Tai, and even in the entire province of Pathum Thani," Gen. Prayuth said on 3 April. "I have already warned them of their potential punishment. I gave them a deadline: within the end of this month, there must not be any prostitution or begging, because they cause damage [to the society]."
There are over a million immigrants living and working in Thailand illegally, mostly from neighboring countries such as Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia.
Due to their lack of legal protection, the immigrants are often vulnerable to exploitation and human trafficking.
Early this morning at 2am, a pick-up truck carrying Cambodian nationals crashed in the nearby province of Prachinburi, wounding at least ten passengers, according to police reports. The injured include women and children, police say.
Police officers in Prachinburi say they suspect the passengers entered the country illegally, as none of the Cambodians carried ID documents or work permits. Police are investigating the incident and looking for the driver, who fled the scene before officers arrived.A young Israeli soldier was reprimanded by his superiors this week after his urge to share his military life with friends and strangers online led him to post a photograph on Instagram offering a view of the back of a Palestinian boy’s head in the cross hairs of a sniper rifle.
The photograph was discovered last week by the Palestinian-American activist Ali Abunimah, who monitors social networks for “raw and unfiltered” glimpses of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank to publicize on The Electronic Intifada, a site he co-founded.
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Before the 20-year-old Israeli sniper who uploaded the photograph was able to delete his Instagram account, Mr. Abunimah and other bloggers copied it and the snapshot was published on news sites in Israel and around the world — dealing another self-inflicted blow to the Israeli military’s effort to use the Web to burnish its image.
After a spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces told reporters that sharing the photograph was “a severe incident which doesn’t accord with the I.D.F.’s spirit and values,” the young man also deleted his Facebook account, where he had posted images of himself using his sniper rifle as a comic prop.
Photo
The Israeli veterans’ group Breaking the Silence, which collects testimony from soldiers who have served in the Palestinian territories first occupied by Israel in 1967, posted a screenshot of the photograph on Facebook side by side with a very similar image “taken by another Israeli soldier in Hebron in 2003.”
Photo
In a statement on the two images, the veterans wrote:
Both pictures are testaments to the abuse of power rooted in the military control of another people. Ten years have passed. Technology and media have changed. The distribution of images has changed. But the exaggerated sense of power and the blatant disregard for human life and dignity have remained: this is what occupation looks like.
Israel is not the only country that has been forced to confront the irrepressible urge of young recruits to share aspects of their lives in uniform online that their superiors would rather keep out of public view. Just months into the uprising in Syria, graphic video clips of forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad torturing prisoners and gloating over dead bodies became ammunition in the propaganda battle being waged online. As that struggle escalated into armed conflict, similar images of rebel fighters committing atrocities were passed around on social networks by Assad supporters.
The American abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib predated Facebook and Instagram, but it resonated online in large part because of the disturbing snapshots the prison guards took of themselves reveling in the humiliation of their captives. The Pentagon’s effort to win a propaganda battle with the Afghan Taliban has been similarly undercut by damaging trophy shots of American soldiers urinating on insurgents they killed in battle and posing with civilians they killed for sport.
Like the activist bloggers in Syria who are working to undermine their enemies, Mr. Abunimah and his colleagues at the Electronic Intifada scour the Web for material to counter the effort by Israelis who use social media platforms to cast their army’s activities in a positive light.
In an online chat with The Lede on Tuesday, Mr. Abunimah explained that the Electronic Intifada bloggers, “monitor social media content produced by Israelis and Palestinians in the context of the ‘conflict.’ This has proven to be a source of newsworthy content that is often raw and unfiltered by P.R. machinery.”
Asked how they manage to monitor such a torrent of information, Mr. Abunimah said: “We try to keep an eye on various streams. Without being too specific, we may pay attention to particular tags.” The same principle, he said, “applies to all popular social media platforms: YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook.”
Mr. Abunimah added: “we’re always on the lookout for sock puppetry and astroturfing — that Israel or surrogates may launch P.R. campaigns that are not overtly identified as such. So we look at the output of individuals because we cannot assume that all propaganda is put out with the state’s name on it.” The Electronic Intifada helped uncover one such covert campaign in 2011, in which an Israeli actor pretended to be a disillusioned supporter of the Gaza flotilla movement for a fake video blog post.
As The Lede reported in 2010, the battle between supporters of Israelis and Palestinians is even waged on Wikipedia entries about the history of the conflict. That year, Naftali Bennett, a rising political star and a leader of Israeli settlers living in the occupied West Bank, explained that he was training a group of about 80 activists to edit Wikipedia entries to make sure that information in the online encyclopedia reflected the worldview of Zionist groups. For example, he said, “if someone searches ‘the Gaza flotilla,’ we want to be there; to influence what is written there, how it’s written and to ensure that it is balanced and Zionist in nature.”Senior officials from Amazon and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) testified before Congress yesterday on the feasibility of using drones for commercial purposes–and it turns out Amazon could be making drone deliveries within the year. Not only that, but the e-commerce company wants to deliver products within 30 minutes using the small, unmanned aircraft.
Michael Whitaker, the FAA’s deputy administrator, said the agency expects to formalize regulations for commercial drones within 12 months. This is a huge change; commercial drone regulations for purposes such as delivery and filming major sports events were not expected until 2016 or 2017 at the earliest. “The rule will be in place within a year,” he told the House of Representatives’ Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
“We’d like to begin delivering to our customers as soon as it’s approved,” added Amazon vice president of global public policy Paul Misener. “We will have it in place by the time any regulations are ready. We are working very quickly.” He added that the company plans to use drones to deliver products within 30 minutes of customers ordering them.
But there’s a rub: Amazon wants to make sure its drone program is regulated by the FAA–and not state or local authorities more vulnerable to demands by local citizens. In written testimony to the committee, Misener said that Amazon insists on federal regulation for their drone deliveries under interstate commerce laws. Fast Company has reported previously on NASA’s attempts to develop an air traffic control system for drone aircraft in the United States.
Yesterday, Amazon also announced R&D efforts based around hiring amateur delivery people via a TaskRabbit-style app.AZ Central: SRP Ads, PR for Solar Rate Hike Topped $1 Million
Salt River Project spent about $1.7 million on advertising in three months as it tried to drum up support for a rate hike that included a controversial increase on solar fees.
Financial records and e-mails obtained from the utility show the company geared up last year for an intense debate with solar advocates, whom one SRP executive referred to as "the enemy" in an e-mail to public-relations consultants. The company says the phrase was used in jest.
E&E News: Report Calls Low Oil Prices an Expensive Distraction From Future Energy Needs
Lower oil prices provide temporary relief for consumers, but rising volatility around oil prices will be a much bigger challenge to long-term energy market stability and could undermine a transition to clean energy, according to a new analysis prepared by the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate.
In a 20-page report from the multinational group's New Climate Economy project, economists warn that the recent drop in oil and natural gas prices, while providing short-term economic relief, may compel governments to authorize expensive fossil energy projects that ultimately prove much more costly under national and international carbon reduction systems.
Bloomberg: Korea’s Fuel-Cell Strategy Takes Page From China Solar Playbook
South Korea is tapping into U.S. ingenuity to drive the market for fuel cells, the clean-energy technology that converts hydrogen or natural gas into electricity.
Conglomerates based in South Korea are buying, investing in or partnering with U.S. fuel-cell makers, seeking to build on their designs for the complex systems by incorporating cheaper production methods that will make them more economical.
Times Union: Though Considered Safe, Solar Panels Offer Challenges to Firefighters
The growing number of solar panels on businesses and homes is creating challenges for firefighters, even though the units themselves rarely spark blazes.
On Friday, firefighters battled a fire at a medical office in Latham that started in the solar panels on the roof. Firefighters were able to get the flames doused within an hour, but they had to avoid walking on the still-charged panels and had to vent the roof from the opposite side, where no panels were installed.
"It does limit our access to the roof," said Deputy Chief Joseph Toomey of the Albany Fire Department.
Forbes Opinion: Climate Scientists Get Respect, So Why Don't Nuclear Scientists?
When we talk about climate change, we point out that 97% of climate scientists agree that we are in a warming period and that we need to act.
When we converse about biological evolution, we acknowledge that 100% of geologists understand that biological evolution has been acting on Earth for the last 4 billion years.
But whenever nuclear energy is discussed on TV or in the news, the nuclear science community is never referenced; in fact, there rarely is a real nuclear scientist present. Only anti-nuclear activists. Why?Stories from the Stone Age
After the freezing Ice Age, the world became warmer and the weather became regular and reliable. Landscapes were changing everywhere. Plants and animals were flourishing. Humans began harvesting wild crops, and then they began planting crops. Farming began. They developed tools like sickles and began to settle down in an area. After experiencing hard time for farming due to harsh climate, to have a secure food supply, humans learnt how to domesticate animals like goats and sheep. Herding, combined with farming, changed a way of life - new style of buildings, population expansion, expanding villages etc. Humans built thriving towns and developed many new materials and ideas - the development of irrigation and orchards, a token-controlled trade economy, bronze tools and weapons, and iron tools and weapons. Their Stone Age revolution made our civilization possible and set humanity on the long journey to the modern world.
Stories from the Stone Age tries to explain how humans could change their way of life from nomadic hunter-gatherers living in small groups to farmers living in large societies, by presenting archaeological evidences and having interviews with archaeological experts. It consists of three episodes: Daily Bread; Urban Dream; and Waves of Change.
Episode 1 - Daily Bread
Episode 1 Episode 2 Episode 3
Episode 1 - Daily Bread
After the last Ice Age, when the world became warmer and the weather became regular and reliable, plants and animals were flourishing. Humans began planting crops and using tools like sickles to harvest crops. Farming began.
Episode 2 - Urban Dream
To have a secure food supply, the domestication of animals like sheep and goats began. And herding, combined with farming, changed a way of life - new style of buildings, population expansion, expanding villages etc.
Episode 3 - Waves of Change
After inventing farming, humans built thriving towns and developed many new materials and ideas - the development of irrigation and orchards, a token-controlled trade economy, bronze tools and weapons, and iron tools and weapons.Frequently Asked Questions: Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Dams
Q: What is the contribution of dams to global warming?
According to the most detailed estimate available, done by Ivan Lima and colleagues from Brazil's National Institute for Space Research (INPE), the world's large dams emit 104 million metric tonnes of methane annually from reservoir surfaces, turbines, spillways and rivers downstream (1). This implies that dam methane emissions are responsible for at least 4% of the total warming impact of human activities. No one has yet calculated the total climate impact of dams, which would include releases of carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide.
Q: How do emissions from dams compare to those from other sources?
According to the estimates of the INPE researchers, dams are the largest single anthropogenic source of methane, being responsible for 23% of all methane emissions due to human activities. Methane is a much more potent heat-trapping gas than carbon dioxide, although it does not last as long in the atmosphere.
The most recent assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change states that methane has a warming impact 72 times higher than carbon dioxide if measured over 20 years, and 25 times higher measured over 100 years. Using these IPCC "global warming potential" (GWP) estimates means that one year's methane emissions from large dams, as estimated by Lima, have a global warming impact over 100 years equal to that of 2.6 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide. (Under the Kyoto Protocol, countries estimate their total warming impact using the 100 year GWPs). Over 20 years, the warming impact of annual large dam methane emissions is equivalent to 7.5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide. By comparison:
Global CO2 emissions from fossil fuel burning (2004): 26.6 billion tonnes (2)
US CO2 emissions from fossil fuel burning (2005): 6 billion tonnes (3)
EU-15 emissions from fossil fuel burning (2003): 3.3 billion tonnes (4)
Global CO2 emissions from coal (2003): 9.6 billion tonnes (5)
US CO2 emissions from coal (2005): 2.1 billion tonnes (3)
US CO2 emissions from road transport (2005): 1.7 billion tonnes (3)
Global CO2 emissions from aviation (2002): 0.5 billion tonnes (6)
Q: How do dams emit greenhouse gases (GHGs)?
The "fuel" for the methane, carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide emitted by dams is the rotting of the vegetation and soils flooded by reservoirs, and of the organic matter (plants, plankton, algae, etc.) that flows into, and is produced in, reservoirs over their lifespan. The gases are released at the reservoir surface, at turbines and spillways, and downstream of the dam. Greenhouse gases are also produced by various other dam-related impacts including the fossil fuels and building materials used during dam construction; land clearing for resettlement sites, transmission lines and access roads; and the expansion of irrigated agriculture (an important cause of methane emissions). The trapping of sediments in reservoirs may act as a carbon sink; it may also indirectly increase the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by reducing the amount of river-borne sediments available to fertilize oceanic plankton, which are important consumers of carbon dioxide.
Q: Which dam-related processes have the highest warming impact?
Most of the global warming impact of dams is due to methane emissions at spillways, turbines and downstream. Methane is produced at the reservoir bottom. As it rises toward the surface most of the methane is oxidized in the water to carbon dioxide, a much less powerful greenhouse gas. But when methane-rich deep water is released at the dam the pressure acting upon it suddenly drops and most of its dissolved methane is released directly into the atmosphere. This degassing occurs according to the chemical principle of Henry's Law and is a similar process to the fizzing of a newly opened bottle of Coke. The INPE researchers estimate that 95% of dam methane emissions are from spillways, turbines and downstream.
Q: Which reservoirs have the highest warming impact?
The thermal, chemical and biological conditions in tropical reservoirs mean that their methane emissions are one or more orders of magnitude higher than those from reservoirs elsewhere. Large, shallow tropical reservoirs have the highest emissions.
Q: How do large hydro plant emissions compare with fossil fuel power plants?
Large hydropower reservoirs in the tropics can have a higher global warming impact per kilowatthour generated than fossil fuels, including coal. Philip Fearnside, of Brazilian government research institute INPA, estimates that in 1990 the warming impact of hydropower dams in the Amazon was equal to that of between 3 and 54 natural gas plants generating the same amount of energy.
Q: What is the importance of distinguishing between net and gross emissions?
Ideally, a calculation of the warming impact of reservoirs should be based upon net emissions. This requires adjusting measurements of gross emissions at the reservoir surface and dam outlets to allow for whatever sinks and sources of greenhouse gases existed in the reservoir zone before submergence, the uptake of carbon through photosynthesis of plants and plankton in the reservoir, and the impact of the reservoir upon the pre-dam flows of carbon throughout the wider watershed. It is particularly difficult to assess the net impact of dams upon carbon dioxide fluxes, and net carbon dioxide emissions may be significantly smaller than gross emissions. However because reservoirs produce such huge amounts of methane relative to background fluxes, the difference between net and gross methane emissions is not likely to be significant. The INPE methane estimates are for gross emissions.
Q: Do the INPE calculations include all large dams?
A large dam is defined by the International Commission on Large Dams (ICOLD)-the dam industry's primary business association-as one that is over 15 meters tall. The ICOLD database used by the INPE researchers counts some 33,071 registered large dams. The actual number of large dams is likely to be closer to 50,000, mainly due to the large number of unregistered medium-sized (15-30m) dams in China.
Q: How much methane is emitted from large dams in specific countries?
Tg = teragrams = million tonnes * CO2e = CO2 equivalent calculated using 100-year Global Warming Potentials from the IPCC's 1996 Second Assessment Report (SAR). The SAR 100-year GWP for CH4 is 21 (the value used in the Kyoto Protocol). The IPCC's 2007 Fourth Assessment Report gives a 100-year GWP for CH4 of 25. ** All data for year 2000. Includes land use, land use change, and forestry. Includes contribution of all 6 Kyoto Protocol gases (CO2, CH4, nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6)).
The INPE team have done the first estimates of dam methane emissions in Brazil, China and India. Their estimate for Chinese emissions is likely an underestimate, mainly because according to their methodology the many dams in sub-tropical southern China are treated as temperate dams when in reality their emissions are more likely to be on the scale of tropical dams.
Sources:
1. Ivan B.T. Lima et al. (2007) "Methane Emissions from Large Dams as Renewable Energy Resources: A Developing Nation Perspective," Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, published on-line March 2007. http://tinyurl.com/2bzawj
2. International Energy Agency, Key World Energy Statistics 2006.
3. EIA Emissions of Greenhouse Gas report
4. International Energy Agency, Global CO2 Emissions From Fuel Combustion 2005.
5. Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center
6. UK Department of Trade and Industry, Forecasts of CO2 emissions from civil aircraft for IPCC, November 2006
7. Climate Analysis Indicators ToolAfter two decades of research, a group of Canadian scientists has won approval to start testing an experimental HIV vaccine on humans. The vaccine, developed by researchers at the University of Western Ontario, has received a green light from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for clinical human trials.
Previous studies have shown the vaccine triggers a strong immune response and has yet to show any adverse effects or safety risks. ( Carlos Osorio / Toronto Star )
Beginning in January, the vaccine will be given to 40 healthy people with HIV to test its safety. Dr. Chil-Yong Kang, professor of virology at the Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry at the University of Western Ontario, called the FDA approval a “milestone.” “We started the basic science research two decades ago,” Kang said. “The vaccine development, we started 10 years ago. This is incredible for us to get to this stage of development.”
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Kang said the vaccine, called SAV001, is the first preventative HIV vaccine approved for clinical trials to use a killed whole HIV-1 virus to activate the immune response in humans. The strategy has been used before to develop successful vaccines for influenza, polio, rabies and hepatitis A. Kang said these past successes for other viral diseases provide hope the Canadian-developed vaccine will work against HIV. The human immunodeficiency virus used in the vaccine has been genetically altered to render it non-pathogenic, or unable to cause disease. Kang and his research team then further inactivated the virus using chemicals and radiation. “In the past, people did not use this strategy (using a killed whole HIV virus) because people did not know how to make a safer virus and people did not know how to make large quantities of it,” Kang said. “Now we have solved those problems by the genetic engineering of the virus.” According to the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, there are 30 HIV vaccines currently being tested in phase 1 clinical trials around the world.
Many of these vaccines have largely focused on using one specific component of the human immunodeficiency virus to trigger an immune response. Other vaccines have used other viral vectors to create a vaccine. Right now, there is no effective HIV vaccine. Dr. Jonathan Angel, president of the Canadian Association for HIV Research, whose research is funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, said it is exciting that a Canadian scientist’s work has progressed from the basic research level to a vaccine approved for human clinical trials, meeting the rigorous criteria of the FDA.
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But he also cautioned that developing an effective HIV vaccine remains a daunting task because HIV is a complex virus that scientists do not yet completely understand. Should the SAV001 be proven safe, the vaccine will enter the second phase of clinical trials, in which it will be tested on 600 HIV-negative volunteers at high risk for HIV infection. Researchers will measure the volunteers’ immune response to the vaccine. The third and final phase would enroll 6,000 HIV-negative volunteers at high risk for the disease. The participants, half of whom would be vaccinated and half un-vaccinated, would be tracked for three years to see how many in each group became infected with HIV. Kang and his team received funding from Sumagen Canada, a company created in 2008 to support the development of the vaccine and a subsidiary of a Korean-based pharmaceutical venture company.Steve Bannon may no longer be physically in the White House, but his spirit lingers there as the guide of the Donald Trump administration and the soul at the core of its beliefs.
Bannon is Dickensian in the way his presence — and nominal absence — haunts the Trump presidency, defining its past, dictating its present and damning its future.
Bannon is the author of Trump’s ideology.
It is always worth remembering that Bannon, who departed the White House in mid-August and returned to his right-wing website Breitbart the same day, last year proudly told Mother Jones: “We’re the platform for the alt-right.”
Alt-right is just a new name for Nazis and racists.
Maybe more important, the Nazis and racists believe that Breitbart is a welcoming platform for them. A few days before Mother Jones published its interview with Bannon, The Daily Beast published this:
“Richard Spencer, who heads the white supremacist think tank National Policy Institute, said he was also pleased. Under Bannon’s leadership, Breitbart has given favorable coverage to the white supremacist Alt Right movement. And Spencer loves it.”The VRLA Winter Expo will take place this Saturday at the Los Angeles Convention Center. The day-long event is expected to be the largest in VRLA history, according to event founder Cosmo Scharf.
“Our last event had about 2,000 people and that was in August,” Scharf said in an interview with UploadVR. “The event before that had 1,500 and previous to that we were at 500. But this whole thing began as a meetup around 2 years ago with only about 100 people.”
Scharf sees the growth of his expo as being indicative of the growth of the industry and this year the show will play host to a projected 3,000 visitors and 71 confirmed exhibitors. It will also feature keynotes that may bring major announcements. Roy Taylor of chip-maker AMD kicks off the keynotes at 12:25 PST followed by Survios, Crytek and then Starbreeze, which is the company behind the ultra-wide field of view StarVR headset.
“I’m particularly excited that the guys from Survios will be coming this year,” Scharf said. “They’ve basically been in stealth mode and they’ll finally be surfacing to reveal their first game in a long time.”
Survios VP of marketing Matt Liszt was able to shed some light on what exactly this mystery game is going to be. According to Liszt, Survios will be unveiling new parts of a co-op experience at VRLA. Two players (in two separate Vive Pre headsets) will enter a shared virtual space and play together in real-time. The VRLA demo will have players fending off waves of enemies coming at them. They will also be expanding the demo to include four players — in two separate co-op experiences — during an after-party event on Saturday evening which will be live-streamed on Twitch.
“We want to showcase our vision for the kind of active VR experience we believe in,” Liszt said.
Liszt said the title of the game and more details will be revealed at the show. It’s unknown whether the experience will be released as a product or if it’s merely a tech demo.
Survios is a VR studio that got into the industry relatively early. In 2012 the founders launched Project: Holodeck at USC in an effort |
on Sep 23rd, 2010 | 0 comments
In a busy day of application releases both Apple and its subsidiary Filemaker released new versions of their main productivity applications for the iPad. The updates to the iWork applications seem to be focusing on the main complaints from early adopters such as the inability of having objects grouped and the inability to export the documents in a Microsoft Office compatible format.
Both Keynote and Numbers were updated with the ability to export documents in formats compatible with Microsoft’s Powerpoint and Excel applications. These updates should help make the iPad even more useful as a business user’s mobile computer of choice.
The Pages application was also updated as to fix a big issue for users that create larger, more complex documents. The new version now correctly supports footnotes, endnotes, sections and tables of contents. The fact that more elaborate documents would loose such content when opened in the iPad version of Pages was relegating the application to a being a slightly enriched text editor, as many users avoided doing work on larger documents.
As for Filemaker Go, the major new feature is the enhancement to the ways in which you can send data to other users. You can now email PDF reports or entire databases directly from one iPad to another.
Considering that the iPad has been on sale for just about six months, the level of sophistication of the productivity applications available for the device is quite impressive. Continued enhancement to these applications should help Apple continue to sell iPads as fast as they can make them.
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Related Posts:We know that Samsung has slowly begun investing more into its own Tizen OS platform as of late (and recent rumors suggest that it could begin moving in that direction even more). But now it appears that yet another Android OEM has begun building its own mobile OS: Huawei. The Chinese company “doesn’t want to be on the crutch of Android,” according to a report today from The Information, although people familiar with the project say it’s still early days…
Deal: Get Pixelbook at 25% off: $750!
According to the report, the team that is leading the development effort is based somewhere in Scandinavia and “includes ex-Nokia employees.” Huawei’s recently-hired ex-Apple mobile UI design lead Abigail Brody didn’t comment on the project in an interview with The Information, but she did acknowledge its existence saying that she plans to meet the team in August of this year.
The move is a “contingency measure” for the moment, meaning that Huawei still has every intention of building its EMUI atop Android for the foreseeable future. It makes sense. As Google plans to become “more opinionated” about its Nexus phones and expresses concern over OEMs’ ability to update software in a timely manner, it’s clear the Mountain View company wants to tighten its grip.
Speaking of Brody and EMUI, the report also details many of the changes that she’s bringing to future versions of Huawei’s mobile OS that’s based on Android. The report says that Brody will address “glaring cosmetic issues” and “pain points” with the next major version of EMUI set for this fall. This includes a visual revamp of its software to be more like Material Design and less like iOS, new icons, better “fresh” and “vibrant” colors, and the addition of an app drawer.
We’ve independently heard some tidbits about the upcoming version of EMUI. One person familiar with its design has said that it’s much closer to a stock Nexus experience with some of Huawei’s own elements built on top. Just like Efrati, we’ve heard that it’s going to be a bold departure from the iOS copycat that is previous versions of EMUI, embracing many of Google’s own design concepts.
It will be nice to see that Huawei is actively trying to resolve what I think its its biggest problem (software UI/UX), but I hope that it doesn’t end up needing to bet the farm on its own OS — I don’t think anyone wants another major software platform to deal with.Joel Diaz doesn't think that Bob Arum wants Timothy Bradley to beat Juan Manuel Marquez on October 12, when the two fighters clash for Bradley's WBO welterweight title in Las Vegas, live on HBO pay-per-view. In fact, Diaz is sure that Arum would prefer Bradley to lose, because Marquez is a bigger draw, and Bradley has never gotten his due in the industry.
From Chris Robinson at Hustleboss.com:
"Tim Bradley has always worked his way up the hard way," Diaz told me recently. "Nobody's ever given him love in the business of boxing. Every single one of his fights, they want to take him out; they want to put him out of the business, one way or another. But he keeps winning. That's one thing that we have in mind. For a fact, I know that his promoter would rather have Marquez win than Bradley win. And we know that." Asked why he feels that way, Diaz had no problem sharing his opinion. "Marquez is a big name, he's a big draw," said Diaz. "Bradley, as you can see, he doesn't draw much. He doesn't have a big draw in boxing. But he keeps winning, he keeps fighting. He's a four-time world champion. As a business person, I'm sure that Bob Arum would rather have Marquez win than Bradley win. Because there [are] bigger fights out there and bigger opponents. We have that in mind and we work against all those adversities."
Bradley (30-0, 12 KO) is the underdog against Marquez (55-6-1, 40 KO), the bigger star coming off of a career-defining win over Manny Pacquiao. Bradley also beat Pacquiao last year, but it was slightly less definitive to say the least.
Do you think Arum is actively rooting against Bradley in this fight? On the one hand, Marquez is the bigger star, but he's also 40 years old as of yesterday, and he's not even committing himself to fighting past this outing. Bradley, who turns 30 next week, has a lot more future ahead of him. A convincing win over Marquez would push him toward undeniable territory. Maybe not a big draw, but a lot more money to make over a longer time for the promoter, and money is the name of the game.On Tuesday the Department of Finance issued a press release enumerating the five principles it will follow as it makes the final touch-ups in its reforms to business taxation:
1. “Support small businesses and their contributions to our communities and our economy.” Actually, the purpose of taxation, which is what this is about, is to raise revenue, which by definition means reduced “support” for small businesses — or anybody who gets taxed. Most people go into business, not to make contributions to the community and economy, though that’s often a consequence of their action, but to make the best possible livings for themselves and their families. Taxing their incomes inevitably discourages them in this endeavour. The way to support them is to cut, not raise, their taxes. And why single out small businesses? Government should support all businesses equally. Big businesses’ pursuit of profit also generates community and economy spillovers.
2. “Keep taxes low for small business, and support owners to actively invest in their growth, create jobs, strengthen entrepreneurship and grow our economy.” Again, why low taxes only for small businesses? What are big businesses, chopped liver? The market will tell us which size of business works best in what context. No person or agency knows what’s needed for tomorrow’s economy, least of all anyone with (as Adam Smith put it) “folly and presumption enough” to think he does. As for all those good things — investment, growth, entrepreneurship — the government shouldn’t actually try to encourage them. It should run a tax policy that minimizes their discouragement and let business people decide how much and which investment and hiring makes sense.
The government wants to conduct a gender based analysis on finalized tax proposals
3. “Avoid creating unnecessary red tape for hard-working small businesses.” But not for businesses that aren’t hard working? No government ever rolls out “unnecessary” red tape. Some agency always thinks it’s necessary, even vital. How about not creating — in fact, how about cutting? — even the red tape that bureaucratic Red Tapers do think is necessary? That would be a real commitment to business.
4. “Recognize the importance of maintaining family farms, and work with Canadians to ensure we don’t affect the transfer of a family business to the next generation.” Is it really more important that parents pass on their business to their kids if it’s a farm rather than some other kind of business? Canada used to be all farm families. But there are under 100,000 left. Do the ones remaining really throw off such big “positive externalities” that the rest of us need to bend the tax system specifically in their favour?
5. “Conduct a gender-based analysis on finalized proposals, to ensure any changes to the tax system promote gender equity.” The document goes on to note that 83 per cent of the “passive investment” income that is a main target of Finance’s proposed tax changes is earned by corporation owners making more than $250,000 a year, 70 per cent of whom are men.
The only fair thing is equal taxes for people with equal incomes, whatever their age, colour, gender
That sounds ominous! Finance seems to be saying tougher rules on passive investment are OK, not just because they hit people making over $250,000 a year — who are above middle class and therefore not the government’s favoured constituency — but also because disproportionate numbers of “the rich” are men. Not only does the government want a class war — the bottom and middle against the top — it also wants a gender war, women against men.
What policy guidance will a gender-based analysis give? If a tax increase disproportionately hits men, it’s OK? If a tax cut disproportionately benefits men, it’s not OK? If that’s the case, be warned: There won’t ever be tax cuts at the top end of the income distribution, or at least not for a long time, since for now and probably for another decade or two men do still make most of the top income, even if many more women have high incomes than used to.
But how does a tax system that hits men disproportionately “promote gender equity”? It may promote gender income equality, by lowering men’s after-tax income and raising women’s (although, since many men live with a woman and vice versa, and since most couples share incomes, it may not even do that). But it has nothing to do with equity.
I’m afraid that, on these issues, I’m shamelessly 20th-century. The only fair thing is equal taxes for people with equal incomes, whatever their age, colour, gender, industry, preferred corporate form, astrological sign — you name it. If there are legal, regulatory or social impediments to certain groups earning as much as they’d like, by all means work to eliminate those. But don’t start using the tax system as a corrective, and deliberately shift the tax burden from one social group to another. Bringing race, gender and so on into the tax system: What a sad way to celebrate Canada’s 150th.Quote: Darren Originally Posted by I keep checking back now and then, but tho you guys have done a great job with the emulator, updates itself seem none existent.
Quote: Darren Originally Posted by I think last time i re downloaded PJ64 the program itself had slight changes but that was only to put a block on the program, if i remember correctly it was something relating to a delay using it unless you paid.
The emulator itself the "core" doesnt seem to have changed, games play the same as they did many years ago, games that wouldnt play havent had any updates to the plugins to try emulate it. https://github.com/project64/project...s/contributors
you can see there that there has been a lot of work done in the last two years.
A lot of work has also been done to make sure things still work similar and work well.
What would you like to see or how would you know things are different the way you want?
Quote: Darren Originally Posted by I know as new systems come out people work towards them, but when you get the likes of Dolphin that plays GC games decently and Wii U.
It makes me wonder why people dont work on older systems anymore given that hardware has come along way since so new things could be done to improve the emulator.
PCSXe is another, I find if plugins could be recoded to take advantage of todays hardware we could see improvements. Maybe more can be done to improve news and changes. This site needs to be redone, but I have been focused on improving things in the code over the site.you can see there that there has been a lot of work done in the last two years.A lot of work has also been done to make sure things still work similar and work well.What would you like to see or how would you know things are different the way you want?New developers do tend to go to new systems, but I have been working a long time on Project64.REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz When it comes to Android devices, it's common for various phone makers to put their own software over Google's clean version of Android.
If you swipe through one of Samsung's Galaxy phones, for example, you're likely to come across some of Samsung's apps and its own Galaxy app store.
Now, however, it seem that Google wants its partners to put its own apps and services at the forefront of most Android phones.
Amir Efrati at The Information says he has obtained confidential documents the reveal Google has been upping its requirements for partners that want to build Android phones.
In particular, the documents suggest Google wants its partners to place more of its apps on Android phones and feature them in more prominent places.
One reason for this change is that Google wants the Android experience to be more consistent across devices, Efrati reports. This means Google would turn down certain customizations proposed by phone makers, and Efrati notes that "there have been frequent fights about that, particularly between Google and Samsung."
This wouldn't be too surprising — Samsung is known for adding its own TouchWiz software to its Android devices. The company also emphasizes its own software features and apps when promoting its new phones.
While Samsung is one of Google's biggest partners, its also its most formidable rival when it comes to the smartphone space. Samsung's incredibly popular Galaxy phones compete directly with Google's Nexus devices and other smartphones, such as Motorola's, that use near-stock versions of Android.
The Samsung Galaxy S5 Steve Kovach/Business Insider Google's partners are reportedly saying the company is "tightening the screws" on these Android contracts, known as Mobile Application Distribution Agreements, according to Efrati.
But many of these manufacturers feel as if they don't have a choice since other operating systems such as Windows Phone, Tizen, and Firefox OS have limited reach. Android currently commands an overwhelming 85% of the global smartphone market as of July 2014, according to Strategy Analytics.
As part of the updated contract, Google is requiring one of its partners to increase the number of Google-made apps from nine in 2011 to 20 in 2014. This year's agreement also required that there must be a Google search widget on the default home screen of the phone along with an icon for the Google Play store and a Google icon that houses 13 apps included "Google Chrome, Google Maps, Google Drive, YouTube, and Gmail among others.
Google is also reportedly requiring partners to follow its guidelines regarding hotwords for voice-enabled searches and virtual assistants.
It's unclear exactly what the impact of these new contracts will be, but if Efrati's report is legitimate this may mean we'll be seeing less customization from some of Google's partners. Samsung has already been putting more of its resources into Tizen, a different open-source software based on Linux.
The company's new Gear S smartwatch, for example, runs on Tizen, but we have yet to see a mainstream phone from Samsung that runs on something other than Android.American Atheists will be among the non-believer groups led by the Secular Coalition for America for an historic briefing with the Obama Administration in Washington, DC, on Friday, 26 February 2010 CE.
Representatives of several leading Atheist, Freethought, and Humanist organizations will gather in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, next door to the White House, at 11:00 AM ET, for the briefing.
Dr. Ed Buckner, President of American Atheists, said "We are delighted that we will get the chance to speak to and to hear from the Obama administration at the briefing with the Secular Coalition for America tomorrow. We will not be seeking support for Atheism from the federal administration, because we know they must be neutral and because we are confident that our conclusions can compete and win in the marketplace of ideas, unaided by government. We seek an end to special rights for religious ideas and beliefs--in all regulations, laws, procedures, and pronouncements. The privileging of religiosity violates the First Amendment and good sense."
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The American Atheists delegation will include Dr. Buckner; AA Vice President and National Spokesperson Dave Silverman; Vice President and Military Director Kathleen Johnson; Indra Zuno, AA general member, translator, and writer; Ellen Birch, Chair of the American Atheists Life Membership Committee and systems engineer; and Camille A. Brewer, AA general member, political/freethought activist and art expert.
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"We will be represented by a wonderful cross-section of our membership," Said Dr. Buckner. "Atheists come from across the social, ethnic, economic, and political spectra."
undefinedI’ve used an Arduino Duemilanove but you can use an Uno (I am not sure about Nano and other types). Arduino gives you a little more info about this process here. Whatever device you are using, this is called the ISP programmer.
1.Install Arduino 1.6.9 (I use this only because the firmware was confirmed working with this, you can probably use the latest but not certain), and install the Sanugino package. This can be done by copying the contents of the zip to /ARDUINO_INSTALL_DIRECTORY/hardware.
2. Connect the ISP programmer/Arudino to your computer. Open device manager -> ports to see what COM port it is if you are unsure.
3. In the Arduino IDE, Tools -> Board -> Select your Arduino board and select the COM port corresponding to your device, Tools -> port
4. Open the ArduinoISP example from File -> Examples ->ArduinoISP -> ArduinoISP and upload it to your Arduino by clicking the upload button.
5. Now we need to burn the bootloader to the Melzi. This will require either 6-pin headers or some sort of make-shift situation like I have done (wires + solder + Arduino headers). However you do this, connect the pins on the Arduino to the Melzi board ISP pins on the bottom of the board. As per the schematic, ensure the following pin connections:
Arduino 10 -> Melzi RES
Arduino 11-> Melzi MOSI
Arduino 12 -> Melzi MISO
Arduino 13 -> Melzi SCK
Arduino 5V -> Melzi 5V
Arduino GND -> Melzi GND
6. Once the connect is made, ensure both the Arudino and Melzi are powered by USB.
7. Go to Tools -> Programmer -> Arduino as ISP.
8. Go to Tools -> Port -> select the port corresponding to the Melzi board, not our Arduino.
9. Change the processor board to Sanugino using Tools -> Board and set processor to The Sanguino ATmega1284p (16MHz) using Tools -> Processor.
10. Click Tools -> Burn Bootloader. This should take about one minute or so and will notify you if successful. Errors will occur if steps 7 – 9 aren’t followed.
11. Remove the headers from the the SPI pins on the Melzi board. You won’t need the Arduino anymore so you can disconnect this too.Story Highlights 47% of Republicans, 39% of Democrats following election news very closely
General GOP advantage on this measure evident each month since January
Overall, Americans paying slightly more attention now than in January
PRINCETON, N.J. -- Republicans continue to follow the news of the presidential election more closely than Democrats. In mid-May, 47% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say they are following election news "very closely," compared with 39% of Democrats and Democratic leaners. This eight-percentage-point gap is slightly smaller than in previous months, but the general pattern of Republicans paying closer attention than Democrats has been evident all year.
This measure of attention paid to the campaign is based on Gallup Daily tracking interviews conducted in the middle of each month since January, with the latest update from May 13-15.
That Republicans pay closer attention to elections is not a new phenomenon; the basic pattern was evident in the 2012 presidential election. Additionally, some real-world evidence -- namely, higher television ratings for the Republican than for the Democratic presidential debates last fall and earlier this year -- underscores the sense that the GOP primary process has been more engaging than the Democratic process for Americans. This may reflect the unusually large field of 17 GOP candidates, the presence of the iconoclastic Donald Trump, and greater uncertainty about who would ultimately prevail in the Republican race.
The groups paying the closest attention to the election generally are those most likely to identify as Republicans. These include men, those aged 50 and older, and whites.
How closely are you following the news about the 2016 presidential election campaign -- very closely, somewhat closely, not too closely or not at all? Very closely % NATIONAL ADULTS 40 GENDER Male 43 Female 37 AGE 18 to 29 26 30 to 49 32 50 to 64 51 65+ 51 EDUCATION H.S. or less 31 Some college 41 College grad only 48 Postgraduate 55 RACE Whites 45 Nonwhites 27 IDEOLOGY Conservative 45 Moderate 35 Liberal 40 Gallup, May 13-15, 2016
A Gallup analysis last month noted that the gender gap in paying attention to the election had been growing since February, with men 13 points more likely than women to be paying very close attention. This month, however, that gap has narrowed, although men continue to be paying closer attention than women.
Americans' Interest in the Election Rises Gradually Since January
American adults overall are paying slightly more attention to the presidential election as the primary season has gone on this year, although there has been little meaningful change in the percentage following "very closely" over the past three months. Forty percent are following election news very closely in May, up from 31% in January. More broadly, 79% report following news about the election very or somewhat closely now, compared with 69% in January. This leaves 21% who are following election news not too closely or not at all.
How closely are you following the news about the 2016 presidential election campaign? January % February % March % April % May % Following closely (net) 69 71 75 75 79 Very closely 31 34 40 37 40 Somewhat closely 38 37 35 38 39 Following not too closely or not at all 30 29 25 24 21 Gallup
Implications
Although Republicans have been consistently more likely than Democrats to say they are following election news closely this year, more activity is left in the race for the Democratic nomination than for the GOP nomination, which appears to be settled. How this might affect the attention gap remains to be seen.
More broadly, attention to the election will most likely rise for all Americans in July, as the two parties hold their conventions, and then again in September and October, as the campaign comes down to its final two months. The latter period will include four planned debates, the first of which is scheduled for Sept. 26 at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. Whether the Democrats can generate more interest from their constituency and hence increase the probability of higher voter turnout is one of their central challenges moving toward November.
Historical data are available in Gallup Analytics.
Survey Methods
Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted May 13-15, 2016, on the Gallup U.S. Daily survey, with a random sample of 1,537 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. For results based on the total sample of national adults, the margin of sampling error is ±3 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. For results based on the total samples of 699 Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents and 677 Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, the margin of sampling error is ±5 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. All reported margins of sampling error include computed design effects for weighting.
Each sample of national adults includes a minimum quota of 60% cellphone respondents and 40% landline respondents, with additional minimum quotas by time zone within region. Landline and cellular telephone numbers are selected using random-digit-dial methods.
Learn more about how the Gallup U.S. Daily works.Toby McLean is the latest player to extend his stay at the Club, signing a two-year contract extension that will see him remain at Victoria University Whitten Oval until at least the end of 2019.
McLean added 15 more games and a premiership medal to his career tally this season, becoming a fixture up forward before a mid-season footy injury temporarily derailed the 20-year-old’s season.
He returned in style, averaging 20 disposals, five tackles and a goal a game, and his creativity in front of goal would become a key ingredient in the Dogs’ premiership success.
“I’m very excited to hang around for a few more years,” McLean told westernbulldogs.com.au.
“I don’t think there’s any place I’d rather be.”
The crafty small forward commenced pre-season last week with the rest of the first to fourth year players, and he says that whole group is motivated and “ready for anything.”
“I think everyone is excited to be back.” he said.
“We’ll definitely be hungry again and we’re very much looking forward to 2017.
List Manager Jason McCartney said McLean had shown some outstanding traits in his young career to date.
“Toby has had a terrific start to his career and to play such an important role in our recent finals campaign after just 19 career games is a testament to his ability, hard work and dedication, he said.
“He is just a great club person, and we look forward to seeing him continue to develop over the coming years.”
McLean will turn 21 in January and has played 19 games for the Club after being taken at selection 20 in the 2014 NAB AFL Draft.(CNN) Food, football, technology and live music are synonymous with Austin, Texas. Along with its diverse interests, the city is one of the most ethnically diverse in America, with growing Asian and Hispanic communities.
The city's African-American community, however, is seeing a decline in numbers, with a 5.4% decrease between 2000 and 2010, according to the Census Bureau. Now, many residents of East Austin, the city's historically black quarter, are looking for ways to reverse the tide.
East Austin is where most of the city's African-Americans have lived and raised their families since the 1930s. African-Americans once accounted for as much as 25% of the city's population. Today, blacks make up only about 8%; the number will fall to 5% in a few decades, according to city projections. The change comes as new residents, mostly young white professionals, are moving into East Austin and many blacks are relocating to the suburbs or other regions of the state.
"It's distinctly different from the way it used to be," said Wilhelmina Delco, a former Austin school board member and the city's first elected African-American official.
She and her husband, Exalton Delco, have lived in their East Austin home, where they raised their four children, for 52 years. For many years, Delco said, whites were afraid to drive across Interstate 35 to visit East Austin, but now they find it an attractive place to live.
"It's a discovery, and now newcomers are getting exorbitant prices for the homes, and that drives up the cost," she said.
In 2015, the Census Bureau named Texas' capital city as one of the fastest-growing metropolises in the U.S., with more than 885,000 residents and counting.
The median sale price of a home in East Austin was $225,000 during the 2012-13 fiscal year, according to the Austin Board of Realtors. Just two years later, housing prices in the area saw a steep increase to an average sale price of $345,000.
Affordable-housing efforts, such as the work of the Blackland Community Development Corp., have been underway for years but, with the significant increase of home prices, have not been entirely effective.
In February, Mayor Steve Adler announced the creation of a Community Cabinet consisting of a diverse group of community members, including two Greater Austin Black Chamber of Commerce board members, whose responsibility it is to address housing affordability, transportation and other issues within the city.
Most segregated city
The Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management named Austin the country's most economically segregated city in the results of a study this year. It found that many Austin residents have separated themselves from those who work in other industries or have different educational backgrounds and that the city is most of all segregated by wealth.
Shocked by the findings, Delco fears that gentrification could cause the native East Austin culture to be forgotten.
It is no mistake that East Austin was once predominantly black. In 1928, the city of Austin adopted a plan that designated an area just east of Interstate 35 as the Negro District, an effort to segregate whites from blacks and Hispanics. To entice blacks to live in East Austin, the city paved roads, built schools and parks, and improved the community's sewer system for their use. An area just south of the Negro District was designated for Hispanics.
Delco said that segregation eventually created a black middle class in East Austin as they opened businesses, worshiped at churches within their community and eventually opened the city's first institution of higher education, Huston-Tillotson University.
"I'm concerned that what used to be our image here inside East Austin is being lost because people are moving here from areas where they had no way of knowing that there was an East Austin where people were predominantly black," she said.
In a report on changing demographics, the city highlighted Austin's shrinking black population and what that could mean for East Austin establishments.
"Many community leaders talk today of how many of these families are still returning to churches in east Austin on Sunday morning," according to the report. "However, many of these same community leaders fear that the newly-suburban African American population will eventual build suburban churches closer to home, leaving the original houses of worship somewhat stranded."
#IAmBlackAustin
Members of the Greater Austin Black Chamber of Commerce have been aware that the black community was shrinking for years, Chamber CEO Natalie Madeira Cofield said. So, this year, the Chamber launched the campaign #IAmBlackAustin.
Chamber members felt that there was no longer a centralized space for black life in the city, Cofield said; #IAmBlackAustin is a direct response to that concern.
The campaign includes a website that promotes community events, as well as promotional videos and photo exhibits featuring African-Americans working and playing within the city. New videos and photo exhibits are released each quarter and afterward kept on display at the Chamber's Dedrick-Hamilton House, the home of one of the area's first freed slaves.
"We decided to use technology and creativity to rebrand, reposition and create a new narrative for what it means to be black in the city of Austin," Cofield said. "We hope the campaign will give members of the black community a place to see a reflection of themselves."
Delco, who has a primary school, a community center and a Prairie View A&M University building named in her honor, said a campaign to identify Black Austin is educational not only for the black community but for the entire community.
With support from the City of Austin, Cofield says, African-American residents have eagerly signed up to be a part of the campaign.
Sterling Smith says "I wanted to be a part of the I Am Black Austin campaign because I wanted to give back."
He says that since relocating Keystoke, his mobile app development company, to Austin from Washington two years ago, his experience has been positive. He said that the city is indeed diverse but that he is often the only African-American in the room when he meets with local tech professionals; he hopes to see that change.
"I would like to see more promoting of African-Americans and other minorities in the technology space," Smith said. "It's always more comforting to see other people at the table."Pete Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, Indiana, announced his candidacy to chair the Democratic National Committee on Thursday.
“I’m running because it’s time for new leadership to deliver a fresh start for our Party,” Buttigieg said in a message to DNC members forwarded to reporters. “The solutions we need to rebuild our Party won’t originate in Washington ― they will begin in our communities across America’s states and territories.”
Buttigieg, an openly gay Navy reserve officer and former McKinsey consultant, is the sixth person to announce they’re vying for the top spot. His competitors are Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), Labor Secretary Tom Perez, Idaho Democratic Party executive director Sally Boynton-Brown, South Carolina Democratic Party Chairman Jaime Harrison and New Hampshire Democratic Party Chairman Ray Buckley.
The message announcing Buttigieg’s candidacy, which includes a video, heavily emphasized his mayoral experience in South Bend. It is an appeal designed to resonate with the leaders of a party that just got trounced in the once-reliably Democratic industrial midwestern states.
“There is a need for a voice that is rooted in our local communities, a community like mine... That local perspective could be helpful right now,” Buttigieg told The Huffington Post in an interview explaining his reasons for running.
“We have had the experience here in South Bend of how to run and win elections, not by running away from our values, but by running on them,” he added.
In a not-so-subtle dig at the personality-heavy presidential race, he argued that Democrats need to make “sure that we’re always talking in terms of people’s lived experience. And that’s one area where we need to be better as a party.”
Buttigieg, like Ellison, pledged that he would leave his current job if elected DNC chair.
“But I will always be standing up for my neighbors, friends, and family in South Bend and the thousands of communities like my hometown, all across our country,” he said in his statement. “I’m running because what happens in the Democratic Party is going to have profound effects on communities like South Bend.”
Buttigieg has won acclaim for his work refurbishing South Bend’s blighted properties, and leveraging the city’s industrial history to generate new economic activity.
And President Barack Obama recently included the 34-year-old on a shortlist of rising stars in the party.
It is not immediately clear if Buttigieg differs from the best-known DNC candidates ― Ellison and Perez ― on major policy issues. He has, at times, expressed views that appear to place him in the more business-friendly wing of the party, rather than its populist left flank. In a June profile in the New York Times, Buttigieg downplayed the impact of trade agreements, as opposed to automation, on job losses.
At the same time, Buttigieg celebrated the career of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) long before the Vermont senator became a national figure. Buttigieg’s 2000 essay hailing Sanders as an “outstanding and inspiring example of such integrity,” won the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Essay Contest for High School Students.
He endorsed Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary, however.
Buttigieg nonetheless spoke highly of Sanders’ presidential run in his conversation with HuffPost.
“It proves that a lot of people would be brought into the process, a lot of people we thought of as independents” could be attracted to an unabashedly progressive message, he said.
“Now what we have got to do is take the lessons of that energy and move it forward,” he added. “A lot of the things I admired then, I admire now.”
Buttigieg shunned ideological categorizations repeatedly when pressed on the matter. He also specifically declined to endorse reinstating a ban on lobbyist donations to the DNC, claiming he “didn’t see anything great come of that.”
“I don’t see where blanket statements about who does and does not give have changed anything for us as party,” he continued.
Ellison has said he would support reinstating the ban; Perez would not make such a commitment.
Ellison released a statement welcoming Buttigieg’s entry into the race. The Minnesota congressman singled out the mayor’s decision to come out as gay during his successful re-election race in 2015 as a display of “tremendous courage.”
Richard Zody, chairman of the Indiana Democratic Party, released a statement endorsing Buttigieg shortly after the mayor’s announcement.
“With investments in things like community development, job creation, and infrastructure during his time as Mayor of South Bend, Pete Buttigieg has the capability of bringing a much-needed Midwest voice to the Democratic Party that will resonate across the country,” Zody said. “Pete is a young and dynamic talent that we need at the top of our party, and I am happy to support a Hoosier for DNC Chair.”
Buttigieg is soliciting donations for his run on ActBlue, a Democratic fundraising website. He has already hired some veteran Democratic operatives, including Lis Smith, the deputy campaign manager for Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley’s 2016 presidential campaign; Dan Parker, a former Indiana Democratic Party chairman; and his own advisers, Martha McKenna and Jenn Pihlaja.
But he faces steep odds if he is to convince the 447 Democratic state party officials and other insiders to choose him between now and late February when they vote.
Although the DNC chair’s main jobs are to raise funds and recruit candidates, after presidential election defeats it has often become a proxy battle for warring wings of the party.
This year, Sanders backers ― and many Clinton supporters ― have rallied behind Ellison in an attempt to assuage dissatisfied Sanders primary voters and re-engage the progressive constituencies Democrats need to turn out.
Ellison enjoys the backing of an array of Democratic leaders |
teammate gave the idea. If I had known what a fuss it would cause..." Goal celebrations have been the cause of previous controversies. Former Valencia player Leandro once imitated a urinating dog at the edge of the field, and Liverpool's Robbie Fowler drew criticism for crawling at a field marking and pretending to snort cocaine.Media playback is not supported on this device I felt like a kid - Thierry Henry
Thierry Henry refused to rule out a third spell with Arsenal - if he is asked - after grabbing a dramatic late winner against Sunderland.
Henry, who scored in stoppage time in the 2-1 win, returns to the New York Red Bulls after Wednesday's Champions League last-16 tie against AC Milan.
"If Arsenal need some help one day I will be around," Henry told BBC Sport.
Defender Per Mertesacker will miss the Milan game and will undergo a scan on Sunday to assess an ankle injury.
Media playback is not supported on this device Wenger praises 'unbelievable' Henry
The German defender had to be stretchered off after collapsing as he tried to control the ball, with Sunderland's James McClean capitalising on Mertesacker's misfortune to give the home side a second-half lead.
Reflecting on whether McClean should have played on, Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger said: "I thought about it during the game after they scored, but you cannot demand that [play to stop] because you do not know if the guy has gone down through injury or because he slipped.
"It's just in the action, you cannot demand to stop."
Substitute Aaaron Ramsey quickly equalised for Arsenal before Henry, who had come on for Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, converted Andrey Arshavin's cross to push the Gunners into fourth.
Henry, 34, scored his 176th goal in 258 top-flight games for Arsenal. He said: "When you come on as substitute you want to help your team and change the game.
"The guy who scores gets the credit but the cross from Andrey Arshavin was perfect."
Arsenal's record goalscorer, re-signed for Arsenal on 6 January, having trained with the club during the Major League Soccer off-season.
Since rejoining, he has scored three goals in six appearances, including the winner on his second 'debut' against Leeds.
"You can never say never," said Henry, after he was asked whether this would prove to be his last Premier League game for Arsenal. "I felt just like a kid who scores his first goal for the team he loves."
Media playback is not supported on this device Henry salutes Arsenal fans
Asked if Henry come back next season, Wenger said: "We will see next year. Maybe he might want to stop at some stage as well?
"It's a shame that a player of that quality is not in England or in Europe."
Henry leaves Arsenal on 16 February after the game against Milan at the San Siro in preparation for the start of the MLS season, which begins on 10 March, with the Red Bulls taking on Dallas.
Wenger added: "I hope he will add some more [goals] in the Champions League on Wednesday. Certainly he got us the three points in a very difficult game."
Sunderland manager Martin O'Neill also joined in the praise for Henry: "He has been a terrific player in his time here - and he hasn't done too badly second time around as well."He tried his best, but Charles McMahon couldn't hold it.
So he dropped his pants by the side of Moravian Avenue in Palmer Township.
Then he did his business. Then he picked it up and threw it.
"You were standing on the side of the road. You pulled your pants down. You picked it up and you started throwing your fecal matter around," said Northampton County Judge Stephen Baratta. "Tell me there's a good reason for this."
"I didn't want to go in my pants," said the 57-year-old Palmer Township man.
He pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct Thursday and will spend six months on probation.
"Why'd you pick it up? That doesn't make sense," Baratta asked. "Why'd you get your hands dirty?"
"I don't know," McMahon said. "It's the first time it ever happened."
Defense attorney Anthony Rybak said McMahon had been drinking. McMahon admitted he had three beers. He told the judge he doesn't abuse alcohol but is schizophrenic.
He said he tossed the waste into the woods.
"Oh. In the woods. You were cleaning up after yourself?" the judge asked.
Two women driving by around 3:30 p.m. Oct. 14 saw McMahon reaching near his rear end and pulled over because he looked suspicious.
"They saw him reach in his pants and they were afraid he was discarding something illegal," said Assistant District Attorney Tatum Wilson.
They went to the woods to see what McMahon had thrown. Unfortunately, one of them stepped in it. The charging police officer reported he smelled the evidence on her shoe.
"You must have eaten something really bad," the judge said.
The 21 weirdest crimes of 2016 in the Lehigh Valley
McMahon lamented he almost made it home.
"I was like this," he told Baratta as he waddled like a penguin to demonstrate.
His prior criminal record included one misdemeanor. He possessed an explosive, an M-80, in New Jersey.
"So you deal with hazardous materials?" the judge asked.
Wilson said the victims didn't oppose the plea deal as long as McMahon gets the mental help he needs. Baratta acknowledged the plea deal made sense for everyone.
"Nobody wants to go to trial and have the jury hear that story," he said.
Rudy Miller may be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @RudyMillerLV. Find Easton area news on Facebook.BOARDMAN — State troopers with the Canfield Post of the Ohio State Patrol early today found a loaded.38-caliber revolver in the car of a man who was arrested for a felony operating a motor vehicle under the influence arrest.
Manuel Davila, 47, is in the Mahoning County jail on charges of improper handling of a firearm in a motor vehicle and OVI after he was pulled over about 1:50 a.m. today at South Avenue and Midlothian Boulevard for running a red light.
Reports said Davila appeared to be drunk but refused to take a breath test. The gun was found underneath the passenger seat. Also found in the car were two cans of beer.
The OVI charge is a felony because it is the sixth OVI charge for Davila within 20 years.
This is the second OVI arrest with a gun for troopers at the post since Sunday.
Early Sunday, a man was arrested for OVI in Austintown and a loaded.357-Magnum revolver was found in his car.An artist's impression of the planetary system around the red dwarf Gliese 581. - ESO via Getty Images
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The incoming Trump administration has a series of planned policy changes in the U.S. related to health care and lobbying, among other topics. But what about policies that extend beyond the country — and even the planet?
Marcia Smith, the founder and editor of SpacePolicyOnline.com, joined us to talk about NASA's future under his administration.
On worries over what NASA researches:
In terms of NASA programs, the biggest concern is that he is going to remove NASA's responsibilities for doing earth science satellites related to climate change research. There have been some comments by advisers to him that that's one of their plans and that's what the community is worried about most right now.
On balancing government with the private sector:
Well, I think that there is widespread support, at least philosophically, in both Republican and Democratic camps for private sector initiatives and for NASA to continue to pursue the public-private partnerships that it's become known for — in terms of supplying the space station with cargo right now, and eventually for crew. The outstanding question is whether or not anyone in the government is willing to become reliant on the private sector for doing some of these things. For example, there's a big debate over whether NASA should continue to build its big rocket — the Space Launch System — or to rely on a private company like SpaceX.
Click the above audio player to hear the full interview.
“I think the best compliment I can give is not to say how much your programs have taught me (a ton), but how much Marketplace has motivated me to go out and teach myself.” – Michael in Arlington, VA As a nonprofit news organization, what matters to us is the same thing that matters to you: being a source for trustworthy, independent news that makes people smarter about business and the economy. So if Marketplace has helped you understand the economy better, make more informed financial decisions or just encouraged you to think differently, we’re asking you to give a little something back. Become a Marketplace Investor today – in whatever amount is right for you – and keep public service journalism strong. We’re grateful for your support. BEFORE YOU GOTransgender people lack adequate medical services in the Greater Boston area, according to a new study by the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Foundation. The report, conducted by the foundation's "Health Equity Roundtable Initiative," found that transgender people faced threatening medical environments and difficulty finding primary healthcare.
Authored by psychiatry clinician and Health Equity Roundtable Director Shani Dowd, the report details findings from a roundtable group discussion that took place in Roxbury last March between "trans" and "gender queer" people and parents of transgender people.
Transgender health in New England:
Massachusetts, Vermont and Connecticut mandate health insurers to cover medical services for transgender people. Such coverage includes hormone therapies and gender affirming surgery - a procedure that conforms someone to a particular gender identity.
But finding doctors to conduct such gender affirming surgeries is not easy: only two surgeons in New England who work at Boston Medical Center offer male-to-female "bottom" reassigning procedures. Those who seek female-to-male "bottom" surgery must travel to Pennsylvania, California, Texas, Florida or Illinois. BMC became the first to offer such services in Massachusetts last May when it opened a Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery.
Boston Medical Center becomes first Massachusetts hospital to offer gender reassignment surgery
Partakers in the study reported the Fenway Health Center in Boston as the safest and most knowledgeable place to receive healthcare.
Few providers, high costs:
The study reports high costs for the few competent providers available, and that these professionals were often not included in their insurance networks. Few specialists also means longer wait times, a time period the study says is crucial for transgender youth going through puberty.
Also scarce are specialized therapists, who must send approval to insurers in cases of gender-affirming surgery. Transgender patients have higher rates of anxiety and depression as well, according to the study.
Some participants also said a lack of specialized knowledge meant they had to educate their own doctors about trans-health issues.
Hostile attitudes:
Participants depicted an intensely negative attitude toward the transgender community within the healthcare environment. Reports of poor treatment by workers - including non-medical staff like receptionists - were common, including "name calling, refusal of care and inappropriate curiosity."
The report quotes one participant saying if he had not moved two states over to receive emergency asthma treatment, he would have died. Emergency waiting rooms are described in the report as anxiety-provoking and risky environments.
Massachusetts Senate passes transgender anti-discrimination law
The Health Equity Roundtable Initiative is a program of the New England-based Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare Foundation and uses direct input from particular communities to uncover health inequalities and improve healthcare.Thomas Randle has claimed the Toyota Racing Series title after beating Pedro Piquet to third in a New Zealand Grand Prix led from start to finish by Jehan Daruvala.
Randle had slipped a point behind Piquet following race two of the weekend at Manfeild, but made a decisive move for the championship on a restart following an early red flag.
At the start, polesitter Daruvala had kept the lead ahead of points leader Piquet, whose position had been strengthened by Marcus Armstrong passing Randle for third and Richard Verschoor – only two points behind the Brazilian after his race two win – slipping to sixth behind Keyvan Andres.
An first-lap incident involving Christian Hahn and Luis Leeds then triggered the race suspension, to allow the cars to be recovered.
At the restart, both Armstrong and Randle found a way past Piquet, while Verschoor was able to regain fifth to regain contact with his rivals.
Randle quickly set three consecutive fastest laps to build a second’s margin over Piquet, which he was able to maintain over the remainder of the 35-lap distance.
Verschoor meanwhile, as has often been the case over recent races, was unable to keep pace with the M2 Competition drivers and Victory Motor Racing’s Randle in his Giles-run car, eventually finishing 5.8s behind Piquet.
Finishing ahead of his rivals ensured that Australian Randle – whose current programme for the rest of 2017 is in the new British LMP3 Cup – claimed the championship.
Out front, Daruvala’s lead went as far as 1.6 seconds as the Force India protege set a high pace in the early part of the race.
Armstrong responded in the second half, cutting his deficit to as little as 0.722s, only for a couple of slow laps to to put the gap back at 1.6s.
That difference reduced again in the closing stages, but Daruvala did enough to finish up 0.855s clear.
Second for Ferrari recruit Armstrong was however enough for the Kiwi to hold on to fourth in the standings ahead of Daruvala.
Brendon Leitch was on course for sixth until dropping out with three laps to go, handing the place to Enaam Ahmed.
Ferdinand Habsburg finished seventh ahead of Andres, Harry Hayek and Taylor Cockerton.The fast-fashion model made popular by Zara is impossible for corporations, including JCPenney and Sears, to keep up with.
Zara sources most of its apparel in Spain and can get out new designs quickly. Meanwhile, department stores are simply modifying other people's designs and sending them to low-cost Asian factories, writes Patrick Lamson-Hall at the Business Of Fashion.
By the time the clothing makes the racks at JCPenney or Sears, the fashions are stale.
"It's worked so far because they can offer the apparel at lower cost," Lamson-Hall writes. "But consumers are quickly losing interest."
Chinese labor costs are also going up, making the model financially unsustainable.
"These companies are getting squeezed on two sides: by rising costs and by consumers who have more options and are becoming more choosy," Lamson-Hall writes. "These trends will only accelerate as the sourcing mix shifts and e-commerce booms."
Zara's model has fundamentally changed the fashion industry, The New York Times reported last year.
Zara's strategy involves stocking very little and updating collections often. Instead of other brands that only update once a season, Zara restocks with new designs twice a week, Suzy Hansen wrote.
That strategy works two ways, according to Hansen. First, it encourages customers to come back to the store often. It also means that if the shopper wants to buy something, he or she feels that they have to purchase on the spot to guarantee it won't sell out.
Unfortunately, JCPenney and Sears don't have the infrastructure to keep up right now.
It's showing: Both companies have been in a tailspin in recent years.Tuesday night during the BET Hip Hop Awards, Eminem essentially initiated a rap battle with President Trump. He also, as he put it, “drew a line in the sand” for anyone who loves his music: You can’t be a Trump supporter and an Eminem fan.
Eminem’s video was part of a BET tradition: the Cypher, a pre-recorded freestyle performance by a rapper that airs during the network’s annual awards ceremony. Introduced as “The Storm” and filmed in a Detroit parking garage, the video went viral before the show was even over. (Eminem grew up in Detroit; it’s a tradition in rap to go back to the streets that made you.)
In the video, Eminem, dressed in a black hoodie and flanked by a line of black men, rips President Trump apart. In the four-minute clip, he calls out Trump for his “support for the Klansmen” and criticizes him for starting Twitter wars with athletes instead of paying attention to natural disasters.
The fact we’re not afraid of Trump
F**k walkin’ on egg shells, I came to stomp
That’s why he keeps screamin’ ‘Drain the swamp’
‘Cause he’s in quicksand
It’s like we take a step forwards, then backwards
But this is his form of distraction
Plus, he gets an enormous reaction
When he attacks the NFL so we focus on that
Instead of talking Puerto Rico or gun reform for Nevada
All these horrible tragedies and he’s bored and would rather
Cause a Twitter storm with the Packers.
Then the freestyle shifts its focus from Trump to Trump’s followers:
Tiki torches in hand for the soldier that’s black
And comes home from Iraq
And is still told to go back to Africa
Fork and a dagger in this racist 94-year-old grandpa
Who keeps ignorin’ our past historical, deplorable factors
Now if you’re a black athlete, you’re a spoiled little brat for
Tryna use your platform, or your stature
To try to give those a voice who don’t have one
He says, “You’re spittin’ in the face of vets who fought for us, you bastards!”
And then comes the kicker: Eminem doesn’t want any fans who support President Trump. “To all my Trump supporting fans, I’m drawing a line in the sand,” he raps. “You’re either for or against.”
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While for some artists this might not be a major statement, Eminem is the most popular artist in a heap of red states, including Montana, North Dakota, and Wyoming. Eminem knows a significant contingent of his fan base put Trump in office. BET is a major platform; he’s not wasting it here. He’s showing that he’s serious — and not afraid of risking losing support from his fans in conservative swaths of the country.
This anti-Trump stance may seem a little out of character. It’s not as if Eminem is famous for his progressive politics; his songs are infamously filled with dark references to his ex-wife and graphic descriptions of fantasies involving violence against his mother.
But close listeners will recognize a through-line: Eminem has been mocking, analyzing, and criticizing the ideology for which Trump stands for years.
Take “White America,” from his album The Eminem Show released back in 2002, less than a year after 9/11 and in the midst of George W. Bush’s presidency. In the song, Eminem paints the United States from his point of view: a divided nation tinted in hypocrisy that leaves a white rapper feeling on the fringe. Pressure to appear patriotic was high, yet Eminem saw it necessary to call out Washington — he cites Ms. Cheney and mocks freedom of speech. The song’s name and content also demonstrate that Eminem was increasingly aware of his whiteness and his white fans, and wouldn’t hesitate to unpack the privilege this afforded him.
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So he addresses misunderstood and lost, young, white men in songs like “The Way I Am,” released in 2000. But at the same time as he empathizes with these boys, he challenges and questions their behavior, and what he perceives as the failure of their parents to take responsibility for how they’re raising their sons:
When a dude’s getting bullied and shoots up his school
And they blame it on Marilyn /and the heroin
Where were the parents at? And look where it’s at!
Middle America, now it’s a tragedy
Now it’s so sad to see.
This character — a frustrated, young, white man fuming in his parents’ basement — is at the center of “Stan,” a eulogy of a rap song that chronicles the growing anxiety and rage of an Eminem superfan who finally snaps, taking his own life. In the song, Eminem ultimately responds. But it’s too late.
This narrative continues with “The Storm,” the urgency stronger as the stakes have gotten as high as the presidency.
Many of the same people who saw themselves in Eminem’s music are drawn in by Trump’s promise to make America great again (for white dudes). But instead of shirk away from this complicated truth, Eminem put it on blast. The overlap between Eminem’s fans and Trump’s supporters is clear to the rapper. And it’s one he can no longer tolerate.Zachary Todd Anderson (Photo: Courtesy Meeker County Sheriff's Office)
A former Monticello man accused of kidnapping, sexually assaulting and killing a Watkins girl is scheduled to be in court Monday to ask a judge to dismiss murder charges against him and suppress evidence gathered during the investigation.
Zachary Todd Anderson, 26, is charged with murder, kidnapping and sexual assault in the death of Alayna Jeanne Ertl, 5. She was taken from her Watkins home in August and found later the same day in a swamp near Anderson's family cabin in Cass County.
A court complaint charging Anderson accuses him of taking Ertl in the early hours of Aug. 20 after Anderson stayed the night at Ertl's home after playing softball and going out with Ertl's father.
The criminal complaint charging Anderson indicates that he had slashed his wrist and was standing in knee-deep water when investigators encountered him in the woods outside a cabin on Iroquois Loop Trail near Motley. He was arrested without incident and eventually helped lead authorities to Ertl's body nearby.
An autopsy determined that Ertl died from strangulation and other evidence of blunt force trauma to her head, according to the complaint.
Court filings show that Anderson's attorney intends to ask a judge to dismiss the indictment against Anderson, arguing that there was lack of probable cause to indict Anderson and alleging that Anderson's constitutional rights were violated by investigators. Anderson is also asking the judge to suppress evidence because of constitutional violations and improper searches.
Follow David Unze on Twitter @sctimesunze or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/sctimesunze.
Read or Share this story: https://www.sctimes.com/story/news/local/2017/01/06/ertl-murder-suspect-wants-charges-dropped/96255992/FC Dallas defender Hernan Grana (2) watches his pass go forward during the first half of an MLS game against Toronto FC at Toyota Stadium in Frisco on Saturday, July 1, 2017. (Vernon Bryant/The Dallas Morning News)
Three FC Dallas players were named to the MLS All-Star roster to face Real Madrid in next month's All-Star Game, and one of the inclusions found his selection unbelievable.
An FC Dallas communications employee sent Hernan Grana a text Monday to let him know of his impending inclusion, but the right back said he wasn't sure if the message was genuine.
"More than anything, I just didn't understand what he was trying to say very well. So, in the last message I started to understand that I was going to be a part of this important game," Grana said. "I really couldn't believe it. I'm happy. It's something unique that doesn't happen often, and you have to enjoy it."
Grana joined the team late in the preseason after its plans for Jose Salvatierra to join the club fell through when the Costa Rica international failed his medical test. After some tough assignments in the CONCACAF Champions league, the Argentine has adjusted well.
"I think Grana has embraced what we want," FCD coach Oscar Pareja said. "It took him a little while to understand the method and the culture of the group, the cultural part and the social part of this country, but we were happy to see him adapting and as we said raising the culture of the team."
The rise from the Argentine second division to earning the confidence not only of his own coach but also Chicago Fire coach Veljko Paunovic, who added Grana and center back Matt Hedges to the All-Star roster after fans selected the first 11 players. League commissioner Don Garber brought
"Everything was really last minute, but I'm really happy it worked out this way. In the end, a lot of great things have happened for me, they take great care of me here, Oscar trusts in me and we're fighting hard for what's coming, the players, the coaching staff. The guys treat me really well and it's a confluence of positive things that are happening for me," the defender said.The reviews have begun
published at 10.08.2017 15:40 by Jens Weller
A few weeks ago I announced a C++ review community, which since then has grown to 250+ members on reddit. There has been great feedback and discussions since then, so that the idea is now ready to be tested. With August, the first review period has started, but first have a look at the idea of a review community again:
What is r/cpp_review?
reddit already hosts a large and active C++ community, so instead of setting up some page it self, I chose to use the reddit interface. Its nearly perfect for this, as its mainly evolved to discuss a single topic per thread. To make things easier, there is one thread for people to post reviews in a short and informative format, and all other threads are open for discussion the various technical details of the library.
My motivation to start this is that with these reviews a community focused on quality in modern C++ could grow, where people are able to learn by example on various libraries. So while more experienced C++ users might be able to give better feedback on the overall design of a library, less expierenced folks are still able particitpate to every review. Feedback on the documentation, measuring code quality with tools like CppCheck, there is so much of things that are easy to do and are a great contribution to a review.
Also I see a great value in the aim of having a list of reviewed libraries available to the general C++ community, which currently is a long time goal. With 2 libraries reviewed every month, it will take some time to compile an interesting list of libraries.
The reviews
Every review runs for about a month, so that thre is enough time for you to participate. The first two libraries which are in review are Bulk and DynaMix. Each review thread is open for discussion, and any questions occuring to you when you start with your review, should be posted there. Maybe some are already answered. When you have made your decision if you tend towards either accept or not accept, post a short comment into the Review Thread, with your decision and an optional list of things you liked/disliked. If you choose to conditionally accept, then also what changes you'd like to see (e.g. your condition/s).
... aims at providing better APIs for MPI or users of the BSPlib. It offers easy access to world and processor objects, improves over BSPlib by using RAII, where previously calls to begin/end, reg/unreg was necessary. Currently bulk offers two back ends: MPI and Thread, which is based on std::thread. Bulk aims at C++17 as the required standard, which makes it not that easy in adoption for possible users. But those from the MPI/scientific community which also can use cutting edge compilers, Bulk is worth a look. Its a promising library for users of MPI or BSPlib.
While Bulk is realtively new, and aiming at the newest standard, DynaMix actually has gathered some industry experience, its used in a few games. DynaMix is providing an API for mixing objects at runtime. You can add or remove various functionality/behavior from your objects. This is a popular concept in Game Dev, DynaMix provides a C++11 implementation of such a Entity Composition System. As an example, a game character could use this to level up or gain totally new traits. The Trait it self would only be a single implementation, while different game entities could make use of it.
Future reviews
Currently, there are already 3 other libraries waiting for a review. I also know about a few others which aim at later review dates, as documentation and such might not be optimal currently. It makes sense to review popular libraries over unpopular ones, so up voting your favorites in the submission thread has some effect.
Also, every review adds to the whole sum, so that even small contributions can have a meaning full effect. Its also often a good idea to think if there is any low hanging fruit you could go for like using static analysers or fuzzers, like I was learning how to use libFuzzer and fuzzing beast. For the current reviews, you'd have to some digging, to find fuzzable interfaces, but maybe there is some serialization in the library?
So join the C++ review community on reddit!
Join the Meeting C++ patreon community!
This and other posts on Meeting C++ are enabled by my supporters on patreon!DENVER -- Terry Collins has amended his language with respect to his outfield. Two days after labeling it a "rotation" to the players themselves, Collins on Saturday labeled Juan Lagares the "everyday" center fielder. The manager added that Lagares will be given limited days off only to guard against his right hamstring becoming re-injured.
#12 CF
New York Mets
2014 STATS
GM 16
HR1
RBI8
R9
OBP.359
AVG.333
Lagares enters Saturday's game against the Colorado Rockies 4-for-9 with three doubles in two games since returning from the disabled list. He also continues to deftly play center field.
Over the past two seasons, Lagares has 2.88 putouts per nine innings in center field. All other Mets center fielders average a combined 2.18 putouts per nine innings. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, Lagares' 14 outfield assists over the past two seasons are tied with Milwaukee's Carlos Gomez for the most in the majors from center field. And Gomez has played 557 more innings at the position during that span.
Collins said he will "try" to get Eric Young Jr. into the lineup Sunday. E.Y. Jr. again is out of the starting lineup Saturday -- making that three straight days on the bench since Lagares returned from the DL for this series.
"He's going to be out there the majority of the time. He's got to be," Collins said about Lagares. "He's the future. He's shown that he's getting better at it. When he starts hitting.195, we'll have to take a look and get him out of there. But, right now, he's getting on base. He's doing all the things you want. People don't score on him when he's got the baseball in his hand. He, right now, would be our everyday guy.
"Again, due to the fact he's had some issues in the past with his leg, including this year, even though it hasn't been necessarily a pulled muscle, we're probably going to give him a day off here and there."CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Panthers cornerback Captain Munnerlyn, one of eight Carolina starters who will become unrestricted free agents in March, wants a long-term deal.
He also wants to stay with Carolina.
Asked if he was optimistic both could happen, the fifth-year player out of South Carolina said, "Kind of, sorta."
"It's home for me," Munnerlyn said Monday, the day after Carolina's season ended with a 23-10 loss to the San Francisco 49ers in an NFC divisional playoff game. "It's the team that drafted me. It's kind of tough to leave this place, man.
"We've got something special going. I know the guys in the secondary, there's a lot of us up. People call us the 'Legion of Whom,' but man, I wouldn't trade those guys for anybody in the world, for anybody."
Three of the eight starters that will become free agents are in the secondary in Munnerlyn, free safety Mike Mitchell and strong safety Quintin Mikell.
Most of Carolina's free agents are like Munnerlyn, players who won't demand top dollar in the open market. Munnerlyn, who signed a one-year deal to return this season, just wants to be treated fairly, which is why he said "kind of, sorta."North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) on Thursday signed the law that would repeal the state's controversial House Bill 2, commonly called the "bathroom bill."
"For over a year now, House Bill 2 has been a dark cloud hanging over our great state. It has stained our reputation. It has discriminated against our people and it has caused great economic harm in many of our communities," Cooper said, according to CNN.
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The law required that people in government facilities use bathrooms that correspond to their sex at birth.
The governor's action eliminates the rule on bathroom use while giving state legislators, not local officials, control over public restroom policy.
A number of high-profile businesses and organizations, including NCAA, threatened to stop hosting events and opening new venues in the state if the law stayed in place. According to The Associated Press, the governor acknowledged that the compromise is not perfect and said it falls short of many of the state's objectives. The measure has also been criticized by conservatives, who urged the governor to leave the "bathroom bill" intact.A number of high-profile businesses and organizations, including NCAA, threatened to stop hosting events and opening new venues in the state if the law stayed in place.
House Bill 2 became law in March 2016 and has drawn widespread criticism from LGBT groups that said it allowed discrimination against transgender people.A new book paints Apple in the post-Steve Jobs era as an empire in decline. Tim Cook, predictably, isn't a fan.
In a statement to CNBC Tuesday, Cook called the book -- Haunted Empire, by former Wall Street Journal Reporter Yukari Kane -- "nonsense." Kane, he said, "fails to capture Apple, Steve, or anyone else in the company."
"I am very confident about our future," Cook said. "We've always had many doubters in our history. They only make us stronger."
Kane writes in her book that a decline at Apple (AAPL) was "inevitable" after Jobs ceded the reins of the company to Cook in 2011, shortly before his death from cancer. She says Cook lacks the charisma and vision of his predecessor, and that the company's "well of ingenuity" has "run dry."
Related: Is Apple really doomed?
Kane's project grew out of her time as Apple's beat reporter for the Journal, and draws on over 200 sources both inside and outside the company. She told CNNMoney that the book was meant to be "an exploration of all of the challenges that Apple's been dealing with" since Jobs' passing.
Apple has faced criticism for a series of perceived missteps under Cook, most notably the flawed Apple Maps and the ill-conceived iPhone 5C.
Related: Apple's CarPlay draws safety criticism
The company sold a record number of iPhones in the fourth quarter of last year on the strength of the new iPhone 5S, though the sales and guidance still fell short of analyst expectations.
While Apple has been generating monster revenue in its existing product categories for years, investors want to see new offerings that change the marketplace the way products like the iPod, iPhone and iPad did. The knock on Cook is that he can't match Jobs' genius for innovation in this realm.
"Apple still has time to course-correct, but clearly over the last couple of years they've struggled to find their footing," she said.
It's been just two-and-a-half years since Jobs' death, and in a field where new products can take years to bring to market, it's still early to judge Cook's legacy. After a decade in which it had a stunning run of industry-changing successes -- the iPod, iPhone and iPad -- Apple and the rest of the tech industry are now trying to find the next big thing.
The company's revenue has continued to surge in recent years, though its profits and margin slipped from 2012 to 2013. Meanwhile, lower-cost tablets and smartphones running Google's Android software have eaten into its market share.
The challenge for Apple, Kane said, is that it has "always been a company that came out with these really interesting products that leapfrogged their competition."
"You can't let that cycle stop," she said. "Their competition can catch up to them a lot more quickly than they used to."
Apple shares hit an all-time high under Cook's watch in late 2012 on the strength of the iPhone 5 launch, briefly cracking the $700 mark. These days, the stock is down to around $535, though that's an 18% gain versus a year ago.
Kane said a letdown for Apple was perhaps inevitable following Jobs' departure, given his success in building a cult of personality around himself. She noted that while Apple had stumbles under Jobs as well -- for example, the problems with the iPhone 4 antenna -- the Apple co-founder used his charisma to explain them away and cultivate an elite image for the company.
"He wasn't just part of their brand, he was their brand," she said. "Steve went out of his way to turn himself into a superstar, and Apple's hurt by that now because he was successful."It’s bad news for the folks insisting that renewables are wreaking havoc on the grid – last year, the average number of minutes of power outages in Germany fell below the already leading level of 2012 and below the average over the past seven years. Craig Morris looks into the situation.
On Friday, Germany’s Network Agency announced (press release in German) that the SAIDI value for the country fell from 15.91 minutes in 2012 to 15.32 minutes last year. Though not without its critics, SAIDI has become the internationally recognized way of measuring grid reliability. In this calculation, power outages must last at least three minutes to be counted, and natural disasters are not included.
In 2006, Germany began using SAIDI as a way of reporting grid reliability as a part of an EU-wide effort to facilitate data comparisons. The average from 2006 to 2012 for Germany is 16.91 minutes, roughly 10 percent above the level in 2013 (low numbers are better).
Despite the overall improvement, the press release also states that “interruptions due to feedback effects” from both the underlying low-voltage and superordinate high-voltage grids increased considerably at the medium-voltage level for the third year in a |
if and give him business advice. But I felt myself unequal to the task: what do you say to someone who runs a small standalone bookshop, on the wrong side of town, in a society where bookshops are shutting down, one by one, or being converted into toy-and-bauble shops?Last week I was passing by Abid Road, and I stopped by at A.A. Husain & Co, as usual, and I was told that the inevitable has happened. That the shop is shutting down after 65 years, and that a mall – what else? – is coming up in its place.And I remembered a business meeting I had not long ago with a businessman who was developing a glitzy new mall. He told me proudly about all the features it would offer: a multiplex, fast food joints, shopping. It would be designed to cater to every member of the family, he said: it would even have a bookshop.A bookshop?Oh yes, he said. For the grandparents, you know. They like to read. Religious books and such-like.And I thought to myself, welcome to the planet of the apes.But I was wrong. The world changes; technology changes; habits change; societies change. And if you do not change along with them, you are the one who gets extinct. That’s the way civilisations evolve. It is not always a pretty process.Pass me the Kindle, please.Merry Christmas!
Enjoy hundreds of free classic old time radio Christmas shows year round!
Hanging stockings, tinsel, hanging ornaments, family, friends, and listening to favorite Christmas carols and songs all make for great memories. In the 1920s, 30s, 40s, and 50s families gathered around the radio to listen to the long-awaited Christmas editions of their favorite shows, making for great memories.
Most old time radio shows produced some sort of show for the Christmas, even shows that you think wouldn't lend themselves to a Christmas show like Dragnet, Suspense or The Whistler. Seriously, what could be better than Sgt. Joe Friday at Christmas?
Don't forget perennial favorites like A Christmas Carol. As a matter of fact, there are several versions of Charles Dicken's beloved story of ghosts and happy endings. Several radio serials performed their own version of the story.Imagine A Blondie Christmas Carol or A Richard Diamond Christmas Carol.Those must be interesting! Think, too, of all the happy Christmas music played by those famous orchestras like Guy Lombardo and Glenn Miller plus shows by singers like Bing Crosby or Dinah Shore.The kiddies weren't left out with shows like Cinnamon Bear with an episode six days a week between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Explore the Old Time Radio Christmas site and listen to samples of radio shows in each genre; music, detective, suspense and more.
Enjoy a Merry Christmas any time of the year and stop by and listen to a new Christmas episode every day!Reno Hackathon invites developers to work all night (for fun and profit)
The Reno Hackathon invites app developers to stay up all night for cash and a shot at Windows Store stardom.
Microsoft Licensing will host the event from noon March 2 until 3 p.m. March 3 at the DeLaMare Library on the UNR campus. Participants will explore the Microsoft Windows 8 development platform. Microsoft Evangelists will be on hand for coaching. The hackathon is organized by EDAWN and PC Doctor.
Developers will actually complete their app during the hackathon. Their work will be submitted to the Windows Store at the end, said Michael Palermo, the event's emcee. There also are cash prizes from $100 to $1,000, along with raffle prizes of tablets and Xbox games.
The Windows 8 mobile operating system was released in 2012. Developers and their resumes will benefit from adding it to their skill set, according to Doug Erwin of EDAWN.
"If you can get your brand into an emerging store, it can really set you up," Palermo said. The market for Windows 8 will keep growing, he said, along with the ability for early developers to profit from getting into the Windows Store early.
Examples of apps created during hackathons include Facebook Chat and an early version of the Facebook Timeline. A Windows 8 developer from Palermo's team is making good money with a card game app, Palermo said.
Hackathon participants interested in game development will be able to find out more about third-party tools that allow game developers import their work into several app stores, including Windows 8, Apple's iOS and Android, Palermo said.
There will be a pre-hackathon social from 5 to 8 p.m. Monday at Washoe Steakhouse, to mingle with other contestants and ask questions.
Other Reno Hackathon sponsors are The Reno Collective, C4CUBE, Bosma Group, Northern Nevada Software Developers Group, Holland & Hart, University of Nevada, Reno, Monster Energy Drink and Battle Born Beer.
Register and get more info at renohackathon.com.Donald Trump is going to have trouble uniting the world — most of the world doesn't want to see him become president.
According to a new Pollfish mobile survey, 60 percent of respondents from six major non-U.S. countries said they preferred Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump.
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Of the 3,500 polled, only 24 percent said they preferred the Republican presidential nominee — less than the 26 percent who preferred neither. And of the six countries — Canada, France, Germany, Russia, Mexico, and the United Kingdom — only one favored Trump: Russia.
On the flip side of the survey results, Mexico showed the strongest disdain for Trump, whose campaign gained momentum by vilifying illegal immigrants from South and Central America, before turning its attention to Syrian refugees and eventually the entire Muslim community: 96 percent of Mexican respondents said they preferred Clinton.
An April YouGov poll of over 20,000 adults in G20 member states similarly found that Trump carried a 21 percent advantage in Russia, but was elsewhere trailing Clinton.
Trump's ties to the Kremlin and Russian President Vladimir Putin have faced especial scrutiny of late. The Clinton camp has repeatedly accused the Russian government of tampering with the U.S. election after its alleged involvement in hacking campaign chair John Podesta's emails.
"A former senior intelligence officer for a Western country who specialized in Russian counterintelligence" told Mother Jones that "when he dug into Trump... he came across troubling information indicating connections between Trump and the Russian government. According to his sources, he says, 'there was an established exchange of information between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin of mutual benefit.'"
According to The New York Times, however, a comprehensive summer-long FBI investigation into any connection between Trump and Russia proved fruitless.
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"Law enforcement officials say that none of the investigations so far have found any conclusive or direct link between Mr. Trump and the Russian government," The Times reported on Monday. "And even the hacking into Democratic emails, F.B.I. and intelligence officials now believe, was aimed at disrupting the presidential election rather than electing Mr. Trump."Fifty years ago, Beatlemania shocked the world, drawing hostility and pity from press and public alike. But the screamers were neither the first nor the last to be starstruck…
The first time Scottish concert promoter Andi Lothian booked the Beatles, in the frozen January of 1963, only 15 people showed up. The next time he brought them north of the border, to Glasgow Odeon on 5 October, they had scored a No 1 album and three No 1 singles, and it was as if a hurricane had blown into town.
The night almost unravelled when nervous local police insisted Lothian bring the Beatles on early to satisfy rowdily impatient fans, even though his bouncers were still in the pub. "The girls were beginning to overwhelm us," remembers Lothian, now 73 and a business consultant. "I saw one of them almost getting to Ringo's drumkit and then I saw 40 drunk bouncers tearing down the aisles. It was like the Relief of Mafeking! It was absolute pandemonium. Girls fainting, screaming, wet seats. The whole hall went into some kind of state, almost like collective hypnotism. I'd never seen anything like it."
A Radio Scotland reporter turned to Lothian and gasped, "For God's sake Andi, what's happening?" Thinking on his feet, the promoter replied, "Don't worry, it's only… Beatlemania."
The coinage is usually attributed to a Daily Mirror story about the Beatles' London Palladium concert eight days later but Lothian insists it came from him, via Radio Scotland. Either way, the phenomenon predated the label. Throughout 1963 there had been reports of teenage girls screaming, crying, fainting and chasing the band down the street; police escorts were already required. But catchy new words have a magical power in the media. Once it caught on, it seemed to cement the phenomenon in the collective imagination.
Although pop fandom has since become more complex and more self-documenting (few Beatles fans had cameras), the tropes of Beatlemania have recurred in fan crazes from the Bay City Rollers to Bros, East 17 to One Direction: the screaming, the queuing, the waiting, the longing, the trophy-collecting, the craving for even the briefest contact. When One Direction's Niall Horan recently said of his group's fans: "They are nuts. Mostly all I see is a sea of screaming faces," he could have been any boy-band star from the past 50 years.
The novelist Linda Grant was a 12-year-old in Liverpool when she first heard Love Me Do. "Everybody was a Beatles fan in Liverpool," she remembers. "You just knew you were in the centre of the universe. I still feel that Cliff and Elvis fans were from an earlier generation even though there was only a couple of years in it. The Beatles belonged to every teenage girl. I feel like I was there at the birth of pop music. The Beatles are the Book of Genesis."
The media's attempts to explain this wild new development to bewildered adults were at best comically square ("Beatles Reaction Puzzles Even Psychologists," reported one science journal), and at worst viciously snobbish and misogynistic. In an infamous New Statesman essay Paul Johnson sneered: "Those who flock round the Beatles, who scream themselves into hysteria, whose vacant faces flicker over the TV screen, are the least fortunate of their generation, the dull, the idle, the failures."
Teenage girl fans are still patronised by the press today. As Grant says, "Teenage girls are perceived as a mindless horde: one huge, undifferentiated emerging hormone." In an influential 1992 essay, Fandom as Pathology, US academic Joli Jensen observed: "Fandom is seen as a psychological symptom of a presumed social dysfunction… Once fans are characterised as a deviant, they can be treated as disreputable, even dangerous 'others'."
"Lots of different fans are seen as strange," says Dr Ruth Deller, principal lecturer in media and communications at Sheffield Hallam University, who writes extensively about fan behaviour. "Some of that has to do with class: different pursuits are seen as more culturally valuable than others. Some of it has to do with gender. There's a whole range of cultural prejudices. One thing our society seems to value is moderation. Fandom represents excess and is therefore seen as negative."
A fan tries to break through a police cordon at Shea Stadium, 23 August 1966. Photograph: Hyman Rothman/ Getty Images
Lothian can't remember why he chose the suffix "mania" but it carried a lot of historical baggage. It was first applied to fandom in 1844 when German poet and essayist Heinrich Heine coined the word Lisztomania to describe the "true madness, unheard of in the annals of furore" that broke out at concerts by the piano virtuoso Franz Liszt. The word had medical resonances and Heine considered various possible causes of the uproar, from the biological to the political, before deciding, prosaically, that it was probably just down to Liszt's exceptional talent, charisma and showmanship.
One Parisian concert review, quoted by Liszt scholar Dana Gooley, suggests the first stirrings of modern pop fandom: "The ecstatic audience, breathing deeply in its rapt enthusiasm, can no longer hold back its shouts of acclaim: they stamp unceasingly with their feet, producing a dull and persistent sound that is punctuated by isolated, involuntary screams." Lisztomania also had its Paul Johnsons. One writer in Berlin, where the phenomenon began in 1842, bemoaned the frenzy as "a depressing sign of the stupidity, the insensitivity, and the aesthetic emptiness of the public".
There were other celebrity "manias" in subsequent decades but no musical performer inspired the same intensity and media soul-searching as Liszt until Frank Sinatra began his residency at New York's Paramount theatre in October 1944. The so-called Columbus Day Riot, when thousands of teenage "bobby-soxers" rampaged through Times Square, inspired reporter Bruce Bliven to call it "a phenomenon of mass hysteria that is only seen two or three times in a century. You need to go back not merely to Lindbergh and Valentino to understand it, but to the dance madness that overtook some German villages in the middle ages, or to the Children's Crusade". Again, the behaviour sounds very familiar to the modern reader. One of Sinatra's publicists described how fans "squealed, howled, kissed his pictures with their lipsticked lips and kept him prisoner in his dressing room. It was wild, crazy, completely out of control."
So girls screamed at Sinatra, they screamed at Elvis, they even screamed at Cliff Richard. What made Beatlemania a fan frenzy of a different order? Of course, as with Liszt, the band's talent, charisma and showmanship were key, but two crucial extrinsic factors were timing and television.
The baby boom meant there were more teenagers than there had been for Elvis or Sinatra, with more money in their pockets, filled with a powerful sense that society was changing. To love the Beatles in 1963 was to embrace modernity. The critic Jon Savage, a 10-year-old fan at the time, recently wrote in Mojo: "It's fused in my memory of the 1960s starting… Big events were happening in the world, and pop was intimately connected to them. It wasn't just entertainment."
If you were a girl, especially one on the cusp of adolescence, Beatles fandom possessed an additional frisson. The critic Barbara Ehrenreich noted in a 1992 essay that while mainstream culture was increasingly sexualised (paging Philip Larkin), teenage girls were still expected to be paragons of purity. "To abandon control – to scream, faint, dash about in mobs – was, in form if not in conscious intent, to protest the sexual repressiveness, the rigid double standard of female teen culture," wrote Ehrenreich. "It was the first and most dramatic uprising of women's sexual revolution."
Londoner Bridget Kelly remembers her first Beatles concert, at the Finsbury Park Astoria on Boxing Day 1963, as the most important day of her young life. "It was something to do with being in a place between childhood and adulthood where you could let go and go mad. I would never dream of being cheeky to my parents so that was our little outlet."
To younger teenagers, the Beatles' cheerful, faintly androgynous sexuality was more approachable than Elvis's alpha-male heat: they wore suits and smiled and wanted to hold your hand. Best of all, there were four of them, each with his distinct appeal, so you could choose which one reflected your own preferences and desires. "For reasons that are beyond me I liked Ringo," says Linda Grant. "There was a real goody two-shoes at school who liked Paul. George seemed a bit nothing. John seemed off-limits, too intimidating."
"All the girls talked about marrying their favourite Beatle and I think that terrified our parents," says Linda Ihle, who was a 13-year-old Paul fan living in Long Island, New York. "It was very sexualised. We weren't at the age yet when we were permitted to date. We liked boys but boys were still a bit less mature than girls. These were young men but they seemed very attainable in some way. They were adorable, they were different, they were irreverent and our parents didn't approve of them, which made it even better. Boys tended not to like them as much. I think they were intimidated by the fact the girls were so attracted to these young men."
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Thanks to television, fans knew in advance exactly what was expected of them. The Beatles Come to Town, a Pathé newsreel recorded in Manchester in November 1963, was practically a how-to video, depicting a sea of howling, tear-stained faces wearing a curious expression best described, by Tom Wolfe, as "rapturous agony", and producing a high, relentless wail, like a hormonal alarm clock. "When they come to your town, well, you won't need any further invitation: you'll be there," said the plummy announcer.
For American fans, the Beatles' appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964, to an audience of 73 million already primed by press hype, was an advertisement for Beatlemania as much as for the band. "Seeing them on The Ed Sullivan Show, with the girls screaming in the audience, it was contagious," says Ihle. "That, coupled with news reports of girls screaming at the airport, spurred it on."
It was the noise that mademost impression on contemporary observers, who called the fans "screamers" and wondered why anyone would want to drown out their favourite band's music. And it was the noise, eventually, that prompted the Beatles to retire from live performance in 1966. "I never felt people came to hear our show," Ringo later grumbled. "I felt they came to see us."
They also came to see one another. When Paul Johnson wrote, "The teenager comes not to hear but to participate in a ritual," he meant it as an insult but it certainly was a ritual. Although stereotyped as brainwashed consumers, the fans were far from passive. They loved the music, of course, but they'd heard these songs a thousand times. When they screamed they were also celebrating themselves, their freedom, their youth, their power. Screaming didn't drown out the performance: it was a performance.
"You soaked up energy from the crowd," says Ihle, who attended the band's first Shea Stadium show in 1965. "The screaming never stopped. We could barely hear the music because the sound systems weren't very good back then. There were police everywhere, trying to keep fans from jumping on to the field. It was a happening, to use a word from the time. It was the event itself. It was being there."
"I didn't understand why you had to scream and I didn't have an impulse to scream but it was what you did," says Linda Grant. "It was mandatory. There was this cult-like element to it."
Fans at one of two gigs the Beatles played at the Convention Centre, Las Vegas, 20 August 1964. Photograph: William Lovelace/ Getty Images
All the fans I spoke to mentioned the sense of solidarity and group identity. "Sexuality is only a small part of fandom," says Ruth Deller. "The writer Susan Clerc says the most primal instinct of the fan is to talk to other fans and I think there's something in that. The idea of community and collectivity is important."
"It makes you feel like part of something larger," says Ihle. "You're not by yourself. Individually, teenagers are isolated and worried and scared all the time of whether or not they're doing the right things and wearing the right clothes, but everybody liked the Beatles so everybody was equal. It didn't matter what your clothes were or where your parents worked; we were all in it together."
The most devoted fans wanted more than concerts. They craved encounters and artefacts. Ihle still owns one of the blank pieces of paper that rained down on fans waiting outside the band's New York hotel one day in 1964. "If they'd touched it, we wanted it," she says. This is one of fandom's oldest traditions. During the first outbreak of Lisztomania, newspapers reported that female fans collected not just locks of their idol's hair but his piano strings, cigar butts and coffee dregs.
Jan Myers, a Londoner who is writing a book about her experiences as a hardcore Beatles fan, went to extraordinary lengths. She bunked off school to cycle 20 miles to Heathrow to greet the band's flight. She crawled through the sewers under Abbey Road to hear them recording Rubber Soul through the floorboards. She even gatecrashed the Yellow Submarine after-party. "We did crazy things," she says. "We were fanatical. We could stand outside Abbey Road for 16 hours and as long as one of them came and smiled or said something it was fine. But my mum would rather I was doing that than stealing or popping pills. I didn't smoke, I didn't drink, I was just obsessed. All I could think about was them."
The scale of Beatlemania caught the band by surprise. When Myers secured her first autograph from Paul in early 1963 he was still in the habit of signing his name "Paul McCartney (The Beatles)", as if an explanation were necessary. Later, she noticed them becoming more defensive. "Paul would say, 'Oh God, not you again,' but he was the best at talking with the fans. John was very unpredictable. You had to be careful with John. But when you're a fan you let them say whatever they want. You were happy he'd talked to you directly, it didn't matter what the words were." She sighs. "How pathetic is that?"
Puzzled, unnerved and occasionally terrified by their fans, bands employed poachers turned gamekeepers to handle them, such as Beatles fanclub secretary Freda Kelly, the subject of a new documentary Good Ol' Freda, and Shirley Arnold, who did the same job for the Rolling Stones. "When I first went I was more interested in working for the Stones, and then I realised that I was working for the fans," Arnold told writer Stanley Booth. "I was a screamer, that's why I understood the fans."
For a long time, it seemed that only fans had the ability, or even the desire, to understand other fans. They were viewed as either hysterical mobs to be patronised or, especially after the murder of John Lennon, obsessive loners to be feared. But in the late 1980s and early 90s, a number of writers, including Jensen and Ehrenreich, began looking at fans with a sympathetic eye. Fan studies is now a fertile field of academia, while pop stars such as Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga are increasingly canny about managing their fans. But at the same time, fans' high profile on social media, where a trending topic can lead the casual observer down a rabbit hole of bewildering intensity, has inspired a new wave of adult angst. "A scorned Directioner is a terrifying beast," remarked one TV critic reviewing a recent documentary Crazy About One Direction.
"The fundamentals are largely the same: people looking for community and identity and developing taste and sexuality," says Ruth Deller. "And moral panics about fandom have been with us for an awfully long time. But the internet has definitely made fandom more visible – for those participating in it but also for everybody else."
If anyone is likely to look kindly on the excesses of new generations of fans, it's a former Beatlemaniac. "I understand when I see the One Direction kids going mad," says Bridget Kelly. "People think they're silly but they're not. It's the togetherness. We had this big communal thing that we all knew and loved and understood — something that was yours and nothing to do with your mum and dad. We were all in it together. It was lovely."Scientists hope their cockroach-inspired robot will one day be able to help rescue people stuck in rubble, like those trapped in Taiwan after the February 6, 2016 earthquake (AFP Photo/Sam Yeh)
Miami (AFP) - Inspired by cockroaches that can squeeze through tiny spaces, US scientists have designed a small robot that may one day help locate people in the rubble of earthquakes, tornadoes or explosions.
The technology by the University of California, Berkeley was unveiled Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"What's impressive about these cockroaches is that they can run as fast through a quarter-inch (0.6 centimeter) gap as a half-inch (1.25 cm) gap, by reorienting their legs completely out to the side," said lead researcher Kaushik Jayaram, who is now a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University.
"They're about half an inch tall when they run freely, but can squish their bodies to one-tenth of an inch -- the height of two stacked pennies."
The palm-sized robot, known as CRAM -- for compressible robot with articulated mechanisms -- is capped with a plastic shield, much like the wings on the back of a cockroach.
"In the event of an earthquake, first responders need to know if an area of rubble is stable and safe, but the challenge is, most robots can't get into rubble," said Robert Full, a professor of integrative biology at UC Berkeley.
"But if there are lots of cracks and vents and conduits, you can imagine just throwing a swarm of these robots in to locate survivors and safe entry points for first responders."
Researchers say their robots are inexpensive to make, and they are working on various versions for real-world testing.
Funding for the research has come from the US Army Research Laboratory, as part of a collaboration with between industry and university partners.The Sani people face a choice between encouraging ecotourism to their rainforest – one of the world’s most biodiverse – and allowing in the oil companies
Fernando was sitting on his veranda listening to the whoops and whistles of the jungle. Our visit was a surprise, but the old man was soon answering my questions, keen to talk.
“I arrived here in about 1960,” he told me. “A group of us came to start a new life. Hunting was easy. The animals were almost tame. We just used a blowpipe, no guns.”
I looked at him. No one knew for sure how old Fernando was – probably about 80 – but he was the oldest person in this 370 sq km of Ecuadorian jungle that’s home to the Sani community. He had seen the virgin wilderness subject to a lot of change: ecotourism arrived in the early 2000s, following less benign incomers in the shape of oil companies.
“They came a few years after I did, scaring the animals away. At least in our area we chose tourism. We kept our jungle, and our community spirit.”
We were on Ecuador’s Napo river, which runs east from the Andes and flows into the Amazon in Peru. The vast rainforest region it flows through is one of the most biodiverse in the world, and is being fought over by two great economic powers of modern life: petroleum and tourism. Only that morning the talk in the main village, an hour downstream, was of an upcoming meeting to discuss the future of the Sani Lodge. That gorgeous little cluster of cabins in a clearing by a lake was the only reason the community had refused the oil company’s offer. But Petroamazonas had come back a year ago with a new offer. The pressure was growing.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Fernando and his grandson, members of the Sani community in Yasuni national park.
My young guide, Victor, put the issue bluntly. “We get an average of 12 guests a day at the lodge, but we need 15. The community is split, but at the moment the pro-tourism group has a small majority over the pro-oil group.”
I had never realised how brutally direct the relationship between conservation and tourism could be. And if I needed a reminder of what choosing oil might mean I’d seen it on the journey downriver from the city of Coca, a few days earlier. The banks of the Napo are dotted with communities and some have taken the petrodollar. In those places large oil storage tanks stand beneath blazing gas burn-offs. The riverbank, eroded by powerful marine engines, has been shored up with metal pilings below scruffy new buildings, and the primary rainforest has been replaced by a thin scurf of secondary growth.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest A many-banded aracari, in Yasuni national park. Photograph: Kevin Rushby for the Guardian
Development further downstream, within Yasuni national park, was once unthinkable, but in 2013 Ecuadorean president Rafael Correa scrapped a historic “keep it in the ground” project. Permits were issued for drilling inside the 6,500 sq km park. For the Sani people, this was a crucial moment. Their land straddles the park border, and is known to contain oil.
The community is split, but at the moment the pro-tourism group has a small majority over the pro-oil group
Victor wanted to show me just how astonishing and beautiful his home is. “I love this forest,” he said. “I hate the thought of losing it.” So next morning we got up at dawn and paddled down the long lake watching for anacondas in the reed beds. Birds including the colourful “many-banded” aracari were clattering and gossiping overhead. In the distance we could hear the caveman moans of howler monkeys.
Victor missed nothing: his eyesight was extraordinary, and his hearing superhuman. When we left the kayaks and walked into the forest, he began moving by sound, hearing things I could not. “There’s a woolly monkey.” And then he would mimic their call with uncanny accuracy, bringing the woolly monkeys into view.
Yasuni Man film is an intimate portrait of a beautiful land under siege for its oil Read more
The trees were frothy with epiphytic ferns, orchids and bromeliads, each a habitat for more species than an entire secondary forest. Victor began squeaking and something answered. “Golden-mantled tamarin,” he whispered, and we left the path, circling the massive buttresses of a sabre tree, and briefly sighted a fabulous orange and black monkey. A hummingbird hurtled past my ear so fast I didn’t even see it, just felt the air tremble, but Victor spotted the greenish blur and identified it.
As the day continued, we added to our primate sightings: black-mantled tamarins, and a pair of night monkeys peering timidly from a hole in a tree. We spent an hour under a tree while Victor guided my eyes to the smallest monkey in the world, the pygmy marmoset – its body barely 15cm long.
The sun was setting by the time we headed back towards the kayaks. It had been a long, successful day, but it wasn’t quite over. Victor came to a sudden halt then, with a quick “Come on!” we were running as silently as possible through jungle, dodging vines and pausing to listen. The forest was dark beneath the canopy. A few late golden rays touched some upper trees. We crossed a stream, climbed a slope then abruptly doubled back. Perched on a low branch in one last ray of light, was a huge bird with a red bill. I had a great view for a few seconds, then it was gone.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest An oil installation at one of the villages along the Napo river that has chosen to exploit the oil reserves. Photograph: Kevin Rushby for the Guardian
“Salvin’s curassow!” said Victor. “Oh, you’re so lucky! Birdwatchers come from all over the world. One guy has been 27 times and still never seen it.”
It was only later, at the lodge, that I thought about that birder whose holidays are helping save a rainforest – because of a bird he cannot find. We’d spotted 42 species that day, many rare and endangered. Perhaps it’s time we all got a bit more obsessive about this.
Way to go
The trip was provided by Sumak Travel (020-36424246, sumak-travel.org) which promotes local community tours and initiatives. A 12-day tailor-made tour of Quito, the rainforest (with stays at Sani Lodge and Yasuni Ecolodge), Cuenca and Guayaquil, including accommodation, internal flights, transfers, excursions and most meals costs from £2,195pp. KLM flights to Quito via Amsterdam start from £479 return and can be booked through Sumak.Twelve Things People with CRPS Want You To Know About Them During the Holiday Season
By Samantha Barrett, Special Events Coordinator
Tis the season to be jolly! Or at least, that’s what I’ve heard. I love the holiday season. There are beautiful lights and decorations everywhere, there are people singing cheery songs, there are fun, mindless movie marathons on TV, there is delicious food- all of my favorite things wrapped into one season. Maybe that’s why I am so exhausted this year! In my years with CRPS, I’ve noticed that things are a little different than what they used to be. But, I am finding a way to be a little less “bah-humbug” and a little more “holly jolly.” While some people may not understand why I’m Scrooge one moment and good ol’ Saint Nick the other, I am trying to change that. So, I created a list of the twelve things that I want my friends and family without CRPS to know this holiday season. Hopefully, you will be able to relate!Asia-based rumor site Apple Daily has acquired photos of what it claims are the next-generation iPhone, including the 5.5-inch model we’ve seen much less of in recent weeks. The two photos above show the larger device (with the purple interior) paired with a 4.7-inch version. The wider 5.5-inch model is to the right and the 4.7 display panel is on the left. While some may note that the part on the right does not appear much larger than the part on the left, it is possible that the image’s perspective does not highlight the size differentiation well.
The larger model, which Apple Daily claims will be called ‘iPhone 6L’ also sports a larger 2915mAh battery (seen below), compared to the 1810mAh in the 4.7-inch device and 1560 mAh in the iPhone 5s. The larger display area and form-factor allows Apple to squeeze a much larger battery pack into the phone, but it is currently unclear if this will mean stronger battery life. It’s uncertain if the larger display and more powerful chip rumored for the bigger phone will counterbalance the effects of the bigger battery pack…
The new iPhones are scheduled to debut at an Apple Media Event on September 9th, and Apple is also preparing new iPad models and a wearable fitness device for launch later this fall. In addition to larger displays, the new iPhones will include thinner and rounder designs as well as display covers built from sapphire crystal and a faster A8 chip.
Components for the upcoming 5.5-inch model’s display began leaking out from the Asia supply chain in June, and parts for the 4.7-inch model have been appearing on the web for months. Both models are now in mass production.
Part of the “iPhone 6L” display panel, which features a similar design to the 4.7-inch variant with more rounded corners, is shown off in one of the photos below. Other internal components, including more photos of the logic board for both handsets, are on display in the photos below:
iPhone 6 logic board, including SIM slot iPhone 6 logic board with visible Apple logo and Toshiba memory 4.7-inch iPhone 6 battery Front cover of the 5.5-inch “iPhone 6L” 5.5-inch “iPhone 6L” battery
“Wall huggers my ass.” – Phil W. SchillerFire in Rujigou coalfield in China. Photo: Anupma Prakash
The Coal, The Coal is on Fire, Let the...
China has the worst underground coal fires on Earth. These fires, which have sometimes been raging out-of-control for decades, destroy as much as 20-200 million tons of coal each year (nobody knows the exact number), which is more than Germany's entire annual coal production. Inner Mongolia, which is a part of China and not to be confused with Mongolia, is China's biggest coal-producing region (637 million tonnes of coal just last year), and it's also #1 when it comes to massive coal fires. What can be done?
In Inner Mongolia, many underground coal fires have been burning since 1962. Over 10 square miles constantly smoldering, releasing lots of toxins and greenhouse gases. Most of the fires were caused by bad mining practices.
The local authorities are finally doing something about the coal fires. Their latest plan allocates 200 million yuan ($29.3 million) a year from now until 2012. If all goes well, they should be able to extinguish about half of the fires. No word on what's going to happen to the other half.
According to a harnessing plan, coal threatened by fire hazards is to be dug away to stop fires from spreading, while the fires are to be covered by sand. Other materials such as slurry are also pumped to help extinguish fires underground.
Digging coal. Using sand. Doesn't sound too sophisticated. Why wasn't this done decades ago? It's all a huge waste of energy. The way I see it, coal should stay in the ground, but if you're going to burn it, at least do something useful with it...
Inner Mongolia, shown in red here, is a Mongol autonomous region of the People's Republic of China. Image: Public domain
But the coal seam fires are just one facet of a bigger problem. As Alex mentioned in a previous post, "according to the report, by Greenpeace, the Energy Foundation and WWF: coal is the source of 70% of the country's energy, 85% of China's sulphur dioxide emissions, 67% of its nitrogen dioxide emissions, 80% of its carbon dioxide emissions, and creates 25% of China's waste water. China's coal mines are the world's deadliest, killing an average of 13 miners a day."
This last part about |
and prevented the dog from opening its mouth. This marks the worst case of animal cruelty that Toronto Animal Services veterinarian Dr. Stephanie Sparling has ever seen. The dog was unable to recover from its injuries and it was euthanized on Thursday.
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“I’ve worked here for about four-and-a-half years and this is the most severe case of animal abuse I have seen,” Sparling said. “This was extremely upsetting for all of us here at animal services.” The City of Toronto is now appealing to the public for help in identifying the culprit and Sparling urged anybody with information to step forward. The distressed dog was found by a resident near Jane St. and Finch Ave. W. on Oct. 10. Toronto Animal Services picked up the dog and took it to a partner clinic for antibiotics, pain medication and medical tests.
It was found to have multiple broken ribs, internal damage and chemical burns to about 30 per cent of its body. “I suspect there was some blunt trauma to the dog, it may have been kicked or hit with something and I suspect there were burns possibly from a chemical poured over the dog,” Sparling said.
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The black Labrador-cross was not aggressive towards staff and continuously rubbed its infected face on its side, whimpering, she said. It was sent to an emergency veterinary clinic on Wednesday after the chemical burns continued to spread, infecting larger portions of its skin. A specialist at the clinic said the dog could not survive the injuries and it was put down on Thursday afternoon. The case has been reported to Toronto police and the Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (OSPCA), Sparling said. The dog’s body has been sent to a veterinary laboratory for a post-mortem examination to discover the full extent of its injuries. OSPCA inspector Brad Dewar said if a person was convicted of animal cruelty under the OSPCA Act they could face a maximum penalty of two years imprisonment, a $60,000 fine and be prohibited for life from living with, caring for, or owning an animal. The severity of this particular case meant it was likely charges could also fall under the criminal code, he said. OSPCA conducted 18,000 animal cruelty investigations last year, including pets that had been neglected to the point of starvation, physically abused and even set on fire. “This case definitely is one that could have been avoided and this animal has suffered as a result of it,” Dewar said. Anyone with information about the dog has been asked to call CrimeStoppers through Tattletails, a program developed to encourage the reporting of animal abuse or neglect, on 1-800-222-8477.Howdy,
I often get a bug during Dominion in which my mouse cursor disappears, and in the most recent patch, the bug now appears in Summoner's Rift. Not only does the cursor disappear in game, it also disappears outside of the game?!
I've scoured the forums and have tried every method to fix it. The only fix I've found is restarting my computer when the bug happens. Another thing to note: Enabling "Display pointer trails" makes my mouse visible outside of the game, but not within.
I've found the bug occurs when I'm dead, and clicking rapidly. In some rare cases it just happens when I'm clicking while alive.
You have no idea how unbelievably difficult this game becomes when your cursor disappears! I would use the reasoning "because I'm so good at the game, I need a handicap" but I suck...This is the third and final game of the season series against the Canadiens, with all three meetings taking place in that span of 45 days… The Flyers won both meetings this season, and are looking to sweep the season series and go perfect against the Canadiens for the first time since the 2002-03 season when they went 4-0-0… Despite winning two in-a-row against the Canadiens, the Flyers will be looking to snap a three-game losing skid at the Bell Centre in Montreal with their last win coming on Apr. 15, 2013 by a score of 7-3… Since Feb. 12, 2010, the Flyers have earned points in 16 of their last 22 games against the Canadiens, going 14-6-2.
The Flyers recorded a 6-3 win at New Jersey in their last game, which was their second six-goal performance of the season, both of which have come in the month of February… The Flyers have scored five or more goals just four times this year, three of which have come in February… The Flyers own a perfect 14-0-0 record when they have scored four goals or more in a game… The Flyers have recorded a goal on the power play in three straight (4-for-13), four of their last five games (5-for-23) and 12 of their last 15 games (16-for-65, 24.6%)… The Flyers own a 12-11-5 record when they score a power-play goal but a 5-1-0 record when they have scored two or more goals on the power play.MINNEAPOLIS -- The Minnesota Timberwolves' promotional video "#TheReturn," a spoof of the Cleveland Cavaliers' visit being all about Mike Miller's return to the Target Center rather than Kevin Love's, was meant to be a joke, but Flip Saunders isn't laughing.
"I was not aware of the video a lot of people are talking about," Saunders, the Wolves' coach, president of basketball operations and part owner, said before Minnesota hosted the Cavaliers on Saturday night. "Didn't know about it, didn't approve of it. I think as an organization we should be above that."
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As Love had predicted, he was showered with boos in pregame introductions before the Cavs beat the Wolves 106-90.
"Truth be told, I thought it was a pretty good reception, especially from people, familiar faces," Love said after the game. "It was nice to see, shake hands, give a lot of hugs to different people and smile, wave at [them].
"[Owner] Glen and Becky Taylor came over to me and said some really nice stuff. Different teammates from the past, different guys over on the other bench. Flip, as well, I gave him some love in the second half."
Love finished with 14 points on 6-for-14 shooting and 17 rebounds but was just 1-for-5 on 3-pointers. The Cavaliers were powered by LeBron James, who scored 16 of his 36 points in the fourth quarter as Cleveland won its 10th in a row.
"It all went pretty well, and we ended up getting a win," Love said. "Like I said earlier before the game, that's what we came here to do. We walked away with 10 straight."
James said the Cavaliers were standing behind Love in his return.
"It was all our responsibilities as his teammates and his brothers to protect him tonight," James said. "Throughout anything, it was the uncertainty. He didn't know what to expect. He could lean on us throughout everything that happened today, and for us, we just had to go out there and help him get a win."
Earlier this week, Love had called the promotional video "hilarious" and said it played to his "dry sense of humor." He reiterated after the game that he "didn't take it wrong at all."
"I know Flip has a good sense of humor but I guess being in the front office and also being the coach and having played a number of roles in different organizations, Flip usually has the last word and holds a lot of power. So I feel like maybe he sees it a different way," Love said.
Flip Saunders and Kevin Love aren't as chummy as they were at the 2013 NBA draft lottery, but Saunders thinks his former player deserved better treatment from the Timberwolves than a video mocking his return to Minnesota. Steven Freeman/NBAE/Getty Images
However, Miller, who ended up being the butt of the joke, also wasn't so impressed.
"It is what it is," said Miller, who played just one season in Minnesota, averaging 9.9 points per game in 2008-09 for a Wolves team that went 24-58. "I'll never [have an] answer for anything that happens between [the] marketing [side]. Their job is to market and sell."
Saunders seemed to think their job should include running their videos by him before releasing them to the public.
"Would San Antonio do that? No. They wouldn't do that," Saunders said. "Our players didn't like it. They have to play against [Love], too. They didn't like it. It just doesn't send the right message.... So, was it funny? Maybe people thought it was funny.
"For me it wasn't great having to deal for three or four hours the last two days having people call me and talk about it as I'm trying to prepare for games. Maybe you think it's OK. That's up to you. But I don't look at it that way -- as someone who is running an organization and has to go out and has to recruit players and has to do those things to get those players.
"[Love] might have thought it was funny. But I know, deep down in his heart, no one would like that. It's human nature."
Love was the first player introduced in the starting lineup for the Cavs, and there was a hearty chorus of boos from the Minnesota crowd.
One fan held a sign that read, "For Love or Money?" Next to him, a fan held another sign with the inscription, "Where's the Love?"
Former teammate Kevin Martin embraced Love at center court before the opening tipoff.
During a first-quarter timeout, the Wolves had a brief presentation on their video board to honor Love. The public address announcer mentioned Love ranking second in rebounds, third in scoring and second in 3-pointers made in Minnesota franchise history. Love's charitable efforts, including collecting winter coats for the needy, also were mentioned. However, the graphic that displayed his accomplishments classified Love as a two-time All-Star, rather than the three-time All-Star that he was during his time in Minnesota.
"We have to acknowledge that Kevin, when he was here, he was a great player for us," Saunders said before the game. "He was an All-Star. He won an Olympic gold medal, did a lot of positive things. And, last year, at this time, everyone was patting themselves on the back for getting him selected into the All-Star Game for us.
"Would San Antonio do that? No. They wouldn't do that. Our players didn't like it. They have to play against [Love], too. They didn't like it. It just doesn't send the right message.... So, was it funny? Maybe people thought it was funny."
on spoof Kevin Love video
"To not acknowledge that, to go the other way, I would say would be hypocritical. So I have addressed some of the people, told them of my displeasure [about the spoof video]. And that, as an organization, that's not the direction we want to go."
Timberwolves owner Glen Taylor and his wife, Becky, approached the Cavs' bench shortly before tipoff, hugged Love and chatted for a short time. Love hadn't spoken to Taylor since being traded.
Saunders said he and Love didn't have any personal problems between them, even though the coach refused to answer questions about the three-time All-Star when the Wolves played in Cleveland earlier in the season.
"It's like when you have kids," Saunders said. "Your kids do something wrong, you might be mad at them, but it doesn't change that you don't like them or love them. It's the same thing. That's kind of how you approach it."
One silver lining to Love's return for the Wolves, who rank dead last in the league in attendance at 13,759 fans per game, was that they sold out Saturday night's game and then some, releasing 500 standing-room-only tickets on top of their regular capacity.
Saunders said his team is content with getting rookie Andrew Wiggins out of the Love deal, although he knows that the two will always be linked to one another.
"When the deal was made, teams were going in different directions and both teams felt good about the deal and both teams [still] feel good about the deal," Saunders said. "Will they be tied at the hip forever? Probably. That's part of what always happens when you go through any type of trade from that perspective."
Appropriately, considering the night, Wiggins scored Minnesota's first basket on a 3-pointer, which was met with raucous cheers. Love scored the first bucket for Cleveland on a putback and predictably was booed for it.
Wiggins had 33 points and four steals for the Timberwolves in a stirring duel with James.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.He once was muscle for the mob; now, he’s getting out of prison early
A “300-pound muscle guy” who helped reputed mobsters shake down delinquent debtors before turning on them and cooperating with the feds is getting out of prison early.
U.S. District Judge Edmond Chang granted a request by prosecutors Tuesday to reduce the sentence of George Brown. Last year, Chang gave Brown two years in prison based on his substantial cooperation with the government. Brown began serving his time last September.
Since his sentencing, prosecutors say Brown has cooperated even further. However, they have only described that cooperation in a sealed document filed with the court last week. And as a court hearing to consider their request began early Tuesday, the judge said he would keep the proceedings public “as long as we’re clever about it.”
Then, noting only that prosecutors had identified an “important reason,” Chang reduced Brown’s sentence to time served and ordered Brown released from the Bureau of Prisons.
Brown was known for his large frame and mixed-martial arts skills, once testifying he could “kick at six-feet-six” even after shoulder troubles left him unable to raise his arms above his head. One debtor wet his pants at the sight of him.
But Brown let the FBI listen in on his phone calls for nearly two years, wearing a wire in meetings with mob boss Paul Carparelli and other members of his crew. Among the memorable quotes Brown captured from the foul-mouthed Carparelli was his prophetic declaration that, “as long as you don’t steal from me, f— my wife or rat on me, you’re my friend 1,000 percent.”
U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman sentenced Carparelli last year to three and a half years in prison. Several of Brown’s other associates also received prison time, including Robert McManus, Michael “Mickey” Davis, Mark Dziuban, Frank Orlando, Vito Iozzo and James Amabile.
When he was sentenced, Brown told the judge that, “I’m a marked man. I have a target on my back. We can all agree that we’re dealing with people who have the means, the money and the time to retaliate.”WNCN reports:
A crowd of protesters gathered outside the old Durham County courthouse on Main Street Monday evening in opposition to a Confederate monument in front of the government building.
Around 7:10 p.m. a woman climbed the statue using a ladder and attached a rope around the statue.
Moments later, The crowd pulled on the rope and the statue fell.
In 1924, the Confederate statue was dedicated to Durham.
Engraved on the front of the monument is “The Confederate States of America.”
Above it, is a statue representing a soldier who fought in the civil war.
“It needs to be removed,” Loan Tran, an organizer, said earlier Monday. “These Confederate statues in Durham, in North Carolina, all across the country.”
There are similar monuments in several cities around North Carolina.A segment on the network was highlighted by Media Matters, reigniting a conversation about whether or not there are political messages in children's movies.
If you Googled news about “Muppets” on Monday you were treated to hundreds of news stories and blog items debating whether Disney’s lovable creatures were Communists or not. You can thank Fox Business Network and Media Matters for that.
Eric Bolling of Follow the Money set the stage on Friday when he hosted a 7-minute segment that argued that The Muppets film – featuring bad-guy oilman Tex Richman -- promotes a left-wing agenda.
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“We’re teaching our kids class warfare. Where are we, Communist China?” Bolling said.
That line – along with the rest of the conversation – irked Media Matters, the progressive watchdog group and No. 1 enemy of Fox News Channel and sister channel FBN. So that night it slapped its logo on a video of the segment and sent it around the Internet, and by Monday it had gone viral. (Video below).
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“Liberal Hollywood depicting a successful businessman as evil – that’s not new,” Bolling said while introducing his first guest, Dan Gainor of the Media Research Center, a conservative watchdog organization.
“It’s amazing how far the left will go just to stop – to manipulate your kids,” Gainor said, “to convince them – to give them the anti-corporate message.”
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“Is liberal Hollywood,” asks Bolling, “using class warfare to kind of brainwash our kids?”
Gainor answers in the affirmative and lists as examples Ted Turner’s Captain Planet and the Planeteers, Disney’s Cars 2 and Nickelodeon’s The Big Green Help.
“Ultimately, what they’re telling kids is what they told you in the movie The Matrix: that mankind is a virus on poor, old Mother Earth,” Gainor said.
STORY: 'The Muppets': Where's Elmo?
Bolling’s next guest agreed. “It’s brainwashing in the most obvious form, right? I just wish liberals could leave little kids alone,” said Andrea Tantaros, co-host of The Five on Fox News.
The Washington Post picked apart the argument, as did the New York Daily News. The item got the most traction, though, at more partisan outlets on both ends of the political spectrum.
“Painting businessmen as evil isn’t anything new. And it would certainly fall in line with a liberal Hollywood message,” a writer at Glenn Beck’s The Blaze wrote.
“In Hollywood, daring to cast a Muslim character can be considered a hate crime, but repeatedly casting businessmen, Christians and Southerners as villains is enlightened,” says an item at Andrew Breitbart’s Big Hollywood.
The Blaze and Big Hollywood are both on the right. Examples on the left include:
Gothamist.com: “Oh, Fox Business News, never change. In one of those ‘if it weren’t real we would think it were an Onion story’ moments, Fox Business show Follow the Money recenty had a segment in which they warn that the new Muppets movie is going to ‘brainwash’ our children into socialist plushies.”
The Huffington Post: “It ain’t easy being green, but according to Fox Business, Kermit the Frog and his Muppet friends are reds…. The Teletubbies were unavailable for comment. Mahna-Mahna.”
Others weighing in on the hot debate were MSNBC, Perez Hilton, Entertainment Weekly and Slate.First introduced at CES 2015 in January, the Asus ZenFone 2 is a very affordable Android handset that’s ready to launch in the U.S. With prices starting at $199, the smartphone also happens to come in a version that has 4GB of RAM under the hood. That’s something not even top flagship devices from Samsung, HTC or LG currently have to offer this year, yet Asus packed it into a budget-friendly high-end phablet.
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The ZenFone 2 has a large 5.5-inch display with 1080p (Full HD) resolution, 2.3GHz quad-core Intel Atom processor, 2/4GB of RAM, 13-megapixel camera, 5-megapixel front-facing camera, 3,000 mAh battery and Android 5.0 Lollipop on board.
The ZenFone 2 version that has just 2GB of RAM on board will be the cheaper one, priced at $199, while the 4GB of RAM model costs just $100 more. These are off-contract prices, meaning that you’d end up with a device that promises top performance without having to consider signing a new contract with your carrier for a subsidized flagship smartphone from Samsung, HTC or LG.
In fact, The Verge reports, carriers won’t even stock the ZenFone 2 models, meaning you’ll have to buy them from electronic retailers including Amazon, where the phone is already available for purchase (check it out at this link).
To check out the ZenFone 2’s performance (the 4GB RAM model), check out the video at this link.CNN’s resident gem Sally Kohn was a guest on CNN Newsroom with Carol Costello February 22. The political analyst and Daily Beast writer was asked to weigh in on Clinton’s trust with voters. Of course Kohn couldn’t do that without bringing up sexism, how much Trump’s voters hated gay people, and how much the right misleads the media.
When Costello brought up that only 12 percent of Democratic voters at the Nevada caucus said that they trusted Clinton, Kohn visibly bristled and rushed in to defend Clinton by claiming that her trust issues were “smears” and a “story” made up by the right:
KOHN: This is a story. This is a narrative that has been built up about Hillary Clinton. Largely by the right, absorbed by Democrats and the mainstream, including her critics and repeated by the media. And you know, listen, People believe Trump tells it like it is because they keep hearing from people like us that Trump tells it like it is, right? You know, we have to be careful in not sort of repeating these smears.
Fellow panelist, Democratic strategist and CNN pundit Jamal Simmons jumped in to agree with Kohn claiming that voters didn’t care about a candidate’s “past.”
Surprisingly, Costello pushed back against Kohn’s and Simmons’s dismissal, insisting that Clinton’s trust issues weren’t just an issue with the right but with moderates and independent voters as well. To that, Kohn laughed and shook her head at the notion that any voter who wasn’t conservative would distrust Clinton.
Kohn went on to say that voters cared instead about “environmental crises” and “disproportionate” money going to the wealthy.
KOHN: American people in general are frustrated that the recovery from the Great Recession has been going disproportionately to the very wealthy and not to the working class and to the poor. I think people are frustrated at the direction of foreign policy, people are frustrated, certainly that we haven't fixed environmental crises and other challenges in this county.
If it sounds like Kohn is out-of-touch with the American public, it’s because she is, and not just on Clinton’s record with voters. Kohn consistently deviates from her role as journalist to take part in heavy-handed activism. In 2015 she took part in the infamous “hands up” stunt on-air in a CNN panel; she has consistently aligned Christians and conservatives with terrorists; and she wrote an article in Elle Magazine admitting she had transgender hopes for her daughter.
See below for the transcript from the CNN Newsroom with Carol Costello segment on February 22.
CAROL COSTELLO: Sally, I'm just curious, because -- I'm just trying to think if the same argument would work with Donald Trump and if people would think he’s all in it for him and if they would fault him for that.
KOHN: Well, look, I mean, there's no question Hillary starts off with a sort of deficit in this area. And if it’s because she’s a well known politician, if it’s because of the different standards that women are judged against men, You know, we can sort of speculate as to why that is, but Trumps a really interesting example. Because Apparently people think he’s--- they trust him a lot because he just says whatever he thinks even though most of the things he says are pretty outrageous and ridiculous, and it makes you think there's an inverse relationship between trust and credentials to actually be a thoughtful, leaderful president of the United States.
COSTELLO: I think people really Donald Trump because they want something different from the establishment, right? It has nothing to do with anything else but everything to do with that. On the issue of trust, though, if you look at the exit, entrance polls rather from the Nevada caucus. They show that just 12% of democratic caucus-goers say Clinton is trustworthy. So whether or not trust really matters, when it comes right down to it, It seems to matter this time around Jamal, or am I wrong? Hillary Clinton obviously is trying to do something about that.
SIMMONS: It's a tricky question, this question of trust. The question is do you trust someone to babysit your kids or do you trust someone to hold your wallet while you go to the bathroom? This thing about trust is different. I think when it comes to politicians, nobody trusts any politicians for the most part. But the question is, among the other people running, do I trust you enough to go into a room and advocate on behalf of me and my family and look out for me, even when I'm not watching. That's the question that Hillary Clinton is trying to get to today by her talking about, you know, it’s the elephant in the room. Am I in this for me or am I in this for you? I'm going to show you I’m in this for you. If I’m on the campaign, I want to also find people who have benefitted from Hillary Clinton’s work for them maybe when he was in the senate or maybe when she was in Arkansas. People who can get up and testify to the fact that they were in need, they went to see her and she helped solve a problem for them.
COSTELLO: So, so is her use of “we” effective, Sally? Bernie Sanders talks like that all the time. He never says “I”?--- he doesn't have a trust issue, by the way.
KOHN: No, but, again, let's also bear in mind he's also far newer to the American public. Look, there's also a sort of optics to this. I wasn't sort of being too glib when I said there's a reality TV sort of dimension that’s entering American politics. Which is, we seem to increasingly like our politicians to be less politician-y right? And to speak off the cuff, and seem more real and authentic. And, again whether that's what you actually want in the White House and in positions of leadership is an interesting question. The other thing is let's be clear. We're doing it right now. This is a story. This is a narrative that has been built up about Hillary Clinton. Largely by the right, absorbed by Democrats and the mainstream, including her critics and repeated by the media. And you know, listen, People believe trump tells it like it is because they keep hearing from people like us that trump tells it like it is, right? You know, We have to be careful in not sort of repeating these smears. And again, let's focus on the issues and what's really at stake.
SIMMONS: But, Carol, at the end of the day, no campaign is really about the candidate's past. It's always about the voter's future. And so Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, any of those candidates that are running, Rubio, they have to be speaking to aspirations of people, understand their anger. I think Hillary Clinton is getting better at showing she understands the anger people have and laying out a vision people can buy into and vote for.
COSTELLO: But aspiration and vision, they're not cutting it this time around, Sally. People are angry. They just want someone to kick the bums out.
KOHN: Yeah. I mean -- look, again, let's be clear of what that anger is. Apparently 31% according to a new poll, 31% of Trump supporters in South Carolina want to ban gay people from entering the united States. So if that's the sort of, quote, on quote, anger being marshalled in this election, I don't think any of us want any of it. Yes, we are frustrated that I think American people in general are frustrated that the recovery from the great recession has been going disproportionately to the very wealthy and not to the working class and to the poor. I think people are frustrated at the direction of foreign policy, people are frustrated, certainly that we haven't fixed environmental crises and other challenges in this county. But you know, the question becomes what are you going to do about it? You need solutions. You need to not just stoke people's anger, make them more afraid. And let’s be clear: Republicans know when voters are more afraid, they vote Republican. So yes, Jamal’s exactly right. Hillary Clinton has to set out a vision and I think using the “we” language is thoroughly appropriate and say, “Where is she trying to take this country?” This isn't about me, this isn’t about my past, This isn’t about whatever you’ve heard about me from the right. This is about a direction for the future and who can get us there.
COSTELLO: Yeah, but there are tangible things out there, that independent voters and moderates think about like the e-mail controversy, like even white water. That's hanging out there in the wind, right? Jamal?
KOHN: [shakes her head, guffaws] No!
SIMMONS: I think that's -- that's already baked into the cake. I think people -- this is the benefit about being around for so long. Hillary Clinton has been in the public eye since I was in college. Right? And so she really understands, and this is like the early 1990s. So people already understand who she is. Now what they want to know is we know who you are. We know you fight for people. Are you fighting for me. She’s got to sort of lay out how she's going to fight for them. I tell you, talk about aspiration.I’ll say something nice about a Republican, which is unusual--- I think Marco Rubio is telling the best story of any campaign that's out there. You know, He's a son of a kid from, you know, humble beginnings, making his way to the top and everybody in America wants to believe that's something possible, if not for themselves then for their children. You’ve got to marshal the anger, show people you get it and then connect that to a vision for the future. That's Hillary Clinton's challenge.Joe Hockey reportedly billed taxpayers more than $13,000 for a dinner at an exclusive Sydney restaurant just weeks after handing down a Budget judged to be one of the most unfair in modern Australian history.
The then-treasurer and trade minister Andrew Robb were hosting unnamed overseas politicians ahead of the 2014 G20 meeting in Brisbane, The Courier-Mail reports.
Both Liberal MPs' staffers attended the 22-person dinner at North Sydney's Aqua Dining, which costed $620 a head.
The bill also included $500 for flowers and $1100 for "audio visual services".
As well as stunning Harbour views, the group enjoyed confit South Australian calamari, quail eggs, onion and porcini soup, salmon, lamb, risotto, and sides of cocktail potatoes, beans and sugar snaps.
For dessert the guests of the Australian taxpayer dined on pear, crème fraîche and star anise granita, warm chocolate cake, and cheese platters with port and Frangelico.
The decadent dinner was held just weeks after the controversial 2014 budget was handed down and Mr Hockey urged Australians to be a nation of lifters, not leaners.
The latest expenses revelation comes after it was revealed Mr Hockey slugged taxpayers $1200 for babysitting while serving as US ambassador in Washington.
Labor's Waste Watch spokesman Matt Keogh said the expenses confirmed the government's "complete hypocrisy on spending".
© Nine Digital Pty Ltd 2019Life does not magically return to normal after flood waters recede.
The West Nyack post office has been closed for three months since Tropical Storm Irene. It will reopen on Monday.
Down the street at Lulu’s Cafe, the cozy, retro-style luncheonette shows no signs of the flooding or damage, but the Journal News reports business has dropped off 40 percent.
At a dry cleaner, the owner tells WCBS 880 reporter Sean Adams that they’re in a slump and that customers have not all returned.
Other storefronts are vacant. A hair salon went under because it had no flood insurance.
A florist, though, is moving past the mopping up, the dehumidifiers, and the smell of mildew cleaner. He’s decorated his window with a Christmas tree and golden cherubs. The flooding will not diminish his holiday spirit.
Do you have a disaster story from Irene? Share it in the comments section below!Unhappy Titans fans saw the Texans fire their coach with three games left in the season.
My Twitter timeline suggests many are reaching new levels of disgust. Some Titans fans are hoping there is news this morning on Mike Munchak.
I have no idea how Tommy Smith is going to operate as the lead owner of the Titans, so anything can happen.
But I wouldn’t expect a move Monday.
Even if the Titans decide to go in a new direction, there is nothing to gain from firing Mike Munchak now. Wade Payne/AP Photo
And there shouldn’t be one.
For starters, do we think management saw the Titans at 5-7 and said, “This team is going to Denver and will beat the Broncos”? No one should have been thinking that way. They were a huge underdog for a reason. Even if the Titans were good this season, this was a game that would have been tough to win.
Why shouldn't the Titans fire Munchak now?
Well, he’s an honorable man who has served the franchise since 1982 as a player, assistant coach and head coach.
There is nothing to be gained by firing him with three games remaining in the season. If team president and CEO Tommy Smith decides to make a change, I would think it would be a complete overhaul. An audition for Gregg Williams, the most likely interim coach on Munchak’s staff, would serve no purpose.
This version of the Titans has proved unable to finish games. It’s lost to a lot of bad teams. It’s not beaten anybody with much of a résumé. The Titans have been overmatched at times. They lost their quarterback. They overestimated their talent.
A lack of energy has not been an issue, so there is no need to look to spark them. Players have not bailed on Munchak or shown themselves to doubt their coach. They have not tuned him out. The locker room is not fractured.
Owners who see those things may be inclined to make a late-season change. Smith is not seeing those things.
What about a head start on finding the next guy?
Well, the Texans have a bigger head start, and Smith can have his people begin to put out back-channel feelers now if he so desires. There will be plenty of good candidates come Dec. 30 if Smith makes a move then.
The biggest thing to gain from firing Munchak now would be that you, an angry Titans fan, might feel a bit better. And making you feel better by firing someone isn’t going to prompt you to buy a ticket or, ultimately, be any more loyal.
Making you happier by firing a guy today shouldn't be management's goal.
If it’s going to happen, what’s three more games?
Why not give one of the franchises all-time greats, a guy who’s shown integrity and has always had the best interest of the franchise at heart, a more conventional and respectable ending?Android 6.0 Marshmallow has officially arrived for a number of Nexus devices, including the Nexus 5, Nexus 6, Nexus 7 (2013), and Nexus 9. Over-the-air (OTA) updates will be rolling out slowly to those devices over the coming days, but if you want the goodness now, you can upgrade via factory images that were posted here.
The latest version of Android offers a bunch of new features, many of which hide behind the scenes to add stability, endurance, and polish to last year’s Lollipop release. They aren’t all back-end optimizations, though. One of the few forward-facing features you will run into and likely use on a regular basis, is Google Now on Tap.
For those not familiar, Google Now on Tap is an enhanced take on Google Now, that allows you to get relevant and timely information from within an app, conversation, or email, so that you don’t have to completely stray from the moment at hand. Google Now on Tap essentially reads your screen and then tries to provide you with useful items, like restaurant reviews, movie times, information on people, shortcuts to navigation, Twitter profiles, related apps, and more. It’s incredibly handy and could be one of the best new features Google has released in years.
To get caught up on an intro to Google Now on Tap, be sure to watch the video below, which we put together last week as the service first went live.TRENTON — The aspirations of New Jersey's first medical marijuana businesses range from modest to potentially massive, but marijuana advocates say the state's startup dispensaries have stronger ties to traditional medicine than most — and an unusual number of politically connected people involved in them.
Last month, the state issued licenses for its first six alternative treatment centers — not-for-profit organizations that are allowed to grow and sell marijuana to patients with certain medical conditions. They're expected to begin sales to the public later this year, but no sooner than late summer.
"These are not people that we're used to seeing apply for licenses. They're coming from a different background. They have different skill sets," said Lauren Payne, the legal coordinator and regulations analyst for Americans for Safe Access, which works on behalf of patients who believe marijuana may help them. "Some of them may or may not have an idea of what they're getting themselves into."
The fledgling medical marijuana industry was closely watching who would get New Jersey's licenses. It has a bigger population than all the 14 other states that have legalized pot for patients, except California. And it's launching its version of the business with tighter restrictions than have been tried anywhere else in the U.S.
The state |
’t being cleaned up. I told her I was a journalist. She just covered up her badge and her name with her hand and left. Hundred-dollar fine, $300 if it’s late.
I talked to a group of teenagers hanging out in the park one day in Mott Haven. They were cutting school, hiding from truant officers who were looking for them. (“They can’t do anything to us after 12,” one told me). I asked them about the Chinese takeout restaurants in their neighborhood. One boy said he knew some guys who robbed them—the guys did a “prank call,” and when the deliveryman came they went downstairs, hit him, grabbed the food and took all his money.
As to why they think this happens, they talked about trauma, and about wreaking havoc. One of the teens said, “Chinese people don’t know how to speak to you,” meaning respectfully. Another said, “We poor, they’re poor.”
This teenager, a girl, said later on that some of the kids did it “just to bully another race.”
I stayed at Lok Hin until 1 a.m. that Saturday night. I drank some of their mother’s homemade rice wine as we all sat around in the back of the kitchen on those MSG barrels and ate a family dinner.
Before I left I asked Nancy about names, how should I identify her in the article. I told her I wanted people to really know her and remember her.
At Good Choice restaurant, also in Mott Haven, the very nice woman I talked to, obviously not American-born Chinese, said her name was Jenny. At No.1 Wok in Mott Haven, where I helped them clean up the garbage on the street, the man who took me behind the counter said he was Chan, “You know, like Jackie Chan,” and I was told the boss’s name was “Number One.”
Nancy’s Chinese name, her birth name, her government name, the name she had or was given when she was born in Fujian Province 30 years ago, does hang on the wall in Lok Hin on a certificate for some New York City food-protection course she took years ago, and she hangs on to a piece of that name in her email address. But for this article she said she wanted to be identified as Nancy Lin. She’s earned that name here in America.Swedish retailer IKEA continues its global solar crusade, using, promoting and selling PV to its customers around the world. Yesterday, the company announced its 44th solar project in the U.S.
To date, IKEA has rooftop PV atop nearly 90% of its stores in the U.S., with a total capacity of more than 40 MW. This time, the company says, its new store will be using a 1.46 MW rooftop solar system, the largest rooftop PV in the state of Tennessee.
The IKEA Memphis store is opening later this year; and the installation of the PV system is expected to begin this summer. The array will be comprised of 4,424 panels that are expected to produce approximately 2 GWh of electricity for the store and reduce 1,406 tons of CO2 emissions annually.
Atlanta-based solar developer Hannah Solar has been chosen to design and install the system.
IKEA has already installed more than 700,000 solar panels on buildings across the world and owns approximately 300 wind turbines, including 104 in the U.S. The company has globally allocated $2.5 billion to invest in renewable energy through 2020.HOUSTON (CN) – A constable claims Harris County fired him for objecting to orders that “any blacks in the neighborhood should be stopped and that probable cause was their race.” Robert Wilson, who is black himself, says his sergeant “instructed him other officers to target any black people driving, walking or riding a bicycle in the community.”
Wilson sued Harris County in Federal Court, claiming he was fired for objecting to the illegal orders he received from his sergeant in Precinct 7.
“Shortly after being hired in Precinct 7, plaintiff’s immediate supervisor, Sergeant Peter Basralian, instructed him and others to target any black people driving, walking or riding a bicycle in the community,” the complaint states. “Sergeant Basralian specifically instructed plaintiff regarding racial profiling in October 2009 indicating that any blacks in the neighborhood should be stopped. Sergeant Basralian instructed plaintiff, Deputy Young and Deputy John Siv that any blacks in the neighborhood should be stopped and that probable cause was their race. Plaintiff informed Sergeant Basralian that his instructions amounted to racial profiling and that this was not appropriate. Plaintiff reported the instructions to Lieutenant Trevino, Captain J. Phillips and Captain L. Aaron. Defendant’s personnel asked for witnesses or proof of these allegations.
“Sergeant Basralian began retaliating against plaintiff by denying plaintiff requested leave, even when previously approved. Sergeant Basralian conspired with Lieutenant Trevino against the plaintiff and created a reason for plaintiff’s termination. Sergeant Basralian continued to retaliate against plaintiff when plaintiff was a reserve officer with the honor guard.”
Wilson says he was fired on Aug. 13, 2010, and two weeks later learned that he had been “dishonorably discharged,” though he “had no prior disciplinary incidences.”
Wilson says he works now in Precinct 3, where he has not seen any racial profiling.
He claims the employment practices in Precinct 7 were intentional, illegal, and malicious.
He seeks back pay, compensatory and punitive damages for discrimination and retaliation.
He is represented by Marcus Stevenson.
Like this: Like Loading...It is able to do this by using a novel form of reinforcement learning, in which AlphaGo Zero becomes its own teacher. The system starts off with a neural network that knows nothing about the game of Go. It then plays games against itself, by combining this neural network with a powerful search algorithm. As it plays, the neural network is tuned and updated to predict moves, as well as the eventual winner of the games.
This updated neural network is then recombined with the search algorithm to create a new, stronger version of AlphaGo Zero, and the process begins again. In each iteration, the performance of the system improves by a small amount, and the quality of the self-play games increases, leading to more and more accurate neural networks and ever stronger versions of AlphaGo Zero.
This technique is more powerful than previous versions of AlphaGo because it is no longer constrained by the limits of human knowledge. Instead, it is able to learn tabula rasa from the strongest player in the world: AlphaGo itself.
It also differs from previous versions in other notable ways.
AlphaGo Zero only uses the black and white stones from the Go board as its input, whereas previous versions of AlphaGo included a small number of hand-engineered features.
It uses one neural network rather than two. Earlier versions of AlphaGo used a “policy network” to select the next move to play and a ”value network” to predict the winner of the game from each position. These are combined in AlphaGo Zero, allowing it to be trained and evaluated more efficiently.
AlphaGo Zero does not use “rollouts” - fast, random games used by other Go programs to predict which player will win from the current board position. Instead, it relies on its high quality neural networks to evaluate positions.
All of these differences help improve the performance of the system and make it more general. But it is the algorithmic change that makes the system much more powerful and efficient.This build is outdated. Anyone interested in newest version of the build can check this thread, at the time of this writing it's the closest thing you can find to original build.
http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1098592/
Last update: 4/december/2014
This is a high mitigation dual wielding buid which can easily do endgame content like maps and Apex of Sacrifice.
This is not a high dps build and cannot compete with clear speed of crit builds. If you like one-shooting monsters, you will not enjoy playing this build.
In 1.1 version of the game, build used to have Iron Reflex, 68% block and spellblock, around 5500hp around level 90 and close to 20k dps.
In 1.2 version of the game the buid has been substantially improved due to introduction of easily accessible dual wiled block nodes. It's now possible to get more block with less 'traveling' on the skill tree which means more nodes can be spent on damage or mitigation.
The build now has two versions - higher damage mana based version and higher survivability blood magic version. Both versions have better offensive and defensive stats then the 1.1 buid had.
Higher dps build - up to ~32k dps with Dual strike and Melee Splash with Hatred and Frenzy charges
- 73% block and spell block
- 6000+ life at higher levels
- 80% increased life recovery from flasks
- Iron Reflex
Higher survivability build - up to ~21k dps with Dual strike and Melee Splash with Hatred and Frenzy charges
- 75% block and spell block
- 40% dodge
- 30% spell dodge
- 6000+ life at higher levels
- 80% increased life recovery from flasks
Hybrid WoE Build - Work in Progress
I have a lvl 92 scion i'm probably going to use free respec at some point to try out the build.
Stats are:
~22k pure phys dps, guessing around 26k with Herald of Ash (dps depends on accuracy, no RT)
~35k+ dps if Discipline is Replaced with Hatred (but has ~1000 less ES)
~7000 combine ES+Life (2700Life, 4300ES)
-72% block/spellblock
-ability to swap PoE+HoA with PoL+PoF
~35k+ dps if Discipline is Replaced with Hatred (but has ~1000 less ES)
~80% chance to avoid being stunned (ES+Heart of Oak)
http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgABvryzP09WguSQEYqvSshuqrXy3-8o2x3KPycqTRUgIuJH4tCBpDks6d0NW68Y28GL26cJWFyw0_yBQTXvbbQ67asLcsPMBk4qtkE0k2Nw7-O-p25phNk7KAOWbj1gQ4MJRnHhiB2qtAzqug18kycc3A2NbAsi9G0ZEVA1uacr2VsbJUuu6QJ_xsHF7Bhwu9kTL2-P-vDVSVGVLgce0NDP6euOk_wuCEcG9vynNNvnX2rviPk3189JsTWS2L2mjXVOZfA0CjdmLKam6zeDV8nEuNX4o-_-j03jplcxng==
I'd probably drop helm or one of the rings for Alpha's Howl or Dream Fragments if it turns out Freeze is an issue.
Chaos damage would probably be a problem with the build as it's using melee damage on full life.
I'd also need to buy Rings, Helm and Gloves to try out the build (my current ES gear has no accuracy). I'm currenty working on a scion hybrid version of the build and its looking pretty good so far.I have a lvl 92 scion i'm probably going to use free respec at some point to try out the build.Stats are:~22k pure phys dps, guessing around 26k with Herald of Ash (dps depends on accuracy, no RT)~35k+ dps if Discipline is Replaced with Hatred (but has ~1000 less ES)~7000 combine ES+Life (2700Life, 4300ES)-72% block/spellblock-ability to swap PoE+HoA with PoL+PoF~35k+ dps if Discipline is Replaced with Hatred (but has ~1000 less ES)~80% chance to avoid being stunned (ES+Heart of Oak)I'd probably drop helm or one of the rings for Alpha's Howl or Dream Fragments if it turns out Freeze is an issue.Chaos damage would probably be a problem with the build as it's using melee damage on full life.I'd also need to buy Rings, Helm and Gloves to try out the build (my current ES gear has no accuracy).
Pros
- relatively cheap (its possible to make it work with less then 5ex even on Standard league)
- do not need any 6L items
- 73% to 75% block and spellblcok
- 80/75/79 elemental resistances
- reflect is not a problem (even multiple levels of reflect are perfectly ok)
- due to good physical damage, you dont need a lot of life leech to reach leech rate cap
- due to increased life recovery from flasks passive nodes, can recover almost 1800hp with divine instant recovery flasks
- able to do all maps and all bosses, from lvl 66 to 79 maps, including normal Atziri and uber double vaal and uber triboss
Cons
- low damage (even higher dps mana based version of the build has low damgage compared to crit builds)
- needs blood rage for life leech if you cant find LL on gloves and both rings while still capping resistances
- no regen maps are somewhat difficult to run with Blood Rage and require higher usage of life flasks
Note: This used to be a cheap build, but The Bringer of Rain was bumped to 'rare unique tier' in 1.2.0 patch which drastically increased it's price (costs up to 10ex in the beginning of the league). The build is still one of the cheapest endgame viable builds for both SC and HC leagues. It's also possible to reach very high level and play endgame without BoR, check 'Q&A' section of the guide to see an example of gear used by Beyond (HC) player who reached lvl 89 without BoR.
Atziri speed run
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHYriqrsLZc
Olmec's Sanctum full map run
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fg0hj1QeNvE
Death and Taxes full map run
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvPhZ0GDvxk
Atziri video with commentary and a bit of Cleave testing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0moztOf1SNU
Mana based version video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5KcxYy8Cww
Shrine Piety
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-lL6HjQlzE
Academy Double Boss
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fl-lHXRalzs
Crematorium Megaera
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XEqOoKYqOU
Precinct Spinecrack
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RW02I0UDxM
Old 1.1 videos
Double Vaal -
Triboss -
Atziri -
Shrine Piety -
Dominus Palace -
Dominus Merciless - Double Vaal - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KB5KIWgpRcE Triboss - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLX_E-r21lA Atziri - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eCVRu_e9RY Shrine Piety - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHmP7K5BeZw Dominus Palace - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYXi6rUxyzo Dominus Merciless - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wbjykcUC3M
I play with legacy Bringer of Rain, but non-legacy version was used for defensive and offensive stats screenshots. Stats in the spoilers are for higher survivability version of the build.
Defensive Stats
Offensive Stats with Hatred and Frenzy Charges
Old 1.1 Stats
Level 92 higher survivability skill tree http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgQBAnEDhwSzBbUJWAxfFE0UUhUgFm8Y2xo4G60cpx3KIuIj9iSqJ-0o2ypNLOkwcTB8MZ4yiTSTNZI17zbpOkI64TrtPC0_J0d-R-JKfUrIS3hNkk3jTipRR1OlVvpX4lnzW69csGNwZU1mnmegbBZttG5pbqpwcnKpfNl9dYFBhNmHGYd2jX2Nv5AKkFWZK6IAo4qkOaZXp4SpaKyqtfK2Qbc-vYG-p8AawYvE9sau0IHTftP81CPYvdun3Q3dqN3n3-_jauw47g7veu_j8kX60vxL_MX-Cv6P_ro=
Level 92 mana skill tree (higher dps skill tree) http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgQBmSu9gUd-FFJlTYTZbmm-p-_jY3A0k7ZBTioppVuvGNvBi9unCVhcsNP8gUE17220Ou3dDfzFZ6CHdkp9VvruDqOK73rTfn11_rpwcgOHG60j9k2SkAos6aaNdU5l8BUgIuJH4tCBpDkqTT8nSshuqrXy3-8o2x3KNZLYvf4K8kU64aZXMZ63PohaoEJewMauHKcMX1OlPC3E9ift_EtsFocZrKpyqXzZWfPAGpBVp4QaOOw4V-IyiQSzAnEUTaIAqWhmnvrSNunjaiSqFm8XL2TnVdaApE3j_o8=
Players interested in mana based version should check skill gem setup for information about mana skill cost and gear needed to sustain attacks.
Normal - Oak
Cruel - Kraityn
Merciless - Oak
What gear is essential for the build to work?
Wings of entropy - adds 10% block chance while dual wielding and adds 25% block chance applied to spells.
The Bringer of Rain - adds 15% block chance. 10% chance to gain endurance charge on block grants you a lot of endurance charges even without Cast when damage taken + Enduring cry.
It helps a lot but its possible to play without one. Check 'Q & A' section of the guide to see an example of gear without Bringer
Stone of Lazhwar - 50% block chance applied to spells. It also gives you intelligence, which you need for auras and faster cast speed which is very usefull for castin immortal call.
Rainbowstride - 20-25% block chance apllied to spell. With WoE, Lazhwar and these boots you have 95-100% block chance applied to spells.
Other gear you need?
Anything that helps you cap your elemental resistances and, if possible, get you some chaos resistance so you can outregen Blood Rage degen.
Belt with block and stun recovery and reduced flask charges used, similar to this one:
Block and stun recovery on belt is more useful in this build then ipd on rustic sash as the build does not have Unwavering Stance and theres no block recovery nodes for dual wield block in the tree.
Reduced flask charges helps you get more uses out of the same flask. For instance, if you roll 20extra charges on ruby flask, and have 14% or more reduced flask charges used on an item, you can use that Ruby flask 3 times instead of just 2. It also allows you to use Hallowed life flasks 6 instead of 5 times if you have 20extra charges on it.
Gear i'm using
Gear used on Standard
Gear used to kill Atziri on day 4 of 1 Month SC league at lvl 82
Gear:
Gear:
Old Gear used on Ambush
BoR (4L) - not much to say here.
Dual Strike + Melee splash + Multistrike + Blood magic < blood magic version
Dual Strike + Melee splash + Multistrike + Added fire < mana version
Cleave + Multistrike + Added fire + Increased AoE/Conc Effect - works with both build versions as long as you have enough mana unreserved and 2% mana leech
WoE (4L + 2L) - 4 Socket WoE is a minimum you need (if you plan on using selfcast EC), 6S is perfect, because two skills are in it, Leap slam and Enduring Cry so you need a minimum of 4L setup in it, or 4L+2L if you have 6S woe.
4L - Leap slam + Faster attacks + Enduring cry + Blood magic
3L/4L - Leap slam + Faster attacks + Blood magic (+ Culling strike)
2L - Cast when damage taken (lvl4) + Enduring cry or Blood magic + Enduring cry
Gloves and Boots
4L - Immortal Call + Increased duration + Blood rage + Blood Magic
4L - Reduced mana + Purity of Fire + Purity of Lightning + Grace/Hatred/Purity of ice
Build can switch auras, Grace for more defense and Hatred for more damage.
Modified skill gem setup
" cavantese
- WoE - 4L(immortal call + vaal haste + blood rage + increased duration) - 2L(leap slam + faster attacks)
- cwdt (1) + enduring cry (5) + enfeeble (5) + increased aoe
- hatred + purity of elements/lightning + herald of ash/purity of fire + reduced mana I'm using slightly different gem setup (modified mana version):- WoE - 4L(immortal call + vaal haste + blood rage + increased duration) - 2L(leap slam + faster attacks)- cwdt (1) + enduring cry (5) + enfeeble (5) + increased aoe- hatred + purity of elements/lightning + herald of ash/purity of fire + reduced mana
cavantese is using a different skill gem setup which i like a lot as it has both Enfeeble and Vaal haste. Downside is he had to drop Culling Strike and doesn't have an option to add CwDT, but i dont think either of the downsides is a big problem and it ofers a boost to map clear speed. If you're looking for more dps i suggest you try this gem setup. You can also swap Enfeeble with Vulnerability if you want more damage.
Aura setup
In my opinion, it's best to use Hatred + Purity of Lightning (PoL) + Purity of Fire (PoF). However, lower and mid level maps, especially if you're overleveled, can be run without PoF and PoL. If you have enough resistances on your gear to reach cap on fire and lightning resistance with Purity of Elements (PoE), you can switch PoF and PoL with Herald of Ash and PoE.
So there are two basic aura setups you can switch between:
Higher max resistances: Hatred + Purity of Lightning + Purity of Fire
Higher dps: Hatred + Herald of Ash + Purity of Elements
Cleave
I do not have a 20/20 Cleave to show exact dps with it, but my tests with lvl 16 Cleave made me believe that 20/20 Cleave would be a good replacement for Melee Splash gem.
There is also an option of completely dropping Dual Strike and using Cleave both as single target and aoe attack.
4L Bringer of Rain setup for blood magic version of the build would be:
Cleave + Multistrike + Added Fire + Blood magic
Note that if you're using Hatred, Purity of Elements and Herald of Ash, as long as you have 2% mana leech and enough mana for high leech rate cap, you can run this setup on mana even in tankier version.
Thx to Symeon_Stareyes for pointing that out " Symeon_Stareyes
Gear:
Spoiler
Health: 5438
Mana: 640
DPS(Concentrated Effect):38,570 I've been using this build for running Atziri and just wanted to let people know it's possible to follow the Blood magic tree with phase acrobatics and still run cleave off mana with the right aura setup. Using Hatred+Purity of Elements+Herald of Ash and a 2% mana leech ring you can get ~40k DPS with concentrated effect. You can also run Immortal Call and Enduring Cry off cast when damage taken as opposed to self-casting and run Atziri without dying.Gear:Health: 5438Mana: 640DPS(Concentrated Effect):38,570
4L Bringer of Rain setup for mana version of the build would be:
Cleave + Multistrike + Added Fire + Increased Area of Eeffect / Concentrated Effect
In this version i would recommend using Increased Area of effect for faster map clear speed and switching to Concentrated effect for difficult bosses.
Blood Rage
This the reason why build has so many life regeneration points and the reason why you want as much chaos resistances on gear and skill tree as possible. With -15% chaos resistance and 4.8% life regen, its possible to completely outregenerate blood rage degeneration on normal maps and have only slight degeneration on half regen and shocking ground maps.
While in ideal case scenario, player with perfect gear does not need blood rage for leech at all, gear with stats good enough to support the build using no resistance helm, chest and amulet would be possibly even mirror worthy.
I find it a lot easier supporting this skill with a few extra skill points on the tree that also benefit me in other ways, then acquiring a couple hundreds of exalted orbs for perfect rings and gloves.
Leveling note: while leveling, supporting blood rage is not easy so its better to use life leech amulet instead of stone of lazhwar. I usually level with Carnage Heart, but any 4%+ life leech amulet is ok. I switch Carnage Heart with Stone of Lazhwar once i hit level 70-71 maps or once i get enough life regen, whichever happens first.
Alternatively, you can use Warlords Mark for leveling, but be aware that rare and unique monsters have reduced curse effectiveness on them, so cursing for example Piety with Warlod's Mark level 20 will mean you only get around 2% life leech instead of 6.9%.
Supporting mana cost of the skills
Mana based version of the build requires 2% mana leeched from physical attacks on one of the rings or gloves. Another requirement is high total mana pool, 750 or more mana in total and at least 80 unreserved mana. Mana leech rate cap is 12.5% of total mana so with 750 mana player can leech around ~90 mana per sec and, with mana regeneration, that is usually enough to support attacks. If attacks are not continuous and character reverts to normal attacks every once in a while, it is advised to take more 'increased maximum mana' nodes or'reduced mana cost of skills' nodes to be able to support skills using mana.
Did new 1.2.0 skill tree buff the build?
Yes, and it buffed it a lot!
New skill tree brings a huge increase in life and block which as a result has build with higher survivability and greatly increased damage.
Is Bringer of Rain absolutely mandatory?
No, check the post written by Fujira who has a BoR, but decided not to use it as he feels build is tanker and has more dps with rare chest and helm:
Spoiler " Fujira
I managed to buy BoR finally but after trying it and losing 8k out of 19k dps and 500 hp I decided that I will try this build without BoR and stay at my 57/61 block/spellblock.
Have 5500 hp currently and 42% reduction with grace, running grace/hatred but will switch to grace/determination at the same time as I change my 6L to added fire instead of life leech and going to run blood rage constantly. Im at 18 positive chaos res so I was waiting for this to do the swap in my build. Point is that I will be hit a bit more than with BoR but with my Hp pool and reduction should still be fine.
I will link my gear below:
I am now lvl 89 in beyond league
I am running the exact build of the mana based tree that is posted so no difference there, only the 6L and the helm/body armour are different.
The _only_ sketchy bosses so far are Dominus on 74/78 that I wont solo on beyond and the beyond boss which shoots fire-lasers and can oneshot you. All the other bosses and exiles I solo with ease. So a bit of an update to those who are interested in a variation of this build, its not very viable of course cause I got really lucky with a 6L WoE.I managed to buy BoR finally but after trying it and losing 8k out of 19k dps and 500 hp I decided that I will try this build without BoR and stay at my 57/61 block/spellblock.Have 5500 hp currently and 42% reduction with grace, running grace/hatred but will switch to grace/determination at the same time as I change my 6L to added fire instead of life leech and going to run blood rage constantly. Im at 18 positive chaos res so I was waiting for this to do the swap in my build. Point is that I will be hit a bit more than with BoR but with my Hp pool and reduction should still be fine.I will link my gear below:I am now lvl 89 in beyond leagueI am running the exact build of the mana based tree that is posted so no difference there, only the 6L and the helm/body armour are different.The _only_ sketchy bosses so far are Dominus on 74/78 that I wont solo on beyond and the beyond boss which shoots fire-lasers and can oneshot you. All the other bosses and exiles I solo with ease.
Can you use a different class for this build?
Duelist is the best class for this build. Scion has to waste 4 and Ranger 5 points to complete the build. Ranger is slightly better then scion because it can start the build with life and evasion nodes, but both classes need to drop Profane Chemistry cluster which is a loss of 60% increased life recover from flasks. That is a very big disadvantage and i do not recommend starting the build with anything other then Duelist.
Does the build have problems with reflect?
No, reflect is a non issue with this build.
If you need proof, check Atziri run with commentary in video section, there you can see the build hitting mirror Atziri and completely and easily outleeching the damage.
Only times when people have problems with reflect when playing WoE+BoR build is if they're not following carefully planned and thoroughly tested skill tree and skill gem setup posted in this guide.
I can't stress this enough. Reflect is a non-issue. If you're having problems with reflect, check your skill tree and gem setup, if either is not the same as i've posted and you've made some 'adjustments', don't come whining about reflect being an issue.
Why not take Ondar's Guile? Its only 2 points away
While Ondar's Guile is very useful in some builds, its not as good in this one. I've tested it and i don't think its necessary because Evasion, Dodge and Block already prevent so much attack damage that whatever goes trough can be outleeched/outregenerated. Also, once in melee range, blind in Bringer double's evasion chance.
It takes 2 points to get to Ondar's which is better spent on more life since that helps with all damage, not just _ranged attacks_. But since its only 2 points, you can test it out and make a call about it yourself.
Can i/should i use molten strike?
You should use whatever skill you like playing, but using skills other then Dual Strike/Cleave means you'll have to adjust the build for that skill.
Molten strike is a great skill, but problem is that less then 1/3 of tooltip damage is actual physical damage (assuming you're using hatred). That means it requires a lot higher life leech then Dual Strike and Cleave if you want to hit leech rate cap. One of the reason why this build has high survivability is because its very sustainable and damage that does get trough defenses is easily outleeched. With less leech, you'll depend on flasks more then you would with physical attacks.
If you have currency for it, its always a good idea to buy fire version of Doryani Invitation belt if you plan on using Molten strike. Corrupting Wings of Entropy and Stone of Lazhwar can give you another 2% of fire damage leeched as life. All of those options are expensive (and corrupted lazhwar means you're losing intelligence it provides too), so its a good idea to first get those items before you make the switch to molten strike.
Why don't you take resistance or attribute nodes on the skill tree?
This is an item progression game, ideally you want to take as many damage and life nodes on the tree and get resistances/attributes/evasion/armour from gear you're using. It's ok to take some of those nodes while leveling, but once you reach endgame and it takes a while until you reach that next level and get another point, its better to upgrade your gear so you can use precious points on better nodes.
I have a 6L Wings of Entropy, is that good for this build?
It's not very useful, but if you have one, you can add both 'Cast when Damage Taken' setups to a single setup and add a curse (defensive would be Enfeeble and offensive Vulnerability). So the gem setup can look like this:
CoDT/BM + EC + IC + Increased duration + Blood Rage + Enfeeble/Vulnerability
Will you write a leveling guide?
I plan on writing a proper leveling guide sometime in the future, but i don't have time to do it atm. I wrote some levling tips that can help you a bit if you're new to the game:
Spoiler " ogrec
Leveling skills i'd be using in new league are dual strike and cleave (which is buffed now)
Leveling should look something like this imo:
Duelist start >
DW block, damage and life >
More damage, block and life >
Resolute Technique and more damage >
Sovereignty >
Here i'd also take axe/sword/mace nodes, depending what i'm leveling with, but preferably axe nodes (Fell the weak)
After that its time to head into ranger area.
In terms of items, first thing build needs is Wings of Entropy and enough chaos can be farmed in fellshrine, city of sarn and docks for Wings. With wings its pretty easy to rush trough act 3 and start farming piety for enough currency to get Bringer of Rain and also build up 66 map pool (since piety drops decent amount of maps). If leech cant be obtained on the gear, its also a good option investing some currency in carnage heart which can be used instead or lazhwar and rainbowstrides in lower level maps (66-69). After starting lvl 70maps, usually around level 75+ depending on map drops, its time to start looking for rings, gloves and belt that would allow switching to rainbows, lazhwar and blood rage. In SC leagues i used to level with 2H weapon and molten strike + blood magic on tree till i had enough money to buy WoE, but new skill tree doesn't go anywhere near bm anymore. I used to level with dual wield in hc leagues, which was slower, but shouldn't be anymore with so many new dual wield points.Leveling skills i'd be using in new league are dual strike and cleave (which is buffed now)Leveling should look something like this imo:Duelist start > https://poebuilder.com/character/AAAAAgQAZU0UUkd-vYGZK4TZ1fjEuG5pvqfv4zSTY3Cbg1PfWNs=
DW block, damage and life > https://poebuilder.com/character/AAAAAgQAZU0UUkd-vYGZK4TZ1fjEuG5pvqfv4zSTY3Cbg1PfWNtbr04qtkEJWNunwYsY29P8XLBKfYd2Z6D8xd0N More damage, block and life > https://poebuilder.com/character/AAAAAgQAZU0UUkd-vYGZK4TZ1fjEuG5pvqfv4zSTY3Cbg1PfWNtbr04qtkEJWNunwYsY29P8XLBKfYd2Z6D8xd0N2L01krXybqpKyD8nKk0VICzpHcoo29_v Resolute Technique and more damage > https://poebuilder.com/character/AAAAAgQAZU0UUkd-vYGZK4TZ1fjEuG5pvqfv4zSTY3Cbg1PfWNtbr04qtkEJWNunwYsY29P8XLBKfYd2Z6D8xd0N2L01krXybqpKyD8nKk0VICzpHcoo29_vfNlyqayqJ-3E9jwtxq63Pv4KOu1ttDXvgUE= Sovereignty > https://poebuilder.com/character/AAAAAgQ |
? What values of versus are distinguishable? What happens on other graphs of low degree? The last word may be due to Oded Goldreich:
I’m happy to see yet another application of the paradigm of decomposing any graph into parts that are rapidly mixing, while omitting relatively few edges. Let me seize this opportunity and mention the application of this paradigm in the bipartite tester for bounded-degree graphs.
He was referring to a paper by Jonathan Kelner and Aleksander Madry on generating random spanning trees, but this could apply to the Arora-Barak-Steurer breakthrough. Perhaps graph property testing techniques can shed light on the UGC.
AdvertisementsI don’t know how many people were paying attention to Occupy Wall Street when it first started, compared to how many people are paying attention to it now. I first wrote about it the weekend it started, and before it even started I know that around 100,000 people were behind the cause. But the thing I was thinking about the weekend or week that it started is how the media tried to kill the movement.
Basically, the only hope to squash the necessary social movement was to act like the first action was no big deal, ignore it altogether, or make it seem like the turnout was a big disappointment to the organizers and supporters. And that’s exactly what the media tried to do.
Rather than focus on the reasons behind the movement, the reasons behind hundreds or thousands of people taking direct action on or near Wall Street, they played it off like, “Oh, what a disappointment, all the supporters didn’t come out,” or just ignored it.
Well, luckily for us, we have decentralized media now, and word got out what was happening and why it was happening, and I think everyone knows by now that the movement has grown to a pretty tremendous size. I think there’s no way this movement is going away, it can’t. Even if it were to go dormant (which I don’t think it will), the problems are there and millions or hundreds of millions of people are now aware of them, and they want change.
People want change enough that they’re getting of their bums and marching in the streets all around the world. People want change enough that they are putting themselves in danger of getting shot by rubber bullets, getting sprayed with tear gas, or even getting their skulls fractured. People want change.
That’s really the story the media should have run with on day one. Luckily, the citizens’ media did.
Anyway, was just having a little laugh reminiscing.
Image via @allisonkilkenny on twitpicPresident Obama has two words for the millions of people who told federal regulators to move forward with tough rules for the Internet: “Thank you.”
After the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted to issue tough net neutrality rules on Thursday, Obama issued a thank-you note through a page dedicated to the issue on the White House website.
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“Today’s FCC decision will protect innovation and create a level playing field for the next generation of entrepreneurs — and it wouldn’t have happened without Americans like you,” he wrote.
“I ran for office because I believed that nothing can stand in the way of millions of voices calling for change,” he added. “That’s the backbone of our democracy — and you’ve proven that this timeless principle is alive and well in our digital age.”
Obama has been a supporter of net neutrality since his first presidential campaign in 2008.
Last November, he released a widely publicized YouTube video to tell the FCC to move forward with the “strongest possible” rules by reclassifying broadband Internet service so that it can be treated similar to a public utility like phone lines. On Thursday, the FCC largely followed that call.
The FCC’s apparent willingness to follow Obama's call despite its status as a legally independent agency has angered critics, who accuse the president of politicizing the issue.
Thursday’s vote was possible in part because of a massive backlash after FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler last year released much weaker draft rules that would have allowed for companies to create “fast lanes” on the Internet.
In the end, about 4 million people issued comments to the FCC over the rules, which easily broke an earlier record set by Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” during the 2004 Super Bowl. Many of those urged the agency to toughen them up.Disabled and ill people unable to get to hospital and forced out of their homes as personal independence payments (PIP) come under scrutiny by MPs
Mark Harper, the minister for disabled people, will appear in front of the work and pensions select committee on Wednesday today to defend the government’s troubled record on implementation of the new disability benefit, the personal independence payment (PIP).
He will be hoping that the session goes more smoothly than last June’s hearing on the same subject by the public accounts committee when its chair, Margaret Hodge, said the launch of the new assessment system had been “nothing short of a fiasco” and accused the government of letting down “some of the most vulnerable in society”.
Over the past year, charities have highlighted the enormous distress experienced by people who have faced serious delays in being assessed, with some facing waits of up to 14 months for the benefit to be paid. New statistics detailing whether the Department for Work and Pensions has been successful in meeting a 16-week target for the benefit to be assessed will be released on Wednesday today.
The problems with processing the benefit, which replaces the old disability living allowance (DLA), echo ongoing issues with the rollout of employment and support allowance (ESA), which have also provoked profound unhappiness from disability groups. Harper is the fourth minister for disabled people in this parliament – a troubled brief, presiding over some of the most controversial coalition policies; like his predecessors he can expect to face tough questions from MPs on the committee.
An independent review of PIP by Paul Gray, chair of the social security advisory committee, published before Christmas, described the process of introducing the benefit as “a major delivery challenge”. The review heard from many people who had claimed PIP, and the overwhelming theme was “the impact of delays and backlogs”.
The assessment is not a “precise science”, the report said, adding that “accurately and consistently assessing several million awards in this way is a formidable undertaking”, and concluding that the current process is “disjointed”.
PIP is intended to provide financial support for disabled people with the greatest challenges to remaining independent and is paid to people in and out of work, aged between 16 and 64, to help with some of the extra costs caused by long-term ill-health or disability. Payment ranges from £21.55 to £138.05 a week depending on how the condition affects the claimant. Assessments have been outsourced to Atos, the IT firm that is ending prematurely its parallel contract for assessing ESA claims this spring, and outsourcing giant Capita. The select committee will also scrutinise their performance today.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Disabled woman protesting against Atos assessments. Photograph: Julian Makey/Rex Features
A spokesman for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) says improvements to PIP had already been made, adding: “Between January and October 2014, the number of claims processed increased fourfold to 66,000 per month, and we are working hard to continue to make further improvements.” The independent review also noted that improvements had been made to speed up the processing of claims for people who are terminally ill.
But charities have opposed the DWP’s decision to continue rolling out the benefit, after pilots around the country, despite the fact that the current system has built up a huge backlog of claims and left many disabled people waiting for over six months, and in some cases a year, for their claims to be processed. Earlier this month, Citizens Advice in Scotland called on the government to halt the introduction of PIP there.
The delays are categorised by the MS Society as unacceptable. “People with disabilities have found themselves in extreme financial hardship as a result of the delays; isolated and unable to access the support they need, like transport to hospital appointments, or help around the home. Not having an answer on PIP makes it much harder to claim other important benefits like carers’ allowance, the blue badge, disability premiums on means-tested benefits and working tax credit,” says a MS Society spokeswoman. “We have been shocked to find that despite the delays, some disabled people could be forced to go through another assessment for the benefit years before they were originally told they would have to reapply.”
Macmillan Cancer Support describes the system as “riddled with delays”, and said in December, in response to the independent review, that it was “a disgrace that thousands of people with cancer have been forced to wait six months or more just to find out whether they were even eligible for the disability benefit… What we are seeing is failure in the system that is having a very real and shattering impact on the lives of people with cancer”. A recent survey of Macmillan benefits advisers revealed that 30% knew of someone who had died waiting for benefits to be processed.
The most challenging phase of reassessment of most current DLA recipients is scheduled to begin from October.
In April 2013, the DWP predicted it would take around two and a half months to reach a decision for non-terminally ill people and 10 days for people with a terminal illness. Last year, the National Audit Office noted that the time for making a decision was 28 days for claims by the terminally ill and around three and a half months (107 days) for everyone else. These times have improved, but there is concern from Labour that the government has shifted the goalposts, in its 16-week target for an assessment(ie not a decision or a payment); an earlier target said it should take 12–16 weeks for a decision to be made.
The benefit was designed to cut costs, but the Institute for Fiscal Studies calculated last year that “significant delays” in the replacement of DLA with the “less generous” PIP had led to a £1.6bn increase in spending, rather than a £1.2bn cut. However, the DWP says it is now on course to make “significant long-term savings” of an estimated £2.5bn, against previous predictions. It also said that nearly 22% of applicants are now getting the highest level of support under PIP, compared to 16% under the previous DLA system.
Kate Green, Labour’s shadow minister for disabled people, says the policy was “costing more, damaging people’s lives and not delivering what the government claimed it would. The impact on disabled people is acute with families left for months without support. The DWP have continually shifted the goalposts and it remains far from clear whether the new 16 week deadline to get a PIP assessment has been met. Disabled people, families, carers and welfare advisers in touch with my office say people are still waiting for longer than 16 weeks.”
Lawyers at Irwin Mitchell Solicitors have been applying for a judicial review into PIP delays, acting on behalf of six clients who had been waiting between seven and 14 months when they approached the firm for help. The application for judicial review was refused last week, on the grounds that the application was “academic”, because the benefit had already been approved. The firm notes that the DWP resolved these cases very swiftly once the application for judicial review was received, making it impossible for the case to proceed.
Anne-Marie Irwin, a lawyer at Irwin Mitchell says: “We are concerned with the delays in dealing with PIP applications and are worried that DWPs approach in fast-tracking our clients that are taking legal action is ignoring the thousands of others who are awaiting a decision on their payments.
“PIP was created to ensure that the thousands of vulnerable people across the UK are able to get support for extra costs caused by long-term ill health or disability. We hope that the select committee makes clear recommendations to ensure that decisions are made by the DWP in a reasonable time. Too many people are experiencing unnecessary and unacceptable delays as they need this support to be able to meet the additional costs which arise as a result of their disability. This issue has left our clients struggling to cope financially, with the strain and stress of these issues also having a significant impact on their health and wellbeing.”During an adjournment debate on PIP last week, MPs detailed the unhappy experiences of some of their constituents, as they have waited for their claims to be processed.
They heard about a student nurse who works part time as a chef, who said she had been forced to sell her house as a result of the PIP assessment waiting time, expected to be around 26 weeks. They also heard about Malcolm, who applied for PIP in March 2014 when he was diagnosed with cancer, but who has still not had an assessment; the delays have affected his ability even to travel to and from hospital for appointments.
Claimants report feeling confused about who is responsible for the process, being told by the assessor (Atos or Capita) to contact the DWP, and vice-versa – a confusion that echoes the ongoing muddle over ESA. Internally, there are reports of similar attempts to pass the buck between the ministry and the companies, when attempts are made to analyse who is responsible for the delays.
In a written statement, Stephen Duckworth, head of Capita’s PIP programme, said he “wholeheartedly apologised to those who experienced delays”.
“PIP was an entirely new benefit and with that comes a number of unknowns. Capita and the DWP now have a better insight into what is required and, as such, have made significant changes across PIP – increasing the number of assessments carried out and not compromising on quality,” he said.
Atos said it did not wish to comment about its performance in implementing PIP assessments.
‘As a benefit claimant, you are presumed guilty of fraud
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Penny Tyas, 57, who has multiple sclerosis, faced delays in payments that led to her being evicted and being declared bankrupt Photograph: Roddy Grimes-Graeme
Penny Tyas, 57, a former accountant from Lymington, Hampshire, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in the summer of 2013 and applied for PIP immediately. She filled in the form for the benefit in June, but did not receive her first payment until January 2014. In the intervening period she had been rejected for the benefit by Atos assessors, and the long delay contributed to a serious decline in her financial situation; she got into debt, was evicted and declared herself bankrupt.
At her lowest point, she and her 14-year-old son were surviving on food bank parcels and she was left with just 22p. She has kept those remaining coins and plans to turn them into jewellery to remind her of that “dire” time. “2013 was not a good year,” she says. She found the process of applying for the benefit exceptionally stressful, which caused a decline in her health. “You have to describe in detail the effect of your incurable, degenerative disease, and you know how much rests on the decision,” she says. She was asked if she could walk 50m. “I have been known to walk 100m, but I can’t walk that distance quickly, safely or as often as necessary,” she says. After the assessment, she was puzzled to discover that she had been judged capable of walking 200m, although no one had asked her to walk at all. She was refused the benefit. “In the UK you are meant to be innocent until proven guilty, but as a benefit claimant, you are presumed to be guilty of benefit fraud until you have proven over and over again that you really are a genuine case”, she says.
“Personal independence payment is not meant to be used to live on but to retain some independence,” she says – helping to pay for taxis, for shopping deliveries, for help at home. Without it, she was ineligible for other related benefits – discount railcards, free road tax, shopmobility services. Although it isn’t meant to be for living expenses, at the time her basic benefits were swallowed repaying debt she had got into when her condition was diagnosed, so the absence of the money was felt acutely.
While she waited her situation worsened. She wasn’t paying rent, got an eviction notice, and faced homelessness until she and her son were rehoused by the council. When she (repeatedly) rang Atos to ask when she was going to be assessed, she was told they couldn’t say.
She is angry that the diagnosis by neurologists of her incurable condition was not considered sufficient evidence for Atos to grant her the payments, until she launched tribunal proceedings. When they were finally granted, her payments were backdated, but she points out that retrospective payments aren’t very helpful if you don’t have anything to live on in the meantime. Her award was meant to continue until September 2016, but in August she was told she must reapply and was forced to go through the bureaucratic process again in order to secure her payments.Spider-Man: The New Animated Series (also known as MTV Spider-Man) is an American-Canadian animated television series based on the Marvel comic book superhero character Spider-Man. The show was made using computer generated imagery (CGI) rendered in cel shading. It ran for only one season of 13 episodes, premiering on July 11, 2003, and was broadcast on MTV and YTV. As of October 13, 2018, Viceland picked up the series for syndication, making it the first time the series has been aired on television in fifteen years.
Series overview [ edit ]
The story follows the events of the first Spider-Man film.[1] Norman Osborn is dead. Peter Parker, Mary Jane Watson, and Harry Osborn attend Empire State University. Peter and Mary Jane try to establish a relationship without success. Peter's superhero duties, and later his involvement with Indira Daimonji, interfere with his romance with Mary Jane. Harry craves revenge on Spider-Man, whom he blames for the death of his father. Peter faces an assortment of other villains including the Lizard, Kraven the Hunter and Electro while trying to maintain a job and his studies. He faces two psychic twins that ruin everything in the wallcrawler's life, causing Peter to give up being Spider-Man and try to live a normal life.
Cast and characters [ edit ]
Main characters [ edit ]
Neil Patrick Harris provided the voice of Peter Parker/Spider-Man, a superhero, an Empire State University student and photographer for the Daily Bugle. Peter confronts with the desire to use his incredible, spider bite-derived powers to do good, he finds it hard balancing his responsibilities of being a superhero with schoolwork and his romance with Mary Jane Watson.
. Peter confronts with the desire to use his incredible, spider bite-derived powers to do good, he finds it hard balancing his responsibilities of being a superhero with schoolwork and his romance with Mary Jane Watson. Lisa Loeb provided the voice of Mary Jane Watson, a student at Empire State University and model/actress. She is the on-and-off girlfriend of Peter Parker, but also seems to still hold some affection for Peter's alter-ego, Spider-Man.
Ian Ziering provided the voice of Harry Osborn, the son of the late industrialist Norman Osborn. He attends Empire State University along with his friends Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson. Ironically, he blames Spider-Man for his father's death and seeks revenge, oblivious to the fact that his best friend Peter is Spider-Man; however, as the series progresses, Harry has shown to warm up to him, as well as helping him defeat Electro and being rescued from the Lizard.
Recurring characters [ edit ]
Angelle Brooks provided the voice of Indira "Indy" Daimonji. An amalgamation of Gwen Stacy and Betty Brant, she is designed as a single character only for the series. Introduced in "Tight Squeeze", she is often described as a foil for Mary Jane and Peter's romantic interest at the Empire One Television Studio. The character showed an intense, flamboyant, and unabashed affection for Peter Parker, pursuing him publicly to MJ's consternation.
. An amalgamation of Gwen Stacy and Betty Brant, she is designed as a single character only for the series. Introduced in "Tight Squeeze", she is often described as a foil for Mary Jane and Peter's romantic interest at the Empire One Television Studio. The character showed an intense, flamboyant, and unabashed affection for Peter Parker, pursuing him publicly to MJ's consternation. Keith Carradine provided the voice of J. Jonah Jameson, the Daily Bugle newspaper publisher. Consistent with his appearances in the comics and films, Jameson spent most of his appearances berating Spider-Man and adding political spin to his activities, usually in front of Peter Parker. Jameson is so passionate about this that he even appears on a competitor's news broadcast to denounce Spider-Man.
Guest characters [ edit ]
Production [ edit ]
Development [ edit ]
Spider-Man: The New Animated Series was initially supposed to be an adaptation of the Ultimate Spider-Man comics. However, after the success of Spider-Man, the show was reworked to follow that continuity.[1] The series was produced by Brian Michael Bendis, who wrote on Ultimate Spider-Man comics, for Sony Pictures Television, who had purchased the film and television rights to the character. The computer-generated imagery (CGI) was produced by Mainframe Entertainment.[2]
Peter Parker was originally supposed to wear baggier clothes to hide his superhero musculature, but cost-effective difficulties with the CG format prevented folds from being put into his everyday attire. As a result, Peter's street clothes were redesigned to be close-fitting and contemporary, while still managing to hide his physique (and the costume he wore under his clothes) as Spider-Man.[1] The character of Aunt May was not included in the series (except for a photograph in Peter's bedroom), because MTV executives feared that the appearance of any elderly people would deter their target youth audience from watching.[3]
The producers found that the more relaxed standards of MTV allowed them more creative freedom than usually allowed for a Saturday morning cartoon show.[4]
Cancellation [ edit ]
MTV decided that the ratings for the series were insufficient to warrant a second season, leaving the series to end on a cliffhanger. Director Brandon Vietti stated that had the series gone on he would have used the villains Mysterio, Vulture, and more of Kraven.[1]
Episodes [ edit ]
Due to various production delays, the episodes aired out of the correct scripted order. This caused some confusion with audiences regarding the chronology of the series. For example, "The Party" originally aired after its sequel "When Sparks Fly". The DVD releases feature the episodes in the correct order. Each episode has a montage at the end of which states "Next Time On Spider-Man"
No. Title Directed by Written by Original air date 1 "Heroes and Villains" Tim Eldred Morgan Gendel July 11, 2003 ( ) Spider-Man battles Turbo Jet, a modern-day Robin Hood armed with a homemade propulsion system, who steals from the wealthy and gives to the poor. Spidey's life gets even harder as the public rallies around Turbo Jet – and against Spider-Man. 2 "Royal Scam" Vincent Edwards Rick Suvalle July 11, 2003 ( ) Spider-Man is duped by the infamous Kingpin into stealing the TX-1 super-chip, designed to decrypt the confidential satellite transmissions that drive the world's financial markets. Now he must find a way to get it back. 3 "Law of the Jungle" Audu Paden Greg Johnson July 18, 2003 ( ) Peter's professor, Doc Connors, injects himself with reptilian DNA, which slowly changes him into the angry, vengeful Lizard. As the serum affects Doc Connors' brain, Spider-Man must stop his beloved professor as he begins seeking revenge on those who have harmed him – including Harry! 4 "The Sword of Shikata" Brandon Vietti Todd Felderstein & Morgan Gendel July 18, 2003 ( ) The master martial artist/swordswoman Shikata is sent to capture Spider-Man for a wealthy man's collection of rare animals. Shikata determines that Spider-Man is too noble a foe to simply capture and they must fight to the death! 5 "Keeping Secrets" Alan Caldwell Marsha Griffin July 25, 2003 ( ) Spider-Man is out to catch Talon, a female thief who's behind a series of high-risk robberies in the city. Things get complicated when Spidey learns Talon's true identity – she's his best friend Harry's new girlfriend! 6 "Tight Squeeze" Vincent Edwards Morgan Gendel July 25, 2003 ( ) Three ex-KGB agents – now a team of mercenaries called Pterodax – take a group of people hostage, including Peter and his new crush Indy. Their demand is simple: they want Spider-Man! Peter will need to use his cunning and cleverness to figure out a way to appease Pterodax without revealing his alter ego. 7 "Head Over Heels" Brandon Vietti Tracey Forbes August 1, 2003 ( ) Peter Parker's lab partner Christina reads his mind with her new invention: an ESP crown. The crown malfunctions, jolting her own brain with electricity and altering her reality. No longer able to distinguish fantasy from reality, Christina attempts to kill M.J. in order to limit the competition for Spider-Man's eternal affection. 8 "The Party" Audu Paden Story by Brian Michael Bendis, Teleplay by Brian Michael Bendis, Morgan Gendel & Marsha Griffin August 8, 2003 ( ) Peter Parker's nerdy high-school friend Max is hazed in a deadly fraternity prank that turns him into Electro, a high-voltage villain that threatens the campus. Only Spider-Man can stop him from exacting his revenge on the students. 9 "Flash Memory" Tim Eldred Whip Lipsey & Scott Lipsey August 15, 2003 ( ) Dr. Zellner tests his "smart drug" on Peter Parker foe Flash Thompson, and Flash immediately displays dramatic spikes in intellect. However, along with the IQ boost comes a potentially fatal side effect. With only minutes to find an antidote, Zellner takes Flash's suggestion that he experiment on an already intelligent candidate: Peter Parker. 10 "Spider-Man Dis-Sabled" Alan Caldwell Morgan Gendel & Rick Suvalle August 22, 2003 ( ) Peter covers a press conference and inadvertently videotapes incriminating evidence against Silver Sable, an Eastern European assassin for hire. Now she will stop at nothing — including killing Mary Jane, Harry, and Indy — to get the tape back. 11 "When Sparks Fly" Vincent Edwards Morgan Gendel August 29, 2003 ( ) Electro returns from his seeming death and tries to make Sally, a girl he has a crush on, become an electrical being just like him. 12 "Mind Games, Part One" Alan Caldwell, Vincent Edwards, Audu Paden Morgan Gendel September 5, 2003 ( ) The Gaines Twins, a brother and sister with uncanny telepathy, escape from an armored transport convoy, but Spider-Man apprehends them by overcoming their brain blasts with his own superhuman will power. Later, just as Spider-Man reveals to MJ that he's really Peter Parker, Kraven the Hunter confronts Spider-Man. As payback for the years he spent in jail, Kraven attacks MJ with one of his poison darts. Spider-Man rushes to her side too late, as her life slowly slips away. Now, Peter is out for revenge. 13 "Mind Games, Part Two" Tim Eldred, Brandon Vietti Steven Kriozere September 12, 2003 ( ) Spider-Man realizes that the diabolical Gaines Twins have brain-blasted him into believing that MJ has died at the hands of Kraven the Hunter. He corners the Twins – but things take a turn for the worse when they once again use their telepathy to trick Spider-Man. This time Indy is seriously wounded. The guilt causes Peter to pack his costume inside of a suitcase filled with rocks and throw it to the bottom of the harbor, quitting his career as a crime-fighter. Is this the end of Spider-Man, or a new beginning for Peter Parker?.
Reception [ edit ]
The series received mostly positive reviews from critics and audiences, with praise aimed at the voice acting, the considerably mature, darker and adult-oriented tone, writing and direction compared to other animated Spider-Man adaptations, the series' potential, quality CGI animation, techno/synthwave-influenced soundtrack, the darker re-imagining and modifications to classic Spider-Man villains (E.G-The Lizard and Electro) and the unique and refreshing take on the Spider-Man mythos, though the abrupt cliffhanger ending and divergence from the later Sam Raimi-directed Spider-Man films received criticism from fans. In 2004, the series was nominated for an Annie Award for Outstanding Achievement in an Animated Television Production while "Keeping Secrets" got a nomination in Outstanding Storyboarding in an Animated Television Production.[5]
Home video [ edit ]
The complete series was released on DVD as Spider-Man: The New Animated Series: Special Edition on January 13, 2004. Four separate DVD volumes containing three episodes each were also released from 2004 to 2005. The entire series was licensed by Marvel and Sony to DigiKids/Sentimental Journeys, who re-edited the footage from many episodes into one feature, which is sold as a personalized DVD in which the purchaser's face is revealed under Spider-Man's mask.[6]CIVIC chiefs have approved a clampdown on shared homes in Southampton.
Tough new rules will be welcomed by residents who feel their neighbourhoods have been taken over by students, but landlords said they could hit people on lower income.
Measures approved yesterday mean only 10 per cent of properties 40 metres of a proposed shared home would be allowed to be a HMO, as opposed to the current 20 per cent.
Labour leader of Southampton City Council, Simon Letts, said: "HMOs are a necessary part of our housing, particularly with the costs of housing.
"They are important for young people coming out of university, young people in university sharing properties just so they can make their pay packets work for them. It's a balanced approach - not banning HMOs, but controlling them where we can."
The council agreed to monitor the situation and look to York for inspiration on how to handle rising student numbers.One of the most revealing exchanges in Saturday's Democratic debate came when moderator John Dickerson pressed Bernie Sanders on what, exactly, he meant by that "political revolution" he always talks about. With such widespread GOP control of statehouses, Dickerson asked, wasn't there actually "a conservative revolution going on in America right now?"
So Sanders explained exactly what he meant. Here's what he said:
We are gonna do a political revolution which brings working people, young people, senior citizens, minorities together. Because every issue that I am talking about- — paid family and medical leave, breaking up the banks on Wall Street, asking the wealthy to pay their fair share of taxes, rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, raising the minimum wage to 15 bucks an hour -- every one of those issues is supported by a significant majority of the American people. Problem is, that as a result of a corrupt campaign finance system, Congress is not listening to the American people. It's listening to the big money interests. What the political revolution is about is bringing people together to finally say enough is enough. This government belongs to us. Not just the billionaires.
This is really a key — maybe the key — question of Bernie Sanders's candidacy. Can he really assemble a national coalition that defies the apparent laws of national politics — turning out millions of people who usually stay home, and winning over many white voters and seniors who usually vote for Republicans?
If he can, he might be able to enact an agenda of sweeping change. But if he can't, a Bernie Sanders presidency might not look all that different from a Hillary Clinton one — and perhaps could never happen at all.
Because Sanders's political revolution is mainly about mobilization. He wants to mobilize not just traditionally liberal demographics but also people who don't usually vote, and Republican-leaning groups like senior citizens and working-class white people. He thinks he can do so by unifying them around an agenda that challenges the power of the wealthy. If these people actually a) turn out to vote, and b) keep actively pressuring their representatives to pass an agenda, Sanders argues, then true change can happen.
Why hasn't it happened already? The problem, he believes, is that Americans are not convinced the Democratic Party will fight for them. As Sanders told Vox:
Are the Democrats 10 times, 100 times, better on all of the issues than the Republicans? They surely are, but I think it would be hard to imagine if you walked out of here or walked down the street or went a few miles away from here and you stopped somebody on the street and you said, "Do you think that the Democratic Party is the party of the American working class?" People would look at you and say, "What are you talking about?" There was a time — I think under Roosevelt, maybe even under Truman — where it was perceived that working people were part of the Democratic Party. I think for a variety of reasons, a lot having to do with money and politics, that is no longer the case. In my view that is exactly what shouldn't be happening. Instead of spending all of our time raising money, I think we should go out organizing people and getting them to unite around a progressive agenda which expands the middle class, which tells the billionaire class that they cannot have it all, which says to corporate America, "You're going to have to start paying your fair share of taxes," which says we're going to raise the minimum wage, we're going to make college available to all regardless of their income, that we are going to have pay equity for women workers, that we are going to create millions of jobs rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure. You need a progressive agenda, then you need the ability to go out and organize people. When that happens, things change here; it's not the other way around.
Sanders argues that he's managed to do just that in Vermont. It seemed inconceivable that an independent "democratic socialist" could win a House or Senate seat, but he did both by winning over white, rural, and working-class voters. Indeed, he was the first independent elected to the US House of Representatives in 40 years. This past success is why he's so convinced that his model can work nationally, too.
But if Sanders can't manage to conjure up this unprecedented mobilization, he himself has admitted that his presidency would fail to bring about major change. "Sixty percent of the American people are not likely to vote in the coming election," he said in Waterloo, Iowa, shortly before the 2014 midterms. "You think you can bring around change with that dynamic? You can have the best human being in the world in the White House fighting all the right fights, and he or she will fail."
So in a sense, Sanders's campaign could be either self-proving or self-refuting. If his theory of change is right, his unusual brand of politics will change everything — massive support from a newly mobilized public would prove all the pundits and the naysayers wrong and help a democratic socialist do the seemingly impossible and actually win the presidency in the United States of America. And a world where Sanders can win is a world where Sanders's agenda may well be able to pass.
But if he's wrong — if he manages to win the primaries anyway but the foot soldiers he hopes will join his political revolution never show up — his nomination could end up a fiasco for the Democratic Party.JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster says he personally supports marriage equality but will defend the state’s constitutional ban against same-sex marriage.
Koster’s comments Thursday come a day after St. Louis officials issued marriage licenses to four same-sex couples.
Koster said he is seeking an injunction preventing St. Louis officials from issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples because local officials should not be acting in conflict with state laws.
Missouri voters approved a constitutional amendment in 2004 limiting marriage to only one man and one woman.
Koster is a Democrat who is running for governor in 2016. He said in a written statement that many people have changed their minds about marriage in the past decade but that it is his duty as attorney general to defend Missouri’s laws.
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This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
This Story Filed UnderWhat a few days it has been for Jordan Morris.
After scoring a stunning equalizer in the Seattle Sounders' 1-1 road draw with Toronto FC on Saturday, Morris bagged a brace in a friendly win over English Premier League side West Ham United on Tuesday. Herculez Gomez scored the winner in the friendly at CenturyLink Field in Seattle, Washington, via a penalty kick late in the first half, but Morris put an emphatic exclamation point on the victory with a pair of goals in a span of a minute.
The Sounders' rookie, who has six goals in MLS this season, netted his first in the friendly in the 70th minute when he got on the end of a rebound. Seconds later, Morris got on the end of a ball from Joevin Jones and expertly fired home – you can watch the highlights above.
Oh, and @JmoSmooth13 just dropped a brace (as a sub) vs a BPL team.. This kid is ridic. Love that kid. — herculez gomez (@herculezg) July 6, 2016
Morris and Seattle will be looking to reproduce that type of offensive production when they host the LA Galaxy on Saturday afternoon (3 pm ET, ESPN).Social media has been a boon for businesses small and large, but it's also becoming a minefield for those unable to manage the increasing complexities of the run-and-gun nature of the beast. On a seemingly daily basis, we suffer through one “Twitter disaster” or another. It's becoming so commonplace that “Twitter disaster” really doesn't deserve to be in quotes.
Damage can occur with incredible swiftness. Although tweets and Facebook posts can be deleted, evidence of their existence is invariably captured and collected for posterity within seconds of their going live. Say something wrong on a social network, and it will haunt you for life.
Don't believe me? Check out these nine all-too-common reasons for failure, all of which involve real businesses being undone by a simple, wayward message on social media.
1. Hand the keys to someone not ready to drive
A sign of an intern gone wild?
It's understandable that as a small-business owner you might not want to spend your days tending to the Twitter and Facebook pages. It's a high-effort job that often has minimal bottom-line impact, so it's very tempting to outsource the task to another company or hand it off to a low-level staffer.
Big mistake.
The annals of business will likely record thousands of cases |
turns out, education on despising “others” must start as early as possible.
Yet nature shall win again. At the end of the day, there will always be those who open their eyes. These three-year-old children will grow up and some of them will discover that surprisingly “there are also good seculars out there.” What’s worse, some of these children may end up discovering that they are living in an artificial movie, and that their purpose is determined not by a higher power, but rather, by humans: Serving as extras in Rabbi Truman’s show.Hello again! I know we've been extra quiet lately, but I promise it's for good reason. We've been working our hardest to make it to Pre-beta (a true Alpha build of the full game) for several months now. In the last update I said I was hoping to finish it by the end of 2016, but as they say the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.
New features have been added like scripted animations to liven things up.
We're finally closing in on the "point of no return" where the base of the game is being locked down, so I decided to use this time to revisit things one last time and work out some final kinks in both design and storytelling. In addition to creating new content, we've also been focused on getting rid of old baggage that isn't needed anymore (the boss jewels for example), and improving the narrative since it wasn't quite as strong as it could be. It's been a difficult balance trying to have an interesting and well-paced story, while not taking the focus away from the gameplay. We want this to feel like a classic experience, so it's taken a lot of refining to find the right amount of each ingredient.
The Keep area was improved in December with bigger enemies and revised rooms.
Experimenting with some new puzzle elements.
I can't stress enough how grateful we are for your patience. It's proven to be a massive challenge designing a game that can hold up to our influences, but each day I'm surprised at just how well it's coming together. We anticipate to be done with the remaining Pre-beta tasks in the next few weeks, so we'll keep you up to date as we close in on our next milestone.
Conferences
In other news, it’s show season again, and we’re also getting ready to show off Chasm at a bunch of different press and industry events. The next ones on the docket are Game Developer’s Conference (GDC) where our marketing guy, Dan Adelman, will be showing the game in the Intel booth, and then PAX East. I haven’t had a chance to leave my dev workstation in months, so I’m really looking forward to show Chasm off to PAX East attendees. Every time someone picks up the controller and has a great time with the game, my batteries get a nice recharge, and that energy will fuel me and the rest of the team as we keep polishing away!
Bloodstained Community Podcast
We also did an interview with the Bloodstained Community podcast, and talked about Chasm at length with them. Both Dan and I had a great time doing it, so give it a listen!An evangelism leader at Casa de Oración United Methodist Church in Dodge City, Kansas, has been released on $8,000 bond after being detained for a month by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Humberto Barralaga’s court date is April 4. "The attorney is seeking to obtain a pardon that will allow me to process my papers here, especially considering that my son, who is a U.S. citizen, will turn 21 in three months, could initiate my petition," Barralaga said. “I was arrested unexpectedly, because I had in my immigration file an order to leave the country and begin the paperwork from Honduras, but I decided not to leave."
The procedure for obtaining legal documentation must be started from the country of origin, but the possibility of re-entry to the U.S. is not guaranteed. Barralaga feared he would not be allowed back if he returned to Honduras.
Supporters of comprehensive immigration reform contend such reform would allow the legalization of more than 11 million people who are without documents.
Barralaga was among 650 people arrested by ICE officials on Feb. 7. “There were all kinds of people in there — criminals, people with no criminal background, different ages, men and women. That meant that the detention conditions, food and treatment was very bad. That frequently causes people to lose hope and feel discouraged," Barralaga said.
Barralaga said he shared his faith with others during his imprisonment. "People were feeling depressed by the way they were living and that led me to give them a message of encouragement and to testify of our Lord. Five people gave their lives to Christ and that filled me with strength in the midst of the difficulties that I had been living in," he said.
Both Humberto, his wife, Emilia, and their children are grateful for the support they have received from their church, especially from the Rev. Raciel Quntana, pastor of Casa de Oración (House of Prayer in English) who has been supporting and accompanying them with prayer, visits and helping with some of their family needs.
Barralaga’s driver’s license was confiscated when he was arrested and will not be returned until the court case is resolved. He works as a truck driver. "Now new challenges start because I probably will have to quit my current job and start looking for new options," said Barralaga.
Emilia Barralaga said the arrest was a challenge for the family’s faith. “And only the hand of God allowed us to have Humberto free with us today. Now we begin a new stage in which we continue to need the support of our church and brothers and sisters in faith," she said.
Vasquez is the Director of Hispanic/Latino Communications at United Methodist Communications in Nashville, Tenn. You can contact him at (615)742-5111 or [email protected]. To get more United Methodist news, subscribe to the free Daily or Weekly Digests.David Hall - January 4, 2011
Louis Eliasberg (1896-1976) was a Baltimore financier who avidly collected coins from 1925 until 1976. His goal was to assemble a complete collection of United States regular-issue coins. He accomplished this monumental feat by 1950, by purchasing the last gold coin he needed (1841 $2 1/2) in 1949 and the last silver coin he needed (1873-CC No Arrows dime) in 1950. From 1950 until his death in 1976, he concentrated on keeping his collection current, adding a few better-condition pieces, and sharing his collection with the numismatic community through various exhibitions. He was even featured in an article in LIFE magazine.
Louis Eliasberg accomplished what no one else accomplished before or since. He built a collection of regular-issue United States coins comprising all then-known dates and mintmarks. He is the only person to ever build a complete set of U.S. coins. He avidly sought every single coin he needed to accomplish his goal, in the process purchasing coins from most of the major dealers of his day.
Eliasberg's largest and most important purchase occurred in 1942 when he purchased the Clapp Estate Collection through Stack's for $100,000. The Clapp Collection had been built first by J.M. Clapp from the 1880s through his death in 1906, and then his son John H. Clapp from 1906 on. The Clapp Collection was not only nearly complete, it contained coins of extraordinary quality, including spectacular-quality coins that J.M. Clapp had acquired directly from each of the Mints in the year of issue from 1892 to 1906. Louis Eliasberg added the Clapp Collection to his, then expanded it and added the great ultra-rarities.
The Eliasberg gold coins were auctioned by Bowers and Ruddy in 1982. The Eliasberg Copper, Nickel and Silver coins were auctioned by Bowers and Merena in two sales in 1996 and 1997. The three Eliasberg sales are among the greatest in numismatic history.
Note that prior to the 1980s, most collectors mixed proofs and circulation strikes. So the Eliasberg collection features circulation strikes for the branch mints and proofs for most of the Philadelphia Mint issues. This was how collectors built sets at the time and a collection was considered "complete" if it had one example from each date and mint, regardless of whether the examples were circulation strikes or proofs. But for his time, Louis Eliasberg truly accomplished "The Impossible Dream"... he built a complete set of United States coins.
PCGS is now in the process of adding the Eliasberg coins to the PCGS Set RegistrySM so collectors can compare their collections to this all-time great collection. The first sets added are the Eliasberg gold dollars. Use this link to view the Eliasberg gold dollars.After playing through LoM Alpha 1, it became obvious that the weapon tuning was a bit off. A level 5 weapon was many times more powerful than a level 1 weapon. This meant that upgrading from the CatBoat (a single weapon ship) to the Sloop (a dual weapon ship) was a difficult transition as two level 1 weapons were far less powerful than one level 5 weapon.
I have retuned the weapons so that a level 4 weapon will be about double the strength of a level 1 weapon. I look forward to hearing your feedback for this change in the Alpha 2 release (which will be available on TestFlight September 20). The game is iOS 7 ready and I cannot wait to give it a try on the iPhone 5S.Police believe an 18-year-old may be responsible for a series of burglaries in the Ahwatukee area since May.
Phoenix police have been investigating burglaries, commercial burglaries, shoplifting, and stolen cars all in the Ahwatukee area where they were all given a similar suspect description.
Those descriptions match 18-year-old Samuel Michael Mielke, a man known to police for multiple robberies as a juvenile. His photo was shown to a loss prevention officer at a Safeway store near 40th street and Chandler Boulevard where Mielke allegedly shoplifted some items and then pointed a gun at the officer when he confronted Mielke.
Police say they got a tip that Mielke was staying at an apartment near 48th street and Ray Road. When they arrived, they located Mielke in a stolen Audi. They captured him after a short car and foot pursuit.
Police report that after his arrest he admitted to multiple cases Phoenix police have been working on. These cases include three stolen cars, the Audi, a BMW and a Toyota Highlander. He also allegedly admitted to stealing spa products and $8,000 in cigars from the Arizona Grand Resort.
Mielke’s identification was found at a bicycle shop where he allegedly stole a $2,700 bicycle that police say he later pawned for $600.
Mielke has so far been charged with aggravated assault and shoplifting in relation to the Safeway incident.With a red embroidered veil draped over her dark hair, Punam Chowdhury held her breath last month as her fiancé said the words that would make them husband and wife. After she echoed them, they were married. Guests erupted in applause; the bride and groom traded bashful smiles.
Just then, the Internet connection cut out, and the wedding was abruptly over.
Normally one of the most intimate moments two people can share, the marriage had taken place from opposite ends of the globe over the video chat program Skype, with Ms. Chowdhury, an American citizen, in a mosque in Jackson Heights, Queens, and her new husband, Tanvir Ahmmed, in his living room with a Shariah judge in his native Bangladesh.
Their courtship, like so many others, had taken place almost entirely over the Internet — they had met in person only once, years earlier, in passing. But in a twist that underscores technology’s ability to upend traditional notions about romance, people are not just finding their match online, but also saying “I do” there.
These are called proxy marriages, a legal arrangement that allows a couple to wed even in the absence of one or both spouses. They date back centuries: one of the most famous examples was between Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, who were first married in her native Austria in his absence, before she was shipped to meet him in France. Proxy marriages via telegraph have also been documented.Across several weeks of the NBA’s clandestine collective bargaining discussions with the Players Association, there has emerged a strong voice championing the small markets on the owners’ powerful labor-relations committee: Charlotte’s Michael Jordan.
In multiple meetings with union officials and players in New York, Jordan is a serious voice in these ongoing discussions, league sources told The Vertical. Jordan’s appointment onto that powerful ownership committee has been secret until now, but his sudden standing strengthens what’s been a sometimes jagged journey into the ownership community.
Michael Jordan is finding serious success as Charlotte's owner. (NBAE/Getty Images)
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Jordan’s emergence on the labor-relations committee – as well as the NBA’s competition committee – has strengthened his legitimacy as a league owner. Of course, consensus on a labor deal is a long way away, but those on the sides of the league and union all agree on this: Michael Jordan is a formidable factor in this process.
After six years as a majority owner, Jordan has never been so relevant on that job. Beyond labor talks, the countdown to Charlotte hosting the 2017 NBA All-Star Game has started. Most of all: The Hornets are winning. The hiring of coach Steve Clifford has changed everything for the franchise, delivering the groundwork for a sustainable program and culture. Charlotte is 39-30, holding onto the sixth seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs – only 1½ games out of third place.
Story continues
As a business model, Charlotte has grown, too. Privately, there are still agents and players who believe that Charlotte needlessly cuts expenses in ways that are below NBA norms, although most admit that the organization has gotten better in that regard. Charlotte has invested in purchasing its own NBA Development League affiliate in Greensboro, N.C., another way that Jordan has shown a willingness to spend money on the long-term growth of his franchise.
For now, the details of Jordan’s participation in the labor talks illustrate a broader impact on the league. The NBA and its union has until Dec. 15 to give official notification that they plan to opt out of the current 10-year collective bargaining agreement in 2017 and clear the way for a possible work stoppage. The NBA and Players Association have broken down into several groups and committees, sources said, meeting to discuss multiple areas of the CBA.
Details on everything have been purposely scant, given the league and its commitment to trying to keep most details of the talks private.
To think that NBA commissioner Adam Silver didn’t want Jordan’s cachet at the negotiating table with a union executive committee that includes Chris Paul, LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony is naïve, of course. Perhaps there’s a tactical edge to having the greatest player in history sitting across from the players. Jordan changes the tone in the room, but make no mistake, owners will tell you: Jordan earned his way onto the committee.
“[Jordan] did it the old fashioned way,” one high-ranking official with strong ownership ties told The Vertical. “He observed. He listened. He wanted to understand the process. He wanted to serve. The players don’t see him as a player – they see him as an owner."
The irony isn’t lost on everyone. Eighteen years ago, Jordan sat on the players’ side and famously barked to Washington Wizards owner Abe Pollin, “If you can’t make a profit, you should sell your team.” Now, Jordan comes to the union as the franchise owner to whom revenue sharing delivered the most money in 2015, league sources said. All those years after becoming a major player on the union’s side in the 1998 lockout, Jordan’s voice on the labor-relations committee has largely been about making the league’s case for the revenue split between owners and players that funds cash payouts to small-market teams with the belief that it will promote competitive balance.
This fight never changes – from Jordan in ’98 to James in ’16. The National Basketball Players Association still insists to ownership and the league: Run your franchises better, make good management decisions and stop making excuses to cut into our fair share.
After years as a strong minority partner and now majority owner of the Charlotte Hornets, Michael Jordan does return to the bargaining table with increased credibility running a franchise. Jordan has driven significant increases in season tickets, sellouts, sponsorships and retail with the franchise’s basketball improvements over the past few years. He brought back the Hornets name to Charlotte, and maybe most of all, brought back Hornets basketball.
Slowly, surely, the greatest player in the history of the game is finding his footing in ownership, pushing to impose his will in these collective-bargaining talks. The All-Star Game is coming to Charlotte, the Hornets are only a game and a half out of the third seed in the East on Monday, and, yes, everything about Michael Jordan’s Charlotte Hornets and NBA life is relevant again.
More NBA coverage from The Vertical:President Trump praised the Senate’s passage of its 2018 fiscal budget as a “really big deal” in an early-morning tweet Saturday and accused the mainstream media of “barely” covering the bill.
“Budget that just passed is a really big deal, especially in terms of what will be the biggest tax cut in U.S. history - MSM barely covered!” Trump tweeted.
Budget that just passed is a really big deal, especially in terms of what will be the biggest tax cut in U.S. history - MSM barely covered! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 21, 2017
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Senate Republicans passed the fiscal 2018 budget on Thursday night after a long voting marathon on the Senate floor. Senators voted 51-49 to pass the bill, with Sen. Rand Paul Randal (Rand) Howard PaulWhite House pleads with Senate GOP on emergency declaration The Hill's Morning Report — Emergency declaration to test GOP loyalty to Trump The Hill's 12:30 Report: Trump escalates fight with NY Times MORE (R-Ky.) joining every Democrat in opposition to the bill.
The bill is key to Republican efforts to pass tax reform because it includes instructions that allow such a bill to avoid a Democratic filibuster.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell Addison (Mitch) Mitchell McConnellWhite House pleads with Senate GOP on emergency declaration Senate Dems seek to turn tables on GOP in climate change fight Pence meets with Senate GOP for 'robust' discussion on Trump declaration MORE (R-Ky.) praised the passage of the budget bill and said it would lead to passing the GOP’s tax-reform plan.
“Passing this budget is critical to getting tax reform done, so we can strengthen our economy after years of stagnation under the previous administration,” McConnell said.
Trump also touted the passage of the bill in a series of tweets Friday morning.
"The Budget passed late last night, 51 to 49. We got ZERO Democrat votes with only Rand Paul (he will vote for Tax Cuts) voting against," Trump said.
"This now allows for the passage of large scale Tax Cuts (and Reform), which will be the biggest in the history of our country!" he continued..
Here’s the opening of a new Douglas Glover short story, just published in Descant’s amazing 40th anniversary issue entitled Possible Worlds. It’s a fabulous issue, contains work by Steven Heighton (well known to NC readers), Nancy Huston, Josef Skvorecky, Alberto Manguel and Susan Swan among many other notables. Like all dg’s stories this one is autobiographical, nearly a memoir, exposes sidelights of his family life hitherto unrevealed to the reading public. Buy the magazine and read the tawdry remainder.
dg
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Uncle Boris up in a Tree
By Douglas Glover
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The photo was taken just before all hell broke loose. Uncle Boris, always the clown, perches on a tree branch above the family group, making a mockery of the occasion. Jannik, the wastrel, smiles inscrutably. Bjorn, the straight arrow, looks like a man with all the troubles of the world on his shoulders, but he works in a bank in town and can afford a gold watch and fob. His eyes are closed. Gurn, the insane one, his mouth twisted from a horse kick, seems merely confused, innocent, and anxious. And Lisel, the compulsive smoker and Bible reader, has momentarily suppressed her persistent and fatal cough. The three young ones huddle with Ma and Pa: Trig, later executed for murder, only six in the photo and dressed like a girl; Grete who became a great lover; and little Nikolai, the math genius, eight months old. Bjorn’s wife Olga, plain as a pine plank but seething with desire, leans against the tree trunk next to Jannik. Aunt Doreen, flighty, excitable, and dim, stares at the camera warily. Daphne, the family slut, has her hands in her skirt pockets and her head tilted to one side.
♠
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It begins like this: a family dinner, al fresco, despite the lateness of the year, just after the turnips were in and the hog slaughtered. Bjorn walks behind the barn to pee and discovers his wife Olga in a passionate embrace with Jannik, the wastrel. At first, the couple remain unaware of Bjorn’s presence. They whisper sweet, desperate nothings in each other’s ear. “Oh, my little potato bug!” “Oh, you bad boy, you bad bad boy, oh!” Bjorn knows that Jannik sleeps with girls in town. He’s even discussed with Olga how Jannik seduced one of the bank tellers. Jannik is drunk half the time. He borrows money from his parents to spend at the dance halls and buy presents for his girls. Bjorn sees nothing charming in him. When they were boys, Bjorn was forever finishing the fights Jannik provoked. The scene behind the barn repulses Bjorn. He doesn’t want to be the straight arrow any more. Suddenly, he doesn’t remember why he married Olga. They have been trying to have a baby for three years, long nights of sweaty labour sawing away under the goose feather quilt. She nags at him to ask Herr Grimmig for a raise. She is always accusing him of sleeping with the tellers at the bank. She calls the teller pool his private harem. Now she sighs and squeals, trembling in Jannik’s embrace; Jannik thrusts himself against her and fumbles with her skirts. The white flesh of her doughy thighs flashes in the October sunlight. Seeing her flesh, Bjorn feels an unaccustomed throb of desire. He should object, but there is nothing he can say now that will make this scene better. Yet he cannnot tear himself away. Then Olga, with a shriek, notices him at the corner of the barn. Their eyes meet. It breaks the spell. Bjorn claps his hat on his head and turns on his heel, thinking only of escape, relieved almost, turgid with desire. Suddenly, time, which had seemed forever stalled in a state of minute reiterations of itself, begins to flow again. He feels the current under his elbows, pulling him along. Olga frantically pushes Jannik away. Bjorn glimpses drab nether hair, petticoats, and Jannik’s erect penis like a small purple heart. Olga catches up with him at the gate. “That didn’t mean anything,” she says. “I had too much potato vodka. Jannik made me. I was confused.” Bjorn towers over her. He can’t think of anything to say. It seems like a speech from some other drama, staged long ago. Her breath smells like red onions and garlic, an odour he associates with love. “Anyway, I’m pregnant,” she says. Bjorn’s shoulders sag. Suddenly, the doors of his cage clang shut again. The doors are called duty and responsibility. The entire family is watching from the blankets spread on the lawn amid the squirts of goose shit and pats of cow dung. Chickens, geese, and six-week-old shoats wander from plate to plate looking for leftovers. “Enough,” says Bjorn, allowing himself to be led back to the festivities. Jannik’s shirttail hangs out. He throws his head back and guffaws at something Pa says. There is a war in Bjorn’s head. Briefly, he becomes a philosopher. He thinks, What does it mean to be alive? How should one behave? He looks up at the sky, cold and numbingly blue. Trig, always the sensitive one, bursts into tears. Uncle Boris is climbing the tree again, trying to make everyone laugh. Bjorn catches up a bottle of potato vodka from the blanket and whirls away. He has the air of a man who is never coming back. Two of the shoats start to drag baby Nikolai toward the bushes. Daphne, the slut, laughing, rescues him and clutches him to her breasts. Olga cries, “If it’s a boy, we’ll name him Bjorn.”
♠
—Douglas Glover
Buy the magazine; read the rest!Tuesday the 20th! Quelab is taking a step back from our more usual, high tech, and going for an event that can appeal to everybody, from high-tech uber geek to causal crafter. All ages, (although there may be some semi dangerous tools, and supplies that may not be appropriate for super young kids without supervison/help.
Last year Techmas, we a great success, several wreaths, and circuitboard trees were made, there were also component creatures, and musical instruments, ornaments and tree/wall hangings, and blinking nose rudolph computer mice, abominable snowmen, and much much more crafted.
As a partial list, We have circuit boards, we have components. gadgets, wire, adhesives, Shapeloc(tm)/friendly plastic, felt, papers, leather, gears, brushes, spraypaints, drillpresses, bandsaws, ordainment hooks, LED’s, batteries, aluminum cans, beads, cogs, ribbons, tape, heat shrink tube, silicone casting/sculpting putty, and much much more! What are you bringing to craft with?
My suggestion would be, obsolete memory cards, un-wanted game pieces, pretty cdr/dvdr disks, ribbons, interesting wires, clockwork/mechanical things. old gadgets… and all sorts of other generic crafting supplies!
Tuesday 12/13 and 12/20 7pm-10pm!
kids under 12 free, non members are asked to donate a minimum of $5 to cover supplies and utilities. (its one of those donate what you can sort of events)
1112 2nd Street!
Here are some photos from last year!
And some links to things to inspire you!
http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Make-a-Holiday-Snow-Globe/
http://www.instructables.com/id/Christmas-Tree-Earrings/
http://www.instructables.com/id/Christmas-Bow-Flower-from-Floppy-Disks/
http://www.instructables.com/id/Crayon-Ornaments/
http://www.instructables.com/id/Ueber-Geek-Christmas-Tree-with-QR-Code-decorations/Belle Gunness and her three children. (Photo via Wikipedia)
Children in La Porte, Indiana, grow up listening to graphic horror stories about the gruesome murders committed by Belle Gunness on her farm at the end of McClung Road. The most disturbing part about these grisly stories is that the gory parts are not fiction. Belle Gunness (also known as Lady Bluebeard, The LaPorte Black Widow, The Mistress of Murder Farm, and Hell’s Belle) was probably one of America’s most prolific serial killers. She likely killed between 25 and 30 people, including women and children, at the turn of the 20th century.
Belle’s crimes were discovered on April 28th, 1908, when authorities were called out to the Gunness farm to investigate a fire that razed the farmhouse. When officials combed through the ashes they found the remains of a headless woman and three children. The woman was said to be Belle herself, and the children’s remains were thought to belong to her children Lucy and Myrtle Sorenson, ages 9 and 11 respectively, and Phillip Gunness, 5.
During the investigation, Asle Helgelien showed up and insisted that his brother, Andrew, had been murdered by Belle earlier that year. When investigators searched the property, they unearthed the butchered remains of at least 11 people buried near the hog pen on the farm.
For the next 100 years, rumors circulated that Hell’s Belle didn’t actually die in the fire and probably faked her death. So in 2007, forensic anthropologist Stephen Nawrocki and a group of graduate students from the University of Indiana exhumed Belle Gunness’ grave at the Forest Home Cemetery in Forest Park, Illinois, near Chicago. The goal was to see if they could positively identify her body.
When the team exhumed Gunness’ coffin and sifted through the bones and dirt, they found the bones of children comingled with Belle’s remains. This was odd, because the remains of the three children recovered from the farmhouse in 1908 had been buried separately.
Nawrocki and his team returned to the cemetery the following year, and exhumed the graves of Lucy, Myrtle, and Phillip—the children found dead after the fire. The forensic team had some lingering questions to answer: Did Belle Gunness really die in the fire in 1908? Did the children’s bones found in Belle’s coffin belong to her own children, or did they belong to additional victims?
“Come prepared to stay forever.”
Belle Sorenson Gunness (November 11, 1859 – April 28, 1908) left her native Norway in 1881, at the age of 21, to travel to Chicago. She married her first husband, Mads Sorenson, three years later in 1884. The couple opened an unsuccessful confectionery store that burned down under strange circumstances almost a year later. Belle and Mads collected the insurance on the business to pay for a new home. They had two biological children that survived infancy, Myrtle (b. 1897) and Lucy (b. 1899), and one foster child, Jennie Olsen.
Mads died on July 30, 1900, coincidentally, on the only day his two life insurance policies overlapped. The first doctor to examine Mads’ body believed he suffered from strychnine poisoning. But the Sorensons’ family doctor, who had been treating him for an enlarged heart, overruled the first doctor and determined that Mads died of heart failure. Shortly after Mad’s death, Belle moved to LaPorte, Indiana, where she purchased the 42-acre farm at the end of McClung road.
She soon met a local butcher, Peter Gunness, and they married in April 1902. One week after the marriage, Peter’s infant daughter died while Belle was watching her. Peter died less than a year later, when a sausage grinder and jar of hot water allegedly fell on him. In this case the coroner believed Peter had been murdered (the body showed symptoms of strychnine poisoning), and so he ordered an inquest.
Because Belle played a convincing widow in mourning, and there was no hard evidence to convict her, she walked away a free woman and collected on Gunness’ life insurance policy. But she was pregnant at the time of Peter’s death, and in 1903 gave birth to a son, Philip Gunness.
However, the La Porte Black Widow was quick to recover and put ads in the “matrimonial columns” of Midwestern Norwegian-language newspapers.
“WANTED: A woman who owns a beautifully located and valuable farm in first class condition, wants a good and reliable man as partner in the same. Some little cash is required for which will be furnished first-class security.”
Many men answered these ads and traveled to La Porte to meet Belle. In December of 1907, Andrew Helgelien, a bachelor farmer from Aberdeen, South Dakota, was one of these men and exchanged letters with Gunness. In January of 1908 he received a passionate letter from Belle that closed with the ominous line, “Come prepared to stay forever.” Andrew promptly emptied his bank accounts and left South Dakota to meet Belle. That was the last his family ever saw or heard from him.
Gruesome Discovery
Early in the morning on April 28th, 1908, a fire destroyed the Gunness farmhouse. When the embers cooled, town authorities found the headless body of a woman, believed to be Belle, and three of her children: Lucy and Myrtle Sorenson, and Phillip Gunness.
Initially, investigators believed Gunness was the innocent victim of foul play, until Asle Helgelien arrived in La Porte to look for his brother, Andrew. Asle insisted his brother had met with foul play at the hands of Belle, and demanded they needed to search the farm for his remains. Investigators soon found the dismembered bodies of at least 11 people, including three adolescents, an infant, and a woman. One of the bodies belonged to Belle’s foster daughter Jennie Olsen, who was last seen in 1906. The butchered body parts were found in gunny sacks buried near the hog pen.
Belle’s dentist said that if Belle’s head or dentures were found, he could positively identify her by examining her teeth. After searching the burnt-out remains of the house, investigators found a piece of bridgework consisting of two human teeth, some porcelain teeth, and gold crown work in between. The dentist identified them as the bridge he designed for Belle. Based on this evidence, the coroner’s inquest ruled that the headless female body found in the house belonged to Belle.
When authorities determined the fire was caused by arson, Gunness’ farm hand, Ray Lamphere, became the prime suspect. In November 1908, Lamphere was convicted of setting the house on fire, but he wasn’t convicted of any of the murders. In January of 1910 Lamphere made a deathbed confession to a clergyman. He claimed that although he didn’t kill anyone, he did help Belle dispose of the bodies.
Lamphere said that when a man answered an ad and came to the farm to meet Belle, she would invite her prey to dinner. During dinner she would either drug her date and hit him over the head with a meat cleaver, or poison the food with strychnine. Belle would butcher and dismember the corpse, then either feed the remains to the hogs or bury the body parts near the hog pen.
Lamphere also claimed that they traveled to Chicago a few days before the fire to find a body double for Belle. They brought back a “housekeeper,” who Gunness killed and decapitated.
In the years that followed, some came to believe there were further victims left on Gunness’ farm. The number of men who had visited Gunness and subsequently been reported missing outnumbered the bodies recovered, and it’s said the authorities never searched the property thoroughly in 1908. (A list of Belle’s suspected victims can be found here.)
Resurrection of a Killer
Many people believed that investigators mishandled and misinterpreted the evidence in the early twentieth century, letting The Mistress of Murder Farm escape unscathed. Like Leatherface or Hannibal Lecter, who survive to kill another day, Gunness was reportedly seen for years after the fire.
The last sighting was in 1931, when a woman named Esther Carlson, who had an uncanny physical resemblance to Belle, died in Los Angeles while awaiting trial on charges she poisoned a man for his money. Not only did Carlson resemble Gunness, she was about the same age Belle would have been in 1931. Esther also killed with Belle’s M.O., and there was no record of her before 1908.
To find out if Belle and Esther were the same woman, Stephen Nawrocki and a team of University of Indianapolis graduate students exhumed Belle’s coffin in November of 2007. They hoped to use DNA analysis to identify the remains, but samples from the still-sealed flap of an envelope that Belle had sent to one of her suitors proved too degraded to be useful. A woman from Norway, a direct descendent of Belle’s grandmother, offered her DNA to compare to the bones in Belle’s grave. But there was not enough money to get the samples examined, and they remain untested in a crime lab in Texas.
The team had also been surprised to find the skeletal remains of two children in Belle’s coffin. Nawrocki and his students returned in 2008 to exhume the bodies of Gunness’ three children, hoping to see if they were missing the bones that were found in the coffin. If not, it could mean Belle killed more children than initially believed. However, at the time of this writing the osteological exam of the children found in “Belle’s” coffin in 2008 was unavailable.
Whenever and wherever she was when she died, Belle seems to have taken her secrets to the grave.
References:
Belle’s Story: The Short Version (2012). Retrieved on May 18, 2014 from:http://www.laportelibrary.org/genealogy/bellegunness.html
Bien, K. (2011 November 14). HOMETOWN SECRETS: Mystery still surrounds 100-year-old LaPorte serial killer story. Retrieved on May 16, 2014 from:http://www.orlandosentinel.com/topic/wsbt-mystery-still-surrounds-100-year-old-laporte-serial-killer-story-20111114,0,7428674.story
Hartzell, T. (2007 November 18). Did Belle Gunness really die in LaPorte? Retrieved on May 16, 2014 from: http://articles.southbendtribune.com/2007-11-18/news/26809754_1_exhumed-three-children-dna
Kridel, K. (2008 February 17). Unlocking secrets of Indiana “murder farm.” Retrieved on May 16, 2014 from:http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2004186653_farmmurders17.html
Kridel, K. (2008 May 14). Children’s remains exhumed in |
-module: Implement the Module D-Bus interface. dbus: Save one level of identation by returning early. dbus: Make sure that subscription callbacks don't try to access removed objects. dbusiface-stream: Only send stream event signals from the right D-Bus objects. dbus: Finish the Client D-Bus interface. dbus: Do message argument type checking early, centrally. dbusiface-core: Add signals FallbackSinkUnset and FallbackSourceUnset. dbus: Change IsMuted property names to Mute. dbus-protocol: Implement argument type checking for normal methods. dbusiface-client: Fix the destructor (stop leaking stuff). dbus: Handle the cases when a non-existing interface is detected in an incoming message. dbus: Add a missing break statement in handle_message_cb(). stream-restore: Fix a few assertion misuses with the D-Bus code. stream-restore: Add a missing pa_xnew0() call in handle_add_entry(). stream-restore: At startup, create dbus entries only for valid database entries. idxset: Fix _get_by_data() comment. sink-input: Replace a tab indentation with spaces. daemon: Don't autospawn if a server address is explicitly configured. alsa-mixer: Use pa_xfree() instead of pa_xstrdup() for freeing a string. alsa-mixer: Replace erroneous PA_ALSA_VOLUME_IGNORE with PA_ALSA_ENUMERATION_IGNORE. alsa: Fix log output to inform about positive base volumes correctly. cli: Increase the command maximum length from 1024 to 2048. dbus: Make it possible to allow remote connections from outside localhost. dbus: Initialize properly the type field of new server structs. dbus: Fix segfault when receiving a property access call that isn't permitted. stream-restore: Fix segfaulting. The dbus entry callbacks expect a dbus_entry pointer instead of a userdata pointer. dbus: Use a struct as the hashmap items for listening_signals. dbus: Fix slightly messed up assertions. stream-restore: When changing restore entries with D-Bus, apply the changes immediately. dbus: Stop polling every 10 seconds to check whether all clients are still alive. dbusiface-core: Track sinks and sources using synchronous hooks instead of asynchronous subscription events. loopback: Make stream names and roles configurable. core: New function: pa_module_update_proplist(). module-alsa-card: New argument: namereg_fail. module-udev-detect: When loading module-alsa-card, use namereg_fail=false. alsa-sink/source: Use the "namereg_fail" module argument. alsa: Print dB values in addition to percentages in debug messages. core: Link virtual sinks and sources to their streams. dbusiface-stream: Send the Device property in the GetAll handler. Allow read-only or non-existing sink input volume. alsa-mixer: Fix path set building when using the element-output or element-input mapping options in profile set configuration. alsa-card: Add a new modarg "profile_set" for giving the card a custom profile set configuration file. Implement the "volume sharing" feature. virtual-sink: Add a modarg for enabling volume sharing. virtual-sink: Add a modarg for forcing flat volume. virtual-sink/source: Use a more descriptive stream name. virtual-sink/source: Remove an unused variable. virtual-sink: Fix a crash when moving the sink to a new master right after setup. sink: Don't send unnecessary PA_SINK_MESSAGE_SET_SHARED_VOLUME messages. sink: Add casts to some printf arguments to get rid of compiler warnings. Add src/*-symdef.h to.gitignore. alsa-mixer: Add DecibelFix section to the profile set config file format. alsa-mixer: Use decibel fixes when getting and setting decibel volumes. pacat: Fix memory leak when draining the context. alsa-mixer: Add a default case for a switch, so that the compiler won't complain about unhandled cases. alsa-card: Print the profile set configuration when loading the card. dbusiface-stream: Fix crash when there's no resampling used. dbus: Always accept mono volumes when setting device or stream volume. alsa-mixer: Implement support for setting element specific upper limits for volume. alsa-mixer: When figuring out the max_dB of a path, use only channels that are used by the path elements. alsa-mixer: Implement constant volume. alsa-mixer: Refactoring: merge element_mute_volume(), element_zero_volume() and element_apply_constant_volume() into a single function. bluetooth: Don't log an error if an endpoint type is disabled. bluetooth: Get rid of warnings about unused stuff when building against a D-Bus version that doesn't have fd-passing support..gitignore: Add ChangeLog to the ignore list. alsa-mixer: Get rid of a compiler warning. sink-input: Add volume_writable to pa_sink_input. alsa-mixer: Make probing elements with more than two volume channels fail. alsa-mixer: Make sure that SND_MIXER_SCHN_UNKNOWN isn't used when indexing e->masks. alsa-mixer: Check that the kernel driver returns consistent limits with both snd_mixer_selem_get_*_dB_range() and _ask_*_vol_dB(). bluetooth: Drop all "#ifdef NOKIA" directives. bluetooth: Fix HSP volume handling. alsa: Fix log output to inform about positive base volumes correctly. sink-input: Check flat volume with pa_sink_flat_volume_enabled(). protocol-dbus: Fix some memory management bugs. stream-restore: Enable database dumping if DEBUG_VOLUME is defined. match: Support for both merging and replacing proplist updates. dbus: Fix connection idxset freeing when unloading the module. dbus: Fix the order of freeing stuff when unloading module-dbus-protocol. loopback: Add a modarg for disabling remixing. gitignore: Add connect-stress, extended-test and format-test. bluetooth-discover: Remove remaining ifdef NOKIAs. virtual: Fix volume callback setting. daemon-conf: Don't make log files executable. svolume: Make log messages more precise. loopback: New modargs: sink_input_properties and source_output_properties. Vincent Becker (3): Correct wav file creation for 24/32 and 24 bits sample formats HSD=3669357 log: Add a new log target to a file descriptor log: Correct bad function implementation Vladimir Kokarev (2): volume: add pa_cvolume_inc_clamp function lirc,mmkvd: added module parameters volume_limit, volume_step Wang Xingchao (3): alsa: Update process_usec before going to sleep alsa: resets POLLOUT event sink-input: Avoid fake rewind in corked state Wu Fengguang (1): alsa-sink: fix mmap_write() work_done amitakhya (1): Sending translation for Assamese anipeter (1): Sending translation for Malayalam chocolateboy (1): Fix typo in log message: s/may no be/may not be/ elad (1): Sending translation for po/he.po hedda (1): Sending translation for German huan zheng (1): core: volume ramping fix ifelix (1): Sending translation for Tamil jassy (1): Sending translation for Punjabi khasida (3): Sending translation for Japanese Sending translation for Japanese Sending translation for Japanese kkrothap (1): Sending translation for Telugu leahliu (1): Sending translation for Chinese (Simplified) mgiri (1): Sending translation for Oriya mrtom (1): Sending translation for French rajesh (1): Sending translation for Hindi runab (1): Sending translation for Bengali (India) sandeeps (1): Sending translation for Marathi shanky (1): Sending translation for Kannada snowlet (1): Sending translation for po/zh_TW.po swkothar (1): Sending translation for Gujarati ypoyarko (1): Sending translation for Russian zbt (3): Add volume ramping feature - envelop fix Add volume ramping feature - sink-input modification Add volume ramping feature - sink modification zerng07 (1): l10n: Updates to Chinese (Taiwan) (zh_TW) translation - -- Colin Guthrie mageia(at)colin.guthr.ie http://colin.guthr.ie/ Day Job: Tribalogic Limited [http://www.tribalogic.net/] Open Source: Mageia Contributor [http://www.mageia.org/] PulseAudio Hacker [http://www.pulseaudio.org/] Trac Hacker [http://trac.edgewall.org/] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iEYEARECAAYFAk6BmTsACgkQCoRSYD8tmNglQACgzp65DpafzdDvHl7XuDu253c6 IYoAniO0srB8VPcLKLRh/HA3O+0r9kw9 =V2DU -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian (L) and Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius (2nd L) and their Japanese counterparts Defense Minister Gen Nakatani (R) and Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida (2nd R) shake hands at the end of their joint news conference at the two-plus-two meeting at the Iikura Guest House in Tokyo March 13, 2015. REUTERS/Kazuhiro Nogi/Pool
TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan and France signed a deal on military equipment and technology transfers on Friday, in a move to drive cooperation and joint development of defence gear, as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe strengthens security ties with major powers.
Japan, at odds with China on territorial and other issues, has reached similar deals with Britain and Australia over the past two years, while ending a ban on its military fighting abroad and easing restrictions on weapons exports.
The agreement encourages bilateral defence cooperation by ensuring that transferred technology and equipment will not be provided to a third country without the consent of the country of origin.
“I think we’ve managed to bring our bilateral security and defence cooperation one step forward... It is a major achievement that we’ve agreed on specific plans of cooperation,” Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida said.
Kishida was speaking at a Tokyo news conference after a joint meeting of Japanese and French foreign and defence ministers.
Potential items of cooperation include unmanned gear for mine removal, French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said.
“Both France and Japan have high-tech companies in this field. If we work together, we can find a win-win solution,” he said.
Japan and France also agreed to work toward concluding an acquisition and cross-servicing agreement (ACSA), which provides a framework for logistic cooperation between armed forces. Japan already has ACSAs with the United States and Australia.Manitoba
Vince Li, man who beheaded passenger on Greyhound bus, given absolute discharge
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Man now known as Will Lee Baker does not pose significant threat to public, review board says
Vince Li is pictured during a court appearance in Portage La Prairie, Man., in August 2008. He has since changed his name to Will Lee Baker. (John Woods/Canadian Press)
Vince Li, the man who was found not criminally responsible for beheading a man on a Greyhound bus in 2008, has been granted an absolute discharge.
The Manitoba Criminal Code Review Board ordered the discharge on Friday, saying Li, now known as Will Lee Baker, does not pose a significant safety threat.
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Baker was found to have been suffering from untreated schizophrenia when he stabbed, beheaded and partially cannibalized Tim McLean, 22.
McLean's mother, Carol de Delley, a vocal critic of Canada's not criminally responsible laws and who believes Baker should remain in custody for life, posted to Facebook on Friday that she has nothing to say about his discharge.
"I have no comment today. I have no words," de Delley wrote.
Baker was found not criminally responsible in 2009 and spent seven years in treatment at the Selkirk Mental Health Centre before being allowed to move to Winnipeg, where he was treated at Health Sciences Centre.
Last year, he was permitted to move into independent living, but he had to abide by certain rules, which included taking medications and attending counselling appointments.
According to a 1999 ruling by the Supreme Court of Canada, a review board must order an absolute discharge if a person doesn't pose a significant threat to public safety.
The review board said it heard testimony from mental health professionals before concluding that the "weight of evidence" showed Baker is not a risk to the public.
'Some will be fearful'
Chris Summerville, CEO of the Schizophrenia Society of Canada, worked with Baker for around eight years and said he's confident Baker will manage his illness effectively.
"We've seen — and I've seen — face-to-face, person-to-person, heart-to-heart, his ability to recover, that is, to learn to live beyond the limitations of his mental illness, with a sense of purpose and hope," Summerville said.
Baker has expressed a desire to "stay engaged" with his doctors and mental health organizations, Summerville said.
Summerville said he believes recovery, rehabilitation and redemption are possible for people with schizophrenia.
"I know that it's very difficult and I appreciate the fact that there are millions of Canadians who are listening to this report, even, that will disagree, and some will be fearful," he said.
"I try to do my best, the schizophrenia societies across Canada try to do their best, to educate the public that people can effectively and successfully live with schizophrenia and manage it and be responsible citizens, have a moral conscience, and stay with their treatment plan. I see it every day."
'Concerned about a relapse'
Matt Logan, a former RCMP officer and forensic psychologist, said he thinks Baker's absolute discharge isn't in the public interest. He said he would have preferred to see a conditional discharge that included requirements for Baker's continued surveillance by mental health professionals.
Logan, who has never worked with Baker, said the man may have progressed well in an environment of support and structure, but he worries an absolute discharge could mean Baker won't access those resources anymore.
"I am concerned about a relapse. I'm concerned about a lack of insight in the taking of medications," he said.
"But the public interest looks at this and says, you know, 'Nine years? Nine years, really, for this kind of crime?' And I think we have to weigh that as well."
Logan said society needs to improve the way it bridges criminal justice and mental health. His own professional experience has included both.
"The de-institutionalizing of people with mental illnesses and putting them into the public and leaving them to the criminal justice to monitor — I think we have to have a lot of discussion about this yet."
Absolute discharge 'inevitable,' prof says
Law professor Isabel Grant hasn't worked on the case herself, but based on what she's seen in the media, she said Baker's absolute discharge was the "inevitable outcome" of his case, based on the evidence provided by mental health staff that he was progressing well.
Grant teaches at the University of British Columbia, and specializes in criminal and mental health law.
She took issue with Logan's assertion that the verdict isn't in the public interest.
"I'm a lawyer and I'm going to go back to the law on this, and that is that the public interest isn't what the Criminal Code says," she said.
"The review board is required to apply the standard in the Criminal Code, which says that if the tribunal finds that he is not a significant threat to the public, they have to give him absolute discharge."
Grant said the criminal justice system doesn't apply its usual "punishment-based model" to offenders who are not criminally responsible. Instead, the model is based on treatment with the goal of allowing offenders to eventually function in society.
But she said the system can feel painfully unfair for people affected by violence.
"I think that we have to be respectful of people who disagree with the decision on that basis, but recognize that we've made a decision as a civilized country that we don't punish people who really didn't know what they were doing at the time of the offence, and really didn't know that they were doing something wrong, and that's a very, very small subset of people," she said.Frustrated fishermen have tried tactics such as blasting heavy metal music from their boats to deter whales from nabbing the fish off their lines. Now, they are talking about abandoning hooks and lines in favor of baited traps.
How do you keep a whale from grabbing the fish off your lines?
Do you put out decoy buoys to try to trick them? Do you blast heavy metal from the deck of your boat to annoy them, or run for hours in hopes of ditching them?
Black cod Killer and sperm whales relish black cod, also known as sablefish, which can live for decades. In 2013, the black-cod catch in the Gulf of Alaska was worth $79.3 million. Black-cod stocks have been in decline, so catch levels have been reduced over the past decade. Source: NOAA Fisheries
All these tactics — and more — have been tried by frustrated fishermen working the Gulf of Alaska, where sperm and killer whales skillfully strip high-value black cod from miles of baited lines.
“Sometimes, you will catch 3,000 pounds. Then the whales will show up, and you will get nothing,” said Paul Clampitt, an Edmonds fishermen who is a 30-year veteran of the black-cod harvests off Alaska.
The problem has grown so bad that many Gulf of Alaska longliners favor a radical move: They want to abandon their traditional hooks and lines in favor of baited steel traps — akin to crab pots — that would protect their catch from whales.
A federal fishery council meeting this week in Anchorage is scheduled to vote on whether to give the green light for a shift to using the pots.
The frequent presence of whales on the fishing grounds is a marked turnaround from the 1970s, when veteran Alaska longliners say they were an infrequent sight.
It is part of a broader global phenomenon, with longline fishermen off Washington, Chile, Australia, Hawaii and other places reporting the same loss of hooked fish to whales.
Off Alaska, Japanese fishermen in the mid-20th century reported conflicts with killer whales in the Bering Sea, followed by reports from U.S. longline fishermen. By the late 1980s, whale encounters spread to the Gulf of Alaska.
Today, sperm whales in eastern Gulf waters and killer whales in the west are an increasingly common and unwelcome sight around longline boats.
As fishermen haul their lines up from the sea bottom, the propeller gives off distinctive acoustics as the engine slips in and out of gear. This appears to act like an underwater dinner bell to the two species of whales, according to researchers.
Sometimes, fishermen report more than a dozen killer whales, including calves, around boats as a crew retrieves longline gear. The whales may grab an entire fish off a hook, or leave behind a few remains.
“They’ll bite just light enough that the body comes off, and the head and guts are left for you,” said Pat McBride, a Homer, Alaska, fisherman who longlined for decades in the Gulf of Alaska and the Aleutian Islands.
Sometimes, only the lips remain on the hooks.
Researchers have also identified a group of 115 sperm whales that work the fishermen’s lines off Southeast Alaska. Those whales, which appear to be mature males, can reach the size of school buses and be larger than some of the boats.
They were the target of intensive hunts that — harpoon strike by harpoon strike — severely reduced their populations by the time commercial harvests ended in the late 20th century. The federal government still lists them as endangered, but scientists believe their population is on the rise.
Fishermen say the sperm whales don’t travel as fast as the killer whales and are easier to shake. But they can edge right up to the boats.
“They are not afraid of you at all. I could literally step right off a boat and onto a sperm whale. That’s how close they are,” Clampitt said.
But fishermen say that once sperm whales home in on a fisherman’s gear, they can take plenty of fish.
Sometimes they bite the black cod off the hooks. They also may grab the longline to create tension that causes some fish to come unhooked. This was first captured by researchers in an underwater video taken in 2006 at a depth of more than 300 feet.
“We thought they were just mostly biting the fish off. It really opened our eyes,” said Jan Straley, a University of Alaska Southeast marine biologist. “We realized that empty hooks could mean a whale was responsible.”
While it’s hard to know exact numbers, federal surveys put the total losses at under 10 percent of the annual harvest of the more than 360 Gulf of Alaska vessels that fish for black cod.
On occasion, fishermen report much larger percentages of their catch lost to whales.
One study found that killer whales can reduce the catch by an average 65 percent.
“It may be sporadic when the whales show up. But when they do, it can be very costly,” said Megan Peterson, an Alaska marine biologist who conducted the study.
Fishermen say they also lose money and fishing time trying to avoid the whales.
“Sometimes you will fish for seven days, and you just can’t shake them,” said Buck Laukitis, a longline fishermen based in Homer. “It’s probably the most frustrating thing we’ve experienced as fisherman. It’s worse than bad weather.”
Researchers have experimented with different types of devices that aim broadband signals at the longliners in hopes of fending off the whales. They also tried to foil the whale’s acoustic ability to target fish by injecting bubbles into the water and putting beads on the longlines.
Whales often figure out ways around the deterrents.
Some fishermen have found it makes sense to try to fish as part of a larger fleet working a relatively small area. That way, there’s a greater chance that whales will target someone else. Some fishermen deliberately run past another boat to pass off the whales.
“It’s kind of dirty pool,” said Clampitt.
The proposed rule change for the federal harvest would give the option to use pot traps that lure in the black cod with ample amounts of bait.
There have been some strong opponents. Many small-boat fishermen believe their vessels are ill-suited to fish with pots, and that the cost of the transition is too high. They also fear prime fishing spots will be claimed by the pots, so they will be unable to lay down their longlines without snagging other gear.
“I feel a pot fleet would eventually displace the smaller longline boats. That would not be good for the boats, nor the communities those boats base from,” wrote Terry Perensovich, of Sitka, Alaska, in a March 22 letter to the federal council. “I guess I would rather see a whale on the Horizon (sic) than a Pot boat.”
Clampitt said it would cost him $200,000 to switch to pots on his 90-foot boat, and he wouldn’t make the move right away. But he probably will eventually.
“If you can find a gear that is clean and whales can’t get fish, then why wouldn’t you do it?” Clampitt said. “We’re looking to the future.”
What remains to be seen is whether whales could figure out a way to open a pot.
“I wouldn’t put anything past a sperm whale,” said Straley, the marine biologist. “They are the cleverest animals I’ve ever worked with.”1 Posted Jan 30, 2012, 10:12 PM jlousa Ferris Wheel Hater Join Date: Jun 2006 Posts: 8,068 320 Granville St |115m | 32Fl | Proposed
Quote: Rezoning Application - 320 Granville Street
VIA Architecture has applied to the City of Vancouver to rezone 320 Granville Street from DD (Downtown) District to CD-1 (Comprehensive Development) District. The proposal is for a 32-storey office building, with retail and a bike station at grade, and a childcare on the top floor. The development would be comprised of approximately 35 303 m² (380,000 sq. ft.) of floor area, with a floor space ratio (FSR) of 25.5, and a height of 119 m (390 ft.).
Rendering
http://vancouver.ca/commsvcs/plannin.../rendering.pdf
City Planning Context
http://vancouver.ca/commsvcs/plannin.../rzcontext.pdf
Site Context
http://vancouver.ca/commsvcs/plannin...s/siteplan.pdf
Concept Model Views
http://vancouver.ca/commsvcs/plannin...nts/aerial.pdf
View Impact Analysis
http://vancouver.ca/commsvcs/plannin...ents/tower.pdf
View Cone Analysis
http://vancouver.ca/commsvcs/plannin...ents/views.pdf
Shadow Diagrams
http://vancouver.ca/commsvcs/plannin...ts/shadows.pdf
Project Stats and Context Aerial
http://vancouver.ca/commsvcs/plannin.../projstats.pdf
Parking Plans
http://vancouver.ca/commsvcs/plannin...ts/parking.pdf
Floor Plans
http://vancouver.ca/commsvcs/plannin...floorplans.pdf
Building Elevation Drawings
http://vancouver.ca/commsvcs/plannin...ents/elevs.pdf
Building Section Drawings
http://vancouver.ca/commsvcs/plannin...s/sections.pdf
My 2 cents, I'm happy to see this one moving forward. I'm still a touch doubtful as to wether it will make this round of towers but I'm more then willing to be proven wrong. As most of you know I seldom complain about design, this is one building that in it's current state lets me down. I certainly don't expect anything special, but I was hoping for slightly more. Anyways enjoy, discuss, critic. An offical application has been made, so here are the details.I the bolded the very large FSR. Not sure if it's a new Vancouver record or not, but it's certainly up there.RenderingCity Planning ContextSite ContextConcept Model ViewsView Impact AnalysisView Cone AnalysisShadow DiagramsProject Stats and Context AerialParking PlansFloor PlansBuilding Elevation DrawingsBuilding Section DrawingsMy 2 cents, I'm happy to see this one moving forward. I'm still a touch doubtful as to wether it will make this round of towers but I'm more then willing to be proven wrong. As most of you know I seldom complain about design, this is one building that in it's current state lets me down. I certainly don't expect anything special, but I was hoping for slightly more. Anyways enjoy, discuss, critic.The Lumbersexual is Here to Chop Down Metrosexuals
The Bold Italic Editors Blocked Unblock Follow Following Nov 6, 2014
By Peter Lawrence Kane
The metrosexual is dead. In his place, straight from a grove of western white pines in Willamette National Forest, comes the slightly more rugged, beardier “Lumbersexual.”
That’s what outdoorsy site Gear Junkie has to say about it, anyway. In a slightly tongue-in-cheek trend piece about the visual strangeness of educated professionals going for woodsman chic, it’s both an affectionate dig at their readers and an astute observation. Guys are putting in time and money to look effortlessly masculine, in $550 Paraboots.
San Francisco has had the bug for a while now. The “MetroJack,” Gear Junkie’s term for a “cleaner, still slightly urban looks,” is a subspecies endemic to Valencia Street’s hospitable microclimate, and one that has found a new ecological niche in the Western Addition and in some San Francisco offices as well. This is about more than just flannel, which has been around awhile. The Lumbersexual “might be wearing a Patagonia heritage jacket, or some technical Cordura nylon pants that look great in the low light of the bar, but also provide protection from a chain-saw blade.”
It goes without saying that virtually no man ever called himself a metrosexual, which really just referred to men who shopped for their own pants, went to the gym, and used moisturizer. (That was a big leap. It really was.) So don’t expect the term Lumbersexual to blow up, no matter how ubiquitous Lumbersexuals become.
Around the time that men who previously just thought of themselves as “men” began thinking of themselves as “straight men,” some other things happened. It became more acceptable to care about your appearance and read some magazines to that effect than before. And straight guys hug each other a lot more than they used to, which is great. This move back to a more overtly masculine style — which like metrosexuality, is still consumption-based — builds on that, rather than canceling it out. Who wouldn’t want a beer and a warm embrace after felling some timber?
Got a tip for The Bold Italic? Email [email protected].
[Via Gear Junkie, image from Thinkstock]Opposition leader tells scientists that political consensus needs to be built and their findings on climate science defended
The climate change debate has been abandoned to “conspiracy theorists and keyboard warriors, the social media trolls and the angry shouts of talkback radio”, Bill Shorten says, and scientists should feel insulted their peer-reviewed research is being subject to “feelpinions”.
The opposition leader gave a speech to a “Science meets Parliament” event on Monday in which he said the Labor party would not walk away from action on climate change but the debate had suffered because of people using one-off weather events to justify their science.
He said consensus needed to be built on climate change, with scientists defending their findings more vigorously.
“I think the degradation of the climate change debate is the cautionary tale for what happens if we abandon the field to the conspiracy theorists and keyboard warriors, the social media trolls and the angry shouts of talkback radio,” he said.
“On climate change, I think too many scientists – and indeed, politicians – made the mistake of projecting the strong consensus within their academic community onto the population at large. Too many of us took the popular support for action on climate change for granted.”
He said Labor would not bow to the will of a prime minister “who offers cynical nostrums that emissions trading is rendered meaningless because it deals with an ‘invisible, odourless substance’”.
“In this age of self-publishing platforms, it has never been easier for people to broadcast their opinion to the world – regardless of its veracity or foundation,” he said.
“On scientific matters, this means any outspoken blogger can pit their anecdotal ‘evidence’ and ‘commonsense’ reasoning against years of painstaking, peer-reviewed research.
“What’s more, the idea of ‘balanced’ reporting often requires that the ill-informed view from the fringe be presented as a counter to the scientist’s theory.”
Shorten said he was sure it was of immense frustration as well as insulting for scientists to see their work subjected to “feelpinions”.
Shorten cited the National Disability Insurance Scheme as proof that political consensus could be reached on important issues, but scientists needed to be “ready for a fight”.
“A great deal of harm has been done by environmentalists using individual extreme weather events as proof of climate change in and of themselves,” he said.
“An argument that is far too easy for climate-change deniers to rebut by seizing on any unseasonably cold weather. All of which only serves as an unhelpful distraction from the real matter at hand – the future of our planet.”
Shorten said while climate science was a key policy challenge, every facet of policy-making could benefit from a new engagement with science.
“We need new ideas in health – driven by human genomics,” he said.
“New ideas in education – informed by neuroscience and psychology. New ideas for our economy – underpinned by innovation, research and development. New ideas for farming and food security – working with cutting-edge and productivity-creating technology.
“And new ideas for our environment – shaped by a recognition of the scientific consensus, not some ideological repudiation of it. History tells us that the policy imperative alone will not be enough.”US allies Germany, France, Japan, and South Korea are among countries which trust Vladimir Putin more than Donald Trump in handling foreign affairs, a new Pew poll shows.
“In many countries he [Putin] is more trusted than American President Donald Trump,” according to a statement from the Pew Research Center on Wednesday.
At least 36 countries from across the world took part in the survey.
The poll showed that at least seven EU countries trust Russian President Vladimir Putin more than US President Donald Trump. Greeks appear to have highest confidence in Putin (31 percent higher than their confidence in Trump), followed by Germany (with a +14-percent differential), and Hungary (+5 percent). Putin is also more trusted in France, Sweden, Italy, and Spain than his US counterpart.
US allies Japan and South Korea also have more confidence in Putin than in Trump, the poll shows. Both countries have repeatedly expressed concerns over the situation with North Korea amid Washington’s ongoing war of words with Pyongyang.
READ MORE: Japan mulls deploying Patriot missile defense as N. Korea threatens airstrike near Guam – officials
Read more
South Korea, which has been staging military drills with the US in the region, trusts the Russian president more than the US leader by 10 percent.
Putin has more support among South American countries, including Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Peru, and Venezuela, according to the poll. Mexico, which has been highly critical of Trump’s intention to build a wall on its border, also supports Putin more than the US leader.
Close US allies Australia, Canada, and the UK trust Trump more than Putin, but the differences are strikingly small at 2-3 points.
Putin scored higher than Trump in 23 countries in the Pew poll. The US president has greater support in 13 countries, including Israel, Poland, the Philippines, and India.
The Putin-Trump poll is a part of a wider survey on security threats around the world. According to the Pew Research Center, many nations view the US, Russia, and China as major threats to their national security.It has never been easy to be poor and a child. This was no less true in Boston’s North End at the end of the 19th century, when the streets teemed with dangerous traffic and open space could feel practically non-existent. The plight of the neighborhood’s immigrant families touched the city’s philanthropic types, and in 1885, one charitable group decided to offer something of an experiment to the local children: a pile of sand, deposited for the summer in the yard of a chapel on Parmenter Street. Little did any of them know how much it would change the experience of childhood in America.
Boston Common had become the country’s first public park more than two centuries earlier, and now the city’s children had their own place to play. The spot—across the street from what is now the North End public library branch—was an immediate hit with children, who spent long afternoons digging with small shovels and making sand pies. This first playground was intended for young children, who were supervised by a motherly matron named Mrs. Gamble. But the concept attracted children of all ages: In 1907, when Cambridge opened its own “summer playgrounds” in schoolyards, older boys who were turned away returned toting younger children, and begging to “mind baby in the sand.”
Today, playgrounds look nothing like that simple sandpile. Over the next century, playgrounds were filled in with dangerous but thrilling monkey bars, swings, see-saws, and metal carousels, all on beds of dirt or asphalt. Then, starting in the 1980s, a new trend began, in which these sometimes rusty and risky structures were replaced by standardized plastic structures, the asphalt giving way to rubber matting.
Modern playgrounds have become so predictable, cushioned, and programmed that they are now coming under attack as a symptom of everything that’s wrong with contemporary childhood: The Atlantic this month dedicated its cover to a story lamenting the “safety paranoia” that has robbed playgrounds—and children themselves—of opportunities for independence and thrills. Susan Solomon, an architectural historian and playground consultant whose book “The Science of Play: How to Build Playgrounds that Enhance Children’s Development” will be published in the fall, has called today’s default playground “the McDonald’s model”: an unchallenging, standardized unit of tunnels, slides, and decks. “Things like taking risks, learning to fail, learning to master something, to plan ahead, to develop deep friendships,” Solomon said, “none of those could take place on most playgrounds today.”
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In looking for inspiration for the next generation of playgrounds, experts are starting to hark back to the messy, anarchic spirit of those earliest playgrounds of Boston. Their concerns may be prompted by a new set of problems—notably, the way that more protective parents and more sedentary entertainment have combined to quash the rambunctiousness and risk-taking once synonymous with American childhood. But as solutions to our 21st-century dilemmas of child-rearing emerge, the thinking of those earliest playground planners is starting to seem more prescient than they could have known.
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Related Links View Gallery Photos: Playgrounds of the past and future
Children have always played, but they have not always had playgrounds. As cities expanded rapidly in the 19th century, experts began to worry about urban children growing up without opportunities for play and vigorous exercise. Friedrich Froebel, the influential 19th-century German educator who developed the idea of kindergarten, called play “the highest phase of child development,” and, starting around the 1830s, designed elaborate settings in which children interacted with animals, insects, plants, and running water. When the German-born founder of a Boston hospital for women and children, Dr. Maria Zakrzewska, visited a public sandpile on a trip to Berlin, she urged the Massachusetts Emergency and Hygiene Association, a charitable group whose main focus was to offer lectures on public health, to import the concept.
Soon, the children of Boston were digging away in the sandpile on Parmenter Street. The country’s first sand garden was an immediate sensation. Their playing was “almost as much of a delight as a picnic,” the organization reported the next year, “better in a hygienic point of view, for they had the air, the sun, the sand, the fun, and—no cake.”
By the summer of 1886, there were three sand gardens in the city; the |
apply for forgiveness of up to $17,500 of their debt after five years.[154]
Subprime mortgage crisis relief [ edit ]
On December 5, 2007, Clinton unveiled her plan to ameliorate the effects of the 2007 subprime mortgage financial crisis on homeowners. She called for a 90-day moratorium on foreclosures, in order that lenders and mortgage servicers have sufficient time to get through paperwork complications and an expected high volume of troubled borrowers without having to shut out the lights, and a five-year freeze on the interest rates of adjustable rate mortgages, so that borrowers would not get slammed by expected 30, 40 or more percent increases in monthly payments due to the effects of the crisis and of unwise initial borrowing decisions.[155]
In late 2008, Clinton voted for the Troubled Asset Relief Program which provided $350 million to purchase toxic assets and equity from financial institutions to strengthen the financial sector during the subprime mortgage crisis.[156]
Clinton claimed during a nationally televised townhall meeting in February 2016 that "You are three times more likely to be able to get a mortgage if you're a white applicant than if you're black or Hispanic, even if you have the same credentials." PolitiFact rated this claim "false," noting "while there is evidence of disparities in mortgage acceptance rates by race... Experts say the gaps are not as drastic as Clinton says once you equalize for other key factors, such as income and credit history."[157]
Trade [ edit ]
Clinton opposes the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), supports the U.S. Export-Import Bank, and holds that "any trade deal has to produce jobs and raise wages and increase prosperity and protect our security".[158][159] As Senator (2001–2009), her record on trade was mixed, voting in favor of some trade agreements but not others.[158] She favors Trade Adjustment Assistance, a measure that would help retrain and provide aid to workers displaced by globalization.[160][161]
NAFTA [ edit ]
During the 1993 internal debate over the North American Free Trade Agreement, Clinton made clear her feeling that its passage was getting higher priority within the administration than it should, especially compared to the Clinton health care reform plan.[162][163][164][165] By most accounts, Clinton was also unenthusiastic about the merits of the agreement, believing it would cause a loss of American jobs and would be politically unpopular.[162][163][166][167] Once her husband decided to proceed with NAFTA, Clinton as First Lady participated in at least five meetings at the White House aimed at securing Congressional passage of the agreement,[168] which Gergen and former official Robert J. Shapiro felt showed she had been a "good soldier" in getting behind a settled decision,[166][167] but which other attendees interpreted as showing Clinton was in fact behind the agreement.[164] During later years of the administration and in her memoir, Clinton touted her husband's support for NAFTA.[169]
Clinton has since 2008 repeatedly called for renegotiating the "core labor and environmental standards" of NAFTA.[170] During her 2008 presidential campaign, Clinton repeatedly criticized the NAFTA agreement,[168][171] despite it being one of the major achievements of her husband's administration.[169] She said, "NAFTA did not do what many had hoped. NAFTA was a mistake to the extent that it did not deliver on what we had hoped it would."[169] She did say that she believed in the underlying idea behind trade agreements such as NAFTA: "I believe in the general principles it represented. But what we have learned is that we have to drive a tougher bargain. Our market is the market that everybody wants to be in. We should quit giving it away so willy-nilly. I believe we need tougher enforcement of the trade agreements we already have."[167] She promised that if elected, she would work to implement changes to it that would benefit American workers,[168] saying "I want to be a president who focuses on smart, pro-American trade. I will review every trade agreement. I'm going to ask for revisions that I think will actually benefit our country, particularly our workers, our exporters... And NAFTA will be part of that review, to try to reform and improve it."[169]
Other [ edit ]
In 2005, while representing New York in the U.S. Senate, Clinton said: "During my tenure as senator, I have voted for every trade agreement that has come before the Senate, and I believe that properly negotiated trade agreements can increase living standards and foster openness and economic development for all parties."[172] Later in 2005, Clinton voted against the Central America Free Trade Agreement,[173] believing that it did not provide adequate environmental or labor standards.[174] As Secretary of State, Clinton adhered to the position of the Obama administration on the United States–Colombia Free Trade Agreement, supporting the agreement that she had opposed in the 2008 campaign given her "concerns about the history of violence towards trade unionists in Colombia".[175][176][177]
Clinton, together with fellow New York Senator Charles Schumer, welcomed a 2006 decision by the United States Commerce Department that called for a 108.3% duty on imports from Chinese candlemakers, as the imports sought to circumvent an Anti-dumping Duty Order.[178] Clinton stated, "This is a real victory for the Syracuse candle-making industry."[179]
Clinton supports the U.S. Export-Import Bank, a decades-old trade promotion agency.[158] She has asserted that "across our country, the Export-Import Bank supports up to 164,000 jobs."[158]
In August 2016, Clinton promised to create a new position of trade prosecutor and to triple the number of enforcers.[82] In the same speech, she said that "China and other countries have gamed the system for too long","Enforcement — especially during the Bush administration — has been too lax" and that "Investments at home that would make us more competitive have been blocked."[82] She said, however, that "the answer is not to rant and rave – or to cut ourselves off from the world. That would kill even more jobs."[82]
Trans-Pacific Partnership [ edit ]
Former top Obama adviser David Axelrod said on MSNBC that when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state from 2009 to 2013, she "owned" the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).[172] During her tenure as Secretary of State, she spoke of the TPP negotiations in glowing terms: "exciting," "innovative," "ambitious," "groundbreaking," "cutting-edge," "high-quality," "high-standard" and "gold standard."[180] During a 2012 visit to Australia, Clinton referred to the TPP as "the gold standard in trade agreements."[172] In February 2013, Clinton left her job with the general framework of TPP in place.[172] In her 2014 memoir Hard Choices, she wrote:
"Because TPP negotiations are still ongoing, it makes sense to reserve judgment until we can evaluate the final proposed agreement. It's safe to say the TPP won't be perfect -- no deal negotiated among a dozen countries ever will be -- but its higher standards, if implemented and enforced, should benefit American businesses and workers."
In an April 2015 presidential campaign stop in New Hampshire, Clinton said, "Any trade deal has to produce jobs and raise wages and increase prosperity and protect our security".[172] Upon the completion of the TPP negotiations in October 2015, Clinton stated her opposition to the TPP, indicating that the final agreement did not meet the high standards she had set for such agreements.[181][182][183] PolitiFact rules her shifting stance on TPP as a flip-flop.[180] In August 2016, Clinton said, "I will stop any trade deal that kills jobs or holds down wages – including the Trans-Pacific Partnership. I oppose it now, I'll oppose it after the election, and I'll oppose it as president."[82]
Clinton has named former Senator Ken Salazar, who is a prominent supporter of TPP, to chair her presidential transition team.[184][185]
Energy and environment policy [ edit ]
Clinton supports energy conservation, releasing oil reserves, increasing the number of hydrogen-powered vehicles, and ratification of the Kyoto Protocol. She opposes drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge[186] and the Bush administration's energy policy.[186]
Clinton supports cap-and-trade, which allows companies to trade carbon credits, seeks an 80% carbon cut by 2050, seeks a 10% national energy reduction by 2020, advocates a zero emission policy for federal buildings by 2030, calls for raising gas mileage standards to 35 mpg ‑US (6.7 L/100 km) within 10 years (having indicated a willingness to use administrative power if Congress fails to act on this), and opposes drilling in the Atlantic.[187]
Clinton was endorsed by the League of Conservation Voters in 2015.[188]
Climate change and renewable energy [ edit ]
Clinton accepts the scientific consensus on climate change and criticizes climate-change deniers "who still refuse to accept the settled science of climate change."[189] Clinton called climate change "an urgent threat" and "the most consequential, urgent, sweeping collection of challenges we face as a nation and a world."[190]
Clinton writes in her memoir Hard Choices that during her tenure in the State Department she played an instrumental role in the push toward an enforceable international agreement to reduce carbon emissions.[191] In December 2009, as secretary of state, Clinton endorsed a climate-change adaption plan, stating: "The United States is prepared to work with other countries toward a goal of jointly mobilizing $100 billion a year by 2020 to address the climate change needs of developing countries." The commitment was welcomed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and others as a solid first step, although the European Union made a more ambitious proposal for 100 billion euros a year (44% higher than the value Clinton mentioned). Clinton did not say specifically how much the U.S. would contribute, but did say that U.S. funding of climate-change mitigation efforts would be conditional upon China and other nations agreeing to "transparency" and verification of cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.[192]
In July 2015, Clinton set forth two ambitious renewable energy goals for the United States: to generate enough clean renewable energy to power every U.S. home within ten years after taking office, and to install 500 million solar panels within her first term.[188][193] Clinton aims to generate one-third of America's electricity from renewable sources by 2027.[194] Clinton said in February 2016 that these proposals aim to "move from fossil fuels to clean energy... in a quick, but thoughtful way"[188] and to "reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 30 percent in 2025 relative to 2005 levels and chart a path to cut emissions more than 80 percent by 2050."[190] Clinton states: "I want more wind, more solar, more advanced biofuels, more energy efficiency."[193] Clinton supports the wind energy production tax credit and has called for making it permanent,[188] and in the past has praised efforts to use vegetable oils as alternative energy.[195]
Clinton has emphasized the jobs that renewable energy creates, saying in an April 2016 town-hall event broadcast on MSNBC that the U.S. must "use clean renewable energy to create more jobs."[188] Clinton has said that "somebody is going to be the 21st century clean energy superpower. It's either going to be China, Germany or us. I want it to be us because there will be a lot of jobs, again, that have to be done right here in America."[188] On one occasion in December 2015, Clinton stated that "we now have more jobs in solar than we do in oil"; PolitiFact found that this was not true, although the number of workers in the oil and gas industry has been declining while the number of workers employees in the solar industry has increased.[196]
Clinton has praised the international Paris Agreement reached at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, saying: "The Paris agreement is testament to America's ability to lead the world in building a clean energy future where no one is left out or left behind... as president, I will make combating climate change a top priority from day one, and secure America's future as the clean energy superpower of the 21st century."[190] Clinton has promised to implement the U.S. commitment to the Paris Agreement.[190]
In her official 2016 presidential platform, Clinton proposes to:
"Reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 30 percent in 2025 relative to 2005 levels and put the country on a path to cut emissions more than 80 percent by 2050."
"Reduce American oil consumption by a third through cleaner fuels and more efficient cars, boilers, ships and trucks."
"Cut energy waste in American homes, schools, hospitals and offices by a third and make American manufacturing the cleanest and most efficient in the world."
Support the Clean Power Plan.
"Launch a $60 billion Clean Energy Challenge to partner with states, cities, and rural communities and give them the tools and resources they need to go beyond federal standards in cutting carbon pollution and expanding clean energy."
"End wasteful tax subsidies for oil and gas companies."
"Cut emissions of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, by 40-45 percent and put in place strong standards for reducing leaks from both new and existing sources."[197][198][199]
While in the Senate, Clinton had long opposed ethanol subsidies before she introduced a bill in May 2006 to create a $50 billion fund to expand the use of ethanol and other alternative fuels.[200] In 2007, Clinton expressed support for corn ethanol as a biofuel.[201] In August 2015, the Clinton campaign said that she would "strengthen" the Renewable Fuel Standard to promote development of advanced biofuels and access to ethanol products.[202]
Fossil fuels [ edit ]
Coal [ edit ]
During a debate in March 2016, Clinton said that "we need" to implement "all of the president's executive actions" on the environment and that we need to "quickly move to make a bridge from coal to natural gas to clean energy."[203]
Speaking at a CNN town hall forum in March 2016, Clinton said: "I'm the only candidate which has a policy about how to bring economic opportunity using clean renewable energy as the key into coal country. Because we're going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business, right? And we're going to make it clear that we don't want to forget those people. Those people labored in those mines for generations, losing their health, often losing their lives to turn on our lights and power our factories. Now we've got to move away from coal and all the other fossil fuels, but I don't want to move away from the people who did the best they could to produce the energy that we relied on."[204]
When confronted about her "out of business" statement while campaigning in West Virginia, Clinton stated "I don't know how to explain it other than what I said was totally out of context for what I meant because I have been talking about helping coal country for a very long time. It was a misstatement because what I was saying is the way things are going now, they will continue to lose jobs. It didn't mean that we were going to do it. What I said is that is going to happen unless we take action to help and prevent it."[205][206]
She has a $30 billion plan intended to revitalize coal communities and aid them in the transition away from coal. The plan calls for increased job training, small-business development, and infrastructure investment, especially in Appalachia. The plan also seeks to safeguard miners' healthcare and pensions.[207][208]
Fracking [ edit ]
Clinton supports allowing hydraulic fracturing (fracking) but only when it meets her conditions regarding local choice, stronger environmental regulation and chemicals.[209] In a March 2016 debate, Clinton outlined her position as follows: "I don't support it when any locality or any state is against it, No. 1. I don't support it when the release of methane or contamination of water is present. I don't support it — No. 3 — unless we can require that anybody who fracks has to tell us exactly what chemicals they are using. So by the time we get through all of my conditions, I do not think there will be many places in America where fracking will continue to take place. And I think that's the best approach, because right now, there are places where fracking is going on that are not sufficiently regulated."[209] According to PolitiFact, the implementation of Clinton's three conditions "would uphold existing bans and add new ones to the mix."[210] PolitiFact notes that there are 11 states with noted cases of spills (which could be covered under her second condition) and two fracking states where there are no rules on chemical disclosure on the books (which would be covered under her third condition).[209][211]
As Secretary of State under President Obama, Clinton promoted fracking services by American companies to various countries as "part of a broader push to fight climate change, boost global energy supply, and undercut the power of adversaries such as Russia that use their energy resources as a cudgel."[209][212]
Keystone XL pipeline [ edit ]
In 2010, Clinton stated that she was inclined to support the issuance by the State Department of a cross-border permit for the Northern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline.[213] Through June 2015, she delayed announcing her position on the pipeline, noting that as Secretary of State, she had set in motion the review process a number of years previously to evaluate the pipeline, and preferred to allow time for her successor John Kerry, and President Obama to make the decision. "I will refrain from commenting because I had a leading role in getting that process started," Clinton had said, "and I think that we have to let it run its course."[214] In September 2015, Clinton announced her opposition to Keystone.[215] The Keystone XL pipeline was officially rejected by Secretary of State Kerry and President Obama in November 2015.[216] PolitiFact found that Clinton had not flip-flopped on the issue.[217]
Dakota Access Pipeline [ edit ]
In a Los Angeles Times op-ed in September 2016, Democratic platform member Bill McKibben was critical of the disparity between the Democratic platform – which calls for recognition of the "right of all tribes to protect their lands, air, and waters" – and Clinton's silence on the issue.[218] In October 2016, young Native American activists met outside of Clinton headquarters in Brooklyn to protest her lack of a position on continued pipeline construction and to give her a letter. In an email to Democracy now!, campaign spokesperson Tyrone Gayle said that everyone should be heard on federal infrastructure agreements, a position that Bill McKibben characterized as "say[ing] literally nothing".[219]
Nuclear power [ edit ]
Clinton wants to renew permits for existing nuclear power plants that are safe to operate and increase public investment in advanced nuclear power.[220][221]
At a February 2007 campaign rally in Columbia, South Carolina, Clinton stated, "I think nuclear power has to be part of our energy solution... We get about 20% of our energy from nuclear power in our country... other countries like France get much much more, so we do have to look at it because it doesn't put greenhouse gas emissions into the air."[222] Subsequently, in a July 2007 Democratic debate, when asked about nuclear power as an alternative energy source, she said, "I'm agnostic about nuclear power. Until we figure out what we're going to do with the waste and the cost, it's very hard to see nuclear as a part of our future. But that's where American technology comes in. Let's figure out what we're going to do about the waste and the cost if we think nuclear should be a part of the solution."[223]
In Democratic primary debates in 2016, Clinton said that she supported greater oversight of the Indian Point nuclear power plant, which had experienced calls for closure following leaks and other problems.[224] Clinton said any action "needs to be done in a careful, thoughtful way" and that: "We also have to be realistic and say, 'You get 25% of the electricity in the greater New York City area from Indian Point.' I don't want middle-class taxpayers to see a huge rate increase."[224]
Environment [ edit ]
Evaluating all her votes throughout Clinton's Senate career, the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) has given Clinton a lifetime 82 percent pro-environment action rating.[225]
Clinton accepts the scientific consensus on climate change.[226] In a December 2014 speech to the LCV, Clinton said, "The science of climate change is unforgiving, no matter what the deniers may say. Sea levels are rising; ice caps are melting; storms, droughts and wildfires are wreaking havoc.... If we act decisively now we can still head off the most catastrophic consequences."[226] Clinton has called climate change "the most consequential, urgent, sweeping collection of challenges we face as a nation and a world."[227]
In 2007, Clinton co-sponsored the Climate Stewardship and Innovation Act (a greenhouse gas cap-and-trade initiative proposed by John McCain and Joseph Lieberman which aimed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 60 percent from 2000 levels by 2050) and the Global Warming Pollution Reduction Act (a more ambitious plan propose by Bernie Sanders and Barbara Boxer which sought to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent from 2000 levels by 2050).[228] Clinton's then-colleague Barack Obama also cosponsored both bills.[228]
Clinton is a supporter of the Clean Power Plan (proposed by the Obama administration's EPA), which would regulate carbon emissions from power plants.[226] In her speech to the LCV, Clinton stated that "the unprecedented action that President Obama has taken must be protected at all costs."[226]
Clinton has supported offshore oil drilling, and in 2006 voted for a bill to open new Gulf Coast areas to drilling.[226]
In a speech to the AFL-CIO, Clinton stated that she supports a green building fund and green-collar job training.[229]
Clinton supports the protection of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and would not allow drilling there. She co-sponsored the Roadless Area Conservation Act.[230]
Some environmentalists have expressed concern about the millions of dollars of contributions from major fossil fuel companies accepted by the Clinton Foundation.[226][227]
Clinton opposes issuance by the State Department of a cross-border permit for the Northern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline.[231]
Clinton was endorsed by the Sierra Club in her 2000 Senate campaign.[232]
Animal protection [ edit ]
The Humane Society gave Senator Clinton scores of 100 in the 108th and 109th Congresses, and an 83 in the 110th Congress on her actions on legislation that would protect animals.[233] The Humane Society endorsed Clinton in the 2016 Presidential Race, saying that she "has a clear, compelling record of support for animal protection".[233]
Immigration policy [ edit ]
The Clinton 2016 platform proposes to:[234][235][236][237]
"Fight for comprehensive immigration reform legislation with a path to full and equal citizenship."
"Defend President Obama's DACA and DAPA executive actions."
Promote the naturalization of the estimated nine million lawful permanent residents in the United States who are eligible to become U.S. citizens.
Support immigrant integration through the creation of a national Office of Immigrant Affairs, $15 million in new grant funding for integration services, and an increase in federal resources for adult English language education and citizenship education.
Conduct more humane and targeted immigration enforcement, by detaining and deporting those individuals who pose a violent threat to public safety; ending family detention and closing private immigrant detention centers.
Legal rights [ edit ]
Clinton's stance on illegal immigration has softened over time.[238] In a 2003 radio appearance, Senator Clinton said: "We've got to do several things and I am, you know, adamantly against illegal immigrants.... Certainly we've got to do more at our borders. And people have to stop employing illegal immigrants."[238] However, also during her time in the Senate, Clinton cosponsored a bipartisan amnesty bill for many illegal workers in the agricultural industry; backed a bill by Senator Edward M. Kennedy that would grant permanent resident status to some illegal immigrants who had been in the country for at least five years and worked for at least two years; and supported college tuition relief for young people who had entered the county illegally.[239] In April 2006, speaking to the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Clinton said her work for her New York constituents could fall afoul of the Border Protection, Anti-terrorism and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005, since some of her constituents are illegal immigrants. "I realize I would be a criminal, too. My staff would be criminal. We help people with all kinds of problems."[240] On March 8, 2006, she strongly criticized H.R. 4437, a bill passed by the House of Representatives in December 2005 and sent to the Senate, Clinton called the measure "a rebuke to what America stands for" and said it would be "an unworkable scheme to try to deport 11 million people, which you have to have a police state to try to do." She believed the solution to the illegal immigration problem was to make "a path to earned citizenship for those who are here, working hard, paying taxes, respecting the law, and willing to meet a high bar for becoming a citizen."[241][242]
In May and June 2007, Clinton cast preliminary votes (in terms of amendments and cloture) in support of the high-profile, compromise-based but very controversial, comprehensive immigration reform bill known as the Secure Borders, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Reform Act of 2007.[243] When the bill was again brought forward, she continued to vote in favor of cloture motions to consider it.[244] In October 2007, Clinton voted in favor of a small subset of the previous bill, the DREAM Act.[245]
In 2007, Clinton called for an increase in the number of H-1B visas.[246]
At a debate at Drexel University in Philadelphia on October 30, 2007, Clinton committed to support of New York Governor Eliot Spitzer's plan to give driver's licenses to illegal immigrants. Two minutes later, she recanted the position and blamed the Bush administration for not passing immigration reform.[247] The following day, she clarified her position in a prepared statement by coming out in support of Spitzer's bill.[248] Two weeks later, after Spitzer abandoned the plan due to widespread opposition, Clinton reversed her position on the issue once again, stating: "I support Governor Spitzer's decision today to withdraw his proposal. As president, I will not support driver's licenses for undocumented people and will press for comprehensive immigration reform that deals with all of the issues around illegal immigration, including border security and fixing our broken system."[249] On November 16, when asked again if she supported granting driver's licenses to undocumented immigrants, she gave a one-word answer: "No."[250]
In 2008, Clinton received a rating of "D-" from Americans for Better Immigration, an anti-immigration organization.[251]
In 2014, Clinton stated that children from Central America who entered the United States illegally "should be sent back as soon as it can be determined who responsible adults in their families are, because there are concerns whether all of them should be sent back. But I think all of them who can be should be reunited with their families."[252] She added: "We have to send a clear message. Just because your child gets across the border, that doesn't mean the child gets to stay. We don't want to send a message that is contrary to our laws or will encourage more children to make that dangerous journey."[238][252]
On May 5, 2015, Clinton stated that allowing illegal immigrants to have a path to citizenship "is at its heart a family issue."[253] Clinton also "sharply criticized Republican presidential candidates who favor granting legal status for some undocumented immigrants, but oppose citizenship," saying: "When they talk about 'legal status,' that is code for'second-class status.'"[253] Clinton said that she supported President Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which grants undocumented youth (those who entered the U.S. as children) the chance to apply for a stay of deportation.[253]
In 2015, Clinton said that she wanted the United States to accept 65,000 Syrian refugees, a significant increase to the 10,000 that the Obama administration pledged to accept.[254]
On July 14, 2016, Clinton expressed support for Obama's Deferred Action for Parental Accountability (DAPA) program, which would allow up to five million undocumented immigrants to gain deferral of deportation and authorization to legally work in the United States, and she promised to expand it.[255][256]
Border barrier [ edit ]
In September 2006, Clinton voted for the Secure Fence Act, authorizing the construction of 700 miles (1,100 km) of fencing along the United States–Mexico border.[257] In 2015, Clinton said, "I voted numerous times when I was a senator to spend money to build a barrier to try to prevent illegal immigrants from coming in. And I do think you have to control your borders".[258]
Foreign and defense policy [ edit ]
Africa [ edit ]
Libya [ edit ]
Clinton reportedly played a key role in persuading Obama to militarily intervene in Libya during the Libyan Civil War,[259] and deemed it worthwhile to intervene due to fears of further atrocities by Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi; calls to action from Britain, France, and the Arab League; and a belief that the Libyan opposition could govern in the aftermath of an intervention.[259] After the conclusion of the Libyan Civil War and the demise of Gaddafi, there remained factional violence in Libya until it erupted into renewed civil war in 2014. Terrorist groups have taken refuge in Libya, and large numbers of refugees have fled to neighboring countries and across the Mediterranean.[260] When asked to defend her record on Libya, Clinton called it "a classic case of a hard choice" and found that the overthrow of Gaddafi represented "smart power at its best."[260] When told of news reports of Qaddafi's death by an aide in between formal interviews, Clinton laughed and replied with "We came, we saw, he died".[261]
Clinton has said that history's judgment on the intervention, and her role in it, are not yet final. In November 2015, she said to the Council on Foreign Relations that "the Libyan people have voted twice in free and fair elections for the kind of leadership they want. They have not been able to figure out how to prevent the disruptions that they are confronted with because of internal divides and because of some of the external pressures that are coming from terrorist groups and others. So I think it's too soon to tell. And I think it's something that we have to be, you know, looking at very closely."[262]
Asia [ edit ]
East Asia [ edit ]
China [ edit ]
Clinton described the U.S.-China relationship in Hard Choices as one that does not fit "neatly into categories like friend or rival".[263] According to the Council on Foreign Relations, "Clinton was a central actor in the Obama administration's strategic 'pivot' to Asia" during her tenure as Secretary of State.[263] She has criticized China for its cyberattacks and industrial espionage against the U.S., and for behaving in threatening ways towards U.S. allies such as the Philippines.[264]
Clinton stated in 2010 that competing maritime claims in the South China Sea were a U.S. national interest: "The United States has a national interest in freedom of navigation, open access to Asia's maritime commons and respect for international law in the South China Sea."[265] The Chinese foreign minister responded, saying that "remarks were in effect an attack on China".[266][267]
Clinton has repeatedly criticized the Chinese government's human rights record.[268] In 2011, for example, she described the Chinese government's human rights record as "deplorable"[269] and its crackdown on dissent as "a fool's errand."[268] Clinton has criticized Chinese leader Xi Jinping's record on gender inequality, accusing the Chinese regime of "persecuting feminists," referring to the detention of five Chinese women activists (Wei Tingting and four others) who had campaigned against sexual harassment.[270][271] As First Lady, she criticized China's one-child policy.[263] She has been criticized by Chinese state media and "government-affiliated opinion writers," as well as by Chinese social media commentators, for her forceful human rights critiques and her opposition to China's activities in the South China Sea.[268] In 2008, she called on President Bush to boycott the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, citing political violence in Tibet and China's failure to pressure Sudan to halt the violence in Darfur.[263] As Secretary of State, Clinton warned against "new colonialism" in Africa, referring to China's involvement in Africa.[272][273] On a trip to Africa in 2011, Clinton said that China was not a role model for governance.[272] In a trip to Africa the following year, Clinton launched the trip by contrasting the U.S. commitment to "democracy and human rights" with rival powers' desire "to look the other way and keep the resources flowing"—a comment that was widely interpreted as a veiled attack on China.[274]
North Korea [ edit ]
Clinton says that she wants to increase sanctions on North Korea to curtail its nuclear weapons program, urge China to put pressure on North Korea to curtail its nuclear weapons program, and bolster the ballistic missile shield with allies Japan and South Korea.[275][276] She supported the Obama administration's pivot to Asia, in part because the United States needed a greater military presence in the region to counter the North Korean threat.[276]
South Asia [ edit ]
Afghanistan [ edit ]
Clinton supports President Barack Obama's decision to keep 5,500 U.S. troops in Afghanistan through the end of his term in January 2017.[277] She has said that the primary goal of these forces should be to support and train the Afghan National Army rather than to engage in "on-the-ground combat."[277] When asked in June 2014 about U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, Clinton said that it would depend upon "conditions on the ground and what was being asked for."[277]
As Secretary of State under Obama, Clinton advocated more hawkish policies than other senior administration officials; "Clinton's more activist philosophy" occasionally clashed with Obama's "instincts toward restraint."[278] Clinton supported the 2009 increase in U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan.[277] During the administration's Afghanistan War review in 2010, Clinton endorsed General Stanley McChrystal's recommendation for 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan, before endorsing a fallback proposal (ultimately accepted by Obama) for 30,000 troops.[278]
In January 2010, Clinton supported a $500 million plan developed by NATO, Britain, and the Afghan government to reintegrate low-level Taliban insurgents into Afghan society. The plan, to be funded by a "Peace and Reintegration Trust Fund,"[279] Clinton set three end conditions for any reintegration of insurgents: the renunciation of violence, a break with al-Qaeda, and a commitment to abide by Afghan law, including an Afghan Constitution guaranteeing "the rights of all individuals, especially women."[279][280] Mary Akrami of the Afghan Women Skills Development Center, were "initially dubious" of the plan, given the Taliban's record of threatening and attacking girls and women.[279] Marc Grossman (who served as U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan at the time) stated that "the moral ambiguity of talking to insurgents was clarified by our commitment to the principles Secretary Clinton had laid out before we started to talk."[280]
U.S.-Taliban talks lasted from mid-2011 to March 2012 and were ultimately unsuccessful.[280] In October 2011, Clinton said that a door for a negotiated peace as part of an inclusive political process was still open to the Taliban, and that the Taliban would face "unrelenting" attacks if they refused.[280] Clinton also said at the time that Pakistani cooperation was vital to Afghan security and urged the Pakistani government "to deny safe haven to extremists sheltering across the border."[281] Clinton stated in her memoir Hard Choices: "I acknowledged, as I had many times before, that opening the door to negotiations with the Taliban would be hard to swallow for many Americans after so many years before. Reintegrating low-level fighters was odious enough; negotiating directly with top commanders was something else entirely. But diplomacy would be easy if we had to talk only to our friends. That's not how peace is made."[282]
During internal U.S. government talks in 2011-12, Clinton was highly skeptical of the exchange of five Taliban detainees for U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. Clinton pushed for stricter conditions as part of any agreement and was "disinclined to trust the Taliban or the Haqqani network in Pakistan," which held Bergdahl prisoner.[283]
Southeast Asia [ edit ]
Burma [ edit ]
Clinton has described Burma's transition to democracy as "a high point of my time as Secretary."[35] While noting that obstacles toward full democracy remain, Clinton emphasized her role in nudging the nation toward political reform.[284] Clinton praised the landmark free elections held in Burma in 2015, calling them "an important, though imperfect, step forward in the country's long journey toward democracy" and saying that they represented "an affirmation of the indispensable role the United States can and should play in the world as a champion of peace and progress."[284]
West Asia [ edit ]
Iran [ edit ]
Clinton has described Iran as a long-term strategic challenge to the United States, its NATO allies, and Israel. In 2006, she called for sanctions to deter Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons[285] and refused to rule out a military strike, saying: "We cannot take any option off the table in sending a clear message to Iran that they will not be permitted to acquire nuclear weapons."[286] In 2007, she accused Iran of state-sponsored terrorism and using its surrogates to supply explosives that kill U.S. troops in Iraq. She criticized the Bush administration for refusing to talk to Iran about its nuclear program; meanwhile, Iran allegedly enhanced its nuclear-enrichment capabilities.[287] On September 26, 2007, Clinton voted for a symbolic non-binding amendment to label Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a "foreign terrorist organization," and to use diplomatic economic, intelligence economic, and U.S. military "instruments" to enforce U.S. policy against Iran and "its proxies" within Iraq.[288] Clinton insisted that she continued to support vigorous diplomacy with Iran, defending her vote by saying Iranian arms shipments to Iraq have slowed down |
desperately searched for an educational institution where I would receive more respect and protection—a place where fellow students would not demand blowjobs.
I missed my bedroom. I missed furniture. But in the end, I found something much better. I felt safe. Unfortunately, there are some things you cannot ever escape. Even now, all these years later, people see me as a character created by a producer. They see me as the daughter of an infamous reality show prostitution whore. They may not have called me garbage like they called my mother, but that's how they made me feel. They took away my name and my voice.
My name is Christine Staub, and I will no longer be the excess debris created by a produced, manipulated, pseudo-reality universe. I will never again be a character defined by unethical producers, and exploited by networks all over the world. I am no longer a child, powerless without a voice.
As for my mother, she has been silenced for far too long, and now it is time for her to open up about every dirty detail once and for all. I don't care what any TV viewer believes her to be, or how any media outlet defines her. I know who she is, and I admire her. Now I have a voice, and the time has come for my mother to reclaim her own—to reclaim the respect she deserves.Workers walk along a tunnel of a subway construction site in Changsha, Hunan province, China, October 11, 2015. REUTERS/Stringer/File Photo
BEIJING (Reuters) - Work has started on less than 60 percent of public-private partnership (PPP) projects promoted by China’s central finance ministry, while the rate for local government projects is even lower, government data through the end of September shows.
Low-participation rates among private firms have long been an issue with the high-profile investment program, with companies citing low rates of return and challenges in competing with state firms among reasons for staying on the sidelines.
Finance Ministry data released on Friday showed 58.18 percent of finance ministry projects had commenced, up from 48.4 percent in June. Meanwhile, only 26 percent of more than 10,000 PPP projects managed by local-governments had moved to the implementation phase as of the end of September.
In a commentary on Sunday, state media Xinhua said the program needs better policies and rules in order to overcome challenges in attracting a wider variety of participants.
With private sector fixed asset investment falling to record lows this year, the central government has pledged to support private firms with a level playing field and better access to financing, among other measures.
The government needs to eliminate contradictory policies, simplify rules, and improve cash flow prospects for investors, Xinhua said.BERLIN (Reuters) – Support for German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives has dipped below the 30 percent mark for the first time, a poll showed on Tuesday, with her Social Democrat (SPD) coalition partners gaining slightly a year before a federal election.
The INSA survey in Bild newspaper put Merkel’s conservatives down 0.5 percentage points at 29.5 percent, the lowest level measured for the bloc by that polling institute.
The SPD gained 1 percentage point but was still far behind at 22 percent and the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) was unchanged on 15 percent.
Merkel’s popularity waned after she launched her open-door migrant policy last year, although it has recovered somewhat in the last few months. She is widely expected to stand for a fourth term in September 2017.
The AfD has gained ground in regional elections this year and pollsters say many voters are disillusioned with Merkel’s right-left ruling coalition.
The SPD’s preferred partner is the Green Party, down 0.5 percentage points at 11 percent. The radical Left party, which some in the SPD view as a possible partner, was up by the same amount at 12 percent.
“Germany is looking at the most exciting election in its history,” INSA chief Hermann Binkert told Bild.
Other surveys show similar trends but INSA tends to show higher support for the AfD than other pollsters.This video is no longer available
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Video title:
Silent Hill 2: Theme Of Laura // Lord Bif Cover
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Hey everybody! This time, I got out of my flat for the filming! :D The theme covered here is "Theme of Laura", from Silent Hill 2, a game on PlayStation 2, and composed by Akira Yamaoka. It's a game I didn't had the chance to play when it came out, but I knew the song and I always liked it. It's also a request from my friend Dave, who plays the bass, and who really likes it as well. Hope you'll enjoy, please upvote and share if that is the case, thanks! Guest: NaRt, Dave Sheik Tipeee: https://www.tipeee.com/lord-bif-music Twitter: http://twitter.com/LordBifMusic Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Lord-Bif-Music/1496042640666811 #silenthill #silenthill2 #videogamecover #cover #guitarcover #videogames #jeuvideo #musiccover #musicvideo #videogameremix #remix #originalsoundtrack
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Nov. 10, 2016, 11:10 PM GMT / Updated Nov. 10, 2016, 11:10 PM GMT By Ken Dilanian, Josh Meyer, William M. Arkin and Robert Windrem
With many mainstream Republican defense experts having denounced his candidacy, President-elect Donald Trump is assembling a team of lesser known national security figures to staff his transition team, intelligence and military officials told NBC News.
A number of prominent Republican former security officials have made it clear through words or deeds they wouldn’t consider joining the administration. For example, Michael Hayden, who was CIA director under George W. Bush, has accused Trump of being a dupe of Russia, given his advocacy of views espoused by Vladimir Putin.
But others are said to be mulling a move to Team Trump, including Stephen Hadley, a former Bush national security adviser. Hadley told NBC News he is "not participating in the transition at this point."
Former GOP Rep. Mike Rogers of Michigan, who chaired the House Intelligence Committee until he retired last year, is playing a key role in the transition after quietly backing Trump during the latter stages of the campaign. His senior aide and former House chief of staff, Andy Keiser, is also involved, a Trump advisor told NBC News.
Former GOP Rep. Mike Rogers of Michigan is a top figure on the Trump transition team. Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images, file
Rep. Michael McCaul (R.-Texas), who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, is under consideration to be homeland security secretary, a campaign official and a source close to McCaul told NBC News.
One list obtained by NBC News includes two dozen people of varying backgrounds to be vetted for security clearances, according to one U.S. military intelligence official and one Trump transition team member. Subjects to be discussed by various members of the group include the nation’s nuclear war plans and the classified details of Russia’s role in the election.
That list includes four current or former Republican members of Congress — Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, Rep. Duncan Hunter of California, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and former Congressman Robert Smith Walker of Pennsylvania.
It includes two retired generals — former Defense Intelligence Agency chief Mike Flynn, who publicly campaigned for Trump, and Ret. Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, former vice president of strategic initiatives at Cubic Corporation, a defense and transportation firm.
Also on the list is former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, a blunt-talking, controversial figure.
Two other polarizing names on the list are Clare Lopez a former CIA officer who has said the Muslim Brotherhood has "infiltrated" the Obama administration; and Walid Phares, is a Lebanese born Maronite Christian who speaks frequently about radical Islam.
A Trump adviser said Lopez, who specialized in Russia during her CIA career, has been "one of the intellectual thought leaders about why we have to fight back against radical Islam," and Phares has briefed Trump and is trusted by him.
Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) speaks during a news conference held by House Republicans on "Protecting America's Veterans" at the U.S. Capitol on May 29, 2014. Win McNamee / Getty Images file
"This is a very eclectic group of folks," said Admiral James Stavridis, former NATO commander and dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts University. "Collectively they’re going to come at international affairs with a bias towards hard power" — meaning military force — "as opposed to soft power" — meaning diplomacy and economic influence.
A Trump national security aide said he could not confirm the list, but told NBC News that revamping policies toward Iran and Russia are at the top of Trump’s security agenda.
Pressuring Iran to stop enriching uranium and renegotiating the broader Iran deal is a top priority, he said, "because it was such a horrible deal….Clearly he wants to renegotiate the deal."
As for Russia, the adviser said Trump will seek to immediately establish "better relationships with Russia across the board and not have so much hostility. We need to cooperate on countering radical Islam and combating all of these Sunni jihadist terrorist groups" like Islamic State and al Qaeda.
Asked if he was concerned that Trump would be manipulated by Putin, the advisor said, "I don’t think so. Trump is a good negotiator."
For any new president, said Stavridis, national security "has to be job one. … Instantly, on Jan. 20 he will be tested. He’ll be tested by the Russians in the cyber world. He’ll be tested by the Chinese in the South China Sea. He’ll be tested by the Iranians in the Arabian Gulf. We will see test after test and they will come fast and furious in the new year."Liam Fox will quit his job as trade secretary "in a huff" within the next year and a half, former deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has said.
The Liberal Democrat MP said he would put a "fair amount of money" on Mr Fox walking out of the ministry he was handed by Theresa May in order to join his colleagues on the Conservative back benches.
Mr Clegg said the Conservative MP "doesn't have a job" and has not yet realised that he has very little impact over the Brexit negotiations.
Speaking to journalists in Westminster Mr Clegg said: "I do feel sorry for Liam in particular. I'm not a betting man, but if I was I would put a fair amount of money that Liam Fox will resign in a huff within the next 18 months.
"He doesn't have a job and he doesn't appear to have realised that yet.Dozens of Liberal MPs and at least one cabinet minister are pushing Finance Minister Bill Morneau to put money aside in next year's budget for a passenger-redress system to protect Canadian travellers, including children, whose names closely match those on the country's no-fly list.
Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen is one of 50 Liberals MPs – accounting for more than 25 per cent of the 180-member party caucus – who are asking Mr. Morneau to fund the establishment of an independent no-fly-list computer system to allow for smooth travel for law-abiding Canadian airline passengers and their children.
"The error in the Passenger Protect Program results in certain Canadian children being subject to security problems at airports because the affected person's name is the same as an individual on Canada's no-fly list," Mr. Hussen wrote in a letter to Mr. Morneau, obtained by The Globe and Mail. "I believe this is an important problem to address in budget 2018 and support providing the necessary funding to make this redress program a reality."
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Last year, the Public Safety Ministry proposed $78-million annually to set up a U.S.-style standalone no-fly-list database computer system but the measure was killed by Mr. Morneau's department.
Liberal MP Wayne Easter, who has been a vocal critic of Mr. Morneau's small-business tax changes, said the Finance Minister needs to find the money to help families who routinely face travel delays from being caught by the no-fly list.
"The reason the letters are going to the Minister of Finance is because it really is a money issue in terms of setting up the technology," he told The Globe on Tuesday. "It makes no sense to me that a six-year-old of a Canadian parent can't get on a plane."
A properly funded redress system would allow passengers whose names closely match those on the no-fly list to apply for a unique identification number. They can use the number at the time of a ticket purchase to clear their name in advance and prevent flight delays.
Over the past several years, Ottawa has been hit by a spate of complaints from airline passengers, including the parents of young children who were unable to board flights because their names mysteriously match those of suspected terrorists on the no-fly list.
Unlike the United States's standalone system, Canada's current no-fly-list database is designed to piggyback on to airline computers, making it more problematic to deal with misunderstandings over identity.
Heather Harder, who is part of a parent-led redress campaign that uses the hashtag #NoFlyListKids, said her 3 1/2-year-old son Sebastien Khan has been repeatedly targeted when the family travels by air.
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"We purchase the ticket. We put in all the information that they ask for including birthday. We even have put passport numbers," she said. "We are denied checking in ahead of time so we have to show up early to the airport where we undergo additional screening and then we are able to take the flight. This happens for every flight for us. We have never flown outside of Canada because we are afraid to."
Ms. Harder's group has 25 signed letters from Liberal MPs to Mr. Morneau and e-mail commitments from 25 other Liberal MPs to write the minister, seeking funding for a Canadian no-fly list computer system that would be administered by Public Safety, Transport Canada and Canada Border Services Agency.
"It's a global world and we have to be able to say we are as good as other countries," said Liberal MP Kate Young, who already sent her letter to the minister.
Brampton-East Liberal MP Raj Grewal, who represents one of the most diverse ridings in the country, said it's upsetting to hear from constituents whose children have been pulled aside every time they go to the airport.
"When certain segments of our society, minorities, are being affected by something that the majority of Canadians take for granted like going to the airport and getting on the plane and not having to be pulled aside or denied access, it is so frustrating for them," Mr. Raj said.
Mr. Morneau's office did not respond to a request from The Globe for comment on whether he would provide the funding in budget 2018.
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Dan Brien, a spokesman for Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale, said the government is committed to improving the reliability of the no-fly system, which is intended to keep people with terrorist ties from getting on planes.
"We appreciate the frustration of travellers whose names are wrongly flagged by air-travel security lists and want to reassure them that work on long-term improvements to the system continues," Mr. Brien said in an e-mail. "However, it will take time to make regulatory and database changes to support a redress system."
In the meantime, Mr. Brien said the government has set up a new federal office to deal with false name matches on the Canadian no-fly list. The Passenger Protect Inquiries Act provides an appeal process and works closely with the United States to help sort out identity errors, he said.
However, the families of those affected say a formal system is needed because their children are still on the no-fly list even after applying for an appeal with the office.
"The system is broken and there needs to be a redress so that people whose names are on the list can apply to get off the list if they are not actually that person of interest," Ms. Harder said.
The government will not say how many Canadians are on the no-fly list despite a request from the Office of the Information Commissioner.For the third straight year, the median income of the typical American family fell in 2010. Adjusted for inflation, it is back where it was in 1996, the longest period of zero growth since the Depression.
And the poverty rate has inched up to 15.1 percent.
Both figures, however, should be put in perspective.
For example, a family can be classified as poor and own a car, a flat-screen TV and a computer, and have a washer-dryer and a garbage disposal.
Folks below the poverty line have their kids educated free in Head Start, for 13 years in public schools, then get Pell grants for college. They get free food stamps and health care through Medicaid. They get subsidized housing and earned income tax credits, are eligible for all other safety-net programs, and can earn $23,300 in pretax income and pay no income taxes.
Poverty in 21st century America is not poverty in the Paris of "Les Miserables" or the London of Oliver Twist or the Dust Bowl of Tom Joad.
The 15-year stagnation in the median income of the American family, however—a vanishing of the American Dream that one's children will know a better life—is a more serious matter.
For there are causes of the stunted growth in the standard of living of the American family that neither party is willing to address, if either of them even recognizes those causes.
First is the immersion of the U.S. economy in a global economy. This plunged U.S. workers into direct competition with workers in Asia and Latin America willing to do the same jobs for far less, in factories where regulations are far lighter.
U.S. corporate executives leapt at the opportunity to close plants here and relocate abroad. This explains the 50,000 factories that disappeared in the Bush decade and the 5.5 million manufacturing jobs that vanished.
You cannot have a rising standard of living when your highest-paid production jobs are being exported overseas.
Now, to buy the goods of the foreign factories that used to be here, we are shoveling out more and more of America's wealth. Our national bill for imported goods and services is $2.5 trillion a year. The U.S. trade deficit is back up to between $550 billion and $600 billion a year.
If President Obama wishes to know why his $800 billion stimulus bill didn't have the kick he expected, he should look at the "seepage" problem.
How do you stimulate the U.S. economy when the workers you retain or rehire with your stimulus billions head for Walmarts on Saturday to buy goods made in Japan, Korea and China?
Our $6 trillion in trade deficits in the Bush decade stimulated economies all over the world, just not our own. Indeed, the most successful economies of the last decade were China and Germany. Not coincidentally, they were the world's two largest exporting countries.
There are time-honored ways that nations have turned around such situations. What prevents us from adopting them? An ignorance of our own history, the immense investment of our transnational corporations in the new global arrangement, and the opposition of a World Trade Organization to which we have surrendered our national sovereignty.
A second reason why the median income of American families is back to 1996 levels and sinking is mass immigration, legal and illegal.
According to analyst Ed Rubenstein of VDARE.com, the United States, despite an unemployment rate above 9 percent, imports 100,000 immigrant workers every single month. Numbers USA contends that 125,000 foreign workers are brought in every month.[VDARE.com note: See National Data | August Jobs’ Labor Day Message: Immigration Moratorium Now!]
Thus, well over a million workers are added annually to our labor force when 14 million Americans are looking for work.
Why are we doing this?
Is it xenophobic to say our own citizens should come first, that the importation of foreign workers must halt until our own unemployed have found jobs?
A huge share of our immigrant population is Hispanic. And Rubenstein finds that for every 100 Hispanics employed in the United States in year 2001, 126 are employed today. But for every 100 non-Hispanics employed in 2001, only 98 are working today.
What prevents our politicians from putting Americans first, deporting illegal aliens and suspending the importation of foreign labor until our own workers are back on the job?
Politics is one reason. Democrats see illegal aliens and their children as future Democratic voters. Republicans are terrified of being called racists and alienating the ethnic lobbies.
Crass commercial interest is another reason.
U.S. companies see immigrants, legal or illegal, as an endless source of cheap labor to keep wage costs down. And they are right.
But who is looking out for the national interest, for all of the members of the American family, especially the unemployed?
If the median income of the American family is falling, already back to where it was in Bill Clinton's first term, Middle America is one of the big losers in the global economy. And who are the big winners?
Patrick J. Buchanan needs no introduction to VDARE.COM readers; his book State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America, can be ordered from Amazon.com. His most recent published book is Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World, reviewed here by Paul Craig Roberts. His new book Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025? will be be released on October 18, 2011, but you can pre-order it on Amazon now!After Federalist No. 10
Fall 2017
Federalist No. 10 may be the most debated of all the Federalist Papers, and its winding odyssey through American historiography has indelibly shaped interpretations of it. The essay was not regarded as one of the important numbers of the Federalist Papers until Charles Beard made it the central exhibit in his 1913 indictment of the framers for possessive individualism, setting off a century-long conservative defense of its author, James Madison, against the progressive historian's lèse-majesté. But there was a significant sense in which Beard's premise about the essay, if not his conclusion from it, was correct: Madison was concerned with the integrity of property and how majorities could be habituated to respect it, and the extended-republic theory of Federalist No. 10 — which appears in the great framer's correspondence repeatedly leading up to the Philadelphia Convention and after it — was most certainly central to his constitutional theory. Where Beard erred was in his reflexive equation of property rights with naked greed.
Even more broadly than property rights, Federalist No. 10 pertains to the orientation of personal appetites toward public ends, which include both the common good and private rights. The essay recognizes that these appetites cannot be conquered, but they can be conditioned. Madison's solution to the problem of faction — a solution he confines to the four corners of majority rule — is to place majorities in circumstances that encourage deliberation and thus defuse passion. Significantly, this solution does not depend on any specific constitutional mechanism: When he announces at the end of the essay that he has "remed[ied]" the "disease" of faction, Madison has not mentioned a single facet of the proposed Constitution — neither the judiciary nor bicameralism nor the president's veto. Any republic deployed across an extended territory should be relatively free of faction, at least in the aggregate.
Yet Madison's solution depends on certain assumptions. Federalist No. 10 assumes politics will occur at a leisurely pace. The regime Madison foresees is relatively passive, not an active manipulator of economic arrangements. And he is able to take for granted a reasonably broad consensus as to the existence if not the content of the public good.
These assumptions are now collapsing under the weight of positive government and the velocity of our political life. Given the centrality of Federalist No. 10 to the American constitutional canon, this collapse demands a reckoning. If a pillar of our order is crumbling, something must replace it. The alternative to outsized appetites is self-control; the political mechanisms that channel passions are set against the moral mechanisms that restrain them. If the assumptions of Federalist No. 10 no longer obtain, it seems necessary to supply the defect with something on which Madison was loath to rely. That challenge may call for a greater emphasis on the sources of civic virtue and on the means of sustaining it.
MADISON'S ASSUMPTIONS
The possibility that virtue might be coded into the essay is evident at its most elemental level: Federalist No. 10's definition of a faction as a group "united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community." As George Carey noted, this definition hinges on an objective understanding of the public good; one cannot comprehend Madison from the perspective of contemporary relativism.
From the outset, then, Federalist No. 10 makes a demand — a thin one, thus far, but still a demand — in the coin of virtue: Its reader must be committed to a normative concept of the good and occupy a polity in which it is possible for such a concept to be broadly shared. This concept is thin insofar as the demand to this point does not speak to the content of that good, only to its objective existence. As Carey has written, "[T]hose who do not believe in an objective moral order cannot 'enter' Madison's system." Thus, belief in such an order, even amid disputes as to its content, constitutes a first unstated assumption of Federalist No. 10.
Having thus defined factions, the essay proceeds to the crisply binary mode of analysis for which it is famous. Madison presents a series of choices, repeatedly eliminating one, then bifurcating the other in turn, and eliminating again until he arrives at his solution. One can remove the causes of factions or control their effects. The causes cannot be removed because the propensity to disagree is "sown in the nature of man," arising particularly from the fact that man is "fallible" and his "opinions and his passions...have a reciprocal influence on each other." Precisely because this influence arises from the link between "reason" and "self-love," the latter of which distorts the former, property accounts for "the most common and durable source of factions," the key being its durability.
Whereas David Hume's analysis of parties said that those based on self-interest were the most excusable while those based on passions were the most dangerous, Madison warns of the reverse. Those rooted in emotion — including "an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power" — are the least worrisome precisely because they are based on passions, which Madison believes to be transient. By contrast, factions based on meaningful skin in the game — that is, property — endure. A second assumption of Federalist No. 10 is consequently that irrational passions, which Madison understands to be those not based on interest, are inherently unsustainable and thus are naturally fleeting. The demagogic leader whose sole or even primary appeal is rooted in personality rather than some tangible benefit he delivers to the people will be unable to sustain his popularity.
Narrowing his options for solving the problem of faction, Madison next distinguishes between majority and minority groups, brushing the latter off in two sparse sentences.
If a faction consists of less than a majority, relief is supplied by the republican principle, which enables the majority to defeat its sinister views, by regular vote. It may clog the administration, it may convulse the society; but it will be unable to execute and mask its violence under the forms of the Constitution.
From this dismissal, we can mine the assumption that the government Madison anticipates will not be actively involved in distributing small economic advantages to vocal minorities (be they interest groups or industries). The reason is that the "republican principle" cannot operate to control minority groups in a regime that traffics in such subsidies. As Madison has just explained it, this principle assumes direct conflict between majorities and minorities that is susceptible to ultimately irresistible majoritarian influence.
The distribution of small economic advantages by a positive state dissolves that assumption by making it less expensive for each taxpayer to finance his minimal share of a given subsidy than it would be to organize the majority to resist it. An extensive territory actively undermines the incentive for conflict by further concentrating benefits and diffusing costs. Madison, of course, did not know Mancur Olson, who recognized that majorities would not form to resist subsidies under those conditions. It is Madison's emphasis on the "great desideratum" of a government that would be impartial between competing interests that supplies the best evidence for his assumption that the regime will not involve itself in economic minutiae.
Having dismissed minority factions, Madison turns his attention to abusive majorities. He aims, first, to impede their formation with the size of the republic: Because there will be so many people and interests in an extended republic, as Federalist No. 51's restatement of the thesis explains, "a coalition of a majority of the whole society could seldom take place upon any other principles than those of justice and the general good." In other words, if a group is impelled by ill motives, the intrinsic conditions of an extended republic will make it difficult for it to become a majority.
If such a majority should exist, it will be inhibited by the difficulty of communicating across a large territory — one postulate here being the diffusion of passions with time — and by the need to communicate its views through representatives, a higher quality of whom will be drawn from a larger population and who, operating at a proper constitutional distance from the immediate influence of the populace, will then "refine and enlarge the public views." A third assumption, then, is that both geographic and constitutional distance will permit the passions to dissipate before their translation into policy.
Finally, Madison cautions Jefferson in correspondence about a month before Federalist No. 10's publication that the extended-republic theory "can only hold within a sphere of a mean extent. As in too small a sphere oppressive combinations may be too easily formed agst. the weaker party; so in too extensive a one, a defensive concert may be rendered too difficult against the oppression of those entrusted with the administration." While this warning about a "mean extent" is not specified in the essay itself, it is an auxiliary of the "republican principle" that we can identify as another latent assumption of Federalist No. 10.
To recapitulate, the assumptions are as follows: The people will share a belief in the existence of an objective moral order, even if they dispute its content; passions, especially when they pertain to attachments or aversions to political leaders, will be unsustainable; government will not dictate the distribution of small economic advantages; geographic and constitutional distance will operate to dissipate passions; and, finally, the territory will not be so large that public opinion cannot form.
Like dominos, these assumptions have toppled, one against the other. It would not be too much to observe that none of them stands in a form that would be recognizable to Madison today.
ASSUMPTIONS UNDONE
It is almost universally acknowledged that moral relativism is ascendant in contemporary American society. It is also ascendant in readings of Federalist No. 10. In his Preface to Democratic Theory, Robert Dahl apparently thought he was doing Madison a genuine service by substituting social-scientific definitions for Madisonian terms where it seemed obvious that the founder's would not do. The result mauled Madison's thought. Having circumvented Madison's system by assessing it from the perspective of Weberian scientism — "[a]s to the 'permanent and aggregate interests of the community,'" Dahl wrote, "so far as I am aware no political group has ever admitted to being hostile to these" — he was surprised to find it wanting.
But inside the Madisonian system, of course, one need not confess to such hostility any more than a criminal must confess to his crime to be guilty. Guilt is an objective condition; so is opposition to the public good. There will always be dispute as to the public good's content, but the rejection of it as an ontological category coarsens public conversation, turning all controversies into questions of power and advantage alone.
There are some who read Federalist No. 10 in precisely this way: as a proto-pluralist brief that forecasts acquisitive interest groups pursuing their appetites and the public good arising from the clashes between them. But Madison does not say this. On his account, factions are inherently, definitionally bad and ought to be inhibited. The operation of the republican principle assumes that a public good exists and that a majority, placed in conditions favorable to deliberation, will be able to discover a reasonable approximation of it.
That is linked with Madison's second assumption, which is that passions will be inherently fleeting, especially impassioned attachments to leaders that defy either evidence about them or one's own self-interest. In Madison's psychology, passion is best understood as a force that intervenes between the individual and his perception of the evidence reason presents to the mind. It distorts, scrambling the signal and preventing its reception. It is sudden and intense, but its force is ephemeral.
It would not be surprising on Madison's analysis if voters were briefly enthralled to a political leader such that they were impervious to reasoned argument about him, especially with respect to his effect on their own interest. It is also possible, of course, that Madison's psychology is simply wrong as an empirical matter, but within the confines of his system, the test of his thesis would be whether demagogic leaders today are able to sustain impassioned loyalty.
Clearly there is ample room for disagreement as to who precisely these leaders might be, but the technology of communication — from Twitter to email to the 24/7 information environment — provides tools for constantly stoking passions while leaving little space for them to cool. One has hardly processed one tweet before the next arrives. President Trump in particular has proved to be an artist at timing these to sustain the enthusiasm of his movement each time it appears in danger of waning. Each is greeted almost immediately with thousands if not tens of thousands of retweets, and the more emotional — in Madisonian terms, impassioned — the appeal, the stronger the response.
Third, Madison assumed the regime would not involve itself in the distribution of small economic advantages. Yet in post-New Deal America, this assumption about a relatively uncomplicated regime in which majorities and minorities do transparent combat also collapses. Despite the occasional gnashing of rhetorical teeth, there are few assumptions more broadly accepted in the actual practice of contemporary politics than that it is legitimate and even imperative for the national government to concern itself with small economic allocations. There are, of course, important disputes as to the mechanism of delivery (for example, the tax code or appropriations). The point is that the accumulated mass of these advantages changes the calculus on which Madison relied in flatly assuming that, under the "republican principle," minority factions would lose head-to-head battles with majorities. Under conditions of positive government, it is far likelier that this combat never occurs because, as students of Olson know, majorities have a positive disincentive to show for the fight.
The most casual glimpse at the absurdity of the federal tax code illustrates the point. Any one of its tens of thousands of pages is apt to contain a targeted tax break that aspires to incentivize, discourage, or otherwise manipulate economic behavior. Each provision individually is a single Lilliputian's string applied to Gulliver: hardly worth the cost of resistance. The problem is that the taxpayers do not comprise a single body with a single will. If they did, they could decide together to resist the aggregate aggression of Lilliput. The question instead, Olson teaches, is whether each of them individually bears enough cost for each individual string to justify the cost to each of cutting it. The answer is that they do not: The cost of a micromanagerial tax subsidy spread over the entire population is unlikely to incur complaints from individual taxpayers, not because they regard it as just but rather because resisting it costs more than paying their fractional share of its price.
Fourth, Madison had assumed that geographic and constitutional distance would also operate to dissipate passions. Yet, as Yuval Levin predicted 15 years ago in The Public Interest, the same technological dynamics that help to sustain passionate attachments to leaders have also consumed the constitutional distance between statesmen and constituents. The webpages of members of Congress now, as a matter of course, refer to them by their first names. Members tweet with their own thumbs (as does the president). They are expected to respond to the public's views immediately, both in the literal sense that the public expects no intermediation — no refining and enlarging of their views, only their unmediated translation into policy — and in the temporal sense that political figures are expected to do so without delay.
It is little surprise, then, that political campaigns, especially at the national level, are increasingly personality-driven. A slogan like "Feel the Bern" encapsulates the phenomenon — the Bernie Sanders partisan both "feels" his loyalty and gives it to "the Bern," that is, personally. To be sure, there are limits to the conclusions one can draw from slogans: "Feel the Bern" is simply catchier than "Contemplate Democratic Socialism." Still, the evidence is considerable that the former precedes the latter, not the other way around. In other words, partisan affiliation is not based on conclusions drawn from objective information, but rather, affiliations inherited from a variety of sources — childhood, neighborhood, occupation, identity, and so forth — drive the conclusions.
For Madison, conclusions drawn from passionate attachments are the calling card of faction. The idea that we should attach ourselves to political figures and cling to those attachments against what our reason tells us or, failing that, what our interests dictate is foreign to his psychological assumptions about the relationship between reason and passion. Again, the point is not that Madison's psychology is impeccable. Nor is it certain that we should want feeling altogether banished from the political realm. The question, rather, is whether the foundational assumptions of Federalist No. 10 can withstand the pressure of contemporary communications technology. There is reason to believe they cannot.
These same technological dynamics have accelerated the speed of communication past the measured pace that Madison thought necessary for deliberation. This measured pace is latent in his claim that communicating factious schemes will be more difficult over a large territory. The more than 30 published volumes of Madison's papers, much of it correspondence, attest to the fact that it |
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You'll notice it looks similar to how we normalized innovators.
CREATE TABLE dependencies ( id INTEGER SERIAL, object_id TEXT, sub_dependency_id TEXT, CONSTRAINT dependencies_dupes UNIQUE ( object_id, sub_dependency_id ) ); CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION objects_to_dependencies () RETURNS TRIGGER AS $$ DECLARE nr dependencies % ROWTYPE ; BEGIN FOR object_cte IN SELECT jsonb_array_elements_text ( NEW. data -> 'dependencies' ) AS sub_dependency_id, NEW. data ->> 'id' AS object_id LOOP INSERT INTO depenedencies ( object_id, sub_dependency_id ) ( SELECT object_cte. * ) ON CONFLICT ON CONSTRAINT dependencies_dupes DO NOTHING ; END LOOP ; RETURN NEW ; END ; $$ LANGUAGE plpgsql ; CREATE TRIGGER trigger_patents_to_innovators AFTER INSERT OR UPDATE ON patents FOR EACH ROW EXECUTE PROCEDURE patents_to_innovators ();
Now that all of the data is normalized (at least the next time I sync, which I can do manually with an empty update), I can go reverse through the tree to find which objects use another object somewhere in their dependency tree.
WITH RECURSIVE dtree ( object_id, data, sub_dependency_id ) AS ( SELECT dependencies. object_id, objects. data, dependencies. sub_depedency_id FROM dependencies JOIN objects ON object. id = dependencies. object_id WHERE dependencies. sub_dependency_id ='some_id' UNION ALL SELECT objects. object_id, objects. data, dependencies. sub_dependency_id as dependency FROM dependencies JOIN dtree parent ON parent. object_id = dependencies. sub_dependency_id JOIN object ON object. object_id = dependencies. object_id ) SELECT object_id, data FROM dependencies ;
This runs quite a bit faster than having to expand out the dependency tree of every object and check for the existence of the object I'm searching for as a dependency.
Bonus Example
Since we're using Postgresql as a document-store and relational database hybrid, we can do cool things, like joining two documents to each other. This was rather difficult in Postgresql 9.4, as there wasn't a way to modify a JSON(B) value in place. Now we can add fields and remove fields with the operators added in 9.5.
CREATE TABLE authors ( id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, data JSONB ); CREATE TABLE books ( id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, data JSONB, author_id INTEGER REFERENCES authors ( id )); INSERT INTO authors ( id, data ) VALUES ( 1, '{"first_name": "Mike", "last_name": "Speegle", "dob": "1979-02-03"}' :: JSONB ), ( 2, '{"first_name": "Patrick", "last_name": "Rothfuss", "dob": "1973-06-06"}' :: JSONB ); INSERT INTO books ( id, author_id, data ) VALUES ( 1, 2, '{"title": "The Name of the Wind", "ISBN": "978-0-7564-0407-9"}' :: JSONB ), ( 2, 2, '{"title": "Wise Man''s Fear", "ISBN": "978-0-7564-0473-4"}' :: JSONB ), ( 3, 1, '{"title": "Something Greater Than Artifice", "ISBN": "978-0-692-26050-0"}' :: JSONB ), ( 4, 1, '{"title": "Pen and Platen: Short Stories Written the Long Way", "ISBN": "978-0615574165"}' :: JSONB ), ( 5, 2, '{"title": "A Slow Regard of Silent Things", "ISBN": "978-0-7564-1043-8"}' :: JSONB ); WITH author_books_cte AS ( SELECT authors. data AS author_data, json_agg ( books. data ) as books_data FROM authors LEFT JOIN books ON books. author_id = authors. id GROUP BY authors. id ) SELECT jsonb_pretty ( author_data || jsonb_build_object ( 'books', books_data )) AS authors FROM author_books_cte ;
authors --------------------------------------------------------------------- { "dob": "1979-02-03", "books": [ { "ISBN": "978-0-692-26050-0", "title": "Something Greater Than Artifice" }, { "ISBN": "978-0615574165", "title": "Pen and Platen: Short Stories Written the Long Way" } ], "last_name": "Speegle", "first_name": "Mike" } { "dob": "1973-06-06", "books": [ { "ISBN": "978-0-7564-0407-9", "title": "The Name of the Wind" }, { "ISBN": "978-0-7564-0473-4", "title": "Wise Man's Fear" }, { "ISBN": "978-0-7564-1043-8", "title": "A Slow Regard of Silent Things" } ], "last_name": "Rothfuss", "first_name": "Patrick" }
By joining and aggregating the data with a JOIN in a CTE and then building the joined object with a CONCAT operator (new in 9.5), I can place the book data inside the authors data.
If you have any thoughts, questions, or suggestions on improving these queries, please Tweet me @fritzy. If you'd like some help working with your data in this way, please contact us. Maybe it's time for you to migrate away from MongoDB?The Crossover is a series of articles exploring themes common to both video and tabletop game design, and examining how each world can learn from the other.
Goals might be thought of as an obvious part of games: necessary, but rarely where the excitement and innovation lie in a design. The repetition found in the goals of many games – complete the level, get the most victory points, survive a certain amount of time, kill the boss – underlines the reality that designing meaningful and specific goals that best suit a game is often an afterthought in the game design process.
Unfortunately this means that designers are overlooking a vital part of their design space when they choose to not explore all the possibilities for different types of goals in their games. Goals have the power to not only drive player behaviour, but can also set the tone of a game, vary the amount of freedom players feel while playing, and determine the overall accessibility of a game. In this article I want to explore the different types of goals that can be used in games, before examining their impact on gameplay, and concluding with some interesting examples of goal design in both tabletop and video games.
To better understand the types of goals in games, and how these relate to the actual experience of playing, I think it is helpful to try and distinguish between intrinsic and extrinsic goals.
Intrinsic goals – goals that are fundamentally tied to the actions a player takes in a game.
Extrinsic goals – goals that don’t arise naturally from the play experience, but rather are introduced to the player as directives they should follow.
This is one of many divisions you could make in characterising goals, but I believe it can be a useful lens through which to see how goals function in different games, and what types of goals you might need in different situations.
Intrinsic goals are very effective in reinforcing the central game mechanics and actions available to a player, rewarding them for engaging with the game system as it is presented. For example, in the Elder Scrolls series of games, players have a character which will earn experience by using different skills and actions in the game’s fantasy world. If my warrior uses his axe to kill a lot of enemies, then I will soon see the results of this with an improved one-handed combat skill, and I will be on my way to a more powerful character. In Ticket to Ride, a tabletop game where players build train routes in order to connect different cities and satisfy specific routes, if I build a route between any two cities, I gain points. In both cases, my achievement is not the result of a quest dialogue telling me to take that specific action; rather through engaging in the central mechanics of the game – fighting in Skyrim and making connections in Ticket to Ride – I am rewarded.
Extrinsic goals however are much better at encouraging a specific behaviour from players, even if this is not obvious or naturally arising from the game mechanics. Going back to the previous examples, you can receive quests in the Elder Scrolls games which might have you travelling to a specific location to kill a specific character. In this case, there was nothing in the fundamental gameplay that prompted the player to act in this way – they probably have never heard of either the place nor the person featured in the quest, and are encouraged to let the game lead them through the experience. In Ticket to Ride, each player begins the game with a certain number of Tickets – cards with 2 locations that if connected by your train routes by the end of the game will score bonus points – which encourage players to pursue certain local connections over others in order to fulfil these longer journeys.
Characteristics of Intrinsic and Extrinsic goals
Understanding the different characteristics of these two different types of goals is useful in deciding what type is best for a game. While there are many different ways in which these types can be described, I think there are three main dichotomies that differentiate them:
General vs Focused (Specificity)
Long-term vs Short-term (Prevalence)
Player-controlled vs Game-controlled (Agency)
Specificity
Intrinsic goals generally apply to large portions of a game and the majority of actions you will take in them. For example, in Skyrim (the latest entry in the Elder Scrolls series) pretty much everything you do in the game leads you towards the goal of gaining experience and improving your character (in Morrowind, an earlier Elder Scrolls game, even the simple act of running was rewarded with an increased Athletics skill). In tabletop games, gaining victory points is usually the basic intrinsic goal, and so-called ‘point salad’ games where there are many different actions within the game that reward you with points (so much so that it can feel like doing anything gets you points) are clear examples of games that are focussed on intrinsic goals. In both cases, players are encouraged to engage with whatever part of the game they want, confident that any action they take is going to lead them towards the goal of the game.
Compare this to extrinsic goals, as exemplified by quests and missions. These are normally very specific, and ask players to perform specific actions, in a specific order, in a specific location. They are still goals: they still move the player towards some reward that sits within the overall architecture of the game, but they often force a player to ignore other parts of the game that don’t feature in the quest: players must prioritise what they do in the game in order to reach their goal. Further to this, board games are well known for giving different starting missions to players, in part to simplify the early gaming experience by encouraging players to engage with only certain parts of the design and ignore the rest. This concept is stretched to its limits in games with strong starting asymmetry, such as the individual character power that a player starts the game with in the Voyages of Marco Polo, which has the effect of leading a player to focus on only certain parts of a game for its entire duration. In the game each player rolls a certain number of dice which they then use for their actions in each round. The value rolled on each die is important, and higher values result in improved benefits when placed in the various action spaces. However, one character’s power allows its player to simply set their dice to whatever values they want at the start of each round, completely excluding some of the interesting tactical decisions that arise from having to adapt your plans in accordance with what numbers you roll. Another character gives its player extra resources whenever any player uses the Market, a popular action space in the game, and this strongly suggests to that player that they should focus on the points that can made from resources, rather than engaging with the other routes to victory in the game.
Prevalence
Intrinsic goals, by their definition, don’t end unless there is some massive shift in the game design. They are part of the fundamental mechanics of the game, and as such apply for most, if not all, of the duration of the game. The action of killing an enemy in Skyrim to gain experience is open to a player at any point in the game, as is gaining points by making a connection in Ticket to Ride. If either of these options were suddenly removed, players would not necessarily feel their absence, as their associated actions would be still available to them, but they simply wouldn’t be receiving any rewards from the game for taking them. One of the consequences of Legacy tabletop games such as Pandemic Legacy or Seafall, games which permanently change every time you play them as a direct result of player actions, is that through these changes they can alter the intrinsic goals of the game from play to play, something that is normally off limits in tabletop games with fixed components and rules (this is only one of the many fascinating design aspects of Legacy games, a topic that I will certainly return to in the future).
Extrinsic goals on the other hand tend to be limited in their duration, usually lasting until the player has accomplished them or something in the game removes them (either with or without specific actions from the player), after which they disappear and are not seen again. Their removal, unlike intrinsic goals, can be readily apparent to a player – it might mean that entire areas of the game world are no longer accessible or are devoid of interesting interactions, or that certain characters simply disappear from the game’s narrative and mechanics. Many areas in Skyrim can be extremely interesting and unique locales when populated with the specific tasks, enemies and items necessary for a quest, but upon completion of the quest, returning to these areas is rare as they are transformed into generic dungeons or buildings (the game even prompts you to keep exploring rather than retreading old locations by turning waypoints black once you’ve explored them, giving a sense of completion in visiting as much of the world as possible).
Agency
Intrinsic goals are more open to interpretation by players as they rely on the game’s mechanics: a player is only limited by their ability to comprehend and manipulate these systems to achieve the desired goal. Extrinsic goals however are more prescriptive, with a defined set of actions to be rewarded that is decided by the game designer rather than the player.
A great example of this difference is seen in how a video game like Hitman approaches killing a certain character versus the same objective in Skyrim. In Hitman, understanding the opportunities afforded to you by the elements in the game can be used directly in completing your objectives. As you walk through the open worlds of each level, different objects will be highlighted, showing you how different objects can be combined with them (such as gunpowder and a cannon), but it is up to you to explore the consequences of using these objects, as well as actually tracking them down in the first place. Furthermore, the better you understand how the game works, the more inventive you can be in your murder method – it is up to you how violent or stealthy or inventive you want to be by utilising different parts of the game world. All this variety comes from a simple goal embedded in the main mechanics of the game, and no dialogue prompts you to act in one way or another. I would also be remiss if I didn’t recommend the excellent video produced by Mark Brown of Game Maker’s Toolkit exploring the design of Hitman in great depth. Another example of how player agency interacts with goals can be seen in the board game Scythe, where players have the overall goal of completing six subgoals. However there are ten different subgoals that can be completed in each game, and players have complete freedom as to which six they complete, and in which order they do so.
In Skyrim the player is often asked to eliminate a certain character in a set location, such as in many of the quests of The Companions. However, even though there are many different multiplicities of locales and enemies, the player has little, if any, agency in deciding how to go about their task. There is not much room for creativity in how you kill the enemy, and usually the dungeon has only one way that you can explore it, and you must do this linearly. This is not to say that every quest in Skyrim deprives the player of agency in how they act, but that many of the quests force a player down a narrow path to complete them. The goal that a player is seeking to achieve is more extrinsic in nature here.
The Effect of Goals on Gameplay
Having a game dominated by intrinsic goals can often convey a sense of freedom and independence to the player. Furthermore, it encourages exploration, as players can safely seek out new and different actions knowing that they will also be rewarded without fear of wasting time or sacrificing efficiency.
However, it can also be overwhelming to a player to be presented with many different options without the game prodding them towards one or another, so much so that players can feel paralysed to even act in the first place. This can especially be a problem in board games, which don’t have the ability to shield options or parts of the game from a player like electronic games can (even in the Civilization series of video games, not every option is available to the player at the start of the game). A good example of this is Uwe Rosenberg’s more recent board games, Fields of Arle and A Feast for Odin. In A Feast for Odin, players are presented with an action board of 61 different spaces, and each turn they will send a group of their workers to one of these spaces, as long as it was not previously occupied by another group in the same round. While many of these options are not viable on a player’s first turn because they don’t have the necessary prerequisites, they still must process which spaces they actually can place their workers on, and which of those 25 remaining options is best for them!
Because intrinsic goals apply to most of the game space and for the majority of the duration of play, games which focus on them can also run the risk of players feeling like they are repeating the same game over and over again, especially if the many choices presented are more illusory than actual feasible choices at every point of the game. While each game of Civilization is unique and will unfold in a different way, it is hard to get away from the fact that the initial 50 turns of the game generally involve the same set of actions, despite it seeming like there is so much freedom present a game where players to some extent literally choose their own goal.
Extrinsic goals can offer a real sense of completion for players, as they get very regular starbursts of achievement throughout the game as they complete quests, rather than the much slower eventual reward of intrinsic goals. Designers should not neglect this effect as a real source of enjoyment for certain players, which can ensure they stay engaged in a longer and more intensive game. Their temporary and specific nature doesn’t take up too much mental real estate for players as well, and give a guiding hand to overwhelmed players as to what to do next. If players didn’t have Tickets in Ticket to Ride, it would be a much more analytical and overbearing experience as players would be forced to consider the relative reward from every route on the board, rather than only needing to focus on the handful of routes necessary to complete the journeys on their Tickets.
On the flip side, having a game dominated by extrinsic goals can make players feel as if they have little agency in a game, and are merely being led from mission to mission, following a set path. In competitive multiplayer games, especially in the tabletop sphere, ignoring or failing to complete extrinsic missions can lead to assured defeat, and games which assign these extrinsic goals randomly (especially at the beginning of the game) can lead players to feel constricted in being forced to play the hand they were dealt. It doesn’t even need to be quests or missions – asymmetric starting positions or abilities can mean that certain actions are obviously more effective for a player to gain rewards that they become for all purposes a quest for that player to complete. For instance, certain nations in Civilization are so strongly advantaged to pursue a certain type of victory that there can be a pressure to eschew the freedom the game allows you to follow the victory path as determined by this initial choice.
What can be learnt?
Most games will use a mixture of intrinsic and extrinsic goals, and that exact mix and how that is chosen is an important parameter a designer can tweak to gain a desired player experience. For example, it is not good enough to decide ‘each gold coin is worth 1 victory point’ and be done with it without exploring the consequences this has on the greater game. There are many interesting examples of the use and implementation of goals in games, and I will briefly describe three here as (hopefully!) useful case studies.
Starcraft and softening the intrinsic goal learning curve
Starcraft and other real time strategy games often feature a single-player campaign, with each scenario generally highlighting the strengths and abilities of a new unit. These scenarios build on each other, with the player only having access to the units featured in the current and previous scenarios. Instead of throwing the player straight into the deep end of a game dominated by a single intrinsic goal – defeat your opponent – with a multitude of units and buildings all with different abilities at their disposal, Starcraft instead uses this campaign system to soften the learning curve and allow the player to learn what everything does in a controlled fashion. Using scenarios in this way could be applied more broadly to tabletop games in particular, building on previous examples like in Agricola (a more constrained Uwe Rosenberg design) where the action spaces are revealed slowly throughout the course of the game. Legacy systems also have opened up a similar possibility for modifying the traditional front-heavy learning curve of tabletop games, and upcoming games such as Charterstone could show off this new capability. Indeed, the designer of Charterstone, Jamey Stonemaier, already experimented with this concept in an expansion to one of his earlier games, Viticulture. In Viticulture, players are competing to establish the best winery in Tuscany, planting different varieties of grape, building structures and utilising the different abilities of special visitors. The Tuscany expansion comprises of a number of distinct modules that can be added to the game, such as advanced visitor cards or new buildings, divided into tiers by their difficulty. Players are initially instructed to only add one of the Tier 1 modules, before adding the other modules one by one with further play in ascending order of difficulty. This ensures a more controlled increase in complexity of the game, giving players time to understand and master each new element before tackling another one, mirroring the campaign-based approach.
Ingenious and balancing intrinsic and extrinsic goals
In the tabletop game Ingenious players begin with a simple goal: make continuous lines of similarly-coloured hexagons so that you can move the matching colour marker a number of spaces equal to the length of the lines they made. For example, if in placing your tile on your turn you increased a line of yellow symbols to 4, and a line of purple symbols to 3, you would increase your personal yellow and purple markers 4 and 3 spaces respectively. Players score for each and every line they add to, and the use of tiles consisting of two conjoined hexagons makes lines easy to make while also opening ample opportunities for other players to make longer lines, and so you could consider at the outset the game to be driven by intrinsic goals which are general and long-term. However, as the game progresses and players start to move their markers up in various colours, a crucial twist in these intrinsic goals kicks in – players will only score the value of their marker that is lowest on its respective track. Suddenly this game defined by intrinsic goals is transformed by different extrinsic motivations for each of the players, where they start to focus on making lines of the one or two colours that are lagging behind the rest. This is further twisted by an additional rule – whenever a player gets one of their markers to the end of its track, they immediately get another turn – and so players need to weigh up the value of focussing on a single colour with the hope of gaining more turns versus advancing all their colours evenly. The balance of these different goals is well, ingenious, and gives what is otherwise a very simple game surprising depth. Finding ways for the different goals present in a game to take precedence over each other, and to change that order of precedence during play can be very effective if used properly.
Lorenzo il Magnifico and reimagining side quests
Lorenzo il Magnifico has each player start with four special person cards, each with a cool benefit for the player if they manage to achieve its specific conditions, such as collecting a certain amount of a resource, or building a number of specific buildings. But rather than these simply being a standard ‘starting mission’ type of mechanism, one extra rule adds a extra layer of strategy. Rather than completing these person cards, a player can choose at any time to discard an incomplete person from their hand to receive a small windfall of resources to aid them towards other goals in the game. With this simple addition, players now must consider not only how many of the four people they will attempt to complete, but also at which point they should change course and discard a card in order to grab much needed resources instead. The implementation of this style of player choice in extrinsic goals can lead to meaningful decisions throughout the whole game, and are worth considering in place of more uninspired options.
~
In a more general sense, if a designer is aware of the choices they are making, there is a chance for truly innovative design. What would happen if extrinsic goals were implemented in such a way that they truly changed the majority of a game’s mechanics for a substantial length of time? What if intrinsic goals turned on and off during a game? Perhaps some designers will take these challenges as goals for new games, ones that deliver an excellent combination between action and reward for the player. In any case, good game design needs to consider suitable goals, and the synergy between the goals and mechanisms in a game can be a powerful tool to create new and enjoyable experiences for players.In Kabul, Afghanistan, American Embassy personnel who want to meet with their counterparts at the nearby U.S. military base have to travel a mere 100 yards. But they don’t make a practice of walking or driving. They go by military helicopter, reports The New York Times. The space between is too dangerous to cross on the ground.
It’s the sort of bizarre fact that might have emerged in Ken Burns’ new PBS series on the Vietnam War, illustrating our inability to turn South Vietnam into a safe, stable place. But it’s not the past; it’s the present.
The Vietnam War was the greatest U.S. military catastrophe of the 20th century. A conflict begun under false pretenses, based on ignorance and hubris, it killed 58,000 Americans and as many as 3 million Vietnamese. It ended in utter failure. Never in our history have so many lives been wasted on such monumental futility.
It was a national trauma worse than any since the Great Depression, and it left deep gashes in the American psyche. It instilled an aversion to wars of choice that became known as the Vietnam syndrome.
The allergy might have lasted for generations. It didn’t. In 2001, just 26 years after the fall of Saigon, the United States invaded Afghanistan. American troops have been fighting there twice as long as we fought in Vietnam.
Once again we find ourselves mired in an incomprehensible land, amid people who distrust us. Once again we are aligned with a corrupt regime that couldn’t survive without our help as we incur casualties in the pursuit of goals we never reach.
In Burns’ documentary, President Lyndon B. Johnson is heard in 1965 confiding, “A man can fight if he can see daylight down the road somewhere, but there ain’t no daylight in Vietnam.” Afghanistan has also been an endless journey down a pitch-black mine shaft.
The American military drew some obvious conclusions from Vietnam. Gen. Colin Powell, who served in combat there, had them in mind when he formulated what became known as the Powell Doctrine. It advised going to war only if we can identify a vital interest, have clear, achievable purposes, are prepared to use decisive force and know our exit strategy. But Powell’s wisdom eventually was forgotten.
How could we be repeating the mistakes of Vietnam already? We didn’t wake up one day with severe amnesia. It was not a one-step process. It occurred through a succession of military interventions that convinced us we were clever enough to avoid the pitfalls that had brought us to such ruin in Southeast Asia.
Ronald Reagan lamented the Vietnam syndrome but shrewdly declined to send American forces to fight leftists in Central America. He did, however, undertake a brief, low-risk invasion — of the Caribbean island of Grenada, against a Castro-backed Marxist regime. Our forces removed the government, and we soon departed.
In 1989, George H.W. Bush tried a more ambitious mission, invading Panama to eject a dictator. Then came Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, which provoked Bush to send a huge air and ground force to expel Saddam Hussein’s army — a fight that proved far easier than expected.
Bill Clinton had his own victory, an 11-week bombing campaign that forced Serbia to leave the breakaway province of Kosovo. He managed it without a single American combat fatality.
By 2001, when terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, we Americans had gotten our swagger back. We had proved we could bring about regime changes in hostile countries while incurring few casualties and avoiding long-term entanglement.
We thought we had cracked the code of successful military interventions. The general attitude in Washington was: “We’ve mastered this.”
We proceeded to plunge into Afghanistan, where we realized a stunning initial victory, and then into Iraq, where we rapidly routed the enemy and toppled his dictatorship. The lessons of Vietnam, many assumed, had been refuted once and for all.
But they were just waiting to be retaught. In Afghanistan and Iraq, American troops once again discovered the confusion and terror of fighting an enemy who blends into the populace. They found how hard it is to defeat a guerrilla insurgency without killing innocents and turning locals against us. They learned that their government was willing to expose them to death rather than admit a terrible mistake.
It has been a painful re-education. And there is no guarantee the knowledge will last.
Steve Chapman, a member of the Tribune Editorial Board, blogs at www.chicagotribune.com/chapman.
Download "Recalculating: Steve Chapman on a New Century" in the free Printers Row app at www.printersrowapp.com.
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Twitter @SteveChapman13Despite great advances in the fields of science and technology, the human race seems to be paradoxically predisposed to unwavering belief in illogical, unverifiable and destructive superstitions. Most self-confessed 'rational' human beings will balk at the idea of witches and voodoo curses, of Zeus with his lightning bolts and Thor with his mighty hammer, but at the same time and in the same breath will assert the reality and continuing presence of a creative force of uncanny intelligence and inexplicable moral wisdom – for whose existence there isn't even the slightest shred of scientific evidence. This essay will attempt to put this self-destructive and absurd superstition to rest once and for all, and to demonstrate that a truly scientific mind must eliminate these counter-intuitive contrivances if we are to ever progress as a society. I will prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is not now, nor has there ever been, a Richard Dawkins.
"Imagine." It was a simple proposition that John Lennon invited the world to embrace. A dangerous proposition. Embroiled as our species is in violence and horror, war and catastrophe, Lennon asked us simply to imagine what the world would be like without our fickle grievances. I'd like you to think about that for a moment. Imagine, with John Lennon, a world without Richard Dawkins. Imagine no suicide bombers, no 9/11, no Crusades, no witch-hunts, no Indian partition, no Holocaust. Recently a local newspaper ran a brilliant advertisement in support of the anti-Dawkins campaign – it showed a picture of the Manhattan skyline beneath the caption "Imagine a world without Richard Dawkins". What was the connection? The twin towers of the World Trade Centre were conspicuously present.
Think of all the great war leaders of the past century, even just the past decade, those who have led tens of thousands of people to their deaths in war and conflict. George Bush, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, Tony Blair, Slobodan Molosovic, Richard Nixon. Think of all the serial killers, the rapists, the murderers, the pedophiles and child-killers. What is it that all these people have in common? Very little, besides the solitary inescapable fact that every single one of them believes in the existence of a man named Richard Dawkins. Don't believe me? I invite you to ask them. Not one of them will deny it. Many of them will even give you a confused glance for the fact that you even asked, as though the answer is entirely obvious. You will not find a single person in any prison in the world, at the helm of any nation or in the lead of any army, who openly denies the existence of Richard Dawkins. Most won't even entertain the idea. The chances of this all being a coincidence are statistically astronomical. Much, much more likely is the hypothesis that believing in the existence of Richard Dawkins drives people into a frenzy of bloodlust, and in the case of rapists, the regular kind of lust also.
To escape this suicidal addiction to murder and conflict, we must remove this ridiculous notion that there is or ever has been a Richard Dawkins. This essay will be the first step toward that goal. Using the incontrovertible powers of science and logic, I will first systematically demolish every popular argument for the existence of Richard Dawkins, and then conclude with the theorem that will represent the final bullet in the skull of Dawkinsism. My hope is that any person who believes in the existence of Richard Dawkins will come out of this essay a staunch Adawkinsist.
The Argument From Scripture
One of the most convincing 'proofs' of the existence of Richard Dawkins is also one of the greatest fallacies. Many people are still convinced by the scriptural evidence for Dawkins' existence. A common argument is that there is are a number of books that are widely claimed to have been written by Richard Dawkins, they are written from the point of view of Richard Dawkins, and we can only assume that, barring some kind of conspiracy, nobody has reason to believe that they were written by anyone but Richard Dawkins. The fallacy is that we can whittle the argument down into three possibilities – that the author of these books is enough of a dick that he'd deliberately mislead us, that he's completely insane, or that he really is Richard Dawkins - the so-called "Dick, Daft or Dawkins" defense. This ultimatum is ludicrously inadequate when you consider the fourth possibility, almost too obvious to need mentioning, that the author is simply honestly mistaken.
In any event, the fact that something is written down is persuasive only to people not used to asking questions about what they read, and these people undoubtedly won't go very far in life. Why should we blindly accept that Richard Dawkins is the author of these books, simply because his name is on the cover? This is circular reasoning, "Dawkins exists because his books say so, and the books are true because Dawkins is no liar." We find ourselves in quite a quagmire of infinite gullibility if we follow this logic to its ultimate conclusion. Can we assume that any book written from the point of view of a character is indisputably the unblemished account of a real person's genuine experiences? Does Lemony Snicket really exist? Richard Bachman? Hitler?
It is simply unreasonable to expect us to believe in the existence of anything without hard scientific evidence, especially something as complex as Richard Dawkins. We don't believe, for example, in other fictional literary characters. We don't believe in Hannibal Lecter, or Hercules, or Charlie Brown, or Harry Potter, or Santa Claus, or the Flying Spaghetti Dawkins. We are all disbelievers in regard to these and countless other whimsical creations. Some of us simply choose to go one further and include Richard Dawkins in this pantheon of fictions.
Flying Spaghetti Dawkins touches you with his noodly appendage, or whatever the equivalent of noodles is in Britain.
The Argument From Personal 'Experience'
Many people claim to have seen Richard Dawkins with their own eyes. They purport to have seen interviews with him on television or in live forums. Some even claim to have spoken to him or shaken his hand. This argument from personal experience is the one that is most convincing to those who claim to have had one. But it is the least convincing to anyone else, and anyone knowledgeable about psychology.
You say you have experienced Richard Dawkins directly? Well, some people have experienced a pink elephant, but that probably doesn't impress you. Individuals in asylums think they are Charlie Chaplin or Napoleon. We humour them but we don't take their internally revealed beliefs seriously. The brain is an incredibly complex piece if machinery, and it's inaccurate to presume that what your eyes see or what any of your other senses perceive is exactly the nature of reality. It's only your brain's interpretation of reality, an interpretation that does occasionally get it wrong.
Sometimes our senses provide an extremely vivid, uncannily believable picture of something that is nevertheless a hallucination. You might have heard someone swear that they saw Richard Dawkins only yesterday, walking out of a shopping centre with a bag of Earl Grey and monocles, delivering a sermon to a mailman about the awesomeness of Charles Darwin. But what is really more likely? That an entity as complex as Richard Dawkins sprang from such a cesspool of inbreeding as the British Isles? Or that our incredibly complex minds created an extremely convincing but nevertheless simple illusion of Richard Dawkins? After all, thousands of people would swear on their lives that they have seen Elvis Presley, alive and well, working at a local supermarket or porn shop. If we want badly enough to believe something, our minds are very good at fabricating evidence to justify those beliefs, and there are thousands upon thousands of college socialists who want very, very badly for Richard Dawkins to be real.
We can not simply believe in anyone's account of the existence of anything, even if those who believe compose the vast majority of humanity. We must be presented with hard evidence of the existence of Richard Dawkins, empirical by the standards of science. Even that will never happen, because an illusion of Richard Dawkins, no matter how realistic, is nevertheless a less complex entity than a real, flesh-and-blood Dawkins, and therefore more probable by far. It is much easier to create a mental hallucination of Dawkins than it is to manifest an actual Dawkins of physical matter.
Therefore we must assume that any supposed first-hand account of Dawkins' existence, even if |
idol, they pay tickets to go there, sponsors love sponsoring those events cause alot of ppl watch and I DO swear 14 yr old girls DO spend A shit load of money for shit they dont even need. IMO 14 yr old girls is a better market place because they spend on IMPULSE. real ppl must asset if they need it, if it would be good for them, etc etc.
to think a 14 yr old girl given her parents card goes on a fucking shopping spree (aka my sister) and my mother is a straight up conservative (who made me buy school supplies at the at of 14 because pencils dont grow out of tress bullshit) you forget that when ppl go to american idol, they pay tickets to go there, sponsors love sponsoring those events cause alot of ppl watch and I DO swear 14 yr old girls DO spend A shit load of money for shit they dont even need. IMO 14 yr old girls is a better market place because they spend on IMPULSE. real ppl must asset if they need it, if it would be good for them, etc etc.to think a 14 yr old girl given her parents card goes on a fucking shopping spree (aka my sister) and my mother is a straight up conservative (who made me buy school supplies at the at of 14 because pencils dont grow out of tress bullshit) Go Bisons Go!
IdrA Profile Blog Joined July 2004 United States 11540 Posts #6172 On October 24 2012 16:21 KlinKz wrote:
Show nested quote +
On October 24 2012 16:18 IdrA wrote:
On October 24 2012 16:04 TheWorldToCome wrote:
Wheat's analogy with American Idol/Breaking Bad was literally the dumbest thing I have ever heard.
its a good point, he just didnt get the opportunity to carry the analogy through because everything was getting all stupid. geoff mentioned the reasons, separately, earlier in the show. marketing people are not stupid, they do not just look at viewers and allot money to them proportionately, or put all of their money into whatever has the highest viewership. their goal is to sell products, pure exposure is good and with lol (and american idol) you get that purely because theres so many people watch. however if a big percentage of those people arent likely to buy your product whether you sponsor them or not, it's not really all that important how many people watch. lol has a younger audience, many of them are much more casual fans, they're less likely to have disposable income and less likely to buy a product purely because its attached to their game.
sc2 as an esport has proven its a sustainable, quality product. big companies have invested in it before and are apparently happy with the returns as they keep investing and more companies keep coming in. the fanbase is not going to disappear even if it rises and falls, and its a very dedicated, passionate fanbase.
so for the analogy, lol/american idol fans = 14 year old girls with no money, sc2/breaking bad fans = real people. its a good point, he just didnt get the opportunity to carry the analogy through because everything was getting all stupid. geoff mentioned the reasons, separately, earlier in the show. marketing people are not stupid, they do not just look at viewers and allot money to them proportionately, or put all of their money into whatever has the highest viewership. their goal is to sell products, pure exposure is good and with lol (and american idol) you get that purely because theres so many people watch. however if a big percentage of those people arent likely to buy your product whether you sponsor them or not, it's not really all that important how many people watch. lol has a younger audience, many of them are much more casual fans, they're less likely to have disposable income and less likely to buy a product purely because its attached to their game.sc2 as an esport has proven its a sustainable, quality product. big companies have invested in it before and are apparently happy with the returns as they keep investing and more companies keep coming in. the fanbase is not going to disappear even if it rises and falls, and its a very dedicated, passionate fanbase.so for the analogy, lol/american idol fans = 14 year old girls with no money, sc2/breaking bad fans = real people.
you forget that when ppl go to american idol, they pay tickets to go there, sponsors love sponsoring those events cause alot of ppl watch and I DO swear 14 yr old girls DO spend A shit load of money for shit they dont even need. IMO 14 yr old girls is a better market place because they spend on IMPULSE. real ppl must asset if they need it, if it would be good for them, etc etc.
to think a 14 yr old girl given her parents card goes on a fucking shopping spree (aka my sister) and my mother is a straight up conservative (who made me buy school supplies at the at of 14 because pencils dont grow out of tress bullshit) you forget that when ppl go to american idol, they pay tickets to go there, sponsors love sponsoring those events cause alot of ppl watch and I DO swear 14 yr old girls DO spend A shit load of money for shit they dont even need. IMO 14 yr old girls is a better market place because they spend on IMPULSE. real ppl must asset if they need it, if it would be good for them, etc etc.to think a 14 yr old girl given her parents card goes on a fucking shopping spree (aka my sister) and my mother is a straight up conservative (who made me buy school supplies at the at of 14 because pencils dont grow out of tress bullshit)
-_- -_- http://www.splitreason.com/product/1152 release the gracken tshirt now available
Ballistixz Profile Joined January 2010 United States 1269 Posts #6173 On October 24 2012 16:15 seffer wrote:
Show nested quote +
On October 24 2012 16:11 Ballistixz wrote:
On October 24 2012 16:06 Scrabo wrote:
On October 24 2012 16:04 TheWorldToCome wrote:
Wheat's analogy with American Idol/Breaking Bad was literally the dumbest thing I have ever heard.
Don't ruin breaking bad trying to get the same viewing numbers as American Idol.
You don't have to be the biggest show to still be a great show.
Don't ruin breaking bad trying to get the same viewing numbers as American Idol.You don't have to be the biggest show to still be a great show.
breaking bad is a great show, SC2 is not a great game. but this is all opinion of course, which is why DJs wheat analogy was extremly stupid. some ppl will say that american idol>breaking bad. breaking bad is a great show, SC2 is not a great game. but this is all opinion of course, which is why DJs wheat analogy was extremly stupid. some ppl will say that american idol>breaking bad.
That and they are both as accessible as one another in terms of being free to watch. This is what SC2 and LoL do not have in common, since LoL is much more of a smooth and friendly gaming experience (despite the fact that they both cater to different audiences in the way that Breaking bad and American Idol do, SC2 could do a LOT to improve in this aspect). That and they are both as accessible as one another in terms of being free to watch. This is what SC2 and LoL do not have in common, since LoL is much more of a smooth and friendly gaming experience (despite the fact that they both cater to different audiences in the way that Breaking bad and American Idol do, SC2 could do a LOT to improve in this aspect).
yup exactly. read my edit to if u want. ever since blizzard decided to release SC2 in 3 parts (WoL, HoTS, and LoTV) they have been purposely handicapping themselves seemingly out of pure greed. they release a unfinished low quality game and then 6 years later finish that game with high quality in the form of 2 more expansion packs that you HAVE to buy.
i think that is the real sad part about all of this is because LoL did not need to resort to such a thing, so why does blizzard? imagine how good the game would be if they actually had all the features WE WERE PROMISED right out the box? same thing with D3 come to think of it. D3 still doesnt have fucking pvp... blizzard is so disgusting with these business decisions that they make. yup exactly. read my edit to if u want. ever since blizzard decided to release SC2 in 3 parts (WoL, HoTS, and LoTV) they have been purposely handicapping themselves seemingly out of pure greed. they release a unfinished low quality game and then 6 years later finish that game with high quality in the form of 2 more expansion packs that you HAVE to buy.i think that is the real sad part about all of this is because LoL did not need to resort to such a thing, so why does blizzard? imagine how good the game would be if they actually had all the features WE WERE PROMISED right out the box? same thing with D3 come to think of it. D3 still doesnt have fucking pvp... blizzard is so disgusting with these business decisions that they make.
itiswhatitis Profile Joined February 2011 United States 136 Posts #6174 On October 24 2012 16:14 1handsomE wrote:
Show nested quote +
On October 24 2012 16:10 itiswhatitis wrote:
On October 24 2012 16:08 1handsomE wrote:
On October 24 2012 16:06 itiswhatitis wrote:
On October 24 2012 16:04 1handsomE wrote:
On October 24 2012 16:02 itiswhatitis wrote:
On October 24 2012 16:00 1handsomE wrote:
On October 24 2012 15:37 itiswhatitis wrote:
On October 24 2012 15:35 1handsomE wrote:
On October 24 2012 15:33 JPSke wrote:
Why don't we spend 14 more pages talking about bullshit and drama instead of addressing the real issue at hand.
SC2 is in comparative if not actual decline. It went from a flagship for E-sports to a major competitor to a somewhat nostalgic tertiary figure in 18 months. Its direct competitors have out-innovated it, out-marketed it, and out-positioned it with a free to play model, integrated advertising, LAN support, and a social integration within their client.
More importantly, the developers behind the two games dominating the current E-Sports market are incredibly responsive and engage with their playerbase regularly. Riot, much like Blizzard, develops at a glacial pace, but they do so while, for the most part, keeping their customers in the loop and maintaining a positive relationship. Blizzard's quality of game has fallen off a cliff, they don't listen to literally anyone, and for their last four releases I would wager to say customer satisfaction has been majorly lacking.
What does this all have to do with Destiny's point, and ITG's reaction? Well everyone on the show agreed that Blizzard sucks, they aren't communicative, and that they would like changes to be made. However the crux of their argument seemed to be that Destiny went about advocating for that change in the wrong way. He was over the top. He was doom and gloom. He made up statistics. This is all fine, but their corrective measures seemed to be to tell Destiny that "This isn't the way to do it". The problem is that the way the ITG guys are advocating is the way they've been trying to do it for two years, and it clearly isn't working. So maybe Destiny made some mistakes in how he framed his argument, but his overall point about the need to somehow spur Blizzard into action remains. While the SC2 scene certainly isn't going to disappear it is going to be left further and further behind by existing and up and coming competitors who are being actively developed for, who do bring in casual players, who do monetize their product without a major up front cost, and who understand the power of integration within the game client itself.
So I ask those of you who care about the Starcraft scene, what can we do about it? It seems to be that now, when Blizzard is finishing development and starting their marketing campaign for a new, premium expansion, is the exact right time to apply a little pressure. They want to sell those boxes, yet they refuse to engage with the community in any meaningful sort of way and address the concerns that are dragging this game down. When, if not now, are we going to figure out a way to get the support from Blizzard we need? Or is it as IdrA said, a lost cause, Blizzard won't change no matter what we do, and we're all wasting our time playing/following/spectating on a game that has very little development support and no real hope of long term growth?
Or, you know, keep calling each other shitheads and worrying about who started it.
Do you like LoL better than SC2? Your argument hinges on it, so I am curious.
Do you like LoL better than SC2? Your argument hinges on it, so I am curious.
Really? After he wrote all that, that's what you respond with? He didn't even say he liked it better. The post is right there to re-read...
Really? After he wrote all that, that's what you respond with? He didn't even say he liked it better. The post is right there to re-read...
That's why I am asking, he never said either way. But if he doesn't like LoL better, than his argument is invalid. He says riot is doing a better job, then he should like their game better right? common sense.
So to your post I say what the heck man?
That's why I am asking, he never said either way. But if he doesn't like LoL better, than his argument is invalid. He says riot is doing a better job, then he should like their game better right? common sense.So to your post I say what the heck man?
That doesn't make any sense. You're assuming that believing a company is doing a better job means that you like their game more. It doesn't, I don't know where you got that. That doesn't make any sense. You're assuming that believing a company is doing a better job means that you like their game more. It doesn't, I don't know where you got that.
If the game isn't better then on what scale are they doing better? Perhaps there is something you don't understand... this is very basic... If the game isn't better then on what scale are they doing better? Perhaps there is something you don't understand... this is very basic...
Don't try to talk to me like I don't understand what I'm saying. It really is simple. Believing a company is doing a better job at supporting and growing their product does NOT mean you prefer that game automatically. Do you not see that? I could say there are many companies who support their products better than Bliz, that does not mean I prefer those games over Bliz games. I like the games I like. Don't try to talk to me like I don't understand what I'm saying. It really is simple. Believing a company is doing a better job at supporting and growing their product does NOT mean you prefer that game automatically. Do you not see that? I could say there are many companies who support their products better than Bliz, that does not mean I prefer those games over Bliz games. I like the games I like.
But since we are talking about an opinion, and this type of thing is only quantifiable by an opinion, than how on earth can one do better and produce worse? Your opinion matters because doing better is not quantifiable outside of anything outside of opinion.
You can say 'they put more money into their game', or 'they did x,y,z feature', but you can't say better. it has to be a better product to be better. Don't know how this is complicated.
But since we are talking about an opinion, and this type of thing is only quantifiable by an opinion, than how on earth can one do better and produce worse? Your opinion matters because doing better is not quantifiable outside of anything outside of opinion.You can say 'they put more money into their game', or 'they did x,y,z feature', but you can't say better. it has to be a better product to be better. Don't know how this is complicated.
Your unnecessary condescension is getting on my nerves. You aren't as smart as you think you are and you are arguing pointless semantics while ignoring my point. Believing a company HANDLES their game better does not mean you think they made a better game. Please stop with all the "it's simple stuff" crap, I obviously do understand what you are saying, you've not said one thing that was over my head.
Your unnecessary condescension is getting on my nerves. You aren't as smart as you think you are and you are arguing pointless semantics while ignoring my point. Believing a company HANDLES their game better does not mean you think they made a better game. Please stop with all the "it's simple stuff" crap, I obviously do understand what you are saying, you've not said one thing that was over my head.
In truth, I think you are ignoring my point. I am saying 'how are you quantifying this?' To me, it seems like if they 'handled' it better, they would produce a 'better' game.
Like I said before, you can say 'they put more money', or 'they have x,y,z feature', but using generalizations on opinions requires you to like the end product better. Otherwise your generalization about them 'handling it better' is invalid. Which is what I was saying in the very first place.
EDIT: And the implied piece of this argument is that the end product, not the means to get there is all that matters. And if you like SC2 more than LoL does it matter if LoL is pumping money into the game/ doing x,y,z feature? The clear answer is, no. In truth, I think you are ignoring my point. I am saying 'how are you quantifying this?' To me, it seems like if they 'handled' it better, they would produce a 'better' game.Like I said before, you can say 'they put more money', or 'they have x,y,z feature', but using generalizations on opinions requires you to like the end product better. Otherwise your generalization about them 'handling it better' is invalid. Which is what I was saying in the very first place.EDIT: And the implied piece of this argument is that the end product, not the means to get there is all that matters. And if you like SC2 more than LoL does it matter if LoL is pumping money into the game/ doing x,y,z feature? The clear answer is, no.
I just STILL don't get your logic. You're still operating under the assumption that better handling = better game. I explained why that isn't so automatically in very simple terms. People like what they like. If I'm not into a game, I won't prefer it over a game I am into, regardless of whether or not I think the company manages the game better. I love sc2 and prefer it over most games, but that definitely doesn't mean I think sc2 is the best handled game out there by their company, far from it. I just STILL don't get your logic. You're still operating under the assumption that better handling = better game. I explained why that isn't so automatically in very simple terms. People like what they like. If I'm not into a game, I won't prefer it over a game I am into, regardless of whether or not I think the company manages the game better. I love sc2 and prefer it over most games, but that definitely doesn't mean I think sc2 is the best handled game out there by their company, far from it. "The bad artists imitate. The great artists steal." -itiswhatitis
Kashmir_33 Profile Joined October 2012 United States 2 Posts #6175 Destiny obviously cares about the game and is quite passionate in how blizzard isn't taking the right steps for people who want to play the game on a more casual bases. No way you can possibly deny that unless you are a complete idiot. If you think they are, then when the hell is it ever going to be shown in actual concrete results...There is no excuse for a MAJOR company like that with income from SOOOOOOO many sources and have a huge group of qualified teams dedicated to these issues could possibly put off things that can be implemented so simply in comparison to the major projects they are working on and have already finished. Destiny was right and no one else was providing ANY solid theories or answers to the situation other than "They don't care what we think, leave it at that." You have to be a babbling moron to believe that if enough people actually give feedback that they wouldn't actually attempt to make a change. Having a few "pro" players in the scene doesn't make them automatically change everything just because they say it isn't right. Even though these high skilled players have huge fanbases and are linked to sponsors doesn't automatically give them a sanction to say whatever they want and blizzard will instantly fall under their "commands."
Tantaburs Profile Joined August 2010 Canada 1820 Posts #6176 On October 24 2012 16:18 IdrA wrote:
Show nested quote +
On October 24 2012 16:04 TheWorldToCome wrote:
Wheat's analogy with American Idol/Breaking Bad was literally the dumbest thing I have ever heard.
its a good point, he just didnt get the opportunity to carry the analogy through because everything was getting all stupid. geoff mentioned the reasons, separately, earlier in the show. marketing people are not stupid, they do not just look at viewers and allot money to them proportionately, or put all of their money into whatever has the highest viewership. their goal is to sell products, pure exposure is good and with lol (and american idol) you get that purely because theres so many people watch. however if a big percentage of those people arent likely to buy your product whether you sponsor them or not, it's not really all that important how many people watch. lol has a younger audience, many of them are much more casual fans, they're less likely to have disposable income and less likely to buy a product purely because its attached to their game.
sc2 as an esport has proven its a sustainable, quality product. big companies have invested in it before and are apparently happy with the returns as they keep investing and more companies keep coming in. the fanbase is not going to disappear even if it rises and falls, and its a very dedicated, passionate fanbase.
so for the analogy, lol/american idol fans = 14 year old girls with no money, sc2/breaking bad fans = real people. its a good point, he just didnt get the opportunity to carry the analogy through because everything was getting all stupid. geoff mentioned the reasons, separately, earlier in the show. marketing people are not stupid, they do not just look at viewers and allot money to them proportionately, or put all of their money into whatever has the highest viewership. their goal is to sell products, pure exposure is good and with lol (and american idol) you get that purely because theres so many people watch. however if a big percentage of those people arent likely to buy your product whether you sponsor them or not, it's not really all that important how many people watch. lol has a younger audience, many of them are much more casual fans, they're less likely to have disposable income and less likely to buy a product purely because its attached to their game.sc2 as an esport has proven its a sustainable, quality product. big companies have invested in it before and are apparently happy with the returns as they keep investing and more companies keep coming in. the fanbase is not going to disappear even if it rises and falls, and its a very dedicated, passionate fanbase.so for the analogy, lol/american idol fans = 14 year old girls with no money, sc2/breaking bad fans = real people.
It wasn't a great point. Yes Breaking Bad is a better show and yes i think that SC2 is a better game but American Idol makes far more money then Breaking Bad does which is Destiny's point in the LoL vs SC2 argument
It wasn't a great point. Yes Breaking Bad is a better show and yes i think that SC2 is a better game but American Idol makes far more money then Breaking Bad does which is Destiny's point in the LoL vs SC2 argument "One cannot play StarCraft with clenched fish.." ~Nick "Confucius" Plott
Nubbinz Profile Joined November 2010 United States 52 Posts Last Edited: 2012-10-24 07:27:32 #6177 It's obvious Destiny's heart is not into SC2 so he will say whatever he wants to gain viewership outside of SC2. All he does is stream LOL almost always now and doesn't do well in any tournaments so what does he have to lose by nay saying or telling us all why SC2 will fail? Nothing. He only stands to gain from any of this and we are all the fools for it.
Ballistixz Profile Joined January 2010 United States 1269 Posts Last Edited: 2012-10-24 07:27:58 #6178 On October 24 2012 16:17 iNcontroL wrote:
Show nested quote +
On October 24 2012 16:08 Ballistixz wrote:
On October 24 2012 16:06 Blackhawk13 wrote:
Incontrol, I think you better do yourself a favor and call it a night on this thread. Nothing good can come out of posting here- especially while you're still heated.
he already did. i guess he realized that arguing, calling ppl idiots, and making bets with people on the internet ruins his already bad reputation. he already did. i guess he realized that arguing, calling ppl idiots, and making bets with people on the internet ruins his already bad reputation.
Actually my "bad reputation" has made me one of the most followed, listened to and publicized figures in SC2. You want to take another crack at pretending I am not doing this right? Actually my "bad reputation" has made me one of the most followed, listened to and publicized figures in SC2. You want to take another crack at pretending I am not doing this right?
the amount of sheer arrogance you have is amazing. i mean seriously, it blows my mind. the amount of sheer arrogance you have is amazing. i mean seriously, it blows my mind.
jmbthirteen Profile Blog Joined February 2011 United States 10249 Posts #6179 On October 24 2012 16:25 Tantaburs wrote:
Show nested quote +
On October 24 2012 16:18 IdrA wrote:
On October 24 2012 16:04 TheWorldToCome wrote:
Wheat's analogy with American Idol/Breaking Bad was literally the dumbest thing I have ever heard.
its a good point, he just didnt get the opportunity to carry the analogy through because everything was getting all stupid. geoff mentioned the reasons, separately, earlier in the show. marketing people are not stupid, they do not just look at viewers and allot money to them proportionately, or put all of their money into whatever has the highest viewership. their goal is to sell products, pure exposure is good and with lol (and american idol) you get that purely because theres so many people watch. however if a big percentage of those people arent likely to buy your product whether you sponsor them or not, it's not really all that important how many people watch. lol has a younger audience, many of them are much more casual fans, they're less likely to have disposable income and less likely to buy a product purely because its attached to their game.
sc2 as an esport has proven its a sustainable, quality product. big companies have invested in it before and are apparently happy with the returns as they keep investing and more companies keep coming in. the fanbase is not going to disappear even if it rises and falls, and its a very dedicated, passionate fanbase.
so for the analogy, lol/american idol fans = 14 year old girls with no money, sc2/breaking bad fans = real people. its a good point, he just didnt get the opportunity to carry the analogy through because everything was getting all stupid. geoff mentioned the reasons, separately, earlier in the show. marketing people are not stupid, they do not just look at viewers and allot money to them proportionately, or put all of their money into whatever has the highest viewership. their goal is to sell products, pure exposure is good and with lol (and american idol) you get that purely because theres so many people watch. however if a big percentage of those people arent likely to buy your product whether you sponsor them or not, it's not really all that important how many people watch. lol has a younger audience, many of them are much more casual fans, they're less likely to have disposable income and less likely to buy a product purely because its attached to their game.sc2 as an esport has proven its a sustainable, quality product. big companies have invested in it before and are apparently happy with the returns as they keep investing and more companies keep coming in. the fanbase is not going to disappear even if it rises and falls, and its a very dedicated, passionate fanbase.so for the analogy, lol/american idol fans = 14 year old girls with no money, sc2/breaking bad fans = real people.
It wasn't a great point. Yes Breaking Bad is a better show and yes i think that SC2 is a better game but American Idol makes far more money then Breaking Bad does which is Destiny's point in the LoL vs SC2 argument
It wasn't a great point. Yes Breaking Bad is a better show and yes i think that SC2 is a better game but American Idol makes far more money then Breaking Bad does which is Destiny's point in the LoL vs SC2 argument
but destiny's point is also that SC2 is dying because its not at LoL numbers.... but destiny's point is also that SC2 is dying because its not at LoL numbers.... www.superbeerbrothers.com
KlinKz Profile Joined April 2010 Canada 115 Posts #6180 On October 24 2012 16:24 IdrA wrote:
Show nested quote +
On October 24 2012 16:21 KlinKz wrote:
On October 24 2012 16:18 IdrA wrote:
On October 24 2012 16:04 TheWorldToCome wrote:
Wheat's analogy with American Idol/Breaking Bad was literally the dumbest thing I have ever heard.
its a good point, he just didnt get the opportunity to carry the analogy through because everything was getting all stupid. geoff mentioned the reasons, separately, earlier in the show. marketing people are not stupid, they do not just look at viewers and allot money to them proportionately, or put all of their money into whatever has the highest viewership. their goal is to sell products, pure exposure is good and with lol (and american idol) you get that purely because theres so many people watch. however if a big percentage of those people arent likely to buy your product whether you sponsor them or not, it's not really all that important how many people watch. lol has a younger audience, many of them are much more casual fans, they're less likely to have disposable income and less likely to buy a product purely because its attached to their game.
sc2 as an esport has proven its a sustainable, quality product. big companies have invested in it before and are apparently happy with the returns as they keep investing and more companies keep coming in. the fanbase is not going to disappear even if it rises and falls, and its a very dedicated, passionate fanbase.
so for the analogy, lol/american idol fans = 14 year old girls with no money, sc2/breaking bad fans = real people. its a good point, he just didnt get the opportunity to carry the analogy through because everything was getting all stupid. geoff mentioned the reasons, separately, earlier in the show. marketing people are not stupid, they do not just look at viewers and allot money to them proportionately, or put all of their money into whatever has the highest viewership. their goal is to sell products, pure exposure is good and with lol (and american idol) you get that purely because theres so many people watch. however if a big percentage of those people arent likely to buy your product whether you sponsor them or not, it's not really all that important how many people watch. lol has a younger audience, many of them are much more casual fans, they're less likely to have disposable income and less likely to buy a product purely because its attached to their game.sc2 as an esport has proven its a sustainable, quality product. big companies have invested in it before and are apparently happy with the returns as they keep investing and more companies keep coming in. the fanbase is not going to disappear even if it rises and falls, and its a very dedicated, passionate fanbase.so for the analogy, lol/american idol fans = 14 year old girls with no money, sc2/breaking bad fans = real people.
you forget that when ppl go to american idol, they pay tickets to go there, sponsors love sponsoring those events cause alot of ppl watch and I DO swear 14 yr old girls DO spend A shit load of money for shit they dont even need. IMO 14 yr old girls is a better market place because they spend on IMPULSE. real ppl must asset if they need it, if it would be good for them, etc etc.
to think a 14 yr old girl given her parents card goes on a fucking shopping spree (aka my sister) and my mother is a straight up conservative (who made me buy school supplies at the at of 14 because pencils dont grow out of tress bullshit) you forget that when ppl go to american idol, they pay tickets to go there, sponsors love sponsoring those events cause alot of ppl watch and I DO swear 14 yr old girls DO spend A shit load of money for shit they dont even need. IMO 14 yr old girls is a better market place because they spend on IMPULSE. real ppl must asset if they need it, if it would be good for them, etc etc.to think a 14 yr old girl given her parents card goes on a fucking shopping spree (aka my sister) and my mother is a straight up conservative (who made me buy school supplies at the at of 14 because pencils dont grow out of tress bullshit)
-_- -_-
I love your argument LoL makes a good profit off little ass kids spamming their moms and dads to buy new shit for their characters, as for sc2... well I buy monster just because EG.Demon someone I truely adore because of his Destiny-Like Trollish Acts who shows his true skill in tournements. Jimmy-Ho fan boy atm, and I love watching demuslim try out dota 2 absolutely loved how pro sc2 player is playing with other members of EG
I love your argument LoL makes a good profit off little ass kids spamming their moms and dads to buy new shit for their characters, as for sc2... well I buy monster just because EG.Demon someone I truely adore because of his Destiny-Like Trollish Acts who shows his true skill in tournements. Jimmy-Ho fan boy atm, and I love watching demuslim try out dota 2 absolutely loved how pro sc2 player is playing with other members of EG Go Bisons Go!
Prev 1 307 308 309 310 311 496 NextNat Geo's famed 'Afghan Girl' Sharbat Gula on Tuesday refused to stay in Pakistan in response to the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) government's offer to stop her deportation from the country.
A special anti-corruption and immigration court had earlier ordered the deportation of Sharbat Gula, the green-eyed “Afghan Girl” whose 1985 photo in National Geographic became a symbol of her country’s wars, after finding her guilty of illegally obtaining a Computerised National Identity Card.
The court had also sentenced her to 15 days imprisonment and fined her Rs110,000.
Sharbat Gula and Afghan government, in an application submitted to the KP government, pleaded for her departure from Pakistan to Afghanistan on completion of her 15-day sentence on Wednesday [November 9].
The 'Afghan Girl' had pleaded guilty to six charges against her, including her illegal stay in Pakistan, forgery, cheating, tampering with documents and violation of the Nadra (National Database and Registration Authority) Act.
A day after her arrest, the United Nations High Commissioner distanced itself from Sharbat Gula, claiming that she was not a registered refugee.
The decision of stopping her deportation was taken on Saturday by the provincial government on humanitarian grounds and as a goodwill gesture towards Afghanistan.
Take a look: Afghan Girl
KP lawmaker Shaukat Yousafzai while talking to DawnNews said, "We had taken steps to stop Sharbat Gula's deporation but if she wants to leave, it is her decision".
"A delegation of KP assembly will meet Sharbat Gula on Tuesday to express good wishes," he added.
Sharbat Gula will leave for Afghanistan on Wednesday through Torkham border.SACRAMENTO (CBS13) — A person can walk down the streets of Sacramento in the nude without any legal problems under a loophole in the city’s public nudity law.
The culprit is section 9.04.060 of the Sacramento city code. It outlaws nudity in public parks, playgrounds and beaches, but it leaves out streets and sidewalks.
Under that law, a nude person would be violating the law if they were in Cesar Chavez Park, but technically they wouldn’t be if they stepped onto the sidewalk.
“I just don’t wanna see butts everywhere,” said Sacramento resident Jazmin Velazquez. “I dunno if that’s what I wanna see.”
Sacramento wants to close the loophole, rewriting what it calls in outdated ordinance. A staff report says several people were arrested last year with everything exposed in public, but the Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office couldn’t prosecute them under Sacramento’s |
who authorized FEMA camps and breaks down the full-scale technologically-integrated police state that includes Fusion Centers, FEMA, the Department of Homeland Security and more.
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At one of many real and verified FEMA locations, Jesse Ventura and Alex Jones approach a “Residential Center” run by Homeland Security in central Texas where they find locked doors, double-fences and escape warnings around the entire perimeter. Further inside the facility, they witness a playground complex, swings and slides for children. The crew walks up to the front door and attempts to get some answers. But the officials refuse to either confirm or deny the facility’s purpose, including whether or not American citizens are being held inside. However, our past investigations into this facility reveal that it has confined both children and adults, including immigrants, refugee seekers and American citizens.Brexit could seriously damage Britain’s food supplies because customs problems could cripple supply chains.
The Road Haulage Association is warning that unless the Government negotiates the right customs controls during forthcoming Brexit talks the UK’s sensitive food supply could be seriously damaged. The current rationing of vegetables has highlighted the danger– and the problems with supplies of lettuce could be just the tip of a dangerous iceberg on the horizon.
Commenting, RHA chief executive Richard Burnett said: “Nearly 30% of all food consumed in the UK comes from the EU and it all arrives in lorries. At the moment, the process is seamless – it’s as easy to deliver from Milan to Manchester as it is from Manchester to Leeds as far as customs processes are concerned. “After Brexit, that will no longer be the case, and we have to get the new processes right. Otherwise the system for getting food into the country could grind to a halt. ”
The RHA fears that massive queues of lorries could build up at ports with not enough experienced staff to cope with a backlog while fresh food supplies rot. “We are not re-assured by recent government statements,“ Richard Burnett added. “The White Paper suggests that HMRC has a world-class customs service. For EU continental road haulage it has NO system.
It will face new challenges and government must recognise that and assure business that HMRC will have whatever resources it requires to get the job done.” Richard Burnett concluded: “The RHA welcomes the government’s commitment to cross-border trade being as frictionless as possible.
But customs process for containers and air freight will not work for the millions of trucks that move through Dover and our ports. “There are nearly 4.5 million journeys between the UK and Europe each year that are HMRC-free at the moment. These trucks carry jobs, components, products – and 30% of our food.”In a first in at least a decade, this year Chicago Public Schools will not approve any new charter or contract schools to open in the coming fall.
Not having the process for approval play out over the winter months will certainly be seen as a political decision. Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who is running for re-election, has come under fire for opening charter schools after closing 50 neighborhood schools last year. CTU President Karen Lewis is considering a run for mayor.
However, CPS officials emphasize that some charter schools will still open next fall. An Intrinsic Charter school and an elementary school operated by a new group called Chicago Educational Partnership already were given conditional approval through the last process to open in Fall of 2015. In addition, as many as five charter schools—the Concept school in Chatham, two UNO schools, one Learn school and an Aspira High School–that were originally slated to open in Fall of 2014 have asked the district if they could delay the opening. It is unclear what their plans are now.
CPS has yet to post a request for proposals (RFP) this year—a document that usually comes out in the summer and outlines what types of schools and locations the district hopes to add to its portfolio. Spokesman Bill McCaffrey says the district plans to post an RFP in December, but that it will only ask for proposals for schools to be opened in the Fall of 2016.
McCaffrey says the delay is to allow potential charter and contract school operators time to go through the entire process, which includes being vetted by CPS and public hearings. “We want to ensure adequate time for the process,” he says.
Wendy Katten, director of the parent advocacy group Raise Your Hand, welcomed the announcement, but said she would like to know what officials are thinking.
“You never know if they just didn’t want any noise during the election year or if they are thinking about the number of seats and considering whether they need to open up more schools,” she said.
Rebeca Nieves-Huffman, Illinois State Director for Democrats for Education Reform, said that there is an urgent need for “high quality charter schools, particularly in underserved communities.” She welcomed the next review process as an opportunity to “create more charter options that would address overwhelming parent demand.”
Also, it does not look like CPS will be doing much in the way of school actions this year. On Wednesday, as it must do by law, CPS posted it guidelines for school actions, which only featured criteria for co-locations and for changing the attendance boundaries of schools.JetSmarter has raised $105 million in Series C funding, at a $1.5 billion pre-money valuation, to build its marketplace for private jet services, according to Sergey Petrossov, the startup’s founder and CEO.
The massive funding round will be used primarily for global expansion of JetSmarter in Asia and Latin America, Petrossov said, and increasing the number of routes and flights available to JetSmarter members in the U.S.
The company’s app, which TechCrunch reviewed here, allows travelers to book a seat on a private jet via the company’s JetShuttle service, or to charter an entire plane if their entourage rolls deep.
While anyone can download and evaluate its app, before flying JetSmarter, members go through a light background check then pay $15,000 for a “core membership” in the first year they join. Members then get a seat on a wide selection of flights “free,” but have to pay for companion tickets if they want to bring a non-member along or pay to charter whole planes.
Members of the Saudi royal family, and hip hop icon and entrepreneur Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter, earlier backers of JetSmarter, increased their investments in the startup with this round.
New investors in JetSmarter included an Abu Dhabi-based equity fund, JetEdge (the global private aviation company that operates fleets of large cabin jets), KZ Capital in London, a Qatar-based private equity fund and other strategic backers the company did not have permission to name.
Today, JetSmarter connects travelers to flights in 50 markets around the world, including New York, Chicago, Fort Lauderdale, Las Vegas, Atlanta, London, Paris, Moscow, Dubai, Milan and other business and leisure travel hubs. Petrossov said he wants to expand to be available in 80 to 100 markets by the end of 2017.
And the company wants to connect more cities on the U.S. map, including connecting Florida destinations to Boston, New York and Washington, D.C., and San Francisco to Seattle.
XOJET President and CEO Bradley Stewart, who is also a senior advisor to private equity firm TPG, has joined JetSmarter’s board with the most recent round of funding. The companies earlier struck a partnership that allowed JetSmarter to expand its offering of flights in North America.
Competitors to JetSmarter include subscription, “all you can fly” travel providers like SurfAir, and other membership-driven private jet services like WheelsUp or StrataJet.
JetSmarter has been able to grow rapidly in private aviation where other players, like Beacon or BlackJet, which was also counted Jay-Z among its backers, have faded away.
Petrossov said, “We scale from the community. We use predictive maps and algorithms to find where the demand is, so that we will never over supply the market, and can just meet the amount of demand we have. Other companies would over supply and fly where they’d have 20% loads. We have zero deadhead weight on our shuttles and a 90% load factor.”
JetSmarter doesn’t own any planes, but instead works with operators, owners and carriers who manage and maintain the planes, hire pilots and deal with safety and compliance issues for the heavily regulated industry.
Being a software-driven, asset-light business, Petrossov and his backers often compare JetSmarter to an Uber for the skies.
The company is hoping to go even further in that direction with something like “on-demand” access to seats on a select number of private flights for non-members. They would pay basically $1 per mile for shorter trips, like Boston to New York, potentially.
Petrossov said, “Everything we do is about making flying fun again.”We all know the warning signs. The sink takes a little longer to drain. You begin to notice water pooling around your feet in the shower. And the odors. The strange, unpleasant odors. They're all signs that you may soon be facing a clogged drain. And then one day, boom. Your drain is blocked completely. It's something you need to deal with quickly, or face the wrath of a burst pipe or a useless bathroom.
So you remove the excess hair and gunk that has built up at the surface of the drain. And nothing happens. You try some liquid plumber. No good. Then, the plunger. But what happens when it doesn't come to the rescue? Here are 10 ways to deal with the blockages before resorting to that expensive emergency plumber. (See also: 5 Household Fixes You Should Stop Paying Others For)
1. The Bent Wire Hanger
Simple enough, but surprisingly effective. Take a regular wire coat hanger and straighten it out as best you can. Then, bend one end over to create a small hook. Push that past the drain cover and start fishing. You should be able to get all sorts of hair and nasty stuff out of the drain. Remember, you always want to be pulling gunk out, not pushing it further. When you've got as much out as you can, run the hot water, and it should clear things up nicely.
2. Baking Soda and Vinegar
Mix 1/3rd of a cup of baking soda with 1/3rd of a cup of vinegar in a measuring cup. It will fizz immediately, and you should waste no time pouring it down the clogged drain. The fizzing action will help to remove the gunk, hair, and grime that has built up in the pipe. Let it sit for one hour or even overnight if you can. Flush with hot water. Alternatively, get as much of the dry baking soda as you can down the drain first, then pour on the vinegar. (See also: 30 Household Products Vinegar Can Replace)
3. The Wet & Dry Vacuum
If you have a wet & dry shop vacuum, it can become a terrific tool to unclog drains. First, set it to vacuum liquids. Cover up the vent to prevent a mess. Then, create the tightest seal you can over the drain. You may want to get creative and adapt an old plunger head for this purpose. With the vacuum turned on its highest setting, it can be powerful enough to draw the clog up the pipe and into the vacuum bag. It doesn't always work, but it's worth a shot.
4. Boiling Water
Tips don't get any easier than this. Put the kettle on (or use the stove or microwave if you don't own a kettle) and boil up as much water as it will hold. Now pour it slowly down the drain in two to three stages, allowing the hot water to work for a several seconds in between each pour. This is usually the easiest and quickest way to unclog a drain. If there's any water left, congratulate yourself with a cup of tea.
5. Caustic Soda
Get some rubber gloves and eye protection. Caustic soda (also known as Sodium Hydroxide) can cause nasty chemical burns. You can pick some up from your local hardware store, but always use caution handling it. Pour 3/4 gallon of cold water into a mop bucket, and then add 3 cups of caustic soda. Stir it well with an old wooden spoon. It will begin to fizz and heat up. Pour it into the clogged drain and leave for 20-30 minutes, then flush the drain with boiling water. Repeat if necessary.
6. Cleaning the Pipe
There are some plumbing jobs that I won't do, but this one is easy. First, place an empty bucket underneath the U-shaped pipe (the trap) beneath the sink. The bucket will collect the water that will spill. Using a plumber's wrench, loosen the slip nuts at both ends of the pipe. You should be able to finish the operation by hand. When the trap is free, remove it and turn it upside down, emptying the contents into the bucket. You may also need to fish around inside it for debris, and do the same with the pipes that were holding it. An old toothbrush is good for getting the tough gunk out. Rinse the trap with water and then put it all back together. In most cases, that will have done the trick.
7. The Drain Snake
This is a fairly low-tech piece of equipment that works wonders. It's basically a long flexible metal rope with a spiral of metal at the end. The following video shows you just what to do.
8. Salt and Baking Soda
Mix 1/2 cup of table salt with 1/2 cup of baking soda and pour down the blocked drain. Leave it for 10-20 minutes, then pour boiling water down. The salt, baking soda, and boiling water will produce a chemical reaction that should dissolve some of the nastiest blockages. (See also: 27 Uses for Baking Soda)
9. Dish Detergent
If your toilet is clogged, pour 1/4 cup of dish detergent in the bowl. Then boil some water. The dish soap will act as a lubricant and help break up any greasy residue. Then pour the hot water down, and get ready to start plunging. If the plunger doesn't cut it, rubber gloves may be the next option.
10. Baking Soda, Vinegar, Gravity, and Pressure
If your bath drain is clogged, mix up some of the baking soda/vinegar mentioned in tip two. Pour it down the drain, and then place the stopper over it. After 45-60 minutes, fill the bathtub with water. Then, remove the stopper. The pressure of 40-60 gallons of water should be enough to dislodge the blockage that has been loosened by the baking soda and vinegar. You could also try some plunging or the drain snake in conjunction with the weight of the water.
Those are 10 quick and easy tips that should help you deal with the most stubborn blockages. Do you have any great tips? Let us know.
Like this article? Pin it!Hundreds Of Victims Of Las Vegas Shooting File Lawsuits
Enlarge this image toggle caption Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images
Hundreds of victims of the Oct. 1 shooting in Las Vegas filed five lawsuits in Los Angeles Superior Court on Monday.
The largest of the suits names 450 plaintiffs. Among those being sued are MGM Resorts International, owner of the Mandalay Bay resort; Live Nation, organizer of the country music festival at which 58 people were killed; and the estate of Stephen Paddock, the shooter.
The victims claim negligence by both MGM and Live Nation. They accuse MGM of not having adequate security policies, not properly training staff, not properly surveilling the premises, and failing to respond quickly when security guard Jesus Campos was shot. The suit alleges that Paddock's VIP status as a high-stakes gambler gave him access to a service elevator at the Mandalay Bay, which he used to stockpile weapons and ammunition in the days before the shooting.
In Live Nation's case, the plaintiffs say the company failed to provide enough exits or properly train employees "in case of a foreseeable event, such as a terrorist attack or other emergency."
The shooter's estate is being sued for assault, battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
The attorney heading the lawsuits, Muhammad Aziz, told Reuters that the cases were filed in California because most of the plaintiffs are from that state and received treatment there. He also noted that Live Nation is based in the state.
Last week, a different law firm filed 14 suits in Nevada court. In addition to MGM, Live Nation, and Paddock's estate, these suits also name the manufacturers of the bump stock devices found in Paddock's hotel suite. Attorneys for the plaintiffs argue that the shooting could have been stopped, and that the lawsuits are intended to prompt policy changes so it can't happen again.
Similar to the California lawsuits, the suits filed in Nevada argue that MGM assisted Paddock in transporting his arsenal by giving him access to a service elevator not open to the public, and that the Mandalay Bay failed to adequately monitor the hotel premises, discover his weapons, have gunshot detection devices in hotel rooms, or have adequate procedures to handle an active shooter situation. The suit alleges that Live Nation failed to provide adequate exits or properly train staff to handle emergencies.
"The evidence we've seen thus far clearly indicates that the defendants were culpable in contributing to the 58 victims who lost their lives and the thousands more still suffering from severe injuries that will take years to overcome, if ever," said attorney Antonio Romanucci in a press release. He is also lead counsel in lawsuits related to the 2016 shooting at Orlando's Pulse nightclub.
Live Nation told NPR that it does not typically comment on ongoing litigation.
MGM wrote in a statement to NPR: "The incident that took place on October 1st was a terrible tragedy perpetrated by an evil man. These kinds of lawsuits are not unexpected and we intend to defend ourselves against them. That said, out of respect for the victims, we will give our response through the appropriate legal channels."
It won't be easy to prove the venues were negligent.
"One can't blame the hotel for not predicting that this gunman would go up to their 32nd floor with an arsenal and break out the windows and start firing at people," Tom Russell, a personal injury lawyer and law professor at the University of Denver told NPR's Kirk Siegler. He said venues can also be victims, in the form of lost business or other harms.
As Kirk reported last month, victims sued the theater chain Cinemark after the 2012 Aurora, Colo., movie theater shooting. But the victims lost their suit, and were ordered to pay Cinemark's legal fees. A legal expert also said that lawsuits against the gun industry tend to be unsuccessful.
"Laws like the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act passed as recently as 2005 broadly exempt the gun industry from any tort lawsuits when criminals use their products," Kirk reported. "Meanwhile some victims, as in one motion already filed in Las Vegas, go after the gunman's assets. But even if they win, there's rarely enough money to go around."
C. Chad Pinkerton, an attorney in the California suits, told the Associated Press that the shooting could have been avoided if officials had implemented safety recommendations and followed the weapons policies they had.
"We know in this day and age that evil does happen, and we have to protect against that," he told the AP. "This was the largest venue security failure in U.S. history."Blue Jays manager John Gibbons said it was unlikely David Price will pitch out of the bullpen again in Wednesday’s ALDS-deciding Game 5. “Well, I’m not sure, (but) I wouldn’t necessarily count on it,” Gibbons said as the Jays worked out at the Rogers Centre ahead of Wednesday’s series finale against the Texas Rangers.
Brendan Kennedy comes to us from the Rogers Centre, as the Jays gear up for the decisive Game 5 of the American League Division Series.
Your Call!
Price, the Jays’ ace lefty, pitched three innings of relief to help secure a victory in the team’s do-or-die Game 4 on Monday. Price said after the game he would be available for Game 5. While not ruling it out entirely, Gibbons suggested otherwise. “You know, first, David is very instrumental in getting us here, but he’s not here to be abused either,” he said. “So we’ll see, but don’t count on it.”
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Meanwhile, left-handed reliever Aaron Loup, who missed Game 4 to deal with a family matter, may also be unavailable for Game 5. Gibbons said he wasn’t sure if Loup would be returning to the team in time for the game. So with Brett Cecil’s season-ending calf surgery, that leaves Toronto’s bullpen without a single southpaw against a Ranger lineup stacked with left-handed power bats. The limited number of left-handed relief arms was part of the reason why Gibbons tapped Price to take over for R.A. Dickey in Game 4, a decision that has been hotly debated since.
ALDS Schedule
The Jays do have a pair of right-handed relievers — LaTroy Hawkins and the recently recalled Ryan Tepera — who actually have reverse platoon splits, meaning they fare better against opposite-handed hitters. So they could be used in a key spot against one of the Rangers’ dangerous lefties on Wednesday. But with Marcus Stroman on the mound, Gibbons is hoping his budding ace will go seven or eight innings so he can hand the ball straight to the late-inning combo of Aaron Sanchez and Roberto Osuna.
The Jays' David Price was brought in to relieve starter R.A. Dickey in Game 4 on Monday in Texas. As a result, Jays manager John Gibbons says fans shouldn't count on seeing Price in a similar role in Wednesday's decisive Game 5. ( Tim Heitman / USA Today Sports )
Read more about:Tesla will have developed cars with “full autonomy” in just three years, CEO Elon Musk has.
At present Tesla is working on a model that has basic levels of autonomy and Musk said, in an interview with Danish media Borsen, he hopes that the features should come out of beta testing as soon as October.
“The Tesla that is currently in production has the ability to do automatic steering, so autopilot on highways, that’s currently being beta tested and will go into wide release next month,” Musk said.
“We’re probably only a month away from having autonomous driving at least for highways and for relatively simple roads.
“My guess for when we will have full autonomy is about three years. Approximately three years.”
But the Tesla and SpaceX boss continued to say that while it will be technically possible for his fully self-driving cars to exist in 36 months, the regulations surrounding their use won’t be developed by then.
Musk said that officials would still be deciding on the rules for self-driving cars between “one to three years” after a Tesla model is created.
“It depends on the particular market.
“In some markets the regulators will be more forward leaning than others but in terms of when it will be technologically possible I think three years,” he explained in the interview.
In some locations around the world, rules and regulations around self-driving cars – and in particular the testing of them – are being developed by governments. For example, UK officials have drawn up a code that states those testing autonomous vehicles in the UK have to be sober and the cars need to be hack-proof.
During the interview, Musk continued to say that he believes by 2020 an electric Tesla car will be able to travel up to 1,200km with one charge and that in 20 years time the majority of cars will be electric.
Tesla has also just announced its first electric SUV, the Model X, which has Falcon Wing doors.
The car can fit up to seven people and travel around 250 miles on a single charge, the company says. As well as being able to fit all the family, plus extras, the vehicle can accelerate from 0-60mph in 3.8 seconds (3.2 seconds if you select the upgraded model) and has a top speed of 155mph.
Among the car’s array of features is automatic keyless entry, GPS, parking sensors and automatic emergency breaking.
The Model X is expected to ship next year.TALLAHASSEE — Masked men broke into the Santa Rosa County elections office last summer and walked out with ballots and voting equipment.
They disabled the alarm system by cutting wires outside. They pried a side door open with a crowbar. Footage from surveillance cameras show the thieves calmly walked in and, minutes later, hauled away two, 3-foot safes on dollies.
In and out. Professional.
The June crime seemed to embody the specter of election fraud and chicanery that Republicans had been warning about since before the 2012 elections. Invoking the sanctity of the ballot, they called for an array of measures including restrictions on early voting and voter registration.
Yet neither Florida's Division of Elections nor the Department of Law Enforcement investigated, even though the break-in came the day before a special election for an open state House seat.
The Santa Rosa sheriff's deputy looking into the crime concluded he had no leads and declared the case inactive on Oct. 11.
As of Friday, no suspects have been identified.
"It's astounding something like this can happen," said Bob Kerrigan, a Democratic attorney in Pensacola. "A major crime was committed against our elections system, and it was caught on camera. But nobody from the state did anything?"
Kerrigan is running an ad in Sunday's Pensacola News Journal that offers $5,000 for information leading to the conviction of the culprits.
It's unlikely the theft altered the outcome of the June 11 contest between Walter Bryan "Mike" Hill, a Republican, and Jeremy Lau, a Democrat. Hill won by 3,000 votes. According to the Sheriff's Office and the Supervisor of Elections Office, the safes contained more than 850 blank ballots, a cellphone, 33 completed early voting ballots, two completed absentee ballots and some election equipment. Total value: more than $5,000.
"I don't think it played a role in my defeat," said Lau, who is friends with Kerrigan, the main supporter in his rematch campaign this year against Hill. "But I do think they kind of dropped it. When you have something that tampers with an election, like this one did, the FDLE's involvement should have been immediate. That they didn't get involved blows me away."
Hill said he was concerned no one had been arrested. Like Lau, he hadn't been contacted by investigators.
"I'd like to see whoever did this brought to justice," said Hill, who is vying to become House speaker in 2020. "It raises concerns. Why was the building itself unsecure? Why was it so easy to walk in and out? Why didn't outdoor cameras pick up on them?"
An FDLE spokeswoman, Gretl Plessinger, said the agency didn't get involved because the case hadn't been referred by the Division of Elections or Santa Rosa County officials.
Brittany Lesser, a spokeswoman for the Division of Elections, said state officials "worked to coordinate and offer assistance" to Santa Rosa County officials in Milton. But that was pretty much a round of phone calls to Tappie Villane, Santa Rosa's supervisor of elections in the days following the break-in. There was no formal investigation.
"I laid out what I knew to them," Villane said.
Asked if she sought help from state officials, Villane said no.
"I just don't think it was ever discussed or brought up," Villane said.
Although the thieves knew which wires to cut and had no trouble finding the safes, Villane didn't suspect the five other employees who work in the office or that any vendors played any role. "That never crossed my mind," Villane said.
Of the office's six elections employees, only Villane and Joan Chabers, who discovered the missing safes when she arrived to work on June 10, were interviewed in the Santa Rosa sheriff's investigation.
Asked why all employees weren't interviewed, the spokesman for the Sheriff's Office, Deputy Rich Alloy, said it was an open case and he couldn't comment.
"I wouldn't venture how the investigators operate," Alloy said.
Although the case is open, the Sheriff's Office took down the news release asking for tips from its Facebook page. Posts from June that remained included details about a Circle K armed robbery that led to arrests; a vehicle burglary arrest; and an advisory about a new law requiring slow drivers in the left lane to move or get fined.
Alloy said a half-dozen people in the department post and remove items from the Facebook page, so he doesn't know who was responsible. Even though the investigator ran out of leads, seeking further help from the FDLE or another state agency isn't necessary, he said.
"The crime happened in our county," Alloy said. "That's how it was treated. As a county case."
Contact Michael Van Sickler at (850) 224-7263 or [email protected]Safe Schools protesters trash Cory Bernardi's Adelaide office
Updated
Two dozen students have trashed Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi's Adelaide office, protesting against his stance on the Safe Schools Program.
The students, who stormed his office chanting and scrawling slogans on both the exterior and interior walls of the office, also overthrew furniture and threw papers onto the floor.
In a tweet, Senator Bernardi said the protesters "threatened his staff".
He said it was unfortunate he was not in Adelaide to "assist his amazing team".
"Gutless actions like this will never stop me speaking the truth," Mr Bernardi tweeted.
Police said a man had been reported for marking graffiti on a road sign.
They said they would review CCTV footage and witness statements, and further charges may occur.
Senator Simon Birmingham also slammed the protesters, calling them hypocrites.
"I have seen some of the pictures from Adelaide and for people who say they are standing up for tolerance and for understanding to then think that destruction of public property, that violence of that manner is appropriate, is deplorable, is hypocritical," he said.
"I would have hoped we would see much better, indeed from all sides."
The program, according to the website, offers resources and support to equip staff and students with "skills, practical ideas and greater confidence" to create a safe and inclusive environment for same-sex attracted, intersex and gender diverse students, staff and families.
Coalition MPs indicated earlier this week they would push for an inquiry into the anti-bullying program.
Senator Bernardi said some of the material in the program was "age inappropriate" and would "horrify parents".
He claimed the "innocuous-sounding" Safe Schools program actually provided links to sadomasochism sites and encouraged 12 and 13-year-old children to experiment sexually.
Topics: government-and-politics, federal-government, adelaide-5000, sa
First postedYemen’s Chief of Staff to Asharq Al-Awsat: We Received Offers from European Countries for Logistical Support
L.t Gen. Fahd bin Turki bin Abdulaziz, the commander of the Royal Saudi Ground Forces and Yemeni Chief of Staff Maj. General Taher al-Aqeeli. Saba
Jeddah - Said Al-Abiad
Yemen’s Chief of Staff, Major General Taher Al-Aqeeli, revealed that the Yemeni army has received European and Asian offers to provide logistical support, noting that new agreements would be signed at a later stage for the interest of the army.
In an interview with Asharq Al-Awsat, Al-Aqeeli said that countries in the European Union, Eastern Europe and South-East Asia “expressed they wish to provide logistical support to the army, and there is cooperation with Australia on the maritime side.”
“All the efforts and actions that are currently being implemented are moving towards strengthening of the army to enable it to defend the country, in line with a clear and comprehensive vision… to become a shield for the homeland and the Arab and Islamic nation,” the Yemeni military official said.
“We will work hard to dissolve the tribal authority over the army through the proper establishment of the military institution,” he added.
Al-Aqeeli underlined the role assumed by the Arab coalition in restructuring Yemen’s military institution.
“The Arab coalition forces play an important and pivotal role in all directions, whether with regards to material assistance or advice provided by the coalition leaders to the Yemeni army. We must realize that our brothers in Saudi Arabia and the UAE have not only provided such assistance, but also stood with Yemen in front positions to defend the rights of the Yemeni people,” he stated.
Al-Aqeeli went on to say that the Saudi-led coalition has provided “all possible resources, and harnessed all the tools to serve and develop the army, and the results of this support can be seen on the ground.”
On the liberation of the remaining Yemeni territories, the Chief of Staff noted that the army was moving with accuracy “to reduce the war bill and to save civilian lives on all fronts.”
“Everyone must know that it is difficult to reveal everything, and the army depends on what it does, not what it says… The army will open new fronts, using conventional and traditional tactics in such confrontations, and carry out direct offensive actions,” he said.
Asked about the mechanism to liberate Al-Hodeida port, Al-Aqeeli stressed that plans to regain control over the area were linked to internal and international decisions.
“There will be a joint local, regional and international decision on Hodeida. There will be a move towards the city in time to create a balance on the importance of moving towards Sanaa or Hodeida,” he explained.
Commenting on calls by international organizations to return to dialogue in the wake of the Army’s advancement on the ground, Al-Aqeeli said: “The Iranian project dominates a number of Arab countries… they have exploited the sincerity of international organizations and influenced the public opinion by using these organizations to change the course of events.”
“But days have uncovered to international organizations the Iranian lies,” he added.
On the recent developments following the assassination of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, the Yemeni chief of staff stressed that the army would carry major operations in coordination with the Arab coalition forces.
“There will be military surprises that will not be disclosed now,” he said. “The army will certainly work in coordination with the Arab coalition forces to take advantage of all the events taking place on the ground in Sanaa.”
He noted that the Yemeni Army has succeeded in attracting leaders and sheikhs from Sanaa to its ranks.
“The army embraces all the Yemeni people from all factions, including scholars, tribes, officials, and therefore it was natural for them to join the army to liberate the remaining cities. We count on them to achieve outstanding results,” he said.Newly-minted House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) blamed Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) for the gridlock in Congress. Phantasmagorical as such a claim might be, in view of the Republican government shutdown and Republican Senate filibusters, Democrats' knee-jerk response is to argue the point.
They shouldn't. It is much more effective for action -- in this case, inaction -- to make the point for them.
Instead of arguing the point, Harry Reid should offer McCarthy a deal.
Here it is: the Senate will bring up for a vote, without amendment, a House-passed bill of McCarthy's choosing in exchange for the House doing the same for a Senate-passed bill of Reid's choosing. There is no requirement that the bill pass in the other chamber, just that the other chamber votes on it.
Simple. Fair. Straightforward. To make it work, Reid and McCarthy should hand each other a sealed envelope with one bill each week already passed by their respective chambers that they want voted upon by the other chamber. No sealed envelope, no bill.
It calls McCarthy's bluff.
Depending on the number of such bills that each side wants voted upon by the other chamber, this could produce a veritable river of yeas and a mountain of nays.
Or, McCarthy will show he was bluffing.August 26, 2016
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Laura Brown or Les Dorr [email protected], [email protected]
Phone: 202-267-3883
WASHINGTON – Please join U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Administrator Michael Huerta and Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) President Brian Wynne for a media briefing to discuss implementation of the FAA’s new Part 107 rule for small unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), which goes into effect on Monday, August 29th. Topics will include details on the waiver process, airspace authorization, and the aeronautical knowledge test.
When: Monday, August 29, 2016 at 11:45 a.m. EDT
Where: U.S. Department of Transportation, 1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE, Washington, D.C. 20590. DOT is located at the Navy Yard Metrorail Station (Green Line).
How:
Attend. The media briefing is open to accredited media only. Please RSVP by 9 a.m. Monday morning to [email protected]
The media briefing is open to accredited media only. Please RSVP by 9 a.m. Monday morning to [email protected] Livestream.The briefing will be available via livestream on YouTube.
.The briefing will be available via livestream on YouTube. Call in. Media may join a listen only teleconference. Please contact [email protected] for the call-in information.
Questions: If you are with the media and have questions during the briefing, please email [email protected] official poster for'Dredd'has been released with the tagline "Judgment is Coming." Get it? Because he's a Judge! Take a look at the official poster, which feels a little familiar...
'Dredd' is hitting theaters September 21, and it's also premiering at Fantastic Fest in Austin the same week with a special red carpet event. Until then, you can take a gander at the official poster for the film, which will be released in eye-popping (or eye-hurting, depending on your opinion) 3D.
'Dredd' follows a law enforcement official of the same name ( Karl Urban ) in a not-too-distant dystopian future where Judges are the last word of the law and serve as judge, jury, and executioner in a streamlined society. But when a new drug called "Slow-Mo" hits the streets and starts taking over, Dredd must fight his way to the top to battle an evil druglord called Maw-Maw ( Lena Headey ).
But hey, this poster looks just a tad familiar, doesn't it? We thought so, too. In fact, it looks strikingly similar to another poster for a comic book adaptation -- 2003's 'Daredevil |
Moon. We now have more detailed information on the water and some other substances detected during that event. Some of these elements and compounds were expected, others are very strange indeed.Because the spin axis of the Moon is perpendicular to the plane of its orbit with respect to the sun, the Moon’s poles get grazing solar illumination. This means that the floors of craters and low areas are in permanent shadow and extremely cold. The DIVINER instrument on LRO measured these temperatures for the first time and found some areas as cold as 25 Kelvin (25° above absolute zero, -273° C), making them colder than the estimated surface temperature of Pluto. Because these areas are so cold, any molecule or atom of a volatile substance that gets into them is trapped. These dark areas are referred to as “cold traps” where, over very long periods of time (billions of years) significant amounts of these elements and compounds might accumulate.Since water is one of the most abundant compounds found in the Solar System, we expected some accumulation of it at the lunar poles. It was on this basis that scientists have been searching for water ice on the Moon for the past 20 years, using a wide variety of techniques, including spectral reflectance, radar, neutron and gamma-ray sensing and ultraviolet imaging – all techniques done remotely from space. Landing at the poles and surveying the lunar surface to actually see what was there, was next on the list.A plan to soft-land a long-lived rover near the poles and conduct an extended surface mission surveying polar resources was discarded when the Ares rocket became the focus of NASA’s lunar return effort. A smaller mission was improvised to hurl an impactor (the spent upper stage of the rocket that launched the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) into the polar deposits so the spacecraft could analyze the material shot off into space from the collision. Although this is still “remote sensing” of the deposits, at least the material would be ejected out of the dark, cold regions into open space where we might get a look not only at the water but also some other volatile substances that might be there.The LCROSS team’s published data from the mission reveals a cold witches’ brew deep inside Cabeus crater. The finding of significant lunar water has confirmed data from earlier missions, while the ejecta plume from the LCROSS impact reveals more modest amounts of a variety of other substances. The Near-IR spectrometers on the LCROSS shepherding satellite detected abundant water (HO) but also hydrogen sulfide (HS), ammonia (NH), methanol (CHOH), methane (CH), ethylene (C) and sulfur dioxide (SO). The uv-vis spectrometer found carbon dioxide (CO), sodium, silver, and cyanide (CN). Aboard the distant LRO spacecraft, the ultraviolet LAMP imager detected hydrogen (H), nitrogen, carbon monoxide (CO), sodium, mercury, zinc, gold (!), and calcium. But water, present in quantities between 5 and 10 weight percent, is the most abundant volatile substance present.In lunar terms, this is a very odd association of materials. Whereas we had found these elements and compounds in the returned lunar rock samples (some in vanishingly small quantities), the presence of significant amounts of ammonia and methane is significant; these gases are common components of cometary nuclei. One idea about the origin of water ice at the poles of the Moon is that it is derived largely from comets, which have continually hit the Moon over geological time. An alternative model suggests that most of the volatiles of this cometary debris are lost to space and the water and hydroxyl (OH) molecules found on the lunar surface come instead from the interaction of solar wind hydrogen with metal oxides in the lunar soil. In this model, heat provided by micrometeorite impact causes the solar wind hydrogen to reduce the metal oxides into native metal (like Fe) and OH, which attaches itself to mineral faces. This hydroxyl is widespread over the lunar surface and was mapped by the Moon Mineralogy Mapper on the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft over a year ago.The newly published LCROSS data showing large amounts of volatiles normally associated with comets strongly suggest that at least some of the lunar water is of cometary origin. However, the detection of large amounts of free hydrogen (H) in the ejecta plume supports significant preservation of solar wind hydrogen in the cold traps as well. It appears that both sources contribute to the water on the Moon and more analysis is necessary to determine which process is responsible for what fraction of the deposits. The clear message of the new work is that the processes and history of lunar volatiles are complex and poorly understood. Once again, the Moon shows us that its history, as well as its current state, is richer and more nuanced than we had thought.The LCROSS results indicate that a variety of useful substances are present in the polar cold traps. Water is our principal object for future resource extraction, being one of the most valuable and readily available substances for spaceflight imaginable (i.e., a life-support consumable, a medium of energy storage and rocket propellant). However, both ammonia and methane have a variety of industrial uses, as well as being ready sources of nitrogen and carbon, two elements essential for the support of human life. Sulfur is also a useful element and appears to be present in fair quantity as both native sulfur and sulfide. Some reports suggest that the high concentration of mercury makes lunar water unusable; this impression is incorrect. Impurities can be removed from harvested polar water easily through the technique of fractional distillation, a common industrial process on the Earth for hundreds of years.Some of the components of the polar suite are perplexing. For example, silver (Ag) shows a very strong peak in the uv-vis spectra. In lunar samples, silver is extremely sparse, occurring at the parts per billion level. Mercury (Hg) is also rare in lunar samples but it is a very volatile substance and the processes that preserve volatiles in the cold traps would work to increase and concentrate mercury at the poles relative to equatorial areas of the Moon. But silver is not volatile (its melting temperature is about 1000° C), so why would it concentrate at the poles? With such bizarre associations, scientists will be looking over this new data with keen interest. To determine the composition, physical nature and distribution of these deposits, a robotic surface rover needs to be sent into the polar cold traps to take detailed measurements.Just after it has been relegated to a “been there, done that” status, the Moon again shows us we have a lot to learn about its history, physical state and the potential value of its resources. We must take the initiative to learn more as the Moon is crucial in developing and advancing a sustainable space faring infrastructure.A look inside the 16th issue of our professional wrestling magazine – Calling Spots.
Order in PRINT – CallingSpots.com/Wrestling-Merchandise
Order in INSTANT DOWNLOAD – Sellfy.com/CallingSpots
SUBSCRIBE in print or digital – CallingSpots.com/Subscribe
As voted by hundreds of our readers, Paul Cooper’s signature cover art for issue 16 features three staples of the British wrestling scene – Kris Travis, Tommy End and Noam Dar.
“The Art of Professional Wrestling Commentary”. Long standing Calling Spots contributor Richard Hattersley sat down with some of the most renowned commentators from the world of pro wrestling to find out what it takes to add the lyrics to the sport we all love. As well as world-class writings, for three years Calling Spots has prided itself on featuring the most beautiful wrestling artwork you will find anywhere. Back for his second issue, to accompany Richard’s piece, Erle Tompkins depicts some of the most influential wrestling commentators from every generation in this stunning piece of artwork.
Along side artwork, we take design and beautiful photography very, very seriously at Calling Spots HQ. If we are going to be inviting the most talented athletes in the world to our studio then we need a magician behind the camera too. This is why the multi-award-winning James Musselwhite is such an important part of our magazine. In issue 16 James continues his much-acclaimed ‘Portrait of a Wrestler’ series of candid, sit-down interviews and photo shoots, this time with the East-End Butcher, Sha Samuels. The UK scene is an absolute hotbed currently, with our wrestlers getting to travel the world and garnering much attention for their work. Sha is one of the nastiest men inside the ring on our shores. We’re lucky that James got out of there with his teeth intact. You’d be a mug to miss this one.
The Summer of ’96. Did you know that only two measly weeks separated Steve Austin’s infamous “3:16” speech at King of the Ring and Hulk Hogan being revealed as the “third man” of the nWo? Stewart Brookes of the New Generation Project Podcast takes an analytical look back in time to the most game-changing summer in the history of professional wrestling.
Kefin Mahon of the Attitude Era Podcast joins us for his recurring spot, this time to muse over the ‘Perils of Improvement’ – an honest look back at various wrestlers who, at one time or another, were a bit rubbish but then went out of their way to do something about it and, most importantly, how the fan reacted to that.
This and much more, including a VERY controversial article by Jo Graham and a celebration of the British wrestling scene, looking at why the 2015 product should never be compared to the World of Sport days.
Thank you so much for your support. You can grab your copy in print or digital using the links below:
Order in PRINT – CallingSpots.com/Wrestling-Merchandise
Order in INSTANT DOWNLOAD – Sellfy.com/CallingSpots
SUBSCRIBE in print or digital – CallingSpots.com/Subscribe
If you’re new to our magazine and would like to read an issue before you buy, we have a FULL issue available to download and enjoy for FREE."My god that's a big ship, but not so big as a Star Destroyer I think..."
For the longest time, Trekkies have been the butt of jokes since Federation starships have always been laggards (let's say modest) in terms of "size" and apparent "firepower". Even the mighty Galaxy Class pales in comparison to say, a typical Imperial Class from Star Wars. And the rebooted and technologically crude Battlestar Galactica herself is significantly larger than any normal UFP combatant. In these immature fandom wars, if your ship doesn't "measure up" it automatically loses any "cred" amongst other sci-fi peers/rivals.
So yes, Trek fans have it hard with the small ship syndrome. Then again, do we need our lead ships to be lumbering behemoths of unspeakable power? Not necessarily. I personally prefer aesthetics myself. Like how the well-crafted Constitution Refit is miles above the monolithic drudgery of the gritty and over-compensating sci-fi ships we see these days. Is it artisan style over realistic practicality? Perhaps, but Trekkies wouldn't have it any other way.
Excalibur by LC_Amaral, Sovereign by Wiley
Spacedock by UnknownX
BG by FrostBoSix and a half years ago, 3-year-old Madeleine McCann disappeared while vacationing with her family in Portugal. Her British parents have not given up hope of finding her, and appealed to German television viewers on Wednesday night for clues after fresh details emerged which suggested a link to the country.
Some 7.26 million Germans tuned in to public broadcaster ZDF to watch unsolved crime show "Aktenzeichen XY... ungelöst" (Case XY... Unsolved) about the girl known around the world as "Maddie," making it the most popular program of the evening. Within hours of its airing, authorities received some 200 tips, German news agency DPA reported.
The show reconstructed the events in the Praia da Luz resort in May 2007 as investigators believe they occurred, outlining new reports of two suspicious men who were seen near the crime scene before the alleged kidnapping, and are believed to have been speaking either Dutch or German. Scotland Yard investigators also revealed a composite sketch of another suspect seen carrying a sleeping child toward the beach around the time of the abduction that night.
Holding hands, Madeleine's parents Kate and Gerry McCann appealed to viewers for their help. "She belongs with us, so please have the courage to say what happened and where she is," said Kate McCann.
Scotland Yard Chief Inspector Andy Redwood made it clear that he believes the man seen carrying the child was likely Maddie's kidnapper. Appearing on the show with her parents, he said investigators know that there were a number of German tourists in the area at the time, some of whom may be able to provide clues.
The show was part of a media campaign by Scotland Yard that has aired on similar shows in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands in recent days to reveal the new clues and release composite sketches of the suspects. These also reportedly generated hundreds of tips that investigators must now sift through.
"It really does give us renewed hope of a breakthrough, because despite the six and a half years, there is new information," said Gerry McCann. "And we hope that German tourists can provide further information."The United States has for years carried out extensive surveillance and eavesdropping operations targeting Mexico's government, according to new evidence obtained by Spiegel Online. The German publication says its information comes directly from classified intelligence leaked by Edward Snowden. Chief among the allegations is that the NSA successfully infiltrated the public email account of Mexico's former president, Felipe Calderon.
Once the agency gained access, according to Spiegel, a top secret May 2010 report reveals that it monitored "diplomatic, economic and leadership communications which continue to provide insight into Mexico's political system and internal stability." The NSA's operatives accomplished this by exploiting "a key mail server in the Mexican Presidencia domain within the Mexican Presidential network," and additional documents suggest the US has continued to take advantage of this security hole — it's described as a "lucrative source" of intelligence.
The NSA secretly gained access to a wealth of data on Mexico's government
In the summer of 2012, the NSA would begin monitoring the communications of then-presidential candidate Enrique Peña Nieto and "nine of his close associates." In all, it intercepted 85,489 text messages from the politician's inner circle; Peña Nieto is now Mexico's president. In a report detailing the spying, NSA analysts trumpeted the technology it used for the snooping, saying it "might find a needle in a haystack" and could accomplish this "in a repeatable and efficient way." The NSA's surveillance of wireless phone calls and text messages in Mexico is reportedly conducted under the internal code name "Eveningeasel."
Spiegel's report claims that both Mexico and Brazil — which has grown outraged by revelations of NSA surveillance— remain high priority subjects. The US has put the most focus on monitoring Mexico's drug trade, political leadership, economic stability, military prowess, and trade relations, among other areas of interest. Last month, Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff announced plans to route internet traffic between South America and Europe, bypassing the US entirely. Officials are also being pressured to pass laws requiring American companies including Google and Microsoft to store data on Brazilian users inside the country. When contacted by Spiegel to comment on the report, the NSA provided the following statement
We are not going to comment publicly on every specific alleged intelligence activity, and as a matter of policy we have made clear that the United States gathers foreign intelligence of the type gathered by all nations. As the President said in his speech at the UN General Assembly, we've begun to review the way that we gather intelligence, so that we properly balance the legitimate security concerns of our citizens and allies with the privacy concerns that all people share.
President Obama in August unveiled new reforms aimed at calming unease over the government's spying both at home and abroad. But several of Obama's proposed solutions, including an NSA review panel, have been criticized for not going far enough in addressing the problem. US officials have since admitted that Snowden's leaks have damaged ties with several countries, though it remains to be seen how Mexico will react to the latest report.Update: Weaver says his quote was "misrepresented" and that "there's nothing happening."
In the midst of another round of college conference realignment, Virginia Tech Hokies athletic director Jim Weaver seems to have revealed there could be interest in Blacksburg in joining the SEC some time in the future, which would stand in contrast to his repeated denials in the past. Weaver's comments were first reported by Fox Sports Radio's Kyle Bailey via his Twitter account late Tuesday.
"I really haven't thought about it because the discussion has just come about three or four days ago..." (cont.) — Kyle Bailey (@TheClubhouseKB) November 21, 2012
"I'd like to defer my comment for right now, but there may potentially be some interest." - Jim Weaver on "Tech Talk Live" @sth_hokie — Kyle Bailey (@TheClubhouseKB) November 21, 2012
Also, from earlier in the day:
Weaver: "The answer to that is, Dr. Steger and I meet about once a month...and we will be ready for whatever comes in the future" #Hokies — Ty Hodges (@STH_Hokie) November 21, 2012
The apparent interest comes in the wake of the ACC's loss of the Maryland Terrapins. The Terrapins are leaving the ACC in favor of the Big Ten, which also accepted the Rutgers Scarlet Knights, which are leaving the Big East conference in favor of the now 14-team conference.
Virginia Tech joined the ACC in 2004 after long-time membership in the Big East. The Hokies have won four ACC football championships and five Coastal Division crowns in their time in the conference. The men's basketball team also made the NCAA tournament in 2007.
Look through SB Nation's many excellent college football blogs to find your team's community.
Follow @SBNationCFBAnyone who has ever been on a train in Tokyo will know how crowded and frustrating it can be at times.
But there is a fun side to the hell of the rush hour or last train.
Sometimes you encounter scenes which are just out of this world! Here is a collection of some of most unusual (and amusing) images we’ve uncovered.
Sleeping Beauties
The Japanese work too hard, as demonstrated by all the snoozing people you can see around the country. They seem to be able to sleep in any kind of place too, including moving (and crowded) trains. And yet invariably they still wake up in time to get off at their stop.
[Via ShiftEast]
Otaku
Yes, Japan is a nation of geeks…
All Creatures Great and Small…
In a culture of cute, you can’t get away from animals and their owners.
Suspicious Characters
No comment necessary. Stay away from these types!
[Pics via Matome Naver
What other strange or impressive sights have you encountered on Japan’s trains?Spring break is a time for college students to go out, get wild and indulge in a bit of alcohol-fueled hijinks. But some drunkards are spoiling the fun for everyone and harming wild animals in the process.
This year, Total Frat Move, a blog about college life, launched an Instagram account dedicated solely to spring break. Buried in between photos of beer bongs, boobs and more beer are videos that show straight-up animal abuse.
Take this clip titled “The shark shotgun,” which shows a guy using a beached shark to open his can of beer:
The shark shotgun. @tfmspringbreak A post shared by TFM (@totalfratmove) on Mar 17, 2017 at 1:37pm PDT
It’s unclear whether these guys found this animal dead or alive on the beach, but the fishing line and hook connected to its mouth suggests the shark was reeled in from the sea. (The location of the video is unknown, but fishing for some shark species is legal in states such as Florida, Virginia and South Carolina.)
The video has been viewed more than 590,000 times since it was posted over the weekend. The bros’ cruel and unnecessary handling of the shark has elicited comments slamming the duo for animal abuse.
But that wasn’t the only Total Frat Move video displaying a disregard for wildlife.
One video showed a guy pouring his drink into a large starfish, before slurping the liquid from the starfish’s leg. Another dude in a Hawaiian shirt caught a live seabird and paraded around the beach and into a room with the struggling animal.
The starfish luge. A post shared by 🏖TFM SPRING BREAK CONTEST '17🏝 (@tfmspringbreak) on Mar 14, 2017 at 10:10am PDT
Taking time out to enjoy the wildlife on spring break. #TFM A post shared by 🏖TFM SPRING BREAK CONTEST '17🏝 (@tfmspringbreak) on Mar 8, 2017 at 11:57am PST
Similar to the shark shotgun clip, comments on the above videos are a mix of people who are amused with the drunken antics and people who are appalled.
“That is not cool dude :( Leave the bird alone, it’s not a toy,” one Instagram user noted on the seabird video. “Somebody call [PETA],” noted another.
To be fair, the rest of Total Frat Move’s photos show typical spring break scenes, which may suggest the guys in the videos above are just a few bad fish in a sea of drunk vacationers.
But using ― and hurting ― animals for the sake of imbibing will never be OK.
Here’s a PSA, spring breakers: Next time you want to drink a beer, pour it in a glass or down your various body parts like a normal college student.
Want more crazy stories like this? Get the HuffPost Weird News email.Details Year: 2005
Make: Lamborghini
Model: Murcielago
Bodystyle: Coupe
Mileage: 13,166 miles
Engine: 6.2L V12
Transmission: 6 Speed Manual
Drive Line: AWD
Fuel Type: Premium Unleaded
Exterior Color: Giallo Orion
Interior Color: Nero Ade
VIN: 11111111111111111
Stock #: LT0734 Fuel Efficiency Rating City MPG:
13 Hwy MPG:
17
Actual rating will vary with options, driving conditions, habits and vehicle condition. Options 4 Wheel Power Disc Brakes
AM/FM RADIO
Air Conditioning
Alarm System
Allow wheels
Automatic Trunk Release
Bucket Seats
Courtesy Lights
Electric Clock
Heater/Defroster
Instrumentation
Intermittent Wipers
Leather Seating
Padded Sun Visors & Dash
Power Door Locks
Power Windows
Rear Spoiler
Remote Keyless Entry Convenience Features 1-touch down
Tilt steering wheel
Air conditioning
Front beverage holders
Illuminated entry
Front dual zone A/C
Telescoping steering wheel
Automatic temperature control
Power windows
Passenger door bin
Remote keyless entry
Driver door bin
1-touch up Entertainment Features Radio data system
Wireless phone connectivity: Bluetooth
MP3 decoder
AM/FM radio
1st row LCD monitors: 2
Steering wheel mounted audio controls
Internal memory capacity (GB): 30 GB
CD player Seats and Trim Max seating capacity: 2
Leather steering wheel
Front seats: bucket
Sport steering wheel
Leather upholstery Specs and Dimensions Compression ratio: 12.50 to 1
Engine horsepower: 570hp @ 9,000RPM
Exterior height: 1,212mm (47.7")
Wheelbase: 2,649mm (104.3")
Exterior body width: 1,938mm (76.3")
Engine bore x stroke: 94.0mm x 81.0mm (3.70" x 3.19")
Air Pollution Score (AP): 5
Front legroom: 1,143mm (45.0")
Interior maximum cargo volume: 230 L (8 cu.ft.)
Greenhouse Gas Score (GG): 3
Engine displacement: 4.5 L
Exterior length: 4,526mm (178.2")
Engine torque: 398 lb.-ft. @ 6,000RPM
Interior cargo volume: 230 L (8 cu.ft.) Powertrain Fuel economy city: 13mpg
Mode select transmission
Horsepower: 570hp @ 9,000RPM
Fuel economy highway: 17mpg
Transmission: 7 speed automatic with auto-shift
Variable valve control
Engine liters: 4.5
Manual-shift auto: F1-Superfast
Fuel tank capacity: 22.7gal.
Cylinder configuration: V-8
Recommended fuel: premium unleaded
Engine location: mid
Torque: 398 lb.-ft. @ 6,000RPM
Variable intake manifold
Number of valves: 32
Drive type: rear-wheel
Limited slip differential Body Exterior Glass rear window
Spoiler
Tailpipe finisher: polished
Door mirrors: body-color
Convertible roof wind blocker
Rear cargo: trunk
Power door mirrors
Bumpers: body-color
Convertible roof lining
Heated door mirrors
Power convertible roof
Convertible hard top Safety and Security Integrated roll-over protection
Traction control
Passenger cancellable airbag
Ceramic disc brakes
ABS brakes
Electronic stability
Security system
Dual front side impact airbags
4 wheel disc brakes
Ignition disable
Dual front impact airbags Suspension/Handling Front tires: 235/35YR20.0
Rear tires: 295/35YR20.0
Wheel size: 20"
Speed-sensing steering
Four wheel independent suspension
Tires: performance
Rear anti-roll bar
Front anti-roll bar
Power steering
Alloy wheels
Adaptive suspension Lighting, Visibility and Instrumentation Tachometer
Fully automatic headlights
Rear fog lights
Delay-off headlights
Variably intermittent wipers
Rear window defroster
Low tire pressure warning
Outside temperature display
High intensity discharge headlights: Bi-Xenon
Rain sensing wipers
Front reading lights
Headlight cleaning
Voltmeter
* While every reasonable effort is made to ensure the accuracy of this information, we are not responsible for any errors or omissions contained on these pages. Please verify any information in question with Lamborghini Dallas.Traffic is terrible.
City and state officials are really good at counting cars to see how terrible traffic is and how it got that way, but that sort of data collection doesn’t exist for bike and pedestrian traffic. New research hopes to change that.
KUT's Andrew Weber reports
The project has a simple goal, but you wouldn’t glean that from its name: "Evaluation of Bicycle and Pedestrian Monitoring Equipment to Establish Collection Database Methodologies for Estimating Non-Motorized Transportation."
Researchers with the TxDOT-backed pilot program are counting cyclists and pedestrians on roads in both Austin and Houston, and want to figure out a way to share that data statewide.
In Central Texas, bike and pedestrian counts happen, but they’re not necessarily consistent – and the data are not always readily available to researchers and planners at TxDOT.
Greg Griffin, a researcher at the Texas A&M Transportation Institute, says the project is about nuance. A nuance that, he says, is not often afforded to researchers.
“Our transportation agencies haven’t been able to put the resources into doing nuanced counts of bicyclists and pedestrians all over cities,” he says.
So, Griffin and his fellow researchers here and in Houston are collecting data and trying to figure out how to store it – all without spending any extra money.
An easy way to do that is to have the pedestrians and cyclists do the work for you – by using crowdsourced data from open platforms like Strava or RideReport. These sorts of apps have provided transportation researchers an easily accessible, relatively low-cost source for counts, but they’re not 100 percent accurate.
&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;“People say, ‘Well, big data’s better, right?’ Well, no, not necessarily,” Griffin says. “And we have to understand what’s really going on in the world, and we do that with 100 percent counts of all the people that are actually biking in an area.”&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Obviously, not everybody has a smartphone, and even the people who do don’t necessarily use those apps while they’re biking or walking. Even when they do, it’s not always clear whether they’re using their bike or walking for exercise or for their commute.&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;“These new data sources are interesting and helpful, but if you just pick them up and apply them without thinking about who it’s representing, then that can make, actually, worse situations,” Griffin says. “Then, you’re planning for people that are buying apps –&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;nbsp;instead of your community, or what you want your community to be.&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;To create a 100-percent-accurate snap shot, sometimes the old ways are the best.&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;So, researchers are using pneumatic tubes –&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;nbsp;like TxDOT uses in its car counting&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;nbsp;–&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;nbsp;to measure capacity along roads like South Lamar. The thin, rubber tubes are embedded with sensors that give a relative sense of how fast cyclists are going while counting cyclists on a given roadway.&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;But, they’re not a permanent solution, they’re nailed into a handful of bike lanes for a few weeks, then they’re gone.&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;So, Griffin’s also using data from the permanent bike counters set up by the city along high-traffic areas. &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;They provide constant data and they’re sturdier than a thin, rubber tube with a sensor in it.&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;They also use video and man-on-the-street-style interviews with folks to count cyclists and pedestrians.&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt; p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Obviously, all of this helps will give a clearer picture of where people are biking and walking, and could inform the $482 million corridor project that was funded by last year’s mobility bond. That slate of projects along nine roads in Austin will take eight years, at least.&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;The data could help inform those future projects as they’re built out, but Billy Fields, a professor of political science at Texas State University, says it's ultimately a shore-term endeavor.&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;“We don’t need data to make our decisions. We always have imperfect data,” Fields says. “We’re always making decisions, and we let the lack of data hamper us.”&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;For him, it’s quantity over quality. The pilot program is well-intentioned, he says, but&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;nbsp;it’s grant-funded. There are no guarantees it will continue after the money runs out.&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;“The key issue is that we need to do this consistently. It’s not a one-time deal. It’s an every year deal. That’s what, essentially, auto traffic data is about,” he says. “It’s about it consistently and managing the system that way, and we don’t’ do that. We need to institutionalize that data collection system.”&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;To get a good picture, Fields says, you can just get some numbers on a consistent basis to see where crashes happen and where bicyclists and pedestrians are going and where they’re not. While &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a data-cke-saved-href="https://austintexas.gov/page/austin-bicycle-master-plan" href="https://austintexas.gov/page/austin-bicycle-master-plan"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Austin’s Bicycle Master Plan&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt; is a good example of using comprehensive cycling data, that sort of deep-dive isn’t always necessary to get a quick look at who’s riding where.&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;“It’s basically the length of time that you do these counts that it matters for. And then, instead of doing an academic paper –&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;nbsp;I like academic papers, that’s what I do –&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;nbsp;but you need to get that data out for people to hear it,” he says. “So doing a report every year to show where we are.”&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Ultimately, both of them agree – no matter how the data’s being collected –more people are walking and biking in Austin and across Texas.&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp |
private retreat is being held at a resort somewhere in North America. The Roundtable will host many of the talented people in the Bitcoin atmosphere to discuss and ultimately bring forth solutions and innovation to the industry.
Also read: Bitcoin’s Moment? DraftKings & FanDuel Lose Major Payout Provider
Satoshi Roundtable 2016
Last year the event announced by Bruce Fenton was deemed the “Bilderberg” meeting of the crypto-world. The meeting held in the Caribbean had many executives, developers, early adopters, and more gathering to create networks and build a better infrastructure. It was later revealed that the group met in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, February 6-8, 2015.
“Thrilled to be having this very special event again,” the roundtable organizer, Bruce Fenton, told Bitcoin.com. “Satoshi Roundtable is a unique opportunity for industry leaders to meet without the noise of a conference or distractions of the media for deep engagement with their peers in a relaxing environment.” He added:
This year is especially interesting because so much is going on in our industry and we once again have such a depth of attendees. My only regret is that we cannot fit more people.
This year, the Satoshi Roundtable will some prominent guests such as:
Andrew Flipowski from Tally Capital;
Decentral Founder Anthony Di lorio;
Core Developer Gavin Andresen;
Core Developer Jeff Garzik;
Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne, a nd more.
Bitcoin investor and evangelist Roger Ver will also be attending. Ver told Bitcoin.com:
2016 will be my second year attending Satoshi Round Table. With all the rapid advances taking place in the Bitcoin ecosystem, I expect it to be even more productive than the last time.
The event will be limited to sixty people who work behind the scenes and on the front lines of blockchain technology. Representatives from Bain Capital and Fidelity Investments will also be in attendance. As usual, the Satoshi Roundtable creators explain everyone is welcome to ask for an invite, but it’s likely that you won’t receive an invitation.
“You are welcome to send a request for an invite — but it’s very, very limited space and even if you are a great person with many accomplishments in Bitcoin and lots of passion we just won’t likely be able to invite you. We apologize in advance. The best way to be invited is if you know someone who is attending and can get some references and also be either a well-credentialed developer or technical expert, CEO, industry thought leader or representative of a large company.” — Satoshi Roundtable Website
The current list of attendees can be viewed here in alphabetical order. Some guests from last year are attending, and new faces will also be at the meeting this time around. It looks as though the industry pow-wow is pretty popular with developers and executives in this space. It seems to give them the opportunity to meet face to face and discuss building this new economy. One thing for sure is that the people attending the event are quite invested in this technology and plan on pushing its adoption forward.
What do you think about Satoshi Roundtable II? Let us know in the comments below.
Images courtesy of the Satoshi Roundtable websiteWhile many assume their consumption of fish only affects the fish they’re eating, a recent NPR article shows that this couldn’t be further from the truth.
Around the world abandoned or lost fishing gear is killing countless sea animals and trashing our oceans. According to Elizabeth Hogan, campaign manager with World Animal Protection, each year 640,000 tons of gear are lost and pollute the world’s oceans.
Last year, the West Coast faced 61 whale entanglements, a record high that unfortunately is likely to be broken this year. There have been 60 reports of entanglements so far this year.
Kristen Monsell, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity, describes what it’s like when a whale becomes entangled in a giant fishing net:
Sometimes it can drown the whale immediately, or it can happen over weeks, because they get so tired. They eventually die of exhaustion. If the gear is in their mouths, it impedes their ability to feed. It can amputate their tails or other parts of the body. And for younger whales, the gear may wrap around them, but the whale keeps growing and it cuts into their flesh.
This issue isn’t isolated to the West Coast. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission estimates that there are more than 85,000 derelict traps in the Florida Keys, hurting 79 species and killing 630,000 lobsters each year. A similar problem is seen in the Chesapeake Bay area and along the coasts of Louisiana and Maine.
Human consumption of seafood is responsible for the deaths of thousands of whales, dolphins, sea turtles, and porpoises. In fact, The National Journal estimates that about 20 percent of all animals caught by commercial fisheries is "by-catch," or unwanted animals swept up in massive trawling nets along with the targeted species.
The best thing we can do to remove our support from the cruel fishing industry is to leave fish off our plates and switch to a compassionate vegan diet.
Check out all the amazing vegan versions of fish and other seafood, such as Gardein’s fishless filets and crabless cakes, available nationwide. Click here for compassionate sea-inspired recipes.Over a decade ago, not long after Ireland got its first transatlantic internet cable links to the US, one international consortium toyed with putting in a cable that would land in France. The point was to route internet traffic around the main European internet hub in London. Why? Privacy and surveillance concerns played a part. There had long been rumours of a Government Communications Headquarters-run surveillance network called Echelon, that was tapping into phone and now, internet traffic. The project never came to fruition.
Fast forward to 2014, and it turns out the concerns about cable surveillance between Britain and Ireland were absolutely valid. In a story that broke this week, new documents released by whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that GCHQ had a little arrangement whereby it was tapping data passing over the Irish-British cables that connect Ireland to the global internet.
Releases from Snowden
As TJ McIntyre, chairman of Digital Rights Ireland, noted in the article: “That means that they can rewind and listen to anybody’s voice conversations, read anybody’s email, monitor anybody’s web browsing from up to three days ago.” There’s an excellent analysis of how the internet surveillance scheme worked, here: iti.ms/1vmKUFB. It notes: “GCHQ had access to 63 undersea internet cables, 29 of which with the help of Gerontic [the codename for a group revealed as Cable & Wireless, eventually bought by Vodafone in 2012]. This accounted for about 70 per cent of the total amount of internet data that GCHQ had access to in 2009.”
According to the Snowden documents, all leaked to a German newspaper, Süddeutsche Zeitung, all the principal British-Irish internet connector cables were targeted. GCHQ has said it follows restrictions on its access to and use of such data fully, and Vodafone – the operator of the key Irish-British subsea internet cable Solas, initially laid by Cable &Wireless –has said it fully complies with laws around giving access to such data rivers. Vodafone and Eircom, which has a 50 per cent interest in Solas, told this newspaper they knew nothing about the alleged intelligence activity on the Irish cable.
But this is all meaningless waffle, because Britain has notoriously lax legislation around data protection, data access and surveillance. That’s why GCHQ was able also to capture video streams from Yahoo without informing Yahoo at all – an incident also revealed in a Snowden leak which so infuriated Yahoo that it moved its European headquarters from Britain to Dublin. When Snowden’s lawyer, Ben Wizner, was in Dublin recently, I spoke to him about the odd fact that most international attention has focused on the surveillance activities and programmes of the US National Security Agency, even though Snowden’s documents revealed Britain’s GCHQ as a more egregious privacy offender.
Yet – unlike the US Congress and indeed, the US president – the British government has responded only in defence of its national surveillance agency and its activities, and Britain has seen only muted public outcry. This contrasts with the sharp and loud response of both citizens and businesses in the US, which has forced months of public debate and proposals for greater oversight of NSA programmes.
‘NSA loved the GCHQ’
Citizen Four
As Wizner noted, “The only solutions here are global solutions.” I believe those must be driven from the bottom up, not the top down. If citizens don’t demand real change from the companies whose services they use, and their national governments, little will change.My Son the Hurricane 'Is This What You Want?!' (album stream)
Published May 27, 2016
Bringing together a whopping ensemble of 14 musicians from Toronto and Niagara, "brass-hop" unit My Son the Hurricane are firm believers in doing things big. That translates to the sound on their latest album Is This What You Want?!, and you can hear it for yourself right now.The new album follows up the group's sophomore effort Cashing a Deadman's Cheque and continues to hear them weaving together elements of funk, jazz and hip-hop. It was laid down in a Toronto studio with engineer Jeff Pelletier, who captured the big band's two trombones, two trumpets, two saxophones, a sousaphone, percussion, guitar and more to tape. Above the raucous instrumentals, Sylvie Kindree makes her debut with the group on vocals.Is This What You Want?! is due out on June 3, but you can give the exuberant set of songs an early listen right now in the player below.Tour dates:06/03 Hamilton, ON - Club Absinthe06/04 Milton, ON - Milton Street Fest06/10-11 Sault Ste. Marie -Loplops06/16 Bayfield - The Ashwood06/17 Sarnia, ON -Paddy Flaherty's06/18 Owen Sound, ON - Heartwood Concert Hall06/24 St. Catharines, ON - L306/25 Toronto, ON - Lee's Palace07/07 Ottawa, ON - House of Targ07/08 Fredricton, NB - The Capital Bar07/15 Midland, ON - Midland Cultural Centre07/16 Barrie, ON - Rio Del Cambio08/19 Owen Sound, ON - Summer Folk Craft and Arts Fest08/20 Bobcaygeon, ON - BurntUp fest09/09 Ridgeway, ON - The Sanctuary Centre for the Arts(Above) A Cessna 208B Grand Caravan EX on floats, similar to a seaplane that could be operating out of Navy Pier next year. (Click on images to view larger versions.)
Seaplane service proposed for Navy Pier
17-Dec-15 Travel from Chicago to neighboring states by seaplane could be an option as early as next May. A Chicago investment company is seeking regulatory approval for an amphibious aircraft facility at Navy Pier.
Azure Aviation Group LLC, wants to use the quieter north side of Navy Pier for takeoffs and landings, operating during the day from May to November. Seaplanes are often used to get up and over bodies of water, says James Price Chuck (left), a principal of Azure Aviation Group. We also look at it as a transportation solution to get up and over congestion.
It has been about 60 years since Chicago had a seaplane base. At one time, there were two facilities at Navy Pier where amphibious aircraft could land. They were in operation in the 1940s and 1950s.
Chuck says what makes Navy Pier an ideal location is its breakwater, the barrier that protects the lock and harbor from waves. It would cost $200 million to build today, he says. Navy Piers transportation infrastructure is used less Monday through Friday when fewer tourists are at Navy Pier, and Chuck says officials there are very excited about bringing a different kind of visitor to the pier, thats not just a regional tourist but a regional business person.
5-10 flights per day anticipated
Five to ten times a day, a single-engine Cessna EX Amphibian with two pontoons, two pilots, and up to eight TSA-screened passengers would take off from Navy Pier. Milwaukee would be 30 minutes away. Indianapolis and Grand Rapids, 40 minutes. Springfield, 70 minutes.
While the aircrafts range is much farther, Chuck says 90 minutes will be the maximum flying time because after 90 minutes, seaplanes without a bathroom on board become not a lot of fun.
Exact air fares have not yet been determined, but a flight to Milwaukee will cost about $100. Indianapolis will cost about $180 and Springfield will cost about $200.
These prices will likely go up, in reality, but we are not sure yet by what margin, he says. Air fares are not yet set because some key operational costs are not yet set, either.
Reasons for flying evolve in Chicagos century of seaplane history
The first seaplane arrived in Chicago in 1913, landing in Monroe Harbor near where Buckingham Fountain would be built 14 years later.For the past year, Scott Ross and I (Daniel Lay), as well as others that cannot be named, have been lobbying the Visual Effects industry along with others to support the formation of ADAPT, a trade organization as well as a legal case that would penalize the studios that take advantage of subsidies and as a result, harm the domestic VFX industry and its workers.
We organized demonstrations, participated in industry panels and national media interviews, and met with industry colleagues in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, and Vancouver.
Additionally, we enlisted the services of Picard Kentz & Rowe, a Washington DC-based law firm that specializes in cases such as this, to help us build a case for the anti-subsidy duty effort (CVD). They met with various facility owners and worked with economists to help measure the impact of trade distorting subsidies. They also conducted meetings with key personnel in the International Trade Commission, US Customs & Border Protection, and the US Department of Commerce. These meetings helped lay the framework for the case as well as gauge what challenges might lie ahead.
It is important to point out that these government agencies completely understood the threat that subsidies were to the VFX industry and they were receptive to a trade case being made.
In fact, they were amused to see the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) argue (to these very same agencies) that digital transmissions were no different than tangible goods, and that the MPAA was seeking to create rules for US customs to stop digital piracy at the border.
We were also tasked with creating the legal paperwork for making ADAPT a non-profit trade organization. This would allow us to establish a bank account so we could accept donations to pay the law firm for the work that would be ahead of us.
We worked hard to lobby the State of California as well as various politicians, to help pay for our legal effort, but fell short, as we were only able to get vocal support from the California legislature in the recently passed film subsidy law AB1839. After all, we, as opposed to the MPAA and the Studios had no lobbying funds nor a trade association to help persuade lawmakers to take up our cause. Without government support, there was now additional pressure to raise funding from our industry.
Some members of our community donated money to help fund the effort, but most did not.
We suspected the reason for this was due to how rapidly the industry in California collapsed as work moved to Canada. This left many out of work without money and others being forced to move to Canada. Others were able to take advantage of the recovering economy and move into other industries which made them reluctant to help an industry they probably would no longer work in.
On the other hand, the reluctance to support ADAPT might also have been our inability to rally the troops or fully explain what we were doing and how much it was going to cost. And finally, and hopefully incorrectly so, it might be that the VFX community is more bark than bite and that the VFX industry is unwilling to take a stand and be proactive in righting the wrongs of the industry.
Whatever the case may be, after months of campaigning, we were only able to raise a minuscule amount, which would only cover 2% of the total legal costs.
The only donor money spent was to pay the monthly website fees.
It’s important to point out, that none of the travel costs associated with our lobbying efforts were paid by any of the funds donated. In fact, Scott and I have received no funds, remuneration or any expensed items whatsoever from donations. All monies spent beyond the website fees were borne solely by Scott and me.
As the fundraising continued, Scott and I started to become concerned that ADAPT would not be able to pay the law firm for their work. Some were reluctant to donate unless we divulged how much the case would cost or report case details back to them. While we understood their concerns, we were concerned that the Studios would take advantage of any information we would report about the case. Case in point, two major US Studios were already in talks with law firms to prepare to refute our case. The Mayor’s office also wanted to meet with us to find out what was going on, though his representatives were former MPAA employees.
We also considered slashing membership dues to increase donations, but given that the amount raised would only cover 2% of the legal costs, it was hard to believe that lowering dues would get ADAPT to where it needed to be. We decided to continue to lobby for more support from the industry with more meetings and interviews to see if support would grow. Despite that effort, there has been very little growth in support.
After careful consideration Scott and I have decided to dissolve the organization due to insufficient fiscal support.
The question now is what should be done with the funds we have already received?
Scott worked very hard with the law firm to considerably lower their fees. The law firm was extremely interested in the case and slashed their costs considerably. They did a lot of work without any payments from ADAPT and even dipped into their own pockets for the work they did with outside consultants. The total amount of money raised does not cover the amount owed for the work Picard Kentz & Rowe has already done. It barely covers the law firms out of pocket costs. Picard waived their customary fees because they felt that this would be a landmark case that would significantly impact case law on digital goods.
While we could give the law firm all the funds raised, Scott, the law firm, and I were concerned that it would be unfair not to return a portion of the money to donors.
Last week the law firm came to an agreement with us for payment that would allow us to return about 40% of the donations back to donors. Over the next couple of months I will be writing checks and personally mailing back partial donations to donors. I will also immediately suspend any recurring payments of any members of ADAPT.
Scott and I are extremely disappointed in this decision. It brings to end years of work in the hopes of trying to give the VFX industry a fighting chance. While we are upset that many chose not to help fund the effort, we want to thank those that did, and apologize that we couldn’t take it to the finish line and make history. We also want to thank Picard Kentz & Rowe which put so much risk, capital and effort to try to resolve the VFX subsidy issue.
Respectfully,
Daniel Lay
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Like this: Like Loading... RelatedShockingly, Trump not a fan of Jill Stein's recount effort pic.twitter.com/7Is80n00Jl — Jennifer Bendery (@jbendery) November 26, 2016
”This is a scam by the Green Party for an election that has already been conceded, and the results of this election should be respected instead of being challenged and abused, which is exactly what (Green Party leader) Jill Stein is doing,” Trump said in a statement about the recount.
“This recount is just a way for Jill Stein, who received less than one percent of the vote overall and wasn’t even on the ballot in many states, to fill her coffers with money, most of which she will never even spend on this ridiculous recount,” Trump said.
The Green Party scam to fill up their coffers by asking for impossible recounts is now being joined by the badly defeated & demoralized Dems — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 27, 2016
The Democrats, when they incorrectly thought they were going to win, asked that the election night tabulation be accepted. Not so anymore! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 27, 2016
Stein denied Trump’s claims that funds raised for the recount would be allocated elsewhere.
“For his information, this is all going into a dedicated and segregated account so that it can only be spent on the recount,” Stein told CNN on Saturday.
“He may be creating his own facts here as he’s been known to do some times in the past,” Stein said. “He himself said it was rigged election unless he won it.”
Stein tweeted on Saturday that she would fight for recounts in additional states.
I will do a recount in any state where the deadline has not passed. Help my staff find state deadlines: https://t.co/VsruD0r8FR #Recount2016 — Dr. Jill Stein (@DrJillStein) November 26, 2016
Marc Elias, the Clinton campaign counsel, said the campaign would take part in the recount in Wisconsin as well as in the other battleground states of Pennsylvania and Michigan if recounts were mounted there.
Wisconsin’s election board on Friday approved the recount requested by Green Party candidate Jill Stein. She has said she wants to guarantee the integrity of the U.S. voting system since computer hacking had marked the Nov. 8 election.
Elias said in a statement on the Medium website that the Clinton campaign had not planned to seek a recount since its own investigation had failed to turn up any sign of hacking of voting systems.
“But now that a recount has been initiated in Wisconsin, we intend to participate in order to ensure the process proceeds in a manner that is fair to all sides,” Elias said.
Clinton’s campaign should be legally represented in Wisconsin to be able to monitor the recount, he said.
Although Trump won the Electoral College tally, Clinton will have won the national popular vote by more than 2 million ballots when the final results are in.
Stein has raised $5.8 million of the $7 million needed to cover fees and legal costs for the three recounts, according to her campaign website. The deadline for filing a recount bid in Pennsylvania is Monday.
The voting margins make it highly unlikely any recounts would end up giving Clinton a win in all three states, which would be needed for the overall election result to change.
Trump beat Clinton in Pennsylvania by 70,010 votes, in Michigan by 10,704 votes and in Wisconsin by 27,257 votes.
Experts urged extra scrutiny of the three states, Stein told CNN on Friday, because their voting systems were seen as vulnerable.For those who haven't been here, Indonesia is a strange place. In many ways it is a great place to live, but for those of you who have never been outside of Europe or North America you have never seen pollution, traffic, or blatant corruption until travelling through some of the cities in Asia, Jakarta being no exception.In recent surveys Indonesia scored as one of the happiest countries on earth, but it is also a place that can quickly flare into full-scale riots, as seen a few weeks ago although not widely reported in western media.It is the largest democratic Muslim country in the world, and there is a general freedom to express political viewpoints of all kinds. But ask around and what you will often hear from people on the street is that there is too much democracy, and sometimes a longing for the old days under the dictatorship of Suharto.It is democracy in the extreme here. There is no infrastructure development, because no elected official can look past their short elected terms. There is no progress on reforms, or laws, because every official seeks to maintain the sharp rhetoric that had them voted into off in the first place, and have no incentive to compromise.And then there is Aceh province. Aceh is a semi-autonomous province that is extremely Muslim. In most places in Indonesia, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, and Christian, live side by side in relative accord, but Aceh has democratically voted themselves into a repressive semi-theocracy.It is there you will find the mullahs patrolling the streets, and a strong and often hostile xenophobia towards other belief systems. Not, however, imposed on them by any religious authority, but chosen through free and open elections.Indonesians often look to their thriving neighbors in Singapore, Hong Kong, and Shanghai, and ask themselves if a democratic system is best. In those heavily centrally directed places, things are generally cleaner, more organized, and prosperous. Leading to the conclusion that here you have too much democracy.Last year, Samsung embedded a giant tablet in the front of a fridge and called the fridge smart. People kind of bought it, and there was much hype. This year Samsung is hoping that some software updates to that fridge tech will set it apart. But it won’t. Instead, the Samsung smart fridge must suffer. Because LG one-upped Samsung and made Windows refrigerators.
The Smart Instaview Refrigerator from LG is the first smart fridge the company has made, and it’s gone above and beyond, building two separate versions: one with Alexa voice control and a WebOS, and one with Cortana voice control and Windows 10. We poked around on the Windows one and learned that it appears to be running an Intel Atom processor.
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Because they run very different operating systems the performance is different between the two refrigerators. The WebOS one is more responsive when moving objects around on the translucent display or quickly writing a note. The Windows one has some definite lag, but was actually faster to respond when doing long press gestures on the display.
Despite some noticeable differences in responsiveness, the appearance of the primary screen for each display is remarkably similar. It’s a virtual white board that lets you throw up reminder stickers, expiration dates for products inside, notes, and timers that count down in real time.
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LG has also promised the ability to simply knock on the display to quickly access screens and apps that you might frequently use. The ones programmed into the samples at the CES booth popped up the weather—on the rare occasion they could work.
When you’re not interacting with the display it’s intended to go completely black, but you can also set it to be translucent so you can see inside and be shamed by the reminder that you own four packages of break and bake cookies (never be shamed by this). There are also cameras inside so you can—again, when the software works—quickly see what’s in the fridge without opening it.
LG told Gizmodo it expects to have the sluggish bugs worked out by the time the fridge launches later this year, but there’s currently no word on pricing or availability for the product.Admittedly, I was one of the last people to get truly excited about Injustice: Gods Among Us. Outside of the Rocksteady efforts for BATMAN, games with DC comics characters have a track record of being, shall we say, less than super. And when I heard the team developing the title, Netherealm Studios, was responsible for the most recent rendition of Mortal Kombat, I instantly thought what 90% of the gaming world thought.
"Great, another Mortal Kombat game with DC comics skins and thinly crafted references to the source material. Because we totally want that."
Then I actually started seeing game play footage, story trailers, and promotional interviews and materials. It soon became apparent that NRS wanted to truly make Injustice a separate being from Mortal Kombat. Then I saw a video of my favorite super-hero, GREEN LANTERN, laying a royal smack-down on Solomon Grundy, a HULKING zombie man. It was as if a switch had been flipped, and suddenly I couldn't get enough info about this game. And after finally getting my hands and taking my favorite heroes and villains through the gauntlet, I am happy to report that Injustice: Gods Among Us is a solid, accessible fighter with something to offer for everyone. DC comics fans, hardcore fighting enthusiasts, even casual players and those who only know Batman and SUPERMAN will find something to enjoy in this game.
STORY:
Fighting games are usually not known for having gripping narratives behind all the bludgeoning and brutality. Injustice, however, seeks to separate itself from that stereotype and, for the most part, succeeds. DC Comics are no strangers to "what if" stories; alternate universes where Superman arrived in the Soviet Union instead of Kansas as a baby, Bruce Wayne got the Green Lantern's ring instead of Hal Jordan, so on and so forth. This game presents yet another one of those "what if's" as its center plot.
Superman is drugged by the Joker and deceived into thinking he is being attacked by the villain Doomsday. However, after dragging the creature into space to toss him into the eternal emptiness, Superman discovers that he is not carrying Doomsday, but Lois Lane, his wife. Lois dies in his arms, their unborn child dying with her. Simultaneously, a nuclear device hidden in the middle of Metropolis linked to Lois' heartbeat is detonated when she dies, wiping out the city and everyone in it. In one fell swoop Superman loses his family and his city. Driven mad with grief, Superman hunts down and murders the Joker. And from that day forward, the Man of Steel is forever changed.
Then the story cuts to another alternate universe. Yep, its a reality-hopping story, folks. In this universe, Superman isn't drugged and the Joker attempts to simply detonate the nuke in Metropolis on his own. When it looks like he is about to succeed, he and Batman along with half a dozen DC heroes are warped to the sister dimension to theirs, where Superman has established a single world government and rules it with a fist of steel.
While the narrative here is intriguing as our heroes get to see how their counterparts dealt with Superman's coup, it almost lessens the impact of just how far afield Superman's mind has gone. Seeing Superman as a dictator, or Batman a fugitive allied with a ragtag group of former villains, or iconic characters killed doesn't feel as tragic as it should be because, as said, it's simply an "alternate universe." If the story had simply taken place in this one universe where Superman becomes the world's ruler, any significant events in it would've struck deeper with fans. For what it's worth, though, the narrative in this story provides enough intrigue and drama to flesh out the fights that take place. The tale is divided into 12 chapters and players get control over 11 different characters total (Batman gets two whole chapters, the egotistical jerk!). The story provides a good introduction to controlling those characters, and if nothing else is certainly entertaining. If only they had kept it to ONE universe though...
7/10
GAME PLAY:
The meat of any fighting game is the controls and general flow of the combat. And I am glad to report that Injustice creates a solid control scheme that is easy to pick up and learn, while still challenging to truly master. The button layout is simple enough, with three of the four face buttons (triangle, square, and X) allowing for light, medium and heavy attacks while the circle button allows your current character to use a specific trait. These range from summoning mechanical bat drones as Batman to switching weapons as WONDER WOMAN or Nightwing, or even pumping a Venom tank as Bane. The character traits are all unique and serve different purposes tailor made to each character, which is nice to see. Every character has special attacks as well, based on their powers and gadgets in the comics. Green Lantern creates constructs with his ring, Superman has his ice breath and heat vision, Solomon Grundy has incredibly intricate grappling techniques and Deathstroke uses munitions of many kinds. Many of these special attacks are simple to use and link into other combos, and can be used quickly with very little practice.
Attacking your opponent and being attacked helps fill a super meter at the bottom of the screen, and this meter is used for much more than simple super attacks. A section can be used to power up a special attack, it can push back an opponent during a block, players can even use it as a sort of "combo breaker", causing a clash sequence where they can wager a portion of their meter to either increase damage on their opponent or repel an attacker and regain some health. And, of course, if you decide to save up your meter until it fills completely, you can choose to use the whole dang thing for an over-the-top super attack. These attacks deal heavy damage, but no so much as to completely reverse the momentum of a fight. They are incredibly fun to watch, although some may prefer to forgo these god-like attacks to keep the action going at a faster pace. The tempered damage of these moves encourages people to think more strategically with their super meter, instead of just saving it for the end to finish the opponent with a super attack.
On top of all this, there are several set pieces in every stage that can be used during a fight. See a car just sitting there? Power characters can pick it up and smash it over their foe's head. More gadget oriented characters can plant a bomb to blow it up, catching their enemy in the blast. And the most acrobatic characters can leap from these pieces to get behind an opponent. These environmental attacks can be powerful when they hit and, at least for now, are completely unblockable. Some could argue that this breaks the balance of the game, but I believe that, for the purposes of a superhero game, it makes sense for super-powerful beings to be throwing around cars, tool cabinets, even baby-grand pianos. Most stages can also transition to another area if a fighter gets knocked into the right end of the screen, causing massive damage to the poor soul that gets hit into them. This is both a hit and miss feature, because while it makes perfect sense for Superman to knock his opponents through entire buildings, seeing the Joker and Batman do the same just seems a little too silly. Regardless, if people wish not to have these environmental features during a fight, they can choose to turn them off before a fight.
Overall, the controls and game flow of Injustice allow for a broad range of players to enjoy it, and can serve to get some new players into the fighting genre while enticing hardcore veterans to learn the ins and outs of their preferred characters. The game is fun, plain and simple.
10/10
GRAPHICS/PRESENTATION:
DC Comics are usually not a place for gritty realism, and for the most part NRS did a good job of maintaining the over-the-top action of the comics while also bringing in the subtle punches of humor that these characters are known for. Graphics-wise, this translates into costumes for characters that, while unique to Injustice, draws heavy inspiration from the source material. Many arenas are incredibly detailed and have hidden nuggets of fan-service hidden among them. Heroes and villains appear regularly in the background in many stages, some even take part during transitions. There's nothing quite like knocking somebody through Arkham Asylum, and seeing them get jumped by the Scarecrow, or ganged up on by Batman's greatest villains. Textures carry a stunning amount of detail, which is especially apparent when you see characters faces during super attacks. It's clear that NRS wanted a game that serves as a big sappy love letter to DC fans.
Menus have several themes going for them, the main menu having a backdrop of a massive super-human fight seemingly frozen in time. The character select screen has heroes and villains on either side, and the two combatants have full portraits in the center. There is a surprising amount of polish to everything that only serves to draw in the players even more. And since Nintendo's newest console is HD capable, there is thankfully no dip in graphical quality among the three versions of this game. Graphically, the game is as strong as the heroes and villains it presents.
10/10
MUSIC/SOUND:
The sound work in this game is very much hit and miss. Apart from the theme at the main menu and the song created for the credits, most of the music in this game is incredibly forgettable. Not bad, just nothing special. It tends to fade to the background, where I suppose it is meant to be. Thankfully the music changes whenever someone uses a super attack or knocks an opponent through a stage transition. Despite the forgettable nature of the arena tunes, everything is recorded by a full orchestra and still serves to bring an epic vibe to these epic fights.
The voice acting, however, is absolutely top-notch. Many voice veterans from DC's animated works make a return here, like Kevin Conroy as Batman, George Newbern as Superman, and Alan Tudyk as Green Arrow. Tara Strong (Harley Quinn), Adam Baldwin (Green Lantern), and Phil Lamarr (AQUAMAN) also make a return, amongst an incredibly strong cast all around. One of the best parts of the voice work in this game is during the clash sequences. Many pairs of characters have unique bits of dialogue, where they often refer to each other by name or reference their past history. If Batman and Superman clash, Bats sometimes orders "That's enough, Clark!". Sinestro calls Green Lantern "human scum", and Harley cries out "I thought you loved me!" if she fights the Joker. There so many hidden gems of dialogue in these sequences alone, and overall the cast brings vivid life to the characters they seek to voice.
8/10
REPLAY VALUE:
This is a fighting game, so it is pretty much 95% replay value that keeps the game alive at all. Single player modes includes classic arcade ladders that can be applied with various rules, such as carrying over your health meter from the previous fight to enabling unlimited super meters while super attacks are disabled. Doing anything outside of training mode in this game earns you XP, and as you level up you can gain access to many things in the Archives menu, such as concept art, extra modes, and unlockable costumes for the characters. Two people can fight online and off, and the PS3 version allows for private matches between friends in addition to king of the hill and survivor challenges. There are currently 24 characters on the roster (with more coming as DLC down the line), each with their own unique playstyle that are bound to appeal to somebody out there. I'm a Green Lantern man myself, with a surprisingly good vibe with Black Adam. Strategic use of the super meter will help close the gap between veterans and new players while still allowing for a serious competitive community to thrive. With more costumes and characters to come, this game has a lot of steam behind it and won't be losing it for a while.
10/10
Overall, Injustice: Gods Among Us is the super-hero fighting title we have |
rupiah, Mexican peso and Philippine peso by 0.3%, 0.5%, 0.5%, 0.1% and 0.5% respectively.
• Total domestic vehicle sales fell in May by -10.4% year-on-year worse than the -9.2% contraction in April and far worse than the -7.7% consensus forecast. Domestic vehicle sales have fallen on a year-on-year basis for 15 straight months reflecting weakening consumer demand. Domestic passenger vehicle sales fell -13.0% on the year a slight moderation from April’s -13.6% decline. Although vehicle export sales growth slowed from 39.1% year-on-year to 0.8% this is due to the base effect of an unusually strong reading in April 2015. On a month-on-month basis vehicle exports increased a robust 2.6%.
• The Barclays manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) fell from 54.9 in April to 51.9 in May but still above the 50.5 March reading. The PMI has been above the expansionary 50-level for three straight months indicating a stabilization in manufacturing conditions. Most sub-indices remained above the key 50-level, although the employment index disappointingly declined from 50.4 to 48.0. The business activity index fell from 56.4 to 52.9, but still a respectable level. Encouragingly, the expected business conditions index, which measures prospects in six months’ time, moderated only slightly from 55.9 to 54.1, indicating a sustainable improvement in manufacturing output. Unfortunately, the prices index increased further from 77.7 to 80.1 confirming growing inflationary pressure and the likelihood of further interest rate hikes.
• SA Auditor General Kimi Makwetu announced in his 2014/15 local government audit that the number of municipalities receiving a clean audit had increased from 40 to 54. Although a fraction of the total 272 municipalities this is a substantial improvement from 13 just five years ago. However, irregular expenditure has more than doubled over the past five years to almost R15bn and unauthorised expenditure has increased threefold to over R15bn. The Auditor General noted that 92% of municipalities had financial difficulties.
• SA unexpectedly registered a second consecutive trade surplus in April. Although SA’s trade surplus decreased from R2.0bn in March to R0.4bn in April this was better than the -R0.9bn consensus forecast deficit and the –R2.5bn deficit recorded in April last year. The cumulative trade deficit for 2016 to date is –R16.8bn the lowest in the first four months of the year since 2012 and 41% less than last year’s deficit. The improving trade data indicates that the weaker rand is finally benefiting the economy via export competitiveness and reduced imports.
The week ahead
• GDP growth: Due Wednesday 8th June. According to consensus forecast quarter-on-quarter annualised GDP growth is expected to deteriorate from 0.6% in the fourth quarter (Q4) last year to -0.1% in Q1. With the agriculture and mining sectors already in recession many economists expect a negative GDP reading.
• Fitch credit rating announcement: Expected Wednesday 8th June. Fitch has not disclosed the date of its announcement but according to consensus it is expected to be Wednesday. Fitch’s current BBB- foreign currency sovereign debt rating is expected to be maintained although it is likely the outlook will move from “stable” to “negative”.
• Mining production: Due Thursday 9th June. According to consensus forecast the year-on-year decline in mining production is expected to moderate from -18.0% in March to -7.20% in April with the base effect of weak year-ago production levels coming to the rescue.
• Manufacturing production: Due Thursday 9th June. The strong improvement in the Barclays’ manufacturing purchasing managers’ index in April indicates manufacturing production will rebound from its -2.0% year-on-year contraction in March to growth of +0.40% in April, according to consensus forecast.
Technical analysis
• The rand remains below successive support levels suggesting a continuation in the rand’s depreciation.
• The US dollar index is testing a major 30-year resistance line, which if broken will pave the way for further strong gains in the currency.
• Despite the recent uptick in bond yields the long-term JPMorgan global bond index bull trend remains intact, with the yield targeting a new low during the fifth and final wave.
• The US 10-year Treasury yield has broken above key resistance levels of 1.8% and 2.0%. However, there is unlikely to be a major bear trend in US bonds as the deleveraging phase is still in its early stages.
• The benchmark R186 SA Gilt yield broke out of its long-term bull trend as a result of “Nenegate”. The new bear trend for the R186 is underpinned by resistance at 9.0% with a risk of further upside to 10.50%. While SA bond yields may fall in line with global bonds they are unlikely to return to the bull trend.
• The MSCI World Equity index has broken downward from a rising trendline which has been intact since the 2008/09 global financial crisis. Given the magnitude and duration of the 2009-2015 bull market the overall correction is likely to reach a downside target for the MSCI World Equity index of 1,400.
• Since the 1950s the Dow Jones and S&P 500 have displayed 7-year up-cycles and the top of the current US equity cycle is likely to have just occurred. The next major wave down will complete the 16-17 year secular bear market that started in 2000. The secular bottom should occur between mid-2016 and mid-2017.
• The S&P 500 index has broken downward from a rising wedge pattern, which is traditionally a trend-changing pattern. The downward trend is likely to remain intact unless the index decisively regains the 2070 level. A further negative signal is that the Dow Jones Transport Index, traditionally a lead indicator for the broader market, is leading the broader market lower on the downside.
• Despite the recent price rally Brent crude’s break below the key $30 support level in February suggests a continuation of the weakening long-term trend to a downside $25 target. Copper is regarded a reliable lead indicator for industrial commodity prices and barometer of global economic growth. Despite its recent rally the copper price broke below the key $4,500 support level in February suggesting further downside ahead.
• Gold has broken its recent downtrend by rising decisively above the $1 100 resistance level. An extended break above $1250 is needed to confirm the end of gold’s bear market.
• The JSE All Share index is testing an important resistance line but if this remains unbroken the index is likely to move back below the 24-month moving average at 50,700 in turn opening a downside target of 45 000 and an ultimate target of 43 000.
The bottom line
• As expected Standard & Poor’s Global Ratings (S&P) granted SA a reprieve, leaving its foreign-currency sovereign credit rating unchanged at BBB-. The rand strengthened by about 3% versus the dollar, pound and euro after the rating decision was announced on Friday evening and a further 1% on Monday.
• S&P credited SA’s prudent fiscal consolidation plans and Eskom’s much improved electricity supply. The National Treasury announced that: “The benefit of this decision is that SA is given more time to demonstrate further concrete implementation of reforms that are underway aimed at achieving higher levels of inclusive growth and place public finances on a sustainable path.”
• While a downgrade to sub-investment grade has been avoided over the near-term, the threat has not disappeared. S&P has kept SA on “negative watch” for a potential downgrade at the next bi-annual review in December. S&P would probably have downgraded SA last Friday if the decision to push a country into sub-investment grade was not so momentous. S&P may be less lenient next time.
• S&P still needs convincing that the economy will recover and that the Treasury will be able to implement its budget reduction targets. S&P said it “could lower the ratings this year or next if policy measures do not turn the economy around.” S&P is looking for bold policy measures including labour reforms, mining sector reforms, and reforms of state-owned enterprises.
• S&P was explicit in voicing its concerns over political uncertainty: “Rising political tensions are accentuating vulnerabilities in the country’s sovereign credit profiles.” S&P went on: “Political tensions have increased in SA since the removal of former Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene; the Constitutional Court ruling against President Jacob Zuma; and periodic disputes between key government institutions and within the ruling ANC. We believe that these political factors, if they continue to fester, could weigh more on investor confidence than inconclusive labour or mining sector reform.”
• S&P’s assessment suggests that for the country to avoid losing its investment-grade rating in December, much will depend on unimpeded policy implementation by “market-friendly” factions within government. Much will also depend on the outcome and the ANC’s response to the local elections on 3rd August.
• The rand’s short-term boost from S&P’s positive credit rating decision provides investors with an excellent opportunity to diversify out of SA-based assets. Pressure on the rand is likely to resume amid continued policy uncertainty, political tensions, and lackluster economic growth.
• Besides the rating decision the rand has gained some reprieve, alongside other emerging market currencies, from weak US employment data which pushed back the likelihood of a June US rate hike. Even though a US rate hike may have been delayed the Fed is keen to normalise interest rates. One or two rate hikes before year-end are inevitable, which will place emerging market currencies, including the rand, under renewed pressure.
For the full report, including a look at international markets, click here.
* Overberg Asset Management (OAM) is an Authorised Financial Services Provider No. 783. Overberg specialises in the private management of local and global discretionary portfolios as well as pension products.
Disclaimer: Information and opinions presented in this report were obtained or derived from public sources that Overberg Asset Management believes are reliable but makes no representations as to their accuracy or completeness. Any opinions, forecasts or estimates herein constitute a judgement as at the date of this Report and should not be relied upon. There can be no assurance that future results or events will be consistent with any such opinions, forecasts or estimates. Furthermore, Overberg Asset Management accepts no responsibility or liability for any loss arising from the use of or reliance placed upon the material presented in this report.Nokia today unveiled an augmented reality app for its Windows Phone-based Lumia devices that uses the phone's camera to show you the restaurants, stores, and other venues in your immediate vicinity.
Dubbed City Lens, the app lets you scan the horizon with your phone's camera and see what's available. It will display reviews and star ratings for that location for a quick rundown of the neighborhood. If you find something interesting, tap to call for more info or share your destination with friends via social networks, SMS, or email.
If you're in a congested, urban area with many overlaying options, tap the screen for a vertical list. Tilt it sideways for a map view, which will provide walking directions with one tap.
"What I like the most in this app is that you can keep you head up when you're using it. Instead of looking for a place on a map and look down on your smartphone, with Nokia City Lens you are actually looking at the world around you through your smartphone," Nokia said in a blog post.
All searches are saved for easy access if you return to the area.
City Lens is currently available for the Lumia 710, 800, and 900 via Nokia Beta Labs. The company is asking users to leave their feedback "while we are polishing and refining its feature set."
In a video demo (below), Nokia said City Labs offers a solution that's "simple, fluid, intuitive and gets me to the information I want that much faster."
In March, Nokia Maps and its voice-guided, turn-by-turn walk navigation were released for iOS and Android via an HTML5 Web app.
Last week, meanwhile, Nokia was hit with a class-action lawsuit that takes the phone maker to task for claims it made about its Windows Phone lineup.
For more from Chloe, follow her on Twitter @ChloeAlbanesius.
For the top stories in tech, follow us on Twitter at @PCMag.U.N. member states criticize Pakistan’s Human Rights record
By Ehsan Rehan -
On Monday over two dozen countries criticized Pakistan’s human rights record at the universal periodic review (UPR) of UN Human Rights Council. The criticism came not only from developed countries like the U.S. and U.K but also from developing countries like Ethiopia and Namibia.
Majority of the countries made recommendations on the status of women, minority rights, and religious freedom.
The United States in its recommendations urged Pakistan to abolish blasphemy laws and protect freedom of opinion and expression. The U.S. recommended that Pakistan:
Repeal Blasphemy laws and restrictions and end their use against Ahmadi Muslims and others and grant the visit request of the UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression. Pass an anti-trafficking law that prohibits and penalizes all forms of human trafficking. Undertake, track and report the investigation and prosecution of security forces who commit human rights violations and abuses.
The U.S. also expressed concern over treatment of Ahmadis:
We note with concern the enforcement of blasphemy laws, and restrictions against Ahmadi Muslims, and the use of blasphemy and other laws to intimidate political opponents and settle personal disputes.
The United Kingdom also made similar recommendations and voiced their concerns about Pakistan’s treatment of Christians and Ahmadis:
We remain deeply concerned about Pakistan’s overall human rights record. This includes limits on freedoms of expression and religion or belief, particularly for the Christian and Ahmadiyya Muslim communities, as well as the increased misuse of terror legislation to portray religious publications of minority communities as hate material.
India urged Pakistan to double its efforts against terrorism and provide full rights to religious minorities. India recommended that Pakistan:
stop sectarian violence, systematic persecution and attacks on Muslim minorities, such as Shias, Ahmadiyyas, Ismailis, and Hazaras
The South American country of Argentina also critiqued Pakistan’s Human Rights record and urged Pakistan to:
Investigate reports of discrimination and those who commit crimes against ethnic and religious minorities such as Hazaras, Dalits, Christians, Hindus and Ahmadis be brought to justice.
New Zealand, Netherlands, and France also made recommendations.
The Pakistan delegation was led by Pakistan’s foreign minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif who became the center of a controversy after he was pictured with a member of the minority Ahmadi community. Asif later apologized in a TV interview and claimed he did not know of the person’s faith and claimed that since the incident, he always asks people whether they are Qadiani [Ahmadi] before taking pictures with them. The Ahmadis have been declared non-Muslim under Pakistani law and are considered apostates by the majority of mainstream Muslims.
The criticism was part of the third universal periodic review of Pakistan. Under the UPR mechanism, the human rights situation of all UN Member States is reviewed every 5 years. Pakistan’s first UPR was held in 2008, while the second was held in 2012.By Mark Nestmann • May 31, 2016
I love technology. I can’t imagine life without modern conveniences like telephones, email, and the internet. Not to mention running water, air conditioning, and automobiles.
But sometimes, technology gets… well, creepy.
And the creepier the technology, the more likely your friendly Big Brother will use it to keep tabs on you. A case in point is the increasing sophistication of face recognition technology.
Face recognition uses software to create a unique "faceprint" of digital images of faces and inputs these into a database of images against which "faceprints" can be compared.
A few years ago, face recognition systems were almost laughably inaccurate. I have an article in my archives from 2003, in which two Japanese tourists visiting Australia fooled an early version of the technology simply by swapping passports.
However, this strategy wouldn’t fool today’s face recognition software.
In the US, you generally have no right to privacy with respect to your facial features. And no federal law regulates the collection of biometric data. If you’re in a public place, the courts have concluded you have a greatly reduced expectation of privacy. Anyone with a camera can legally take your picture in a public space.
But the rules for face recognition are beginning to change, thanks to laws in a handful of states and a court decision involving one of the largest collections of faceprints in existence, compiled by Facebook. Earlier this month, a federal judge in California refused to dismiss a class action lawsuit against Facebook brought by residents of Illinois. The lawsuit alleged Facebook collected, stored, and used faceprints in violation of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA). The law is intended to protect the privacy of Illinois residents in their personal biometric data. Regulated biometric identifiers can include a scan of “face geometry.”
Facebook uses face recognition technology to match photographs users have uploaded to subsequently present “tag suggestions” for digitized images uploaded later. Subscribers can then “tag” friends or family members. At first glance, it seems completely harmless, especially since you can turn off “tagging” in your Facebook settings. But the Illinois plaintiffs didn’t see it that way at all.
And the fact is Facebook has the largest single collection of images ever assembled. More than one billion Facebook users had uploaded more than 250 billion pictures by 2013, and the total number today is undoubtedly much higher. Of course, not all the photos are of faces, but many – perhaps most – are.
But what’s the real harm in allowing companies like Facebook to assemble vast face databases to make “tag suggestions”?
Consider FindFace, a face recognition app now taking Russia by storm. FindFace allows users to photograph people on the street, in a bar, or anywhere else and identify them by matching the photos to digital images uploaded to VK, a Russian social networking site. VK has about 200 million users – large, but not nearly as big as Facebook. The developers claim the system is 70% reliable in identifying the right person, with each version of the app improving accuracy. Apparently, FindFace can’t match photos posted on Facebook, at least not yet.
The really creepy part is the way the app has already been used – and abused. FindFace makes it possible for stalkers to harass individuals on the street who have VK profiles. The founders – 20-something males – envision being able to take a photo of an attractive woman, match her photo to a VK profile, and then ask her out on a date. But they believe the real breakthrough for their company will come when law enforcement authorities adopt it. They claim police have already used FindFace to locate criminal suspects who had seemingly disappeared.
It turns out that something similar and even creepier is already underway in the US. But instead of Facebook, authorities are using a database you can’t opt out of or turn off – archives of state driver’s license photos. State and local police and the FBI all use face recognition software to scan state driver’s license records to track down fugitives. And as part of the “Real ID Act,” states must digitize driver’s license photos, making it possible for face recognition software to sift through millions of photos in search of a match.
Several companies have developed systems that allow police to search these facial archives. The systems consist of a handheld face recognition device that plugs into a smart phone, and they’re being used by an increasing number of police departments nationwide.
It’s easy to see how this technology could be abused, and not just by stalkers. Let’s say you’re in a public demonstration against the ruling party that gets out of hand. Police identify the participants with face recognition and then arrest them at their leisure. Not to mention whistleblowers and those who support political causes or social issues that aren’t approved of by most Americans.
It’s not easy to protect your privacy against this technology, but I do have a few suggestions.
Don’t renew your driver’s license until it expires. Photos taken more than a decade or so for driver’s licenses aren’t necessarily in digital form and are harder to match. A few states even allow you to cite your religious beliefs to avoid having a photo appear on your driver’s license at all.
Unsubscribe from Facebook and other social networks. If you use these networks, don’t post photos of yourself.
Wear head coverings. A hat will prevent a camera above you from capturing a clear image of your face, unless you look at it. If you’re a Muslim woman or don’t mind dressing as one, a burqa will obscure your entire face.
If you’re a man, grow a beard. Like hats or other head coverings, a beard – at least a full one – hides enough of your face to make face recognition more difficult.
One thing is for certain. The technology underpinning face recognition will only improve. Be ready for it by acting proactively.
Protecting your assets (and yourself) against any threat - from the government, the IRS or a frivolous lawsuit - is something The Nestmann Group has helped more than 15,000 Americans do over the last 30 years.
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To begin, we just need to know where to send it:Drones are going to deliver everything in the future, and they’re already a fixture in California skies. Weed is also now legal in California, so some enterprising entrepreneurs (or enterprising Darwin award winners) would put two and two together and think that weed delivering drones are in the future. But… not so fast my friends.
California’s Bureau of Cannabis Control has put the kaibosh on any potential weed delivery drones under the Medicinal and Adult-Use Cannabis Regulation and Safety Act (MAUCRSA). As it states,
““Cannabis goods will be required to be transported inside commercial vehicles or trailers. Transportation may not be done by aircraft, watercraft, rail, drones, human powered vehicles, or unmanned vehicles.””
There were already some start-ups popping up like MDelivers and Eaze who had plans for weed delivery drones, but the new regulations prevent that from happening. And in case some enterprising Darwin award winners would assume that smoking while delivering the marijuana to their delivery points would be legal, that too is not the case, as the Bureau specifically stated in its new by-laws.
Licenses for cannabis distributors, retailers, testing labs, business and the like start on January 1, 2018, and marijuana could be worth $5 billion to the state’s economy in years to come. What won’t be a part of that new economy, however, will be weed delivery drones.
And based on the new laws, autonomous cars delivering your weed is also going to be illegal, in case you were wondering.
[The Verge]If you've been feeling nostalgic for the days when airlines served A full meal in economy, Delta has good news for you.
The legacy carrier announced Thursday it will start offering complimentary meals in the main cabin on several long haul flights as part of a multi-million dollar effort to improve customer experience across the board.
The airline was among the first to axe free meals back in 2001, with many domestic airlines following suit over the next decade.
Starting March 1, Delta will offer complimentary meals in the main cabin on flights between New York City's John F. Kennedy International Airport and Los Angeles/San Francisco.
The following month, the airline will expand the complimentary meal service to 10 other domestic flights from Seattle, N.Y., Boston and Washington, D.C. Other enhancements include upgraded main cabin snacks, enhanced blankets and free in-flight entertainment. Passengers on long-haul, international flights will also receive complimentary beer, wine, spirits and sleep kits.
Delta began offering complimentary meals late last year as part of the limited service test to improve customer satisfaction. Some fliers were pretty surprised by the re-introduction of inflight meals.
"Blow me down and call me Nancy, there was a free meal on my @Delta domestic flight. What is this 1997? :)," said one Twitter user last year.
Blow me down and call me Nancy, there was a free meal on my @Delta domestic flight. What is this 1997? :) pic.twitter.com/Khqlk3C0Gh — Derek Fung (@bubandbob) November 4, 2016
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The meals offered on 12 routes will vary depending on flight time. In the morning, customers can choose between a honey maple breakfast sandwich, Luvo breakfast medley or a fruit and cheese plate. In the afternoon, there's a mesquite-smoked turkey combo, Luvo Mediterranean whole grain veggie wrap, or a fruit and cheese plate. Customers flying overnight will have a selection of a various entrees and be offered a breakfast bar before arrival.
Delta says it will regularly rotate its menus with a focus on seasonal and locally-sourced food and beverages.The Russian embassy in the Syrian capital of Damascus was shelled on Tuesday, with Moscow stating that it considers the attack on its diplomatic mission an act of terror.
Two mortar rounds landed on the premises of the Russian Embassy in the afternoon, “one of them fell near the main entrance, the other hit an administrative building," Asiya Turuchiyeva embassy's spokeswoman, told RIA Novosti.
There were no fatalities or injuries as a result of the mortar attack as it happened during the lunch break, the spokeswoman added.
According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, the shells were fired from the Jobar district of Damascus, which is controlled by “illegal armed groups.”
“We treat the incident as terrorist act, aimed against the Russian Embassy. We strongly condemn its perpetrators, organizers and instigators. We reaffirm our solidarity with the Syrian authorities in their efforts to combat the terrorist threat in the territory of Syria,” Aleksandr Lukashevich, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman, said.
READ MORE: UN Security Council condemns attack on Russian embassy in Damascus as ‘terrorist act’
Moscow urged the international community “to give due assessment to the terrorist attack against the Russian diplomatic mission” and demanded “an immediate cessation of such acts” from all parties with influence on the extremists in Syria, he added.
Syrian authorities were quick to respond, promising to boost security and ensure the Russian Embassy’s safety.
The UN Security Council has strongly condemned “the terrorist attack” against the Russian embassy in Damascus, calling for those responsible to be brought to justice.
“The members of the Security Council recall the fundamental principle of inviolability of diplomatic and consular premises and obligations of host governments to take all appropriate steps to protect diplomatic and consular premises against any intrusion or damage,” ambassador and Permanent Representative of Lithuania Raimonda Murmokaite told journalists.
“The members of the Security Council underline the need to bring perpetrators of such acts to justice.”
It’s the second time the Russian embassy in Damascus has been shelled this year. The previous incident occurred in January when a shell hit the roof of the consulate’s building.
Syria has been engulfed in a bloody civil war since March 2011, with government forces of President Bashar Assad fighting various opposition and terrorist groups, including the Al-Qaeda-linked Nusra Front and Islamic State.
Over 220,000 people have been killed and around 5 million made refuges during the four-year conflict, according to UN estimations.People like Blizzard’s new game so much that they are doing a lot of searches in an effort to see its characters naked.
On Thursday, searches for Overwatch on the adult-video company Pornhub jumped 817 percent, according to the website. Of course, Thursday was also the start of the Overwatch open beta on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC, which gave a huge audience its first go at the class-based team shooter from the studio responsible for World of Warcraft. And after getting a taste of the excellent action in Overwatch (we’ve really enjoyed our time with it), players went looking for the game’s characters engaging in lewd behavior.
Gaming is a $99.6 billion business, and you don’t generate that kind of revenue without a little sex appeal. Overwatch is no different. Its characters are visually appealing on multiple levels, and — clearly — that is riling up a lot of fans.
Image Credit: Pornhub
Interestingly, in the case of Overwatch, people looking for adult content will actually find quite a lot. The game isn’t even out, and some of the steamier parts of Tumblr are already overflowing with fan art and quick animations that strip Blizzard’s characters of their clothing and occasionally have them bumping Ultimates with each other.
Most of the Overwatch-related videos you’ll find on Pornhub feature the character models from the game with some slight alterations to show more skin. Amateur animators then use the free Source Film Maker tool from Dota 2 publisher Valve to make those characters thrust, gyrate, and quiver.
The abundance of porn for Overwatch seems like it can only indicate a deep, primal response to the character design, and that likely bodes well for the shooter’s launch later this month.
If you’ve paid any attention to the early fan culture for Overwatch, you’ve likely noticed that Tracer seems especially popular. Well, Pornhub’s data confirms that. The company found that “Overwatch Tracer” is the most popular search term featuring “Overwatch.” Here are some more:
Image Credit: Pornhub
Pornhub has also discovered that the thirst for Overwatch porn is a global phenomenon. Folks from Asia, Europe, and South America are all looking for porn related to the game. Again, Blizzard can likely take this as a sign that it’s done something right by driving so many different kinds of people to want to see Widowmaker and Mercy acting wrong.Back in the day: Al Sharpton in 2000. Reuters The Reverend Al Sharpton used to weigh 305 pounds — no surprise, considering that the prominent reverend and activist used to incorporate fried chicken into all three meals of the day.
He added fried chicken to breakfast with grits and eggs, to lunch in a sandwich, and to dinner, when he'd eat half a chicken.
But about 15 years ago, his then 12-year-old daughter punched him in the belly and asked him why he was so fat, he recently told the New York Daily News.
And that was more than the minister could take.
"That was my inspiration to lose the weight. And probably the last time anyone hurt my feelings," he told the News.
Now, while Sharpton's political presence may be as large as ever, the man himself is more than half gone weightwise — this week he weighed in at 129.6 pounds, about one pound above being classified as underweight, according to the National Institutes of Health's body mass index calculator.
So how does that happen? Is it some special diet, bariatric surgery, or even some sort of illness?
Nope. He stopped eating and started exercising. But when we say "stopped eating," we mean it.
Sharpton cut the cake beside Aretha Franklin at his 60th birthday party at the Four Seasons on Oct. 1 in New York. But the word is that he didn't have any. Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images His daily intake, as told to the News, is this:
Breakfast: Three slices of wheat toast (about 300 calories / 15g of protein) and a Doctor Earth green juice from Juice Press (180 calories / 2g of protein) Lunch: A salad containing lettuce, tomato, onion, a chopped hard-boiled egg, and balsamic vinaigrette (about 240 calories / 6g of protein, depending on serving size) and a banana (about 100 calories and 1g of protein) Dinner: Another green juice
With breakfast and lunch he drinks breakfast tea sweetened with stevia, which is basically calorie-free. Occasionally on the weekends he'll have some grilled fish.
That's it, according to his interview with the Daily News. And he only added the juice, banana, and toast because a doctor told him he wasn't eating enough with just a lunchtime salad a day. He still doesn't eat any solid food after 6 p.m.
That's about 1,000 calories and 26 grams of protein a day, less than half the normal "recommended diet."
His workout is less intense, 20 minutes on the treadmill at 3 mph.
So is it healthy, or is it an eating disorder?
A doctor might recommend such a low-calorie diet for extreme weight loss, but it's likely overkill at this point — especially for someone teetering on the edge of being underweight.
"Certainly compared to weighing 300 pounds, this is preferable," David Seres of the Institute of Human Nutrition at Columbia University Medical Center told the News. But he might be pretty vulnerable if he got sick, according to Seres. "His intake would make a nutrition expert nervous."
His meal plan may also seem a bit boring and not enough for most of us, to be sure, but Sharpton told the News that he isn't bothered by it. "I'm conditioned now so that I never get hungry," he said.Steve Clarke was appointed Reading manager in December 2014
Reading boss Steve Clarke has spoken to Fulham about their managerial vacancy, reports BBC Radio Berkshire.
Ex-West Bromwich Albion boss Clarke has yet to make a decision on his future and took training at Reading earlier.
The 52-year-old is understood to be Fulham's preferred candidate to replace Kit Symons, who was dismissed from the job at Craven Cottage on 8 November.
Clarke has been at the Madejski Stadium for 11 months and led the club to an FA Cup semi-final last season.
Reading are four points ahead of Fulham in the Championship table.
Clarke was due to speak at his weekly news conference on Thursday, but Reading postponed it until Friday morning.
Reading are without a win in five league games, a run including a 4-2 defeat by Fulham at Craven Cottage on 24 October.
Clarke brought in several new players during the summer transfer window and led Reading to second in the Championship during a five-match unbeaten run.
Fulham, who were relegated from the Premier League in May 2014, are 12th in the table, eight points adrift of the play-off places.
After sacking Symons, Cottagers chairman Shahid Khan said it was time to take the club to a "higher level of success".
Analysis: Tim Dellor, BBC Radio Berkshire's Reading commentator
"Clarke joined Reading in December 2014 with the club languishing in 17th in the Championship.
"In 50 games, he's won 18 and there's not much doubt what the highlight was, as the Royals reached the last four of the FA Cup in April.
"The issue was just 12 wins in 41 league games at the end of last season.
"Plenty of deals were done in the summer transfer market, bringing in 11 new players and revamping the backroom staff, and the club has been as high as second in the Championship.
"Clarke's tenure of 11 months in charge is the average for a Championship club nowadays."Poland has responded to Russia's belligerence by raising its defence budget by 18 per cent, achieving the biggest increase in military spending of any country in Europe.
Haunted by memories of Soviet invasion, Poland is set to join the handful of Nato members who meet the alliance's target of investing at least two per cent of national income in defence.
Party divisions were swept aside when the Polish parliament decided to meet Nato's two per cent target from 2016 onwards, with 402 MPs voting in favour and only two against.
"This is one of the most important days of my term," said Tomasz Siemoniak, Poland's defence minister, after the vote. "This is a very good and important decision given the current security situation."
Poland's defence budget jumped from £5.6 billion last year to £6.6 billion in 2015, an 18 per cent increase that is almost unprecedented in Europe since the Cold War.
Poland views itself as being on the "front line against Russia", said Marek Matraszek, a defence consultant.
Thanks to its 130-mile border with the enclave of Kaliningrad, Poland is a direct neighbour of Russia. Meanwhile, Ukraine's Crimea has been annexed by the Kremlin and a third, Lithuania, feels directly threatened.
• Would we really go nuclear to protect Estonia?
Although Poland joined Nato 16 years ago, the alliance has no combat troops permanently based on its soil. Nato is still observing an agreement signed with Russia in 1997 forbidding the stationing of combat units in any country east of Germany – unless the "security environment" changes.
Poland believes that Russia's behaviour has indeed changed the security situation, but Nato's reticence means the country must prepare to look after itself.
• Sitting near a nuclear tripwire, Estonia's president urges Nato to send troops to defend his country
"Other countries in Nato benefit from the presence of US troops, so feel less of a need to increase their budgets," said Mr Matraszek. "Poland doesn't have the security of a permanent US presence."
He added: "Fundamentally what the government is trying to do is give Poland the assets to – in the worst case scenario – hold off Russia until Nato forces can be deployed."
As a country with 38 million people and a long martial tradition, Poland is the only one of Russia's European neighbours that could, in theory, become a significant military power.
The Polish armed forces have fought more wars for national survival than most, but they remain burdened by ageing Soviet equipment. The air force still flies MiG fighters; the army relies on T-72 tanks.
About 70 per cent of Poland's armoury dates from the era when the country was in the Warsaw Pact. Only 30 per cent meets Nato standards.
An ambitious rearmament programme aims to reverse that ratio by 2022.
Whether that goal can be achieved is open to question. Already, the government stands accused of wasting money on high profile weapons of little military value.
Poland has ordered eight Patriot missile batteries from America, costing at least £1.7 billion. The aim of this defensive system is |
, just be sure that the marijuana is always floating 2 inches from the bottom of the pan.
Step 2
When the water is boiling place the butter in the pan and allow it to melt completely.
Step 3
Once the butter has melted you can add the marijuana. When the marijuana is added turn the heat down. Cook the butter at a gentle simmer. I usually let the marijuana cook for around three hours. You can tell it's done when the top of the mix turns from really watery to dark and glossy.
Step 4
While the canna-butter is cooking set up the bowl to hold the finished product. I like to use a heatproof bowl, Place a double layer of cheesecloth over the top, and secure it with elastic, string or tape.
Step 5
Strain the marijuana butter over the bowl, carefully trying not to spill. When the saucepan is empty, undo the twine, pick up the cheesecloth from all four sides and squeeze out all of the remaining butter.
Step 6
Allow the canna-butter to cool for about an hour. Place in the fridge until the butter has risen to the top layer and is solid. The THC and other properties have attached to the butter, and you are just about there.
Step 7
Run a knife around the edge and lift the butter off. Place upside down on your work surface and scrape off any of the particles that have attached to the underside of the butter. Your canna-butter is ready to roll. Enjoy! Store in the fridge for a month or freeze.
* To decarboxylate your cannabis (the process of activating the THC), place on a rimmed baking sheet in an oven heated to 240deg F for 40 minutes. Your kitchen will smell like Woodstock.
Estimating potency
Most bud you buy these days seems to have a potency around 20% THC. Trim clocks in closer to 12% THC. If you are making the infusion with a 12% THC trim, the resulting butter (if you follow the recipe above) will have a potency of 10mg THC per teaspoon. If you use a 20% THC bud, you will have a potency of around 25mg THC per teaspoon.
For those of you who are going to be trying marijuana for the first time, go slow. Don't over do it. Always start with a low dose, even if you are dealing with serious pain. It won't take long to find what is comfortable, maybe 3 days, but it is so worth it. Ingesting too much is a real turn off and very unpleasant when you are going through it. Just ask Maureen Dowd.
Start with 5 mg THC -- THC is the active ingredient in cannabis that makes you "high." If you are a patient who needs a higher dose, try slowly increasing doses day over day until you reach the level that is right for you. It is best to work up rather than work backwards. Trust me, I have been there. Dispensaries will be able to direct you towards starter strains and products. Don't be embarrassed, everyone has to start somewhere.
5 simple edibles with canna-butter
Top a baked sweet potato with 1 tsp. canna-butter, 1 tbs. regular butter, 2 tsp. maple syrup, and 1/4 tsp. cinnamon.
Combine 2 tbs. melted regular butter and 1 tsp. melted canna-butter and pour over 2 cups popped popcorn. Mix 1/2 tsp. cumin, 1/4 tsp. chili powder, 1/2 tsp. lime zest and sprinkle over popcorn.
To one cup of apple cider add 2 tsp. caramel sauce and 1 tsp. canna-butter.
Spread two slices of toast with 2 tsp. regular butter, 1 tsp. canna-butter, 1 tbs. honey, and 1/4 tsp. cinnamon.
Saute 1 sliced and cored pear and 2 tbs. dried cranberries in 1 tbs. regular butter, 1 tsp. canna-butter, and 2 tsp. brown sugar over medium heat until caramelized.
For newbies, foodies, oldies, and goodies, this will be a lot of fun. Cooking with cannabis is like trying a new herb that very few people like! But some people do like the taste, and there are some foods that even pair nicely with cannabis. Cannabis cuisine has come a long way beyond the infamous pot brownie and crisped rice treats of our forefathers. It now includes literally everything from soup to nuts. Welcome to the future of edibles!
Laurie Wolf is a professional chef who develops recipes for cooking with cannabis. She can be reached at
[email protected]
and on Twitter at
@lauriemaryjaneArt Hop Analytics
These white boxes are part of a mobile device monitoring system along the Kalamazoo Mall. The technology, from the Kalamazoo/Detroit-based WAYN WiFi company, tracks devices as they search for a Wi-Fi connection. Chuck Miller | Kalamazoo Gazette
KALAMAZOO, MI –
A series of devices attached to light posts along the Kalamazoo Mall are tracking mobile devices, searching for a Wi-Fi connection as a way to monitor downtown foot traffic.
Twenty Wi-Fi access points spread over four "zones" from Lovell Street to Water Street were installed in October and paid for by the Arts Council of Greater Kalamazoo and the Event Company as a tool to monitor traffic during major events, specifically Art Hops.
The technology is made by the Michigan based start-up company WAYN WiFi and is using the four-block stretch as a beta test for the technology in an outdoor, public space.
As personal devices — smartphones, laptops and tablets — search for a Wi-Fi connection, they "ping" WAYN’s monitors to create a real-time map of pedestrian traffic.
From her computer on the second floor of the Epic Center, Arts Council deputy director Beth McCann can watch as red dots move across a map of downtown Kalamazoo.
While watching her screen recently, a red dot dashed down the mall. McCann guessed it was a customer trying out a pair of running shoes at Gazelle Sports. She can get data on a specific time frame on a specific date, including "dwell" time, or how long a device remained in one area, to unique visitors.
It may sound like something from George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four," but Neal Welbourne, the president and founder WAYN, which stands for "Where Are You Now," says it's not intrusive. He compared it to sonar. He said no personal information is being gathered. One downtown businessman described it not as "Big Brother" but "awkward cousin."
"I wouldn't even call it awkward cousin. I'd call it concerned grandmother who lives down the street," said the 39-year-old Welbourne, a Kalamazoo native who graduated from Western Michigan University in 2001 with a bachelor's degree in geography.
As it stands now, the technology is fairly limited. Welbourne, who lives in Birmingham, said it's only a collection of time stamps.
It's not new or proprietary technology, he said. Several shopping districts in other major U.S. cities use something similar. It can have many uses, but WAYN is developing it specifically to monitor traffic. The company, which has offices in Kalamazoo and Detroit, works with eight clients, including a grocery store. It's also been used at trade shows, Welbourne said.
Beth McCann, deputy director of the Arts Council of Greater Kalamazoo, points to a map on her computer screen. Using technology from the start-up company, WAYN WiFi, McCann can monitor mobile devices as they search for a Wi-Fi connection over a four block range on the South Kalamazoo Mall.
Should downtown Kalamazoo develop an app, which Welbourne said he recommended, the public could download it and more of the technology's power could be realized, including target marketing from specific businesses along the mall. The devices could also provide Wi-Fi service, he said.
Welbourne is a technology consultant specializing in geography and geographic data. He's been working on WAYN WiFi for about two years, with the company coming to fruition in the last eight months, he said. His parents still live in Kalamazoo and he said he thinks his company can help improve his hometown.
He said the technology could give greater visibility to Kalamazoo's arts culture and potentially provide a positive economic impact for several downtown businesses.
The Arts Council sees it as a way to better understand the flow of traffic and to potentially secure funding for future events as those dollars are harder to find. McCann said the devices will remain up at least through the Jan. 10 Art Hop. She said the Arts Council is seeking funding to keep them up through 2014.
McCann and Welbourne would not say how much the service costs, although Welbourne said it varies with the customer and the location.
"It’s a significant investment, yes, but it would not detract from our other programming if we invested in this. We’d be looking to potentially seek funding for this,” McCann said.
She added, "I don't think it will be hard to get funding."
The need for such technology, at least in terms of the Art Hop, comes as funding for the event has dropped significantly. The Art Hop is an Arts Council event held typically on the first Friday of the month when downtown businesses and local artists collaborate for a series of stops. Four times a year, Arts Council partnered with DKI to put on expanded Art Hops, or events with a larger number of stops. Art Hops are one of the more popular events downtown.
Downtown Kalamazoo Inc., a longtime partner with the Arts Council in Art Hop, is providing $10,000 in funding for this year’s series of events. In 2012, DKI supplied $50,000 in money and support and it gave $25,000 in assistance last year, according to Rob Peterson, business recruitment and retention director at the DKI.
McCann said the data collected from WAYN's project will help them make a stronger case when the Arts Council seeks grant dollars and private funding for future events. For example, according to the data, the December Art Hop attracted 8,173 visitors, which is more than 3,000 people on an average Friday. McCann didn't have numbers like that before. Welbourne estimates the technology captures about 70 percent of a given audience, as some people turn off their Wi-Fi to conserve battery and others own older cell phones.
The Arts Council, with assistance from DKI, has an encroachment agreement with the city to mount the devices. Welbourne and McCann said they would like to see the range of the project expanded to include Bronson Park and the Arcadia Creek Festival Place, but there would need to be additional funding to place the devices on light poles that aren't owned by the city. Welbourne said they'd have to pay a fee to the company that owns the light posts to plug the devices into a power source.
DKI's Rob Peterson called the technology "highly valuable" for downtown retailers as well. He thinks the data could help inform businesses on the best hours to keep, as well as other benefits, including customer loyalty programs, should an app be developed.
The project does raise questions about privacy. Welbourne said the devices only capture devices seeking a Wi-Fi connection, so if you turn the Wi-Fi off on your smartphone, it won't "ping" the system. It doesn't collect any personal data, he said.
“We respect people’s privacy and we do not encroach on that privacy at all. A lot of people think you can communicate with this person with the technology we have, but you cannot. It’s completely anonymous," Welbourne said.
McCann said there should be no privacy invasion concerns.
“Because we don’t get any information off the cell phone, for us, it’s just simply dots on a map and numbers,” McCann said. “At this point in time, because we’re not ready to market to those people, I would never want to take that information and just have it. Once we get to that point and we can do that, sure, but it would be an opt-in thing at that point. We’d never want to invade their privacy without their permission.”
John Liberty covers entertainment for the Kalamazoo Gazette. Call him at 269-370-7372, email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter.Climate deniers now rule in Washington and many are asking how much damage they can do. Already Trump has signed an executive order permitting the construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline, stopped after a long and bitter campaign when President Obama reluctantly vetoed it in 2015.
The pipeline will open up the vast tar sands reserves of western Canada, one of the “carbon bombs” that scientists say must not be allowed to explode.
But the burning question is this: How entrenched is the clean energy revolution in the US economy? Does it have so much momentum that it cannot be stopped or reversed by anything Washington does?
Some believe so, but I’m not so sure. One thing is certain: the energy revolution could have been far more advanced, beyond the point of no return, had President Obama not for years dragged his feet on climate action.
In his first term, his office was filled with “pragmatists” for whom climate policy was at the bottom of the presidential agenda, a second-term issue.
I gained an insight into this thinking in 2003 when, as head of the Australia Institute, I helped initiate a “three think tanks” project that set up a high-level global taskforce on climate change. Matthew Taylor, director of the Institute for Public Policy Research (and later head of Tony Blair’s policy unit), came up with the idea for the taskforce.
Taylor asked me if the Australia Institute, which had been working on climate change for years, would join in. He and I sat at a café in London’s Covent Garden wondering who we could team up with in the United States. A junior IPPR researcher said she knew someone at the new Center for American Progress (CAP) in Washington.
CAP seemed to serve primarily as a parking lot for ex-Clinton administration apparatchiks while they waited for a return to government. Its boss was John Podesta, once Bill Clinton’s chief of staff and later co-chair of Obama’s transition team.
Most recently he ran Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. It was Podesta who fell for a phishing scam, allowing the theft of a trove of emails, allegedly by Russians, and soon published by Julian Assange in a way that would bring maximum benefit to Donald Trump.
Obama’s hard men
Even in 2003, when I turned up in Washington to meet him for the first time, Podesta had been the compleat Beltway mover and shaker for years.
I was asked to wait as he was on the phone. From the other side of the wall it sounded like an intense conversation. A staff member later confided to me that he had been leaning on retired US General Wesley Clark to withdraw from the nomination race to give John Kerry a clear run at George W. Bush.
We met. He came across as a hard man, seemingly devoid of human warmth. But what most alarmed me was his near-total ignorance about climate change. He knew just enough to know that it might become an issue and that CAP could benefit from being the American leg of the three-legged stool. But only if he could find some money, which would prove difficult for him.
As I left Washington I took with me serious doubts about teaming up with the Center for American Progress, but by then it would have been too awkward to uninvite them.
The membership of the taskforce we put together was quite eminent. Its first meeting was held in Windsor Castle (the Queen, we were informed, was not in residence) and the second was staged at Government House in Sydney, hosted by Premier Bob Carr.
A decade later Podesta would rewrite history to claim credit for initiating the task force. The Australia Institute did almost all of the intellectual work. The reaction from Washington to one of our first drafts was that we could not use the phrase “low-carbon economy” because Americans would confuse it with “low carb diet”. I am not making this up.
That was where CAP was up to on climate change. For the Americans to contribute anything useful to the work of the steering committee, Podesta had to bring in outside expertise, including hard-arsed lawyer Todd Stern. A Podesta protégé, Stern would later be appointed (by Hillary Clinton) Obama’s chief climate envoy, and be accused of being implicated in blowing up the 2009 Copenhagen conference.
Podesta also drafted Jonathan Pershing onto the steering committee. Pershing, then at WRI, had been a colleague of Podesta’s in the Clinton administration, and would go on to succeed Stern as Obama’s chief climate negotiator. Compared to the other two think tanks, the CAP people (with the exception of Ana Unruh Cohen) always took the cautious position.
POTUS foot-dragging
When the three think-tanks project wrapped up in 2005 it was clear to me that Podesta, who’d taken little interest in it, still didn’t know or care much about the threat global warming posed to the world.
When in late 2007 Podesta was putting together Obama’s White House team he stacked it with “pragmatists” like himself whose only interest in climate change was whether it would win them votes or give them grief.
The concession to environmentalists was the appointment of John Holdren as White House chief science adviser. Holdren, a brilliant Harvard and Woods Hole physicist and environmental scientist, “got” climate change as well as any in the vanguard. (As it happens, he had been a member of the taskforce, which would have helped his later appointment.)
Early in Obama’s first term climate activists were willing to cut the President some slack, confident he would soon begin to act. But as the years went by and Obama did nothing they became alarmed and ramped up the pressure. By the end of Obama’s first term Holdren was despairing and contemplated resigning.
He decided to stay on because he could at least keep exerting pressure from inside the tent. It was only after another two years in office that Obama began to spend some serious political capital on climate change.
If he had precipitated the clean energy revolution in the United States five or six years earlier, there would be almost nothing for Trump now to unwind.In continuum mechanics, including fluid dynamics, an upper-convected time derivative or Oldroyd derivative, named after James G. Oldroyd, is the rate of change of some tensor property of a small parcel of fluid that is written in the coordinate system rotating and stretching with the fluid.
The operator is specified by the following formula:
A ▽ = D D t A − ( ∇ v ) T ⋅ A − A ⋅ ( ∇ v ) {\displaystyle {\stackrel {\triangledown }{\mathbf {A} }}={\frac {D}{Dt}}\mathbf {A} -(
abla \mathbf {v} )^{T}\cdot \mathbf {A} -\mathbf {A} \cdot (
abla \mathbf {v} )}
where:
A ▽ {\displaystyle {\stackrel {\triangledown }{\mathbf {A} }}} field A {\displaystyle \mathbf {A} }
field D D t {\displaystyle {\frac {D}{Dt}}} substantive derivative
substantive derivative ∇ v = ∂ v j ∂ x i {\displaystyle
abla \mathbf {v} ={\frac {\partial v_{j}}{\partial x_{i}}}} velocity derivatives for the fluid.
The formula can be rewritten as:
A ▽ i, j = ∂ A i, j ∂ t + v k ∂ A i, j ∂ x k − ∂ v i ∂ x k A k, j − ∂ v j ∂ x k A i, k {\displaystyle {\stackrel {\triangledown }{A}}_{i,j}={\frac {\partial A_{i,j}}{\partial t}}+v_{k}{\frac {\partial A_{i,j}}{\partial x_{k}}}-{\frac {\partial v_{i}}{\partial x_{k}}}A_{k,j}-{\frac {\partial v_{j}}{\partial x_{k}}}A_{i,k}}
By definition the upper-convected time derivative of the Finger tensor is always zero.
It can be shown that the upper-convected time derivative of a spacelike vector field is just its Lie derivative by the velocity field of the continuum.[1]
The upper-convected derivative is widely use in polymer rheology for the description of behavior of a viscoelastic fluid under large deformations.
A Examples for the symmetric tensor [ edit ]
For the case of simple shear:
∇ v = ( 0 0 0 γ ˙ 0 0 0 0 0 ) {\displaystyle
abla \mathbf {v} ={\begin{pmatrix}0&0&0\\{\dot {\gamma }}&0&0\\0&0&0\end{pmatrix}}}
Thus,
A ▽ = D D t A − γ ˙ ( 2 A 12 A 22 A 23 A 22 0 0 A 23 0 0 ) {\displaystyle {\stackrel {\triangledown }{\mathbf {A} }}={\frac {D}{Dt}}\mathbf {A} -{\dot {\gamma }}{\begin{pmatrix}2A_{12}&A_{22}&A_{23}\\A_{22}&0&0\\A_{23}&0&0\end{pmatrix}}}
Uniaxial extension of incompressible fluid [ edit ]
In this case a material is stretched in the direction X and compresses in the directions Y and Z, so to keep volume constant. The gradients of velocity are:
∇ v = ( ϵ ˙ 0 0 0 − ϵ ˙ 2 0 0 0 − ϵ ˙ 2 ) {\displaystyle
abla \mathbf {v} ={\begin{pmatrix}{\dot {\epsilon }}&0&0\\0&-{\frac {\dot {\epsilon }}{2}}&0\\0&0&-{\frac {\dot {\epsilon }}{2}}\end{pmatrix}}}
Thus,
A ▽ = D D t A − ϵ ˙ 2 ( 4 A 11 A 12 A 13 A 12 − 2 A 22 − 2 A 23 A 13 − 2 A 23 − 2 A 33 ) {\displaystyle {\stackrel {\triangledown }{\mathbf {A} }}={\frac {D}{Dt}}\mathbf {A} -{\frac {\dot {\epsilon }}{2}}{\begin{pmatrix}4A_{11}&A_{12}&A_{13}\\A_{12}&-2A_{22}&-2A_{23}\\A_{13}&-2A_{23}&-2A_{33}\end{pmatrix}}}
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Macosko, Christopher (1993). Rheology. Principles, Measurements and Applications. VCH Publisher. ISBN 978-1-56081-579-2.
NotesThe top two lawmakers on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Ranking Member Elijah Cummings, right, and Chairman Jason Chaffetz, left, both requested the Office of Government Ethics look into Conway's action. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call File Photo)
The Office of Government Ethics is recommending the White House investigate and take disciplinary action against Kellyanne Conway, the president’s special counselor who touted his daughter’s clothing line during a TV appearance from the White House.
In a letter to President Donald Trump’s deputy counsel, OGE Director Walter Shaub Jr. said “there is strong reason to believe” Conway violated standards of conduct that prevent employees from misusing their official positions.
At issue is an appearance Conway made on Fox News where she encouraged viewers to purchase products from Ivanka Trump's retail brand, after department store chain Nordstrom's dumped the brand due to low sales.
“I’m going to give a free commercial here,” Conway said, from a briefing room inside the White House. “Go buy it today, everybody; you can find it online.”
Shaub’s letter comes less than one week after the top two lawmakers on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee wrote to him pointing out that Conway appeared to violate federal law that prevents government employees from using their positions to endorse a product.
Although White Press Secretary Sean Spicer told reporters last week during a press conference that Conway had been “counseled” Shaub wrote that his agency has yet to receive notification of any disciplinary “or other corrective action” taken against Conway, according to the letter.
“I recommend the White House investigate Ms. Conway’s actions and consider disciplinary action against her,” Shaub wrote, adding that any action be reported back to his agency by Feb. 28.
Contact Rahman at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter at @remawriterPolice are asking the public to help a teen with Asperger Syndrome who has been missing since Monday.
Crispin Dowell’s parents noticed the 16-year-old was missing from their Del Cerro home about 6:15 a.m.
Since he’s been missing, money has been withdrawn from his parent’s account twice. On Monday morning, $100 was withdrawn from a Chase bank in Santee. Sometime later, another $100 was withdrawn, this time from a Chase bank in La Mesa.
He also used the trolley twice on Monday. He went from La Mesa to San Ysidro and from San Ysidro to Santee, police said.
San Diego Police Department Crispin at a trolley station in La Mesa. He may be wearing the same clothing. Crispin at a trolley station in La Mesa. He may be wearing the same clothing. (San Diego Police Department)
There’s been no activity at banks or on the trolley Tuesday.
Cripsin is described as white, 5 feet 8 inches tall, and 160 pounds with short blonde hair, blue eyes and black rim glasses. He is unshaven.
He was last seen wearing a blue hoodie, a hat, white and silver Nike shoes and a red backpack. Anyone with information about Cripsin’s whereabouts were asked to call police at (619) 531-2000 or detectives at (858) 495-7944.
Twitter: @LAWinkley
(619) 293-1546
[email protected] wasn’t exactly a daring rescue for Toronto firefighters, but a ‘clusterduck’ of a situation Thursday caught the hearts of many on social media. Toronto Professional Fire Fighters’ Association shared video on their Twitter page and Instagram account showing efforts to save three ducklings who had fallen into a sewer grate in North York.
In a video posted to Twitter and Instagram, a duck can be heard crying in distress as a fire crew works to save a duckling stuck in a sewer drain. ( Toronto firefighters / Instagram ) A firefighter can be seen working to rescue ducklings stuck in a sewer drain. ( Toronto Firefighters / Instagram )
It started when a bystander noticed a mother duck in distress by the grate near Bathurst St. and Patricia Ave. The bystander then heard “cries” from the drain underneath the grate and called for help. When the firefighters arrived on scene, they found the three ducklings and used a scoop-like tool to grab the little not-so-ugly ducklings and pull them to safety.
Article Continued Below
After the quick rescue, they were reunited with their mother and siblings. The rescue was captured on video and had over 1,000 views by Thursday night.You’re reading Significant Digits, a daily digest of the telling numbers tucked inside the news.
2 percent
Donald Trump does not have a lot of support among African-American voters. Just 2 percent of black voters said they were backing Trump in a new national poll by McClatchy-Marist, and he picked up only 1 percent in two other recent national surveys. [@Taniel]
4th place
Trump is also not doing very well among voters aged 18 to 29. When asked who they would vote for in an election held today, 41 percent backed Hillary Clinton, according to that Marist survey. Another 23 percent said they would support Libertarian Gary Johnson, and 16 percent said they would support Green Party candidate Jill Stein. Oh, and 9 percent said they were for Trump, which lucky for him means he is at least beating some candidate named “undecided,” currently with 8 percent of the youth vote. [McClatchy]
30-40 capybara
Approximate number of capybara — which everyone should know is a large rodent (well, everyone who watched a lot of “The Wild Thornberrys” as a kid like I did) — who reside inside the Rio Olympic golf course perimeter. As far as wildlife you’re liable to encounter in Brazil, you could do worse than a capybara. [SF Gate]
33 American service members
Number of U.S. service members who have contracted the Zika virus, including one pregnant woman. [The New York Times]
98 alleged drug smugglers
Peru, Brazil’s neighbor, is cracking down on drug smugglers in advance of the Olympics: At least 98 people have been arrested at the Lima airport, and law enforcement has confiscated 19.6 tonnes of narcotics. [Yahoo News]
$500,000
Amount of money given by Smith & Wesson, the gun manufacturer, to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a trade group, to fight Massachusetts’ assault weapons ban. [The Guardian]
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And if you see a significant digit in the wild, send it to @WaltHickey.Whether you’re cautiously curious or already avid, autumn is the time to go tarantula-spotting in the Bay Area. It’s mating season for the hairy critters, and, accordingly, the males are venturing forth from the ground in search of potential partners, who coyly await their suitors on their burrows’ “doorsteps,” and try to eat them after the fact.
Tarantulas, contrary to common portrayal, are rather fragile beasts: easily trodden upon, possessing poor eyesight, and liable to loose a leg if they fall too great a distance. Their bite isn’t even as bad as you might think: enough to kill a cricket, but you’d feel it on the magnitude of a bee sting. Because they are so vulnerable, the arachnids are nocturnal and spend most of their time underground, just popping to the surface to grab a meal.
In autumn, however, tarantulas are more easily spotted as they forsake caution in the name of procreation. In the East Bay, you can find them at Las Trampas, Sunol, Del Valle, and Pleasanton Ridge Regional Parks. Mount Diablo is also prime tarantula territory, and both the State Park and the Lindsay Museum typically offer guided tarantula walks along its slopes. In the South Bay, try Coyote Reservoir, Joseph D. Grant County Park, and Henry W. Coe State Park. Henry Coe hosts their annual Tarantula Festival and Fall Barbecue each October. It’s a fun, educational affair that attracts in the order of 400 attendees with the aim of dispelling the long-standing monster myth. Check out info on the 2008 event here.Economic Insights
The Impact of Lower Earnings in Alberta on Earnings Growth at the National Level Economic Insights
The Impact of Lower Earnings in Alberta on Earnings Growth at the National Level
by Andrew Fields, Labour Statistics Division
and Guy Gellatly, Analytical Studies Branch
Release date: November 18, 2016 More information PDF version
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This Economic Insights article highlights the slower pace of earnings growth for Canada as a whole during 2015 and the first half of 2016. It focuses on the impact that lower average earnings in Alberta during this period have had on earnings growth at the national level. The contribution of different industries to lower average earnings in Alberta is examined.
End of text box
Overview
Payroll employment and average earnings in Alberta have trended downward since early 2015 as labour market conditions in the province adjusted to lower oil prices. From January 2015 to June 2016, payroll employment in Alberta declined by 105,500 (-5.1%) with notable job losses in natural resources, construction and manufacturing. The change in average weekly earnings in Alberta, measured year-over-year, has been negative since June 2015 with widespread declines across industrial sectors. A combination of earnings and employment reductions in two high-wage sectors—mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction; and professional, scientific and technical services—have contributed most notably to lower average earnings in the province.
Lower average earnings in Alberta have coincided with slower average earnings growth at the national level (Chart 1). For Canada as a whole, the pace of earnings growth moderated throughout 2015. During that year, average annual earnings growth slowed to 1.8%, down from 2.6% in 2014. Earnings growth continued to moderate during the first half of 2016, averaging 0.4% from January to June.
In Alberta, payroll earnings continued to decline year-over-year into 2016, down 3.3% on average during the first six months of the year. The recent declines in Alberta and the slower pace of earnings growth for Canada as a whole have exceeded the lows observed in the 2008-2009 recession.
Description for Chart 1 Data table for Chart 1
Table summary
This table displays the results of Data table for Chart 1. The information is grouped by Year and month (appearing as row headers), Average weekly earnings, calculated using percent (year-over-year) units of measure (appearing as column headers). Year and month Average weekly earnings Canada Alberta percent (year-over-year) 2007 January 3.84 5.72 February 3.36 3.98 March 4.34 4.82 April 4.13 4.17 May 4.65 4.47 June 5.18 7.16 July 4.94 7.18 August 4.02 5.90 September 4.53 8.01 October 4.18 6.64 November 5.09 7.59 December 3.34 5.20 2008 January 3.18 5.07 February 4.18 7.81 March 3.33 7.04 April 3.38 6.87 May 2.88 5.90 June 2.38 5.45 July 2.42 4.45 August 2.81 5.85 September 2.85 5.46 October 3.05 4.91 November 2.42 6.66 December 1.83 5.69 2009 January 2.27 6.80 February 1.82 4.52 March 1.67 4.19 April 1.18 3.19 May 1.15 3.92 June 1.42 2.65 July 1.48 3.81 August 1.25 0.88 September 1.66 1.12 October 0.93 1.63 November 1.20 0.50 December 2.37 1.26 2010 January 2.29 1.02 February 2.80 2.16 March 2.66 3.00 April 3.40 5.61 May 3.55 4.24 June 3.53 4.72 July 3.68 4.65 August 4.44 6.70 September 4.47 6.11 October 4.21 5.42 November 4.32 4.90 December 3.95 5.29 2011 January 4.60 7.22 February 3.49 5.94 March 3.36 5.04 April 2.85 3.31 May 2.91 4.64 June 2.36 4.54 July 1.80 2.50 August 1.63 4.26 September 0.91 2.97 October 2.54 4.17 November 1.92 4.24 December 1.73 3.96 2012 January 1.43 1.81 February 1.19 2.37 March 1.93 3.02 April 2.22 2.73 May 2.13 2.14 June 2.68 2.55 July 3.64 5.16 August 3.61 5.44 September 3.38 4.75 October 2.41 3.87 November 2.71 3.99 December 2.72 3.96 2013 January 1.78 2.97 February 2.78 4.28 March 2.03 3.59 April 1.53 3.50 May 2.53 5.66 June 1.89 3.64 July 0.99 2.36 August 0.85 1.01 September 1.05 2.76 October 1.44 3.32 November 2.13 4.23 December 2.38 4.66 2014 January 2.47 4.56 February 2.39 3.14 March 2.53 4.36 April 3.13 4.46 May 2.40 3.13 June 2.86 4.53 July 3.50 4.91 August 3.12 4.83 September 2.97 3.59 October 2.63 4.13 November 1.75 2.46 December 1.88 1.24 2015 January 2.73 3.66 February 2.51 2.41 March 2.76 1.11 April 2.43 0.97 May 1.26 0.11 June 1.81 -0.42 July 1.40 -1.60 August 0.58 -2.74 September 1.44 -1. |
bove is a screenshot from query_reviewer. It tells you every single query being run, and alerts you to things that use temporary tables, file sorts and/or just damn slow queries.
In a nutshell, you need indexes to avoid full table scans. The traditional way is to run EXPLAIN manually on queries coming out of your dev log. Query_reviewer lets you see it all right there in the left corner of your web browser. It's brilliant. You also need to eager load associations that will use in your views by passing :include to your ActiveRecord find method call, so that you can batch up SQL queries instead of destroying your DB server with 100 queries per dynamic page.
New Relic is new for us, but it helps us see what is really happening on our production site. If your site is on fire, it's a freaking beautiful gift from the heavens above. You'll see exactly what controllers are slow, which servers in your cluster, how load is on all your machines, and which queries are slow.
If you memcache first, you will never feel the pain and never learn how bad your database indexes and Rails queries are. What happens when scale gets so big that your memcache setup is dying? Oh, right, you're even more screwed than you would have been if you got your DB right in the first place. Also, if this is your first time doing scaling Rails / a db-driven site, there's only one way to learn how, and putting it off til later probably isn't the way. Memcache is like a bandaid for a bullet hole -- you're gonna die.
If you're using nginx or Apache as a load balancer in front of a pack of mongrels (or thins or whatever else is cool/new/hip), then each of those mongrels acts like a queue. The upshot is that if you EVER have a request that takes a long time to finish, you're in a world of hurt. So say you have 4 mongrels, and Request A comes in to port 8000 and it takes 10 seconds. The load balancer is naive and keeps passing requests to Port 8000 even though that port is busy. (Note: This might help, but we don't use it)
Then what happens? Sad town happens. 1 in 4 requests after Request A will go to port 8000, and all of those requests will wait in line as that mongrel chugs away at the slow request. Effective wait time on 1/4th of your requests in that 10 second period may be as long as 10 seconds, even if normally it should only take 50msec!
Enter the wonderful mongrel proctitle. Now, you can see exactly what is blocking your mongrels. I keep this on a watch in a terminal at all times. It's what I look at immediately if our constant uptime tests tell us something's wrong. Super useful.
The answer is: a) run some mongrels dedicated to slow running jobs (meh) or b) run Phusion Passenger, or c) run slow stuff offline... which leads us to...So you gotta send some emails. Or maybe denormalize your DB. Or resize photos, or transcode video or audio. But how do you do it in the 200msec that you need to return a web request? You don't. You use Workling or Delayed Job or nanite. It'll happen outside of your mongrels and everyone will be happier.
I don't know why people don't talk about this more, because if you run a site that basically does anything, you need something like this. It *should* be a part of Rails, but isn't. It isn't a part of Rails in the same way that SwingWorker in Java wasn't a part of Java Swing core like forever, even though it absolutely had to be.
Test your site uptime, not just ping but actual real user requests that hit the DB. Sure, you could use pingdom if you're lazy, but it seriously takes like 10 lines of ruby code to write an automated daemon that runs, does a user action and checks that your site is not hosed. open-uri is your friend. You don't know if you're up if you're not checking. Do not tolerate downtime.
Also, use god for mongrel and process monitoring. Mongrels die or go crazy. You gotta keep them in their place. (What's funny is that god leaks memory over time with Ruby 1.8.6 *sigh*). Munin monit, and nagios are also great to have.
Keep an eye on your resources -- IO ok? Disk space? It's the worst thing every to have a site crash because you forgot to clean the logs or you ran out of disk space. Make cronjobs for cleaning all logs and temp directories, so that you can set it and forget it. Because you will forget, until you are reminded in the worst way.
You will learn more reading the source and debugging / fixing bugs in plugins and sometimes Rails itself than a) complaining on a mailing list or b) whining about shit on your twitter. It's Ruby open source code -- if it's broken, there's a reason. There's a bug, or you're doing it wrong. Fix it yourself, drop it into a github fork, and submit back.They don't work well. And they sit around on Google sucking up time and effort. Acts as paranoid is one. They look legit, with famous names who created them. Don't fall for it. Insist on using code that has been updated recently. Rails changes pretty fast, and plugins that don't get updated will waste your time, cause random bugs, and basically make your life crap.
Github is new on the scene and has totally revolutionized Rails. When in doubt, search Github. If it's not on Github, it's probably dead/not-maintained. Be wary.
Actually, if this blog post is older than even 6 months or 1 year -- you might want to go elsewhere. Rails moves fast. What's hot and "must have" in Rails now may be totally a piece of crap / barely functioning garbage later. Same with any blog posts. Be super wary of the Rails wiki. There be dragons -- I mean, really stuff that references Rails 1.2.6 or earlier!
There's tons more stuff, but this is a pretty decent list of stuff to watch out for. If you have any suggestions for other things I missed, or questions, please do leave a comment below!
If you liked this article, please try posterous.com and/or follow me on twitter at @posterous and @garrytan!
Posterous is also hiring Rails engineers for full time positions in San Francisco. We're a small team of all hardcore developers and looking for like minded folks to join up. Well-funded by the top-tier VC's and angels. We grew over 10x in 2009!Those small threads you can see in the video above are individual nerve cells. Until now, scientists couldn’t see them in place in the whole mouse brain. But a new technique can now turn the entire bodies of small animals transparent, allowing scientists to trace the paths of nerve cells and blood vessels from nose to tail. The new tool, published today in Nature Methods, is the first to offer such a detailed view of individual cells in an intact body. “Now…we can look into the wiring of the whole mouse in high resolution,” says coauthor Ali Ertürk, a neuroscientist at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. This will allow researchers to better understand how the nervous system is assembled, and how injuries or illnesses can mess with this circuitry.
An entire mouse brain imaged with a new technique that turns organs and small animal bodies transparent. Ali Ertürk
Generally, scientists can view entire organs in low-resolution with techniques like MRI, or cut tiny pieces of tissue into fine slices and pop it under a microscope for a detailed look at a very small area. But cutting tissue up into thin wafers is time-consuming and doesn't capture the full complexity of the nervous system, whose cells are often too long to fit onto a tissue section. “This is usually sufficient to study tumor cells or inflammatory cells because they are small circles…but neurons are not like this,” Ertürk says. “You don’t see the entire picture, you are cutting the wires.” With the new method, which he and his colleagues have dubbed “ultimate DISCO” or uDISCO, those wires can be viewed whole and in place. Ertürk likens the process to learning how pipes in a wall are organized by turning everything to glass and filling the pipes with colored water. To make a dead rat see-through with uDISCO, the animal is soaked in solutions that remove the water and lipids from its tissues, leaving a glassy scaffold behind. This process also shrinks the rodents’ bodies by up to 65 percent, making them easier to fit under a microscope, and renders tissue hard but flexible for easy positioning. In rodents engineered to carry fluorescent proteins, a peek under the microscope can then offer a high-resolution glimpse at whichever cells or areas the researchers decided to illuminate.
A rat made transparent with uDISCO. Ali Ertürk
Previously, Ertürk and his colleagues created a similar technique called 3DISCO (3D imaging of solvent-cleared organs). 3DISCO could clear a mouse brain or spinal cord within a few hours, but the solutions quickly damaged the glowing proteins. To turn a whole mouse transparent takes days, at which point there was no signal left to light up the cleared tissues. “They would destroy this fluorescent color,” Ertürk says. “So basically we would make [the mice] transparent, but at the end we would lose what is painted inside.”
[The researchers hope] to eventually map an entire human brain with uDISCO.
uDISCO preserves the fluorescent proteins in a body for months, making it possible to clear and view entire rodents. The whole process takes about eight days. By contrast, using an electron microscope to map a mouse brain from tissue slices would take about 50 years, and a human brain 1000 years, Ertürk says. He hopes to eventually map an entire human brain with uDISCO. Ertürk and his colleagues also plan to apply uDISCO to investigate how brain injury or psychiatric conditions can affect the rest of the body. Another use would be to follow the path of metastasizing cells in tumors, or understand how transplanted stem cells migrate to unintended areas of the body. Using uDISCO to create atlases of whole rodents might even cut down on the number of lab animals used in future research. With uDISCO, scientists can also compare how the nervous system looks in healthy mice compared to those with Alzheimer’s-like diseases. “This will give us hints how the miswiring is happening," Ertürk says. "And how we can then tackle it to make it correct.”FIANNA FÁIL IS considering tabling a motion of no confidence in the management of An Garda Síochána.
The move comes following strong criticism of the Garda Commissioner Noírín O’Sullivan at last night’s Fianna Fáil front bench meeting.
A litany of massive errors emerged last month which led to almost a million phantom breath tests being logged on the Pulse system and hundreds of thousands of drivers receiving summonses they should never have been sent.
Last night, Fianna Fáil reiterated its stance that it cannot express confidence in the commissioner. There was also criticism of the commissioner’s performance at an Oireachtas committee meeting last week.
Sinn Féin’s motion of no confidence in the commissioner is due before the Dáil on 12 April – however, Fianna Fáill are not expected to support it.
It’s understood that Fianna Fáil are considering their own motion, or, if the Labour Party are receptive to the wording, both parties may join forces to bring forward such a motion.
This would most likely be heard in May.
Labour leader Brendan Howlin questioned the Taoiseach in the Dáil today, asking if the government can continue to have confidence in garda management.
“I retain confidence in the commissioner,” said Taoiseach Enda Kenny.
Removal from office
Fianna Fáil’s Sean Fleming confirmed to Newstalk Breakfast this morning the party has said if Fianna Fáil was in government it would remove her from office.
O’Sullivan is due back in Leinster House later this month to appear before the Oireachtas Committee on Justice. She will face questions in relation to the breath tests and false summonses.
Questions for the commissioner
The committee has agreed to send 15 questions to the commissioner in relation to the scandal and in addition, asked her to outline her knowledge of any further mishandling of garda figures.
Her written responses are due back to the committee the day before the Sinn Féin motion of no confidence.
Yesterday, Tánaiste Frances Fitzgerald outlined plans for the independent root-and-branch review of the gardaí. She also told her Cabinet colleagues that the Policing Authority will carry out an investigation into the breath tests scandal.
It’s understood an independent expert, who could be named as early as this week, will head up the Garda review.
It’s believed Fianna Fáil were not consulted prior to the plans being brought to Cabinet yesterday.
One source said the lack of consultation with Fianna Fáil’s justice spokesperson Jim O’Callaghan prior to the meeting is a clear indication that the relationship between O’Callaghan and Fitzgerald has soured.
The Tánaiste is scheduled to meet with opposition representatives today.Photo
BRUSSELS — European Union governments delivered a blow Monday to the biotechnology industry, allowing Austria and Hungary to maintain national bans on growing genetically modified crops from Monsanto.
The vote, taken by European environment ministers, could irritate Washington, which has complained to the World Trade Organization about obstacles to planting bioengineered crops.
The vote was also a setback for the European Commission, the union’s executive arm. The commission has sought to ease the restrictions in Europe on gene-altered crops, in part to keep down the cost of animal feed.
Member countries were “firm” and the “commission should take a close reading of the result,” the French environment minister, Jean-Louis Borloo, said after the announcement in Brussels, according to Bloomberg News.
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The market for genetically engineered crops is worth several billion dollars worldwide. Only one genetically altered crop is currently grown in Europe: a form of corn, called MON 810, produced by Monsanto and other companies.
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In 2003, Argentina, Canada and the United States brought complaints about Europe’s biotechnology policies to the W.T.O., which ruled in 2006 that a de facto ban on imports of genetically modified foods from 1984 to 2004 violated trade rules.The agency stonewalls requests for records that would show it divulged private taxpayer information.
The Internal Revenue Service might be done in by a group of the type it has been accused of targeting, and the agency seems to know it has been tripped up.
Several congressional committees have tried their hand at investigating the IRS, but Cause of Action (CoA), a government watchdog group, may be the ones to put the agency in a corner. IRS and Department of Justice officials are looking for ways to get the group off their tail.
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“We’ve set up a trap for them,” CoA president Dan Epstein tells National Review Online. “We’re literally outsmarting them.”
For more than a year, CoA has focused on the IRS’s inconsistent application of the Internal Revenue Code’s rule 6103, which states that private taxpayer information must be kept confidential. Through a series of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) applications, CoA methodically requested documents pertinent to the White House’s potential unlawful acquisition of such information. The IRS appears to have moved to stonewall CoA, which has not yet received the documents it requested, and Epstein says that the delays amount to the IRS’s acknowledgment to at least some wrongdoing.
Epstein and his team first requested that the IRS provide any communications regarding the president’s personally requesting taxpayer information, a power legal under 6103(g), which allows the president access to the information if he submits a letter to the agency or authorizes a member of his staff to do so. CoA knew that no president had ever exercised that authority and knew that it would get nothing back as a result. The seemingly useless gesture set the parameters of its investigation: If anyone in the White House accessed personal taxpayer information, it wasn’t by a presidential request, and was therefore unauthorized.
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Next, CoA wanted records of communications by or of investigations into anyone at the White House who accessed the protected information. “What we’re doing there is chipping away consistently and strategically at the metes and bounds of 6103,” explains Epstein. Even if the agency opted to initially withhold the records, the IRS would have thereby admitted that those records exist and were likely subject to unauthorized access.
That is, the IRS did admit to having the types of records that CoA was seeking, but it refused to release them, so the nonprofit filed a lawsuit in district court. The court eventually ruled in CoA’s favor. But earlier this month, the IRS alerted CoA that it would not be handing over any of the thousands of pages of documents that a federal judge had just ordered the agency to provide.
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“What that suggests to me, quite honestly, is that they were surprised by the [judge’s] decision,” Epstein says. “It’s clear from that they were taking seriously what’s in those documents.” Epstein knew that his team was on to something after a separate 800-page document request revealed e-mails between IRS and Department of Justice officials discussing CoA’s FOIA requests and how to handle the release of documents.
In a letter to CoA, the Treasury inspector general for tax administration (TIGTA) cited rule 6103. But Epstein says that the acknowledgment of more than 2,500 documents related to these correspondences and investigations illustrates the agency’s inconsistent interpretation. “We think there is a problem when 6103 can be used as a sword and a shield,” he says.
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The “sword” function is a common concern regarding the IRS’s collection of private information. It comes into play when taxpayer data are used against political foes, whether they have been accessed by the administration or by its allies, such as when the donor list of the National Organization for Marriage was leaked to the Human Rights Campaign in 2012.
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But what CoA uncovered with its approach was that the IRS as well as the inspector generals are also capable of using rule 6103 to protect the administration.
“When it comes to the president accessing our most private information, all of a sudden that [power] is shielded,” he says. “TIGTA’s job should not be protecting those in political power. It should be bringing enforcement actions against those who violate the law.” TIGTA is taking a hard stance on 6103, shutting out CoA and others while the IRS’s apparently looser interpretation unlawfully provides others with the private information, further complicating the troubling dynamic.
For now, CoA is evaluating how it will proceed with its fight. Although the IRS is still withholding the records of the access it provided to parties interested in private taxpayer information, the judge’s order establishes a precedent: What’s included in those recordss can be released. But the group isn’t aiming to get anyone fired or fan the flames of scandal. “We want nothing more than for these documents to reveal that there was no 6103 information going to the president,” he says. “It is not good for this country, for the American people to think that 6103 information is being disclosed to the White House.”
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After all its clever maneuvering to outwit the IRS into acknowledging that there was something to hide, CoA has just one goal when it comes to 6103, Epstein says: “What we want is for this administration to be transparent on this information.”
— Andrew Johnson is an editorial associate at National Review Online.There's a prank I like that goes as follows: a team of performers go to a classy food fair and serve the taste-testing elite takeout from McDonald's cleverly disguised as fancy hors d'oeuvres. Cut into glamorous looking bite-sized appetizers and served on toothpicks, they suggest a far more refined experience than they actually provide. Everyone agrees that what they're being served is a cut above what it truly is. Omega Force's adaptation of the popular manga and anime series, Attack on Titan, is a lot like that.
The famous Dynasty Warriors developer's latest title, Attack on Titan: Wings of Freedom, is extremely appealing in moderation. It looks great, feels great, and sounds great. One's initial couple of hours with the game is mesmerising in its presentation, controls, and sheer spectacle. Yet after a few hours it becomes clear that it's one of the most shallow and repetitive full-priced action games on the market today. It's both bollocks and brilliant.
It's true. This man has no dick.
For the uninitiated, Attack on Titan is a steampunk series about a world where mankind has been living in fear of giant, naked, seemingly braindead creatures called Titans. Where they come from and what they want is intentionally vague, adding a tantalising sense of mystery. Long story short, humans have erected a few colossal walls to shield themselves from these gargantuan predators. Of course, the walls get breached as the Titans have only grown bigger, stronger, and smarter over the years.
While the series is loved for its sharply drawn ensemble, memorable aesthetic, and elegant storytelling, there's one aspect above all that makes Attack on Titan a shoe-in for a video game adaptation: its peculiar combat system.
Yes, the source material has a "combat system" so excruciating detailed yet patently ridiculous that it almost seems like the franchise was designed with a video game treatment in mind.
How's it tie into the anime? From a storytelling perspective, Wings of Freedom is primarily a retelling of the show's first season. It fleshes out some background scenes - like what Levi Squad was up to during prior to the battle for Trost - and the epilogue offers a few hints at what's to come, but by and large this is an adaptation of the series' existing narrative rather than a spin-off. Omega Force does a commendable job adding context for newcomers (and many of its cutscenes are shot-for-shot remakes from the anime), but this is definitely an abbreviated reenactment with much of the drama lost in translation. Those fresh to the series will likely have a hard time investing in the diverse cast, while old hats may feel let down by the dearth of new stories in this universe. That said, Omega Force's adaptation stays true to the source material and does an adequate job jogging one's memory and providing context for its myriad of battles.
Here's how it works: Titans only have one weak spot on the nape of their neck. Slicing off any other limbs - including the head - will result in them simply regenerating said body part after a minute or so. To combat this, various military groups use a woefully impractical, yet comically cool accessory merging grappling hooks and jet packs. Called the Omni-Directional Mobility Gear, this device essentially turns any would-be soldier into a sword-swinging Spider-Man.
This is where Omega Force absolutely nails the Attack on Titan license. Those peculiar peripherals make traversing Wings of Freedom's various battlegrounds an absolute dream. Slinging, boosting, and reeling about cities, forests and plains offers one of the most exhilarating expressions of movement the medium has manifested. It may sound simple, but merely traipsing about is a pleasure.
Things get even more cathartic once the Titan-slaying begins. To fell each colossal beast, you must latch onto the back of their neck, build momentum, then deliver the killing blow in one of the most viscerally satisfying attack animations in recent memory. Everything slows down, big bright numbers splatter on the screen in a whirlwind of blood, and the delicious term "Complete Subjugation" commemorates your accomplishment.
You don't have to go straight for the jugular though. There's incentive to lop off other limbs instead. Amputating arms prevents a Titan from grabbing you, while slicing them off at the knee brings them crawling for easier nape access. Severing limbs also results in material drops for crafting upgrades - like a more powerful sword, lengthier grappling line, or a higher fuel capacity.
It all feels amazing... to a point. The problem crops up early on when it becomes clear that Attack on Titan's combat system is extraordinarily elementary. Whatever benefit you receive from more powerful gear is negligible as Wings of Freedom is almost laughably unchallenging. Setting the game to the hardest difficulty mode initially available, I only succumbed to a game-over once - and this was only due to not understanding the mission objective. Usually I could even acquire the coveted S-rank with minimal effort.
As such, what begins as a breathtaking experience quickly declines into banal busywork. Swing towards the red dots on your mini-map, latch onto a Titan's nape, reel in, hit the attack button, rinse, repeat. It never gets more interesting than that and after awhile it recalls cleaning up a messy room as much as engaging in thrilling battle.
Attack on Titan certainly has strong jacket game.
The ease of combat deemphasises the item and crafting systems as there's little reason to scavenge for specific materials when the base equipment does the job. The repetitive mechanics are further exacerbated by a series of over 60 optional Survey missions that offer little story progression and no unique objectives beyond slaying the horde. Unfortunately, if you want to enjoy the game's epilogue - which moves the game's plot into territory not yet covered by the show - you'll have to plow through these highly monotonous assignments.
Shooters: How games fund arms manufacturers From marketing guns to young people to selling lucrative licenses.
At least you can play these side-missions in online co-op. This doesn't shake things up as much as one might hope since it's hard to stay close to your comrades. You'll likely split up and clear different parts of the map, which may be more efficient, but is hardly a game-changer. Disappointingly, there's no competitive mode or leaderboards to compete for best times or most kills - concepts that seem like a natural fit here.
Ultimately, Wings of Freedom's tiny toolkit never grows as robust as one would hope. Instead, it feels like an excellent first third of an action game stretched far too thin in hopes of supporting a lengthy umpteen-hour adventure.
And yet, Wings of Freedom remains intoxicating in brief sessions. After every hour or so of play I'd find the game boring, dull and tedious; yet every time I'd return, I'd find myself thoroughly enjoying it, in spite of knowing how hollow it is. It's the very definition of dumb fun. Wings of Freedom may be lacking in nutritional value, but sometimes you just want that cheap fast food burger. The fact that it's dolled up to look more dignified makes it far more palatable than it has any right to be.UPDATED 30 Oct 5am ET with Motobot's current top speed.
Japanese motorcycle giant Yamaha created a robot that is learning how to copy a motorsports champion.
At the Tokyo Motor Show on Wednesday, the company revealed Motobot, its autonomous motorcycle-riding humanoid robot, which can to ride an unmodified motorcycle.
Yamaha told Mashable Motobot is able to ride at 106 km/h (65 mph) on a racetrack now, but the company is expecting it to be able to go faster than 200 km/h (124 mph) "in the near future."
"mashable.com/2015/10/28/yamaha-sports-ride-concept/" is not a valid see-also reference
"The task of controlling the complex motions of a motorcycle at high speeds requires a variety of control systems that must function with a high degree of accuracy," Yamaha said in a statement. Motobot is also part of Yamaha's research efforts toward better rider safety, it said.
In the promotional video above, the robot issues a challenge to Italian world champion Valentino Rossi. As a childhood picture of Rossi comes on screen, the robot, using a digitized boy's voice, says: "I am improving my skills everyday, but I'm not sure if I can even beat the five-year-old you."
Motobot makes it clear that it's gaining on Rossi — and the rest of humankind: "I am not human but there has to be something only I am capable of. I am Motobot. I was created to surpass you."SPARTANBURG, S.C. -- Charles Johnson simply couldn’t get past nine seasons of hating the Tampa Bay Buccaneers when the NFC South rival brought him in for a free-agent visit.
The Carolina Panthers defensive end referred to his March trip through Tampa Bay’s facility as “weird’’ and “awkward.’’
“Don’t get me wrong, because Tampa has a great organization, but it was awkward playing against them so many years,’’ Johnson said on Sunday. “You really have a hate factor for them and it was just really awkward.’’
Johnson had every right to hate the Panthers, who released him to clear $11 million under the salary cap.
Panthers defensive end Charles Johnson (95) hits the sled during training camp at Wofford College. Jeremy Brevard/USA TODAY Sports
But he couldn’t bring himself to hold a grudge against general manager Dave Gettleman or the organization in the way all-time leading wide receiver Steve Smith and running back DeAngelo Williams did after being released the previous two seasons.
Johnson wanted to stay with the team that selected him in the third-round of the 2007 draft out of Georgia so badly that he accepted a one-year deal worth $3 million.
In an NFL world of get everything you can while you can, that is almost unheard of.
“It’s kind of hard to leave something that you have invested so much in and the sky is the limit for this team,’’ Johnson said. “I want to help take this team to where we need to be.’’
That’s back in the Super Bowl, except this time Johnson wants to walk away with a championship ring.
“I love being here and if you love being in a place, why change to change it up?’’ Johnson said.
The one thing Johnson did change was his weight. He reported at 275 pounds, 10 pounds lighter than he was this time a year ago. He jokingly says hours on the golf course during an unusually hot offseason helped him shed the pounds.
He also shed about 10 strokes off his game, shooting a personal-best 92.
“I do feel a little lighter on my feet, but like I say it’s all about putting in the work, so we’ll see,’’ Johnson said.
Whether it is weight related or not, Johnson can’t say, but he hasn’t missed time during training camp with the nagging hamstring and knee issues that hampered him the past couple of years.
Johnson injured the hamstring so badly last season that he was placed on injured reserve with a designation to return after the second game. Second on Carolina’s all-time sack list with 63.5, he missed seven games and finished the regular season with a career-low one sack.
Johnson wasn’t really at full strength until the postseason, and it showed as he collected a sack in both playoff games and the Super Bowl.
He hasn’t had a double-digit sack season since 2013, when he collected 11. But, at 30, Johnson still believes that’s possible.
“There are other guys that are way older than me that are putting up numbers,’’ Johnson said. “I’m just going to try to stay healthy and help the team out any way possible.’’
And he’s not just talking about this season. Johnson hopes to play several more.
“I feel like this year is going to be, I wouldn’t say critical, but a big year for me,’’ he said.
Because he got a $30 million bonus in 2011 when he signed a six-year, $72 million deal that earned him the nickname “Big Money,’’ Johnson wasn’t worried about how much he earned this season.
In many ways, he’s enjoying not having the pressure of living up to a big deal or his nickname.
“It’s relaxing when you can come in and enjoy working at the place you love,’’ Johnson said. “This is kind of like a dream for me because I get to play where I want to play at without any consequences. I just get to be loose and have fun doing what I love.’’
And do it against teams, like Tampa Bay, that he hates.Four Russian air force Sukhoi Su-34 attack planes flew over the North Pole recently. The epic mission is the latest development in the increasing militarization of the Arctic region.
According to the Interfax news agency, the four bombers refueled twice during the flight, performing air-to-air refueling in pairs.
The twin-engine, twin-seat warplanes together covered a combined distance of more than 50,000 kilometers in three days. Each Su-34 spent about 20 hours in flight.
The Su-34s—Moscow’s newest strike planes—aren’t the only Russian jets to have operated in the Arctic lately. MiG-31 interceptors have flown as far north as the 82nd parallel, demonstrating their ability to chase down targets around the North Pole.
Russian air force colonel-general Viktor Bondarev told ITAR-TASS that the air arm is preparing to send the MiG-31s even farther north during future exercises.
Production of the MiG-31 ended in the early 1990s, but Russia is upgrading the aircraft to extend its service life out to 2030, at which point Moscow hopes a replacement will be available.
At top—an Su-34. Photo via Wikipedia. Sign up for a daily War Is Boring email update here. Subscribe to WIB’s RSS feed here and follow the main page here.Before the 2016 Rio Olympics kicked off in Brazil, CNN host W. Kamau Bell made a request to world famous Olympian Michael Phelps.
Bell, who hosts a show called “United Shades of America,” told Phelps that he should let someone else carry the American flag.
In an editorial for CNN, Bell revealed who he thinks should have the honor instead:
“What I’m trying to say is that as far as America is concerned, you are a golden boy … literally. You getting the opportunity to carry the flag is like Michael Jordan getting a free pair of Nike sneakers. You are both the living embodiment of the “honor” you are getting. To put it another way, in the Make-Your-Own-Ice-Cream-Sundae-Bar of life, your sundae is lousy with hot fudge, butterscotch, strawberry sauce, whipped cream, nuts, sprinkles, extra scoops of ice cream, and so many Maraschino cherries that 5-year-old kids with mouthfuls of Maraschino cherries yell as you pass by, “THAT’S TOO MANY CHERRIES!” And that’s why I would be proud of you for giving up your position to Ibtihaj Muhammad. Muhammad carrying the flag would be much bigger than your one moment. It would be a symbol for our country in this moment when we are mostly known for one of the most contentious, controversial, scandal-ridden, hateful, xenophobic, jingoistic, and just generally unlikeable presidential elections in recent memory. This is at a time when we could use some more symbols of unity and togetherness.”
Muhammad is a world champion female fencer from New Jersey:
Some people applauded Bell’s challenge to Phelps:
– It would be a historical moment and send a message to young Muslim girls about inclusion. — Deborah Troop?? (@djtroop51) August 5, 2016
Yes! Please, please, please. This is important! — Alissa McLean (@alissakmclean) August 5, 2016
While others were strongly against the decision. One commenter called it race baiting:
he maybe a good guy but this idea is absolutely absurd. So tired of race bating and pandering — Daniel Gibalevich (@DGibalevich) August 6, 2016
Another said she needs to earn the honor herself:
.@wkamaubell @IbtihajMuhammad Maybe when she wins 18 gold medals. Meritocracy is the idea behind the Olympics. It's @MichaelPhelps moment. — Vermont Card Company (@VermontCardCo) August 5, 2016
Some didn’t like the give-everyone-a-trophy mindset:
https://twitter.com/alexanderjguy/status/761725397453135872
And didn’t see an issue with an American white male carrying the flag:
https://twitter.com/Integralmathyt/status/761583526651105280
And then there was the perspective that Bell’s suggestion is insulting to Muhammad:
So white shame Phelp's success and tell a young competitor that being a black muslim woman is her real success? — Tyrone Pigbottom (@TyronePigbottom) August 5, 2016
As far Bell’s advice, Phelps didn’t take it. He was recently seen in Rio De Janeiro representing America like this:I have to hand it to OCZ's CEO, Ryan Petersen, I never thought he'd turn the company around in the way that he did. When I first met Ryan around a decade ago, he wanted to know why I wouldn't allow him to advertise OCZ on AnandTech. The company at that time had an extremely bad reputation. It was among the worst I'd ever seen. It was so bad that not only would we not review their products (memory, at the time) but I wouldn't allow OCZ ads to run on the site. Although all advertising on AnandTech is handled through a third party, I still have the ultimate say on what ends up on the site. Back then, OCZ wasn't allowed.
Having just taken over the company, Ryan was eager to know what he had to change to fix OCZ's reputation. I gave him a long list of issues to address. Most of my suggestions were obvious, just to go above and beyond the call of duty in taking care of his customers and our readers. He agreed to do everything on the list, with one exception. I told him that if he really wanted to succeed, he needed to abandon the OCZ name and start fresh. He |
is based on this underlying principle," said Soleymani. Selesnick added that this powerful signal analysis method is practical only now because of the computational power available in electronic devices today.
J. Thomas Roland, Jr., the Mendik Foundation Professor and chairman of the Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at NYU Langone, said noise is the number-one problem for people with any degree of hearing loss, even with an appropriately fit hearing aid or cochlear implant. "It is also a big problem even for normal-hearing people," he said.
The potential uses for SEDA, for which a U.S. patent application has been submitted, go way beyond helping the hearing impaired. "While it was originally conceived for improving performance with cochlear implants (which it does very well), I can imagine the market might even be bigger in a mobile phone arena," said Landsberger.An Army whitepaper released Monday, prompted by the Department of Justice, questions a plan sending as many as 100,000 “untraceable” 1911s, referred to as “popular crime guns” to the Civilian Marksmanship Program.
The paper, obtained by the Huffington Post, cites the concern passed to the service branch of President Obama’s DOJ that a measure currently moving through the House could end up with the Army’s frozen surplus of.45 ACP pistols could end up arming criminals.
The guns, remnants of more than two million produced for the Army between 1912 and 1945, were withdrawn from service in the 1980s but cannot by law be cleared for disposal. Lawmakers believe this could save the estimated $200,000 per year spent to store the unneeded weapons.
However, the nation’s federal law enforcement officials are pumping the brakes on the plan to move them to the non-profit marksmanship corporation for resale to collectors and shooting enthusiasts.
“There is a significant risk of approximately 100K semiautomatic handguns that are virtually untraceable, being released into commerce,” the paper reads. “Per DOJ, M1911 pistols are popular crime guns. Over the last 10 years, they traced an average of 1,768 M1911 pistols with a significant percentage (percentage not provided) ultimately identified as surplus U.S. military firearms.”
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives maintains the National Tracing Center –the nation’s only crime gun tracing facility — which traced some 336,000 crime guns in calendar year 2013. The process typically involves running the serial number back through the manufacturer to wholesalers and distributors to the end licensed dealer. On used guns that have had multiple sales, surplus military guns, or guns that have seen their manufacturers go out of business, this process often leads to dead ends.
The Army paper also cast shade at the prospect of expanding the CMP’s current mission to allow it to sell surplus handguns. While a military program it sold them in the 1960s, but has not done so since breaking away from the Army itself.
“If Congress intended for CMP’s firearm safety mission to include handguns or believed CMP should have the authority to resale handguns to generate revenue to support other programs, it would have required the Army to transfer the surplus M1911A1 inventory to CMP in 1996 when the program originally moved from the Army to the Corporation,” the report reads.
The paper also called into question the public safety of CMP sales as a whole by saying, “Although the provision does communicate that CMP cannot sell the firearms to prohibited persons, the provision does not include a mechanism to verify and confirm the information obtained through private, Internet or mail order sales.”
However, it is not all that easy to get a milsurp rifle from the CMP to begin with.
The vetting process
Currently the primary surplus Army firearm the CMP sells to eligible members of the public is the M-1 Garand, of which they have sold 400,000. While the corporation is not a federal firearms license holder, it is allowed by law to sell these curios to individual collectors who pass a number of qualifications that actually go beyond that of your typical FFL. These include:
Providing proof of U.S. Citizenship.
Proof of Age.
Supplying proof of membership in one of the CMP’s affiliated marksmanship clubs.
Verifying participation in a marksmanship related activity to include current or past military or law enforcement experience or hunter’s education course.
Passing a Federal Bureau of Investigation National Instant Criminal Check System check to ensure the buyer is not a prohibited possessor.
Provided the applicant meets the requirements and pays for the firearm, the CMP then ships the gun directly to the buyer. In accordance with state law in jurisdictions such as California, New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey, the CMP will only ship surplus firearms to licensed dealers who then proceed with the final sale and background check before passing the rifle on to the buyer.
Further, as many CMP-sold firearms are highly valued by collectors, the likelihood of these guns being passed along to prohibited possessors for use in street crime is low, barring theft, at which point the gun owner could report the firearm stolen — thus allowing it to be traced by the ATF if recovered.
Guns in limbo
In effect, the guns at the center of the debate are frozen in place. As the Army generally hasn’t contracted for new 1911 frames since 1945, those currently on hand are obsolete, with the newest of the stock pushing 70 years old, making them unlikely candidates for front line service. Typically the only use seen by the military for these veteran handguns is as a platform to build into non-combat marksmanship firearm for military shooting teams — ironically in many CMP sponsored matches. Other than that, just 8,300 M1911s have been loaned out since 1996 to law enforcement agencies through the DoD’s 1033 Program, which allows qualified police forces to request up to one.45 ACP pistol per full time officer.
Nevertheless, the nation’s primary land defense force can’t get rid of them.
While the military is prohibited by language in the 2015 Appropriations Act Continuing Resolution from spending any funds “demilitarize or dispose of M–1 Carbines, M–1 Garand rifles, M–14 rifles,.22 caliber rifles,.30 caliber rifles, or M–1911 pistols…” meaning those in Army custody cannot be torched, current law only allows for the transfer to the CMP of.30 caliber and.22 caliber rifles. This means the Big Green can’t pass on any handguns even if it wanted to.
In the end, these guns may continue their quiet storage, as House Democrats are now seeking to strip the amendment to transfer them away from the National Defense Authorization Act, which is up for debate this week on the floor.
“This provision, which the Army has said it does not want or need, could potentially put nearly 100,000 untraceable.45-caliber military-grade handguns on our streets,” said a representative for Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.). “This provision is an unnecessary risk.”
Experts on historical military weapons scoff at the brewing controversy over these surplus guns.
“The opposition of the anti-gunners to the proposed sale of M1911A1 pistols by the CMP is as predictable as it is misguided,” Bruce N. Canfield, a noted firearms historian and author of numerous books on post-Civil War weaponry, told Guns.com.
Canfield painted a picture of common sense.
“I don’t know what the CMP would sell the guns for but, for the sake of argument, let’s say $1,000 each. Logic would tell anyone with half a brain that gang-bangers, criminals who hold up liquor stores and other nefarious characters won’t be standing in line to pay a grand for a 70+ year old gun when much more modern pistols can be bought for a fraction of that amount,” he explained.
“The guns would be prized collectibles and much less likely to be misused than the vast majority of firearms on the market today (legal or otherwise). Let’s hope the politicians use common sense for a change and not cave in to political expediency or pressure from opponents of the Second Amendment,” Canfield said.The KKE held mass demonstrations on the 26th of June 2015 in the major cities of Greece against the new anti-people measures and agreements with the lenders, which are being prepared by the SYRIZA-ANEL government.
D. Koutsoumpas, the GS of the CC of the KKE, said, amongst other things, during his speech in Athens’ central square:
“The Greek people must say a big NO to the agreement, NO to their own continuing bankruptcy, NO to the parties of the EU one-way street and capitalist power. They must chart a course so that they can really take the reins of power.
The people must struggle alongside the KKE, they must impede the anti-people measures, on the streets, in the workplaces.
SYRIZA became the government by hijacking the workers’-people’s demands. It is now trying to deceive the people once again, distorting and interpreting the people’s votes in line with its interests.
Five months after the elections, the government is preparing to send the people the bill with the measures of the new agreement that are truly a noose around the necks of the families from the popular strata who have bled and will continue to bleed for the debt, for the EU, for the profitability of the monopolies, if they do not start a counterattack along the path of rupture and conflict with the EU and the monopolies.
The Greek people must reject both the proposals of the lenders-“three institutions” and also the proposals of the Tsipras government of 47+8 pages, they are both barbaric, a guillotine for the people.
The SYRIZA-ANEL government and also its European partners and the IMF, with the intervention of the USA, have not given up on the efforts to save capitalist Greece inside the framework of the capitalist EU.”
In early hours of the morning of the 27th of June, the Prime Minister A. Tsipras announced a referendum, whose question will be whether the people accept the proposal of the lenders or not.
In an intervention during the program of the Mega TV station, shortly after the Prime Minister’s address, Yiannis Gkiokas, member of the CC of the KKE and responsible for its Press Office, stressed that:
“The position of the KKE is clear. The NO of the Greek people must be directed towards both proposals-the proposal of the lenders and also the proposal of the government of 47 pages that has had details added to it during this whole period.
Both proposals contain savage measures at the expense of the people.
The referendum has the features of blackmail against the people and aims to make them complicit in the anti-people plans, by calling on them to choose between two evils.
The government must cease telling fairytales about allegedly respecting the people’s will. The people struggled in the previous years and bled against the memoranda and application laws. And during these 5 months, the government has not abolished any law, has maintained the previous framework untouched and is also proposing new measures to the lenders.
The government says that the proposal of the lenders is outside the people’s mandate. Is its own proposal inside the boundaries of the people’s mandate?
The government told lies to the Greek people. It promised them that they could be freed from the memoranda and austerity inside the EU and the capitalist development path and now it is trying to manage the collapse of this pre-election narrative.
The people must say no to both of them in every way and using every means available. They must reject the plan of the creditors and also the plan of the government. They must rise up and fight for the only realistic solution for their own interests, which is rupture with the EU and with the current path of development.”Dubai: “Brand Trump” has been getting quite a knock in global headlines and social media chatter in recent days.
By design or otherwise, Trump’s name and image have been knocked off a billboard
advertising a real estate development in Dubai.
The billboard was highlighting the virtues of the super-luxury villas bearing the Trump name at the Akoya project by Damac Properties.
A spokesperson for Damac declined to provide any details as to what led to the
removal of the image.
The developer’s official position — on the disparaging comments Donald Trump made about Muslims while campaigning to be the US Republican candidate for President — was that it will not comment on the “internal American political debate scene”.
It is the stance Damac maintained when the removal of the Trump name from the billboard was brought to its attention.
The villas — as well as the golf course that the Trump Organisation is to manage at the same development — were launched with great fanfare.
It marked the re-entry of the Trump brand into the UAE’s real estate development scene, after an earlier attempt to build a signature tower on the Palm Jumeirah came to naught following the global financial crisis.
Donald Trump himself and his daughter Ivanka were in Dubai to have first-hand look
at how the project was shaping up.
The villas carry price tags of Dh30 million and had been much favoured by investors at the time of the launch.
It is unlikely any of the existing owners will make a knee-jerk decision to try to sell the property in the secondary market as a protest move.
In the current market situation, when luxury properties have not been flying off the shelves, they may not find too many will buyers.
According to brand consultants, any branded development – attached to a celebrity’s
name – comes with a 30 per cent premium on average. But if the said brand turns toxic, the consequences could be dire.Europe's betrayal If you must, at least turn to the 6 European countries which abstained at the UN vote - not that they have anything to be proud about with their Holocaust record. Prof. Phyllis Chesler,
INN:PC Prof. Phyllis Chesler Prof. Phyllis Chesler The writer is a Ginsburg-Ingerman Fellow at the Middle East Forum, received the 2013 National Jewish Book Award,.authored 18 books, including Women and Madness and The New Anti-Semitism, and 4 studies about honor killing, Her latest books are An American Bride in Kabul, A Family Conspiracy: Honor Killing and A Politically Incorrect Feminist. More from the author ► The writer is a Ginsburg-Ingerman Fellow at the Middle East Forum, received the 2013 National Jewish Book Award,.authored 18 books, including Women and Madness and The New Anti-Semitism, and 4 studies about honor killing, Her latest books are An American Bride in Kabul, A Family Conspiracy: Honor Killing and A Politically Incorrect Feminist. I am reliving the Evian Conference, held in 1938. No European country was willing to take the Jews.
Eighty years later, on December 21, 2017, twenty six European countries voted to condemn the United States’ decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Six abstained. No European country dared to stand with the United States, with Israel, or with reality.
Austria and Germany—Hitler’s home base—voted to condemn the United States’ decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
Germany—whose shame about the Nazi genocide of six million assimilated, productive, and non-violent Jews led Merkel’s Germany tp embrace millions of non-assimilated, non-productive, and very violent Muslim refugees—and why?
Partly to redeem their own soiled reputation and, more diabolically, to continue their traditional Jew-hatred by allowing Muslim refugees to harass, beat, torture, and murder Jews—and by consistently voting for Palestinian terrorists over a peaceful and democratic Israel.
Germany—on whose soil Israeli athletes were murdered in cold blood at the Olympics and whose police could not stop the Palestinian killing spree or apprehend the perpetrators.
Austria and Germany were not the only European countries who voted to condemn the vote on moving the American Embassy to Israel’s capital city, Jerusalem.
France—a hotbed of radical Islamism did too. France—which has again hosted the kind of mobs that cry “Death to the Jews” in Paris in the 21st century. France—in which Jews have literally been tortured to death (Ilan Halimi, z”l, Sarah Halimi z”l); synagogues bombed; Blood libels launched (the Mohammad Al-Dura fakery); medical care given to mass murdering terrorist, Yasir Arafat and asylum given to his family.
La Belle France—quelle dommage. La Belle France—living proof that prophecy still exists in the modern age. Jean Raspail envisioned it all in his dystopian novel, “In The Camp of the Saints.”
Europe was home to so many Jews—but it was also a death camp for us.
Greece, (who yielded up the Jews of Salonica to the Nazis); Iceland (what did the Jews ever do to Icelanders?); once neutral Ireland and Italy (which yielded up all the Jews of Venice, Turin, Rome, to Hitler), both condemned the U.S. decision.
Belgium, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Monaco, and Montenegro (were fully occupied by the Mussolini’s Nazis); The Netherlands, (the country that yielded up the greatest percentage of its Jews to Hitler and that, myth aside, boasted no real resistance movement); Norway (the country that gave Hitler as many of its Jews as it could); Portugal (oh, how can we forget the Spanish-style Inquisition and exile of Portuguese Jews—I cannot do so); Serbia, (fully on board and aligned with Herr Hitler); Spain, (who can forget Spain’s anti-Jewish Inquisition and its secret support for Hitler.
Sweden and Denmark once rescued their Jews—but that was then, now it is in a politically correct strait-jacket; Switzerland (which held onto to Jewish bank accounts and art work but not to living Jews); and the United Kingdom about which much can be said; my personal favorite is how His Majesty’s Navy circled and shot at pitiful Nazi-era Jewish refugees on board leaky boats, whom they did not allow to land in Haifa.
The anti-Semitic Poles (!) Croatians, (!) Hungarians, (!), Latvians (!) Romanians (!) and Czechs (!) all abstained. Their records during the Shoah were awful.
Europe was home to so many Jews—but it was also a death camp for us.
Yidden and our friends: If you want to put your tourist dollar down, I suggest you do so in these six European countries.
More Arutz Sheva videos:
topThe US military are not planning to leave Syria until the Syrian settlement process in Geneva brings success, US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Monday.
US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told reporters on Monday that the US military would only leave Syria after it is evident the Syrian settlement process in Geneva is successful.
“We’re not just going to walk away right now before the Geneva process has cracked. That doesn’t mean everyone stays there. That doesn’t mean for certain — certain troops are leaving. I’m just saying that we’re going to condition — and I’ve honestly not made those decisions. We’re going to make sure we set the conditions for a diplomatic solution… Not just, you know, fight the cop part of it and then say good luck on the rest of it. We did it for that — to support the diplomatic solution,” Mattis said.
The US-led coalition of some 70 members has been conducting airstrikes, as well as ground-based and rocket-propelled artillery fire against the Daesh terror group in Syria, as well as Iraq. The coalition’s strikes in Syria are authorized neither by Assad nor by the UN Security Council.
In addition, the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have been receiving military support from the United States in fighting terrorists.
According to UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura, the eighth round of the intra-Syrian talks in Geneva will begin on November 28.
Source: Sputnik
AdvertisementsAs Google Glass begins to slowly make its way out of Google's top secret R&D labs and into the hands of Googlers, outside app developers, the press, and even some lucky members of the general public, it is, of course, eliciting many charged reactions.
Some people love it, others hate it, and a bunch of reporters at Business Insider were a bit confused by it.
But Scott Heiferman, co-founder and CEO of Meetup, has a much stronger reaction to Google's newest gadget.
Meetup takes interactions offline and creates communities in the real world, which explains why Heiferman is not too excited about yet another gadget that keeps you in the virtual world.
Back in 2010 when Apple's iPad was just released, he gained some notoriety when he smashed a brand new tablet onstage at a Meetup event.
Watch below his take on Google Glass and its owners.
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Produced by Daniel Goodman and Kamelia AngelovaWhat “The Division” Taught Me About Fear
The Big Bad Wolf Blocked Unblock Follow Following Mar 13, 2016
Fear is an emotion that Video Games have a hard time driving.
The worst thing that can happen to you in games is being forced to restart after dying. As such, dying rarely matters, and you’re not frightened of it.
Survival Horror games like ‘Alien: Isolation’ try to instill fear by placing save points very far away, to threaten you with having to repeat lengthy sections of the game if you get careless and die.
The Division isn’t a billed as a Survival Horror game. But I can tell you that the Dark Zone has offered some of the truest horror I’ve ever experienced in a video game.
‘The Division’ pits you against an oppressive post-disaster New York
But it’s not just fear of dying. It’s fear of strangers. Fear of the unknown. Fear of what you could become, if left to your own devices in a lawless world. It’s true fear.
And it’s some of the best gaming I’ve ever experienced.
Set in New York some short months after an outbreak of Small Pox, The Division is a ‘shared world shooter.’ It borrows largely from the MMORPGs that have dominated the market over the last decade. You make a character; you do quests to gain Experience Points; get better gear; and ultimately Level Up your character to become stronger.
Many people who don’t play Role Playing Games like this always ask me; ‘To what end?’ If the game is just ‘getting stronger’, then what is it you’re working toward?
In The Division, what you’re working toward is surviving The Dark Zone.
Ominous, four-story walls plastered in tattered tarpaulin covered in bio-hazard symbols, act as a literal division between the deserted streets of winter-time Manhattan (where your only threat are gang-bangers and looters), and The Dark Zone, where the game play is very much akin to the Lawless West.
In The Dark Zone, elite enemies that can murder you in a heartbeat share the stage with other players (like you), who at the mercy of their own whims, can decide to make you their next target practice.
This might not sound very foreboding given that there are countless games where the entire objective is to shoot other players, but what The Division achieves with The Dark Zone is a very real sense of urgency and fear.
You are cut away from the real world. Your comms go down; there are no fast travel options; there are fewer stations to restock your ammunition and medpacks; gangs of high level enemies march through the middle of the street, proclaiming that this is ‘their city’, and you’re locked in here with them.
In The Dark Zone, you are prey to everything you see.
In The Dark Zone, you keep your head down, you move cover-to-cover, you stay out of the street lights and when someone see’s you (and God you hope they don’t), you just pray they don’t put you on their list of shit they want to fuck up today.
So, why go there?
Because we’re stupid. And we’re made stupid by the same thing that drives all people stupid: Greed.
The Dark Zone is littered with high-end and rare gear that will make your character more powerful. It’s the promise of these powerful items that draw you like a lure through the contaminated streets of Manhattan, in search of more guns; better knee-pads; modifications for your back pack; or even cosmetic items likes scarves, sweaters and caps.
Sometimes, you’ll just want to sleuth through a contaminated zone to get to a chest, and then get the hell out of there.
‘The Dark Zone’, where your morality is put to the test
Other times, you and a few friends might team up to clear an abandoned sports store of the enemies who have set up camp, raiding it for the loot the they’ve stockpiled.
And maybe, just sometimes, you’ll let the lawlessness of The Dark Zone get the better of you, and you’ll decide to start hunting people just like you.
Attacking other players causes you to ‘Go Rogue’, which marks you for others to see. Besides the obvious aggressive nature of making that choice, what makes it worse is that Rogue players can loot your body when they kill you, literally robbing you of the hard work you’ve done to get all that gear.
As such, Rogue players are avoided. I’ll sneak between abandoned cars, up snow-coated scaffolding, and zip-wire down a building just to avoid having to cross a street where Rogue players may be loitering.
But it’s not always easy to avoid them.
The loot you acquire in The Dark Zone is contaminated by the same virus that wrecked all of New York. If you want to use it, you need to have it extracted and decontaminated.
To do this, you need to summon a Helicopter at an Extraction Zone.
Firing a flare, you take cover and wait out the timer as the Chopper approaches, all the while hyper-aware that the noise (and the flare), will draw enemies both non-player and player alike.
It was during one of these sequences that I first experienced all the fear The Dark Zone truly offers.
My party (three others) and I, had full packs of loot we’d busted our asses to collect, and we weren’t about to get gunned down only to lose it all.
We’d fired the flare, when an unknown player walked up onto the helipad. I was nervous. My party was twitching.
‘Who’s that?’
‘Are they Rogue?’
‘What’re they doing here?’
We moved out of cover. I drew my shotgun and approach the unknown player, aimed down the sights as my party did the same.
We made it clear that we weren’t about to be fucked with.
A few tense moments passed. The player hadn’t moved. His gun wasn’t drawn like ours were. Suddenly, he raised his arms, wavering defensively, cowering. He’d turned on the ‘surrender’ emote, and slowly we lowered our shotguns.
We’d come to an understanding. We back away (slowly), and returned to cover as the Chopper sounded in the distance.
Small Arms fire came at us from the south.
We panicked. Nearly a full minute had passed with no sign of oppression, when a swathe of Non-Player enemies with Sub-Machine Guns rained hell fire at us out of nowhere.
We re-positioned and buffed our defenses, opened fire on the hoody-clad baseball-bat wielding rioters.
Huddled behind a crate dented with machine gun fire, I was joined by the player we’d threatened. He took up arms and fought with us, downing the NPC’s as they rushed up the stairs.
All was going well. Our healing station was active. Snipers couldn’t see us.
I backed up, firing at the NPC’s over the cover with my shotgun. Stray buckshot spattered into the unknown player at my side.
“YOU HAVE BEEN DISAVOWED.”
The words thundered. I watched the screen shudder, a red halo appeared over my head.
“Your Team is Marked as Rogue.” The words trailed above.
‘What happened?
‘What was that?’
‘I didn’t mean it!’ I said, panicked.
The Chopper was getting closer.
There was no way I could undo what was done.
Watching a player crawling for safety as they die is heady stuff. Do you help or hinder?
The unknown player was wounded by me, physically (and I assume emotionally). I’d betrayed him, and now all four members of my team were marked Rogue; the most oppressive thing a player in The Dark Zone could see.
Non-player characters were still flooding in, firing, trying to kill us so we couldn’t escape with the loot we’d spent hours stockpiling.
The unknown player could start firing back at the Rogue agents that had sprouted up around him, threatening to rob us of the loot as well.
But what I did is what frightened me most.
The unknown player had a bio-hazard sack on his back, presumably full of contaminated, high-end Dark Zone gear. Gear that could be stolen, and easily placed on the incoming helicopter, delivered to my stash back home like a ready-wrapped Christmas gift.
And there I was, inadvertently marked Rogue, a huge target on my back for all to see.
I would be hunted. My team would be hated. Feared.
So I decided, looking down upon the cowering, confused player, that if I were going to be marked as Rogue, there was only one outcome.
‘Fine then.’ I said, and raised my shotgun. ‘Better make the most of it.’What you need to know about Northern Territory police's trial of body-worn video cameras
Updated
Northern Territory police have begun a three-month trial of body-worn cameras recording high-definition video and audio.
The officers have unrestricted powers to record wherever they go in the course of their duties, including public spaces as well as private places such as homes and offices.
Police say the front-mounted digital cameras will help improve police transparency, reduce paperwork, and supply useful evidence to the courts.
Use of the cameras in policing is an emerging trend both in Australia and overseas.
In the United States, there have been calls for police officers to wear body cameras following the fatal shooting of a black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri.
President Barack Obama recently proposed equipping 50,000 officers with the cameras.
In November, New South Wales parliament passed a bill giving frontline police the power to use body-worn video cameras following widespread trials earlier in the year.
It has been proposed the cameras will eventually be worn by every NSW frontline officer.
In recent years there have been limited trials in South Australia, Victoria, Western Australia and Queensland, including at the recent G20 summit of world leaders in Brisbane.
Here is what you need to know about the Northern Territory police's body-worn camera trial.
What kind of camera?
The Reveal RS2-X2. Unlike other body-worn cameras trialled in Australia it has a screen that faces outwards and shows what the camera is recording. "The person they're recording can see their image on the screen facing them at the time," Acting Deputy Commissioner Reece Kershaw said at a press conference announcing the trial.
It records high-quality video and audio, has a 120 degree horizontal field of view and weighs about 130 grams.
Will every officer have a camera?
No. Forty cameras have been allocated between officers across the NT. Twelve cameras will be sent to Alice Springs, six to City Safe, six to Darwin Traffic Operations, four to Drug and Organised Crime Squad, and 12 to the Metropolitan Patrol Group.
Does the camera record all the time?
No. "Officers will press record when they execute their police powers or make customer contact or custody or when there is a likelihood of custody incident," Acting Deputy Commissioner Kershaw said.
Can I ask police to stop recording?
Police do not require your consent to record. "They can ask that question however the officer no doubt will continue to record," Acting Deputy Commissioner Kershaw said.
Where can police record?
Police officers may use them anywhere in the Northern Territory. The only restrictions are those that generally determine where police may go.
What happens to the video?
The data is stored on a "secure server". If the video is being used as evidence then it will be made available to you, your legal representative as well as the prosecution.
If the footage is not being used as evidence it can be obtained for a $115 fee. You may not access footage of others.
Data not being used in court will be destroyed after 110 days.
When does the trial end?
The trial ends March 31, 2015.
Topics: police, darwin-0800
First posted"Whatever Jacen has become, he was a hero once. Jacen Solo saved the galaxy." ―Leia Organa Solo [src]
The son of Han and Leia Organa Solo, Jacen Solo was a leading Jedi Knight who proved crucial in defeating the Yuuzhan Vong and protecting the galaxy during the Yuuzhan Vong War. The grandson of Darth Vader, Darth Caedus was a Sith Lord who turned against his family and friends, betraying his former principles and leading the Galactic Alliance he once championed into a reign of terror as he attempted to bring order and stability to a fractured galaxy. It was Solo's desire to protect the galaxy and his increasing willingness to accept any cost in that cause that facilitated his fall to the Sith.
Born in 9 ABY, Jacen Solo spent most of his early years as the target of various kidnapping plots and schemes against his famous parents. When he was thirteen, he and his twin sister Jaina began attending the Jedi Praxeum on Yavin 4, where their uncle Luke Skywalker taught them the ways of the Force. There he made several friends, among them the Hapan princess Tenel Ka Djo, to whom he became strongly attracted. While training, he and his friends defeated numerous plots against the New Republic and, in 24 ABY, he and his younger brother Anakin were apprenticed to Skywalker.
A philosopher who struggled with the idea of employing violence to fight violence, Solo entered a personal crisis with the outbreak of the Yuuzhan Vong War. He preferred to serve off the front lines, but felt obligated to volunteer for the strike team assembled to eliminate the voxyn queen at Myrkr. There, Anakin Solo was killed and Jacen Solo stepped up to lead the team, killing the queen and ending the voxyn threat before he was captured by the Yuuzhan Vong.
Solo spent nearly a year in captivity, during which he was tortured for weeks at a time. Solo struggled with his circumstances and with the teachings of his captor and mentor, Vergere. He slipped to the dark side before returning and embracing the idea of responding to the universe with unconditional, all-encompassing love. He escaped Yuuzhan Vong custody with Vergere, a former Jedi of the Old Republic, and rejoined the war effort. In the final battle of the war, Solo stormed Supreme Overlord Shimrra Jamaane's Citadel and defeated Onimi, who was mentally controlling the Supreme Overlord, while Solo himself experienced a moment of unity with the Force.
Afterward, he spent five years visiting and learning from various Force-using sects. During his time with the Mind Walkers, he experienced a vision of a dark figure ruling the galaxy and became determined to prevent its fulfillment. He returned to the Jedi during the Dark Nest Crisis and, armed with a more ruthless philosophy of accepting various sacrifices in the name of the greater good, conspired to eliminate the Killiks to prevent another vision of galactic war and protect his infant daughter Allana, secretly conceived with Tenel Ka Djo. In 40 ABY, Solo agreed to become the Sith apprentice of Lumiya after probing the future and finding that, if he did not do so, he would kill Luke Skywalker and the galaxy would be consumed by chaos.
He embarked on a year-long descent into the dark side, slowly turning against the Jedi and his family as he grew darker and more extreme. After seizing control of the Galactic Alliance, killing Mara Jade Skywalker, torturing his former apprentice Ben Skywalker, committing multiple atrocities, taking Tahiri Veila as his official Sith apprentice, and ascending to Sith Mastery as Darth Caedus, he was finally killed by his twin sister Jaina.
Contents show]
Biography
Earliest years
Target from birth
"I was just thinking about children. Trying to imagine what it's like to try to raise them. Wondering how much of their character a family can mold, and how much is innate in the children themselves. Wondering if the evil in a family's history can be erased, or whether it always passes itself on to each new generation." ―Leia Organa Solo, to the Maitrakh of Clan Khim'bar [src]
Jacen Solo was a figure of galactic political significance before he was even born. The son of former smuggler, retired general, and Rebel icon Han Solo and Princess Leia Organa Solo of Alderaan, the New Republic Minister of State, Jacen Solo and his twin sister Jaina were immediately matters of public interest, and news of the pregnancy was spread throughout the New Republic.[19] Taking a different sort of interest in the developing twins, Grand Admiral Mitth'raw'nuruodo, the new leader of the Galactic Empire's military, promised Organa Solo's powerful Jedi children to Joruus C'baoth, the insane clone of Jedi Master Jorus C'baoth, as his to raise and make his apprentices in exchange for C'baoth's participation in the Grand Admiral's schemes. This resulted in several kidnapping attempts by Grand Admiral Thrawn's Noghri agents against Organa Solo during her pregnancy.[20] Organa Solo evaded all of them and was able to appeal to the Noghri to change their allegiance to her, exposing Thrawn's manipulations of their people and playing on their reverence for Darth Vader, the man who had been Organa Solo's father.[19][20]
As Jacen and Jaina Solo developed in their mother's womb, it was immediately apparent that they were Force-sensitive, and Organa Solo was able to make mental contact with their developing minds through the Force. She did so frequently to calm them when they were agitated.[1] When Jacen Solo was born in 9 ABY in the medical ward of the Imperial Palace on Coruscant, Organa Solo did the same throughout the ten-hour labor, until Solo, born after his sister, had emerged from the womb a brown-eyed, brown-haired infant.[1][5]
The children were raised in the Solos' Imperial Palace suite, with Organa Solo's adoptive sister Winter serving as their nurse.[1] Their uncle, Luke Skywalker, tested their Force potential and found it astonishing.[21] Shortly after their birth, they were the targets of another kidnapping attempt by an Imperial Intelligence team. Trapped in their suite, they were nearly captured before smuggler ally Mara Jade intervened and saved the family. After that incident, |
on such a special night,” the president of an associated Real Madrid supporters club in Iraq, told AS.
The town of Baakouba, located about 60 kilometers north of Baghdad also lies less than 90 km away from Balad, a city that witnessed the first attack on Real fans by the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) terrorists on May 13. Sixteen people were killed by three gunmen at the Al Furat cafe, leaving more than 20 injured.
On Saturday, Real went on to win the title beating Athletico 5(cat) in a penalty shootout after full and extra time ended with 1:1. After the victory in Milan, Real Madrid president Florentino Pérez said that he would like to “dedicate this cup to our fans in Iraq.”
In a statement in the aftermath of the attack earlier this month, Real Madrid said that the club “profoundly laments” the terrible attack and “expresses its total sadness and offers its thoughts and condolences to the families and friends of the victims.”
Ahead of Saturday’s match, Iraq's security forces have deployed extra personnel around Al Furat cafe to protect the venue. However this time, the terrorists struck another target.
Football is effectively banned in areas controlled by IS. Watching or following the world’s most popular game is severely punished within the ranks of hardline extremists. Earlier this month European security services warned that France faces an increased terrorist threat during the upcoming Euro 2016 football tournament.
/129When Staff Sgt. Noah Lubben was assigned to Air Force Special Operations Command, he enjoyed the freedom and the “laid back” atmosphere among his crew. The airmen had more freedom there and embraced the swagger of the Special Operations flying culture. “It was awesome,” Sergeant Lubben recalls. ”It was fun.”
But it was also a culture that ultimately contributed to his sexual assault, Lubben says – with “sexually charged” and “disgusting” insults that isolated him and turned his longtime fellow troops against him.
As the Pentagon released figures last week showing that incidents of sexual assault increased 50 percent between 2012 and 2013, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel vowed to take a number of steps, including some designed specifically to reach out to men, who make up half of all reported victims of sexual assault, according to a Pentagon study released last week.
“We have to fight the cultural stigmas that discourage reporting and be clear that sexual assault does not occur because a victim is weak,” Secretary Hagel said. The Pentagon, he added, would be seeking “input from male victims” to make prevention programs more effective.
Lubben, square-jawed and blond with a frank demeanor, says that early in his time in the unit, there was talk about the “cultural lessons” designed to haze new crew members into the ranks.
One of these rituals, Lubben recalled, was the “naked gunner hug,” in which, they were told, the gunner would “go around hugging new flyers with his naked body.”
One female airman took exception to this. “One girl in our class spoke up and said, ‘If that ever happened to me, I’d report it hands down.’ ” In response, some of the male crew members – ”me and two other guys,” Lubben says – ”actually called her a prude,” he recalls. “We told her she wouldn’t fit in well.”
Lubben later apologized to her for the remark, based on what he was to experience in the weeks to come.
It was on his gunship crew’s first temporary duty (TDY) trip to Tampa, Fla., that the trouble began. The crew’s navigator was a captain, and his conversation “was always sexually charged,” Lubben says.
“He bragged about his crude exploits with women,” including showing crew members photos of his conquests stored on his cellphone, he adds. “He was the center of attention, and the rest of the crew sought his approval."
On the first night of TDY, the crew went to a strip club. Lubben opted out. “It’s just not my style,” he says. “I think this put a wedge between me and the crew.”
He began to experience the brunt of the crew’s bad treatment. “They would say disgusting things” directed at him over the plane’s communications system.
Then came Lubben’s first flight without an instructor, which was referred to among his crew and others as “cherry flights,” a reference to a woman losing her virginity and “just another example that illustrates the sexuality ingrained in our culture,” he says.
That's when the assault took place. After the crew coordinated over its communications system to “get” Lubben, he turned around “and to my surprise he [the navigator] had his genitals out and seemed that he was going to hit me in the face” with them. He raised his arm to block that contact.
During the post-flight debriefing, Lubben informed the officer in charge “about the navigator’s inappropriate behavior, and everybody laughed.”
Lubben then spoke one on one with the mission commander, who “looked at me and said, ‘Yeah, that kind of stuff happens.’ ”
He decided to seek counsel from two fellow airmen closest to him. One “encouraged me to do the right thing. The other one warned me not to do anything – I’d make a lot of people angry and only ruin my career.”
Then he sat down with his wife and made a checklist on paper. It became clear: “I could do what was right, or I could do what was popular,” he says. “This made the choice clear for me and made it, not easy, but easier.”
He went straight to his local sexual assault response coordinator. “I was not afraid to speak out against my peers, so I reported it.”
The report caused an outcry, however, among his commanders and fellow crew. People were not upset about his assault, he says, but rather that he had reported it.
At the squadron Christmas party, he was approached by a friend who had heard rumors about what had happened. “He pulled me aside and asked, ‘Can I talk to you?’ He seemed concerned, honestly.”
After Lubben told him the story, “his demeanor changed. He pointed his finger at me and said, ‘Why would you do that? Why would you report this guy and possibly ruin his career?’ ”
He learned that while his experience with the navigator was hurtful, much more so was “the lack of willingness from my friends to stand up for what I’d done,” Lubben said. ”I’ve openly been called a snitch to my face and been stared down.”
The gunship crew, one of the most-deployed units in the Air Force at the time, was disqualified from flying as a result of Lubben’s report.
The navigator received an administrative punishment and was taken out of special operations command, Lubben said.
Today, the Air Force is encouraging him to come forward. At a recent gathering of Air Force three-star generals, who are the “convening authorities” in military justice cases regarding sexual assault, he told his story.
Afterward, he fielded questions from the generals, who included the top officer in the Air Force, Gen. Mark Welsh.
Lubben “is not someone who feels like a victim and acts like a victim – [he] isn’t someone who isn’t strong,” General Welsh said.
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And if his story “doesn’t rip you apart,” he told the gathering of dozens of generals around a large round conference room table, “then there’s something wrong with you.”
It's obvious to most Linux users that Digital Rights Management (DRM) is a really bad idea. It's not just because DRM-encoded media usually won't play with our operating system, but rather because we understand the value of openness. The really sad part is that DRM, at least on some level, is attempting to do a good thing.
Take Wil Wheaton for example. You may know Wil from television or movie acting, but he's also a successful writer. Along with writing books, he often performs them and sells the audiobook version of his work. Because Wil is against DRM, his books are available as unrestricted MP3 files. That's great for those of us who like to listen to such things on Linux or a non-iPod MP3 player. Unfortunately, some users confuse DRM-free with copyright-free. When otherwise decent individuals don't think through the ramifications of redistributing someone's copyrighted work, you end up with situations like this: tinyurl.com/stealfromwil.
If you put yourself in Mr Wheaton's shoes for a second, you can see how tempting it is for authors—and, more important, publishing companies—to DRM-encode their work. Theoretically, if a piece of media is “protected” with DRM, only those people who purchase the rights to enjoy it can enjoy it. Unfortunately, as everyone but the big companies that insist on using it know, all it manages to do is punish the honest people. People who have tried to play Amazon Video on Demand videos on their Linux desktops or listen to Audible audiobooks on their no-name MP3 players know exactly what I mean.
The truth of the matter is, if people are dishonest enough to use copyrighted materials they haven't paid for, DRM does little more than give them an “excuse” for their pirating ways. Right now, users are given the choice of paying money for limited, restricted access to media, or to download illegally fully functional, cross-platform, unrestricted media for free from torrent sites. I have two messages for two different groups:
1. Media publishing companies: make it easy for users to buy access to your media, and make that media flexible, archive-able and affordable. Yes, people will pirate your stuff—just like they do now. The difference will be that your honest clients won't hate you, and you'll actually gain some clients because you will be offering what people really want.
2. Frustrated users: look, I'm with you. DRM frustrates me too. Although I'm not expecting to convert those among us who choose to pirate media, I would hope that we'd all support those companies (and individuals, in Wil Wheaton's case) that “get it”. The only way we'll be part of the solution when it comes to eliminating DRM is actually to buy non-DRM stuff. At the very least, every time you pirate something because you can't buy it legitimately, e-mail the companies and let them know. If they see lost sales, perhaps they will rethink their approach to digital media.
I could go on and on about the insanity of Blu-ray DRM and the like, but I don't have the energy. Plus, I want to go watch the hi-def movie I just ripped on my Linux laptop. I'll have to remember to e-mail the movie producer about my morally justifiable, but legally questionable ways....Postmedia Network Canada Corp. Chief Executive Officer Paul Godfrey has called his company's U.S. dollar debt a noose around the newspaper publisher's neck. Investors are betting he may soon escape it as a restructuring looms.
Postmedia's $222-million of bonds, which have second place in the company's capital structure, have fallen to 14 cents on the dollar from more than 71 cents in January, according to data from the U.S. Financial Industry Regulatory Authority's reporting system. That price suggests the market is bracing for a debt restructuring that could force lenders including Allianz SE and Riverpark Advisors LLC to take substantial writedowns, convert the bonds to equity, or wipe their investment out altogether.
"It's telling you it's highly likely this bond will be restructured and become new equity, so the existing, current equity holders have been annihilated," said Paul Tepsich, founder and portfolio manager at High Rock Capital Management Inc. in Toronto, which owns some of Postmedia's higher-ranking Canadian dollar notes that he says trade at about 87 cents on the dollar. "It gives them a longer runway to survive or to rejig the business more."
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The plunge in Postmedia's 12.5 per cent bonds maturing in 2018 suggests ownership of Canada's largest newspaper chain will pass to its lenders following a restructuring. Whatever deal is cut would have to ensure the first-lien bondholders, led by Richmond Hill, Ontario-based Canso Investment Counsel Ltd. get paid first while the second-lien noteholders, including Allianz, would get whatever is left.
While painful for bond investors, a restructuring would provide some interest payment relief to Postmedia. In a January interview with the Canadian Press, Godfrey singled out the U.S. bonds as particularly "hurtful" because the weaker Canadian dollar made the interest payments more onerous. Since Toronto-based Postmedia sold the bonds in 2011, the debt payments have swollen in Canadian dollar terms by more than 30 per cent.
The rising borrowing costs come amid declines in Postmedia's print advertising revenue at papers including the National Post, Montreal Gazette and Vancouver Sun. Its efforts to make money online have failed to offset those drops even with the 2014 acquisition of 175 publications from Quebecor Inc. Last month, Postmedia's largest shareholder, GoldenTree Asset Management LP, initiated a sale process for its stake, according to a person familiar with the matter who declined to be identified because the process is private.
GoldenTree was part of the U.S. creditor group that financed Postmedia's creation from the wreckage of a bankrupt predecessor, Canwest Global Communications Corp., in 2010. Because Canada has rules against foreign ownership of its media, the transaction required a dual-share structure, with the majority of voting shares held by Canadian investors including Godfrey, who owns about an 11 per cent stake in those shares. The U.S. financiers hold Class B shares with limited voting rights.
Postmedia's non-voting shares trade at about 6 cents, for a market value of C$17-million. That values Goldentree's 53 per cent stake at C$9-million.
Phyllise Gelfand, a spokeswoman for Postmedia, declined to comment on the speculation of a debt restructuring, in an e-mail message. Megan Frank, a spokeswoman for Allianz's U.S. business didn't respond to messages requesting comment. Mary Beth Grover, an outside spokeswoman for GoldenTree with ASC Advisors LLC, declined to comment.
"If you get rid of that debt or significantly reduce that debt I believe the newspaper business is a viable business," said Niko Veilleux, a partner at Montreal law firm Fasken Martineau who represented Quebecor in the 2014 sale. He says a restructuring that converts Postmedia's second-lien bonds into equity would be one way to do that. "This is an industry that's declining, but it's not disappearing."
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GoldenTree, a New York-based hedge fund, also holds positions in the first and second lien bonds, according to Postmedia's regulatory filings. Canso Investment owns the majority of the top-ranked notes, the filings show. And of the approximately 53 per cent of the second-lien notes whose owners have to report their positions, 40 per cent are held by Munich-based money manager Allianz Global Investors GmbH, according to regulatory filings made in the 12 months to January.
"The equity is in my mind not worth anything because even the assets the company has, what we value it, is not enough to cover the debt," said Peter Adu, an analyst at Moody's Investors Service, which rates Postmedia Caa2, its fourth-lowest rating. "The debt would be a stretch to be able to refinance at par."No matter our profession, there are always some aspects of the work that we don’t like. Here’s my list today.
Unrealistic management expectations
In my career, I’ve had some great managers who are pretty savvy about what can get done and what can’t. Unfortunately, they are outweighed by the folks that seem to have no clue what’s possible and by when.
I don’t like working with managers that put an unrealistic time frame on a project so it gets done faster.
Maybe. Maybe not.
When I’m asked to implement an entire ERP system in 24 hours or they’ll be hell to pay, I remain calm. I look straight at the person and say, “Of course we’ll do our best to have this done. Talk to me for a minute about why this is so important to have done by tomorrow. What feature is the most critical? Where is the pressure coming from?”
Of course, there is no way an entire ERP system is going to be up and running in 24 hours. But there’s something going on in that manager’s head, and as project managers, we need to find out what it is. If we can know why there’s an unreasonable expectation, we can try to address it in the project plan.
The potential paperwork
Strictly following PMI’s processes could create lots of paperwork. Between the project plan and all the potential subsidiary plans – resource, communication, risk management, requirements management, scope management, schedules, action item lists, subcontractor management plans, it seems we could spend most of our time writing and updating plans.
I’m not a big fan of creating documents that are never used.
I suggest most project managers don’t create every one of the PMI suggested subsidiary plans. It’s important to have those records that are pertinent to your project. If your project is shorter than a month, completing the main project plan with a schedule, a scope change process and maybe a risk management plan might be enough. Longer projects need more documentation.
As a project manager, our companies are relying on our judgment as to what’s necessary. Have what you need, without spending hours creating documents that won’t be referred to after you finish them.
Project status with reluctant team members
Since I like talking with people, gathering project status is usually an enjoyable time. I get to converse with my team members and see how things are going and what’s happening. I try to make it as productive as possible and avoid wasting time.
For some team members, determining the status of their tasks seems to be like sentencing them to the guillotine. I suspect for some this is about perfection. It’s not done perfectly, therefore it’s not done at all. Who wants to admit that?
For others, it’s about not doing the work, or not knowing how to do the work. Sheer laziness will be found out. If the team member has more tasks than hours in a day, there are workarounds for that.
What’s tougher is someone who agrees to a task, but got stuck somewhere and is ashamed or reluctant to admit their lack of knowledge. You chase these folks until finally you go to their manager because you need an answer.
Any answer.
I don’t like chasing people.
I try to talk with the reluctant team member and find out what the problem is before I go to the manager. If that person and I can talk about where they’re stuck without an audience, usually an answer can be found. I like to give folks the benefit of the doubt until they demonstrate otherwise.
There are many moving parts in good project management. Some of the parts are good, and some are a bit more challenging. What are some aspects of project management that you dislike? Let us know in the comments.
Do you want a PDF of this post? Click to get your copy!Commanders,
This weekend we mark another successful year in the gaming industry. It is your continuous support that makes it all possible and it is thanks to you that we can continue delivering you great games and new content for you to enjoy. Therefore, we invite you to join the celebrations this weekend and enjoy some nice bonuses and discounts. Also, make sure you check out the dedicated packages we have put up in the Premium Shop for the occasion!
From Saturday 1 August at 07:10 until Tuesday 4 August at 07:00 CEST (UTC +2) enjoy the following:
Premium Shop
The following offers will also be available in the Premium Shop during the special.
Anniversary Offers: Heavy Steel: USA 43.29 Euro Heavy Steel: Germany 43.95 Euro
Premium Account: 12 Months 69.19 Euro Premium Account: 6 Months 40.65 Euro
Missions
Happy Anniversary
Reward
1 x Personal Reserve: +10% XP boost Duration: 4 hours
Expiration date: none
Requirements Tier V and above only
Random Battles only
Once per day
Conditions Earn a total of 25,000 XP over any number of battles
Be in the top 10 players on your team by base experience earned - bonuses for the first victory, premium account etc., will not be counted to determine the rankings.
Party Time!
Reward 1 x Coated Optics
1 x garage slot
Requirements Once per account
Conditions Finish the mission “ Happy Anniversary ” a total of 3 times
Celebrate the good times, Commanders!Now that she’s pregnant with Simon Cowell’s baby, scheming Manhattan social climber Lauren Silverman wants the filthy-rich “X-Factor” mogul to marry her, sources said.
And Cowell – who has been named as a co-respondent by Silverman’s outraged husband Andrew in their messy divorce – has said he will do his baby mama’s bidding, according to the sources.
“He promised to marry her after learning she was pregnant, and she is trying to make sure she keeps his promise.” a source close to the situation told The Post today.
“Simon says he will do the right thing for the baby.”
SEE PICS OF LAUREN SILVERMAN IN THE HAMPTONS
Cowell and Lauren had been carrying on their illicit trysts for more than a year, right under the nose of spurned spouse Andrew, several sources noted.
“She was sleeping with him on his yacht, while Andrew was there,” said one insider.
A few months ago, Lauren boldly posted photos of herself in a bikini, snuggling with Cowell on his yacht, with the caption, “Me and my little Simey monster.” She recently deleted the shot, and several others of herself with Cowell, from the social media site.
When Page Six asked Lauren about the photo and her alleged affair in May, she burst into tears and said, “Simon is my best friend, but please don’t write we are having an affair…it would destroy my family.”
Lauren had pretended to treat Cowell as just a close pal as they yachted and hobnobbed together — only to blindside her real estate developer husband Andrew, 37, well after the affair was in full swing, sources said.
“It is an unbelievable story of betrayal. It is a sad story and a tragic story,” Andrew’s brother, Alexander, told The Post.
One friend of the shapely brunette said that the Silvermans “weren’t estranged, as some friends of Lauren have claimed.
“The suggestion that she was an estranged wife who fell into another man’s arms is not the case.”
In fact, Andrew had been so oblivious to the sordid, under-his-nose affair that he recently upgraded Lauren’s engagement ring with a 10-karat diamond, a friend said.
“She is a total gold digger,” one pal said.
Another added, “The pregnancy was by design.”
Andrew is so livid, he’s seeking revenge on both Cowell and his straying wife — who is 10 weeks pregnant with Cowell’s baby. He’s taking the highly unusual step of embarrassing Cowell personally by naming him as a co-respondent in divorce papers, which were filed under the radar in Manhattan Supreme Court two weeks ago.
New York is a no-fault divorce state, but Andrew has filed for a fault divorce based on adultery.
That means Cowell, 53, risks being hauled to the witness stand to reveal his finances — he is said to be worth about $350 million — in addition to the sordid details of his affair with Silverman.
“It’s really a signal to the spouse who cheated that the wronged spouse is very angry and that it’s going to be a very nasty, scorched-earth, high-profile litigation,” said noted divorce attorney Martha Cohen Stine.
Another top matrimonial attorney agreed that the rare move was a pressure tactic.
“It’s very nasty,” said William Zabel, billionaire George Soros’ attorney. “I assume it’s to embarrass them and get them to settle.”
Cowell and Lauren Silverman had met on vacation seven years ago at the exclusive Sandy Lane resort in Barbados. Silverman dutifully introduced Cowell to her husband.
The Silvermans and Cowell — who was squiring English presenter Terri Seymour at the time — hit it off. They double-dated and vacationed together frequently, remaining close as Cowell traded in Seymour for his next, long-haired brunette gal pal, makeup artist Mezhgan Hussainy, who would become Cowell’s fiancé.
The married Silvermans and the engaged Cowell and Hussainy were even photographed frolicking together on the X-Factor judge’s yacht in St. Barth’s in January 2012 as if everything was fine and faithful — even though by then their extramarital treachery was in flower, a friend of Lauren’s said.
Andrew and Lauren had lived together in their Upper East Side apartment until June, when she moved out to their home in Bridgehampton with their 7-year-old son, also named Andrew, to spend the summer near the beach.
Her friends say she’s “overjoyed” by the pregnancy and Cowell can’t wait to be a father.
“He’s thrilled,” one friend said, adding that he traveled to Miami to meet Lauren’s parents.
Lauren and Cowell have lawyered up, hiring the high-powered divorce team of Bernard Clair and Robert S. Cohen.
Lauren’s husband, Andrew, comes from a moderately wealthy real-estate family, although, compared to Cowell’s massive fortune, he’s a small fry.
“He’s just an average guy from a real- estate family,” said one realty source.
Andrew works for The Andalex Group, founded by his father, Allen Silverman. Andrew, along with his brother, Alexander, have been called rising stars in New York’s real-estate industry.
The company, however, ran into some problems with a marquee project in Long Island City, Queens, where it spent $130 million converting a former electric factory into luxury condominiums, according to published reports.
A group of condo owners in the Arris Lofts building filed a civil complaint in 2010 seeking $20 million in damages when they said the developer ignored repeated requests for repairs. The disposition of the claim was not known.
Andrew married Lauren while they were in their mid-20s.
“I always found her very pretty, but I found them to be very pretentious,” an acquaintance in the Silvermans’ social circle said. “And I always wondered why she married him, and I figured it was for money.”
Andrew was spotted running from his Midtown office to a car yesterday when reporters asked him for a comment.
Meanwhile, Cowell’s mother, Julie, seemed thrilled at the prospect of becoming a grandmother, telling The Sun newspaper in England, “I’m delighted. It’s wonderful.”
Rosy Davis, who is the wife of Lauren’s father, Steven, told Britain’s Daily Mail, “We are all excited for the baby. It’s beautiful. We feel blessed.”
Close friends of the Silvermans say the real issue is who will care for their little boy.
“How will all of this play out? That’s the really sad part,” a friend said.
Additional reporting by Tara Palmeri, Julia Marsh and Frank RosarioTransgender group to picket Governor Cuomo’s Democratic rally in Hauppauge N.Y.
.
It’ll be a decade before we know it, and the promises he made to pass GENDA remain unfullfilled.
Juli Grey-Owens from (LITAC) writes “in 2010, then candidate for Governor, Andrew Cuomo was quoted as saying:”
“New Yorkers believe that their neighbors should be afforded the same rights and privileges under the law that they receive. I will work with our leaders in the legislature to achieve passage of the Gender Non-Discrimination Act (GENDA), and with our state agencies to eliminate health disparities for LGBT New Yorkers.”
4 years later, transgender New Yorkers are still without basic civil rights. In the meantime states like Iowa and New Mexico have added transgender protections to their civil rights laws.
It is now 2014, and Governor Cuomo is running for reelection. Here’s what he is saying about GENDA, in a letter to Empire State Pride Agenda:
“I write to reiterate my deep commitment to protect the rights of all New Yorkers, including those in the transgender community. Indeed, New York State has a long history of advancing transformative civil rights laws in an effort to protect disadvantaged citizens. We must continue to advance progressive reforms to protect those who continue to suffer discrimination without recourse.”
ANYONE SEE A PATTERN HERE?
IT’S TIME TO HOLD GOVERNOR CUOMO TO HIS WORDS!
GOVERNOR, IT’S TIME TO STOP USING GENDA AS CAMPAIGN RHETORIC AND BACK UP YOUR WORDS WITH ACTION!
I’ve been amazed at how effectivly and quickly the Long Island Transgender Advocacy Coalition can organize a action in the past. I have no doubt that they will pull this off in spatuclar style Saterday.
I found out tonight that Governor Cuomo will be appearing at a Democratic Party Rally in Hauppauge this Saturday 10/11, at 1:25 PM!
For months Trans activists around the state have felt some kind of statement needed to be made to our “recently evolved” Governor, and now the opportunity has landed in our lap, right here on Long Island!
I know it is short notice, but:
WE NEED ALL TRANS ACTIVISTS, ALLIES, FAMILY, AND FRIENDS TO STAND WITH US THIS SATURDAY AS WE SEND A STRONG MESSAGE TO GOVERNOR CUOMO THAT HE MUST HELP PASS THE GENDER EXPRESSION NON-DISCRIMINATION ACT (GENDA) IN 2015!!
PLEASE MEET US:
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 11TH
11:30 AM- 12 PM
GOVERNOR ARRIVES AT 1:25 PM
IBEW Local 25 Union Hall
370 Motor Parkway
Hauppauge, NY 11788
DIRECTIONS: Exit at the Long Island Expressway, Exit 55. Head west on Motor Parkway, approximately 3 blocks. The IBEW Union Hall is on the north side of Motor Parkway.
BRING SIGNS, NOISE MAKERS AND YOUR LOUDEST VOICE!
PLEASE PASS THIS INFORMATION ON TO YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA CONTACTS!!
THANKS FOR YOUR CONTINUED SUPPORT!!!
Juli Grey-Owens
Executive Director
Long Island Transgender Advocacy Coalition
Kelli Busey Editor in Chief at Planet Transgender Kelli Busey an outspoken gonzo style journalist has been writing since 2007. In 2008, she brought the Dallas Advocate on-line and has articles published by the Reconciling Ministries Network, The Transsexual Menace, The Daily Kos, Frock Magazine the TransAdvocate, the Dallas Voice and The Advocate. Kelli, an avid runner is editor in chief at Planet Transgender which she founded in 2007.
Related
Facebook CommentsThe CW has renewed five of its dramas for next season. Ready?
Arrow.
The Vampire Diaries.
Supernatural.
The Originals.
And…
Reign!
Explained CW president Mark Pedowitz: “This season we’ve had great success with our new hit series The Originals paired with Supernatural, giving us our best Tuesday nights in years. The Vampire Diaries is #2 in its time period in the young adult demos, and with Arrow continuing to gain among young men, and Reign growing its time period, we now have strong nights on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. I’m very pleased to announce early pickups for all five series, and let our fans know they’ll have more great drama to look forward to next season.”
All five of these pickups were predicted in our Death Watch post earlier this week. Click the link to see the odds of renewals on the remaining CW shows:
UPDATED: Death Watch 2014: TV show survival predictionsTen acts were chosen to participate in today's national final by an expert jury during live auditions in November and December 2015. This is the list of singers and songs in running order of tonight's show:
Ten acts were chosen to participate in today's national final by an expert jury during live auditions in November and December 2015. This is the list of singers and songs in running order of tonight's show:
Ten acts were chosen to participate in today's national final by an expert jury during live auditions in November and December 2015. This is the list of singers and songs in running order of tonight's show:
The final will be hosted by TEO, who represented Belarus in the 2014 Eurovision Song Contest, and his wife Olga Ryzhikova. The show will be broadcast live from the 600 metres studios in Minsk. Belarusian public broadcaster BTRC is promising a spectacular event, including a large 43 x 5 square metres LED screen set at the stage background.
The final will be hosted by TEO, who represented Belarus in the 2014 Eurovision Song Contest, and his wife Olga Ryzhikova. The show will be broadcast live from the 600 metres studios in Minsk. Belarusian public broadcaster BTRC is promising a spectacular event, including a large 43 x 5 square metres LED screen set at the stage background.
, and you can watch one of them right below.
, and you can watch one of them right below.
A great effort has been taken to produce "postcards" for all ten entries - just like in the Eurovision Song Contest itself! There is
A great effort has been taken to produce "postcards" for all ten entries - just like in the Eurovision Song Contest itself! There is45
950 W El Camino Real
Mountain View, CA 94040
(650) 965-4256
The food is fine. The service with the drive thru is often the issue for us. We have to double-check our order when we get it, because we would leave and realize 1-2 items on our order are missing. This happens consistently. The same for the sister store near Mary Sve and El Camino in Sunnyvale.
At first I thought it was a mistake or some sort of unavoidable circumstance but now I realize that this location closes whenever the employee feels like it. Close time says midnight but it all depends on when the one employee feels like working til. I've come by several times between 11pm and 15 til midnight to find that the employee inside has decided to close shop early and simply refused to serve anyone. I always stop at the second window and spot them resting or hiding. I've been waived off or flat out ignored every time. Several times I've watched them peak out and see me at the window and then duck back into hiding. This kind of behavior is embarrassing and unacceptable. If your hours are advertised as open til midnight then it should be open until midnight, not an hour to midnight or ever 5 minutes til midnight.
Wish I could give this place negative stars! Air conditioning barely worked -- it was miserably hot inside on a sunny summer day. The interior layout was terrible, like a maze: there were pillars in the way, big empty spots and then spots where it was so crowded I had to squeeze in between structures. The air circulation in this place was non-existent, and odors (stagnant perfume, smelly gym t-shirts) lingered. The other people I saw at this Taco Bell seemed to be oblivious to the smell or to their own odors, and primarily fell into 2 categories: liberally doused with 'granny' perfume, or wearing t-shirts soaked through with gym sweat. Unfortunately, all these odors cling to your clothes & hair, so expect others to smell them on you even after you leave.
The employees are very disrespectful never going back there. When I go thru the drive thru they judge so I'm not giving them anymore business
Found a 2 foot long HAIR down the middle of my chalupa. Unfortunately I pulled it from one end of the Chapula to the other and no longer have an appetite for the chalupa. They also completely left out the nacho fries supreme we ordered so we had to drive all the way back to get it.
Well cleaned excellent employees Oliver is a great person very nice and kind. Thx have a great one
Just passing through for some drive thru and we get the strangest service around 10pm. The operator gives no greeting and asks what we want in the most brusque manner, doesn't respond to our several hellos when we're ready to order, drops our change, climbs out the window using our car for leverage to go talk to someone in the parking lot before even finishing our order. Someone else, much friendlier, had to finish for us. Just bizarre and unprofessional. I think they have to reevaluate their staffing choices.
I love Taco Bell... borderline obsessed. I could eat Taco Bell everyday which is why it makes me so sad to tell you that I probably won't ever go to this location again. I had moved from one end to mountain view to the next. Shoreline to el Camino and the one thing I was excited about was that I got to frequent a new T BELL. I had been going in for a couple months, with little slip ups like 2 sauce packets, not enough meat and smaller the usual portion sizes. I went in the other day where I ordered 15.00 dollars worth of food ( not just for myself lol) I asked for extra sauce. She gave me a few I said can't I have a few more and she pulls out a sign on the napkin holder from next to her register and tells me no... so I said " I will pay" she said no we aren't allowed to sell and aren't allowed to give more then this.... I simply said " why is there all you can grab sauce bowls inside" she got so upset with me and gave me some of the worst service and attitude I have ever seen. It made me so uncomfortable that I will not be going back.
Went picked up a few mini chicken quesadillas. And this is what they looked like inside. Where is the chicken???????
Hot summer day and loads of sweating to make it here but well worth the bike ride down from Palo Alto. This Taco Bell is especially friendly and patient (a lot of high schoolers seem to show!). My favorite is their quesadilla which is definitely not authentic Mexican food but the orange sauce they throw in is crazy good!
Tried the drive through for a second time in a moment of desperation. Second time they gave me the wrong order though it showed up right on the screen :( Ended up with something I couldn't eat. Seems like they were understaffed and the person working on drive |
Getty Images
But I have to tell you: We feel like we’re in a good spot.
And we feel like — at this particular moment, in these particular playoffs, in this particular year — we are able to say the thing that is maybe, honestly, even better than any of those. The thing that sometimes … on any given night … feels like the only thing in basketball that matters.
We’re the team with Russell Westbrook on it.Last year, we wrote about the XS 500 by the Miles Automotive Group, what was supposed to be the first affordable electric car that can do highway speeds with a decent range. Unfortunately, it seems like the $30,000 price tag has almost doubled (inflation's that bad, eh?) to €40,000, which converts to a little under $60,000. But there's still hope: maybe this simply means that it will be more expensive in Europe than elsewhere. We've contacted a Miles employee to try to confirm what's going on.
Update: Good news! "Information regarding an increase in the projected price of the MILES XS500 which was listed on AutoblogGreen and Treehugger.com was the result of miscommunication between a writer and our EU distributor, MILES-Benelux BV. Our 2009 XS500 model is still projected to sell for $30,000 to $35,000 in the United States."Update: "AllGreenVehicles, the MILES-Benelux BV distributor, currently distributes the low speed Miles Electric Vehicles models in the Benelux countries. When the XS500 is available for purchase, MILES-Benelux BV will be distributing the sedan in the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg; but, the price for the XS500 has not yet been set for those markets. The MSRP for the XS500 is set by the manufacturer, Miles Electric Vehicles, and not by the distributors."
With a little luck, they'll sell a good number and that will make the prices go down. We hope so, because although not out of this world, the specifications of the car are attractive compared to many other electric vehicles.
Rapid acceleration to top speed of 80+ mph (130+ kph)
120+ miles driving range (200+ kilometers)
Battery life of approximately 100,000 miles.
Minimal maintenance required, very low operating costs
One charge costs about the price of one gallon of gasoline
Charged on any standard 220V wall socket
Advanced airbags
Safety-tested proprietary li-ion battery pack
We wish we had more detailed specs, but they don't seem available anywhere yet. The car is supposed to be in showrooms at the end of 2008, so we should hear about it before then.
::Miles Automotive Group, via ::Miles XS500 will be a lot more expensive than planned, ::$30,000 Electric Car in 2009: The XS 500 by Miles Automotive Group
See also: ::The Tesla Roadster: Electric Sports Car, ::Tesla Roadster: The Electric Car that Redefines "Power" (Part 1), ::The Audi R-Zero Electric Wet Dream, ::Wrightspeed X1: "Amazing: Electric Car Pwns Ferrari"
Interested in electric cars? Check out: 17 Electric Cars You Must Know AboutNikki Haley strongly condemned Russian actions at an emergency U.N. meeting today about recent upticks in violence in the eastern Ukraine Donbass region between Russian-backed separatists and the Ukrainian army.
Quote The dire situation in Eastern Ukraine is one that requires clear and strong condemnation of Russian actions... This escalation of violence must stop.
She called on Russia and Ukraine to uphold the Minsk I and II agreements to restore the ceasefire and pull out heavy artillery from the disputed region, which has been in turmoil since 2014 when Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovytch was ousted and Russia annexed Crimea. Haley added that U.S. sanctions against Russia regarding its "occupation" of Crimea would remain in place until Russia returns control over the peninsula to Ukraine.
Why this matters: Haley used clear and strong language against Russia — much stronger than Trump used on the campaign trail, and much stronger than the U.S. State Department language released the day after fighting broke out this week. Remember, Trump previously said he might recognize the annexation, and experts have been saying the new clashes may have been a test from Russia to see whether Trump's team is willing to be friendlier to Russian interests.Often when an elderly person passes away it’s said that he or she has died of “old age” or “natural causes.” What exactly is meant when one speaks of “dying of old age” or “dying of natural causes?” Is it even possible to “die of old age?”
Old Age is not a Cause of Death
“Old age” is not truly a cause of death in and of itself. To “die of old age” means that someone has died naturally from an ailment associated with aging. The same usually goes for “dying of natural causes.”
Traditionally, government health authorities have required resident’s causes of death to be listed on death certificates. So, sometimes when an elderly person passed peacefully and not altogether unexpectedly, coroners would simply declare that the deceased had died of “natural causes” or even “old age.” In these cases, there was always a more specific cause of death, but it may not have been determined or thought to be worth mentioning.
Immediate Causes and Underlying Causes
Today doctors and coroners are pressed to specify a cause of death, so the terms “old age” and “natural causes” are rarely used. They are expected to list both the immediate and underlying cause of death. For instance, a person who had a heart attack and died may have their immediate cause of death listed as “cardiac arrest” and their underlying cause of death as “heart disease.” In the past, an elderly person who died in such a manner may have had their death classified as a “natural cause” or “old age,” but this in increasingly less common.
However, professionals don’t always have an easy time identifying an underlying cause of death when the deceased has multiple underlying ailments simultaneously. As a Washington Post article states, “You know the cartoon where a character is driving an old car that suddenly falls apart, every bolt sprung, with the last hubcap rattling in a circle until it comes to rest? Some people die like that, too. The trouble is there’s not a good name for it.”
In cases when the root cause isn’t clear, sometimes a generic term like “multiple organ failure” or “debility” will be listed, but “natural causes” or “old age” as an official cause of death has gone the way of the buffalo.
That said, these terms live on in public discourse.
When “Natural Causes” is All We Need to Know
The practice of ascribing a death to “natural causes” lives on in the media and popular parlance. Because we are not doctors, we don’t necessarily need to know the details of a stranger’s last days. “Natural causes” suffices because clinical accuracy about an older person’s death is usually neither necessary nor desirable. In fact, detail beyond “natural causes” would be considered an undignified invasion of the privacy of the deceased and his or her loved ones. Similarly, at least in public discourse, when the deceased person has multiple underlying ailments and contributing factors, “natural causes” or “old age” is sufficiently accurate in that it recognizes the ambiguity of the cause of death.
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More ArticlesLivestreams, Movies and Podcasts
Since my return to EVE I’ve been going through videos and blogs like crazy. I’ve found that my years in this game haven’t really been “deep” in EVE. What I mean is that I was bassicly always doing stuff that is easy to get into. (mining, industry, missioning, small fleet pvp, pirating and wh)
There is so much more to EVE, so much more to see.
Sadly enough though, there isn’t THAT much information around. Looking through youtube for vids of eve online they are 90% PVP, 5% songs/jokes/drama and 5% for the total newbie.
Blogs are common though and a lot of stories can be read and should be read around the net. Reading stories is interesting but you can only read so many before wanting to try it out yourself. And I haven’t seen a recent, decent, step-by-step post about how to do XXX.
Podcasts, podcasts range from WH to PVP to trading. But those I have found are either:
1. Very informative and very short lived (5 episodes before dropping of the radar)
2. battle reports and news reports
3. Shenanigans
On the other hand we have some very, very good helpful tools. EFT, EVEMON, EVE mentat, ISK the guide, E-uni, Red vs Blue, etc etc etc
Why is the blogosphere, the Podcast scene and the Videoscene being left out? Why isn’t anyone here doing something for the noobs? Are they all grizzled old vets? I doubt it, I’ve been around EVE for 7 years and I don’t feel like a grizzled old vet. Of course, I haven’t been in 0.0 aside from the spy-operations and corp steals. In my seven years in EVE I haven’t bene in one 500+ PVP battle. Is that why, I’m not a vet? And If I ain’t a vet, what am i? It doesn’t matter, all I know for sure is that I want to help the new and mediocre player in EVE. The player that doesn’t know what a cyno, point, scram or gf is. One that doesn’t know the marketpvp, one that doesn’t know what WH life is and so on.
As you can read while you sigh and roll your eyes, I’d love to give back to the community. I’ve always gone through EVE in the shadows, running small corps, scams, deals and roams. It might be time to take it to the next level and take the newer people with me on the journey.
That is why I need the input from you, my constant reader. This blog is small, VERY small and I don’t expect to get a reaction straight away but answer me this:
What would you like to see out of game, to make the game easier on you. Livestreams, movies, podcasts, blogposts? Would you like to see anything else?
And what would you like to see on the channel? would you like to see/read from it starting day 1? step-by-step tutorials? anything else?
Let me know, I’m open to suggestions
AdvertisementsAt one point, nuclear energy was going to power the future. The atomic age would be cheaper and more efficient than burning coal to produce electricity. Even today, nuclear power is carbon-neutral and arguably more efficient than many alternative energy sources. Despite this, nuclear power has struggled to compete in the present regulatory environment. The latest sign of this comes with the announcement that Westinghouse Electric Company would be exiting the nuclear reactor construction business.
“We are coming back to our previous business model that has been in engineering and procurement. That is where we have the right skills, the right abilities and right capacities,” said CEO Jose Gutierrez at the World Nuclear Association Symposium.
“During this process, we have been delivering on all our commitments,” Gutierrez said. “We have not stopped any of our processes – all our factories and services centers have been working – and in the USA and Europe we have been delivering all our products and services without any kind of interruption.”
The announcement is the latest step in Westinghouse’s emergence from bankruptcy. In late March, the company filed for bankruptcy protections. Westinghouse has been using its Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing to transform itself, shedding unprofitable ventures while retaining its core business of nuclear fuel supply, engineering, component supply, and decontamination & decommissioning.
The company has stated that it hopes to emerge from bankruptcy in the next few months. However, Toshiba, its parent company, is also actively considering a sale of all or part of the business. This could be difficult since any sale to a foreign buyer would require approval from U.S. regulators, since the company is considered to have national security importance. This would reduce an already limited pool of potential buyers by removing any possible Russian or Chinese purchasers.
Westinghouse’s announcement shows the high costs of the current nuclear energy regulatory environment. The company struggled to stay afloat in the wake of massive costs and time overruns on the construction of two nuclear reactors in Georgia. Construction is continuing on the two AP1000 plants near Waynesboro, Georgia, even though completion will cost an additional $9.45 billion on a project that is already well over budget. The plants are expected to open in 2022, six years behind schedule.
Two utilities in South Carolina decided to abandon construction of another AP1000 power plant this summer, a decision that cost around 6,000 workers, including 870 Westinghouse employees, their jobs.
“While we respect Santee Cooper’s decision, we are extremely disappointed,” said Gutierrez in a statement after the announcement. “The South Carolina economy is sure to feel the negative impact of losing over five thousand high-paying, long-term jobs, as well as not having available the reliable, clean, safe and affordable energy these units would provide.”
Westinghouse is only the latest in a string of companies announcing their exits from the nuclear energy industry. Internationally, countries have been turning away from nuclear power since the Fukushima disaster in 2011. Regulators around the world passed strict new safety standards in light of the disaster, even as the cost of other fuels, including both renewables and natural gas, fell. This made it more difficult for nuclear power to remain competitive.
Already, these effects have been seen domestically. In May, Exelon Corporation announced the closure of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania. An additional three reactors in New York and one in Illinois are slated to close in 2017, and another five will shut down in 2018 before Three Mile Island’s projected closure in 2019.
These closures reflect shifts in how regulators classify nuclear power as part of the fuel mix. Although carbon neutral, nuclear power is not generally considered to be a renewable energy source. This affects utility companies, which are generally mandated to include a certain percentage of clean energy sources in their fuel mixes. When nuclear energy is not included in the definition of clean energy, it becomes increasingly difficult to justify keeping open aging reactors in an era of cheap natural gas.
Westinghouse hopes that exiting the nuclear reactor construction business will allow it to focus on more profitable ventures, such as supplying nuclear fuel and helping with maintenance. However, its struggles to complete construction projects not only in the U.S., but also in China, show that nuclear energy remains a costly prospect.
Follow Erin on Twitter.UPDATED: The sequel, which took in $27.7 million on Friday, is pacing well ahead of "Rise of the Planet of the Apes," which debuted to $54.8 million in August 2011; Richard Linklater's "Boyhood" soars at the specialty box office.
Fox's sequel Dawn of the Planet of the Apes thumped its chest at the Friday box office, grossing an estimated $27.7 million in North America in 3,967 locations. That sets it up for a weekend debut that has $70 million in its crosshairs.
The critically acclaimed sequel is pacing well ahead of Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which bowed to $54.8 million in August 2011. Thursday night, Dawn took in $4.1 million as it began rolling out in select theaters, compared to $1.3 million for Rise. Both films earned an A- CinemaScore.
Richard Linklater's high-profile indie drama Boyhood also found an eager audience in the five theaters in New York and Los Angeles where it opened in limited release for IFC Films. The movie, drawing rave reviews, attracted $102,161 for a per-theater average of $20,432, setting up an opening weekend that will easily top the $300,000 mark.
Transformers: Age of Extinction, which held the top spot for the past two weekends, moved into the second position Friday as the Paramount release collected $4.8 million. Michael Bay's vfx-spectacular will pass the $200 million mark at the domestic box office today.
Warner Bros.' Tammy, starring Melissa McCarthy, was in third place with just over $4 million for the day.
22 Jump Street, entering its fifth weekend, ranked fourth. The Sony comedy, starring Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum, grossed just over $2 million as it looks to increase its domestic coffers to more than $170 million this weekend.
Two family-oriented films were virtually tied for fifth place. Relativity's Earth to Echo and Fox's release of DreamWorks Animation's How to Train Your Dragon 2 each pulled in an estimated $1.75 million for the day. Dragon is looking to cross the $150 million domestic line this weekend.
Entering its third weekend, Dinesh D'Souza's documentary polemic America grossed $723,000 in 1,105 locations. The Lionsgate release is expected to total about $2.15 million this weekend, which will bring its domestic tally to just under $8 million.
PHOTOS 'Dawn of the Planet of the Apes' San Francisco Premiere
Directed by Matt Reeves, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes features Andy Serkis returning in the role of Caesar the ape, who has decamped to the forest of Marin County with hundreds of other genetically evolved apes and primates. When they are threatened by a band of humans who have survived a worldwide plague, a fierce divide erupts asking whether peace can be restored, or whether war is the only way to determine who will emerge as Earth's dominant species.
Peter Chernin's Chernin Entertainment developed and produced both Apes movies.
The sequel, financed by Fox at an estimated $170 million, opens three years after origin movie Rise of the Planet of the Apes reinvigorated the iconic franchise. That film, directed by Rupert Wyatt, took in a strong $481.8 million at the worldwide box office, including $176.8 million in North America.
This time out, Gary Oldman, Jason Clarke, Keri Russell, Toby Kebbell, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Enrique Murciano and Kirk Acevedo are featured in the human cast. Reeves directed from a script by Mark Bomback, Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, based on the characters created by Jaffa and Silver.
VIDEOS Most Anticipated Summer Blockbusters of 2014
As with Rise of the Planet of the Apes, the sequel is drawing widespread praise for its use of motion capture. It's also being released in 3D.
Hollywood is hopeful the weekend will restore some balance to the domestic box office, where Fourth of July weekend revenue was down a steep 44 percent from last year, leading to a summer revenue decline of nearly 20 percent.
Overseas, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes begins its initial assault, rolling out in 28 territories, including major markets Australia and South Korea. The tentpole is waiting to open in many larger markets because of the bottleneck created by the World Cup.
PHOTOS Simian Cinema: The Best and Worst Movies Featuring Monkeys and Apes
Linklater's Boyhood, which is heating up the specialty box office, won the best directing award at the 2014 Berlin Film Festival following its world premiere at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival.
Boyhood, starring Patricia Arquette, Ethan Hawke and Ellar Coltrane, was shot intermittently over a 12-year period in order to chronicle the story of a boy as he grows up in a divorced household.Now a Christmas icon, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was created by a department store adman enduring a great personal tragedy 75 years ago.
Balsam wreaths and visions of sugarplums had barely faded in the first weeks of 1939, but thoughts inside the Chicago headquarters of retail giant Montgomery Ward had already turned to the next Christmas 11 months away. The retailer had traditionally purchased and distributed coloring books to children as a holiday promotion, but the advertising department decided it would be cheaper and more effective instead to develop its own Christmas-themed book in-house.
The assignment fell to Robert May, a copywriter with a knack for turning a limerick at the company’s holiday party. The adman, however, had difficulty summoning up holiday cheer, and not just because of the date on the calendar. Not only was the United States still trying to shake the decade-long Great Depression while the rumblings of war grew once again Europe, but May’s wife was suffering with cancer and the medical bills had thrown the family into debt. Sure, he was pursuing his passion to write, but churning out mail order catalog copy about men’s shirts instead of penning the Great American Novel was not what he had envisioned himself doing at age 33 with a degree from Dartmouth College.
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Given the assignment to develop an animal story, May thought a reindeer was a natural for the leading role (not to mention that his 4-year-old daughter, Barbara, loved the reindeers every time she visited the zoo). As he peered out at the thick fog that had drifted off Lake Michigan, May came up with the idea of a misfit reindeer ostracized because of his luminescent nose who used his physical abnormality to guide Santa’s sleigh and save Christmas. Seeking an alliterative name, May scribbled possibilities on a scrap of paper—Rollo, Reginald, Rodney and Romeo were among the choices—before circling his favorite. Rudolph.
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Rudolph creator Robert May
As May worked on “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” through the summer, his wife’s health worsened. She passed away in July 1939. Now a widower and a single father, May refused the offer of his boss to give the assignment to someone else. “I needed Rudolph now more than ever,” he later wrote. Burying his grief, May finished the story in August.
The 89 rhyming couplets in “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” borrow from Clement Clarke Moore’s “A Visit from St. Nicholas” right from the story’s opening line: “Twas the day before Christmas, and all through the hills/The reindeer were playing…enjoying the spills.” Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale “The Ugly Duckling” also inspired the storyline as did May’s own childhood when he endured taunts from schoolmates for being small and shy. “Rudolph and I were something alike,” the copywriter told Guideposts magazine in January 1975. “As a child I’d always been the smallest in the class. Frail, poorly coordinated, I was never asked to join the school teams.”
Those familiar with only the 1964 animated television version of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” which remains the longest-running Christmas special in television history a half-century after its debut on NBC, might not recognize the original tale. There is no Hermey the elf, no Abominable Snow Monster, not even the Land of Misfit Toys. While Rudolph was taunted for his glowing red nose and disinvited from reindeer games in May’s story, he did not live at the North Pole and was asleep in his house when Santa Claus, struggling mightily with the fog, arrived with presents and realized how the reindeer’s radiant snout could help him complete his Christmas Eve rounds.
Montgomery Ward had high hopes for its new 32-page, illustrated booklet, which would be given as a free gift to children visiting any of the department store’s 620 locations. “We believe that an exclusive story like this aggressively advertised in our newspaper ads and circulars,” the advertising department stated in a September 1939 memo, “can bring every store an incalculable amount of publicity…and, far more important a tremendous amount of Christmas traffic.”
The retailer’s holiday advertisements touted “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” as “the rollicking new Christmas verse that’s sweeping the country!” That wasn’t just hype. Children snapped up nearly 2.4 million copies of the paper-bound book in 1939. Plans to print another 1.6 million copies the following year were shelved by paper shortages due to World War II, and Rudolph remained on hiatus until the conflict’s conclusion. When the reindeer story returned in 1946, it was more popular than ever as Montgomery Ward handed out 3.6 million copies of the book.
In the interim, May married a fellow Montgomery Ward employee and became a father again, but he still struggled financially. In 1947, the retailer’s board of directors, stirred either by the holiday spirit or belief that the story lacked revenue-making potential, signed the copyright for “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” over to May. In short order, May licensed a commercial version of the book along with a full range of Rudolph-themed merchandise including puzzles, View-Master reels, snow globes, mugs and slippers with sheep wool lining and leather soles.
In 1949, songwriter Johnny Marks, who happened to be May’s brother-in-law, set Rudolph’s story to music. After Bing Crosby reportedly turned down the chance, singing cowboy Gene Autry recorded the song, which sold 2 million copies in the first year and remains one of the best-selling tunes of all time.
The song and merchandise sales made May financially comfortable, but hardly rich. After leaving Montgomery Ward in 1951 to manage the Rudolph commercial empire, May returned to his former employer seven years later. He continued to work as a copywriter until his 1971 retirement. By the time he died five years later, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” had become a piece of modern folklore and a metaphor for overcoming obstacles, embracing differences and recognizing everyone’s unique potential.Image copyright EPA Image caption Mrs Merkel spent weeks talking to the FDP and Greens - but no coalition deal resulted
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her ex-coalition partners Social Democrats are to hold discussions in efforts to end a political impasse.
The centre-left SPD has softened its stance, saying it is open for talks.
Leader Martin Schulz had refused to renew a coalition with Mrs Merkel's conservatives but came under pressure from allies to change his position.
Mrs Merkel failed to form a coalition government with the liberal Free Democrats and the Greens this week.
German President Frank Walter Steinmeier will host Mr Schulz and Mrs Merkel for talks next week.
What is Schulz's position?
He had strongly rejected joining a "grand coalition" led by Mrs Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) and the Christian Social Union (CSU) and promised to take his party into opposition.
But in a slight shift on Friday, he did not categorically rule out a new alliance, saying that "nothing [was] automatic" on the party's direction.
"But one thing is very clear: if a discussion results in us deciding to participate in any form whatsoever in the formation of a government, we will put it to a vote of party members."
On Thursday, Mr Schulz met President Steinmeier, who is trying to break the stalemate by talking to party leaders. He then had eight hours of late-night talks with SPD leaders.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Mr Schulz is under pressure to reconsider an alliance with Mrs Merkel's conservatives
The SPD governed in coalition with Mrs Merkel between 2013 and 2017. But Mr Schulz promised to change course after September's election, when his party had its worst result since 1949.
What could happen?
The SPD could join Mrs Merkel in a coalition but also in an agreement to not obstruct a minority government led by the chancellor
Mrs Merkel could form a minority government with the Greens - the FDP pulled out of talks. But the chancellor previously said she preferred new elections to an unstable minority government
President Steinmeier could call for a new election, after a long drawn-out process that would take months. Polls suggest a new vote would produce a result similar to September's election. There is also the fear that the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) could benefit the most
In the meantime, who is governing?
Mrs Merkel's ministers remain in office in a caretaker role, as the September election produced no overall majority.
Until a government is agreed, she continues as acting chancellor, while the newly-elected German parliament sits as normal.
The delay in forming a new coalition - the biggest crisis of Mrs Merke's political career - has worried some European Union allies, who see Germany as a pillar of stability in the bloc.
Speaking in Brussels, Mrs Merkel said Germany continued to have a government committed to the EU.
"We are conducting the consultations we need with our parliament in order to be capable of taking the necessary decisions."SANTA CLARA, Calif. — An anticipated showdown between an old-style quarterback and his new-age counterpart — not to mention two top-seeded teams — degenerated into a morass of poor throws, dropped passes and horrible pass protection, with a combined six turnovers and 18 penalties.
This 50th edition of the Super Bowl was meant to be entertaining, even historic. But perhaps the moment was too pregnant for the Denver Broncos, led by Peyton Manning in the twilight of his famed career, and the upstart, favored Carolina Panthers, represented in every way by their pioneering quarterback, Cam Newton.
An exciting matchup of opposites fizzled as Manning threw a series of wobbly passes and Newton was altogether disappointing, spending most of the game running for safety.
In a grinding, lackluster game, the Broncos, a team whose backbone is a thumping, ferocious defense, prevailed, 24-10, on Sunday. The game might prove the last of Manning’s career, but it will almost certainly not be his best remembered: He completed 13 of 23 passes for only 141 yards with no touchdowns, an interception and a lost fumble.**** NO REFUNDS AFTER October 12th due to switch to rain date******
Be prepared for a kid-friendly spooky night filled with friendly ghost, tent-o-treating, a mini-spook glow hike, and tons of great live music. Due to our weather postponement, BaseCamp will be resurrected on the spookiest weekend of the year, October 27th-28th.
For those of you who know and love BaseCamp, you know what to come prepared with as far as gear and s’mores and cozy clothes. However, this year we are adding tent-o-treat (a tent to tent trick-or-treating experience for the kiddos), a costume contest for adult and kids with prizes, and a tent decorating contest for the spookiest tent with a the grand prize being a glamping experience for the 2019 BaseCamp. Additionally, the world famous glow hike will have a fun Halloween feel!
Make the short trek to BASECAMP at Turkey Mountain Presented by Ascent Tulsa! Set up camp and enjoy family, food, friends, fire, and fantastic music starting on Saturday afternoon, October 27, 2018. Get there early for the fun and games, then stake out your spot at the BASECAMP amphitheater to enjoy some chill live music from 4-11pm. BaseCamp is a relaxed, family-friendly atmosphere that has plenty of entertainment for everyone!
PURCHASE YOUR TICKETS NOW! Very limited quantities of EXCLUSIVE discounted ticket offers are available this year; private pavilion passes, reserved front row stage camping permits, and much more. All proceeds will benefit Tulsa River Parks Authority. Get your tickets and help support these two great causes today! There are limited numbers of camping passes that will be sold, so get yours before they are gone!
CLICK HERE FOR TICKETS
**** NO REFUNDS AFTER October 12th due to switch to rain date******
This year we’ve added “Damn Fine Camping” to the options of camping. Here Homma Camp Co will come and set everything up for you and all you have to do is show up and enjoy! For more details check out their website and our ticket page for info on pricing.
Camp Setup begins at 2pm for Early Arrival permit holders and 4pm for all others. Each camping pass is for 1 tent and up to 4 persons per tent please. We’ll see you at BASECAMP!
Once you have your tickets, let click join on our Facebook Event Page and invite your friends:
www.facebook.com/events/804097353058311
Then “Like” our FB info page for the latest updates:
www.facebook.com/tulsacampout
Want to know what your BaseCamp experience will be like? Check out the video from last year by Explore Tulsa?
Don’t forget Sunday Morning Sunrise Yoga at 8am with Beth Richmond for a $10 suggested donation.
Some suggested items for camping:
__ tent and stakes
__ find a nice FLAT spot to pitch your tent
__ flashlights or headlamps
__ camp chairs
__ sleeping bags/blanket
__ ear plugs and eye mask if you are a light sleeper.
__ coolers/ice with your favorite beverages
__ sunblock/bug spray
__ inflatable air mattress or foam cushions to sleep on
__ stuff for s’mores
__ sweatshirt/jacket
__ hand wipes
LARGE Personal grills, fireworks, glass containers, weapons, illegal substances, campers or trailers, car camping, and grumpy pants not permitted. Quite Time: 11pm to sunrise.
Limited camping passes available because we don’t want it to feel too crowded. Get yours soon for your only chance to camp at Turkey Mountain!
Contact us, if you’d like to volunteer. [email protected]
Scenes from previous years!
Thanks to Robert Burke for some of the photos!
As part of your camp pass, you get to hike through the AWESOME FANTASTIC GLOW HIKE sponsored by Fleet Feet Tulsa! We string 1000s of glowsticks down the trails and you get to walk through the woods in this one-of-a-kind experience!
FAQs:
Q: Do we have to pay to hike Turkey Mountain if we aren’t going to camp?
A: Nope. The trails will remain open to the public throughout the day. Anyone who comes to Turkey to hike is HIGHLY encouraged to stop by the festival area and check out the vendors, music, and good times! Park visitors without camping passes have to follow park rules regarding curfew and alcohol.
Q: What’s up with “Quiet Time”?
A: Per River Parks Authority rules, there is no loudness after 11pm and what a perfect time for beddy-bye. We STRICTLY enforce this policy. We don’t make you go to sleep, you just can’t be loud and noisy because others are trying to sleep. Hushed tones and sleepy sleep are a priority. Security guards will be patrolling throughout the night to make sure everyone is safe and sound. Quiet time ends at sunrise because we just can’t stop people from waking up. So, if you’re a late sleeper, bring earplugs and a eye mask!
Q: Is this going to be like Woodstock or Burning Man?
A: Heck NO! Although our organizers are big fans of both, BaseCamp is a family and friends event. Our focus is as a camping festival with cool music that families or groups of friends can come to that will all have a chill relaxed time. Definitely, watch the video above to get the best idea of what the festival will be like!
Q: You’re website is confusing and didn’t answer my question.
A: Well, that’s more of a statement really, but just shoot us an email and we’ll responds ASAP. [email protected] lede in Charles Babington’s Associated Press article today probably isn’t what congressional Republicans wanted to see. It is, however, accurate.
News flash: Congressional Republicans want to raise your taxes. Impossible, right? GOP lawmakers are so virulently anti-tax, surely they will fight to prevent a payroll tax increase on virtually every wage-earner starting Jan. 1, right? Apparently not. Many of the same Republicans who fought hammer-and-tong to keep the George W. Bush-era income tax cuts from expiring on schedule are now saying a different “temporary” tax cut should end as planned. By their own definition, that amounts to a tax increase. The tax break extension they oppose is sought by President Barack Obama. Unlike proposed changes in the income tax, this policy helps the 46 percent of all Americans who owe no federal income taxes but who pay a “payroll tax” on practically every dime they earn.
The piece goes on to quote Rep. David Camp, R-Mich., chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, who said it’s more important to worry about the deficit than a popular tax-cut policy.
The politics of this, as a result, are rather bizarre. President Obama has made this tax cut one of his top priorities, stressing its importance to the middle class, while Republicans are increasingly vocal about their desire to, by their own reasoning, raise middle-class taxes.
This policy, by the way, has traditionally been a Republican idea. What’s more, GOP leaders have not emphasized tax breaks over deficit concerns in general, but they’ve specifically prioritized this tax break over deficit concerns for years.
That is, until President Obama agreed with them, at which point they decided to once again oppose their own proposal.
As Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) recently argued, “If they oppose even something so suited to their tastes ideologically, it shows that they’re just opposing anything that helps create jobs. It almost makes you wonder if they aren’t trying to slow down the economic recovery for political gain.”
The result is a political problem for the already chronically-unpopular Republican Party. They’re not only fighting, by their own reasoning, for a middle-class tax increase, they’ll be waging this fight while opposing job-creation measures.
If I had to guess, I’d say Republicans probably support an extension of the payroll tax cut, but just aren’t willing to say so. Why not? Because then they lose leverage — GOP officials know the White House wants this, and if they simply agree to pass the measure, they won’t get anything extra out of the deal. Hostage strategies have become an instinctual norm for Republicans.
But the more news articles tell the public, “Congressional Republicans want to raise your taxes,” the more likely it is GOP officials will cave.
Update: Kevin Drum makes the case that the GOP may genuinely oppose the tax break, and either way, it’s not really a “hostage” strategy. It’s a fair point.It’s the most wonderful time of the year: Eurovision season, where our screens become flooded with the best (and worst) of Europop in a battle of pyrotechnics, optical illusions, and cheesy synths.
However, controversy has already struck this year’s competition ahead of the final |
hangers, towels, mints, and toothpaste, etc.)
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Display your memories. As an Idealist, you have a deep well of feeling and love for others. Because of this, it’s likely you are a sentimental person. If there are memories, songs, poems that really mean a lot to you, make them into artwork and display them throughout your home! Frame the lyrics to your first dance, or sew your child’s baby clothes into a quilt. Keepsake boxes work great for displaying shells from vacation, dried flowers from a bouquet or corsage, or even your wedding dress!
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Choose minimal upkeep design. INFP’s tend to be more laid-back and less concerned about the mundane details of life. Becuase of this they should make design choices accordingly, knowing they will not want to be spot cleaning every inch ot their home weekly. For instance, choose darker flooring that won’t show dirt, and consider using a shower curtain rather than a glass enclose that you will have to work hard to keep clean.
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Shopping alone. Because you care deeply for those around you, and have a low tolerance for conflict, shopping with many others may not be a great idea. As an Idealist you have extremely high standards and tend towards perfectionism. If you are shopping with others you may buy what they like in order to minimize conflict, but in the end you regret it because it doesn’t live up to your standards. Have fun when your with loved ones! But save the serious shopping for another time.
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Exhibit your passions. When an INFP takes an interest in something they feel passionately about, it often becomes their ’cause.’ They work hard and fight for that project in order to help make the world a better place. What are your causes? Are they reflected in your home? Help spread the word and show other what you are about by incorporating your work in your home decor. Display a relevant book on your coffee table or hang ribbons for your cause.
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Good News for the Idealist
1. You see the good where other cannot. Because you are always looking for the positive about something, you will be able to take things that others might not appreciate and use them well in your home. By taking thrifted finds and turning them into your own treasures you can save money and have unique and creative home decor.
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2. You prefer beauty over utility. This means you’re one of those lucky types that can have gorgeous marble countertops and not be bothered by the fact they they are just not quite as practical. Because you value aesthetics over function, you are unbound by practicality and can freely decorate your home to your heart’s fancy! Just make sure to check in with your spouse before you purchase your carrera marble countertops…. their personality type may not be as forgiving of them!
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Well there you have it, all of my decorating tips and tricks for INFP the Idealist. What do you think, INFP’s? What causes are close to your heart? Do you use your home to help others? I’ll be back next week for: ENFJ Decorating for the Giver. If you enjoy this series and want to find out more tips and tricks on decorating be sure to sign up for emails (on the right sidebar) or follow me on bloglovin’! Thanks 🙂
Decorating for your Personality:
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*Contains Affiliate Links*Just how big is a comet? It all depends on your perspective.
When compared to vast structures like the Milky Way, which is about 100,000 light-years across, comets are tiny. After all, the nucleus of a typical comet is less than six miles wide. But a fun new illustration featuring Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, now awaiting a landing by the European Space Agency's Rosetta orbiter, reminds us six miles is tiny only in astronomical terms.
(Story continues below.)
The illustration shows what Churyumov–Gerasimenko might look like if it were to be plucked from outer space and placed ever so gently behind downtown Los Angeles.
It's an eye-catching image for sure. And it does give a reasonably accurate sense of the comet's size, Dr. Claudia J. Alexander, a project scientist with the U.S. Rosetta Project, said in an email to The Huffington Post.
The comet's "long dimension" of 3.3 km (2 miles) doesn't seem to be shown exactly to scale, she said, though "it's difficult to gauge from just the location of downtown relative to the comet."On a short visit to Delhi, Foxconn (the company that's most famous for manufacturing the iPhone) CEO Terry Gou met NDTV Gadgets as part of a tour of India that will see him travel to Mumbai and Bengaluru. Foxconn is one of the biggest hardware manufacturers in the world, with plans to set up new manufacturing units in India, - and Gou says that it wants to do this as quickly as possible. Gou tells us that Foxconn wants to open 10-12 manufacturing facilities in India by 2020, but this needs a push from the government to go forward.
"I am ready, ask your government," says Gou. "Which state will make India most friendly for manufacturing - that's where we will start. There will be at least 1 million jobs created by 2020, maybe more, and not just basic jobs but jobs for skilled workers and engineers. We want to set up our plant in rural areas, and transform the area, with jobs and infrastructure."
Foxconn already has manufacturing experience in India - it first opened a plant in Chennai a decade ago, but there were "complications," Gou says, adding, "[it was] not our fault, [but the] political situation."
Gou feels that the government at the time was not supporting manufacturing enough. This is something that he says has changed by now. "[Prime Minister Narendra] Modi has pushed for development, I like your Make in India, Skill India," says Gou. "You have software, you have content, you need hardware and now Modi has made it your goal."
(Also see: SoftBank, Foxconn, and Bharti Partner on Solar Power Projects in India)
"Indian local [state] government is also much more friendly now," he adds, saying, "I met with the Chief Ministers of three of your states, AP [Andhra Pradesh], Gujarat, and Maharashtra. [The CMs of] Gujarat and Maharashtra came to China, and saw my facilities, and they're keen that we set up in their states. Ten years ago, government was not friendly."
Another major development, which Gou says helped convince Foxconn to invest in India, is the growing online businesses. "Your Internet content has grown, and your entrepreneurs, they are very smart people," says Gou. "They have created lots of opportunity, but they need hardware support and we will give it to them."
At this point, Gou wouldn't reveal the names of the companies that Foxconn is working with in India, or even the products it will manufacture here, though he hinted that there would be a preference for local brands.
"I don't care what brands I make here; you ask about Apple, but we will make the products where it makes sense," he says, "we have to look at lot of different factors before deciding what to make. But we will work with local brands and help them with design, and manufacture components locally, so that Indian brands can also start to export, right now India does not export."
But there are some major bottlenecks that he says need to be solved first, if the Make in India goal is to be achieved.
"Your infrastructure will be a big limitation. Today I was told it will take 20 minutes to reach you, but it took 1 hour 20 minutes because it rained," he points out. "Power is a problem. If there is a power cut, the entire factory has to stop working. Power, water, skilled workers, all these problems need to be solved."
(Also see: Taiwan's Innolux Looks to Invest in India With Foxconn)
"Even your tax - every state has different tax regulations, so we need to work this out for every place we want to do business," he adds. That said, he's not focussing on any one state right now - some believe that PM Modi's home state of Gujarat is a likely candidate for Foxconn's first factory - and a team from the company is in that state right now - but Gou says that there have been no decisions yet.
However, Gou also believes that the Indian government doesn't do enough to support local entrepreneurs. He says that while Indian entrepreneurs have been smart and have lots of good ideas, the government can do more to help startups.
"In China, we have BAT - Baidu, Ali, Tencent. That is like Google, Amazon, Facebook, in China," says Gou. "Why doesn't India have one? You have e-commerce, but you don't have any big cloud company like BAT. And the infrastructure - in China, in two years, we are 98 percent 4G. In India, your 4G is just 1 percent. And your 3G keeps switching to 2G."
"The spectrum is so expensive here, and the ARPUs are so low," he adds, "your companies spend all their money on spectrum when they need money to improve infrastructure also."
Gou says he also doesn't understand why India's market is so open. In China, for example, the likes of Google and Facebook are banned, which means local companies have found adoption amongst the 1.35 billion strong population.
"The young generation of India uses Facebook and WhatsApp, I had a meeting with Hike, and I asked them why?" he says. "I'm surprised, I asked Hike, 'your country doesn't support the young generations? Why do people use WhatsApp and not Hike?' You [India] have a huge market but you open it for anyone. But how do Western companies contribute to Make in India, or Skill India? How will India have a BAT?"
(Also see: Alibaba, Foxconn Reportedly in Talks to Jointly Invest $500 Million in Snapdeal)
Gou says that Foxconn will be following a strategy of partnerships, as part of its greater strategy of Internet Plus. "We are not a hardware manufacturing company only," he says. "We are Internet Plus, that means content, and hardware for information processing, and cloud, and bandwidth. We have expertise for all of this, and we will partner with Indian companies to deliver this."
As a part of this, Gou says Foxconn will also be setting up incubators in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad. "We will work with Indian businesses and help them grow, but your government must also help them grow," he adds. "We want to come to India, but it is not a one way thing, your government has to help push this."Lobby Joe’s long voyage back to the ocean began when he was spotted by Christine Loughead, sitting alone in a tank in a northern Ontario supermarket
By the time Lobby Joe was released back into the waters on Canada’s east coast, the Atlantic lobster had travelled thousands of kilometres on a journey that had cost hundreds of dollars.
The lobster’s long voyage began when he was spotted sitting alone in a tank in a northern Ontario supermarket, by Christine Loughead. Perhaps because she was a vegan, she found the crustacean’s probable fate unbearable. “It weighed on my psyche more and more,” she told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
Then it dawned on her. “It’s not too late to help. He’s alive.”
Loughead bought the lobster for C$20.23 ($15.46), not exactly sure what she would do next. She took it home, telling it: “you are now not dinner,” and naming it Lobby Joe. Cutting off the thick rubber bands around its claws, she put it in a saltwater tank in her home.
An online search suggested the lobster had probably been plucked out of the waters near Nova Scotia. Loughead reached out to an online vegan community in the area, appealing for help to release the lobster back into the ocean if she could find a way to get it to Halifax, some 3,000 kilometres away from Red Lake.
Her call was answered by Beth Kent, the founder of a local animal shelter in Bridgewater, a small town about an hour’s drive from Halifax.
Now Loughead had to figure out how to get the lobster to Kent. She called around; the nearest courier that would ship live animals was in Winnipeg, a six-hour drive from her town.
Loughead packed the lobster in a Styrofoam box padded with wet newspaper and cold packs, placing the box gingerly in the back seat and fastening the seat belt around it. The cost of shipping was C$225 ($172) while gas for the journey came to around C$160 ($122.30).
After 24 hours in transit, the box arrived in Nova Scotia. As Kent gently wrestled wet newspaper from the grasp of its claws, she told Lobby Joe: “Life is going to get better, OK?”
Kent first went to the site where she had planned to release the lobster, but hastily changed plans after spotting a fishing boat on the horizon. She instead released the lobster in a small cove. “There he goes, there he goes,” Kent said excitedly as the lobster scrambled over the rocks.
Back in Ontario, Loughead cried as she heard that Lobby Joe had survived the journey and made it back to the ocean. While some have criticized her for supporting the lobster industry by purchasing the lobster, she said it was worth it.
“It’s a food animal to [most] and it’s not an attractive animal, but I tell people to close their eyes and picture something cuter waiting to die in the deli section,” she told the CBC. “I’m pretty sure you’d have an impulse to do something.”We had good success bringing our Wunderlist skill live (see our blog post here) and want to explore the possibilities of Alexa further.
Alexa can stream music from sources like Spotify or Amazon Music, but a skill to stream from SoundCloud is missing. So I started to implement one!
Here is a demo.
Playing Your First Track With Alexa
Playing a track in response to a user’s intent simply requires adding a PlayDirective in the response (code written in Kotlin).
// These constructors don't actually exist, just used for brevity val stream = Stream ( url = "https://test.com/path/to/my/audio.mp3", token = "audio.mp3", offsetInMilliseconds = 0 ) val audioItem = AudioItem ( stream = stream ) val directive = PlayDirective ( audioItem = audioItem, playBehavior = PlayBehavior. REPLACE_ALL ) val response = SpeechletResponse ( directives = asList ( directive ))
The most important properties here are url and token. The token is used as sort of an identifier that will be available in all further requests while the stream is playing.
And that’s it. Alexa will now start to play the mp3 file.
Continuous Playback
Of course you usually want to listen to more than one track. So let’s say the initial intent of the user was:
Alexa, open SoundCloud and play my favorites
So how and when do we tell Alexa to play the next track? In case of an audio player enabled skill, Alexa will automatically send some special requests to the skill implementation. On the JVM we can react to these by implementing the AudioPlayer interface in our Speechlet. It provides a hook that will be called shortly before a track reaches the end of its playback.
class SoundcloudSpeechlet : SpeechletV2, AudioPlayer { override fun onPlaybackNearlyFinished ( env : SpeechletRequestEnvelope < PlaybackNearlyFinishedRequest >): SpeechletResponse? { val state = env. context. getState ( SystemInterface :: class. java, SystemState :: class. java ) val userId = state. user. userId val nextTrack = loadNextTrack ( userId ) val stream = Stream ( url = track. streamUrl, token = track. id, expectedPreviousToken = envelope. request. token, offsetInMilliseconds = 0 ) val audioItem = AudioItem ( stream = stream ) val directive = PlayDirective ( audioItem = audioItem, playBehavior = PlayBehaviour. ENQUEUE ) val response = SpeechletResponse ( directives = asList ( directive )) return response } // Other overrides }
The important parts are
Load the next track. Alexa developers will know the concept of a session. They might be tempted to put the list of tracks into a session attribute and make the loadNextTrack method access the session. Sadly this is not how sessions work – they are only intended for a „conversation“ of a user with Alexa. Starting to play music always ends the session. Instead the persistence of the list has to be implemented manually. See further down on how I did it.
method access the session. Sadly this is not how sessions work – they are only intended for a „conversation“ of a user with Alexa. Starting to play music always ends the session. Instead the persistence of the list has to be implemented manually. See further down on how I did it. Use the ENQUEUE play behavior. This way Alexa will play the next track seamlessly after the first one has finished.
play behavior. This way Alexa will play the next track seamlessly after the first one has finished. For ENQUEUE to work correctly it is important to use the correct values for token and expectedPreviousToken. For a discussion see the Amazon audio player reference.
So how to store the list of tracks to play? Luckily we get a unique identifier with each request, even the ones without session: the user id. In a request that has a session it is available via envelope.session.user.userId. In requests without a session (i.e. everything from the AudioPlayer interface) it is a bit harder to access, at least in the Java SDK. It’s hidden away in the context. Above you can see how to load it from there.
Since my skill implementation is hosted on AWS Lambda I decided to use DynamoDB for the persistence. I used the userId as the primary key and stored the list of tracks to play, the current position and some other metadata under it.
Pause, Next, Previous,..
In addition to the special requests from the AudioPlayer interface there are special intents that the user can say without needing the name of the skill that plays audio. For example AMAZON.PauseIntent and AMAZON.NextIntent can be just used with
Alexa, pause
and
Alexa, next
Since these are handled as normal intent requests the current token and play offset have to be accessed differently. They are stored in the audio player state.
val audioPlayerState = env. context. getState ( AudioPlayerInterface :: class. java, AudioPlayerState :: class. java ) audioPlayerState. token audioPlayerState. offsetInMilliseconds
With this information it is possible to determine the next track in an intent request. Of course the user id is also accessible via the envelope.session.user property.
The update of the player state for a user is best done in the AudioPlayer request handlers, though. Only then you can be sure Alexa has reacted correctly.
override fun onIntent ( env : SpeechletRequestEnvelope < IntentRequest >): SpeechletResponse { when ( env. request. intent. name ) { "AMAZON.PauseIntent" -> { // Do NOT store the current offset here, just tell Alexa to stop: return stopDirectiveResponse () } } } override fun onPlaybackStopped ( env : SpeechletRequestEnvelope < PlaybackStoppedRequest >): SpeechletResponse? { // Now we are sure that playback has stopped: Store the offset val state = env. context. getState ( SystemInterface :: class. java, SystemState :: class. java ) storeOffset ( state. user. userId, env. request. offsetInMilliseconds ) return null // AudioPlayer methods may return null as responses }
Next Steps
I have a good grasp on how to handle audio playing Alexa skills now. It is definitely harder than „normal“ skills since tracking the current state of the audio player and deciding what to persist when requires a lot of attention.
The next steps are the more traditional: I have to find a way to make music discoverable and provide more functionality, like
Play any playlist (not only favorites)
Play another user’s stream
If you have further suggestions or questions about Alexa skills please ask away in the comments!The ESPN documentary “30 for 30” Broke emphasizes the narrative that many professional athletes have made millions of dollars throughout their careers. Many of these athletes will file for bankruptcy within three years of retiring from their respective sport. Some have made poor financial decisions or invested in businesses with little chance of success.
The documentary highlights the high percentage of athletes that have started restaurants, rap labels and car washes. Recently, there has been a change in the asset management of athletes such as Kobe Bryant and Carmelo Anthony. They are changing the status quo by becoming venture capitalist.
Investopedia definition of venture capitalist (VC) is an investor who either provides capital to startup a business ventures or supports small companies that wish to expand but do not have access to equities markets. You may ask why take the risk to become a venture capitalist vs. owning your business or a safer investment option (T-Bills, Mutual Funds)?
Carmelo Anthony states in an interview “he would want to brand himself as a tech pioneer athlete innovator, business tycoon. Anthony wants to invest in startups and multiply his bank account by 100 because billions can solidify his reputation in a way millions/NBA championships can’t. I understood this, as being on the Forbes list is forever whereas as athletic success is temporary. On the contrary, Kobe Bryant said in an interview with MSNBC “No better feeling than helping entrepreneurs” is his primary passion. It is very believable when Kobe is speaking as he has made some brilliant business moves in his basketball career that I will explain later.
Kobe Bryant vs. Carmelo Anthony as basketball players:
If we were talking basketball, it would be easy to compare Kobe Bryant vs. Carmelo Anthony.
It is very clear who is the winner from the chart above. Kobe has 5 championships and tons of accolades that Carmelo may never get in his career. (See above).
In this blog post, I am going to compare Kobe Bryant and Carmelo Anthony business acumen and then their respective VC funds.
Risk Tolerance & Business Acumen: Kobe Vs. Carmelo Anthony:
Kobe Bryant is believed to have earned 680 million in career earnings with over his 20-year NBA career. Furthermore, not many NBA players have their own signature shoe line. I m sure you can count the superstars on Nike with their own line. (Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving, Kobe). The Kobe signature shoe line from Nike will receive the rare Michael Jordan treatment. Nike will continue to innovate and manufacture new Kobe shoes after his playing career ended. Kobe Bryant lines of shoes are #1 selling basketball shoe in China. In addition, Kobe is an icon in China, the largest basketball market. If you think about China population, that is a lot of shoes and apparel being sold every day. Moreover, in 2014, Nike sold $105 million of Kobe apparel. This is an impressive number but where I want to give Kobe his dues is for risk & strategy. It begins with Kobe decision to leave a $10 million dollar/per year contract with Adidas in 2003. Adidas gave Kobe his own signature brand as an 18 year old that jumped right out of high school to the NBA. He only played 15 minutes a game as a rookie. His stats were pathetic to say the least. Adidas made the bold move to shoot commercials with their unproven star. By 2001, Adidas gamble looked genius as Kobe was considered the heir-apparent to Michael Jordan. After the KOBE TWO released in 2001 with poor shoe design, which looked like a car and him favoring wearing older pairs of his own shoes in the 2001 playoffs. Kobe made the jump to Nike mid-career. Leaving the loyalty that Adidas showed him as a high school student. I see this as a very bold move by Kobe as I believe it’s human nature to be loyal to people who had faith your abilities before becoming a NBA all-star and champion.
The second example of when Kobe was innovative and took risk in his career was when he met with Nike design team and began brainstorming ideas for the KOBE IV; His focus wasn’t on precedent but rather on setting his own mark. Kobe as an avid soccer fan wondered how soccer players who put stress on their ankles could wear low-cut shoes on the pitch. He felt they could do something similar on the hardwood. This idea was against the common belief in the basketball world that high top shoes reduced sprained ankles. So that day in the boardroom, he gave Eric Avar, Nike’s performance creative director one specific instruction. Create the lowest, lightest basketball shoe ever. The end result is a shoe that weighs just 11.8 ounces, 20% lighter than the average Nike basketball shoe. Innovative!
Let’s look at the following quotes from Carmelo Anthony about Puerto Rico FC.
"I've always liked soccer, you know me, I always like doing things non-traditional, I like doing things outside of the box," said Carmelo Anthony, Last year Carmelo purchased Puerto Rico Football Club, an expansion team in the North American Soccer League. Carmelo says he had been exploring various ownership opportunities, but when the chance to have a team based in Puerto Rico, it was a match made in heaven." There was a deep need for a soccer team, even though baseball is the number one sport down there, I just wanted to bring something different to the island," Anthony said My passion for soccer has always been there“. The more time I started spending in Puerto Rico over the past six, seven years I realized that there was kind of a void down there on my island. The island didn't really have anything that they could kind of call their own, that they could represent not just on the island but also from a global standpoint".
I would like give Carmelo credit for taking on this type of challenge for venturing into the world of professional sports, which has lots of risk, opportunity and philanthropy.
Kobe Stibel vs Melo 7 Tech Partners
Carmelo Anthony and Former NBC and Bertelsmann Executive Stuart Goldfarb are investing in tech startups together. Carmelo and Stuart met through his Carmelo wife, former MTV VJ Lala Anthony. Stuart Goldfarb had been the CEO of Bertelsmann Direct North America, a marketer of music, movies and books with billions in annual revenue. They have created a partnership called Melo 7 Tech Partners. Melo 7 Tech Partners mission is to develop opportunities primarily in early stage digital media, consumer interest and technology ventures.
Since they started in 2013, they have backed over 20 companies with six of these backed companies purchased by larger firms in the last two years. Stuart Goldfarb role is to breaks down numbers, looks at the odds, and studies the market and estimates success rates.
Melo 7 Tech invested in Mars Pet Care that was acquired by Whistle, makers of a GPS pet tracker that Melo 7 Tech backed. The deal was valued at over 100 million. Melo 7 Tech portfolio has a number is startups that have managed to attract a sizeable rounds led by traditional VC funds like Felicis Ventures, Accel Partners and Battery Ventures. Melo 7 Tech has invested in the ticketing app SeatGeek, the mobile app for wine reviews and shopping Vivino and Maker’s Row a marketplace that connects US-based factories with small business who want to manufacture their products domestically. Another start-up they have invested in is Walker Co, makers of healthy and beauty products of people of color. Since investments in early stage startups take seven to ten years to get to a point of liquity typically it too early to know if Melo 7 tech will become successful. Carmelo playing basketball for the New Yorks Knicks is another competitive advantage as he near the pulse of Wall Street.
Bryant Stibel is a VC firm that is focused on the convergence on media, technology and data. In 2011, they announced Bryant Stibel as a $100 million investment fund with the mantra on value-growth. Jeff Stibel is former web.com president & CEO, business week “40 under 40”, New York Times bestseller. Kobe acknowledged that balance sheet analysis is Stibel's strength, whereas he is more focused on storytelling and branding. He said Nike CEO Mark Parker is one of the chief executives he most admires and has been mentoring him throughout his second career as a venture capitalist. You can really see Kobe applies to the same passion for basketball in this quote "But if you really want to create something that last generations, you have to help inspire the next generation, and they create something great, and then that generation will inspire the one behind them, right? And that's when you create something forever. And that's what's most beautiful". See the picture below of a list of companies that Bryant Stibel has backed.
Who has the Competitive Advantage?
Which fund will be more successful ten years down the road? I feel that Kobe Bryant and Carmelo Anthony have two distinct competitive advantages over other investors. They are extremely popular on a global macro level by a large amount of fans worldwide. Who wouldn’t take a phone call or meeting from Kobe Bryant and Carmelo Anthony. The brand they have developed in the NBA should take them every far in the world of business/investing. Leveraging the fact that many people they are dealing are larger than life fans is the first competitive advantage Bryant Stibel and Melo 7 Partners.
The other competitive advantage that both funds have is both Kobe Bryant and Carmelo Anthony are liquid. Career earnings of 680 million and 225 million will allow both funds to be able to take more chances or invest larger sums of money in a company that they think has a chance of being successful. A third factor that applies to Kobe more than Carmelo. If Kobe can leverage his popularity in China for the businesses his fund is backing. That could be the factor on whether the start-up scales to become a innovative company that is mentioned with Uber, Airbnb and Snapchat.
If I were to select which fund will be more successful, I would say Kobe Bryant b/c of his popularity in China. Kobe becoming a spokesperson/advisor for a company he’s backing can translate in sales in the Chinese market. If it does translate in increased visibility and marketshare, I think this is factor sway my opinion in thinking Bryant Stibel may be the marginally more successful VC firm.
Leave a comment below on which you think will have the more profitable VC firm?
** Not everything is 100% correct
** Just my opinionAt least one beer that was included a popular series from Bell’s Brewery, Inc. is making a comeback.
According to filings with the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB), the Comstock, Mich.-based brewery will be rereleasing Mars, a 10.1 percent ABV double IPA brewed with Munich malts. The original debut of the IPA was in August 2014, when it was named Mars, The Bringer of War (10.10 percent ABV) and was the first beer released in Bell’s Planets Series, which was based off off Gustav Holst’s orchestral suite called The Planets.
The Planets Series debuted in August 2014 and included seven different beers, with each beer released approximately every two months:
Mars, The Bringer of War – Double India Pale Ale – August 2014
Venus, The Bringer of Peace – Blonde Ale – October 2014
Mercury, The Winged Messenger – Belgian Single – December 2014
Jupiter, The Bringer of Jollity – Malt Forward Brown Ale – February 2015
Saturn, The Bringer of Old Age – Bourbon Barrel-aged Barleywine – April 2015
Uranus, The Magician – Black Double India Pale Ale – May 2015
Neptune, The Mystic – Mystical Stout – July 2015
The newest incarnation of Mars will be packaged in 12-ounce bottles. An email sent to the brewery for additional information was not immediately returned.Ashlye from Aurora writes, “What is driving you crazy? The left turn arrow, to turn from eastbound Iliff onto northbound Abilene, only stays green long enough for two cars to turn, and then it turns yellow and immediately red. During rush hour and heavier traffic times, you can sit through the arrow 3-4 times before turning! Why isn't it a longer arrow?”
That is not the only intersection around town that has that same problem Ashlye. If I come up to one of those lights that I know is bad I more often than not will turn right and then flip around and avoid the left turn all together. That move isn’t possible at that turn or I would find myself driving the wrong way on northbound I-225.
I asked Aurora Public Works about that problem. They tell me depending on the time of day and day of the week, the signal could be operating “free” or in one of four different coordination plans.
MORE: Read more traffic issues driving people crazy
“Available green time during coordination varies from a minimum of 6 seconds to a maximum of up to 12 seconds depending on the plan active and the numbers of vehicles present on the movement,” said Julie Patterson with the city of Aurora.
Let’s give the first driver the benefit of the doubt and they aren’t checking their Facebook page while waiting to turn. I would think it would take that driver on average two of those seconds to react after the light turns green and hit the gas. That would leave four seconds to get maybe two or three other cars to make the turn before the light changes to yellow. I would estimate that another three or four or maybe five more cars could make the turn if the timing was up to 12 seconds and they were all paying attention.
Aurora Public Works says they base their timing plans on several considerations including the number of lanes at the intersection, the configuration of intersection and the typical volume of traffic making each movement during the time allowed by each signal cycle.
“Within each cycle length, the amount of green time available to a particular movement is typically allocated proportionately with regard to the volume present on that movement as compared to the total volume present at the intersection,” said Patterson. “The through movements on the major road at an intersection are typically the highest volume and therefore typically receive the greatest amount of time—this is also important for progressing through traffic along an arterial route.”
The City of Aurora’s next citywide traffic signal timing study is currently scheduled for next year. It could even spill into 2019 depending on how long it takes. The good news is that the entire Iliff corridor is in the first phase of the study. Aurora Public Works anticipates they will be making updates and changes to that signal, as well as other intersections, after the study is finished.
Denver7 traffic anchor Jayson Luber says he has been covering Denver-metro traffic since Ben-Hur was driving a chariot. (We believe the actual number is over 20 years.) He's obsessed with letting viewers know what's happening on their drive and the best way to avoid the problems that spring up. Follow him on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram or listen to his Driving You Crazy podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, and Podbean.The Cleveland Browns released veteran wide receiver Andrew Hawkins on Monday, in what was a mutual decision between the team and Hawkins. He had been with the Browns since 2014.
Prior to his tenure with the Browns, Hawkins spent three seasons with the Cincinnati Bengals. Between the Browns and the Bengals, he hasn’t done too much winning, and that’s one of the reasons he wanted to be released:
The Browns and Andrew Hawkins have talked the last few weeks. He made the hard call to ask for his release. Wants to chase a championship. — Albert Breer (@AlbertBreer) February 27, 2017
Hawkins played in 16 games this season, starting in five of them. He improved off of an injury-filled 2015 season, and caught the second-most touchdown receptions of his career with three. Yet he still only put up 324 yards receiving.
Hawkins talked about his release on the UNINTERRUPTED Twitter account, thanking the Browns. He also said that he felt they paved the way for future success.
"As of today, I am officially a former Cleveland Brown." — @hawk pic.twitter.com/b0iGEv0lmL — UNINTERRUPTED (@uninterrupted) February 27, 2017
In their press release, the Browns were very appreciative of Hawkins’ three seasons with the team.
Browns coach Hue Jackson spoke highly of Hawkins, saying, “It's tough to say goodbye to men like Hawk, that have done everything you've asked of them and gone above and beyond when it comes to leadership.”
Jackson added, “Hawk was a rock for us last season. He kept our locker room together and led by example as he gave everything he had on the field.”
It wasn’t just about his on-field play, though.
“The well-intended work he did in the Cleveland community was greatly appreciated and the respect he earned throughout our league for never being afraid to responsibly create an educated dialogue around a societal issue is commendable,” Executive Vice President of Football Operations Sashi Brown said.
During the 2016 season, Hawkins, along with other NFL players, went to Washington D.C. to discuss police brutality and issues related to race with members of Congress.
Hawkins was also appreciative of his teammates. “Thank you to my incredible teammates for allowing me the opportunity to be one of your captains, it was an honor to battle with you, week in and week out,” Hawkins said. “And lastly, thank you Cleveland Browns fans, you are one of the best fanbases in all of the world.”
Playing for the Browns isn’t easy, but Hawkins seemed to genuinely enjoy his time there — making it as fun as he possibly could.
“No matter where I play next, I will always be part of the Browns family,” Hawkins said.
Though he’s no longer a member of the team, Hawkins is optimistic about the future of the Browns. “Be optimistic because Hue Jackson is one of the best coaches in all of football,” he said in his video with UNINTERRUPTED. “I know you guys have an incredible future ahead of you.”
As far as Hawkins goes, any future success with him depends on who picks him up this offseason.Six Flags America was evacuated Saturday afternoon “out of an abundance of caution” after a bomb threat was made.
WASHINGTON — Six Flags America was evacuated Saturday afternoon due to a bomb threat, according to police.
Prince George’s County police |
middle of what was otherwise a conversation about role-playing games.
“Because the automatic updater system is working?” I said.
“Was Firefox 4 really so broken that you had to kill it after three months?” he asked. Except he used a ruder word than “broken”.
“No, not at all”, I said, remembering the giant launch party we had had for Firefox 4. It did feel kind of like we told everybody “Firefox 4 is the greatest thing ever, and it’s finally here! Download it now! OK now it’s obsolete already.”
“It’s just that we’ve got this new rapid-release schedule going”, I continued, “where we push out the new releases every three months, so that users always have the latest bug fixes and speed improvements and stuff.”
“OK, well, it says that Perapera-kun (the extension I use to translate Chinese) is no longer compatible. I really needed that extension.”
Oops.
Some backstory:
Firefox 3.6 was released on my 30th birthday – January 21, 2010. Firefox 4.0 was released on March 22, 2011: 14 months later.
It was very frustrating both to our developers and our users that bug-fixes, speed-ups, and features that were completed in, say, February or March of 2010 had to sit unused on the shelf until every part of the the enormous monolith called Firefox 4 was ready to launch. By early 2011, users of Firefox 3.6 were complaining about problems that had already been fixed for a year; but they didn’t have the fixes because our monolithic release schedule didn’t let us give them the fixes.
Our monolithic release schedule also meant we couldn’t respond quickly to the rapidly changing and highly competitive browser market. Chrome and IE aren’t stitting still. There was a feeling within MoCo that the fourteen-month wait between Firefox 3.6 and Firefox 4.0 could have killed us competitively. Almost did kill us.
Given that, moving to a rapid release schedule — releasing a new Firefox on a regular, frequent schedule, just to give users whatever improvements we have for them, even if it’s not a huge splashy new release — seemed like pure win. It took a lot of effort inside the company to make that transition. We had to really focus on it, pull together, overcome many obstacles. That we shifted over to a whole new development process and still shipped Firefox 5 on time, even though it was just a tiny incremental update, felt like an enormous victory.
And yet… People on the Interenet are calling the new release plan a kick in the stomach, saying we’re committing corporate suicide, saying that they feel “suckered” and that “Mozilla is creating something you can’t rely on” (comment thread). They’re even making us into Hitler. (Hitler in his bunker, no less — the meme used to indicate not only that someone is the bad guy, but that they’re losing and in denial about it as well.)
When I first started reading some of this backlash, I was puzzled. Were people really getting upset because we released Firefox 5 so soon after Firefox 4? Isn’t releasing rapidly a good thing? Don’t they want new bug fixes and speed improvements as soon as possible? Yes, we stop supporting older versions, but it shouldn’t matter, because everybody should automatically be upgraded to the latest version, right?
Or were they complaining that there was too little change to justify a version number bump? Did people really care that much about version number schemes? (As a rule, I don’t pay much attention to debates over version numbering schemes, because they bore me to tears.) If we had released the exact same thing but called it Firefox 4.1 would they have been happy?
In diagnosing usability problems, we often have to look beyond what users say they want in order to perceive the underlying problem. We want to treat the disease, not the symptoms.
In this case, the symptom is the complaints about the pace, and the rapidly-increasing version numbers, of new releases. But new releases are good, and version numbers are just numbers. What’s the disease?
We thought that the new rapid release process was pure win. We underestimated two things:
The number of extensions that are breaking each time we raise the version number. And the number of people who need a stable, long-term-support version of Firefox.
First, many extensions — like my friend’s favorite extension, the Chinese popup translator PeraPeraKun — break each time a new release comes out. Faster releases means faster breakage, which means more effort for developers and for users to keep their extensions compatible.
There are two causes of extension breakage. An extension may break because we changed an API it relies on, meaning it won’t work on the new Firefox version until the extension developer goes in and rewrites the part that uses the API. But an extension may also break just because of the version number changed, even if there is no API change. This is because extensions have metadata files specifying which versions of Firefox they run with; if your extension’s metadata file says “I work with Firefox 3.5 – 4.0” then as soon as 5.0 comes out, your extension will be marked as incompatible, even if there is no API change. So an extension can lose compatibility for bureaucratic reasons — its “paperwork” isn’t up-to-date — even if there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it. It would work if that file was changed (or if add-on version compatibility checking were turned off). But an end user has no way of telling the difference between a “real” breakage and a “paperwork” breakage.
This system made sense back when every new major version number was fairly guaranteed to have API changes. In the new rapid-release world, the version number is now changing every few months, but API changes are no more frequent than they were before. API breakage is a problem that existed before; the rapid-release schedule hasn’t made it any worse. But the number of paperwork breakages has skyrocketed under the rapid-release schedule.
We can say that “80% of extensions remain compatible” but that’s hardly consolation if the one extension you rely on is not part of that 80%. Ideally its developer should be updating it; but what if its developer is nowhere to be found? What if its developer got fed up with having to change the metadata file every six weeks and stopped maintaining the extension? Maybe that one extension was the only reason you were using Firefox; then what? You could try to go back to your old version of Firefox that still works with the extension… if you can figure out where to download it, and if you can figure out how to turn off auto-updates. We don’t make either of those things easy. Even if you succeed, you’re now stuck on an obsolete browser version and you’re not getting fixes for the latest security vulnerabilities. This is a problem.
I think that long-term, we ought to move away from the whole concept of a “maximum compatible version number” in a metadata file. We should try to provide a compatibility layer with a guaranteed-stable API, so that even if we change the underlying implementation, extensions written to the compatibility layer will still work. That’s one of the goals of the Jetpack project.
The second thing we underestimated: the number of people who need a long-term-support version of Firefox. By “need” I mean that their choice is between using a long-term-support version and not using Firefox at all. Imagine being the IT manager for a large organization, a school for instance; you’d like to keep your browsers up-to-date but you have a lot ofX other things to worry about, and any major change to browser functionality means you’re going to have to re-write documentation, re-test your intranet web-apps, re-install any extensions you rely on, and re-train your users. All of these things cost you time and money. You want a browser that can be relied upon to behave consistently over time. Your ideal browser is one that automatically gets security updates, but not other kinds of updates.
If Mozilla isn’t going to provide a browser like that, you’ll look elsewhere. Simple as that.
Maybe in addition to “nightly”, “aurora”, “beta”, and “final”, we ought to have a fifth update channel. Call it “long-term stable” or call it “security updates only”; whatever we call it, there’s a huge demand for something like that, and we’re not providing it right now.
We need to start by admitting that we screwed up. We have to listen to our community when they tell us what a serious problem this is for them. We have to stop treating complaints about version numbers as if they were just a misunderstanding; yes, they’re “just” version numbers, but under the smoke of the version number argument there is the fire of a real problem. Or rather, two problems.
I still think that moving to rapid releases was a good idea on the whole. It has a lot of advantages. But like many big changes, it’s solved one big problem while creating two smaller problems. We need to face those problems and deal with them. I’m confident we can solve them, but first we need to stop pretending that they don’t exist.
AdvertisementsSo Cigar City has lowered the bottle limit to 2 per person. Consolation? Check out the guest tap list…
7venth Sun Midnight Moonlight Berliner Weisse
Avery Trogdor the Burninator
Ballast Point Smoke Screen Helles
Ballast Point Sour Wench Blackberry Ale
Bold City Mad Manatee
Bold City Killer Whale
Bold City Duke’s
Dunedin The Moar Wheat Ale
Dunedin Noggin Black Cherry Pale Ale
Founders Breakfast Stout
Founders Imperial Stout
Funky Buddha Last Snow Porter
Funky Buddha Floridian Hefeweizen
Funky Buddha Passionfruit Berliner Weisse
Green Room Undertow Barley Wine
Intuition People’s Pale Ale
Johnathan Wakefield’s Miami Madness Berliner (guava, mango, passionfruit)
Johnathan Wakefield’s Phat Bottom Berliner (hidden rose apples)
Johnathan Wakefield’s PFDF Berliner (passionfruit, dragonfruit)
Lost Abbey Angel’s Share
Lost Abbey Deliverance
Port Brewing Older Viscosity
Samuel Adams Dark Depths Baltic IPA
Samuel Adams Griffin’s Bow Oaked Blonde Barley Wine Ale
Samuel Adams Tasman’s Red IPA
Shipyard Emporium Palm Ridge barrel-aged Porter
Tequesta Oak-aged Vier Belgian Quad
Three Floyds Alpha King Pale Ale
Three Floyds Arctic Panzer Wolf Imperial IPA
Three Floyds Dark Lord Imperial Stout
Three Floyds Oak-aged Dark Lord Imperial Stout (Heaven Hill barrels)
Three Floyds Dreadnaught Imperial IPA
Three Floyds Sand Pebbles American Brown Ale
Three Floyds Stygian Darkness Dark Belgian Strong Ale
Three Floyds Topless Wytch Baltic Porter
Three Floyds Zombie Dust Pale AlePhotos by Caroline McNally
For Ian Alvey, the last 18 months have been insane.
As chief bottler-washer and one of the main players in Bodytonic, he’s helped open four bars in that time, as part of the company’s rapid expansion into the Dublin pub scene.
Established in 2000, Bodytonic was borne out of frustration on the part of its founder. In order to get gigs for his fledging career as a DJ, Trevor O’Shea started the company as a collective of like-minded creative types and promoters. Initially running gigs and club nights, it has since morphed into a different beast altogether.
The company today now runs a host of venues, runs music events and is involved in a number of food and drink festivals.
Over at the Back Page in Phibsborough, one of five pubs now under Bodytonic ownership, Alvey sits down for a chat. It’s just after 5pm on a Thursday. In one corner, two lads rattle Connect Four pieces into the grid while at the other end of the bar, the pizza chef fires up the oven.
Having come on-board six years ago, Alvey now heads the brewing end of operations and manages two of the Bodytonic bars: the Square Ball, off Holles Street, and the Back Page.
He hasn’t far to travel to this particular location. He lives upstairs with co-conspirator Brian Hoffman, his black-and-white tabby cat.
Model Modification
It’s been a shaky few years in the pub industry.
Between 2007 and 2011, there was a 28-percent decline in sales, according to the Drinks Industry Group of Ireland (DIGI). But then, came an uptick.
In January, DIGI noted that pub sales were up 6.4 percent from October 2014 to October 2015 as it released a sunny report on the Christmas-season sales, suggesting that they were also better than the previous year’s.
The market has stabilised since the recessionary slump, yet Bodytonic are conscious that to stay in the game, you have to try a little harder these days. A Wicklow native, Alvey grew up with the impersonal prototype of the boom-years watering hole.
“I’ve worked in bars since I was 13 years old,” he says. “I remember the Celtic Tiger days when all you’d do was open the door, serve expensive beer and you were full. Maybe put on a band at the weekend and that was it.”
Dissatisfied with this inadequate incarnation of the local, O’Shea, Alvey and team set about establishing pubs where they, themselves, would want to drink.
With the profits from running club nights such as WAR on South William Street, and operating the Twisted Pepper on Abbey Street they made their first venture into the industry.
In 2006, Bodytonic took over Brannigan’s on Richmond Street and created the Bernard Shaw.
“Was it a risk?” asks O’Shea. ‘In hindsight, not really because it’s gone on to do really well, but at the time, it was our first proper business and, unlike gigs, which you do and then they’re over and you walk away, with this, we couldn’t.”
It wasn’t until 2014, though, that the empire really began.
In July 2014, MVP arrived on Clanbrassil Street. With classy cocktails and monthly singalongs, it’s proved a hit with locals.
That November, Phibsborough got its first new pub in years when the Back Page, a sports bar, came to town. Nine months later, in September 2015, the Square Ball, a Southside alternative to the Back Page opened on Hogan Place.
Wigwam, opened last November, provides a more grown-up feel than its predecessor the Twisted Pepper. Incorporating everything from cocktails and food to the Boxcutter Barbershop (downstairs), Vice Coffee and the Dublin Doughnut Company, it’s “the Twisted Pepper’s mature older brother,” says Alvey.
Home Brews
While many Dublin pubs seem satisfied to offer up the old standards on draught, recent years have seen places like P.Macs and Cassidy’s champion the craft-beer phenomenon.
With Brewtonic, the Bodytonic crew have gone a step further and created their own beers from scratch. Alvey heads up this part of the enterprise, and works closely with Rascal’s Brewing in Rathcoole, to create the range on offer.
“To date, we’ve brewed nine beers. Some are one-offs and others are here for the long run,” he says. “We’re more interested in brewing some of the styles you wouldn’t usually see coming out of an Irish brewing company, and brewing on such a small scale makes that much easier to do.”
Their most popular, he tells me, is Sim Simma Hemp Ale. As Bodytonic employs a number of Wicklow expats, Alvey says, “we have a bit of a reputation for being hippies at heart, so this beer made perfect sense”.
Each week, Alvey and others meet in a bunker space at the back of the Bernard Shaw, their laboratory for trialling new ideas. While inspired by the likes of Beavertown and Kinnegar breweries, the rest, he says, is “just random”.
“I spent three hours today researching using rainwater in your brew to find out it’s mainly unadvised,” he says. “I’m still going to give it a shot though.”
Each brew is available across the five pubs. Although cocktails feature heavily in the Bodytonic pubs, and the old reliables like of Guinness are on draught, the Brewtonic concoctions take on the likes of Galway Bay Brewery and Trouble Brewing in the marketplace.
While this has added to the pubs’ profits, the grub on offer has also gone some ways to ensuring that the punters return.
The Foodie Factor
Just as each pub plays on a different theme, the food menus vary.
The Bernard Shaw is by now famous for its big blue double-decker bus serving up pizza, calzones and salads, ranging in price from €8 to €11.
The Back Page has its own sports-themed pizza menu. Priced between €9 and €12, each pizza is named after an Irish or international sports star.
For example, the Ayrton Senna (tomato, mozzarella, gorgonzola, parma ham, fresh organic pear) and the Billie Jean King (tomato, mozzarella, organic baby spinach, choriza, organic wild mushrooms, free range egg).
Over at MVP, you’ll find Spudbox, which pimps up the humble baked potato, with toppings from chilli con carne to oodles of cheese.
Next, Fowl Play will open at the Square Ball, cooking free-range chicken over wood-fired rotisseries and smokers.
Wigwam has both lunch and dinner menus. It serves toasties and salads by day, and, in the evening, chef Pedro Feraz channels his Brazilian roots with picanha rump steaks with farofa, and mini brisket sambos.
It’s a far cry from the days when Alvey would find himself unblocking toilets in the down-at-heel Twisted Pepper.
“I managed the Twisted Pepper for five years,” says Alvey. “It does leave a serious void in my life now it’s gone, but its legacy will live on. But in terms of layout, decor, drinks and food, Wigwam is far superior than it ever was.”
For many, it’s a natural progression from the clubbing days, evidenced by the gang of lads who’ve just left with their Vice coffee. “Got any yokes?” one asks his mates, chuckling off down Abbey Street.
Keeping Down Costs
The team leases the buildings and then moves in and creates a different theme and feel with each new offering.
As a business model, it’s smart. They try to sidestep the words “chain” and “franchise”, as each pub gets its own, idiosyncratic decor and feel.
“Ideas are never a problem, “says Alvey. “It’s just finding the time to execute them all and the right location.”
With the exception of the Twisted Pepper they’ve largely avoided major city-centre locations. Taking over old pubs that had run their life cycle has been their modus operandum. As Alvey notes, though, it’s been “a mixed bag”.
“When you get into things like designing whole new heating systems from scratch in a new pub, it can be a real ball ache,” he says. “There were plenty of evenings where you’d consider a stick of dynamite might just be the easier option.”
O’Shea says the properties are key.
“MVP on Clanbrassil Street? I viewed the very same place a year previously, and I just walked up to where the bridge was beside it and got a view of the whole area and for some reason it just clicked in my head,” he said. “With the Bernard Shaw and the Back Page, it was love at first sight. MVP was more of a slow-burner – it took me a year to actually go for it.”
A Traditional Industry
The pub trade is often considered to be a traditional, if-it-ain’t-broke kind of industry. Many pubs find their strength in taking few risks, and sticking with what has worked for decades, or even centuries.
In Glasnevin, tucked away in Prospect Square, John Kavanagh’s, also known as the Gravediggers, has maintained its aesthetic since it first opened in 1833.
The nicotine-stained ceilings haven’t been given a lick of paint in decades, and although it now offers a tapas menu in the lounge section, co-owner Anne Kavanagh says, “There’s no music, no singing, and no wifi and we won’t be changing that.”
Anne’s brother Ciarán explains that when their father Eugene bought the pub in 1973, he insisted there’d be no shenanigans on site. It’s a policy that works for them; talk to each other, not your phones.
The pub is famous for its insistence, in February 1984, that the funeral party of Dubliner Luke Kelly remain much in the same vein as the dearly departed: silent as the grave.
While the Diggers benefits from knowing where it stands, each new location for Bodytonic is a risk.
And where larger companies invest piles in market research to find out exactly what it is the customer wants, Alvey and company have taken an inward approach.
“We do what we love really,” he says. “It’s usually selfish enough, we’re just lucky there’s a few people that dig it.”
With hard graft and the avoidance of massive capital investment, as well as the steady building of a customer base, costs are kept low. The food and drink helps.
Some Juggernauts
With five pubs now under their belts, and a host of food festivals and music events to run, Bodytonic have cemented themselves as a juggernaut of the Dublin entertainment scene.
Yet there’s always competition.
Earlier this month, Dublin-based Capital Bars and the Mercantile Group merged. With 12 bars in their portfolio, including Café en Seine and Opium, they now control some major players of the Dublin pub scene. Mega-pub chain JD Wetherspoon now has four bars open across the city with a fifth location set for Camden St.
Alvey and company say these big players don’t concern the Bodytonic team, though.
“Pubs like ourselves wouldn’t be worried about it,” says Alvey. “People go out to experience something, and I wonder, long-term, will they struggle as they fail to live up to that unique stalwart of an Irish pub: the fucking craic.”
On a growth front, 2016 is going to be “all about consolidation and a little more meditation,” says Alvey. With five pubs now to look after, plus everything else they’re into, the crew have their work cut out for them.Those of you who were reading the site in February will recall my astonishment at Love, the forthcoming procedurally-generated moderately-multiplayer online world by one-man studio, Eskil Steenberg. Steenberg is a man of remarkable talent, both artistic and technical, and what I saw on his laptop screen at GDC impressed me more than any high-profile release of recent years. A wondrous, impressionistic MMO world that facilitates player creativity and encourages co-operation, that looks incredible and sounds too ambitious to be true. It’s a bold, brave project of independent game development. We’ve got the first moving images of Steenberg’s project after the jump.
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You can see the smoky visuals, the player-editing landscapes, the combat, the abstract entities of the Love world. We’ll be asking Steenberg to explain his game in a little more detail in the coming weeks. In the meantime read my previous conversation with Steenberg, and visit his site.
The game, naturally, will be done when it’s done.Activists from the heartland want a crack at protesting Donald Trump’s presidency and his refusal to release his tax returns. So hundreds of sturdy Chicago residents are gearing up to face the cold and drop trou to moon Trump International Hotel & Tower en masse.
The event — “Chicago Moons the Trump Tower” — is being organized by the comedy TV news program “S#!tshow” via Facebook. As of Thursday night more than 275 had signed up with 1,200 marked as “interested.” “S#!tshow” plans to film the event planned for Feb. 12.
The prank is being organized to bring attention to Trump’s still (never?) to-be-released tax returns. The battle cry for #RumpagainstTrump? “Kiss our asses, release your taxes.”
Trump “doesn’t think the American people want to see his tax returns, so let’s show him that we do in the classiest way possible!” urges the Facebook posting for the event. “At the crack of 4 p.m. (pun intended), we’ll pull down our pants for a whole 10 seconds and send a powerful message to the Washington elites.”
The Facebook posting for the event cites a Maryland judge’s ruling in 2006 that mooning is a form of free speech protected by the First Amendment. But the local CBS-TV station notes that “cheeky” protesters might break the city’s indecent exposure law if butts are “exposed to public view” or not hidden by an “opaque covering.” Lawbreakers could face a fine of up to $500.
Organizer Bailey Davis, 20, hopes the stunt will be a dramatic attention-grabber. “If 500 people go up to that tower and pull their pants down it’s not going to go unnoticed, and that’s the goal,” he told DNAInfo Chicago.
Davis is hoping the unusual protest will also drive Trump bonkers.
“If you ridicule [Trump] or make him feel like he’s the loser, that’s how he blows up,” Davis said. “That’s what makes The Donald implode.”
Things can be a bit frosty in the city in February. Fortunately this year forecasters predict the temperatures will be relatively balmy, ranging from 37 to 46 degrees.
A downtown Chicago march is also being planned for April 9 to pressure Trump to release his tax information.
Trump promised throughout his campaign that he would release his tax returns, as candidates traditionally do, as soon as a routine IRS audit was completed — though there’s nothing about an audit that precluded him from revealing the information. But his pledge died with his election.
“He’s not going to release his tax returns. People didn’t care,” White House advisor Kellyanne Conway said on ABC two days after Trump’s inauguration. In fact, an ABC poll in mid-January found that that 74 percent of the public wanted Trump to release his returns.
A petition posted on the White House web site calling for Trump to release his taxes has received more signatures than any other petition in the system’s five-year history. As of Thursday it had amassed 476,000 signatures.It’s an almost ridiculous premise—choosing the best craft breweries of the year. All those beers to sample. All those tasting room visits to log into the tiny notebooks that we beer journalists carry with us everywhere. That’s where we write things like, “pumpernickel. I’m definitely getting a strong pumpernickel vibe.”
At the end of the year, we look at all of those notes and the catalog of reviews we’ve published and the state of the craft beer world as a whole, and we start to argue with each other about which breweries killed it this year.
Obviously there are more good beers today than any one person (or entire network of journalists) can sample in 12 months. But we’ve remained thirsty since January, and the following breweries impressed us first and foremost with the beers they sent into the world in 2013. Really, really great beers. From there, innovations, goodwill, awards, and just plain creativity all came into consideration, until finally, the arguing at Paste stopped. And we had this: The 20 Best Craft Breweries of 2013.
Did we miss a brewery? Undoubtedly. Did we make mistakes? Maybe. Read the list, argue amongst yourselves, and let us know what breweries are on your personal Best list this year in the comment section below.
20. Smuttynose Brewing, Portsmouth, N.H.
Out of all the beers Paste reviewed in 2013, only nine received a score of 8/10 or better. Smuttynose made three—its Baltic Porter, Gravitation Belgian quadrupel ale, and Farmhouse Ale. A fourth (the Stone-collaboration, Cluster’s Last Stand IPA) earned a 7.9/10. Plus, the brewer had an entry in our IPA challenge (Finestkind IPA) and two of Paste’s Top 10 summer beers (Vunderbar! and Summer Weizen). There’s simply too much good beer coming from Portsmouth these days to discount Smuttynose. Plus, it’s really fun to say “Smuttynose.”
19. The Alchemist, Waterbury, Vt.
You gotta respect a brewery that only brews one beer. Heady Topper is an unfiltered double IPA. It’s one of the most critically acclaimed beers in America, and it’s only sold at beer shops in Vermont (mostly in Burlington and Stowe) and at The Alchemist Cannery. This is pilgrimage beer here. In fact, so many people have made the pilgrimage to the Cannery, that this November, The Alchemist had to close its retail store to the public because the surrounding community couldn’t handle the traffic and crowds anymore. The good news—The Alchemist is already working on a larger retail shop where traffic and crowds won’t be an issue.
18. Green Flash, San Diego, Calif.
Green Flash is known for its big, hoppy beers and this year, they didn’t disappoint. Exhibit A: The Green Bullet, a triple IPA seasonal release that attempts to warm you through the winter with hops…and more hops. Exhibit B: Palate Wrecker, another seasonal that uses six pounds of hops per barrel. This brewery makes other West Coast-style beers look like lagers. And here’s what really has us excited—this year, Green Flash announced they’re building an East Coast brewery in Virginia Beach, Va.
17. Odell Brewing Company, Fort Collins, Colo.
Odell’s Final Four finisher in the Paste IPA Challenge (Odell IPA) may have been this brewer’s second most impressive 2013 accomplishment. With Tree Shaker, Odell managed to make a fruit-beer (peach flavored, no less) we’ll actually seek out (rated 7.2/10). Woodcut 7, a barrel-aged Russian Imperial Stout, was bold, experimental, and good. The brewery’s Pilot Program done good this year too, with the aforementioned Tree Shaker and wild and fruity Friek as obvious standouts.
16. New Belgium, Fort Collins, Colo.
Ah, New Belgium. Does any brewery walk the line between experimentation and broad appeal better than this juggernaut of an institution? Fat Tire is still a gateway beer for new generations being weaned from macro beer. So welcoming, so comforting. But NB is on this list for its commitment to creativity. The Lips Of Faith Series uses everything from home brew recipes to wild hairs to create bold, often magical limited releases. The brewery has collaborated out the ying-yang this year (creating beers with everyone from Patagonia to Cigar City) and even introduced a new winter IPA. It’s as if the craft brewing behemoth has something to prove. And we like it.
15. Hill Farmstead Brewery, Greensboro Bend, Vt.
Hill Farmstead is producing some of the most critically acclaimed and sought after beer in the country right now. The brewery’s Abner, an Imperial IPA, earned a 100 at ratebeer.com. So did countless other beers coming out of this tiny brewery in Vermont. In fact, Ratebeer went ahead and named Hill Farmstead their Best Brewery in the World for 2013. Here’s the only problem—Hill Farmstead only distributes on draft, and only in Vermont. If you want a bottle, you’ll have to schlep all the way to the brewery in the middle of the Green Mountain State to buy one. The store opens at noon on Wednesday. The line begins to form at 11:30. Seriously.
14. Lagunitas Brewing Company, Petaluma, Calif.
In 2013, Lagunitas brought back the original Brown Shugga, a strong ale that was put on hiatus for two years because the brewery was at capacity and Brown Shugga is an incredibly expensive beer to make. The resurgence of Brown Shugga alone is enough to warrant a place on this list. But there’s more—Lagunitas put Hairy Eyeball in a 22-ounce bomber, this year. The Day Time IPA was a hit (so much so that it’ll be a year-round beer in 2014). And still, the “future’s so bright.” The NorCal favorite is building a massive brewery in Chicago to help infiltrate the thirsty East Coast market. It’s already one of the biggest craft breweries in the country (number six, last time we checked).
13. Russian River, Santa Rosa, Calif.
Two things are working in Russian River’s favor here: buzz and scarcity. Pliny the Elder, Russian River’s flagship, has become a darling of the beer media. Don’t even get us started on the limited Pliny the Younger. We’ll start to blush. And then there’s scarcity: The tiny brewery only distributes in three states (California, Colorado, Oregon). Add buzz and scarcity, and you get a beer that people stand in line for at the beer store. You get a beer that restaurants go on a waiting list to be able to serve. You get a beer that has its own black market on eBay. When Russian River pulled out of its distribution plans for Washington, the state went mad. They still haven’t recovered.
12. Founders Brewing Company, Grand Rapids, Mich.
Beyond having this author’s favorite porter, Founders put out a remarkable fruit-beer (the Raspberry Ale, 8.7/10) and two of the best scotch ales we sampled (Dirty Bastard and Backwoods Bastard, our top scotch ale). Toss in the fact they were working with laid off MillerCoors employees and churned out beers to christen naval ships, and it’s hard to argue Founders’ place on this list.
11. Westbrook Brewing Company, Mt. Pleasant, S.C.
Meet perhaps the best young brewery in the US (only opening in 2011). Even the fortunate folks in Tampa, Fla. recognize something special is building here, with local beer journalists comparing Westbrook to their own Cigar City: “Mexican Cake from South Carolina’s Westbrook Brewery, think Cigar City Hunahpu’s before it was famous.” The seasonal Gose set Paste staff on fire this year. Also in 2013, the brewery started canning the Gose (a practical move) and released three editions of their barrel aged Mexican Cake Imperial Stout (a creative move), which prompted Westbrook enthusiasts to brave the rain and long lines to catch a sip of the first release.The “Upper-Body Squat”
The Pullover was the first machine that Arthur Jones built of what would become fitness giant “Nautilus Inc” (he sold the first one in 1970). He claimed that up until the point, it was impossible to isolate and fully work the largest single muscle of the upper body, the Latissimus Dorsi. The reason that Arthur explained, “it is difficult to fully work the lats because the arms are much smaller and unable to do as much work as the much larger lats.” The arms are the limiting factor, in terms of stimulating the musculature of the torso. In order to fully work the lats, you must use a single joint exercise, thus eliminating the weak link (arms).
Free Weight Pullovers
Using a Barbell or Dumbbell to provide resistance, you will start by lying supine on a bench. Press the weight straight up from your chest, set your elbows at the desired angle (slight bend) and initiate the eccentric or negative phase of the Pullover. Continue to lower the weight until your upper arms are parallel to the ground or to the point that your mobility allows (excessive range of motion may lead to a shoulder injury). Once the desired range of motion has been completed, pause and reverse motion into the concentric or positive phase. Continue to move the weight until it is directly over your chest or nearly directly. Once the upper arm is perpendicular to the ground, the weight has been completely unloaded from the musculature being worked during a Pullover. It is not uncommon to have sore triceps after performing pullovers, this is due to the triceps role in holding a fixed angle of the elbow (isometric contraction).
Machine Pullovers
Performing the pullover on a machine, the movement typically starts with the arms overhead. Machines usually have handles and pads for the elbows. The hands should remain relaxed and the force should be exerted through the elbows. Pushing through the elbows makes The Pullover a single joint move, thus excluding the weaker muscles of the arm from limiting the amount of work that can be completed. Starting in the up position, pull the handle of the machine down until it contacts your lap, pause and reverse direction into the eccentric phase of the movement. Return to the starting point in a controlled manner, pause and initiate the next rep.
Arthur Jones, creator of the Pullover Machine, often recommended a tempo in the range of a :03 Eccentric Phase and :02 Concentric Phase. He emphasized the importance of removing momentum from the movement, thereby keeping a continuous load on the working musculature.
Muscles Worked by the Pullover
The Pullover is used primarily for the purpose of working the Lats or Chest. The Primary focus of the exercise can be changed by slight changes to technique and by which muscles you choose to focus on as the prime movers.
Primary Movers
1. Latissimus Dorsi
2. Pectoralis Major
3. Teres Major
Secondary Movers/Stabilizers
1. Triceps
2. Serratus Anterior
3. Abdominals
4. Rhomboids
5. Trapezius
In order to shift focus to the Lats, it is often recommended that the elbows be held in a slightly bent position, flared out into a wider position and that the focus is placed on pushing through the elbows (shoulder extension). The Machine Pullover should result in most of the work being done by the lats. There are several advantages to using a machine to perform Pullovers:
1. The elbows rest against a pad which allows for force to be exerted through the elbows directly against the resistance.
2. Machines can provide resistance through a much larger range of motion.
3. Nautilus Machines were designed to provide appropriate |
been carried out on health facilities in Syria since the beginning of the year.
It is estimated that nearly 60pc of public hospitals in the country have closed or are only partially functional.
UNICEF, who offer support for the paediatric hospital where the baby died, has condemned the attacks.
The organisation said in a statement: “Attacks on health facilities are a blatant violation of international humanitarian law and can amount to war crimes.
“Health facilities must never be attacked or damaged, and health workers should be allowed to provide medical treatment and services to all people in need wherever they are inside Syria.”
Online EditorsYou’ve already mastered Rachael Ray’s Le Cordon Bleu-worthy recipe for microwaved bacon and now here’s your next challenge: Paula Deen’s canned peas in a pot recipe! Once Sandra Lee’s recipe for Easy Mac hits Food Network’s site, we’ll have ourselves a full fucking meal!
The Land O’ Lakes Indian Maiden’s adoptive mother, Paula Deen, is going to change your culinary life with her innovative recipe for English Peas…..which is more like Spears Peas (or Cyrus Peas). There’s a good chance it’s much too complicated for your ass to conquer. If that’s the case, just melt the butter and serve it in a plastic tub. Or you know, you can just throw a half stick of butter on the table and let everyone scratch each other’s eyes out for a piece. That’s how the Deen family does it, I’m sure. And really, only half a stick of butter? That must be a typo. Paula clearly meant half a carton of butter.
Just like with Rachael Ray’s complex bacon recipe that will win her a James Beard Award this year, the comments in Paula’s recipe are the best ingredient! Examples:
You need to be clearer in your recipes. I melted the butter with a small amount of pot (about two joints’ worth in the microwave then added the peas. Since I only cooked until the peas were warm the marijuana was still basically raw. The stems made it really unpleasant. Perhaps in the future you could substitute “saucepan” for “pot”. It’s confusing. – rudyrucksack This was outstanding! I did make a couple modifications. I eliminated the butter, and in place of the peas I substituted one can of Chef Boyardee spaghetti and meatballs. – paschabloomington Whoa, whoa, whoa Paula. This is really complicated for me. Now…A half stick of butter? See, this is why I’l never be as good of a cook as you. As I was cutting the butter I had no idea that my friend was using the Necronomicon in the other room. As I did I unleashed an old God into that stick of butter. I morphed into a terrible butter demon of 1,000 horrors. Thinking quickly I used it’s only weakness against it…a heated butter knife. I sliced at the creature and it screams echoed like the wail of millions of banshee’s. – number17
Sandra Lee, it’s time to step up to the hot plate and show these bitches how lazy is really done.
Source: FNH via FarkDisembodied, badly equalized and with no musical cues or ambient sound around it, the nonetheless recognizable voice of Kevin Spacey in sneering antihero mode fuzzes over the computer speakers. "You think that you can just march into these countries based on some fundamentalist religious principles, drop a few bombs, topple a dictator and start a democracy?" he asks. "Ha! Gimme a break." A strange humming noise follows.
That audio clip, with no context, surfaced in May. A new episode of House of Cards, perhaps? An Aaron Sorkin project? It took the Internet a few hours to figure it out. When you ran the clip through a spectrogram(!), the waveform made by the hum at the end resolved into a picture of a soldier carrying a gun into battle in a pose instantly familiar to players of Activision's decade-plus-old video game franchise, Call of Duty. Which is to say, everybody.
The wildly popular game has earned Activision some $10 billion over its lifetime, which began in 2003, making it one of the most lucrative gaming franchises in history–with corporate siblings World of Warcraft and Skylanders among the others. For its 2011 iteration, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, the company says it hosted 1.5 million concurrent players on the first day of release.
The larger operating unit of Activision Blizzard, Activision is run by former Deutsch LA co-CEO Eric Hirshberg, who assumed the CEO job in 2010 and hasn't looked back. "It's been a huge learning experience and very satisfying to be working on a creative product further upstream," Hirshberg says. "In advertising, all you get to do is influence the message and the way a product is positioned and communicated. But as we know from the ad business, a lot of times there isn't something special or differentiating baked into the product itself. And this is a chance for me to influence that and make sure that the things that we were actually launching were created different before communication ever began."
In marketing terms, it's tempting to think of Call of Duty as basically a film franchise, but that's wrong. It is true that, much like a movie studio, Activision manages the campaigns leading up to the latest release of the game each November (this year, Nov. 4) with teasers starting six months out, the rollout of a big launch trailer, and integrations across everything from last year's Eminem album to this year's partnership with Vice Media (a documentary sponsored by Activision about the leaders of the mercenary industry upon whom Spacey's character is modeled). But it is a year-round enterprise, with new maps, add-ons and fun stuff made available for purchase every few weeks between game launches. For each marketing blowout–whose centerpiece is a flashy trailer from 72andSunny–there are four smaller, targeted campaigns.
It's a good year to talk about strategy with Hirshberg and Tim Ellis, the company's CMO, because Activision is pulling out all the stops on Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. The latest game has a new lead developer for the first time since 2005 (Sledgehammer Games, joining the alternating teams of Treyarch and Infinity Ward after working with the latter on CoD: Modern Warfare 3), and is going in a slightly more science-fictional direction. The series' hallmark has always been realism down to the last detail (Activision likes to play up the Pentagon's input into the games), but the new guns and tanks look more like they're on loan from the R&D division than the armory. In all honesty, the ripped-from-the-headlines thing doesn't always pay off. CoD: Black Ops 2 created a certain amount of controversy when Activision brought on Iran-Contra planner Oliver North as a consultant, and Manuel Noriega was less than thrilled with his cameo in Ghosts and is now suing the company. (Activision's official line, from none other than Rudy Giuliani, who represented the firm: "Manuel Noriega had no more than an inconsequential appearance in Call of Duty and isn't entitled to anything for his role as a brutal dictator.")
This time around, the most notable addition to the game is Spacey–a guy arguably more famous than either North or Noriega, and for much less scandalous reasons. Call of Duty's ads have a history of using Hollywood stars–Jonah Hill and Sam Worthington starred in a spot, directed by Peter Berg, for CoD: Modern Warfare 3. The developers also employ tinseltown production talent: screenwriters Stephen Gaghan (Syriana, Traffic) and David S. Goyer (The Dark Knight) have penned storylines for campaigns. Just last week, Los Angeles creative agency Ant Farm won a Grand Key Art Award in the audio/visual category from The Hollywood Reporter and the Clio Awards for its work on the Call of Duty campaign.
For Advanced Warfare, Hirshberg says, Activision wanted a face everyone would recognize. Spacey was at the top of the wish list. "He's a guy who's done some really enterprising things in terms of getting involved with different media," Hirshberg notes. "Doing a high-quality HBO-style show for Netflix is now a no-brainer; when he did it, it was a huge zag and unheard of."
The relationship is beneficial to both Activision and Spacey, according to Hirshberg. "We put him in front of a new audience who might not be familiar with some of his iconic films in another situation where he's trailblazing, being an actor on his level, a two-time Oscar winner in a completely new medium," he says.
Part of the reason the series is changing is because, frankly, it needs to. Last year's installment, CoD: Ghosts, was not as well-received as other launches. And with next-generation gaming systems (Xbox One, Sony PlayStation 4) comes the next generation of play mechanics, and a much more open playing field. World of Warcraft is a major source of revenue for Activision Blizzard, but that income has declined along with its subscriber base. Activision is hedging its bets–a little. It commissioned a well-received multiplayer shooter game, Destiny, from Bungie, the studio that developed Microsoft's popular Halo franchise. But considering that the blockbuster game market caters primarily to people who buy two, maybe three games in a year, might Destiny eat into CoD's margins? Hirshberg insists that it won't. And as Cowen Group analyst Doug Creutz puts it: "If you're going to get eaten, you'd rather cannibalize yourself."
Creutz personally looks forward to playing the latest CoD. "It's futuristic and there's a greater emphasis on mobility in the player versus player, and Call of Duty lives and dies on the player versus player," he says. But the quality of the new title, he adds, might not matter. "It's hard to get people to come back even if you do a better job this time around. If my friends have moved on to something else, I'm going to play that," he says. The splashy Hollywood production values are there to attract new gamers, and that's always the balancing act for a game the size of Call of Duty: how to maintain both a massive fan base and manage churn by keeping the product appealing to a general audience.
Call of Duty is in a league by itself. Grand Theft Auto, BioShock Infinite, XCOM–all are great games, but their audiences remain limited because, even when they do incredible sales, they don't come out every year. Titles that do come out every year, like FIFA, don't change much. "Call of Duty is a little different because it's such a mass market product," Creutz says. "The rest of the industry is so niche-y, and it takes so long to launch."
As Ellis puts it, "We have to treat every launch as our comeback, and we can't just go in there trying to top ourselves. We have to go into it with the mind-set that we need a radical leap forward every year of the franchise launch."
Creutz estimates that Call of Duty costs $50 million to $100 million to launch and market each year. (Activision declined to comment.) It would be very hard to spend too much, he says. "They're doing over $1 billion a year on this game, so whether they spend $50 million or $100 million to make it, it's a rounding error. You spend what you need to spend to make it great," Creutz says.
Accordingly, for the game's big celebrity-driven trailer this time around, the company tapped Taylor Kitsch, best known for playing Tim Riggins on NBC's Friday Night Lights and star, with Colin Farrell and Vince Vaughn, of the coming season of HBO's True Detective. Kitsch was an obvious choice, not just because of his fan base but also his relationship with Berg, who created Friday Night Lights. And he recently worked on Lone Survivor, another project with a heavy military presence on set. "Having worked with Navy SEALs, I'm very proud of the way I can handle a gun now," says Kitsch. With respect to Call of Duty, he says, "I just hope to keep throwing curveballs." And there are more balls in the air than ever before. "The game has changed," says Kitsch. "And I haven't been in it forever, but it's definitely different, especially given how much that foreign box office means. Sometimes it's a good 75-25, if not 80-20."
Overseas concerns don't just affect the movie business. Activision relies on the international market, too. China, in particular, is vast and slippery territory for the gaming companies, with borderline nonexistent enforcement of piracy laws and supply chain problems companies that operate solely in the American market never have to deal with–even taking into account the digital nature of the product.
That's why Hirshberg has a well-regarded internal division, Raven, working on solutions. "We're making a specific game from the ground up for the Chinese market," he says. "The business model is a little bit different. You make the content that's right for the Chinese market–it's primarily free to play and microtransaction based, but we're doing it with our triple-A, Western studios."
The Chinese CoD, in other words, will probably be a freely downloadable game through Chinese media giant Tencent in which a user pays a few renminbi for perks–bigger guns, better bombs, emergency backup. It probably will be smaller in terms of file size than the multi-gigabyte edition that comes on Blu-ray discs for PS4 and Xbox One. In many ways, it is the industry's next challenge. To make it in the key Chinese market, Activision has to produce a high-quality game that can be downloaded and played over spotty connections via old cables and overloaded networks run by local monopolies.
Then there's the obligation to respond to any hiccups quickly and well. One of the ways CoD has remained popular in the U.S. is through customer relationship management. Ellis, who worked for Volkswagen and Volvo prior to Activision, understands the importance of customer relations. "We're constantly asking ourselves how best to keep players happy and engaged and just keep them coming back and wanting more," he says. "And then, of course, how do you encourage them to express themselves through creation of user-generated content and other sorts of ambassador activities?"
The answer can be found in virtually every meeting space at Activision. Throughout the building, Ellis says, one can find these wise words scrawled across whiteboards: "No Douche Moves."Get the biggest Liverpool FC stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
Now Liverpool FC have agreed a £75m deal with Barcelona for the transfer of Luis Suarez, Brendan Rodgers and the transfer committee face a huge dilemma.
The dilemma is not just who to replace Suarez with, but how to replace him altogether.
READ: Luis Suarez £75m deal to Barcelona agreed
Over the years, plenty of clubs in world football have lost their star players for eye-watering fees. But how those fees have been used, and the success that followed, vastly differs.
Suarez’s move immediately evokes memories of Gareth Bale’s world-record transfer to Real Madrid last season; it also offers a firm reminder that money doesn't guarantee success after Tottenham’s misguided attempts to replace him with any player available.
Spurs is not an example to follow - but there are many precedents, both good and bad, which may help the Reds decide what to do with the money.
Option one: Reinvest in a lot of players in different positions
Case study: Tottenham Hotspur (2013/14)
Player sold: Gareth Bale (£85m, Real Madrid)
Players bought: Paulinho (£17m, Tottenham), Nacer Chadli (£7m, Twente), Roberto Soldado (£26m, Valencia), Etienne Capoue (£9m, Toulouse), Vlad Chirches (£8.5m, Steaua Bucharest), Christian Eriksen (£11.5m, Ajax), Erik Lamela (£26m, Roma)
What they did: Although Bale’s move to Madrid was not completed until until the final day of the transfer window, Spurs prepared early and brought in seven new players for over £100m, taking the option of strengthening the entire squad in defence, midfield and attack.
Soldado was the only established star who joined, while Lamela and Eriksen were two of the most wanted midfielders in world football. Paulinho, fresh from a good Confederations Cup with Brazil, was also an exciting acquisition.
How it turned out: Andre Villas-Boas lost his job by December after a 5-0 drubbing to Liverpool at White Hart Lane as the club failed to recover from the loss of the talismanic Welshman. Soldado struggled to score in the Premier League and Lamela spent his season homesick; only Eriksen was an unquestionable success.
With so many new players, team cohesion on the pitch lacked, and the Portuguese boss didn’t get much chance to integrate them; furthermore, with no direct replacement for Bale designed to do what he did, the team lost a lot. Tim Sherwood, who took charge after Villas-Boas’ dismissal, didn’t fare much better.
What this would mean for Liverpool: With Suarez gone and a small squad, the Reds could look to add players all across the pitch. But with the style of football Brendan Rodgers plays, only a certain calibre would bring success - that would come with quality, not quantity.
On the other hand... Roma received 30m euros for central defender Marquinhos, who moved to Paris St-Germain, last summer. With that money, in came some excellent - and relatively low-key - players like Kevin Strootman, Mehdi Benatia, Gervinho, Adem Ljajic and Mattia Destro. Having finished sixth the previous season, Roma ended up second, playing some wonderful attacking football.
Option two: Don’t spend the majority of the fee; allow other current players to flourish
Case study: Manchester United (2009/10)
Player sold: Cristiano Ronaldo (£80m, Real Madrid)
Players bought: Antonio Valencia (16m, Wigan), Gabriel Obertan (Undisclosed, Bordeaux), Mame Biram Diouf (Undisclosed, Molde), Michael Owen (free transfer)
What they did: After losing Ronaldo, who scored 66 league goals in the three years before his move, United decided to tweak their system and instead focus on maximising Wayne Rooney’s potential by building the team around him.
While Valencia came for a big fee from Wigan, it represented less than a quarter of what United received for their Portuguese star - and he was a completely different type of wide man than the all-action Ronaldo. Diouf and Obertan were signings with the future in mind, while Owen was an opportunistic purchase. With 24 clean sheets the previous season, the defence remained untouched.
How it turned out: Pretty well for Rooney, not so well for United. The Scouse striker scored 26 league goals - 15 more than the previous season - despite the fact he missed the final two months of the season through injury. It was his best season at Old Trafford at that point as he relished the extra responsibility following Ronaldo’s departure.
But despite that, the triumvirate of Rooney, Ronaldo and Carlos Tevez had been broken up with Tevez also departing United, opting to join rivals Manchester City instead. It meant that a team who came so close to the treble in 2009 finished 2009/10 with just the League Cup, losing the title on goal difference to Chelsea and suffering Champions League elimination at the quarter final stage. The spark of Ronaldo was very much missing.
What this would mean for Liverpool: Step forward Daniel Sturridge. The England striker scored 21 league goals last season playing alongside Suarez, and could improve even further with the focus solely on him. His progression under Rodgers was evident last season, and the Northern Irishman could extract even more potential out of him.
On the other hand... Atletico Madrid received a huge fee for Radamel Falcao from Monaco but spent just a small portion of that on first-team players, David Villa and Toby Alderweireld. They chose to make Diego Costa the focal point of attack instead of playing off the Colombian, and it paid off spectacularly. Costa scored 27 league goals - he bagged 10 the season before - as Atletico won La Liga and reached the Champions League final.
Option three: Spend a portion on a direct replacement
Case study: Napoli (2013/14)
Player sold: Edinson Cavani (£55m, Paris St-Germain)
Players bought: Gonzalo Higuain (£29.5m, Real Madrid), Dries Mertens (£7.5m, PSV Eindhoven), Jose Callejon (£7.5m, Real Madrid), Raul Albiol (£9.5m, Valencia)
What they did: The departure of Uruguayan hitman Cavani was a big worry for Napoli given he had scored 78 goals in three Serie A seasons, so Rafael Benitez sought to replace him with a like-for-like replacement. In came Real Madrid striker Gonzalo Higuain, another South American relentless in front of goal, and one who broke the 20-goal mark in three of his five seasons at the Bernabeu.
The change of manager saw a slight change of system, but the overall aim remained the same - supply the striker with chances and he will score.
How it turned out: Quite well. There can be a debate whether Cavani or Higuain is the better striker - but Higuain cost less and is a year younger, so it immediately represents decent business on that front. He only scored 17 league goals - less than any of Cavani’s three seasons at San Paolo - but his presence helped Napoli to the Coppa Italia; they also finished third with 78 points, the same points tally as 2012/13, and scored more goals overall.
What this would mean for Liverpool: With Alexis Sanchez keen on Arsenal, there are not many players out there who can come close to ticking every box Suarez did. The Reds will have to find a striker who can play up front, out wide and even as a number 10 - all at once.
On the other hand... Parma sold Hernan Crespo to Lazio for a world-record fee in 2000 after the Argentine scored 80 goals in four seasons. In came Savo Milosevic, who flopped at Aston Villa but rediscovered his form with Real Zaragoza. Unfortunately for Parma, he only scored nine goals in two full seasons before leaving the club.
Option four: Supplement squad with three or four top signings
Case study: Borussia Dortmund (2013/14)
Player sold: Mario Gotze (£29.5m, Bayern Munich)
Players bought: Henrikh Mkhitaryan (£20m, Shakhtar Donetsk), Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang (£10.3m, St-Etienne), Sokratis Papastathopoulos (£7.5m, Werder Bremen)
What they did: Losing wunderkid Gotze could have signalled the end of Jurgen Klopp’s high-intensity, progressive style of football - but the club reacted by strengthening the first 11 in positions that needed it and with players who fit the profile of the club.
Mkhitaryan had enjoyed a superb season in Ukraine, while Aubameyang had become one of Ligue 1’s most exciting attacking talents; Sokratis, meanwhile, brought a physicality to Klopp’s defence. All three were players required to improve the starting line-up and strengthened the overall 11 - in theory.
How it turned out: As well as could be hoped considered they sold Gotze to title rivals Bayern, who also invested in Thiago Alcantara to join the treble-winning side. Gotze’s craft was replaced by Mkhitaryan, who notched 10 assists, while Aubameyang’s directness brought 13 goals from the right-hand side. Sokratis would also oversee a better season defensively.
Dortmund would miss Gotze of course - they only reached the quarter finals of the Champions League instead of the final as they did in 2012/13 - but the gap between themselves and Bayern actually shortened. They were also unfortunate to lose the German cup final to Pep Guardiola’s side.
What this would mean for Liverpool: A full back, a centre back, somebody with the creativity of Suarez and possibly somebody else who can share the 31-goal burden he’s leaving. This, admittedly, looks the likliest choice.
On the other hand... Juventus went one better than Dortmund and improved after selling Zinedine Zidane to Real Madrid for a world-record fee, while also losing Pippo Inzaghi to AC Milan. After finishing second with Zidane and Inzaghi in 2001, the Italian giants would win the league after bringing in Gianluigi Buffon, Lilian Thuram, Pavel Nedved and Marcelo Salas.
Option five: Do (almost) nothing
Case study: Real Sociedad (2013/14)
Player sold: Asier Illarramendi (£34m, Real Madrid)
Players bought: Haris Seferovic (£1.6m, Fiorentina), Sergio Canales (£3.6m, Valencia, January window)
What they did: When the inevitability of losing their young star to one of La Liga’s big two became reality, Sociedad were preparing for a tilt at the Champions League. Having managed to keep Antoine Griezmann and Carlos Vela, the Basque side decided to not replace the midfield metronome, instead bringing in inexperienced Swiss striker Haris Seferovic.
Canales would join later in January, but it was 21-year-old Ruben Pardo who was given more minutes to fill the gap.
How it turned out: From fourth to seventh, Sociedad saw all their good work from the previous season undone, finishing 11 points behind fourth-placed Athletic Bilbao. They would also finish bottom of their Champions League group with just a point.
What this would mean for Liverpool: Who knows? But would be inconceivable for the Reds to simply let Suarez leave without seeking to add to their attacking options - and it is very, very unlikely to happen, especially with Lazar Markovic set to complete a £25m deal.
On the other hand... It could be far, far worse. In 2001, Fiorentina sold Rui Costa to AC Milan to alleviate their fears over financial ruin - therefore opting to bank the money in an attempt to save the club. After Enrico Chisea ruptured knee ligaments early in the season, the club struggled for goals and finished 17th - before subsequently going under that summer.
Note: There are also clubs who have sold their players and chosen not to reinvest into the squad, instead opting to distribute transfer fees received to other parts of the football club such as stadium running costs. Liverpool will begin work on the £75m project to expand the Main Stand later this year - but Suarez's fee is certain to be used on new recruits.
poll loading What should LFC do to replace Luis Suarez? 3000+ VOTES SO FAR Reinvest in a lot of players Allow other current players to flourish Spend a portion on a direct replacement Supplement squad Do nothing
More Liverpool FC news:
Re-read: Liverpool FC reporter James Pearce answers your questions
Suarez facing dilemma after appeal rejected by FIFA
Suarez ban upheld after FIFA reject Barca-bound striker's appealclick to enlarge Mike Koozmin/The S.F. Examiner
CCSF student Alondra Aragon, left, shakes hands with the school’s new special trustee, Guy Lease, who was introduced Monday.
City College of San Francisco took a big step toward restoring its elected board of trustees Monday amid a raucous protest that spilled into the news conference.
A new special trustee was announced to oversee the return of authority to the school's elected board, a process that will take a year shorter than initially planned.
Guy Lease, 70, the former longtime superintendent and president of Lake Tahoe Community College District with more than three decades of experience in education, was appointed by California Community Colleges Chancellor Brice Harris to succeed Robert Agrella as CCSF's special trustee with extraordinary powers.
Agrella, who is retiring, was first given the role of special trustee in summer 2013, after the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges sought to strip CCSF of its accreditation in a move that would have effectively closed the school. The commission has since been ordered by a San Francisco Superior Court judge to reconsider that decision, and the school remains open and fully accredited.
At a news conference Monday at CCSF's Ocean Avenue campus, Harris said the elected trustees will reassume full responsibility on or around July 1, instead of the previous deadline of July 2016.
But news of the latest special trustee and accelerated timeline for restoring the board was still met with outrage from several dozen CCSF students and professors, who held up banners and sang songs to demand immediate reinstatement of the elected trustees. The group even stormed the meeting where Lease and other school leaders were speaking.
"We want democracy! Go home! We don't need you!" protesters shouted as Harris turned over the microphone to Lease at the news conference.
Lease said he and CCSF Chancellor Art Tyler are in agreement with their intention to transition CCSF back to its elected trustees as soon as possible.
"I really believe in local control," Lease told the audience. "I hope to work myself out of a job very quickly."
In response, an audience member hollered, "Start today."
The news conference became even more heated when board of trustees President Rafael Mandelman thanked Agrella, who was not present. Students rushed the table where Harris, Lease, Mandelman and Tyler were sitting and confronted the leaders face to face.
"This is a community school. We're not going to listen to you anymore. This is our school," students declared loudly as CCSF leaders and trustees tried to continue addressing the audience.
Lease remained unfazed by the less-than-warm welcome and even carved out time after the news conference to speak with a student who had approached the table.
"I apologize if you feel attacked. We're not here to attack, we're here for you guys to hear us out," CCSF student Alondra Aragon, 19, explained to Lease. "I'm here to ask you, 'What are you going to do for our community here?'"
Nodding, Lease told Aragon, "I'm going to start by listening more, but I'm going to also be supportive of your chancellor because he's the one who will actually run this college. I don't run it, my job is to oversee the decisions that are being made."
Harris said the steps involved in restoring power to the elected trustees by this summer are similar to the original plan, and include determining milestones over the coming months. The board, which held its first official meeting in 18 months in December, is expected to begin making decisions in March or April.
Lease will maintain authority over trustee decisions for an undetermined amount of time after full authority is restored to the board, school officials said. His salary is $216,000 a year.
A product of a Texas community college himself, Lease comes to CCSF with 32 years of experience in California community colleges, including five interim stints at schools after retiring from his post at Lake Tahoe Community College District.
Lease said his time at Del Mar College, a community college in Corpus Christi, Texas, "changed my life dramatically." Lease eventually transfered to Rice University in Houston, then received a master's degree in business from the University of Utah and a doctorate from the University of Southern California, he said.
Lease has served as the chief executive of several colleges and college districts with demonstrated success in fiscal management, collective bargaining and accreditation — skills that will assist CCSF's board of trustees as they assume governance responsibilities, noted Harris.
"Dr. Lease is certainly uniquely qualified to oversee this process," Harris said.In February of 1967, The Beatles released a groundbreaking double A-side single. On one side was a Lennon song, “Strawberry Fields Forever,” that had been transformed in the studio thanks to the contributions of the other Beatles along with producer George Martin and engineer Geoff Emerick. On the other side, was McCartney’s imaginary stroll down one of Liverpool’s main thoroughfares, “Penny Lane.”
Like The Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations,” which had been released a few months earlier, “Penny Lane” kicks off with a vocal, skipping any kind of introduction. McCartney narrates the scene around Penny Lane with a wonderful, rolling melody over steady piano chords. Martin provides a score of brass and woodwinds to help conjure up the scene while Lennon and Harrison contribute background harmonies. McCartney pulls off a difficult songwriting feat by placing the verses and the choruses in neighboring keys (the verses are in B and the choruses are in A). At the end of the song, McCartney writes a key change so that the final chorus is in B, bringing the song full circle. Yet, it’s in the verse that McCartney injects a magical chord that helps make “Penny Lane” a case study in great songwriting. I’ll let you in on McCartney’s secret in this video.
– Scott Freiman
PS. You might also enjoy our upcoming film, “Deconstructing Revolver,” which opens on March 15, in most cases playing for only one night. You can see a list of theatres here. We’re adding theatres every day, so please check often. Here’s the trailer.
Other Posts You Might LikeUpcoming indie superstars Mimimi Productions present The Last Tinker: City of Colors.
A joyous platformer lovingly crafted in the image of all time classics such as Zelda, Jak and Daxter and Banjo Kazooie, The Last Tinker is a colorful adventure set in Colortown, a world built upon creativity, emotion and collaboration.
A dark force named The Bleakness has emerged and seeks to tear the colors apart, draining all joy and life from the world.
Koru, a young boy from the slums of Colortown, is forced to act. He embarks on an epic and one of a kind adventure to combat the Bleakness and to restore joy and color to his home.
© 2014 Daedalic Entertainment GmbH and Mimimi Productions UG. Daedalic and the Daedalic-Logo are trademarks of Daedalic Entertainment GmbH. All rights reserved.Two young men who sued Johnson & Johnson over a drug they claim caused them to grow female breasts say they are being denied justice because the courts are so clogged with similar lawsuits that they can’t get their day in court.
More than 6,000 lawsuits over the J&J drug Risperdal are pending in Philadelphia’s Complex Litigation Center, a court designed to handle mass injuries, according to court director Stanley Thompson.
Most of the lawsuits were filed on behalf of young boys who grew female breasts after taking Risperdal for a variety of reasons. Many of these boys – now young men – need money to pay for breast reduction surgery to lead normal lives.
“I don’t feel like there is any justice because of how long I’ve already had to wait and how long I’ve had the condition,” said Shawnee Wilson, 21, of South Carolina, who joined the litigation in 2013. “I can’t just keep wasting my life trying to cover up my condition because I want it gone. It bothers me every single day. I think about it, day in and day out.”
Jason Itkin, a lawyer with Arnold & Itkin in Houston representing more than 12,000 young men with abnormal breast growth has filed more than 4,000 claims against Johnson & Johnson in the Philadelphia court. He said his last trial began in April of 2017, and his next trial date isn’t until October of 2018.
“We are ready to try as many cases as the Court will allow. We certainly want to see these children have their day in Court.” Itkin said.
Thompson told the Clear View Post that 10 Risperdal cases are scheduled for trial over the six months from Oct. 23 to April 9.
At that pace, it would take hundreds of years for every person to get a jury trial.
Thompson declined to comment on how 6,000 plaintiffs can realistically expect to get their day in court. The court’s coordinating judge, Arnold New did not immediately return calls for comment.
But Paul Rheingold, a personal injury lawyer experienced in mass torts at Rheingold, Giuffra, Ruffo & Plotkin in New York, answered for them.
“Obviously, you can see they can’t,” Rheingold said.
Rheingold said a mass tort like the Risperdal case typically gets settled after enough cases have gone to trial to give the defendant, like J&J, a sense of the size of the average jury award.
“It’s what I call rough justice. There isn’t any other way,” Rheingold said.
J&J declined to comment to the Clear View Post on its settlement plans.
“We will continue to defend this litigation and try cases, as appropriate,” Kelsey Buckholtz, spokesperson for J&J subsidiary Janssen Pharmaceuticals, wrote in an emailed response to questions about its strategy.
The lawsuits claim that J&J knew but failed to warn the public that a significant percentage of boys who took the drug would grow large breasts, a condition called gynecomastia.
“I think Johnson & Johnson should really fess up that if they knew better, they knew better. I feel they should acknowledge all the lives they’ve basically ruined,” said Harold Audinwood, 29, of Elmira, N.Y., who joined the case in 2014.
J&J denies liability and insists that the public was adequately warned.
Wilson was prescribed Risperdal at age nine for attention deficit disorder. Like many victims, he became reclusive after his body became distorted.
“I can’t be a normal guy. I can’t have my shirt off out in public or go swimming. There’s a lot of things I’ve been invited to that I could not go because it might expose what’s wrong with me,” Wilson said.
Wilson is hoping to save enough money from his manufacturing job or receive a jury award to pay for his breast reduction surgery which he expects will cost $10,000.
“If I have this done, then I can begin my life. This is what has held me back,” Wilson said.
Audinwood said he was prescribed Risperdal at age 10 because of depression and aggressive acting out.
Considering that each lawsuit requires about four weeks of courtroom time for a jury trial, Audinwood said, “I’m not entirely sure my court case will ever make it to the actual court |
, on the other hand, publishes a novel. But really, this film uses writing as a jumping-off point to explore gender roles and gender, as it was perceived in the early ’80s.
16. The Hours (2002), directed by Stephen Daldry
“The Hours? More like the weeks!” said Liz Lemon in a 30 Rock episode, and she’s half-right in this case. Nicole Kidman puts on the fake nose in order to play Virginia Woolf, prepared to walk into the River Ouse with stones in her pockets, and the scenes are intercut with visions of women who can be considered Woolf’s daughters: Julianne Moore as an uptight, possibly lesbian housewife; Meryl Streep as a modern-day Mrs. Dalloway throwing a party.
15. Naked Lunch (1991), directed by David Cronenberg
“Joan Lee (the stalwart Judy Davis, one of only two women in the cast) is introduced injecting her chest with bug poison. ‘It’s a very literary high, it’s a Kafka high — you feel like a bug,’ she tells Bill [Burroughs]. To watch Davis idly kill roaches simply by breathing on them is to see the real Morticia Addams. Davis and [Peter] Weller are a pair of hollow-eyed cadavers — all the more so when, like the actual Burroughs, Bill Lee decides that it’s ‘time for our William Tell routine’ and, aiming for the glass on Joan’s head, undershoots it by several critical inches.” — From J. Hoberman’s Village Voice review
14. Starting Out in the Evening (2007), directed by Andrew Wagner
Frank Langella is a fine actor to play a writer, as he has an inner light that’s basically impossible to snuff out. In this adapation of Brian Morton’s great novel, he’s a 70-something nearly forgotten novelist, Leonard Schilling, and Lauren Ambrose is the ambitious grad student determined to bring Schilling back into the public conversation with his thesis. Something like May-December ensues, but it’s love as a thrillingly intellectual conversation that never ends.
13. Bright Star (2009), directed by Jane Campion
Jane Campion brings her inimitable eye to the story of John Keats and his love Fanny Brawne. They fall for each other, body and soul. There’s a section of the film where they send love letters to each other, and it may be one of the swooniest literary seductions on film. There’s magic in seeing the word-drunk romance of these two characters.
12. Young Adult (2011), directed by Jason Reitman
While this film got press for being about an unlikable character — which it is! Unapologetically! It’s great! — it’s also even better about the writing process; Charlize Theron’s Mavis is a successful ghostwriter for a teen series, and we see her process at work. Teen girls chatter in a Target, and she’s listening, and you can see her turning their minutia into dialogue and plot.
11. Certified Copy (2010), directed by Abbas Kiarostami
Perhaps Certified Copy is the ur-example of a movie that is about a writer stating what the thing is about, and the film echoing the shape of his words. In this case, it starts with a British writer giving a talk called “certified copy,” which says that authenticity is irrelevant in art since everything’s a copy… and regarding this writer’s mysterious relationship with Juliette Binoche, which waxes and wanes and playfully rearranges your mind over the course of the film, maybe that’s a copy too?
10. A Man For All Seasons (1966), directed by Fred Zinnemann
Sir Thomas More, author of Utopia, was a deeply principled man. A humanist. A saint. In this Best Picture-winning theatrical adaptation, we watch how More’s principles — he refused to let Henry VIII annul yet another marraige — shaped the outcome of his life. He was a man who revealed great morality and ethics in the process, and this stately film pays fine tribute.
9. The Shining (1980), directed by Stanley Kubrick
“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” A writer and a recovering alcoholic, Jack Torrance is on his last chance as the recently hired caretaker of the Overlook Hotel. But weird, Kubrickian shit keeps happening, and the mad visuals lead to one conclusion: this guy has a very bad case of writer’s block. The screenplay was co-written by Diane Johnson, the writer best known for the great book Le Divorce, and I’m sure she gave an authoritative perspective to Kubrick’s wild visions of writerly madness.
8. Providence (1977), directed by Alain Resnais
Do you want to know what a novelist’s mind feels like? This Resnais film does a good job of giving us a film that shows us a writer’s process. We meet aging literary lion Clive Langham, and little by little, over the course of the movie, we realize that all these scenes that make up his life — are the scenes that make up his novel. The result is beautiful and quite touching.
7. Sunset Boulevard (1950), directed by Billy Wilder
A classic of noir and Hollywood and pure, acid screenwriting, Wilder’s genius work depicts a faded silent screen star (“It’s the pictures that got small!”), played by Gloria Swanson, and her pas de deux with the unsuccessful screenwriter Joe Gillis (William Holden), who she draws into her web with promises of fame and fortune. But we start, of course, with Gillis’ body floating facedown in the pool, and Gillis’ voice on the soundtrack: “Yes, this is Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, California. It’s about five o’clock in the morning. That’s the Homicide Squad — complete with detectives and newspapermen. A murder has been reported…”
6. My Brilliant Career (1979), directed by Gillian Armstrong
Australia and New Zealand seem to be the countries that produce the best female-directed stories about female writers who find freedom in their work. What’s in the water down there? This Judy Davis-starrer is set in 19th century Australia, and it’s about a young woman named Sybylla, torn between two men. But, spoiler alert: she chooses something else, and becomes a writer. The result makes your heart leap.
5. Adaptation (2002), directed by Spike Jonze
This brilliant meta-comedy (something Americans are very good at when it comes to movies about writers) is about Charlie Kaufman (Nicolas Cage, wonderful) attempting to adapt Susan Orlean’s real-life book The Orchid Thief. He finds himself fighting a wicked case of writer’s block and a slovenly twin brother named Donald. Neurosis ensues, and wild comedy that involves Orlean (Meryl Streep was nominated for an Oscar for her role) and the Florida orchid thief Laroche (Chris Cooper, who did win the Oscar). Perhaps the only movie that involves a New Yorker writer doing crazy hallucinogenic drugs while also being pinpoint accurate about what goes on in most of a writer’s day (procrastination, masturbation).
4. An Angel at My Table (1990), directed by Jane Campion
A biography of the late Janet Frame, a writer from New Zealand, this stunning early film from Jane Campion is filled with her trademark eye and empathy. In three segments, Janet grows up working class, has a difficult childhood marred by shyness, and is (erroneously) diagnosed with schizophrenia and sent to a mental hospital. For the eight years she’s inside, she’s subject to electric shock therapy. Yet even while she’s away, her short stories end up published and award-winning, something that Frame hears about at the point that she’s scheduled for a partial lobotomy. She was released and would go onto become a brilliant New Zealand writer with a full career and vivid, beautiful life.
3. Wonder Boys (2000), directed by Curtis Hanson
Taking apart a great groaning bear of a second novel by Michael Chabon, Wonder Boys has Michael Douglas as Grady Tripp, a college professor and novelist stuck, magnificently, on his second novel. It depicts the long lost weekend that develops regarding some lost Marilyn Monroe-related collectibles and a dog, with Tripp’s louche agent (Robert Downey Jr.) and a promising prodigy of a student (Tobey Maguire) at his side. Very funny, and maybe one of the only movies that gets the literary life in the hub of a college fairly accurate, and accurately grubby.
2. Barton Fink (1991), directed by the Coen Brothers
The Coen brothers are merciless, hilarious gods when it comes to movies about the life of the mind, and Barton Fink may be their best and sickest work about “writer’s block” as a metaphor for blackly comic hell. With John Turturro and Coen muse John Goodman, it’s about a New York playwright (played by Turturro) who comes to Los Angeles for a chance to write in the movies. The results are surreal visions of dreams you might’ve had about 1940s Hollywood.
1. Reprise (2006), directed by Joachim Trier
Two young men, best friends, at a mailbox. They both have their manuscripts of their first novels in their hands. They drop them in the box with all the hope in the world. Phillip’s manuscript is accepted, and he’s instantly a literary sensation. Erik’s is rejected. From here, the story goes to places sad and surprising, as Phillip’s success doesn’t mean he can run away from his mental and emotional problems, and Erik searches, fruitlessly, for something like talent. Joachim Trier’s staggering debut is filmed with the zeal and joy of the French New Wave, and by intelligently interrogating why we create and what it does for us (the camera doing the same thing at the same time), it creates its own magic around storytelling, writers, and its collage-like portrait of the artist as a young man.Hacking group fail0verflow has announced that PS4 owners can now successfully use the console to boot a Linux kernel-based operating system. While the group had been running Linux on the console for months now, this is the first time they have made the exploit public. Find out how you can put Linux on your PS4 below.
It's worth noting that with the released kexec loader and kernel (and an exploit) you should be able to replicate our 32c3 demo. — fail0verflow (@fail0verflow) March 3, 2016
The 32c3 demo they’re referring to here is the demo that was shown at the 32nd Chaos Communication Congress event, held on 30 December 2015. The demo ran Gentoo with Linux kernel 4.4, systemd 228, using the Xfce desktop environment, which is fairly light on resources.
In order to boot Linux on your PS4, you first need to make sure you have firmware version 1.76 and the ps4-kexec loader, as well as the ps4-linux kernel forked from Linus Torvalds’ branch. Finally, you’ll need the leaked PS4 BadIRET kernel exploit. Having some experience in compiling kernels helps, too.
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Are you going to run Linux on your PS4? What are you going to do with it? Let us know in the comments below.Ocean Springs, MS -- A grandmother made me rethink all the bio-remediation hype. The "naturally-occurring oil-eating bacteria" have been newsworthy of late as they are supposedly going to come to the rescue of President Obama and BP and make good on their very premature statement that "the oil is gone."
We were talking about subsurface oil in the Gulf when she said matter-of-factly, "The bacteria are running amok with the dispersants." What? "Those oil-eating bacteria -- I think they're running amok and causing skin rashes." My mind reeled. Could we all have missed something so simple?
The idea was crazy but, in the context of the Gulf situation -- an outbreak of mysterious persistent rashes from southern Louisiana across to just north of Tampa, Florida, coincident with BP's oil and chemical release, it seemed suddenly worthy of investigating.
I first heard about the rash from Sheri Allen in Mobile, Alabama. Allen wrote of red welts and blisters on her legs after "splashing and wading on the shoreline" of Mobile Bay with her two dogs on May 8. She reported that "hundreds of dead fish" washed up on the same beach over the following two days. This was much too early for the summer sun to have warmed the water to the point of oxygen depletion, but not too early for dispersants and dispersed oil to be mixed into the Gulf's water mass. By early July, Allen's rash had healed, leaving black bruises and scarring.
A mysterious persistent skin rash has occurred across the Gulf, coincident with BP's release of oil and chemical dispersants. Mobile, Alabama, resident Sheri Allen was one of the first to report its occurrence in early May. (Photo: Sheri Allen)
Sheri Allen's rash had largely healed by July 2, leaving bruises and scarring, similar to other reports across the Gulf. (Photo: Sheri Allen)
Other people -- both residents and visitors to the Gulf Coast -- wrote of similar rashes or other skin problems like peeling palms. The rashes have been diagnosed as scabies and staph infections, including MRSA, the potentially lethal Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus bacteria. Most cases lingered for months, as the rash did not respond well to antibiotics, steroid creams, or steroid shots.
Medical doctors are diagnosing skin rashes on Gulf visitors and residents alike as scabies and staph infections, including MRSA (this photo, identity protected). The rashes resist prescribed treatments and often reoccur for months. (Photo permission: Riki Ott)
Normal looking scabies contrasts sharply with the Gulf cases. (Photo: provided by Nurse Ali Schmidt)
That should have been a clue that maybe the primary cause was not biological, but chemical. A secondary biological infection might clear up with antibiotic treatment, but then keep reoccurring because the primary chemical illness had not been treated.
Retired Registered Nurse Allison Schmidt agrees. Referring to Allen's case, she said, "I can say without hesitation that these skin rashes have nothing to do with scabies. Scabies is a parasite, which causes a skin infection and is extremely contagious. It spreads from person to person by direct skin contact or by wearing an article of clothing worn by an infected person." Schmidt said, "If this were scabies you would see entire families infected and NOT just a single family member."
Another clue to the real cause of the mystery rash is its prevalence across the entire oil-impacted Gulf. Something in the water or air, or both, could explain this. While public officials and BP claim that dispersant use was halted in May for Corexit 9527A and on July 19 for Corexit 9500A, evidence collected by Gulf residents has shown that dispersants are being used in nearshore and inland waters, close to highly populated areas across the Gulf. Further, oil and the Corexit marker have been found in air and inland water.
Despite denial by public officials and BP, evidence mounts of continued dispersant use in inland and nearshore waters near populated areas across the Gulf. Private contractor in Carolina Skiff with tank of Corexit dispersant, August 10, south of Pass Christian Harbor, Mississippi, 9:30 AM. (Photo: Don Tillman)
I have heard from Gulf residents and visitors who developed a rash or peeling palms from contact with Gulf water, including such activities as swimming or wading, getting splashed, handling oiled material or dead animals without gloves, and shucking crabs from the recently opened Gulf fisheries. I have also heard from people who developed the same symptoms after contact with Gulf air by wiping an oily film off their airplane's leading edges after flying over the Gulf (absorbent pad tested positive for oil) or swimming in outdoor pools, or splashing in puddles, after it rained.
Outraged by the unprecedented release of oil and toxic chemicals in the Gulf, Nurse Schmidt and Mike McDowell developed a project to test Gulf rainwater for harmful chemicals. Schmidt said, "We are convinced the chemicals used in the Gulf to help disperse oil have evaporated and will eventually come down mixed with the rain."
Another clue, more like a condemnation, is that NOAA and EPA decided to use dispersants in the Gulf without considering what harm the chemicals and dispersed oil might do to people, specifically, the general public. Dr. Sylvia Earle, former chief scientist of NOAA, and other scientists, criticized the agencies' decision, in part, based on concern about harm to human health. Other scientists have also criticized the agencies' decision. Citing the National Academy of Sciences, a Texas Tech University professor testified in Congress that the chemicals break down cell walls, making organisms (including people) more susceptible to oil. The professor called the Gulf an "eco-toxicological experiment," which is inexcusable, because OSHA has known about harm from solvent exposure since at least 1987. Don't these federal agencies talk amongst themselves -- or with others?
Which all brings me back to the grandmother. After talking with her, I've been reading about bacteria, and I now think the Great Gulf Experiment is going very badly for humans. One can only wonder about the rest of the ecosystem.
There are two distinct types of bacteria based on the structure of their cell walls. Gram-positive bacteria have a single-membrane cell wall, while Gram-negative bacteria have a double-membrane cell wall. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bacteria are "Gram-positive," while the oil-eating bacteria are Gram-negative.
But! A component of the double-membrane cell wall structure of Gram-negative bacteria can irritate human skin, causing inflammation and activating the immune system. In other words, oil-eating bacteria, just because they are Gram-negative, can cause skin rashes. In the case of Alcanivorax borkumensis, the reaction can erupt on the skin like MRSA infections.
To make things a little scarier, some of the oil-eating bacteria have been genetically modified, or otherwise bioengineered, to better eat the oil -- including Alcanivorax borkumensis and some of the Pseudomonas. Oil-eating bacteria produce bio-films. According to Nurse Schmidt, studies have found that bio-films are rapidly colonized (p. 97) by other Gram-negative bacteria -- including those known to infect humans.
Scientists anticipated early on that the Gulf leak would cause populations of oil-eating bacteria to soar. Still, infections are not likely in healthy people. However, exposure to oil weakens a person's immune system function, as does the mental stress of dealing with disaster trauma. And then there are people who are more at risk than others to bacterial infections, especially when first challenged with oil and solvent exposure. This includes children, people with cystic fibrosis or asthma, and African Americans (who are prone to blood disorders), to name a few.
Is this the perfect storm -- an exploding population of opportunistic Gram-negative bacteria (some natural, some not), millions of gallons of food (oil) for the bacteria, and a susceptible population of stressed-out people?
Perhaps. If the outbreak of skin rashes across the Gulf is any indication, the health care providers, media, and Congress ought to be taking a hard look at this question. Further, people ought to be connecting the dots to illnesses that surfaced in Exxon Valdez spill responders and to the illnesses occurring now in Michigan residents coping with the Enbridge oil pipeline spill.
In the Gulf, Nurse Schmidt believes:
This is like a major bacterial storm. It could be the reason we are seeing a variance of symptoms in different individuals. In some people, we see respiratory complications, while in others we see skin or GI symptoms. I think it is due to a multitude of colonized bacteria -- which may have been triggered by BP's disaster.poster="http://v.politico.com/images/1155968404/201602/1766/1155968404_4739022793001_Bernie-Sanders-video-.jpg?pubId=1155968404" true A new Bernie Sanders ad released on Thursday. Sanders campaign revises ad ripped as 'deceptive'
Bernie Sanders’ campaign on Thursday released a revised advertisement that no longer suggests he was endorsed by a New Hampshire newspaper.
The 30-second spot, titled “Endorsed,” shows that the American Postal Workers Union, National Union of Healthcare Workers and National Nurses United have backed the Vermont senator and touts additional endorsements throughout.
Story Continued Below
But it no longer claims the Valley News has given an official endorsement. “The Valley News says, ‘Sanders has been genuinely outraged about the treatment of ordinary Americans for as long as we can remember,’” the narrator says as the newspaper's name, quote and date appear on screen with a shot of a Sanders rally in the background. An “endorsed by” label no longer appears by the Valley News, though.
The ad still does, however, flash a quote from the Nashua Daily Telegraph — "He is not beholden to Wall Street money" — though it does not explicitly say the paper endorsed Sanders.
Before the edits, the executive editor of that newspaper, Roger Carroll, denounced the ad as "deceptive":
For the record, despite @BernieSanders deceptive ad to the contrary, @NashuaTelegraph has not endorsed any Dem prez candidate #nhpolitics — Roger Carroll (@Telegraph_Rog) February 3, 2016
Gabriel Debenedetti contributed.Prophet is a lightweight schemaless database designed for peer to peer replication and disconnected operation. Prophet keeps a full copy of your data and (history) on your laptop, desktop or server. Prophet syncs when you want it to, so you can use Prophet-backed applications whether or not you have network.
SD (Simple Defects) is a peer-to-peer issue tracking system built on top of Prophet. In addition to being a full-fledged distributed bug tracker, SD can also bidirectionally sync with your RT, Hiveminder, Trac, GitHub or Google Code issue tracker.
Today marks the public release of "Cavil", the first versions of SD and Prophet which are ready for general use (though we've been using SD to keep track of its own bugs for over a year). Cavil is the culmination of 16 months of work and includes contributions from at least 20 developers:
A. Christine Spang, Alec Clews, Alex Vandiver, Arjen Laarhoven, c9s, Casey West, Chia-liang Kao, Florian Ragwitz, Franck Cuny, Hans Dieter Pearcey, Kang-min Liu, Kevin Falcone, Robert Krimen, Ruslan Zakirov, Shawn Moore, Simon Wistow, sunnavy, Will Thompson, Yanick Champoux
Two contributors deserve special mention:
First, I'd like to thank Christine Spang. Over the past two summers, she's done an astonishing job of making SD (and Prophet) friendlier and easier to use, better documented and better tested. She successfully got us from "oh yeah, we should have a public release eventually" to today. Thanks, Christine!
Second, I'd like to thank my partner in crime Chia-liang Kao. CL and I designed and wrote 8000 lines of code which formed the core of what became Prophet and SD over the course of a marathon 8 day hackathon.
Prophet and SD should be considered "beta" quality software. They're unlikely to lose data and we've found that they work well for us. Database formats are considered to be stable and we'll go to great lengths to ensure upgradability to new released versions from today forward.
SD supports custom ticket properties, comments and attachments. It uses Prophet's "social" conflict resolution system to ease collaborative work and keep full change history for each and every ticket update. SD ships with both a web interface and a scriptable CLI. It integrates with git and Darcs. In addition to the sync plugins mentioned above, SD ships with read-only support for Redmine. A bidirectional Lighthouse sync plugin is forthcoming.
Prophet and SD are available from CPAN:
http://search.cpan.org/dist/Prophet
http://search.cpan.org/dist/App-SD
Those interested in contributing patches back to Prophet/SD or just living on the bleeding edge can download directly from git via GitHub:
http://github.com/bestpractical/prophet/tree/master
http://github.com/bestpractical/sd/tree/master
Find out more about Prophet and SD at: http://syncwith.us/
Prophet and SD development is sponsored by Best Practical Solutions, LLC. Prophet and SD are released as free, open source software under the MIT license.
If you have questions about Prophet or SD, join us on #prophet on chat.freenode.net or join one of our (currently very low volume mailing lists):
[email protected]
[email protected]
Thanks!
Jesse Vincent
Best PracticalThe “bu” tool is obsolete, which makes this post not-so-useful. Look at this file instead.
The command line utility “bu” (for “Bitcoin utilities”) is included with my Python-based pycoin library. This utility makes it easy to deal with Bitcoin private keys and addresses in their native and various intermediate formats. Let’s go through some examples.
The most basic form of a Bitcoin private key is simply an integer between 1 and 115792089237316195423570985008687907852837564279074904382605163141518161494336 ≅ 1.15e77 (inclusive). That’s it! This integer is a “secret exponent”, because generating the public key involves exponentiation, and there is no known way to go from the public key to the secret exponent.
Let’s take a look at the very first private key, also known as “1”.
$ bu 1 secret exponent: 1 hex: 1 WIF: KwDiBf89QgGbjEhKnhXJuH7LrciVrZi3qYjgd9M7rFU73sVHnoWn uncompressed: 5HpHagT65TZzG1PH3CSu63k8DbpvD8s5ip4nEB3kEsreAnchuDf public pair x: 55066263022277343669578718895168534326250603453777594175500187360389116729240 public pair y: 32670510020758816978083085130507043184471273380659243275938904335757337482424 x as hex: 79be667ef9dcbbac55a06295ce870b07029bfcdb2dce28d959f2815b16f81798 y as hex: 483ada7726a3c4655da4fbfc0e1108a8fd17b448a68554199c47d08ffb10d4b8 y parity: even key pair as sec: 0279be667ef9dcbbac55a06295ce870b07029bfcdb2dce28d959f2815b16f81798 uncompressed: 0479be667ef9dcbbac55a06295ce870b07029bfcdb2dce28d959f2815b16f81798\ 483ada7726a3c4655da4fbfc0e1108a8fd17b448a68554199c47d08ffb10d4b8 hash160: 751e76e8199196d454941c45d1b3a323f1433bd6 uncompressed: 91b24bf9f5288532960ac687abb035127b1d28a5 Bitcoin address: 1BgGZ9tcN4rm9KBzDn7KprQz87SZ26SAMH uncompressed: 1EHNa6Q4Jz2uvNExL497mE43ikXhwF6kZm
You can see from blockchain.info that the addresses corresponding to this private key (1BgGZ9tcN4rm9KBzDn7KprQz87SZ26SAMH and 1EHNa6Q4Jz2uvNExL497mE43ikXhwF6kZm) are used a lot in tests. Of course, neither has any funds in it (well, at least not at this time), since draining the funds is as simple as entering one of the WIF values above into a Bitcoin client.
There is a bunch of information here. The secret exponent is displayed in decimal and in hex.
The corresponding WIF ("wallet import format") key is displayed, both in compressed and uncompressed format; with this information, you can import the corresponding bitcoin address into your client. Note that the WIF simply contains the exponent encoded using "hashed base 58".
The "hashed base 58" encoding is used to represent an integer with a checksum for validity. A 32-bit checksum is appended to the binary form of the integer, forming another integer. This integer is then represented in base 58 using the alphabet of all digits and all letters of the upper and lower case English alphabet except 0, o, O and l (presumably left out because of potential confusion).
So encoding the WIF in this format really provides no additional (non-redundant) information beyond the secret exponent.
The public pair x and y correspond to the ECDSA (elliptical curve digital signature algorithm) public key that is used to verify digital signatures. Bitcoin clients use public keys to validate that transactions are signed by an entity that has knowledge of the corresponding secret exponent. The x, y value is on the elliptical curve used by bitcoin. In other words
y*y = x*x*x + 7 (mod P) where P = 0xfffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffefffffc2f
You can check this easily in Python:
$ python Python 3.3.0 (default, Mar 21 2013, 20:48:16) [GCC 4.2.1 Compatible Apple Clang 4.0 ((tags/Apple/clang-421.0.60))] on darwin Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. >>> p = 0xfffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffefffffc2f >>> y = 32670510020758816978083085130507043184471273380659243275938904335757337482424 >>> x = 55066263022277343669578718895168534326250603453777594175500187360389116729240 >>> (x*x*x+7) % p 32748224938747404814623910738487752935528512903530129802856995983256684603122 >>> (y * y) % p 32748224938747404814623910738487752935528512903530129802856995983256684603122 >>> print "ta da!" ta da!
For a given x value, you can rewrite as y = sqrt(x^3+7) (mod P). Since numbers have two square roots even in a finite field, there are two values y0 and y1 that satisfy this equation, where y1 = P - y0. Since P is odd, exactly one of y0 and y1 is even, and the other is odd. In other words, with x and knowledge of whether y is even or odd, we can figure out the value for y. (This is how compressed keys work... they include the value for x along with a boolean indicating even or odd rather than the full value for y.)
The SEC ("Standards for Efficient Cryptography") format provides an alternate way of encoding the public key. This is the internal format that Bitcoin uses in transaction signatures to encode public keys. There is an uncompressed format, which has a prefix of a single 04 byte, followed by the x and y coordinates, and a compressed format, which has a prefix of 02 or 03 depending upon whether the y coordinate is even or odd, followed by the x coordinate.
The hash160 value is the ripemd160 hash of the sha256 hash of the bytestream of the sec version of the key.
$ python Python 2.7.2 (default, Oct 11 2012, 20:14:37) [GCC 4.2.1 Compatible Apple Clang 4.0 (tags/Apple/clang-418.0.60)] on darwin Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. >>> import binascii, hashlib >>> sec = "0279be667ef9dcbbac55a06295ce870b07029bfcdb2dce28d959f2815b16f81798" >>> binascii.hexlify(hashlib.new("ripemd", hashlib.sha256(binascii.unhexlify(sec)).digest()).digest()) '751e76e8199196d454941c45d1b3a323f1433bd6'
The Bitcoin address is the hashed base 58 representation of the hash160 value.
The bu utility will accept input in nearly any format, automatically determining the input type, and display output of all values that can calculated. (Obviously if you enter a Bitcoin address, you won't get the corresponding WIF!)
$ bu 55066263022277343669578718895168534326250603453777594175500187360389116729240,32670510020758816978083085130507043184471273380659243275938904335757337482424 public pair x: 55066263022277343669578718895168534326250603453777594175500187360389116729240 public pair y: 32670510020758816978083085130507043184471273380659243275938904335757337482424 x as hex: 79be667ef9dcbbac55a06295ce870b07029bfcdb2dce28d959f2815b16f81798 y as hex: 483ada7726a3c4655da4fbfc0e1108a8fd17b448a68554199c47d08ffb10d4b8 even key pair as sec: 0279be667ef9dcbbac55a06295ce870b07029bfcdb2dce28d959f2815b16f81798 uncompressed: 0479be667ef9dcbbac55a06295ce870b07029bfcdb2dce28d959f2815b16f81798\ 483ada7726a3c4655da4fbfc0e1108a8fd17b448a68554199c47d08ffb10d4b8 hash160: 751e76e8199196d454941c45d1b3a323f1433bd6 uncompressed: 91b24bf9f5288532960ac687abb035127b1d28a5 Bitcoin address: 1BgGZ9tcN4rm9KBzDn7KprQz87SZ26SAMH uncompressed: 1EHNa6Q4Jz2uvNExL497mE43ikXhwF6kZm
The input is determined to be x & y coordinates.
$ bu 1BgGZ9tcN4rm9KBzDn7KprQz87SZ26SAMH hash160: 751e76e8199196d454941c45d1b3a323f1433bd6 Bitcoin address: 1BgGZ9tcN4rm9KBzDn7KprQz87SZ26SAMH
The input here is determined to be a Bitcoin address. The only thing that it can be converted to is a hash160.
Let's try one more example using the WIF from https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/WIF :
$ bu 0C28FCA386C7A227600B2FE50B7CAE11EC86D3BF1FBE471BE89827E19D72AA1D secret exponent: 5500171714335001507730457227127633683517613019341760098818554179534751705629 hex: c28fca386c7a227600b2fe50b7cae11ec86d3bf1fbe471be89827e19d72aa1d WIF: KwdMAjGmerYanjeui5SHS7JkmpZvVipYvB2LJGU1ZxJwYvP98617 uncompressed: 5HueCGU8rMjxEXxiPuD5BDku4MkFqeZyd4dZ1jvhTVqvbTLvyTJ public pair x: 94473386280621915394287615869907363252910868562986308188178980306950346138716 public pair y: 97844737324952875321726721826250953720280326724356638601167669885622888745738 x as hex: d0de0aaeaefad02b8bdc8a01a1b8b11c696bd3d66a2c5f10780d95b7df42645c y as hex: d85228a6fb29940e858e7e55842ae2bd115d1ed7cc0e82d934e929c97648cb0a y parity: even key pair as sec: 02d0de0aaeaefad02b8bdc8a01a1b8b11c696bd3d66a2c5f10780d95b7df42645c uncompressed: 04d0de0aaeaefad02b8bdc8a01a1b8b11c696bd3d66a2c5f10780d95b7df42645c\ d85228a6fb29940e858e7e55842ae2bd115d1ed7cc0e82 |
McClatchy/Marist — his worst mark since hitting 39 percent in September 2011.
Mr. Obama, though, still enjoys a higher approval rating than lawmakers at the other end of of Pennsylvania Avenue. Twenty-two percent approve of Congressional Republicans and one-third of registered voters approve of Congressional Democrats’ job performance.
SEE RELATED:
Mr. Obama is slated to kick off a series of speeches on the economy Wednesday; 37 percent of respondents approve of his handling of the economy, while 56 percent disapprove.
Mr. Obama’s disapproval rating is at 48 percent in the poll, up slightly from April’s 46 percent.
“Clearly six months into his second term there’s been falloff across the board. It’s not like one group bailed on him,” said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion at Marist College in New York. “When [Obama] gets away from talking about the economy, numbers have a tendency to slide.”
A Real Clear Politics average of polls from June 28 to July 21 puts Mr. Obama’s approval rating at 45.6 percent and his disapproval rating at 49.2 percent. On Christmas Eve last year, he was safely above water; he had an average 53.8 percent approval rating and 41.8 percent disapproval average.NFL players say they don’t play for the money. Brian Dawkins just proved it. Check that. The Broncos’ passion-playing safety has been proving it every Sunday for 15 seasons in the league — and has his “Wolverine” alter ego to prove it.
But Dawkins showed it again last week by accepting a substantial pay cut so he could play a 16th season.
Scheduled to make $6 million this season with the Broncos, Dawkins instead will play for $2 million — $1.6 million in salary with a $400,000 signing bonus, according to contracts turned into the league Tuesday.
“Where I am in my life as a person, this is no big deal to me,” Dawkins said. “It’s what I felt was right. The last 2 1/2 years, I had a horrible taste in my mouth. I really wanted to be part of this team, part of the Denver Broncos — how do I say this? — without any dark clouds over us. I could have decided to continue my career some other place, but that’s not what I wanted to do.”
Another aspect to Dawkins’ new contract: The final two years of his original five-year deal were canceled. Instead of his contract expiring in 2013, it concludes after this season.
A starting strong safety, Dawkins turns 38 in October. He has played in one Super Bowl and five conference championship games and has earned berths in eight Pro Bowls. His new contract would suggest he wants one final glorious season.
But if this is his final season, Dawkins won’t say.
“I’m taking it year by year,” he said. “I know the situation. I know they drafted young guys at my position. But I wanted to play and help us move in the right direction.”
The $4 million that Dawkins saved the Broncos helped them restock their roster, which in turn improves the odds of a more competitive season. Newly signed running back Willis McGahee will get $3 million this year — $1 million in salary and $2 million in signing bonus.
Defensive tackle Ty Warren has a two-year, $8 million contract — a $2.5 million signing bonus, $1.5 million in 2011 salary and $4 million in 2012.
The Broncos’ third highest-paid free agent was their own Marcus Thomas. The defensive tackle will make $1 million this year.
New starting tight end Daniel Fells and slot receiver David Anderson are scheduled to make $735,000 each. Receiving tight end Dante Rosario and defensive tackle Brodrick Bunkley, acquired from Philadelphia in a trade, will make $685,000 each. Defensive end Derrick Harvey, the No. 8 overall draft pick just three years ago, will make $650,000.
Add it up and the Broncos allocated $11.49 million in cash this year for their eight new acquisitions. Factor in the $4 million they saved from Dawkins’ deal and the Broncos got McGahee, Warren, Fells, Thomas, Bunkley, Harvey, Anderson and Rosario for a mere $7.49 million.
“I’ve put down some roots here with my home and my teammates,” Dawkins said. “And a huge factor in this decision was having Coach (John) Fox here. I like what he’s brought here. I’m excited about what we have going on here with the Denver Broncos.”
Mike Klis: 303-954-1055 or [email protected] Delhi: Expressing supreme confidence over the possibility of his winning the National Herald case, BJP leader Subramanian Swamy, Tuesday, said that it was an open-and-shut case and Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul will to go Tihar Jail.
“My assessment is that it is an open and shut case and they will go the jail,” Swamy said in an interview to a private news channel.
Dubbing all Congressmen as jokers, Swamy said that the Congress is fooling the public by claiming that Sonia and Rahul have got relief from the court today.
“What relief is this? They have been made to give a promise that they will be present in court as accused...they have no case anywhere the latest order is so damaging that Supreme Court won't touch it,” he said, adding, “If they ask for bail, I will ask for their passports to be seized.”
“They will have to appear on December 19 other wise (arrest) warrant will be issued,” Swamy said.
`Sonia Gandhi is coward`
Swamy also launched a direct attack on Sonia Gandhi and said the Congress president behaves like a coward whenever there is crisis in the country. He claimed that Sonia had abandoned India when a war broke out between India and Pakistan in 1971.
'I don't need anyone's help, not even of PM Modi'
When asked whether the BJP government at the Centre would want him to go slow in the case as the GST Bill is set to be presented in Parliament, Swamy said, “That's government's problem not mine. I fight corruption and will continue my fight.”
He also suggested that GST Bill must be sacrificed for the cause of fighting corruption, adding that the government should remember that it had come to power on the promise of fighting corruption.
Swamy said he doesn’t need support from BJP to take on Sonia and Rahul and went to add that he even does not need the support of PM Modi on the issue.
`Government can't do a damn thing!`
On whether the government or any of the ministers will interfere in the strong case – as per Swamy – against the Gandhis, he said, “The government cannot do a damn thing in this. The fact of the matter is that it is a democracy and courts are independent.”
“I don't want any of the ministers poking their nose into this (the case),” Swamy quipped.
“I am sure I am going to win.”“I gave you four surplus budgets, all those jobs, declining poverty, the lowest poverty rate we’ve had in 30 years, and the first time in more than 30 years that there has not been an increase in inequality,” Clinton boasted. “We went forward together. We’re supposed to grow together. We didn’t do it by taking anybody down, we did it by lifting everybody up.”
It was hard not to see a veiled critique of the current president in Clinton’s paean to himself, one that veered perilously close to the “Green Lanternism” that liberal commentators so detest—the view that if the current president just tried hard enough, he could overcome the Republican intransigence and structural impossibility that have doomed his agenda. Indeed, Obama went totally, glaringly unmentioned in Clinton’s 18-minute speech. (On Monday, Clinton’s implicit critique became more pointed: “When people sneeringly say McAuliffe is a dealmaker, I say, ‘Oh, if only we had one in Washington during that shutdown,” he reportedly said, adding that it was “exhausting seeing politicians waste time with all these arguments. People deserve somebody who will get this show on the road.”)
This is some chutzpah on Clinton’s part. After all, the Clinton years featured their own government shutdowns, one of which was longer than the recent closure, along with such polarizing doings as his impeachment hearings. But either things now are so much worse, or hindsight has sufficiently colored the memory, that Clinton can recast those days as a heyday of mutual respect and comity.
“If we become ideological, then we’re blind to evidence. We can only hear people who already agree with us,” Clinton said. “We think we know everything right now, we’ve got nothing to learn from anybody, and most important thing we can do is impose our views on everybody else. And you can choose that course here. But I’m telling you... it doesn’t work.... The only thing that works is cooperation.”
The campaign of McAuliffe’s opponent, Ken Cuccinelli, bombarded reporters with “Back to the Baggage” press releases slamming Clinton, complete with a Photoshopped header graphic of McAuliffe as Marty McFly and Clinton as Doc Brown. “From renting out the Lincoln Bedroom to selling tickets on Air Force One, the former president and his ‘professional best friend’ have accumulated a lot of baggage,” one representative example noted. But Clinton’s campaign schedule on behalf of McAuliffe showed that he is that rare politician who plays to every crowd—urban or rural, white or black, liberal enclave or hardscrabble town. No other former president has this sort of appeal, nor has any remained in the political fray to this degree—especially not Clinton’s successor, George W. Bush. Bush’s approval ratings have markedly rebounded since he left office, but—or perhaps because—he has kept a determinedly low profile.Typography for User Interfaces
Jun 21st, 2016
Back in 2004, when I had just started my career, sIFR was the hottest thing out there. It was developed by Shaun Inman and it embedded custom fonts in a small Flash movie, which could be utilized with a little bit of JavaScript and CSS. At the time, it was basically the only way to use custom fonts in browsers like Firefox or Safari. The fact that this technique relied on Flash soon made it obsolete, with the release of the iPhone (without flash) in 2007.
Our interfaces are written, text being the interface, and typography being our main discipline.
In 2008, browsers started eventually supporting the new CSS3 @font-face rule. It had already been a part of the CSS spec in 1998, but later got pulled out of it. I remember the excitement when I managed to convince one of our clients to utilize the new @font-face and rely on progressive enhancement to deliver an enhanced experience for browsers which already supported this feature.
Since my early days in the industry, I’ve grown to love type and all the little nuances that go into setting it. In this article, I want to share some of the fundamentals that I’ve learned, and hopefully help you get better at setting type for user interfaces.
The first GUIs
While the history of typography dates back about five thousand years, we’ve had graphical user interfaces for mere four decades. One of the key turning points was in 1973, when Xerox introduced Alto, which in essence created the foundation for today’s graphical UIs. Alto was born a decade before any other GUI hit the mass market, and was seen as the future of computing.
This early development for Alto evolved to Xerox Star in the 80s and became the first commercial operating system with GUI.
Although neither Alto nor Star never really took off the ground, they greatly influenced the future development at Apple and Microsoft with their revolutionary mouse-driven GUI. A couple years later, in 1984, Steve Jobs introduced the first Mac OS.
The release of the Macintosh meant custom typography suddenly becoming available to the masses for the first time ever. The original Mac came pre-installed with many iconic typefaces, and over the next few years, multiple type foundries started releasing more and more digital versions of their popular typefaces.
When inspecting these early graphical user interfaces closer, we realize that most of their elements are written language. These GUIs are essentially pure text — collections of singular words displayed in isolation from one another.
We can make a similar observation by inspecting almost any modern interface too. Our interfaces are written, text being the interface, and typography being our main discipline.
Text is interface
Every word and letter in an interface matters. Good writing is good design. Text is ultimately interface, and it’s us, the designers, who are the copywriters shaping this information.
Take a look at the example below and imagine the elements taken apart and put down on a table in front of you. Observe what’s left. A collection of singular words, two images and few icons.
Our work is not about putting random things on screen and making them look pretty, but instead starting from the most important parts, the copy and the content, and figuring other details up from there. That’s where the core of our craft lies.
The clarity of letterforms plays a key role too. It might not seem to matter much at first, especially if our brain needs to pause only for a fraction of a second to decipher a word shape. But when we multiply this across numerous instances and letter combinations, our typographic choices become much more apparent.
Of course, there are more nuances to interface design; things like balance, positioning, hierarchy and structure, but good copywriting and typography takes us 95% there.
A great designer knows how to work with text not just as content, he treats text as a user interface.”
– Oliver Reichenstein
How we read
If the letters that we put on screens are so important, then we should spend some time studying how we read and how that affects our design decisions.
An isolated word that has fewer than 20 characters will be read more slowly than a word that forms a part of a longer sentence.
One of the key findings that I had back when I was reading Billy Whited’s article on Setting Type for User Interfaces, is that the efficiency with which we read is a function of the amount of text available to us as we do so. This means that an isolated word that has fewer than 20 characters will be read more slowly than a word that forms a part of a longer sentence.
This results from the fact that our eyes don’t move smoothly across the text when we read longer sentences. Instead, they make discrete jumps between words, which are called saccades.
Saccades improve our reading capabilities and make it possible for us to skip shorter functional words completely. This is a key factor to keep in mind since our interfaces tend to have mostly isolated words. In essence, it means that we cannot rely on the effects of saccades at all.
Eventually, knowing that the identification of individual letters plays the most critical part in the reading process, it’s becoming apparent why our choice of typeface is extremely important.
In the past, many thought we recognize words by their so called Bouma shape, or the outline that a word creates. In later studies this was proven to be somewhat wrong, and the readability and legibility of a given typeface should not be anymore evaluated only by its ability to generate a good bouma shape. Instead, we need to pay more attention to the letterforms themselves.
What makes letters legible?
At first, it might seem hard or just plain impossible to answer this question. Since reading is a matter of habit, we read best, what we read most. How could we possibly determine what features make letters legible? To start gaining an understanding, we need to first break sentences into words, words into letters, and letters into smaller parts and start looking the finer details.
In 2008, Department of Psychology at the University of Victoria did empirical tests to reveal which areas of lowercase and uppercase Latin letters are most efficient for reading.
The study revealed a few interesting things. First of all, it revealed that line terminations are the most important features for letter identification.
The image above shows which areas we pay most attention to when recognizing letters. These areas of a typeface should be designed both in a generic and familiar way and also in a way that stresses letter differentiation.
In 2010, there was also another study, by Sofie Beier and Kevin Larson, that focused testing letter variations of frequently misrecognized letters.
This study found that some variations were more legible than others, despite the letters within a font having similar size, weight and personality. The results showed that narrow letters benefit from being widened, and that x-height characters benefit from using more of the ascending and descending area.
We can gain more understanding about the legibility of a given typeface by using a tool I built for a recent project. Legibility App allows you to simulate different (often harsh) viewing conditions by applying a level of filters on top of the text — like blur, overglow and pixelation. The app is in beta, and for the time being, works in Chrome, Opera and Safari.
What to look for in a UI typeface?
Understanding how we read and what features make letters legible gives us a better overall view on what we should look for when choosing a UI typeface. I’ve gathered 10 key things below.
1. Legibility
Legibility is the number one factor to consider. Letterforms need to be clear and recognizable. Letters with clear distinction in their forms perform better as user interface elements.[5] Many sans serif typefaces, including Helvetica, have indistinguishable capital I and lowercase l, making these particular fonts bad choices for interfaces.
Source Sans Pro on the left compared to Helvetica on the right. It’s almost impossible to differentiate the first 3 letters on Helvetica. Source Sans Pro on the other hand performs much better. Some people would also agree that Helvetica sucks for any type of UI work since it wasn’t really developed for use on screen displays.
Helvetica sucks. It really wasn’t designed for small sizes on screens. Words like ‘milliliter’ can be very difficult to decipher.”
– Erik Spiekermann
When Apple “momentarily” switched to using Helvetica as their main interface typeface, it caused real usability and readability issues for certain users. Eventually, this was one of the reasons that led Apple to design the typeface we now know as San Francisco. This new typeface is designed specifically for screens and it has higher x-height than Helvetica, looser spacing, and its letters are easier to distinguish from one another.
Image credit: Thomas Byttebier
2. Modesty
An ideal UI typeface doesn’t scream for attention, but rather goes unnoticed. The typeface you choose should stay out of the users’ way when they try to complete their task, by honoring the content in a way that doesn’t add to the users’ cognitive load.
3. Flexibility
A UI typeface needs to be flexible. We are designing experiences for medium(s), where it’s not possible to control our user’s abilities, context, browser, screen size, connection speed, or even the input method used.
The typeface we choose should support these vast contexts and work well in different sizes, devices, and on a small screen in particular. Sans serifs that are made to work at small sizes on low resolution are preferred.[5]
4. Large x-height
X-height means the height of a lowercase “x”. You want to look out for a typeface with large x-height since it’s in general easier to read and renders better in small sizes. Don’t go too far though, since too large x-height makes the letters n and h difficult to distinguish.
5. Wide proportions
Proportions refer to the width of a character in relation to its height. You want to look out for a typeface with wide proportions since it helps with legibility and is easier to read in small sizes on a screen.
Image credit: Adobe Acumin
6. Loose letter spacing
A good rule of thumb is that letter space should be slightly smaller than the counter space inside the letterforms.
The space around the letters is as important as the space within them. Letters that are too close to each other can be hard to read. A good UI typeface should have enough breathing room in-between letters, and even spacing to establish a steady rhythm.
On the other hand, if there’s too much spacing, the integrity of the word breaks. A good rule of thumb is that letter space should be slightly smaller than the counter space inside the letterforms.
7. Low stroke contrast
Good UI typefaces have low stroke contrast. Typefaces with high-contrast might look good at larger sizes, but at small sizes on a screen thin strokes easily disappear. On the other end of the spectrum, we have typefaces like Arial and Helvetica, that can have too little contrast between letter shapes, making the letters indistinguishable from each other.
It’s all about finding a balance between the two. Imagine the example below as a horizontal scale. You want to aim for something that is more towards the example on the right side.
8. OpenType features
Making sure that the typeface you choose supports OpenType features is important, since it provides much more flexibility for us. It’s often also an indicator that there’s a good support for different languages and special characters.
For me, one of the most useful OpenType Features has been tabular figures, which are numerals that share a common width. You might want to use them for example when working with timers or counters, or when you have a table displaying information like IP numbers.
Image credit: Fontblog
9. Fallback fonts
Below is an experience that you’re all probably familiar with. What’s happening here is that the web fonts are blocking the actual content from showing up before they’re all fully loaded.
Image credit: Filament Group
This can be easily fixed by loading the fonts in a non-blocking manner, which drastically cuts the loading time for the content. The drawback is that we need to define fallback fonts from the default system fonts, which show while our custom fonts are loading.
Image credit: Filament Group
10. Hinting
Hinting is a process where fonts are adjusted for maximum readability on computer monitors. Hinting tries to make vector curves render nicely to a grid of pixels by providing a set of guidelines for different sizes. At low screen resolutions hinting is usually critical for producing clear, legible text.
Hinting was originally invented by Apple, but since TrueType font format, and thus the instructions we’ve called “hinting,” are disappearing, I’d nowadays only consider this if you need to support IE8 or older browsers needing TTF or EOT format.
Image credit: Typotheque
The Future(s)
It’s been a relatively short ride for us, and I expect to see a lot of progress in terms of how type behaves on the web, how our typographic tools mature, how font formats keep evolving, and how we’ll be utilizing type in the (near) future.
Ultimately, good typography enables productivity for everyone. It could even save your life.
I imagine we’ll start seeing much more progressively enhanced experiences where the text itself is fundamentally more important than our suggestions about how it should be typeset.[6] It’s really how things have always worked on the web, but we’re only now starting to take this issue seriously.
For ideal typography, we also have to know as much as possible about each user’s reading environment. This may seem obvious, but it really isn’t.[7] In the future though, I imagine typefaces becoming more aware of their surroundings and starting to respond to a number of factors like viewport, resolution, type rendering engine used, ambient light, screen brightness and even the viewing distance.
I also predict that fonts’ legibility adjustments will be eventually linked to OS’s accessibility options so that typefaces can automatically start adapting to different user needs.
Overall, I see the future for UI typography being all about sensors and font formats that can respond to data acquired from these sensors, and eventually also new typographic tools that have contextual awareness which integrates more intelligent algorithms to our workflows.
All this is needed so that we, and the typefaces that we work with, can better respond to all these contexts we have to deal with.
Image credit: Luke Wroblewski
To ease our work…
Image credit: Samsung GearVR
…make our interfaces faster…
Image credit: MozVR
…more accessible…
Image credit: Callan & Co
…and eventually more legible and productive too…
Image credit: Microsoft Hololens
…because ultimately, good typography enables productivity for everyone. It could even save your life. ❦
This article is loosely based on a talk that I did in one of our internal design workshops at Idean in Palo Alto, CA. See the slide deck.
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ShareHILLSBOROUGH TWP. -- James V. Maguire, a paramedic with the Hillsborough Rescue Squad, died in the line of duty on Monday.
Maguire had responded to a call near his home on Sunday afternoon and performed CPR for an extended period of time. Less than 20 hours later, he apparently suffered a heart attack, the squad announced. He was 57.
Visiting hours will be on Sunday, 2-6 p.m. A Mass will be held Monday at 10 a.m. in St. Joseph's Church, 34 Yorktown Road in Hillsborough.
"Jim was our coworker and our friend," squad Chief David Gwin said in a statement Wednesday afternoon.
"It's a very difficult time for all of us, particularly the crews that responded to Jim's house on Monday. We deeply appreciate the outpouring of sympathy and support from around the state as well as the offers of coverage from neighboring squads."
Maguire's "entire adult life was dedicated to public service -- as a United States Marine, as an EMT and paramedic, and as a police officer," Gwin said.
He joined the Hillsborough Rescue Squad in 1979 and was active with it ever since. "I had the pleasure of working with Jim for over 35 years," Gwin said.
Maguire also worked as a paramedic at Hunterdon Medical Center in addition to working on the Hillsborough EMS day crew.
He held many positions serving the Hillsborough community over the years. He was a Somerset County sheriff's officer and then served as a police officer with the Hillsborough Township Police Department from 1984 until his retirement in 2008.
During his tenure with the police he held many positions, including patrolman, detective, hostage negotiator, police liaison to the township Office of Emergency Management, and undercover narcotics officer.
Janet Fund gives out defibrillators
"He was quite an iconic man in Hillsborough," Police Lt. Darren Powell said on Wednesday. "He was a great guy. He was a hard-working officer and active in the Police Benevolent Association."
Powell noted that Maguire "was a dedicated public servant in many capacities," very active with EMS services and with the township Office of Emergency Management. "I think he delivered a handful of babies," Powell said.
Following the September 2001 terrorist attacks, Maguire worked on the FBI's World Trade Center Task Force's forensic unit. Afterward he was appointed as Hillsborough Township's deputy OEM coordinator and Hillsborough's first municipal counter-terrorism coordinator, training other officers in counter-terrorism techniques.
"His loss leaves a hole that will never be filled," Gwin said.
Hillsborough Funeral Home is handling the arrangements. It is at 796 Route 206, Hillsborough 08844.
Sallie Graziano may be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @SallieGraziano. Find The Hunterdon County Democrat on Facebook.Police remain at the scene of a fatal crash involving a car and cyclist within the grounds of a cemetery at Sutherland this morning, NSW Police say.
Emergency services were called to the cemetery on Linden Street, Sutherland, shortly before 7am (Sunday 26 November 2017), to find the cyclist trapped under a Toyota Corolla hatchback.
The cyclist died at the scene; he is yet to be formally identified.
The driver of the car, believed to be aged 29, has undergone mandatory testing at Sutherland Hospital and is providing police from Sutherland Local Area Command with a statement.
Police have spoken to witnesses at the scene and an investigation is now underway.
Police are urging anyone with information in relation to this incident to call Crime Stoppers.
/Public Release.One of the Cubs' biggest fans - and one of their oldest - is Loretta Dolan. At 102 years old, her knowledge of the game is remarkable and her loyalty to the Cubs is unmatched.Whenever they play, she is glued to the TV. No casual viewer is she. For Loretta Dolan keeps score of every game, every batter. Right down to the pitch count."Yes, yes I do. Otherwise I wouldn't know. I wouldn't know who was up. Isn't that odd?" she said.Nope, not odd. Quite remarkable, for Loretta has been keeping score of Cubs games for more than half a century. And here is but a sample of proof: scorecards from as far back as '63. Williams, Santo, Banks, Hubbs. Back when a hot dog at Wrigley was 30 cents and beer was a dime more.If Loretta didn't have a scorecard handy, she'd make one. If she missed a game, she'd use the newspaper box score to fill in the blanks."If I have to outcome something my daughter said, and she was wrong, I would let her know," she said.Loretta has five daughters who don't relish west coast games because they're falling asleep and Loretta doesn't tire."I've never seen her doze off during a game," said Corrine Belluomini, her daughter."I'm so interested I can't put it down," Loretta said.We had occasion eight years ago to warm up Loretta before she tossed out the first pitch at Wrigley. And two years ago, when she hit the century mark, Loretta was back on the field again.Here's the magic number now. Gram is 102 years old, with a uniform to prove it. She and her huge family believe this is the magic season."You know when they get up to bat, they haven't got an angry look. They smile. They get up like they're going to do their jobs, and I think that's what keeps me going with them," Loretta said.Loretta is a treasure - with a zest for life - and a deep hope that this is the year dreams become reality."Oh, I hope they win. I certainly hope they win," Loretta said.Interview done. Back to the scorebook. There is a pitch count to be watched.Texas Frightmare is currently taking place this weekend and several of the puppets for the Puppet Master reboot were unveiled. The new film is titled Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich and the puppets include redesigns of Blade and Tunneler, as well as a new one that is frog in a clown outfit. They were redesigned and created by Tate Steinsiek (Face Off). The cast features Michael Paré (Streets on Fire), Tina Parker (Breaking Bad), Udo Kier, Thomas Lennon (Hellbaby), Jenny Pellicer, Nelson Franklin (Scott Pilgrim), Charlyne Yi (Cloverfield), Alex Beh, and Barbara Crampton (From Beyond). Check out the synopsis and images below.Puppet Master: The Little Reich centers on a recently divorced young man discovers a mint condition Blade doll in his deceased brother’s closet and plans to sell the toy at a convention in Texas celebrating the 30th anniversary of the infamous Toulon Murders. All hell breaks loose at during the auction when a strange force animates all of the various puppets throughout the convention as they go on a bloody killing spree. The history of class struggle in the Beloit Iron Works and how the company responded to it and kept it to a minimum.
This paper concerns class struggle---or its absence---in a factory in one American town. The Beloit Iron Works, or the Beloit Corporation as it was known after 1962, was a company founded in the late nineteenth century that primarily manufactured paper-making machines and was the leader in its industry. Beloit, Wisconsin is a small city located at the southern extreme of Wisconsin, right next to the Illinois border. At first glance, Beloit seems a strange place to look for class fault-lines in the edifice of American society; the town is fiercely proud of its identity and unwaveringly patriotic. While class inequality is manifestly preset, class divisions within the town do not appear to exist on a subjective level. There is no explicit radical tradition, either current or historical, which could unify and justify the incidental conflicts that arise from the labor process. Nevertheless, class struggle is and was a reality in Beloit. These incidents of contention which arise largely from class relations in production, however, have never coalesced into a broader challenge to the system overall, nor have they led to new ways of seeing the world in which “the laboring class and the employing class have nothing in common”. Beloit's ruling class has managed to limit the damage inflicted by class struggle, and to preempt the formation of revolutionary class-consciousness, by actively fostering a way of thinking which sees the interests of capital and labor as fundamentally aligned. Despite momentous changes in the demographics of the town, the structure of the economy, and the nature of labor-management relations, this emphasis on community remains constant as a strategy for capital. The history of the Beloit Iron Works is a history of a local bourgeoisie using conceptions of community to subsume the specificity of proletarian interests.
Before proceeding, however, it is important to define “class” for the purposes of this study. Class is not a label or a set of neat categories to place every individual in. It is a social relationship which entails, in the context of capitalism, the sale of labor on the part of the worker to a capitalist who buys the worker's labor-power and uses it in the production process to realize a profit and increase his or her capital. Classes do not exist as separate, a priori categories which then come into conflict. Rather, they are defined by this very conflict. Individuals may occupy multiple roles during their lifetime, as the original founders of Beloit Iron Works did, and even do so simultaneously. However, the fact that some individuals occupy class positions which defy pat categorization does not preclude struggle. The class structure in effect today, with all its complexity and ambiguity, is a product of yesterday's class struggles.
Class struggle has always been a contentious phenomenon --- both because of its very nature as conflict and due to the high-stakes ideological battle waged over what to make of it. To Marx and his'scientific socialist' followers class struggle was a revolutionary force, one which was destined to completely overthrow capitalist society.1 Conservatives, on the other hand, have seen in class struggle the dissolution of society; its protagonists, they contend, will destroy society by refusing to conform to their 'place' in it.2 Furthermore, they are willing to use criminality to further their own selfish ends. Between these extremes are a variety of more moderate viewpoints; Social Democrats and other “progressive” political tendencies have viewed strikes and labor agitation as regrettable necessities to be overcome by state action, which can include regulation which makes the conditions of labor more humane and state-backed arbitration between labor and management.3
These differing conceptions diverge from each other not only in their general orientation towards class struggle, their approval or disapproval, but in their conception of how it works. Marxists tend to emphasize material factors, viewing workers, as one critic charged, as an "abstract mass in the grip of an abstract force" whereas the practical-minded labor movement "holds the concrete workingmen in the center of its vision".4 Many thinkers disagree with the Marxist approach, which they see as an overly mechanistic interpretation of class struggle, and emphasize institutional and cultural factors.
Like all sweeping categories, the risk of giving in to sterile abstractions which impede rather than assist one's understanding of reality is inherent to the use of “class struggle” as an idea. In order to make class struggle a useful tool of analysis, it must be applied to specific events. Choosing the Beloit Iron Works as a case study has several merits, the most obvious being that choosing to research the town I currently live in makes my job much easier. I have access to local knowledge and history and it is easier to picture how events happened. Beyond my own convenience, I chose to look at class struggle in the Beloit Iron Works because it was not particularly striking as a hotbed of class warfare. Indeed, my inquiry has shown that Beloit had comparatively placid labor relations, and that class contradictions were largely overshadowed by the cohesion and unity prevalent in both factory and town. There is a tendency for commentators on class struggle, especially those on the left who are in favor of it, to focus on the most extreme and revolutionary tendencies. This is understandable given the central place of class struggle in the left-wing concept of revolution; since class struggle, it is hoped, will lead to the revolution, the struggles most interesting to these observers are those with an overtly revolutionary quality. Thus little emphasis is placed on the way class struggle is mitigated, transcended, and overcome by capitalism. This process must be understood if we are to make the more radical manifestations of class conflict explicable. Beloit, Wisconsin offers an example of one locality in space and time where class conflict has been effectively overcome with a minimum of disturbance. As such, it affords an opportunity for analyzing how capital manages to suppress its own contradictions.
The'suppression' of capital's contradictions in this context should not conjure up images of police/military brutality, censorship, or any of the other forms of violent, direct suppression. In this case the'suppression' of class struggle was largely accomplished through what Antonio Gramsci called, “the'spontaneous' consent given by the great masses of the population to the general direction imposed on social life by the dominant fundamental group.”5 Generally speaking, the managers and executives of Beloit Iron Works never had to resort to force or other crude means to direct social life; instead they persuaded the workers to believe ― correctly or not ― that their interests coincided with those of the 'dominant group'.
To comprehend this process, however, one must move away from abstract theories and examine the setting in which they are applied. An understanding of local conditions is essential, since class struggle always adapts itself along local lines and is circumscribed by its setting. To understand class struggle in the Beloit Iron Works, one must keep the region the B.I.W. was part of firmly in mind. Wisconsin was first settled by whites in the 1830s after the Black Hawk War effectively eliminated the problem of Native American claims to the land. |
No, Arabs", countered the King. "You as Persians have no business meddling in Arab matters". King Abdullah said he would favor Rafsanjani in an Iranian election.[67][74]
He told General Jones that Iranian internal turmoil presented an opportunity to weaken the regime—which he encouraged—but he also urged that this be done covertly, stressing that public statements in support of the reformers were counterproductive. The King assessed that sanctions could help weaken the government, but only if they are strong and sustained.[40]
Bahrain
Saudi Arabia, by the endorsement of the Gulf Cooperation Council, sent 1,200 troops to Bahrain to protect industrial facilities, resulting in strained relations with the United States. The military personnel were part of the Peninsula Shield Force, which is stationed in Saudi Arabia, but not affiliated to one country alone.[76][77]
Guantánamo Bay
In December 2010, leaked diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks revealed that King Abdullah wanted all released detainees from the Guantanamo Bay detention camp to be tracked using an implanted microchip, in a way similar to race horses. The King made the private suggestion during a meeting in Riyadh in March 2009 with White House counterterrorism adviser, John O. Brennan. Brennan replied that "horses don't have good lawyers" and that such a proposal would "face legal hurdles" in the United States.
China
Since King Abdullah's visit to Beijing in January 2006, Saudi-Chinese relations have focused predominantly on energy and trade. The king's visit was the first by a Saudi head of state to China since the two countries established diplomatic ties in 1990.[78] Bilateral trade with China has more than tripled, and China would soon be Saudi Arabia's largest importer. Saudi Arabia also committed significant investments in China, including the $8 billion Fujian refinery. Based on a WikiLeaks cable, the King told the Chinese that it was willing to effectively trade a guaranteed oil supply in return for Chinese pressure on Iran not to develop nuclear weapons.[40]
In late March 2011, King Abdullah sent Bandar, Secretary General of the National Security Council, to China to gain its support regarding Saudi Arabia's attitude towards the Arab Spring. In turn, lucrative arms contracts were secretly offered to China by the Kingdom. Furthermore, King Abdullah believed that China as well as India were the future markets for Saudi energy.[79]
Relations with other nations
In November 2009, King Abdullah was received by Nicolas Sarkozy, who committed various diplomatic faux pas. The diplomatic relationship Jacques Chirac had with Saudi Arabia was not evident with Sarkozy.[80] In January 2011, the Kingdom granted asylum to the ousted Tunisian leader, Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali, under conditions of no further political involvement.[66] According to leaked cables, King Abdullah was more receptive than Crown Prince Sultan to former Yemeni President Saleh.[81]
King Abdullah supported renewed diplomatic relations with the Syrian government and Bashar al-Assad. They met in Damascus on 7 October 2009.[82] In addition, Assad attended the opening of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in October 2009. Relations between Syria and Saudi Arabia deteriorated as a result of the Syrian Civil War. In August 2011, King Abdullah recalled the Saudi Ambassador from Damascus due to the political unrest in Syria and closed its embassy.[83]
In December 2011, King Abdullah called on leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council to strengthen their alliance into a united "single entity" as they confront threats to national security. "I ask you today to move from a stage of cooperation to a stage of union in a single entity", King Abdullah said at the opening session of a GCC meeting in Riyadh in comments aired on Saudi state television. “No doubt, you all know we are targeted in our security and stability.”[84]
Criticism as king
On 16 February 2003, Parade magazine's David Wallechinsky rated King Fahd and Crown Prince Abdullah as the second worst dictators in the world.[85] Most of this criticism stems from the fact that most of Saudi citizens live under a strict Wahhabist interpretation of Sharia law, which mandates the amputation of hands as a punishment for theft and floggings for crimes like drunkenness.[86] Execution by public beheading is common for murder, rape, drug trafficking and witchcraft, and Abdullah's policies towards the rights of women have also been criticized. In a slight rebuff to accusations of human rights violations, Saudi inmates of Najran Province sent the King well-wishes from jail and wished him a speedy recovery.[87]
King Abdullah has also been criticized for his policies on religious freedom and the Saudi government allegedly has arrested Shiite pilgrims on the Hajj.[86] On 24 January 2007, Human Rights Watch sent an open letter to King Abdullah asking him to cease religious persecution of the Ahmadi faith in Saudi Arabia. Two letters were sent in November 2006 and February 2007 asking him to remove the travel ban on critics of the Saudi government.[88] Human Rights Watch has not yet indicated whether they have received any response to these letters.
On 30 October 2007, during a state visit to the UK, King Abdullah was accused by protestors of being a "murderer" and a "torturer". Concerns were raised about the treatment of women and homosexuals by the Saudi kingdom and over alleged bribes involving arms deals between Saudi Arabia and the UK.[89]
Succession to the throne
King Abdullah's heir apparent was his half-brother Crown Prince Sultan until the latter's death on 22 October 2011. The title of Crown Prince then passed to Prince Sultan's full-brother, Nayef, until his death in Geneva, Switzerland, on 16 June 2012, while undergoing medical tests for an undisclosed ailment. His third heir apparent was his half-brother Salman, who was named as Crown Prince on 18 June 2012,[90] and would succeed him in 2015.
In 2006, Abdullah set up the Allegiance Council, a body that is composed of the sons and grandsons of Saudi Arabia's founder, King Abdulaziz, to vote by a secret ballot to choose future kings and crown princes. The council's mandate was not to have started until after the reigns of both King Abdullah and late Prince Sultan were over. It was not clear what was to happen when Prince Sultan died before the end of Abdullah's reign, leaving a question as to whether the council would vote for a new crown prince, or whether Prince Nayef would automatically fill that position. Despite such concerns, Prince Nayef was appointed Crown Prince on 27 October 2011 after consultation with the Allegiance Council by Abdullah.[91]
In November 2010, Prince Nayef chaired a cabinet meeting because of the deterioration of the King's health.[92] During the same month, King Abdullah transferred his duties as Commander of the Saudi National Guard to his son Prince Mutaib. King Abdullah is credited with building up the once largely ceremonial unit into a modern 260,000-strong force that is a counterweight to the army. The Guard, which was Abdullah's original power base, protects the royal family. This was suggested as an apparent sign that the elderly monarch was beginning to lessen some of his duties.[93]
Various positions
King Abdullah was Commander of the Saudi National Guard from 1963 to 2010. He was Chairman of the Saudi Supreme Economic Council until 2009.[94] He also continued to be the President of the High Council for Petroleum and Minerals, President of the King Abdulaziz Center For National Dialogue, Chairman of the Council of Civil Service, and head of the Military Service Council until his death in 2015.
Personal life
King Abdullah was a falconer in his youth
Wives
King Abdullah followed his father's (King Abdulaziz's) path in terms of marriage in that he married the daughters of the al Shalan of Anizah, al Fayz of Bani Sakhr, and al Jarbah of the Iraqi branch of the Shammar tribe.[27] King Abdullah had about 30 wives, and fathered about 35 children.[11][12][13][14] One of his wives is the sister of Rifaat al-Assad's wife.[95] He also married Jawahir bint Ali Hussein from Al Jiluwi clan, with whom he had a daughter, Princess Anoud and a son, Prince Saud.[96][97] Aida Fustuq was another wife of Abdullah, they had two children, Adila and Abdulaziz.[98][99] They divorced later.[100] Munira bint Abdullah Al Al Shaykh was the wife of King Abdullah and gave birth to his eldest living son, Prince Khaled.[101] Tathi bint Mishan al Faisal Al Jarba gave birth to Prince Mishaal.[102]
Sons
King Abdullah's eldest son, Prince Khaled, was deputy commander of the Saudi Arabian National Guard West until 1992. His second son, Prince Mutaib, is former commander and current minister of the National Guard. His mother is Munira Al Otaishan. Prince Mishaal was governor of the Makkah Province (2013–2015).[103] Prince Abdulaziz was the king's former Syria adviser[95] and has been deputy foreign affairs minister since 2011. Prince Faisal is head of the Saudi Arabian Red Crescent Society. King Abdullah's seventh son, Prince Turki, who was a pilot in the Royal Saudi Air Force, was governor of the Riyadh Province (2014–2015).[104] The youngest son, Prince Badr, was born in 2003, when Abdullah was about 79 years old.[105] In October 2015, his son, Prince Majed bin Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, was arrested in Los Angeles for using cocaine, being drunk, threatening female employees, and forcing them to watch him having gay sex with a male employee.[106]
Daughters
King Abdullah's daughter Princess Adila is married to Faisal bin Abdullah bin Mohammed.[107] She is one of the few Saudi princesses with a semi-public role, and a known advocate of women's right to drive.[108] She is also known as "her father's public face".[26] One of Abdullah's younger daughters, Princess Sahab, was born in 1993.[109] Sahab bint Abdullah married Khalid bin Hamad Al Khalifa, son of Bahraini King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, on 6 June 2011.[110] Princess Sahab is the daughter of the king from his wife of the Al-Jarbah tribe.
From his marriage to Princess Alanoud Al Fayez (arranged when she was 15 without her having ever met him), whom he has now divorced, he had four daughters – Princesses Sahar, Maha, Hala and Jawahir.[111] The four princesses have been under house arrest for the last 16 years, and are not allowed to leave the country.[112][113] After media releases in March 2014, Sahar and Jawaher received no food or clean water for 25 days, lost 10 kilos each and their mother carried out weekly protests in front of the Saudi Arabian embassy in London,[114] and about which Sahar and Jawaher released a video while under house arrest pleading for help from the international community. King Abdullah also had a daughter called Princess Nora who died in 1990 in a car accident. Princess Fayza is yet another daughter. She is the mother of Prince Saud bin Abdulaziz bin Nasser Al Saud who was accused of murdering his servant Bandar Abdulaziz in London in 2010.[115]
Other Family
King Abdullah was the half brother of both his predecessors, including King Fahd, and his successor, King Salman.
Ancestry
Illness and death
The King had curtailed his activities from June 2010 with no clear explanation. Diplomats said there had been uncertainty about the extent of his health problems since Abdullah canceled a visit to France.[when?] In a television appearance in which he was seen to use a cane, King Abdullah said he was in good health but had something "bothering" him. In a visit by US diplomats to Saudi Arabia in April 2014 the Saudi King was seen connected to breathing tubes during talks, indicating increasing health problems.
From 2010 to 2012 King Abdullah had four back surgeries.[117] The first two of the surgeries were in New York, one in 2010 for a slipped disk and a blood clot pressing on nerves in his back and a second to stabilize vertebrae in 2011.[117] The third one was in Riyadh in 2011. And the last one was also in Riyadh on 17 November 2012.[117]
In November 2010, his back problems came to light in the media. He had an "accumulation of blood" around the spinal cord. He suffered from a herniated disc and was told to rest by doctors. To maintain the Kingdom's stability, Crown Prince Sultan returned from Morocco during the King's absence.[118] The King was admitted to New York-Presbyterian Hospital after a blood clot complicated a slipped disc and underwent successful back surgery. The lead surgeon was Muhammad Zaka, who probably removed the herniated disk and performed a lumbar fusion.[119][120][121] He subsequently had another successful surgery in which surgeons "stabilized a number of vertebras". He left the hospital on 22 December 2010 and convalesced at The Plaza in New York City.[122] On 22 January 2011, he left the United States and for Morocco,[123] and returned to the Kingdom on 23 February 2011.[124]
King Abdullah left Saudi Arabia on "special leave" on 27 August 2012.[125] Al-Quds reported that he had an operation at Mount Sinai Hospital, New York, on or before 4 September 2012, following a heart attack.[126] However, there was no official report on this alleged operation – instead, it was announced that the King went on a private trip to Morocco, where he is known to frequent. The King returned to Saudi Arabia from Morocco on 24 September.[127] Nearly two months later, in November 2012, King Abdullah underwent another back surgery in Riyadh[128] and left hospital on 13 December 2012.[129] A report in April 2014 stated that the King had around six months left to live, citing a diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.[130] On 2 January 2015, Abdullah was hospitalized in Riyadh for pneumonia[131] and died on 23 January at the age of 90.[17][132] Per Islamic tradition, his funeral was held the same day, a public ceremony at the Grand Mosque of Riyadh before burial in an unmarked grave at the Al Oud cemetery.[133] Three days of national mourning were declared, in which flags would fly at half mast.[133] Flags were also flown half-mast at Buckingham Palace and Westminster Abbey in London.[134]
Philanthropy
Influence
King Abdullah was, in 2012, named as the most influential Muslim among 500 Muslims for the previous 4 years.[138][139] In December 2012, Forbes named him as the seventh most powerful figure in its list of the "World's Most Powerful People" for 2012, being the sole Arab in the top ten.[140]
Honours and awards
King Abdullah received a number of international high orders. Most notably, he was an honoured knight of the strictly Roman Catholic Order of the Golden Fleece (the Spanish branch), which caused some controversy.[141][142]
In April 2012, he was awarded by the United Nations a gold medal for his contributions to intercultural understanding and peace initiatives.[143]
Foreign honours
Wealth
In 2011, the financial magazine Forbes estimated his and his immediate family's documentable wealth at US$21 billion, making him one of the world's richest monarchs.[146]
Abdullah was an expert equestrian in his youth. His stables were considered the largest in Saudi Arabia, with over 1,000 horses spread throughout five divisions led by his son Prince Mutaib bin Abdullah.[147] The King also owned Janadria Farm, a large complex located in the suburbs of Riyadh.[147]
For holidays, the King maintained a large palace complex with several residential compounds in Casablanca, Morocco.[148] It is equipped with two heliports and is surrounded by large mansions on 133 acres of vegetation.The first game of the 2016 men’s soccer season on Aug. 26 is getting closer and closer. This year’s schedule features some very intriguing early-season battles between non-conference opponents that are looking to get an early jump on their quests for a national championship. Here are three very intriguing games that could give everyone a first impression of who might be competing in the 2016 College Cup in Houston.
No. 10 Georgetown at No. 2 Akron | Aug. 26
What a start to the season this should be, as the first night of the 2016 season features one of the best matchups you will come across all season. Akron enters the year with big plans to hoist the trophy they held in 2010 after a penalty-kick loss in the semifinals of the 2015 College Cup. Meanwhile, Georgetown is also hungry after suffering a similar fate last season, a loss in penalty kicks against Boston College in the Sweet 16.
RELATED: 5 seniors poised for a big final year
These two teams played each other early in the 2015 season as well, with the Zips marching into Washington, D.C. and emerging with a 1-0 victory. The lone goal scorer in that one was Adam Najem, who would go on to be named a first-team All-American. Stopping Najem and getting junior Arun Basuljevic quickly acclimated as the new top guy on offense following the departures of Brandon Allen and Alex Muyl will be major keys for the Hoyas if they want to pull off the upset on the road.
No. 1 Stanford vs. No. 9 Notre Dame | Sept. 2
The defending-champion Cardinal gets a major test after a relatively soft first three games on the schedule. Stanford is heading to South Bend, Indiana, for the Adidas/IU Credit Union Classic, which features the Cardinal, Notre Dame, California and host Indiana. Stanford’s game against the No. 15 Hoosiers on Sept. 4 is also a big one, but the tournament opener versus the Fighting Irish gets the slight edge as the biggest game.
PREVIEW: Stanford sets sights on title defense; watch out for Maryland
Stanford received 20 of the 24 first-place votes in the NSCAA preseason coaches poll despite superstar and MAC Hermann Trophy winner Jordan Morris leaving with a year of eligibility remaining for the MLS. That leaves Stanford with some question marks on offense but still a large group of talent. That unit is led by junior Foster Langsdorf, who registered seven goals last season despite playing second fiddle to Morris.
2015 DI Men's Soccer: Championship Highlights
This game against Notre Dame should tell us a lot about where the Cardinal are at, as well as if the Fighting Irish can make the leap back to truly elite territory after winning the national championship in 2013. Anchored by top offensive weapon Jon Gallagher and a defense that allowed fewer than two goals in 17 of their 22 games in 2015, the Fighting Irish should present a great early test for the champs.
No. 7 Creighton at No. 3 Clemson | Sept. 2
That night, two more top 10 teams will go at it when Creighton travels to Clemson, South Carolina. The Tigers had their most successful season in decades, reaching the national championship game for the first time since 1987. This is still a very talented Clemson team, albeit one that lost its top two scorers and starting goalkeeper from last year’s squad that was blown out by Stanford in the championship.
Creighton is very familiar with the concept of losing a giant offensive standout as well, with the nation’s leader in points by a ridiculous margin of 12 Fabian Herbers taking the same route as Morris and leaving a year early for the MLS. Still, the Blue Jays are a strong team year in and year out, and this year should be no exception. But is either team’s new-look roster good enough to be a legitimate championship contender? This game might be a strong clue toward the answer of that question.Percy Jackson found a way to sabotage his work at a factory in Alsace.
Well I was a joiner and they put me on a circular saw and I was working away happily until I suddenly realised: ‘I’m working for the enemy!’ It was timber, to go in the dugouts, lining the dugouts. And I thought, ‘I’m helping the enemy!’ So I spoilt a few and they took me off it!
The work could be dangerous, as Alf Bastin explained.
We were at Dobritz and we were going out into the woods there digging up gravel which was required for building purposes in the camp and town. We used to have one of these huge farm carts, fill it with gravel, and it was dragged by about 24 prisoners. So, where we were working there was quite a steep hill down to the exit. And I remember on one occasion we’d started down the hill and the idea was that people holding the ropes would hang on back behind to steady the vehicle, getting out of hand. But unfortunately, something went wrong this particular day and it started away on it’s own. And unfortunately for one poor lad, he lost his life. It went over his head, and that was an awful scene.
For some POWs, their work placements provided respite from strict camp regulations. George Thompson lived on a farm in the Soltau area in 1918.
We had a hut in the farmyard – quite a comfortable hut in the farmyard. And we were fed, of course, in the farm kitchen with the other farm labourers. The job was potatoes, really, that’s why we were there the extra labour for potato picking. They treated us like ordinary people; I mean they didn’t bother about us being prisoners at all. We used to go down to the villages and have a look round. If we had some prisoner of war money – we were paid about a penny a day for working – we’d spend it in the village shop.
When a POW wasn’t working, life in the camp could be pretty dull, as Albert Barker discovered.
There was no football or anything like that. You couldn’t do anything, actually. Later on they got books from England, but we didn’t get many. You’d waste your time. If you were a fit man you went out to work for so many hours a day. But such as us who were in the camp you’d nothing to do, you got fed up with it. It was just a case of you were a prisoner and that was it, you had to make the best of it.
Some prisoners organised learning schemes and orchestras, read books or played games. At William Shipway’s POW camp, there were morale-boosting concerts.
Of course we had the orchestra, as I said, and we got up shows. In which we got up costumes and scenery and so forth, invited the German staff, the German officers and they invited German officers in from the garrison and quite a ‘do’. We did I think it was two shows that I can remember. One of them was called the Raja of –. And the raja had a beauty chorus of officers dressed as ladies, you see. Oriental costumes; heavily made-up.
Escape attempts were fairly common in First World War POW camps. In July 1918, 29 officers left Holzminden prison via a secret tunnel, in one of the most famous escapes of the war. Holzminden inmate Vernon Coombs described the reaction to the breakout.
Do you know, I knew nothing about that tunnel; it was being built for months! I knew nothing about it until after the escape. I don’t know why I didn’t know – I suppose it was very secret. Well, every morning we were paraded and counted and when, after the escape, we paraded, they said there are 29, I think, missing. And that was a great excitement and, of course, pandemonium amongst the Germans. Because the commandant had always prided himself on a camp where no escapes could take place. He was thoroughly deflated and absolutely mad!
For British prisoners, escape was difficult without money, food or the ability to speak German. If they were caught, escapees could be harshly punished. George Cole and his friend tried to leave their camp in 1918.
We went in front camp commandant and this interpreter was interpreting for the German. So he asked if we knew we could be shot for trying to escape. And I don’t know where I got it from, I says, ‘No sir,’ I says, ‘that’s the prisoner’s privilege of trying to escape – we are supposed to escape.’ The interpreter told it to the German, see. And I can remember him giving me a kind of a smile, see, and he spoke back to the interpreter. And he says, ‘He’s going to give you five days in a cell, bread and water.’ So I says, ‘Oh well,’ I says, ‘it’s a soldier’s duty trying to escape, to join his regiment, see.’ Martin kept saying, ‘Be quiet!’ And the German was laughing, like, see.
Allegations of cruelty, neglect and brutality were commonly made by prisoners of war. The POW experience varied – but mistreatment did occur. Hugh Matthews was threatened when he refused to work.
We were ordered to go out to work. And that was a thing I was very much opposed to doing on principal; I never had done any manual work since I was captured because I held that full ranks shouldn’t be forced to work. But however, one morning we fell in at half past 6 in the side road between our barrack blocks in parties of about 50. The guard fell in in front of us, facing us, a very heavy guard – about one file to every two files of prisoners. And we were given the command, right turn, to go and get shovels and things. Well of course, nobody moved. And the sentries were given a very smart and angry order and off came their rifles and they very ostentatiously put one in the spout to start with, closed the bolt and they just stood there waiting for the command to fire. And we were told if we didn’t move at the next command, we should be fired upon. And of course it would just have been a slaughter. So when the ‘recht -’ came, we just ‘recht -’, you see, and shambled off.
British private, H Stone, witnessed maltreatment of other prisoners at his camp.
I saw the first brutality there. These Italian prisoners used to come into our compound; they were not supposed to be in the compound. They used to come in there – they were in a shocking state, all toes sticking out of their boots, rags – and they used to come round to the cookhouse looking for potato peelings. The Germans, if they saw them, used to come over and they used to knock ’em flat – you know, knock ’em flat on the floor and kick ’em out of our compound. I’d never seen any brutality like that – I didn’t realise that our people suffered just the same until later on.
Thomas Painting remembered a fellow POW being punished for complaining about conditions in a letter home.
Discipline was severe and the treatment was bad. Rifleman Turner he wrote home and said he was hungry, he got no food. The Germans come down and got Harry Turner. And tried him for writing home saying he was being starved. And in the camp there was a post four inches square, wood, seven foot high. They put two bricks under his feet, tied him to this post round his arms and waist and legs, took the bricks from underneath his feet and left him to hang there for two hours in a snowstorm. He was nearly dead when they cut him down. That was a punishment for writing home saying he was hungry.
Huge numbers of Germans were also captured during the war, and imprisoned by the Allies. British soldier Clifford Lane had a good rapport with some German prisoners taken on the Western Front in 1918.
We took some German prisoners and I had the job of escorting them down to the battalion headquarters. On the way down, the Germans put up – on the communication trenches – they put up a terrific bombardment. The two or three of us who were escorting these prisoners got them into a dugout, where some of our people actually were, a deep dugout. Of course, we took advantage of these dugouts. These Germans were most comical. One was called Hans, I remember. And we gave them a rum issue and they were laughing – of course, they were glad to get out of it, I suppose. But anyway, they thoroughly enjoyed themselves.
Norman Collins of the Seaforth Highlanders also showed kindness to a captured German.
I remember a German, a young German prisoner, a young German, hopping, coming in with a piece of wood – which no doubt he’d got from the dugout – acting as a crutch. I could speak a few words of German and I just asked him how he felt. And I wasn’t popular because I had him put onto a stretcher and taken back with the British wounded behind the lines. I could see that I wasn’t popular at all for that. It was probably the wrong thing to do, but he was a young fellow; he didn’t look more than 18. He was badly wounded and he couldn’t walk, except hop on this crutch made out of wood, and I suppose I felt sorry for him.
There were, though, instances of British hostility aimed at German POWs. Henry Brunker recalled one he witnessed in Salonika.
We brought in seven German prisoners, you know,to question them, you know. And Colonel Greenwood looked at one of those Germans – a big German, about 6 foot 3 – big fellow. He looked at this German as good as insult him, you know, in the way. I felt sorry, you know, in a way that he did that. And this German looked at him as though he would have killed him! I thought, ‘If he was free, he’d have killed him’ – he would have!
The war ended in November 1918, but POWs were not immediately released from captivity. George Thompson did not even find out that the war was over until January 1919.
I had a load of potatoes down at the station, the village station, due to be loaded into a truck. And a train pulled up and an Englishman pushed his head out of the train, he says, ‘What the hell are you doing there?’ I says, ‘Working, I work here on a farm.’ He said, ‘Well, the war’s been finished for ages.’ That was the first I knew about it. And then I got, in January, I got a letter from the Pied Piper’s town – Hamlyn – saying there was a railway warrant in it and I had to take the train from Celle to the camp at Hamlyn. And from Hamlyn, we were put on a train the next day and came into Holland. And that was the end of that.
For many POWs, it was months before they returned home. Their families often found that their experiences had changed them. Beatrice Lee’s husband had been badly treated in his POW camp in Germany, after he’d tried to escape.
In 1919, my husband came back – it was on a Sunday evening. And when he came back, he was thinner than me. I had a lot to do for him; he was a sick man, a very sick man. Anyway, I took him to Ireland – Larne – we started off at Larne. And we went to a little quiet place, Ballycastle, thinking it would bring him back to his health. But it was no good.
After spending more than three years as a POW in Germany, Charles Colthup just wanted the familiarities of his home life when he returned to Britain in January 1919.
We arrived out in my village, outside mother and father’s house. It was after midnight when we got out to my village, yes, and everybody was in bed, naturally. Anyway, I went up the steps to our house and tapped the door and called out, ‘I’m home.’ Mother got up and came down and – oh dear – the reunion, well you can guess what it was like. Straight away she lit the fire and put a kettle on – we soon had a cup of tea…
Voices of the First World War is a podcast series that reveals the impact the war had on everyone who lived through it through the stories of the men and women who were there.Your name, having been recently dubbed the “Ghibli killer”, has been reaching audiences globally to both longtime anime fans and non-devotees alike. But underneath the surface of a touching, youth drama lies heavy social commentary and significant allegories towards societal issues that aren’t even necessarily specific to Japan.
The latest film by Makoto Shinkai, Your name follows two high school teenagers whose lives immediately change when they begin to literally swap bodies. The film trails their day to day experiences as they better understand the other’s life, learning to love the respective person they’re being and inching closer towards a journey set forth to finally meet who they have become in-person. As of today, Your name is one of the biggest anime box office hits of all time on a global scale, since Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away. Compared to Studio Ghibli fantastical epic, what made Shinkai’s Your name so sweeping, and even groundbreaking, for audiences today?
Spoiler warning! This article will go into heavy, specific description of events that occur in the whole film. Significant plot details below.
Shattering the Fantasy
Your name, at a glance, wallows and depends on cliches typical of televised anime more so than ever compared to Shinkai’s previous works. But like his previous works, Shinkai manages actually turns these tropes over on their heads as he has always done before.
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The premise of body-swapping in fiction is not a unique concept at all, especially when it comes to body-swapping between a boy and girl for the the comical misunderstandings that follow later on. The narrative begins with as what any public promotional material for the film has made clear: Mitsuha, a girl who lives in the rural, mountainous town of Itomori, has been body-swapping with Taki, a boy who lives within the confines of concrete jungle Tokyo for an unclear period of time. To the surprise of no one, the two grow infatuated with the other.
However, the foreseen, developing romance between the teenagers becomes complicated when their swapping turns out to not be as straightforward as it seems. Throughout the film, a constantly referred to impending comet is hinted at being the source of the body-swapping. Building up to be this beautiful, momentous occasion, the climatic moment ends in disaster: a part of the comet splits, and the impact wipes Itomori off the map, thus killing all of its residents including Mitsuha. As Taki has yet to realize this, but realizes the body-swapping has stopped, he is pushed on a pursuit to investigate where Mitsuha lived. Soon finding out Mitsuha and the entirety of the town has died, he realizes in horror that not only were they separated by distance, but in time entirely: Mitsuha’s life that Taki has been living was occurring three years prior to his present life. With time now a factor, the chance of preventing Itomori’s demise becomes a sliver of hope in what otherwise turned into a series of cynical, dreary events.
This science fiction concept of lovers being separated by time and trying to challenge it is not so new - but it is so distinctly Shinkai and not so common within the works of his contemporaries. Likewise, some American viewers may recall this specific concept explored in the mainstream through the film, The Lake House, a 2006 romantic drama directed by Alejandro Agresti. As with most films, good marketing doesn’t tell all, wanting to get people seated in theaters based on what seems to be the best takes of a movie through its promotional material. Your name creates a twist of what was perceived to be a straightforward, happy, school daze romance into something ultimately more complicated - if not downright unsettling.
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But don’t worry, viewers: Shinkai’s direction explicitly reminds you, the audience, that what you are seeing is not real. Prior to the film’s actual beginning, Your name opens up with an isolated, theme song sequence. This sequence is not one would typically be used to when watching a film; a particular technique having been adapted by most modern films onwards, the opening sequences of films are designed to immerse you in the film’s universe. A film’s opening sequence usually comprises of text or graphics overlayed on a series of shots establishing the setting or following a character, making it clear that the narrative of the film has already begun and you, the viewer has stumbled upon the scene.
Your name, at first, appears to walk back in time when opening sequences were treated more separate and solely for the purpose of credits, but instead, it specifically presented a song sequence familiar to every anime fan who views serialized anime religiously. Typical of anime TV opening sequences, the audience is subjected to a montage of every character that will be presented plot, and likewise summarizes everything that will happen: what you are about to see is not real and here is a culmination of everything you may see.
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Your name makes it clear that it is a tribute to the anime viewer and the cliches it embraces. To the tune of a theme song composed by J-rock group RADWIMPS (whom also composed the rest of the film’s soundtrack), the film not only represents itself as an ode to the regular anime viewer, but this particular generation of anime viewers who have grown up with these tropes and cheesy concepts of their own time. Although Shinkai may seem like he is subverting these things as harsh critique, he is doing so with love and care by his own resonation when he himself has grown up with anime genres of this same flair. (Shinkai has said that Ghibli’s Laputa: Castle in the Sky is his favorite anime.)
Your name’s treatment as if a televised, syndicated, anime series is completely purposeful. For Shinkai to consider a theme song sequence may be jarring and obtrusive to some film viewers, but removing you from the film by calling it fictional upfront isn’t necessarily a bad thing. From the breathtaking, photorealistic visuals of Taki’s Tokyo and Mitsuha’s lush, rural town, and through the raw emotions shared between the two and across all of the other characters, perhaps its intent on knowing |
in F. A. Jenkins (ed.), Primate Locomotion. Academic Press, New York.). At the same time, the astragalar ectal facet is oriented more plantad and less laterally in Galecyon than in Prolimnocyon, resulting in the presence of a lateral process in Galecyon. Geisler (2001) Geisler, J. H. 2001. New morphological evidence for the phylogeny of Artiodactyla, Cetacea, and Mesonychidae. American Museum Novitates 3344:1–53. has suggested that a ventrally oriented astragalar ectal facet may facilitate weight transfer between the astragalus and calcaneus, but this does not provide any obvious insights into substrate preferences. The sustentacular facets are notable chiefly for the presence of a distinct connection between the calcaneal sustentacular facet and the distal facet in Prolimnocyon, a feature that is lacking in Galecyon. The former morphology is characteristic of taxa with substantial mobility at the subastragalar joint (e.g., Artiodactyla), and its absence in Galecyon is a further indication that this joint was less mobile in the latter genus than in Prolimnocyon.
Although the distal portion of the astragalus is not preserved in DPC 5364, an isolated astragalus referable to Prolimnocyon sp. (USNM 493817) demonstrates that the astragalar head of Prolimnocyon is transversely expanded and dorsoventrally compressed in this genus, contrasting with the more obliquely oriented morphology in Galecyon. The former morphology facilitates transverse movements at the transverse tarsal joint and is consistent with the scansorial or arboreal locomotor repertoire suggested by other aspects of the skeleton of Prolimnocyon. The morphology present in Galecyon would permit a greater range of parasagittal movement, again consistent with a more terrestrial habitus.
Finally, although complete distal phalanges are unknown in both taxa, preserved portions indicate that the unguals of Galecyon were relatively more elongate than those of Prolimnocyon. Certainly, the unguals were shallower and less deeply fissured than in Thinocyon, a likely descendant of Prolimnocyon (Gebo and Rose, 1993 Gebo, D. L., and K. D. Rose. 1993. Skeletal morphology and locomotor adaptation in Prolimnocyon atavus, an early Eocene hyaenodontid creodont. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 13:125–144.). Eigenshape analysis of distal phalanges of Thinocyon was consistent with scansorial or terrestrial habits (MacLeod and Rose, 1993 Rose, M. D. 1993. Functional anatomy of the elbow and forearm in primates; pp. 70–95 in D. L. Gebo (ed.), Postcranial Adaptation in Nonhuman Primates. Northern Illinois University Press, DeKalb, Illinois.), and the overall morphology of the genus suggests a generalized locomotor repertoire (Gebo and Rose, 1993 Gebo, D. L., and K. D. Rose. 1993. Skeletal morphology and locomotor adaptation in Prolimnocyon atavus, an early Eocene hyaenodontid creodont. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 13:125–144.; MacLeod and Rose, 1993 Rose, M. D. 1993. Functional anatomy of the elbow and forearm in primates; pp. 70–95 in D. L. Gebo (ed.), Postcranial Adaptation in Nonhuman Primates. Northern Illinois University Press, DeKalb, Illinois.; Morlo and Gunnell, 2003 Morlo, M., and G. F. Gunnell. 2003. Small limnocyonines (Hyaenodontidae, Mammalia) from the Bridgerian middle Eocene of Wyoming: Thinocyon, Prolimnocyon, and Iridodon, new genus. Contributions from the Museum of Paleontology, The University of Michigan 31:43–78.). The shallower phalanx is consistent with greater terrestrial or digging ability in Galecyon, but otherwise is too incomplete to better document specializations.
The differences between Galecyon and Prolimnocyon indicate that, relative to Prolimnocyon, Galecyon emphasized parasagittal mobility and transverse stability at major joints. Evidence from the distal humerus indicates reduction of musculature to the carpus and manus. All of these features are consistent with Galecyon being better adapted to terrestrial locomotion than Prolimnocyon, which has been reconstructed as scansorial (Gebo and Rose, 1993 Gebo, D. L., and K. D. Rose. 1993. Skeletal morphology and locomotor adaptation in Prolimnocyon atavus, an early Eocene hyaenodontid creodont. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 13:125–144.). In fact, many of the features of the postcranial skeleton of Galecyon just discussed are widely cited as indicators of a terrestrial locomotor repertoire (Taylor, 1974 Taylor, M. E. 1974. The functional anatomy of the forelimb of some African Viverridae (Carnivora). Journal of Morphology 143:307–336., 1976 Taylor, M. E. 1976. The functional anatomy of the hindlimb of some African Viverridae (Carnivora). Journal of Morphology 148:227–254.; Gebo and Rose, 1993 Gebo, D. L., and K. D. Rose. 1993. Skeletal morphology and locomotor adaptation in Prolimnocyon atavus, an early Eocene hyaenodontid creodont. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 13:125–144.; O'Leary and Rose, 1995 Heinrich, R. E., and K. D. Rose. 1995. Partial skeleton of the primitive carnivoran Miacis petilus from the early Eocene of Wyoming. Journal of Mammalogy 76:148–162.; Heinrich and Rose, 1997 Heinrich, R. E., and K. D. Rose. 1997. Postcranial morphology and locomotor behaviour of two early Eocene miacoid carnivorans, Vulpavus and Didymictis. Palaeontology 40:279–305.; Rose, 1999 Rose, K. D. 1999. Postcranial skeleton of Eocene Leptictidae (Mammalia), and its implications for behavior and relationships. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 19:355–372.; Argot, 2001 Argot, C. 2001. Functional-adaptive anatomy of the forelimb in the Didelphidae, and the paleobiology of the Paleocene marsupials Mayulestes ferox and Pucadelphys andinus. Journal of Morphology 247:51–79., 2002 Argot, C. 2002. Functional-adaptive analysis of the hindlimb anatomy of extant marsupials and the paleobiology of the Paleocene marsupials Mayulestes ferox and Pucadelphys andinus. Journal of Morphology 253:76–108., 2003 Argot, C. 2003. Functional-adaptive anatomy of the axial skeleton of some extant marsupials and the paleobiology of the Paleocene marsupials Mayulestes ferox and Pucadelphys andinus. Journal of Morphology 255:279–300., 2010 Argot, C. 2010. Morphofunctional analysis of the postcranium of Amphicyon major (Mammalia, Carnivora, Amphicyonidae) from the Miocene of Sansan (Gers, France) compared to three extant carnivores: Ursus arctos, Panthera leo, and Canis lupus. Geodiversitas 32:65–106.; Sargis, 2002a Sargis, E. J. 2002a. Functional morphology of the forelimb of tupaiids (Mammalia, Scandentia) and its phylogenetic implications. Journal of Morphology 253:10–42., 2002b Sargis, E. J. 2002b. Functional morphology of the hindlimb of tupaiids (Mammalia, Scandentia) and Its phylogenetic implications. Journal of Morphology 254:149–185.; Rose and Chinnery, 2004 Rose, K. D., and B. J. Chinnery. 2004. The postcranial skeleton of early Eocene rodents. Bulletin of Carnegie Museum of Natural History 36:211–244.; Zack et al., 2005 Zack, S. P., T. A. Penkrot, J. I. Bloch, and K. D. Rose. 2005. Affinities of “hyopsodontids” to elephant shrews and a Holarctic origin of Afrotheria. Nature 434:497–501.; Penkrot et al., 2008 Penkrot, T. A., S. P. Zack, K. D. Rose, and J. I. Bloch. 2008. Postcranial morphology of Apheliscus and Haplomylus (Condylarthra, Apheliscidae): evidence for a Paleocene Holarctic origin of Macroscelidea; pp. 73–106 in E. J. Sargis and M. Dagosto (eds.), Mammalian Evolutionary Morphology: A Tribute to Frederick S. Szalay. Springer, Dordrecht, The Netherlands.). However, although Galecyon is more terrestrially adapted than Prolimnocyon, there is no evidence for a truly cursorial locomotor repertoire, as occurs in contemporary mesonychids and some herbivorous taxa (Rose, 1982 Rose, K. D. 1982. Skeleton of Diacodexis, oldest known artiodactyl. Science 216:621–623., 1985 Rose, K. D. 1985. Comparative osteology of North American dichobunid artiodactyls. Journal of Paleontology 59:1203–1226., 1990 Rose, K. D. 1990. Postcranial skeletal remains and adaptations in early Eocene mammals from the Willwood Formation, Bighorn Basin, Wyoming. Geological Society of America Special Paper 243:107–133., 1996 Rose, K. D. 1996. Skeleton of early Eocene Homogalax and the origin of Perissodactyla. Palaeovertebrata 25:243–260.; Zhou et al., 1992 Zhou, X., W. J. Sanders, and P. D. Gingerich. 1992. Functional and behavioral implications of vertebral structure in Pachyaena ossifraga (Mammalia, Mesonychia). Contributions from the Museum of Paleontology, The University of Michigan 28:289–319.; O'Leary and Rose, 1995 Heinrich, R. E., and K. D. Rose. 1995. Partial skeleton of the primitive carnivoran Miacis petilus from the early Eocene of Wyoming. Journal of Mammalogy 76:148–162.). Instead, Galecyon shows some evidence for non-parasagittal mobility such as a rounded calcaneal cuboid facet and an astragalar head that would have permitted some mediolateral movement. The presence of distinct, if reduced, medial epicondyle and supinator crest on the humerus also indicate the retention of more manual dexterity than is typical of fully terrestrial taxa. A more appropriate comparison would be with modern taxa classified as scansorial/terrestrial by Gebo and Rose (1993) Gebo, D. L., and K. D. Rose. 1993. Skeletal morphology and locomotor adaptation in Prolimnocyon atavus, an early Eocene hyaenodontid creodont. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 13:125–144., including some euplerids, mustelids, mephitids, and viverrids that spend most of their time on the ground while retaining the ability to climb.
To some extent, the differences in postcranial morphology between Galecyon and Prolimnocyon mirror differences between Didymictis and the contemporary miacid Vulpavus (Heinrich and Rose, 1997 Heinrich, R. E., and K. D. Rose. 1997. Postcranial morphology and locomotor behaviour of two early Eocene miacoid carnivorans, Vulpavus and Didymictis. Palaeontology 40:279–305.). However, differences between the two hyaenodontid genera are less dramatic than between Didymictis and Vulpavus. The morphology of Prolimnocyon is less specialized than the highly arboreal Vulpavus, whereas Galecyon does not show the degree of terrestrial specialization present in Didymictis, which has been reconstructed as incipiently cursorial (Heinrich and Rose, 1997 Heinrich, R. E., and K. D. Rose. 1997. Postcranial morphology and locomotor behaviour of two early Eocene miacoid carnivorans, Vulpavus and Didymictis. Palaeontology 40:279–305.). All Wasatchian hyaenodontids can likely be accommodated in the scansorial locomotor category of McLeod and Rose (1993) Rose, M. D. 1993. Functional anatomy of the elbow and forearm in primates; pp. 70–95 in D. L. Gebo (ed.), Postcranial Adaptation in Nonhuman Primates. Northern Illinois University Press, DeKalb, Illinois.. Galecyon and Arfia (see below) are most similar to scansorial/generalized terrestrial taxa (e.g., Gulo), whereas Prolimnocyon is more comparable to more purely scansorial taxa (e.g., Martes).ADELAIDE has easily accounted for Greater Western Sydney by 36 points in front of a bumper crowd of 9250 at a wet Thebarton Oval on Saturday.
The Crows dominated the game from start to finish to run out comfortable winners, 7.6 (48) to 1.6 (12).
Olympic basketballer Erin Phillips booted three goals for the Crows in her first game of competitive football, while midfielder Ebony Marinoff picked up a game-high 20 possessions.
Rhiannon Metcalfe controlled the rucks for Adelaide - she had 10 opening-half hit-outs while the entire Giants team managed just one - and gave gold-plated service to industrious midfielders Marinoff and co-captain Chelsea Randall (16 possessions).
Full match coverage and stats
The Giants, who were without both of their marquee signings Emma Swanson and Renee Forth, and priority signing Louise Stephenson, finally received a much-deserved reward for their effort when Phoebe McWilliams kicked the club's first goal early in the last quarter.
"For a first hit-out, I was really pleased with their effort," GWS coach Tim Schmidt said. "That was the thing going in, making sure there were no weak efforts, and they gave it their all.
"Overall picture, playing in front of 9000 people, first-ever AFLW game, being away... I thought the girls handled themselves very well and I couldn't be more proud of them."
ADELAIDE 1.3 3.6 6.6 7.6 (48)
GREATER WESTERN SYDNEY 0.1 0.2 0.3 1.6 (12)
GOALS
Adelaide: Phillips 3, Randall, Gibson, Varnhagen, Perkins.
Greater Western Sydney: McWilliams
BEST
Adelaide: Marinoff, Randall, Phillips, Gibson, Varnhagen, Mules
Greater Western Sydney: Barr, Farrugia, McWilliams, Dal Pos
INJURIES
Adelaide: Rachael Killian (quad) replaced in the selected side by Abbey Holmes
Greater Western Sydney: Nil
Reports: Nil
Official crowd: 9250 at Thebarton Oval
Ebony Marinoff (left) and Talia Radan celebrate after the final siren. Picture: AFL Photos
The first blow
Marquee signing Kellie Gibson wrote herself into Adelaide history, booting the club's first goal with a sensational long-range effort. The Crows worked the ball beautifully out of defence and along the wing before finding Gibson. The West Australian gave the ball a mighty heave as it bounced through the big sticks to the delight of the large local crowd.
It was a heavy high tackle, but great to see Erin Phillips get to her feet and convert the goal here #AFLWCrowsGiants pic.twitter.com/vM3bWYcJhm — AFL Women's (@aflwomens) February 4, 2017
The difference
The Crows had winners all over the ground. Hard-running midfielder Ebony Marinoff was everywhere, picking up a game-high 20 possessions. Marquee players Chelsea Randall and Kellie Gibson were both excellent, while Olympic basketballer Erin Phillips was dangerous up forward booting three goals.
Work in progress
It was always going to be a tough ask for an undermanned Greater Western Sydney team, which was without injured marquee players Renee Forth and Emma Swanson. Priority signing Louise Stephenson was also sidelined with a knee injury. Jess Dal Pos was outstanding for the Giants laying nine tackles, while Nicole Barr and captain Amanda Farrugia led from the front.
What's next
The Crows will look to make it two straight wins to start the season whey they take on the Western Bulldogs at Whitten Oval next Friday night. Meanwhile, the Giants have another big task when they face an impressive Carlton side at Ikon Park next Saturday.
Say what?
"She's an unbelievable athlete and she showed a glimpse of what she's capable of today."
- Adelaide coach Bec Goddard talking about ex-basketball star Erin Phillips, who booted three goals.
"We matched them right from the start, our first five minutes were sensational, but they probably utilised their opportunities a little bit more."
- Greater Western Sydney coach Tim Schmidt.Remember the unbridled success that was the Starbucks Unicorn Frappuccino?
Between April 19 and April 23, 2017, Starbucks introduced its limited edition “Unicorn Frappuccino ® blended beverage.” The drink caused a social media frenzy – good or bad, everyone had an opinion, and picture, of the drink.
The only problem, besides the taste, was that there was already a pending trademark on “Unicorn Latte,” (Ser. No. 87308906) filed January 20, 2017. The mark, which has currently reached publication for opposition in the registration process, is for Section 1A Use in Commerce. The End began selling the latte in December 2016, to the delight of social media conscious New Yorkers in the area.
So it comes as no surprise that in May 2017, the owner of the trademark – Brooklyn coffee shop “The End,” and its parent company, “Montauk Juice Factory” filed a federal lawsuit in the Eastern District of New York alleging trademark infringement and dilution.
The suit claims Starbucks’ drink is a knockoff of The End’s and that it both confuses The End’s customers as well as overshadows the small shop’s Unicorn Latte. Also, the suit points out that although composed of entirely different ingredients, the drinks look remarkably similar – possibly setting up trade dress claims.
Neither drink actually contains any coffee, The End’s latte is made from “cold-pressed ginger, lemon juice, dates, cashews, blended with additional healthy, dried ingredients such as maca root, blue-green algae, and vanilla bean,” while for Starbucks, “blended crème is made with a sweet dusting of pink powder, blended into a crème Frappuccino with mango syrup and layered with a pleasantly sour blue drizzle. It is finished with vanilla whipped cream and a sprinkle of sweet pink and sour blue powder topping.” In other words, The End’s Latte is healthy, while Starbuck’s Frappuccino is – SURPRISE – not.
Mythical Musings – Trademarks and Dilution
A trademark is any recognizable symbol, literally anything – words, shapes, colors, sounds, or smells – which identifies a product or service and denotes its source, thus distinguishing that product or service from other sources. A trademark must (1) identify the source of a product or service, distinguishing it from others and (2) represent the goodwill associated with that service. And it must be used in commerce to have any protectable rights attached to it.
Now, the amount of protection and enforceable rights any given trademark may have depends on the strength of the mark. The stronger the mark, the easier it is to be registered and successfully used in litigation. A mark’s strength is gauged using the spectrum of marks, which from weakest to strongest is:
Generic Marks: a word or phrase so inherently descriptive as to be incapable of ever functioning as a source-identifier, e.g., Vodka Brand vodka, or “clock” for a timepiece; Descriptive Marks: often a word or phrase that merely describes a product, its function, or ingredient. Usually too weak to function as a source-identifier, e.g., LIGHT AND FLUFFY for whipped cream. Descriptive Marks may function as a protectable mark if they acquire secondary meaning, such as with International Business Machines (IBM); Suggestive Marks: hint or suggest the nature of the product, service, or its attributes, generally requiring some leap of logic or imagination to draw a connection between the mark and product e.g., CHICKEN OF THE SEA for tuna; Arbitrary Marks: the mark has a common meaning, but is used in connection with products or services that are totally unrelated to its definition, e.g., APPLE for computers. Arbitrary Marks are inherently distinctive; and Fanciful or Coined Marks: typically an invented word or phrase, a combination of letters with no meaning. This is the strongest possible mark and is also inherently distinctive, e.g., XEROX, EXXON, or KODAK.
Mythological creatures have been trending for a while on social media – specifically unicorns and mermaids. But, regardless of the seemingly ubiquitous use of those terms to describe products and foods with a blindly bright and glittery color scheme, the law takes a while to notice trends. So, while using UNICORN to signify a certain color scheme may seem descriptive to you or me, from a legal perspective “suggestive” is currently the more appropriate category.
Let’s walk through this – we need to examine two things, (1) the product and (2) the proposed mark. The End’s product is a juice drink with vibrant and whimsical colors. The proposed mark, UNICORN LATTE, inherently does not describe the product. A latte is a type of coffee drink made with espresso and hot steamed milk, and a unicorn is a mythical animal represented as a horse with a single straight horn projecting from its forehead, often predominantly white with a rainbow colored mane. Thus, UNICORN LATTE suggests a coffee drink that has the attributes of a unicorn – in this case, whimsical colors. No doubt, The End’s lawyers will argue the mark is arbitrary rather than suggestive, but this author thinks that is a stretch.
Suggestive or Arbitrary marks are fairly strong, so unless there’s heavy opposition to its registration there’s a good likelihood UNICORN LATTE will be registered as a trademark. If that happens, then The End’s protective rights will retroactively reach back to the date the registration was filed – January 20, 2017, nearly three months before Starbucks’ drink came out.
Champing at the Bit: Litigation
Registration is just the starting gate, though. Litigation is a whole other derby. While the trademark examiners are unlikely to examine social media trends when issuing a mark, you know Starbucks will get on its high horse and argue the pervasive trend renders the mark descriptive or generic to a judge. And I’m sure the judge will give careful consideration to Starbucks’ arguments, after all, that’s their job.
The End is suing for trademark infringement and dilution. Trademark infringement is where you sue someone for either unlawfully using your trademark, or a mark that’s really close to being the same as yours, such that consumers are confused about whose product is whose. Here, The End would have to show whether Starbucks’ Unicorn Frappuccino is likely to create consumer confusion with the Unicorn Latte, which the complaint does a pretty good job of laying out.
Trademark dilution is a claim to protect the “distinctiveness” of The End’s Unicorn Latte mark. Dilution is a difficult claim for a plaintiff (here, The End) because they have to show their mark is famous – like, really famous, we’re talking Kentucky Derby, Seabiscuit, Secretariat, or Man o’ War famous. It is a high burden, and not often met.
A court could probably go either way on this one; the internet trend for unicorn foods is an interesting wrinkle in what would otherwise be a fairly straightforward case. Unicorn food seems to be a trend with some staying power; this author just hopes the unicorn slaughter can stop.
AdvertisementsThe man who first pitched the idea of G.I.Joe to Hasbro passed away earlier this month at the age of 84, according to a statement from his family
Weston, a former soldier who got into the advertising business after his draft service in the Army, saw the opportunity to pitch a boy-oriented doll line to Hasbro in the wake of Mattel’s groundbreaking success with Barbie in the early 1960s. Drawing on his own history in national service, Weston came to the toymaker with the idea for G.I.Joe, a line of military-based dolls with more poseability than Mattel’s Barbie and Ken dolls, to better use the troves of weaponry and other tools they would come bundled with.
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Not only did Weston launch a franchise that is still thriving today after decades of toys, movies, comics, and animated series, he arguably helped give birth to the concept of an “action figure” itself, a term first coined with the launch of G.I.Joe in 1964. Weston sold the concept to Hasbro for just $100,000, and watched it flourish into one of the most iconic toy lines in history. After the success of Joe, Weston would go on to represent a variety of pop culture legends through is advertising company Leisure Concepts, from Star Wars to James Bond, the WWE, and even Nintendo. Through the company, Weston went on to help create another smash hit toy and animated series hit, Thundercats.
Weston is survived by his brother, his three children, and five grandchildren, and our thoughts are with his family.
[THR]PIONEERING rugby league players may break with 119 years of tradition to avoid tackles instead of running straight into them.
Since the game was invented in 1895, every single player coming into possession of the ball has run directly into their nearest opponent.
Rugby league player Stephen Malley said: My father and his father before him always ran straight into the opposition player for their whole lives, and it never hurt them. Well, not permanently.
But what if instead of hurtling directly at a 16 stone man, I tried to run around him? Wouldnt that maybe assist my bid to reach the try line?
Of course in the cold light of day I never go through with it. I just run into the arms of an opponent, get roughed up a bit and pass the ball back through my legs.
Maybe there are just some questions that us mortals will never know the answer to, such as why a drop goal is only worth one point and where St Helens is.C4 has launched our first Lighthouse campaign! For those of you who already know what Lighthouse is and want to grab the project, you can grab it here:
https://cryptoconsortium.org/c4.lighthouse-project
You can also watch the progress here: https://www.lightlist.io/projects/37
For those of you who don't, here's some information.
What is Lighthouse?
Lighthouse is a crowdfunding platform similar to Kickstarter or Indigogo, but is completely decentralized like Bitcoin. To make pledges to projects, you need to download and run Lighthouse software on your computer, and download "project files" for each project you're interested in. When you decide to pledge to the project, you click the "Pledge" button in the Lighthouse software and it'll walk you through the process.
Why are you raising funds?
We want to raise $100,000 to help C4 reach its goals in the next year. The specific details are listed within the lighthouse project file above, but a quick summary of the things we will use the funds for include:
Web application development
Administrative Work
Legal
Design
Marketing
Education Partnerships
The bitcoin protocol limits the number of donations per campaign, so instead of raising $100,000 directly, we will be hosting a few smaller campaigns of 50BTC each.
Lighthouse seems complicated...
You're not wrong. Lighthouse uses an advanced feature of the Bitcoin protocol, and although it makes it MUCH easier to navigate by offering a slick GUI, it still involves a number of steps to download it, install it, grab project files, load them into Lighthouse, fund your wallet, and then pledge those funds to a project.
If you just want to make a donation without dealing with Lighthouse, you can send bitcoin to the following address: 3PL3933fEBrbmuwhGXYqNHGY272BiLvSrJ![3PL3933fEBrbmuwhGXYqNHGY272BiLvSrJ QR Code][qrcode]
[qrcode]: https://blockchain.info/qr?data=3PL3933fEBrbmuwhGXYqNHGY272BiLvSrJ&size=200
We will be hosting a list of our sponsors and their products and services on our website. This list will help users find easy ways to study for a certification exam, or easy ways to have their businesses reach CCSS Level I, II, or III.
If you have an offering that compliments C4's mission, you can benefit from having your company listed as a supporter. We'll write a blurb about how your offering helps the public which will drive traffic to your site.
You'll also gain a warm fuzzy feeling in knowing that you're helping C4 concentrate on updating security standards, expert exams, and all of the hard work because your funds will support administrative staff who take care of the large volume of easy work.
C4 is a non-profit entity. Receipts for your non-tax-deductible donation are available upon request.NOOKS AND CRANNIES
When was the skip invented, and by whom? Was it a product of inner-city gentrification? ALTHOUGH skips have been used in the mining industry for a long time, the first use of a skip-like container removed by a lorry for rubbish disposal was probably in Southport in 1922. It came about as a result of Edwin Walker, of the lorry manufacturer, Pagefield, meeting Southport's borough engineer. He, like other towns' engineers, faced the problem of growing distances between household refuse collection rounds and dumping grounds. Horse-drawn refuse carts were effective in town, but not in covering the distances to waste tips. The resulting Pagefield system used 300 cu ft horse-drawn containers on 20-inch diameter wheels which, when full, were winched on to the back of a Pagefield lorry to make a relatively speedy trip to a distant dump. A more up-to-date system, not relying on horses, but still created by municipal enterprise and needs, and not by the purely commercial initiatives of modern-day skip hire operators, was launched by the Letchworth firm of S & D in 1926. Harry Shelvoke and his partner, James Drewry, had developed a revolutionary, small-wheeled petrol-engined truck - the Freighter - in 1922. It had hand control to make things easier for ex-horsemen to drive. Scores of applications followed, including in 1926 a system featuring sideways-mounted skips for the Marylebone area of London. Several skips could be carried across the chassis at once. The Freighter, with all its different applications, was such a good idea that it is time someone re-invented it. The present day skip is, environmentalists please note, less clean than those early Pagefield and S & D systems - they had closely-fitting lids on their containers. The growth of DIY as a leisure activity and the need to replace parts of Victorian houses (not just repair them) have probably contributed as much to skip growth as outright gentrification of our inner suburbs. Stephen Jolly, Milton Keynes, Bedfordshire. ALTHOUGH the skip may have changed the face of gentrification, that process is older than the skip. I was taught about gentrification in A-level geography in the 1960s, but first encountered skips in the early 1970s, working in a small engineering factory in Reading. The factory waste was thrown into a skip, supplied by a firm from Ewelme called Grundon. The command was always 'Put it in the grundon', and it was only much later that I discovered that this remarkably apt name was not the correct term. I still think of them as 'grundons'. Rob Close, Ayr, Scotland. My father had a road haulage firm in Lincoln (A Suthrell Haulage Ltd) from the 1940s onwards and I think he was one of the first pioneers of the general use of skips for urban environments in the 1960s - I'd be really interested to know if this is true... dr charlotte suthrell, oxford (previously Lincoln) England Hi charlotte I drove for Suthrells from 1973 on the haulage side I think at that time bert had 5 skip wagons He was one of the fist to have Luggers as we called them. Regards Norman norman, penrith england
Add your answerDeveloper Turtle Rock, Creator of Left 4 Dead, will soon launch a new multiplayer experience, Evolve. The game is set in a futuristic frontier-like galaxy, where Humanity has colonized a planet called Shear. That’s when the monsters come in. A group of hunters are enlisted as a last ditch effort to save the planet’s colonists. On paper Evolve is a simple concept — four player-controlled hunters versus one player-controlled monster — but from this simple idea for a gaming mechanic, something novel and complex has been created.
“Even prior to creating Left 4 Dead, Turtle Rock Studios was keenly interested in the idea of a team of players fighting a giant boss battle, but with the boss being controlled by another player,” said Michael J. Boccieri, Senior Producer at 2K. “Compared to a standard boss battle, this 4v1 multiplayer results in unique gameplay every single match due to the human mind controlling the monster, so no match ever plays out the same way…[Turtle Rock] then drew inspiration from other mediums including film, comic books, literature and more, which was a core driving component to a lot of the aesthetics that make Evolve what it is today.”
The notion of playing as the monster in a game isn’t new, but never before have developers embraced the idea of giving players control quite like this. In Shelly’s Frankenstein (as well as its film adaptations), Frankenstein’s creation is always on the defensive, despite its impressive power. The creature, misunderstood and unmoored, is hunted by an angry village mob, which views it as an implicit threat. But in games, players haven’t really experienced the persecuted monster’s point of view.
Though developers have occasional embraced a “monster” as a narrative’s lead, but those instances are few and far between. In these cases, the game is usually constructed in either two ways:
1) The monster is the protagonist in an anti-hero role, who is tasked with fighting a worse evil, or it is empowered by the developers to hunt and slay others. This can be seen in titles such as Altered Beast, Splatterhouse, Overlord, Demon’s Crest, Alien Vs Predator 2, and more.
2) The monster is just a stock character in a gameplay centric title within either the Fighting or Sidescrollling genres, like Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee or Rampage World Tour.
In all of these titles the developers empower the player to be on the offensive, hunting and killing with minimal regard for the protagonist’s life beyond the threat of restarting a level. Players are rarely, if ever, given an experience where they can inhabit the mind of a monster who is being hunted by an an overwhelming force. That’s where Evolve steps in.
During this year’s E3 gaming expo, the game’s publisher 2K gave TIME the opportunity to competitively play the game. I took control of a monster named Kraken. During my match, I finally understood what Frankenstein’s creation felt like as the angry and armed mob hunted it down. Because Evolve a strategic competitive multiplayer title, I was able to feel the fear of being hunted. At the onset of each match the monster is weak and vulnerable. I was forced to avoid confrontation and scavenge on local wildlife, and in doing so, I could “evolve” (three evolutionary stages in total). With each subsequent evolution I was granted more abilities, and gained the strength necessary to push back my attackers.
“Certainly when you start a match as the monster at Stage One, you are underpowered compared to the hunter team; a savvy hunter team knows this, and will attempt to corral, contain and destroy the monster as quickly as possible,” said Boccieri. “Much as Frankenstein’s creation comes into his own over the course of the novel, so too does the monster player over the course of a match as they feed on the wildlife and evolve, growing more and more powerful. By Stage Two the monster is equal to the hunters, and by the time the monster reaches Stage Three, the hunters actually become the hunted. It’s an interesting parallel to the plot of the novel — by the time we are at the ice flows at the novel’s conclusion, we wonder whether Dr |
throw around in the snow in lieu of destroying their nicer, summer car. There are good reasons for this. Some cars are just naturally made for this weather: old XJ Jeeps and Subaru’s that are cheap and plentiful, but have all wheel drive that make them highly sought after prizes for people trying to plow through a Nor’Easter on their way to Wegmans because they forgot the eggs and milk in their last run home from work.
AWD
If you are a newbie to the Rochester winter, we would suggest getting something with AWD or 4WD. The only difference here is with 4WD, you have to tell the car that all four wheels are getting power, whereas AWD, it is done automatically by a computer. The biggest argument against this is that 4WD and AWD only help you get going, and get you unstuck. These features will not help you when it comes to slowing down or stopping. The biggest thing in picking one of these cars out is getting one that is in good working order, so a used car check should be utilized whenever possible. Another big factor is that not all AWD systems are created equal, and some will only work when the computer feels the car slipping, such as in the Honda CRV or Toyota Rav-4. These are not as good as some of the all time all wheel drive setups of, let’s say, a Mercury Mountaineer or BMW 325Xi. When in doubt, run a used car check, tell your tech you’re looking for something that will get you through the winter. At the end of the day, they don’t care whether you buy the car or not, so they shouldn’t steer you wrong and let you buy a lemon.
FWD
The next theory in winter driving is the theory of Front Wheel Drive; the Cliffs Notes—you’re going to want to keep this one cheap. GM W-bodies such as Chevy Lumina’s, Pontiac Grand Prix, and Oldsmobile Cutlass’ are typically dirt cheap and fairly reliable. They have been around and usually have survived enough winters to know what goes wrong with them. Which is really, not a whole lot. Additionally, the front wheel drive makes it so that the weight of the engine is over the wheels that are driving the car.
This is good for traction and getting going when things get slippery, which in Rochester, is basically all the time. Additionally, the parts and labor for fixing up a cheap GM W-body are very low. They are much cheaper to fix than something foreign or AWD. A little bit of money in repairs in these cars will last the rest of the winter, and when you’re done with it, throw it out or sell it to the 16 year old down the street. We know a lot of people who have made money on their cars doing just this.
RWD
The Third option is taking something that’s rear-wheel drive and putting a lot of weight in the back for traction. The best platforms for this are usually the Ford Crown Vic, or an older Volvo. These are two drastically different options, but hear us out. The Crown Vic is seriously one of the cheapest cars that you can pick up. It has a big V8, a big trunk, and it weighs 2 tons on a thick frame. Throw 200 pounds of sand and gravel in the back of it and you should theoretically be able to drive it on the moon. These cars were made for so long that you can get them almost anywhere. They are a ubiquitous winter beater the world over. Plus, you can take the weight out of the back and one-wheel-peel all over the place, throwing massive drifts and looking like a complete knob, while having more fun than an entire barrel of hooligan monkeys.
Older Volvos, namely the 900 series, can be found quite cheaply in the Northeast. Most Volvos are front wheel drive, but just for this argument’s sake, we are talking about a rear wheel, 900 series model. They are a little more expensive to fix, but their rock solid mechanical construction and big footprint make them great in the snow. Their weight is also quite substantial, which is very important for maintaining traction in inclement weather. There is a reason why everyone in Vermont has one of these things behind their house, and it’s usually for when the snow starts falling. Typically, you can pick a high mileage one up for a few hundred dollars. This is the most important one to get a used car check on. If you get one that has done 300,000 miles, but has been well maintained, it will last much longer than it should. If you get one with 100,000 miles that has been neglected, even Surfwrench won’t be able to save you from the financial devastation that you have brought upon yourself. Please get these checked out, if you don’t, you will absolutely regret it.
Where to Find a Winter Beater
The next real question is, where do you find one of these cars? There are a lot of options, but typically some of the best ones come straight off of people’s front yards. They are cars that have been in the family that grandma used to drive to church and back on the weekends, but still brought it in every 6 months to get checked out. With that being said, estate sales usually have at least one of these options. Additionally, Craigslist is often a good resource, but be warned, there are often used car lots parading as individual sellers that are looking to get a lot more than the car is worth.
Winter Beater Econ 101
That leads to another important question, How much should you pay for a winter beater? While there isn’t a 100% right answer to this question, here are some of the things that you should consider: How much are you going to be driving it, how much money are you going to have to put into it, are you going to resell it or keep it after winter is over? The rule of thumb that most of our friends use is 4 months = $1,000. This is a nice round number that makes all of the accounting in our heads very simple. We typically want something that is going last 4 months and cost us no more than $1000. When going into a negotiation, it makes everything very simple for the seller. You have someone look at the car who knows them very well, have them tell you all of the things that are going to wrong with that car in the 4 months you are going to own it, subtract that from the price, and make sure that that number is less than $1,000.
For example. If you are looking at a 1999 Oldsmobile Cutlass for $600, but were told by your Surfwrench Technician that it needed a heater core, brakes and brake lines, and 2 front ties (this example actually happened) and this would cost $500. We would hit the owner of the car with an offer for $450 because of what was wrong with the car. This way, he gets a closer to the money value for the car, and you are still underneath that $1,000 dollar threshold.
If you are going to keep a winter beater for longer, or are going to hand it down, you can obviously adjust this amount accordingly. However, if you are going to hand off a winter beater to a new driver at the end of the season, keep this $1,000 threshold in mind, as new drivers have a tendency to depreciate the value of vehicles harder than salt, winter, damage, and a meteor strike combined. One such example of this is when someone picks up an XJ Cherokee Jeep. They are often held onto for Mudding and 4-wheeling in the area of the state that we’re in, so they can be bought for more money. Often after a season of mudding, they are useless as a road legal vehicle, so don’t go too much over that line of $1,000.
Why Should I Get a Winter Beater?
At its heart, driving a winter beater is essentially recycling. You are taking a car that is not long for this world and getting some extra miles out of it before it gets carted off to the shredder. As we have established, driving cars for longer and keeping them on the road longer decreases the aggregate pollution caused by creating that car in the first place. You are getting more use out of something that is otherwise not going to be used. Also, you are probably going to recycle it when it goes bad because the value of scrap cars is close to what you are going to pay for it. In addition, you are keeping a good car good by not exposing it to elements that would otherwise cause it to rust, break, and lead to you getting rid of it faster than you would if it was in good condition. If you can’t get behind recycling for the “good for the earth” benefits, at least get behind it for the economic benefits. If you can’t get behind it for the economic benefits, then f**k off: this is Capitalist America, you have no business being here.
Here’s a simple list of things you should consider when thinking about purchasing a winter beater:
Do I like my daily driver?
Is my daily driver good in the snow?
Will I need to get snow tires for my daily driver?
Do I want to keep my daily driver in the condition that it is currently in?
Will damage caused by winter driving exceed the value of something that I can buy right now and drive through the winter?
Am I a good driver in the snow?
Is my driveway impassable at times when it snows?
Do I have a significant commute?
Do I see cars off the road on my commute?
If you answered yes to the majority of these questions, get a winter beater. Look around, post what it is on Surfwrench, and have someone come and take a look at it. Odds are, you will be able to get an incredible car that is on its last legs, that will save you time, money and hassle in the long run, by taking care of your daily driver through the winter.The Day's Color The daily color digest
Color is everywhere.
Cherish it.
Everything you see contains a palette. Some beautiful. Some 'ugly'. Some dark. Some light. Some hot. Some cold. But they are all inspiring. They are all engaging. Color can adjust our perception. It can effect the way our food tastes. It can increase the emotional and intuitive level of an experience. It can turn us off, turn us on. It is psychological. It is emotional. Color is a wonderful thing. Retain it. This site is dedicated to my love of color.
The goal is to find colorful inspiration from things that surround us. Daily. I created this site to pool my inspiration and share it. These colors have inspired thought, art, music, memories. Everything. These colors have conjured thoughts outside ourselves. Tapped into things that we may not understand, at first. But, in a sense, make things so much clearer.
I hope you enjoy this fun project. Thank you!
Sincerely,
Nigel Evan DennisIndian prime minister Manmohan Singh at a bilateral meeting with Chinese president Hu Jintao as the Indian economy's average growth of eight per cent a year continues [GALLO/GETTY]
The recent India-Africa summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, at which India's government pledged $5bn in aid to African countries, drew attention to a largely overlooked phenomenon - India's emergence as a source, rather than a recipient, of foreign aid.
For decades after independence - when Britain left the subcontinent one of the poorest and most ravaged regions on earth, with an effective growth rate of zero per cent over the preceding two centuries - India was seen as an impoverished land of destitute people, desperately in need of international handouts. Many developed countries showcased their aid to India; Norway, for example, established in 1959 its first-ever aid program there.
But, with the liberalisation of the Indian economy in 1991, the country embarked upon a period of dizzying growth, averaging nearly eight per cent each year since then. During this time, India weaned itself from dependence on aid, preferring to borrow from multilateral lenders and, increasingly, from commercial banks. Most foreign aid programs - with the sole exception of Britain's - have dwindled or been eliminated altogether.
Today, the proverbial shoe is on the other foot. Long known for its rhetorical faith in South-South cooperation, India has begun putting its money where only its mouth used to be. It has now emerged as a significant donor to developing countries in Africa and Asia, second only to China in the range and quantity of development assistance given by countries of the global south.
Money to spend
The Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation Program (ITEC) was established in 1964, but now has real money to offer, in addition to training facilities and technological know-how. Nationals from 156 countries have benefited from ITEC grants, which have brought developing country students to Indian universities for courses in everything from software development to animal husbandry.
In addition, India has built factories, hospitals, and parliaments in various countries, and sent doctors, teachers, and IT professionals to treat and train the nationals of recipient countries. Concessional loans at trifling interest rates (between 0.25 per cent and 0.75 per cent, well below the cost of servicing the loans) are also extended as lines of credit, tied mainly to the purchase of Indian goods and services, and countries in Africa have been clamouring for them.
In Asia, India remains by far the largest single donor to its neighbor Bhutan, as well as a generous aid donor to Nepal, the Maldives, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka as it recovers from civil war. Given Afghanistan's vital importance for the security of the subcontinent, India's assistance program there already amounts to more than $1.2bn - modest from the standpoint of Afghan needs, but large for a non-traditional donor - and it is set to rise further.
India's efforts in Afghanistan have focused on humanitarian infrastructure, social projects, and development of skills and capacity. Five Indian medical missions provide treatment and free medicines to more than 1,000 patients a day, most of them poor women and children. The Indian-built Indira Gandhi Centre for Child Health in Kabul is connected through a telemedicine link with two specialty medical centres in India.
A million tons of Indian food assistance provides 100 grams of high-protein biscuits to two million of Afghanistan's six million schoolchildren, a third of whom are girls. Indian engineers, braving attacks that claimed several lives, built a 130 mile (218km) highway from Zaranj to Delaram in southwest Afghanistan, opening a trade route to the Iranian border. Indians braved the 3,000m heights to run a power-transmission line from Pul-e-Khumri to Kabul - giving round-the-clock electricity to the capital for the first time since 1982. India is currently engaged in building the Afghan Parliament building, a visible and evocative symbol of democracy.
India has also commissioned 100 small development projects (mainly quick-gestation, small-scale social-sector projects), and pledged further funds for education, health, power, and telecommunications. Of course, some in Pakistan see nefarious designs behind this assistance, but the ultimate objective is straightforward: to build indigenous Afghan capabilities for effective governance, reflecting India's commitment to regional stability in the face of terror and violence.
In Africa, India's strength as an aid provider is that it is not an over-developed power, but rather one whose own experience of development challenges is both recent and familiar. African countries, for example, look at China and the United States with a certain awe, but do not, for a moment, believe that they can become like either of them. India, by contrast, comes across as a land that has faced, and is still surmounting, problems rather like those confronting its beneficiaries. If India can do it, many Africans reason, perhaps we can learn from them.
Moreover, unlike China, India does not descend on other countries with a heavy governmental footprint. India's private sector is a far more important player, and the government often confines itself to opening doors and letting African countries work with the most efficient Indian provider that they can find.
Similarly, unlike the Chinese, Indian employers do not come into a foreign country with an overwhelming labour force that lives in ghettoes, or impose their ways of doing things on aid recipients. Instead, they recruit, hire, and train local workers and foremen, and leave behind enhanced capacities. Whereas China's omnipresence has provoked hostility in several African countries - a presidential candidate in Zambia even campaigned on an explicitly anti-Chinese platform - Indian businesses have faced no such reaction in the past two decades. Indeed, Uganda, where Idi Amin expelled Indian settlers in 1972, has been actively wooing them back under President Yoweri Museveni.
Finally, India accommodates itself to aid recipients' desires, advancing funds to African regional banks or the New Economic Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD). Its focus on capacity development, its accessibility, and its long record of support for developing countries have made India an increasingly welcome donor. This could not have been imagined even 20 years ago, and it is one of the best consequences of India's emergence as a global economic power.
Shashi Tharoor, a former Indian Minister of State for External Affairs and UN Under-Secretary General, is a member of India's parliament and the author of a dozen books, including India from Midnight to the Millennium and Nehru: the Invention of India.
A version of this article first appeared on Project Syndicate.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.NEW DELHI: The government is considering radical changes in the Land Acquisition Act to enable speedier project implementation by diluting the social impact assessment and consent clauses which are seen to hamper land purchase.The proposed changes to the Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act follow rural development minister Nitin Gadkari’s consultations with states yielding a wide consensus in favor of amending the law.The likely points for action shortlisted by the rural development ministry for the PMO’s consideration include removal of the consent clause for public-private partnership projects. Alternately, it is proposed to reduce the consent requirement to 50% of land owners.Under the law passed last year, PPP projects would have required consent of 70% of land owners. The note has argued that the clause should be revisited as ownership in PPP projects vests with the government.Unwilling to oppose a populist law before the Lok Sabha election, BJP had supported the bill when it was brought to Parliament despite misgivings about the impact the Act would have on costs and timelines.The BJP manifesto had hinted at reviewing the Act and the Modi government lost no time in consulting states after assuming office as land acquisition is a key element in its plans to revive growth.The proposals, however, are silent on whether the provisions stating that compensation for acquisition in rural areas will be four-fold the market price and two-fold in urban regions will be revisited.The social impact assessment clause has been both praised and slammed. Activists feel SIA mainstreams evaluation of the cost-benefit equation by factoring in social and environmental variables.On the other hand, its critics feel SIA processes are too elaborate and will delay projects and rather than making assessments more predictable, will achieve the opposite.The ministry has proposed a second look at the “affected family” clause on the ground that it is very elaborate and includes “livelihood losers” who have been working on the affected land for three years before acquisition.The rollback of several controversial provisions of the Act will require considerable political finesse and Gadkari promised that the interests of farmers would be protected in any such review. Yet, as the action points indicate, the task is not easy.The ministry has highlighted that development of “culturable wastelands” in lieu of “multi-cropped irrigated land” needs to be amended as states like Delhi, Goa, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand do not have any wasteland for such a purpose.The retrospective clause stipulating that land acquisition proceedings would lapse in case compensation is not paid or physical possession is not completed is up for modification as well.Payment of compensation in accordance with the new Act is seen to result in increased burden on the state exchequer and leading to litigations.The Centre wants to restore primacy of the urgency clause that will allow a state government to determine the need for acquisition. The law restricts the clause to reasons of defence, national security and national calamity and even these need parliamentary approval.The penalty provisions that include imprisonment of six months to three years for errant officials is seen as too stringent and could result in harassment, the note states.The clause specifying sharing of 40% of enhanced cost with original land owners should be deleted as it leads to disputes, the ministry has suggested.‘Boston Bombers’ Women’s Basketball Team Changes Name
The only semi-pro women's team in the area is now called the "Bulldogs."
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If you’re interested in Boston’s only semi-professional women’s basketball team, and go to search for them on Google, you’re likely to only find stories and images about the Boston Marathon attack. That’s because until recently, the team went by the name of the “Boston Bombers.”
The team was part of the Women’s Blue Chip Basketball League, whose mission, according to their website, is to “provide highly competitive basketball for women age 20 and older” in varying levels, mixing in former College players, National Women’s Basketball League players, and WNBA players.
But after the Boston Marathon bombings, it’s nearly impossible to find anything related to the team’s happenings and current events. According to the WBCBL site, the team has wiped the old name and logo—a picture of a cartoon bomb with basketball lines embroidered on it—and changed their official title to the “Boston Bulldogs.” They have not created a new logo since the marathon attack, however.
“It was something we were thinking about for a while, but obviously this tragic event solidified that decision,” says Charne Dixon, assistant general manager and marketing director for the team. “We are going to go by the ‘Bulldogs’ now. We had a lot of people reaching out to us [after the bombings], both good and bad. For obvious reasons, the name does not reflect a good one after what happened.”
The WBCBL recently made the necessary name changes on the directory page to the team’s section on their site. But more still needs to be done, says Dixon. “There are a lot of things that we have to replace, including uniforms, travel equipment … it’s a process, but we are getting there.” Dixon says the team will be getting together in May to further discuss the changes.
In the meantime, the team took down its official website, and did away with its Twitter account and accompanying Facebook page, too. Dixon says all of those changes were made “immediately” after the attack, and before they decided on the “Bulldogs.”• Supporters asked to raised banners in 12th and 78th minute • Arsène Wenger’s team have won only four of their past 13 games
Unhappy Arsenal fans are planning to protest against the club’s stagnation during the game against Norwich City at the Emirates Stadium on Saturday evening, by raising banners in the 12th and 78th minute as a nod to the 12 years that have passed since their most recent league title.
The supporters groups Black Scarf Movement, RedAction and the Arsenal Supporters Trust are calling on fans to raise placards reading: “Time for change. Arsenal is stale – fresh approach needed.”
Alexis Sánchez does enough to keep the weary Arsenal fans awake | Barney Ronay Read more
The protest will not focus solely on increasing calls for Arsène Wenger to be removed. Supporters are also calling on the club’s majority owner, Stan Kroenke – described by RedAction as “an absentee owner who takes money from the club” – to take action.
RedAction added: “We have a manager who won’t use the resources available to him to strengthen a squad which everybody can see needs investment. Throw in some of the highest ticket prices in world football and all of the groundhog seasons, where it’s clear that the fans’ ambitions are not matched by those in charge.
“Fans are fighting each other over what exactly is wrong and who is to blame – but it’s clear that we are in a rut, and that something needs to change.”
In a separate statement Black Scarf Movement said: “Whether it’s the manager, whether Stan Kroenke has to go and whether the board needs shaking up and reminding that we’re a football club, change is needed at Arsenal, a fresh approach to bring some excitement back to this great club of ours.”
While they described the Norwich fixture as a “pretty meaningless end-of-season kickabout”, Arsenal have not yet guaranteed a top-four finish with three games to play. They have won only four of their past 13 games in all competitions and fifth-placed Manchester United are five points behind with a game in hand. On Sunday 8 May Arsenal travel to Manchester City, whom they trail on goal difference.The X-Men are a team of mutant superheroes, published in comic books by Marvel Comics. Over the decades, the X-Men have featured a rotating line up composed of a large number of characters.
New Mutants graduate X-Men Edit
In 1986, The New Mutants briefly graduated to become the X-Men in Uncanny X-Men Annual #10.
Character Alter Ego Cannonball Samuel Guthrie Mirage Danielle Moonstar Karma Xi'an Coy Manh Magma Amara Aquilla Sunspot Roberto Da Costa Magik Illyana Rasputin Cypher Douglas Ramsey Warlock Warlock Wolfsbane Rahne Sinclair
Muir Island X-Men Edit
In 1989, in the wake of the X-Men's "death" during "Fall of the Mutants", Banshee assembled a team of X-Men on Muir Island in Uncanny X-Men #254 to #255.
Phalanx invasion X-Men Edit
In 1994, to oppose the threat of the techno-organic alien Phalanx, a team of X-Men was quickly banded together in Uncanny X-Men #316.
Character Alter Ego Banshee Sean Cassidy Jubilee Jubilation Lee Sabretooth Victor Creed White Queen Emma Frost
Mannite rescue X-Men Edit
In 1999, after Professor X disbanded the X-Men in an attempt to "smoke out" a Skrull impostor in their ranks, Cyclops and Jean Grey pulled together a team to help the Mannites in Astonishing X-Men, vol. 2 #1.
Character Real name Cyclops Scott Summers Phoenix Jean Grey-Summers Archangel Warren K. Worthington III Cable Nathan Christopher Summers X-Man Nate Grey Unidentified Skrull Unrevealed
Genoshan assault X-Men Edit
In 2001, after losing members when Storm started her X-Treme X-Men and Professor X was captured by Magneto, Jean Grey recruited a temporary team in Uncanny X-Men #392 in order to rescue Professor X.
Character Alter Ego Phoenix Jean Grey-Summers Dazzler Alison Blaire Northstar Jean-Paul Beaubier Omertà Paul Provenzano Wraith Hector Rendoza Sunpyre Leyu Yoshida Frenzy Joanna Cargill
Street team X-Men Edit
In 2004, a team scratched together by Cyclops in the wake of Xorn's rampage through Manhattan, New York in New X-Men #149 to #150.
Character Alter Ego Cyclops Scott Summers Fantomex Charlie-Cluster 7 E.V.A. Beak Barnell Bohusk Dust Sooraya Qadir Stepford Cuckoos Celeste Cuckoo Mindee Cuckoo Phoebe Cuckoo Longneck William Hanover Forearm Marcus Tucker Choir Irina Clayton Several other Xavier Institute students who were never identified were part of this substitute X-Men squad.
X-Force (X-Men's strike team) Edit
X-Men squad assembled from 2007 to 2014. Led by Cyclops with Wolverine serving as the field leader. Took on missions which required responses too violent or controversial for the X-Men to deal with directly. When Cyclops disbanded the X-Force, Wolverine put a new X-Force squad together without his knowledge.
Character Alter Ego Active in Cyclops Scott Summers Uncanny X-Men #493 (2008) Wolverine James "Logan" Howlett Caliban Hepzibah Warpath James Proudstar Wolfsbane Rahne Sinclair X-23 Laura Kinney Archangel Warren Kenneth Worthington III X-Force, vol. 3 #2 (2008) Elixir Joshua Foley X-Force, vol. 3 #4 (2008) Domino Neena Thurman X-Force, vol. 3 #8 (2008) Vanisher Telford Porter X-Force, vol. 3 #9 (2008) Cable Nathan Christopher Charles Summers X-Force, vol. 3 #27 (2010) Cypher Douglas Aaron Ramsey Recruits Psylocke Elizabeth "Betsy" Braddock X-Men: Second Coming #2 (2010) Fantomex Charlie-Cluster 7 (Jean-Phillipe Charles) E.V.A. Deadpool Wade Wilson Deathlok Prime Uncanny X-Force #7 (2011) Nightcrawler Kurt Darkholme (Age of Apocalypse) Uncanny X-Force #19 (2012) Storm Ororo Monroe Uncanny X-Force, vol. 2 #1 (2013) Puck Eugene Milton Judd Uncanny X-Force, vol. 2 #13 (2013) Bishop Lucas Bishop Spiral Rita Wayword
In 2009, Beast gathered a scientific team in Uncanny X-Men #507 to attempt to deal with the mutant birth crisis and reverse the effects of M-Day. The team lasted until 2012.
Character Alter Ego Joined in Beast Henry McCoy Uncanny X-Men #504 (2009) Angel Warren Worthington III Doctor Nemesis James Bradley Box Madison Jeffries Uncanny X-Men #505 (2009) Dr. Yuriko Takiguchi Yuriko Takiguchi Uncanny X-Men #507 (2009) Dr. Kavita Rao Kavita Rao Uncanny X-Men #508 (2009) Psylocke Elizabeth "Betsy" Braddock Uncanny X-Men #512 (2009) Danger Inapplicable Uncanny X-Men, vol. 2 #1 (2011)
In 2010, a team of the first mutants to surface in Earth since M-Day, tasked with rescuing and helping any other new mutants as they appear. The team lasted until 2012.But a political crisis threatening the Belgian government and objections from France's constitutional watchdog mean the controversial measures might not make it into law.
Belgium's parliament was to vote on the law after its home affairs committee unanimously backed a nationwide ban on clothes or veils that do not allow the wearer to be fully identified, including the full-face niqab and burka.
With both the governing parties and the opposition supporting the measure, Thursday's vote is expected to approve the draft law.
It would allow fines of 15-25 euros (£13-£21) and/or a jail sentence of up to seven days, for anyone ignoring it unless they had police permission to wear such garments.
But a party is threatening to pull out of the ruling coalition unless talks between the French and Dutch-language communities on power-sharing are not finalised in 24 hours.
And that means that the day's proceedings in parliament could yet be disrupted.
The French government said on Wednesday it would ban Muslim women from wearing a full-face veil in public, despite a warning from experts that such a law could be unconstitutional.
The spokesman for President Nicolas Sarkozy's government said a bill would be presented to ministers in May and would seek to ban the niqab and the burka from streets, shops and markets and not just from public buildings.
Most Muslim women, in France's immigrant communities and around the world, do not wear a full veil, but the niqab, which covers the face apart from the eyes, is widely worn on the Arabian peninsular and in the Gulf states.
The burka, a shapeless full-body cloak that covers the face with a fabric grille, is worn in some areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
"We're legislating for the future," government spokesman Luc Chatel said after a cabinet meeting chaired by Mr Sarkozy.
"Wearing a full veil is a sign of a community closing in on itself and of a rejection of our values," he added.
Last month however, the State Council – France's top administrative authority – warned Mr Sarkozy against a full ban on the veil.
It suggested instead an order that women uncover their faces for security checks or meetings with officials.
In France, as in Belgium, there is strong parliamentary support for such a ban and the government is determined to press ahead.
According to Chatel, Mr Sarkozy told his cabinet the veil was an "assault on women's dignity".
Human Rights Watch warned against such legislation, in a statement issued late Wednesday criticising the Belgian initiative.
"Bans like this lead to a lose-lose situation," said Judith Sunderland, senior Western Europe researcher at Human Rights Watch.
"They violate the rights of those who choose to wear the veil and do nothing to help those who are compelled to do so."
There was no evidence that wearing the full veil in public threatened public safety, public order, health, morals, or the fundamental rights and freedoms of others, she added.
"At a time when Muslims in Europe feel more vulnerable than ever, the last thing needed is a ban like this, treating pious Muslim women like criminals won't help integrate them," Mrs Sunderland added.BBC4’s quirky detective series Dirk Gently has been cancelled, according to the show’s star Stephen Mangan.
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“It gives me no pleasure whatsoever to report that the BBC have decided not to make any more Dirk Gently,” the actor told Twitter followers this afternoon.
Based on the books by Douglas Adams, the comedy-drama followed Mangan’s eponymous “holistic” detective and his assistant/partner Richard MacDuff (played by Bafta winner Darren Boyd) as they employed Gently’s idiosyncratic methods to solve cases.
A pilot episode was watched by almost 1 million viewers when it first aired on BBC4 in December 2010. But a series of three hour-long episodes shown in March this year saw an initial average audience of 844,000 fall to less than 600,000 by the final instalment.
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Last year, Mangan said he’d be “heartbroken” if the show was ever cancelled, telling Metro “If they axe it, I’ll go round there and smash the place up with my bare hands.” BBC security is no doubt on standby…RE:DOM is now 1.0!
Juha Lindstedt Blocked Unblock Follow Following Oct 1, 2016
History
Almost two years ago, March 10 2015, I released the first version of FRZR, a tiny view library. The API has changed a lot since that and even the name changed to RE:DOM. It has been a long journey, I’ve learned a lot and it’s awesome to finally be at the version 1.0! RE:DOM is definitely more than ready for production with 100 % test coverage.
Performance
RE:DOM is one of the fastest view libraries around. Here’s results of a performance test reordering 10 000 HTML elements:
~30 ms Vanilla JS ~30 ms RE:DOM v1.0 ~30 ms FRZR v0.22.7 ~80 ms React v15.3.2 ~500 ms React v0.14.7 ~10 000 ms Riot.js v2.6.2
Riot.js is releasing v3 soon, I hope it will fix the performance issues..
Filesize
RE:DOM is 3.5 KB before and 2 KB after gzip.
Server-side rendering
With the release of RE:DOM 1.0, I also released NO:DOM – a complementary library for rendering RE:DOM apps/components server-side. It’s also tiny, easy to use and super fast.
Embracing JavaScript
There’s not that many abstractions in RE:DOM. You create components writing vanilla JavaScript. Diffing gets done against the DOM (with amazing performance though). You can refer to real DOM elements and still you get the benefit of “pure functions”, since updating the component should always go through only one update function by design. When with vdom you always redefine everything, with RE:DOM you can define the init state for component and separately how you update it.
Here’s a basic hello world with just an HTML element:
import { el, mount } from redom
const hello = el('h1', 'Hello world!')
mount(document.body, hello)
Here‘s a component version:
import { el, text, mount } from redom
class Hello {
constructor () {
this.el = el('h1',
'Hello ',
this.target = text('world'),
'!'
)
}
update (target) {
this.target.textContent = target
}
}
const hello = new Hello()
mount(document.body, hello)
setTimeout(() => hello.update('you'), 1000)
Future
I believe future is bright for RE:DOM, since nothing is better than writing JavaScript as close to the metal as possible. Recently I wrote about mastering the DOM and talked about the JavaScript fatigue, which I believe is only cured with more minimalistic approach. In the long run you benefit the most by learning the language itself and not some third party abstractions.
If you have any questions about RE:DOM, just raise an issue on Github, send me a tweet or send me email.
Hope you have fun with RE:DOM!Image copyright Atlantis Resources Image caption Dozens of turbines could eventually be installed in the Inner Sound of the Pentland Firth
Two turbines in the Pentland Firth set a world record for monthly production from a tidal stream power station, according to the project's developer.
Atlantis said its MeyGen scheme in the Inner Sound of the firth off the Caithness coast produced 700 MWh of electricity.
The company said this was enough power for 2,000 homes.
The initial phase of the renewable energy project will involve three turbines.
Atlantis said there had been "minor delays" in receiving upgraded components for the third turbine, but hoped the device would be reinstalled at the site next month.
'Most powerful'
David Taaffe, director of project delivery at MeyGen, said: "The production performance from the installed turbines on the MeyGen project has been very good.
"August proved to be a world-record month, providing enough energy to power 2,000 Scottish homes from just two turbines."
Atlantis hopes to expand the project to have dozens of turbines.
Hannah Smith, policy manager at industry body Scottish Renewables, said the world record was the latest in a series of milestones for the MeyGen project.
She said: "The tides that flow through the Pentland Firth are some of the most |
a little odd seeing someone as tightly wound as Broussard engaging in a bedroom romp. Still, while his conversation reveals he’s never quite fully in the moment, always keeping eyes and ears open for any possible need to flee, the fact that he’s even willing to risk discovery for an intimate encounter shows the toll of this fight on his consciousness. He’s a little stir crazy, too; denying others the chance to get away and do what he’s doing might be necessary for his sanity and safety (he’s much better at covert actions than the rest), but it’s still a little selfish.
Homeland Security has been an even less pleasant place to work since Will’s been away, unfortunately. (Just ask Jennifer McMahon, R.I.P.) His new partner, Burke, is already proving to be less of a co-worker and more of a hall monitor, looking askance at Will’s every move and testing his abilities as an agent. Luckily, Will is very, very good at his job, and by the end of “Company Man,” he’s already gotten a glimpse at the massive surveillance center that houses the screens showing the camera feeds from his home. He realized the extent of the monitoring before, but now he might be able to do something about it.
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But he can’t do anything for Jennifer. Burke proves he’s as big of an asshole as he seems, brusquely informing Will that his old partner “didn’t have the constitution to survive in the new system.” The only lingering question is whether Jennifer actually went through with the suicide. It‘s likely she’s dead, but since we haven‘t seen a body, I don’t want to count her out just yet. Jennifer was one of the more compelling and conflicted characters thus far in season two, and it would be a shame if she’s gone for good.
The most significant change this episode comes on the homefront, as Katie finally loses her patience with Lindsay’s bullshit. Katie has never been good at sitting on her hands; she starts to crack anytime she can’t be active, engaged, doing something to help the cause or protect her family. The irony is that she’s spent the previous few episodes so determined to keep her family safe, and now that it looks like they’re in the clear for the time being—Jennifer obviously isn’t telling anyone—Katie is already pushing back against Will’s caution to play everyday mom. To be fair, Lindsay’s devout fanaticism finally went too far. It’s not even that the tutor sent Charlie to his room, so much as what she tells Katie when ordered never to do that again. “That child is a poison,” she proclaims. Sorry. Lindsay, but you don’t get to go around calling someone’s kid a poison and expect to continue your employment under them. At least we expect it from Lindsay; Madeline is outright obnoxious to her sister. Someone’s conversion to pro-alien devotion is turning them into kind of a jerk.
This was an uneven installment of Colony, as the show pivots back to following Will’s exploits as a member of Homeland Security. When the most intrigue is happening at the labor camp between Snyder and Bram, it’s a sign the other storylines aren’t up to snuff. Still, Bram is finally a little interesting. The position of triple-spy, reporting back to his crush while also squealing to Snyder with false information she provides him, makes him someone in a tenuous position, and that makes for effective drama. The sooner everyone else is back in situations as precarious as the eldest Bowman kid, and the more rapidly the unexpected charges and twisty moral dilemmas return to the fore, the less time we’ll spend having lackluster secret convos in movie theaters.
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Stray Observations:
Seriously, Maddie was so rude to her sister. The zeal of the newly converted isn’t looking good on her.
Really hope this isn’t the last we’ve seen of Lindsay. We miss you, you insane little monster.
Even her response to Gracie was spoken with the demented crack of a true believer. “We see evidence of the Greatest Day all around us.” Do we, Lindsay?
Snyder’s low-key resentment of Jenkins, his head of security, is delightful. No one does swallowed irritation like Peter Jacobson.IRVING, Texas -- The Dallas Cowboys want us to trust their judgment, but they don't make it easy.
Not when they pass on Florida defensive tackle Sharrif Floyd, pretty much a perfect fit in the 4-3 defensive scheme they're going to use this season. And not when every draft trade chart you find on the Internet says they were fleeced by getting only the 74th pick from San Francisco for moving down 13 spots in the first round.
And not when they draft a player in the first round -- Wisconsin center Travis Frederick -- who says he didn't expect to go until the second round.
It would be one thing if owner/general manager Jerry Jones had earned our trust over the years. But he hasn't. We're talking about a GM who would've been fired years ago if he didn't own the team. Only a man who owns the team could survive a 128-128 record since 1997 with one playoff win.
Don't forget we're talking about a team that hasn't been to the NFC Championship game or posted consecutive 10-win seasons since the graduating class of 2013 was in diapers.
So forgive me for not buying the Cowboys' company line. Not yet anyway. It's going to take some time to sift through the poppycock and find the truth.
It appears that head coach Jason Garrett, left, won't be calling offensive plays for Jerry Jones' Cowboys in 2013. AP Photo/James D Smith
For now, take solace in the Cowboys adding another offensive lineman to a raggedy group that was among the worst in the league last season. Frederick will start at guard or center against the New York Giants in the opener or Jason Garrett and Jerry will spend much of their postgame news conferences explaining why he didn't.
From the time Jerry bought the club in 1989 until 2011, the Cowboys never spent a first-round pick on an offensive lineman. They've spent first-round picks on a lineman in two of the last three seasons.
For that, you should be happy. It's progress, and a sign Garrett is committed to building a strong offensive line.
The problem, of course, is the Cowboys rarely have a clean pick. You can't find any so-called draft expert that had Frederick rated as first-round talent. Most had him rated in the second round. A few had him in the third.
And here's where it gets tricky.
According to their draft board, the Cowboys had 19 players worthy of being drafted in the first round. Ordinarily, that would be considered pretty good since they had the 18th pick. But the Cowboys didn't think the players left with first-round grades, including Floyd, fit their offensive or defensive schemes. That's why they opted to trade down when San Francisco called looking to move up.
The Cowboys took Travis Frederick at No. 31, but he -- or a similar player -- might have been available in the second round. Gary A. Vasquez/USA TODAY Sports
(Just so you know, the Cowboys' internal draft trade chart said they received good value. Make of that what you will.)
By the time the Cowboys drafted, the consensus top five offensive linemen had been selected, as well as the top four defensive linemen and the top two safeties. So they took Frederick, rated the 22nd player on their board with the 31st pick. Go figure.
"A little surprised," Frederick said of being picked in the first round. "I thought that I was going to probably fit somewhere in the second round, but Dallas had showed a lot of interest in me throughout the process. I knew that they definitely needed a little bit of help inside (the offensive line) and were looking to upgrade that. I think that I'm going to fit in pretty well down there."
Understand, the problem isn't necessarily with Frederick, because the Cowboys definitely need help on the offensive line.
The problem is it feels like the Cowboys wasted an opportunity to get a much more talented player with the 18th pick -- and they still could've had Frederick, the top-rated center and 70th-rated prospect according to ESPN's player rankings. Or somebody just as good, such as California's Brian Schwenke (ranked 72nd) or Alabama's Barrett Jones (ranked 97th) in the second round.At least 38 people, most of them police officers, were killed, and over 150 people injured in two separate blasts that targeted Turkish security forces in the vicinity of Besiktas stadium in Istanbul.
Thirty police officers, seven civilians, and an unidentified person were killed in the bombings, according to Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu.
“According to the latest information we have received, 38 of our nation's children have reached martyrdom after last night's cruel attack,” Soylu told a news conference, as cited by Reuters. He added that Kurdish militants were believed to be responsible for the atrocity.
At least 155 more people suffered injuries of varying severity. They are now being treated in the hospital and 14 of them are said to be in intensive care, Reuters reported citing Turkish Minister of Health Recep Akdag.
READ MORE: Moment of terrifying Istanbul explosion caught on camera (VIDEOS)
The blast outside the stadium took place shortly after a soccer match between two of Turkey's top teams, and was caused by a car bomb detonated remotely at around 10:30pm local time, Soylu said. The first explosion was followed by a suicide attack at Macka Park about 45 seconds later.
Police have so far taken 10 suspects into custody over potential links to the attack, the minister added.
While a total of 166 people were wounded, some have already been discharged, with 17 injured undergoing surgery, Health Minister Recep Akdag said. At least six victims are in intensive care.
At least 13 people killed by a huge car bomb in ‘inhuman terror attack’ at the Besiktas football stadium in Turkey https://t.co/i0N8TUjlqmpic.twitter.com/DkeknLAVpx — SitiBe (@sitibedotcom) December 10, 2016
The blast targeted a riot police bus, the minister said.
“It is thought that it was a car bomb at a point where our special police forces were located, right after the match at the exit where Bursaspor fans left, after the fans departed,” the Guardian quoted Soylu as saying.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that terrorists targeted both police officers and civilians in a way that was apparently designed to maximize casualties.
He said that, “a terrorist attack has been carried out against our security forces and our citizens. It has been understood that the explosions after the Besiktas-Bursaspor football game aimed to maximize casualties. As a result of these attacks, unfortunately, we have martyrs and wounded,” he said.
No matter which terrorist organization was behind the attacks in Istanbul, be it the PKK, ISIS, or Gulen’s FETO movement, Erdogan promised to eradicate extremists.
Turkish Transport Minister Ahmet Arslan called the explosion outside the stadium a “terrorist” act. He expressed his condolences to the victims’ families on Twitter.
Turkish Prime Minister Yıldırım issued a statement saying that terrorists will not be able to defeat the "integrity of the state" and will not turn Turkey away from the path of democracy. The PM also confirmed that an explosives-laden vehicle targeted Turkish security forces outside the stadium.
A game between two of Turkey's top teams, Besiktas and Bursaspor, was held at the arena on Saturday evening.
“Two explosions happened Saturday after a football match,” Alaattin Kilic, a reporter from Istanbul, told RT. “The attacks targeted a police bus as it was leaving the stadium after [a]... security job.”
Uh oh RT @mkarim: Massive Boom in Istanbul. Two of them. In or near Besiktas Stadium. pic.twitter.com/LiefIgO0QS — Andrew Satter (@asatter) December 10, 2016
Police, according to the reporter, immediately intervened with water cannon to extinguish the fires caused by the explosion. Rescue units are currently working at the scene, Kilic stressed.
None of Bursaspor's fans were injured in the incident, the team reported on Twitter, saying it checked the information with fan groups.
Meanwhile, two witnesses told Reuters they heard two blasts outside the Vodafone Arena.
“It was like hell. The flames went all the way up to the sky. I was drinking tea at the cafe next to the mosque,” said Omer Yilmiz, who works as a cleaner at the nearby Dolmabahce mosque.
“People ducked under the tables, women began crying. Football fans drinking tea at the cafe sought shelter, it was horrible,” he told Reuters.
Pictures of grey clouds rising near Besiktas stadium quickly emerged online. Those were followed by images and videos of the explosion's aftermath.
Turkey witnessed several terrorist attacks in its two biggest cities, Ankara and Istanbul, this year, as the country continued its bloody campaign against the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in the southeast of the country. Ankara has also been stepping up its military operations inside Syria and Iraq over the last year against Islamic State militants.
İstanbul patlamasından ilk kareler. pic.twitter.com/DhIqrWRiAP — Yusuf Reşit Beyazal (@YRBEYAZAL) December 10, 2016
The government alleges that PKK has twice struck Ankara this year, while suspected ISIS suicide bombers have hit Istanbul on three occasions.Industry leaders cooperate to evolve cross-platform open standard for heterogeneous parallel programming; Backwards compatible with OpenCL 1.1 to preserve code investment; Comprehensive OpenCL 1.2 conformance tests available
November 15th 2011 – SC11 - Seattle, WA – The Khronos™ Group today announced the ratification and public release of the OpenCL™ 1.2 specification, the latest update to the open, royalty-free standard for cross-platform, parallel programming of modern processors. Released eighteen months after OpenCL 1.1, this new version provides enhanced performance and functionality for parallel programming in a backwards compatible specification that is the result of cooperation by over thirty industry-leading companies. Khronos has updated and expanded its comprehensive OpenCL conformance test suite to ensure that implementations of the new specification provide a complete and reliable platform for cross-platform application development. The OpenCL 1.2 specifications, online reference pages and reference cards are available at www.khronos.org/opencl/.
“The OpenCL working group is listening carefully to feedback from the developer and middleware community to provide significant and timely functionality for heterogeneous computing in this cross vendor open standard,” said Neil Trevett, chair of the OpenCL working group, president of the Khronos Group and vice president of mobile content at NVIDIA. “The OpenCL working group is also broadening its membership and has growing representation from the mobile and embedded industries and is enabling innovative devices such as FPGAs to be driven through OpenCL.”
OpenCL 1.2 enables significantly enhanced parallel programming flexibility, functionality and performance through many updates and additions including:
Device partitioning - enabling applications to partition a device into sub-devices to directly control work assignment to particular compute units, reserve a part of the device for use for high priority/latency-sensitive tasks, or effectively use shared hardware resources such as a cache;
Separate compilation and linking of objects - providing the capabilities and flexibility of traditional compilers enabling the creation of libraries of OpenCL programs for other programs to link to;
Enhanced image support - including added support for 1D images and 1D & 2D image arrays. Also, the OpenGL sharing extension now enables an OpenCL image to be created from OpenGL 1D textures and 1D & 2D texture arrays;
Built-in kernels represent the capabilities of specialized or non-programmable hardware and associated firmware, such as video encoder/decoders and digital signal processors, enabling these custom devices to be driven from and integrated closely with the OpenCL framework;
DX9 Media Surface Sharing - enables efficient sharing between OpenCL and DirectX 9 or DXVA media surfaces;
DX11 Surface Sharing - for seamless sharing between OpenCL and DirectX 11 surfaces.
Working Group Member Support
“AMD promotes industry standards like OpenCL 1.2 that encourage developer freedom and creativity,” said Manju Hegde, corporate vice president, AMD Fusion Experience Program. “In addition to being one of the leading contributors to the OpenCL working group and specifications, AMD Accelerated Processing Units (APUs) and GPUs are the perfect platforms to take advantage of the potential of OpenCL – for developers and end-users.”
“Having worked with our Khronos partners in the evolution of OpenCL we are pleased to support the announcement of the latest version of the standard," said James McNiven, vice president, compute sub-systems, processor division, ARM. “We believe the vision of energy efficient heterogeneous compute subsystems can only be realized through industry collaboration and standards. ARM remains committed to supporting OpenCL across both CPU and GPU technology and helping our partners deliver high-performance compute systems that leverage ARM® Mali™ GPU and Cortex™ processor technology.”
“Intel is encouraged by the progress of the OpenCL specification and proud to be an OpenCL adopter and contributor to the OpenCL 1.2 release”, said Bill Savage, vice president and general manager of the Developer Products Division of Intel’s Software and Services Group. “OpenCL 1.2 promises better performance and more flexibility in software design for developers targeting current and future Intel Platforms.”
“The existence of an unified programming interface for multi-core platforms is becoming a crucial element for boosting the productivity of software engineers.” said Satoshi Miki, Founder and CEO, Fixstars Corporation. “With the release of the OpenCL 1.2 specification, I am very excited for the increased flexibility that it brings to multi-core programming. My hope is for many hardware vendors to support this new specification to allow for further innovations that can only come about from taking full advantage of the multi-core architecture.”
OpenCL Session at SC11, Seattle November 14-18th 2011
There is an OpenCL BOF “Birds of a Feather” Meeting on Wednesday 16th, 5:30– 7PM in Room TCC 101 at SC11, where attendees are invited to meet OpenCL implementers and developers and learn more about the new OpenCL 1.2 specification.
About The Khronos Group
The Khronos Group is an industry consortium creating open standards to enable the authoring and acceleration of parallel computing, graphics and dynamic media on a wide variety of platforms and devices. Khronos standards include OpenGL®, OpenGL® ES, WebGL™, WebCL, OpenCL™, OpenMAX™, OpenVG™, OpenSL ES™, OpenKODE™, StreamInput and COLLADA™. All Khronos members are able to contribute to the development of Khronos specifications, are empowered to vote at various stages before public deployment, and are able to accelerate the delivery of their cutting-edge media platforms and applications through early access to specification drafts and conformance tests. More information is available at www.khronos.org.
###Central Texas Women are arming up to show that they can protect themselves. It's all part of a new female shooting league called Guns and Glitz. The shooting league was started by a Belton cop who says after her girlfriends told her they felt unsafe when home alone or leaving work late at night she decided to teach them how to use a gun for protection.
The league kicked off last October and already has over 500 members and 2 different practice locations. Participants learn things like gun safety rules and proper stance and grip among other things. League founder Tammy Jo says it's become especially popular with women fleeing violent situations looking for a way to keep safe.
"They've been raped or they've been beaten by their husband who is now in prison. We have all kinds of stories and that's what makes them walk through the door" says Guns and Glitz Founder Tammy Jo McCleney.
One woman is training hard. Preparing for when her abusive husband gets out of prison. She says she's glad she found guns and glitz because she can't always rely on police to defend her.
"He pushed me through a couple of windows. You call the cops they're ten minutes away and you can't always depend on them because by the time they get there who knows what could happen" says Vicky, Domestic Abuse Survivor.
But the league isn't just for abuse survivors. Anyone young or old can try their hand at it.
"One day if I do need to protect myself at least I will know how to in case there's a bad situation" says 10 year old shooter Hannah Buchhorn.
The league founder says she hopes every woman who walks through her door leaves out of it stronger and more secure.
"They don't have to be a victim anymore, with a little bit of training they have the ability to get their life back" says McCleney.
That's what the ladies plan to do one bullet at a time. The league practices at Mountain Creek Range in Killeen. Contact the group through their Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/gunsandglitzwomensshootingleague/The big problem with supercomputing is that the organizations that could benefit most from the technology aren't using it.
Supercomputer-based visualization and simulation tools could allow a company to design, test and prototype products in virtual environments instead of building and testing physical models. Couple that capability with a 3D printer, and a small company with limited resources could revolutionize its R&D and manufacturing operations.
But licensing fees for the software needed to simulate things like wind tunnels, ovens and welds are expensive. On top of that, the tools have to run on large multicore systems, and typically only skilled engineers know how to use them.
One possible solution: taking a high-performance computing (HPC) process and converting it into an app.
This is how it might work: A manufacturer designing a part to reduce drag on an 18-wheel truck could upload a CAD file, plug in some parameters, hit start and run a simulation on 128 cores of the Ohio Supercomputer Center's (OSC) 8,500-core system. The cost would likely be $200 to $500 to run the simulation and package the results in a report.
Testing that 18-wheeler in a physical wind tunnel could cost as much $100,000.
Alan Chalker, the director of the OSC's AweSim program, uses that example to explain what his organization is trying to do. The new group has some $6.5 million from government and private groups, including consumer products giant Procter & Gamble, to find ways to bring HPC to more manufacturers via an app store.
The app store is slated to open at the end of the first quarter of next year, with one app and several tools that have been ported for the Web. The plan is to eventually spin off AweSim into a private company, and populate the app store with thousands of apps.
Tom Lange, director of modeling and simulation in P&G's corporate R&D group, said he hopes that AweSim's tools will be used for the company's supply chain.
The software industry's business model is based on selling licenses, and licenses for an HPC application can cost $50,000 a year, said Lange. That price is well out of the reach of small manufacturers interested in fixing just one problem. "What they really want is an app," he said.
Lange said P&G has worked with its supply chain partners to help them gain access to HPC resources, but that can be difficult because of the complexities of the relationship.
"The small supplier doesn't want to be beholden to P&G," said Lange. "They have an independent business, and they want to be independent and they should be."
That's one of the reasons he likes AweSim.
AweSim will use some open-source HPC tools in its apps, and it's working on agreements with major HPC software vendors to make parts of their tools available as apps.
Chalker said software vendors are interested in working with AweSim because it's a way for them to make inroads in the small-business market, which is inaccessible to them today. The vendors could get some licensing revenue for the apps they agree to sell in the store, but they'd also get access to new customers that might use larger, more expensive apps in the future.
AweSim is an outgrowth of the Blue Collar Computing initiative that started at the OSC in the mid-2000s with the goal, similar to AweSim's, of giving smaller users access to HPC systems. But that program required users to purchase costly consulting services. AweSim's approach with the app store is to minimize cost, and minimize the need for consulting help, as much as possible.
Chalker has a half-dozen apps already built, including one that could be used in a simulation involving an 18-wheeler, as in his example. The OSC is building a software development kit to make it possible for others to build apps. One goal is to eventually enable other supercomputing centers to provide compute capacity for the apps.
AweSim will charge users a fixed rate for CPUs, covering just the costs, and will provide consulting expertise where it is needed. Consulting fees may raise the bill for users, but Chalker said the tab usually won't run more than a few thousand dollars, which is a lot less than the cost of hiring a full-time computer scientist.
The AweSim team expects that many app users -- mechanical engineers, for instance -- will know enough to work with an app without the help of, say, a computational fluid dynamics expert.
Lange says that manufacturers understand that making products domestically rather than overseas requires finding new processes, being innovative and not wasting resources. "You have to be committed to innovate what you make, and you have to commit to innovating how you make it," said Lange, who sees supercomputing as a key piece of that innovative approach.
Patrick Thibodeau covers SaaS and enterprise applications, outsourcing, government IT policies, data centers and IT workforce issues for Computerworld. Follow Patrick on Twitter at @DCgov, or subscribe to Patrick's RSS feed. His email address is [email protected] peoples' SSD
In a lot of ways, Serial ATA SSDs have stagnated recently. Most new drives are just slightly different spins on their predecessors. They have similar controllers, lightly massaged firmware, and flash fabbed on finer fabrication processes. And different stickers on the outside. Can't forget the stickers.
We don't get big leaps in performance anymore, though. The limited bandwidth of the 6Gbps SATA interface is partly to blame, as are the inefficiencies of the associated AHCI protocol. Even with those handicaps, most decent drives are already fast enough for the vast majority of desktop applications.
None of that makes for a compelling storyline. There's one more thing, however, and it's a pretty big deal. SSDs are getting cheaper. Like, a lot cheaper. Just look at the release-day prices for the last four generations of Crucial drives:
Crucial's first 6Gbps SATA offering was the RealSSD C300, which arrived in 2010 with 34-nm flash. The drive rang in at over $600 for 256GB, making it an expensive luxury even for high-end PCs. Since then, each successive NAND generation has come with a substantial discount, culminating in the 16-nm MX100 that debuts today. Crucial's latest is priced at just $109.99 for 256GB.
Let me repeat that. The MX100 is priced at just $109.99 for 256GB.
That's only $0.43 per gig, more than a 5X decrease from the C300—and a 50% drop from the M500's introductory sticker one year ago. Quite the opposite of stagnation, don't you think?
Crucial's parent company, Micron, deserves much of the credit for plummeting prices. SSDs are getting cheaper because memory makers are using smaller process geometries to cram more and more gigabytes onto each silicon wafer. Micron aggressively pursues cutting-edge fabrication technologies, and Crucial enjoys the spoils.
The MX100 is the first SSD to use Micron's 16-nm MLC NAND. 16GB chips based on that process have been sampling since last year, and Micron claims they have "the greatest number of bits per square millimeter at the lowest cost of any MLC device in existence." We're waiting on details about the exact die dimensions and how they compare to the previous generation. For what it's worth, Micron says its 16-nm process is capable of squeezing "nearly 6TB" onto a single wafer.
Although smaller fabrication techniques are great for increasing bit densities, shrinking the process geometry typically decreases endurance. NAND wears out because writing data erodes the physical structure of the memory cells. That structure becomes more fragile as it shrinks, reducing the volume of writes the cell can tolerate. Packing cells closer together also increases the potential for interference from neighboring cells.
Micron isn't ready to talk about how many program-erase cycles its 16-nm NAND can endure. However, most desktop users will struggle to exceed the MX100's endurance specification. The drive is rated for 72TB of total writes, which works out to 40GB per day for five years. That rating matches the endurance spec for Crucial's M500 and M550 SSDs, both of which are based on 20-nm NAND. The MX100 has the same three-year warranty as those drives, too. Here's how the three families compare:
M500 MX100 M550 NAND 20nm MLC 16/20nm MLC 20nm MLC Die size 16GB 16GB 8/16GB Capacities 120-960GB 128-512GB 64GB-1TB Controller Marvell 88SS9187 Marvell 88SS9189 Marvell 88SS9189 Sequential read 500MB/s 550MB/s 550MB/s Sequential write 130-400MB/s 150-500MB/s 190-500MB/s Random read 62-80k IOps 80-90k IOps 90-95k IOps Random write 35-80k IOps 40-85k IOps 75-85k IOps Total writes 72TB 72TB 72TB Warranty Three years Three years Three years Price (240-256GB) $114.99 $109.99 $168.99
The MX100 is essentially a replacement for the M500. It promises to outperform its predecessor at a lower cost, but there are a few caveats, including the fact that the M500 is much cheaper today than it was last year.
While the M500 is available in capacities up to 960GB, the MX100 is capped at 512GB. Folks who want more storage are directed to the higher-end M550, which goes up to 1TB, and to the M500 960GB, which hasn't been retired yet. It sounds like Crucial plans to keep the big M500 around for a little while longer.
At the other end of the spectrum, we should note that the MX100 128GB actually uses older 20-nm NAND. Only the 256GB and 512GB versions have the latest 16-nm flash.
All three drives are loaded with 16GB dies, which is a liability for the lower-capacity models. Modern controllers typically require at least 32 dies for peak performance. With 16GB per die, all the MX100s south of 512GB lacks sufficient NAND to exploit controller's internal parallelism. The 128GB and 256GB drives have lower performance ratings as a result.
Capacity Die config Max sequential (MB/s) Max 4KB random (IOps) Price $/GB Read Write Read Write 128GB 8 x 16GB 550 150 80,000 40,000 $79.99 $0.62 256GB 16 x 16GB 550 330 85,000 70,000 $109.99 $0.43 512GB 32 x 16GB 550 500 90,000 85,000 $224.99 $0.44
Dropping to 256GB cuts the MX100's peak sequential write speed to 330MB/s. The 128GB variant is even slower, and it takes a big hit on random writes. The entry-level unit has higher per-gigabyte pricing than the rest of the lineup, too. No wonder Crucial only sent us the 256GB and 512GB drives. We've benched them both, and we'll see how they stack up in a moment.
The 512GB version is just as competitively-priced as its 256GB sibling, by the way. $224.99 is the lowest list price we've ever seen for a 512GB SSD.
Inside and out, the MX100 looks an awful lot like the M550. It has the same eight-channel Marvell controller and nearly identical features. To protect against data loss from physical flash failures, the MX100 employs a RAID-like redundancy scheme called RAIN. Onboard capacitors provide a measure of power-loss protection, enabling the drive to preserve in-flight data if the lights go out. There's hardware support for 256-bit AES encryption, too, complete with the requisite IEEE and TCG Opal compliance. The MX100 can also dial back its performance if temperatures get too toasty, a valuable capability for notebooks and small-form-factor systems.
The only thing that isn't on the menu is DevSleep, an extra-low-power mode designed for mobile systems. According to Crucial, the MX100 will respond to the command, and the feature is supported in the firmware. However, because Crucial hasn't seen a lot of demand for it, DevSleep isn't part of the drive's official specification.
DevSleep is geared toward mobile systems, which aren't really the MX100's native turf. Sure, the drive will fit into standard 2.5" notebook bays, but Crucial isn't making mSATA or M.2 flavors suitable for slimmer ultrabooks, convertibles, and the like. Instead of cranking out mini MX100s, Crucial will continue selling mSATA and M.2 versions of the M500. The M550 is also available in mini formats.
Overall, the MX100 covers all the essentials except utility software. Unlike most SSD vendors, Crucial doesn't offer an application to monitor health, optimize system settings, and track drive statistics. The firm makes matters worse by giving many of the drive's SMART attributes vague, vendor-specific titles that can only be deciphered with the aid of a separate decoder ring. The reallocated sector count is clearly marked, at least, but program and erase failures, error correction and RAIN recovery events, and total host writes are not. If Crucial isn't going to provide its own SSD utility software, it should at least stop making life difficult those monitoring their drives with third-party utilities.
Crucial redeems itself somewhat by shipping the MX100 with a download code for Acronis True Image HD 2014. The imaging software should come in handy for folks upgrading existing systems.
Now, let's see how the MX100 performs.MotoGP season opening round in Qatar was overshadowed on Friday by the death of a Tunisian rider who crashed in a support series race. MotoGP organizers said 49 year old Taoufik Gattouchi had died in Doha’s Hamad hospital of injuries sustained in a ‘multi-rider incident’ during the Losail 600 race. The race was stopped after the crash on the 10th of 15 scheduled laps and Gattouchi received medical attention at the side of the track before being flown by air ambulance to the hospital. The Losail 600 Cup is a locally organised club competition made up of four two race events at the Losail International circuit, where the MotoGP race takes place under floodlights, for riders on 600cc bikes.
The MotoGP riders had their second and third official practice sessions at the circuit on Friday, ahead of qualifying on Saturday and Sunday race. The race was a support event for the showpiece, season-opening Qatar MotoGP which takes place on Sunday.
The organizer said in statement:
“It is with great sadness that we have to report the passing of Tunisian rider Taoufik Gattouchi.”
“The race was red-flagged on lap 10 of 15 following a multi-rider incident at Turn 3 and Mr Gattouchi received immediate trackside medical attention.”
“The 49-year-old was immediately transported by air ambulance to the Hamad Hospital in Doha where resuscitation continued. Unfortunately, Mr Gattouchi succumbed to his injuries.”
Tributes poured in for the rider on Facebook, with many of Gattouchi’s friends displaying temporary profile pictures of him that said, “RIP Tawfeeq, will never forget you brother.”
Sad news indeed. Taoufik Gattouchi was killed today in Qatar after a crash in the Losail 600 Cup Race. RIP fellow racer… — Team EG 0,0 Marc VDS (@TeamEG00MarcVDS) March 18, 2016
Awful to hear of a death in a MotoGP support race in Qatar, RIP Taoufik Gattouchi. Thoughts with the family.
The FIM, Losail Circuit Sports Club, QMMF, Dorna Sports and the entire MotoGP community wishes to pass on its condolences to the family and friends of Mr Gattouchi.Three Walmart employees are facing manslaughter charges, accused of killing a man who was trying to shoplift from the store.
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Three local Walmart employees have been charged with manslaughter in Polk County following the death of a shoplifting suspect.The three stood before a judge Friday, facing charges of manslaughter. They are accused of suffocating a man who was trying to shoplift.Lakeland Police said the three employees chased 64-year-old Kenneth Wisham after he allegedly stole hundreds of dollars worth of DVDs in February.>>Download the WESH 2 News app for iOS and AndroidAccording to the arrest report, Wisham was walking out of a Lakeland Walmart with close to $400 worth of DVDs in a shopping cart. The three employees -- Crucelis Nunez, a customer service manager; Randall Tomko, loss prevention; and Nathan Higgins, a support manager -- tried to stop Wisham.The report states that Nunez knocked Wisham to the ground and punched him "multiple times with a closed fist." Tomko was accused of "using his weight to hold the victim's upper body down." Higgins allegedly had the victim by the ankles, and "pushed...towards the victim |
to taking off for the reconnaissance mission over Iraq. Several RAF Tornado jets set off from RAF Marham in Norfolk this afternoon to travel to a "pre-position", from where they will fly to northern Iraq to provide improved surveillance of the situation on the ground. The jets, fitted with Litening III targeting and surveillance pods, will be able to fly over the crisis area to provide intelligence and help with the delivery of humanitarian aid 5/15 Iraq crisis A British Royal Air Force (RAF) Tornado GR4 aircraft equipped with the Litening III pod from RAF Marham, eastern England, on their arrival at RAF Akrotiri Cyprus for their reconnaissance mission over Iraq 6/15 Iraq crisis Aid inside a Royal Air Force (RAF) Hercules C130 J aircraft before being airdropped to civilians in Iraq 7/15 Iraq crisis A Royal Air Force (RAF) Hercules C130 J military transport plane at RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus. Britain made a third round of airdrops of supplies to aid refugees stranded on a mountain in northern Iraq, officials said, as Tornado fighters arrived at an RAF base in Cyprus preparing to provide surveillance support for the humanitarian effort 8/15 Iraq crisis Royal Air Force (RAF) Tornado GR4 aircraft, flown in from Britain, stand on the tarmac at RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus 9/15 Iraq crisis A displaced man helps a woman, both from the minority Yazidi sect fleeing violence from forces loyal to the Isis in Sinjar town, as they make their way towards the Syrian border, on the outskirts of Sinjar mountain, near the Syrian border town of Elierbeh of Al-Hasakah Governorate 10/15 Iraq crisis Iraqis including Turkmen, Shabaks, Kurds, Yezidis and Christians, fleeing from assaults of army groups led by Isis, take shelter at Bahirka Camp in Arbil 11/15 Iraq crisis Displaced Iraqis from the Yazidi community look for clothes to wear among items provided by a charity organization at the Nowruz camp in Derike, Syria 12/15 Iraq crisis Displaced Iraqis from the Yazidi community gather for food at the Nowruz camp in Derike, Syria 13/15 Iraq crisis Displaced Iraqis from the Yazidi community gather for food at the Nowruz camp in Derike, Syria 14/15 Iraq crisis Syrian Kurdish Peshmerga fighters take a sick Iraqi Yazidi woman to the clinic at Nowruz camp in Derike, Syria 15/15 Iraq crisis Sick displaced Iraqis from the Yazidi community wait for treatment at a clinic at Nowruz camp in Derike, Syria 1/15 Iraq crisis Displaced people from the minority Yazidi sect, fleeing violence from forces loyal to the Isis in Sinjar town, walk towards the Syrian border, on the outskirts of Sinjar mountain, near the Syrian border town of Elierbeh of Al-Hasakah Governorate 2/15 Iraq crisis Displaced people from the minority Yazidi sect, fleeing violence from forces loyal to the Isis in Sinjar town, walk towards the Syrian border, on the outskirts of Sinjar mountain, near the Syrian border town of Elierbeh of Al-Hasakah Governorate 3/15 Iraq crisis Displaced Iraqis from the Yazidi community settle at a camp at Derike, Syria. In the camps here, Iraqi refugees have new heroes: Syrian Kurdish fighters who battled militants to carve an escape route to tens of thousands trapped on a mountaintop 4/15 Iraq crisis A pilot based at RAF Marham entering a Tornado GR4 prior to taking off for the reconnaissance mission over Iraq. Several RAF Tornado jets set off from RAF Marham in Norfolk this afternoon to travel to a "pre-position", from where they will fly to northern Iraq to provide improved surveillance of the situation on the ground. The jets, fitted with Litening III targeting and surveillance pods, will be able to fly over the crisis area to provide intelligence and help with the delivery of humanitarian aid 5/15 Iraq crisis A British Royal Air Force (RAF) Tornado GR4 aircraft equipped with the Litening III pod from RAF Marham, eastern England, on their arrival at RAF Akrotiri Cyprus for their reconnaissance mission over Iraq 6/15 Iraq crisis Aid inside a Royal Air Force (RAF) Hercules C130 J aircraft before being airdropped to civilians in Iraq 7/15 Iraq crisis A Royal Air Force (RAF) Hercules C130 J military transport plane at RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus. Britain made a third round of airdrops of supplies to aid refugees stranded on a mountain in northern Iraq, officials said, as Tornado fighters arrived at an RAF base in Cyprus preparing to provide surveillance support for the humanitarian effort 8/15 Iraq crisis Royal Air Force (RAF) Tornado GR4 aircraft, flown in from Britain, stand on the tarmac at RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus 9/15 Iraq crisis A displaced man helps a woman, both from the minority Yazidi sect fleeing violence from forces loyal to the Isis in Sinjar town, as they make their way towards the Syrian border, on the outskirts of Sinjar mountain, near the Syrian border town of Elierbeh of Al-Hasakah Governorate 10/15 Iraq crisis Iraqis including Turkmen, Shabaks, Kurds, Yezidis and Christians, fleeing from assaults of army groups led by Isis, take shelter at Bahirka Camp in Arbil 11/15 Iraq crisis Displaced Iraqis from the Yazidi community look for clothes to wear among items provided by a charity organization at the Nowruz camp in Derike, Syria 12/15 Iraq crisis Displaced Iraqis from the Yazidi community gather for food at the Nowruz camp in Derike, Syria 13/15 Iraq crisis Displaced Iraqis from the Yazidi community gather for food at the Nowruz camp in Derike, Syria 14/15 Iraq crisis Syrian Kurdish Peshmerga fighters take a sick Iraqi Yazidi woman to the clinic at Nowruz camp in Derike, Syria 15/15 Iraq crisis Sick displaced Iraqis from the Yazidi community wait for treatment at a clinic at Nowruz camp in Derike, Syria
A prominent religious leader, Baba Sheikh, decreed that returning women should be treated as victims and welcomed back into the community but that has not been the case for all.
Those women and girls face not only stigma over sex outside of marriage, whether it was consensual or not, but also the trauma of pregnancy.
Abortion is illegal in Iraq except in cases where the mother’s life is directly at risk, forcing victims to turn to dangerous “back-street” doctors or bear the children of their rapists, sometimes giving birth at a dangerously young age.
Human Rights Watch is among the groups campaigning to have terminations made legal for rape victims or women at risk of suicide or honour-based violence.
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view.
At The Independent, no one tells us what to write. That’s why, in an era of political lies and Brexit bias, more readers are turning to an independent source. Subscribe from just 15p a day for extra exclusives, events and ebooks – all with no ads.
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Referring to Joakim Noah's current deal as a "bad contract" would be an insult to bad contracts everywhere. He's a 32-year-old center who played just 75 games in the two seasons prior to 2017-18, and he has a history of ailments that reads like a chart at a doctor's office for geriatrics.
And yet, amazingly, he's earning nearly $17.8 million this season. Even worse, he's slated to receive roughly $37.8 million from the New York Knicks over the two ensuing seasons.
"It's the worst contract in the NBA," an Eastern Conference front office staffer told B/R.
The contract is an albatross, the type of deal that can handcuff a team for years. Think of it as Phil Jackson's parting gift to his now-former employer.
None of this is meant to disparage Noah, nor to blame him for accepting a deal Jackson offered to him. A two-time All-Star and former Defensive Player of the Year, Noah once deserved such riches. He was a brilliant passer, a bruising screener and a genius defensive stopper who boasted both the athleticism to stick with guards and muscles to man the paint.
But that player no longer exists. Injuries have sapped Noah of his burst, while the game's migration toward pace and space has rendered plodding centers extinct.
Noah is aware of this.
"Probably not," he recently told reporters when asked whether he thinks he can rediscover his old form. "I can help. I feel like I could help this team, and that's just my reality. But I just want to, you know, just be the best that I can be. It's not about trying to be what I was three, four years ago, because it's not the reality."
Michelle Farsi/Getty Images
The Knicks have played 11 games since Noah was activated from the 20-game suspension he earned for testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs (dating back to last season). He's been inactive for seven of them.
To date, Noah, who's third on the team's depth chart at center, has appeared in only two games this season. He's played for a grand total of 10 minutes and 59 seconds even though Knicks big men Enes Kanter and Kristaps Porzingis each have missed recent games due to injuries.
The most run he's received this season came last week for the Westchester Knicks, the team's G League affiliate.
Having Noah around is a major issue for the new Knicks regime. The question is: What are their options?
The answer? There aren't any good ones.
Option No. 1: Trade Noah
Garrett Ellwood/Getty Images
This would be the ideal route for the Knicks, but it's far easier said than done. Two scouts told B/R there's no scenario in which they'd take Noah back in a deal. One (slightly) hedged, saying, "If it's death or take Noah, I'll take Noah."
A Western Conference executive added the only teams that would "maybe" be interested in Noah would be looking for veteran leadership—not all teams believe in the value of that—or a backup center. Perhaps the Pelicans, or the Nuggets in exchange for Kenneth Faried. Or maybe Tom Thibodeau wants to reunite with his former player in Minnesota.
But even these scenarios were a long shot, the executive said.
Think of it like this: Remember when Jackson dangled Porzingis over the summer? According to ESPN.com's Ian Begley, Jackson wanted any team that traded for his young unicorn to take back Noah as well, which speaks to Noah's value around the league. Basically, no team would consider absorbing his deal unless it was also receiving an All-Star. The Knicks only have one of those, and with Jackson gone, there are no plans to move him.
In other words, no outside team is parachuting in to rescue the Knicks from Noah's deal.
Option No. 2: Buy Noah Out
Tony Gutierrez/Associated Press
This would work in theory, but as the front office staffer said, "There's really no incentive for Noah to accept a buyout."
A buyout involves a player agreeing to surrender some of the money he's guaranteed in exchange for the freedom to sign with another team. In Noah's case, though, there might not be another team in the league interested in him. He'd be giving back money and perhaps receiving nothing in return.
That may change if he continues to rot on New York's bench and another team expresses interest in signing him to a reserve role for a minimum contract. Any cap relief would be valuable to the Knicks. But unless Noah's representation knows of another team open to bringing him in, it's hard to envision any of this coming to fruition.
Option 3: Noah Retires
James Devaney/Getty Images
This isn't the escape hatch you might think.
If a player under contract voluntarily retires, it doesn't affect his cap hit. Retirement can't be used as a method for circumventing league rules, either. Any player who voluntarily retires foregoes his remaining salary and is forbidden from signing with another team for a year.
For an aging veteran on a small deal, it might not be a bad route. But it's hard to imagine Noah walking away from $37.8 million.
The only maneuver under the retirement umbrella that could free the Knicks from Noah's deal is if he were to retire for medical reasons. He'd still receive his salary, but it wouldn't count on the Knicks' cap sheet.
However, a player can't just decide his body can no longer handle playing. Doctors, chosen by the league and the NBA Players Association, evaluate players who retire for medical reasons, and they have to give a stamp of approval.
Perhaps Noah's injury history is enough to pass this test. But it's unlikely, and these sorts of applications have been rejected before. Noah has also given no indication this season that he plans on stepping away from the game anytime soon.
"Oh my God, it's been so long," Noah told reporters following his first minutes of the season. "Just to be on the court is special.
Option 4: 'Stretch' Noah's Contract
Nathaniel S. Butler/Getty Images
This is the most plausible option, but it's also the most dangerous.
The stretch provision allows a team to waive a player and then "stretch" his remaining cap hit over twice as many years as there left on his deal, plus one. So, if a player is stretched with two years and $5 million remaining on his contract, his cap hit becomes $1 million over each of the next five years.
Stretching provides immediate cap relief, but it eats into your books for a long time.
In Noah's case, stretching would take the $37.8 million he's owed over the next two years and turn that into roughly a $7.5 million cap hit over each of the next five. That means that in the summer of 2022, Noah's deal would still be restraining the Knicks.
There's no benefit to waiving and stretching Noah now. The summer would be the time to do so, and only to free up about $12 million in cap room to sign a free agent.
There's also no reason for the Knicks, who aren't close to competing for titles, to prioritize the short term. Especially with the league's salary cap, now at $99 million, projected to rise only incrementally over the next few years. By the time Porzingis is ready to take his final step, it's going to be difficult for the Knicks to carve out cap space. Keeping Noah on the books in any form could be detrimental.
The Knicks' eyes should be on 2020, not this coming summer. Stretching Noah would hinder that plan. The best path for them is the one they've followed this year.
The contract is a sunk cost. Ignore it and keep Noah around—but on the bench—until it expires.Chris Soghoian is an unlikely federal official. In 2006 he built a tool that let you print fake boarding passes for Northwest Airlines to highlight a TSA security flaw. Unamused, the FBI raided his house (he was never charged with a crime). A year later he mapped where California company Biofilm shipped tubes of its sexual lubricant Astroglide using data the company put online. He claimed Biofilm violated privacy laws, but authorities declined to investigate, saying no financial data was exposed. "Just names, phone numbers, addresses and the fact that you requested sex lube," grumps Soghoian.
Given this history, he was surprised when the Federal Trade Commission offered him a job in 2009. Soghoian, 29, was the first of a handful of technologists the agency recruited to investigate corporations for violating consumers' privacy. The FTC needed tech geeks to help it understand privacy on the Web, and Soghoian, an Indiana University informatics-and-computing Ph.D. candidate fresh off a Harvard law and technology fellowship, accepted the offer for pragmatic reasons. "We have one privacy regulator at the federal level in this country--the FTC," says Soghoian.
It was an odd fit from the start. Asked for a fingerprint scan on his first day, Soghoian nearly quit in protest. Then he avoided a background check by ignoring e-mail requests. "I didn't feel like I should have to give up my privacy to protect other people's."
Still, being a fed had perks. In December Soghoian's FTC credentials let him secretly tape Sprint executives bragging at an industry-only security conference about how they'd turned customers' GPS information over to law enforcement 8 million times in a year.
He posted the audio to his personal blog, sparking an uproar. A month later the Justice Department released a report saying the FBI had broken the law by invoking nonexistent emergencies to conduct phone record searches.
But his technique caused headaches for his bosses. The agency's inspector general investigated the stunt, and later the FTC declined to renew his contract, though it rehired him part-time to finish up open cases. An FTC official says only that Soghoian provided valuable service to the agency.
Again a private citizen, Soghoian has kept at it. He's still in Washington advocating for consumer privacy protections. And a complaint he filed with the FTC against Google --for leaking consumer information that reveals to websites how you got to their sites--has led to a class action in the Northern District of California.
His former employer also remains hard at work. Congress has two draft online privacy bills, but until one passes, responsibility rests squarely in the FTC's lap. At the beginning of November the FTC named Ed Felten, a computer science professor at Princeton, its chief technology officer. Felten has a history of pushing back against corporations on privacy issues, including Sony in 2005 for secretly downloading copyright protection software onto people's computers to prevent CD copying.
It's a good start, says Soghoian, but in his humble opinion the feds still have a long way to go. "One of the things that's become abundantly clear after being in D.C. for a year," he says, "is that many of the people making the rules and setting the policies have absolutely no idea how the technology works." Or the technologists.
Special Offer: Free Trial Issue of ForbesA Florida man put an end to another “pay it forward” streak at a local Starbucks because he said he thinks people were participating out of “guilt,” not “generosity.”
Peter Schorsch, a blogger, drove to the Starbucks drive-thru in St. Petersburg, Florida, on Thursday after hearing about the pay it forward phenomenon there that ended with customer No. 458, a woman, the day before. After he ordered two Venti Mocha Frappuccinos, the barista told him his first drink had been paid for by the previous customer and asked if he would like to pay for the next customer.
“I told him no,” Schorsch, of St. Petersburg, told ABC News. “When the barista asks you to pay it forward, it is no longer spontaneous.”
Though Schorsch didn't pay for the next customer at the drive-thru, he said he tipped the barista $100.
10-Hour 'Pay It Forward' Line Ends With Customer No. 458 Who Refuses
Conn. Starbucks Customers Pay it Forward 640 Times and Growing
“I’m really not trying to be a Grinch,” Schorsch said. “I know things are hard for baristas and I am willing to help people.”
“I just don’t want to be forced into doing something,” said Schorsch, who is also a political consultant. “This is turning into a social phenomenon and I had to put an end to it.”
When baristas ask customers to pay for the next customer, some patrons simply oblige out of guilt, not generosity, he said.
“Although I can’t prove it, I think this has become an organic marketing ploy for Starbucks,” Schorsch said. “I love Starbucks. I have nothing against them. But this takes away the genuineness.”
Schorsch said some patrons are driving to this particular store after they heard about the pay it forward streak.
“This is turning into something ridiculous and cheesy,” Schorsch said.
“It just seems like a First World problem to me. Middle-class people sitting in their cars at a drive-thru, sipping a $5 drink and worrying about someone breaking the ranks,” Schorsch said.
“There is a little humor being a contrarian, but I think if you really want to help, find someone that obviously needs help, like the homeless,” Schorsch said.
"Also, I got a $6 Venti Frappuccino. Someone might just get a $2 coffee," Schorsch said. "This is unfair to that person who paid for me."
An employee at this Starbucks location referred ABC News to the company’s corporate media relations hotline.
"This happens quite often in our stores," Starbucks spokeswoman Linda Mills told ABC News. "People are usually very happy to do it."
"We by no means have the expectation for the customer to carry it on. We are absolutely not pushing for it," Mills said.
Schorsch isn't a stranger to controversy. Those active in politics had made allegations that Schorsch asked for money from interviewees in exchange for good stories. Schorsch denied the "quid pro quo" allegations and no charges were filed.
"I just wrote a short blog about the Starbucks encounter yesterday," Schorsch said. "I was by no means advertising for my blog."
"I have about 60 advertisers on my blog," Schorsch said. "I don't think my credibility is in question."
"I let other people decide if I'm credible," he said.Image caption Forty-two percent of marriages end in divorce, statistics suggest
Latest figures show that there were 117,558 divorces in England and Wales in 2011, down by 1.7% since 2010, the Office for National Statistics said.
Based on marriage, divorce and death statistics for 2010, about 42% of marriages are expected to end in divorce - a drop from 45% in 2005.
The number of divorces in 2011 was highest among people aged 40 to 44.
In 2011, 10.8 people divorced per thousand married people, compared with 12.9 in 2001.
The findings showed that there continues to a "general decline" in divorces since 2003 when there were 153,065.
The fall in divorces is consistent with a decline in the number of marriages to 2009 - a factor which may be due to the increasing number of couples choosing to co-habit rather than marry, the ONS said.
Impact of recession
Across the UK, the number of divorces decreased by 1.9% in 2011, to 129,763 compared with 132,338 in 2010.
The number of divorces in Scotland fell by 2.8%, from 10,149 in 2010 to 9,862 last year, while the number of divorces in Northern Ireland also decreased.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Divorce lawyer Deborah Jeff: "Recession is one of the many reasons for dwindling divorce figures."
Divorce rates decreased between 2004 and 2011 - except in 2010 when it increased, the ONS said.
This could have been because of the 2008-09 recession, it said, although it could not explain fully why it had an impact.
It said there were two competing theories about the effect of an economic downturn on divorces.
One theory suggested that increased financial strain, changes in employment and related lifestyle changes could contribute to divorces, while the other theory suggested that partnerships would be less likely to dissolve because "of an increase in family solidarity during difficult times and the need to postpone marital break-ups until the economy, and the value of their home, improves".
ONS gave the example of the 1990-92 recession when there was an increased risk of divorce, but with a delayed impact, so that divorce rates increased more markedly in 1993 than during the recession.
When it comes to children, almost half (49%) of couples divorcing in 2011 had at least one child aged under 16.
There were 100,760 children aged under 16 whose parents divorced in 2011, a decrease of 31% from 2001.There are a great many titles being released this fall, vying to work their way into your budget. Technically all are in competition with each other, as even if there are eight worthwhile games being released, not everyone has $500 to spend on new games, and decisions will have to be made with some titles being put on the back burner.
But it’s very clear what the fiercest competition is going to be, Battlefield 3 vs. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, and by proxy, EA vs. Activision. Battlefield is gunning directly for Call Duty’s userbase, as has been said many times in interviews and reinforced in commercials featuring taglines like “going above the call.”
All indications point to Battlefield 3 being an outstanding game that has a great many steps forward over its predecessors. Similar early word says that while Modern Warfare 3 might be good in its own right, it does little to innovate over past titles.
So why, despite all this, do I believe Battlefield will never be able to catch Call of Duty in terms of sales? Simply put, accessibility.
Call of Duty is characterized for its “run and gun” playstyle, meaning the way it’s designed encourages players to rack up as many kills as they can. Sure, it helps if you’re coordinating with your team, but it’s far from required, and usually whichever squad has the one or two people with the highest kill-to-death ratio is going to win, and if you can manage to kill more than you get killed, you’re a contributing member of the team.
Battlefield, on the other hand, isn’t about kills to nearly the same extent. Most game types are objective based, where players pick specific loadout classes and have to actively coordinate with their team at all times in order to achieve an objective. Run and gunning here will often get you nowhere, and do nothing but draw the ire of your teammates. The game is far more strategic and involved, and ultimately, that will be why it hits a sales ceiling.
Don’t mistake what I’m saying here. I’m not in any way suggesting Battlefield is a worse game because it’s a smarter shooter, but I am saying that smart doesn’t always sell. I just don’t believe it’s possible that this style of play has a broad enough appeal to ever hope to put up the kind of numbers that Call of Duty enjoys, which has set 24 hour and one week sales records not just for video games, but for consumer products of any kind.
Battlefield has a die hard contingent of fans who maintain their game is better, and that Call of Duty players are twitchy fingered kids who wouldn’t know a good shooter if it put a.50 cal slug between their eyes. But “better” is a subjective term, and the so-called twitchy fingered kids who play Call of Duty make up a huge chunk of the player base, and therefore are responsible for contributing to the massive amount of units sold.
It might in fact be more satisfying to play a smart shooter, and through teamwork with responsible allies achieve objectives and win, but with Battlefield looking to put more emphasis on its console version, it’s hard to imagine that will happen to the extent the game needs it to. PC players which are the core group of Battlefield fans are more likely to adopt such a play model, but it’s hard to imagine the same result can be achieved on Xbox Live where your first instinct is to mute every player in your lobby due to the high pitched voices and racial slurs. And working together with those same hooligans? Forget about it.
Hopefully players will adapt. I really would love to pick up Battlefield and after a little while have weeded out all the players who think it’s Call of Duty and have everyone know how to play. The problem is that Call of Duty’s deathmatch focus is far more accessible for most players, which may not translate into a necessarily better game, but without question, it will equal more sales.
Call of Duty would seem to have a sort of “Madden” factor, where even though other games might try to improve upon what it does in the genre, it’s still a yearly staple that’s going to rack up massive sales for an indefinite stretch of time to come. This didn’t used to be the case, but ever since Activision figured out they could release one of these titles every single year and not even have to change this much, it’s a money machine they wouldn’t dare try tweaking too much.
It’s great that Battlefield is offering some serious competition for a change, but I just don’t think when the gauntlet is thrown down at release, the numbers are going to even be close. But if DICE and EA can manage even to put a dent in MW3 sales, Activision will take notice, and perhaps put a bit of extra effort into their golden goose the next time around.Angry mob of Lebanese villagers lynch murder suspect in town centre in gruesome vigilante attack
A mob of angry Lebanese villagers stabbed to death an Egyptian man and then lynched his naked body in the centre of town over allegations he killed four members of a local family.
Mohammed Msallem, a 38-year-old Egyptian who worked as a butcher in Ketermaya, had been arrested a day earlier on suspicion of shooting to death an elderly couple and their two young granddaughters, aged seven and nine.
He was leading police investigators through a re-enactment of the killings when dozens of residents attacked him with sticks and knives, security officials said.
Police rushed Msallem to the intensive care unit of a nearby hospital, but residents broke in, dragged him out and pounded him with sticks.
Vigilante attack: Hundreds of Lebanese villagers gather around the hanging body of Egyptian Mohammed Msallem after he was stabbed to death and paraded through town
A security official said police at the scene could not stop the attackers, who blocked streets in the village to prevent police reinforcements from reaching the scene.
After killing Msallem, the attackers stripped his bloody body down to the victim's underwear and drove it through town on a car hood, with several local men standing on the hood cheering.
They then hanged the body from a pole in the centre of town as hundreds of residents cried 'Allahu Akbar,' or God is great. Some villagers even took photos of the dead man with their mobile phones.
Shocking: Lebanese women take pictures of the dead murder suspect with their mobile phones
Looking on: The villagers attacked Msallem after he was arrested on suspicion of murdering two girls and their grandparents
His body hung from the pole for about ten minutes before Lebanese army troops took him down and drove him away in a jeep.
The rare mob attack shocked many, and security officials said police who were escorting the man at the time were unable to prevent the killing in the Chouf mountain town of Ketermaya.
Interior Minister Ziad Baroud ordered an investigation and said such vigilante justice was 'extremely dangerous'.
Exit: A Lebanese soldier removes the body from the scene and takes it away in an army truck
Security officials said Msallem had confessed to killing the four family members, but the motive was not immediately clear.
One official said Ketermaya residents also believed Msallem had raped a 15-year-old local girl a month earlier, but that report could not be independently confirmed.
There was no immediate word of arrests in the attack.
Crime has been on the rise in Lebanon but such vigilante mob killings have been rare since the end of the 1975-90 civil war, during which political violence was common.December 3, 2015 — Ron Chusid
I’ve noted many times that polls prior to primaries are of little predictive value. Polls in December 2007 showed that Clinton had a huge lead over Obama. In December 2003, Howard Dean was pulling away in the polls. Eventual winner John Kerry was in sixth place with only 4 percent, even trailing Al Sharpton. While Clinton is certainly in a strong position this year, her leads in the national polls do not guarantee victory. Similarly, while Donald Trump seems to have a significant lead in the Republican race, it is premature to assume he will win unless he actually performs well in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Alfred J. Tuchfarber has looked at the December polls and has also demonstrated how little predictive value they have. In polls from November 2007, taken two months before voting, Hillary Clinton was leading the Democratic race. Rudy Guiliani was leading the Republican race, with Fred Thompson also ahead of John McCain. In 2011 Herman Cain was leading the Republican race, and had left the race by the time of the Iowa caucuses.
One reason for the poor predictive value of national polls is that whoever wins in Iowa and/or New Hampshire generally gets a huge boost in subsequent states. That doesn’t mean that the polls in Iowa are all that more meaningful as voters there typically don’t make up their minds until the last minute. Hillary Clinton was leading in the polls in Iowa and came in third place in 2008. In late 2007 Mitt Romney was leading the polls in Iowa, and came in second to Mike Huckabee. Herman Cain was leading in Iowa as well as the national polls two months before the Iowa caucus.
Polls also have limited predictive value as the pollsters do not know who will actually turn out to vote. If the Democratic caucus in Iowa is dominated by long time Democratic voters, then the polls are showing the race as very close. If those who haven’t previously voted but are showing enthusiasm for Bernie Sanders turn out to vote, there could be a big victory for Sanders. The much stronger degree of support seen for Sanders in social media is very encouraging, but no guarantee of votes. It might also be helpful for Sanders that the Iowa caucuses are later this year than in the 2008 cycle, when many college students were off on vacation. Even more might turn out for Sanders in this year than had turned out for Obama.
Similarly we will not know whether Donald Trump will easily win the nomination, or if a party regular will challenge him, until we see how the voters act."It's a McDonald's," said Martha Anderson, the general manager, "not a senior center." She said she called the police after the group refused to budge and other customers asked for refunds because there was nowhere to sit.
The police in the 109th Precinct, which serves the area, say that calls to resolve to disputes at businesses are routine, though the disruptions are more often caused by unruly teenagers than by septuagenarians.
The Flushing McDonald's looks like any other. Few among the crowd there on a recent Saturday said they even liked the food. "We prefer our own Korean food," said Hoick Choi, 76, a pastor at New Power Presbyterian Church, who comes about once a week. Many come after filling up on a free lunch at a nearby senior center.
Some say it is convenience that draws them from the solitude of their nearby homes to spend the day sitting there in the Big Mac-scented air. Many are widowed, or like Jee Woong Lim, 81, who arrived in America two years ago from Seoul, say they are in need of company. They are almost without exception nattily dressed, in suits or dress slacks, brightly colored ties or sweaters, fedoras and well-shined shoes.
Yet there seem to be no shortage of facilities that cater to the elderly in the neighborhood. Civic centers dot the blocks, featuring parlors for baduk, an Asian board game, and classes in subjects from calisthenics to English. Mr. Lee, who comes to the McDonald's from Bayside, passes several senior centers en route. One is a Korean Community Service center in Flushing, which recently changed a room in the basement into a cafe with 25-cent coffee after its president, Kwang S. Kim, got word of the McDonald's standoff.
No one has come.
"I think I have to go to McDonald's and ask why they're there," Mr. Kim said.
Outside the McDonald's recently, Sang Yong Park, 76, and his friend, Il Ho Park, 76, tried to explain what drew them there. They come every single day to gossip, chat about politics back home and in their adopted land, hauling themselves up from the banquettes with their canes to step outside for short cigarillo breaks. And they could not say why they keep coming back — after a short walk around the block to blow off steam — every time the officers remove them. They said they had each been ousted three times so far.
The two men, however, knew what they would do next time. Sang Yong Park said he would not budge, but his friend said he would dutifully obey any police order, just as he always has. "I will just listen to them," he said. "But I will come back inside after they leave."
New York TimesTyler Bridges, a freelance writer based in New Orleans, is a former Nieman Fellow and reporter for The Miami Herald and The Times-Picayune. He is the author of The Rise of David Duke and Bad Bet on the Bayou: The Rise of Gambling in Louisiana and the Fall of Governor Edwin Edwards.
Gov. Bobby Jindal has a plan: Do for the country what he’s done for Louisiana. Cut taxes and cut the government workforce and the economy will bloom, he promises. It’s a message he’s peddling as he lays the groundwork for a presidential run. Indeed, as Jindal is quick to say, private-sector job growth and the economy in Louisiana have outpaced the national average during his tenure as governor. “I’m a fiscal conservative,” he told the influential Conservative Political Action Conference last year, in explaining these successes.
But here’s what Jindal doesn’t say: Louisiana’s budget is hemorrhaging red ink, and it’s getting worse. He inherited a $900 million surplus when he became governor seven years ago, and his administration’s own budget documents now show the state is facing deficits of more than $1 billion for as far as the eye can see. There are no easy solutions today because Jindal has increasingly balanced the budget by resorting to one-time fixes, depleting the state’s reserve funds and taking money meant for other purposes.
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“There are all kinds of tricks in the budget,” said Greg Albrecht, the state legislature’s chief economist, a nonpartisan position. Meanwhile, the state’s unemployment rate has risen from 3.8 percent when Jindal took office, a point below the national average then, to 6.7 percent today—nearly a full point higher than today’s national average. Jindal omits these inconvenient facts when he bashes President Barack Obama and Washington for “bankrupting” the federal government and mismanaging the national economy.
As the son |
but wanted Scotland’s separate decision respected. Would it have hurt May too much to have made it known she had investigated with Brussels the possibility of such a deal on separate membership of the Single Mafrket – only to be told it was proving difficult?
Did she openly debate the UK remaining in the European Economic Area where a Norway option might have been used to assuage Scottish opinion?
Could she have brought herself so low as to meet Sturgeon to propose a joint responsibility for ag and fish after Brexit?
Has she given any iota of respect to anyone except the madcap Brexiteers by wilfully bypassing parliament and ignoring the 48 per cent? In a pale impersonation of Thatcher she has stamped her foot. No! No! No!
She cut Sturgeon, and therefore Scotland, out of the thinking and decision-making process so that the First Minister spoke unaware if May was about to make an Article 50 declaration. Such is our place in the Union. So much for 50 MPs. So much for devolved government. So much for respect. A real politician would not make these basic errors. The saddest part of this story is the use of the phrase…’she will ask permission to hold a referendum…’ That is the Union is miniature. Somebody else will decide if we have the right to vote on our European future – us, Scotland, one of the ancient nations of Europe, in supplicant mode to people who do little more than spit metaphorically at our feet.
She has in fact provoked a reaction by her intransigence, goading her opponent into the nuclear option which was spelled out all along in her manifesto. Tory moans now, led by Davidson, that the promise of indyref2 does not stand up because the SNP lost a majority of seats is cackhanded democracy. The SNP won the election. Decisively. Davidson did not.
She is in a poor position to complain about division. Nothing has divided Britain like her party’s suicidal dalliance with xenophobia and narrow nationalism. There is no division greater than removing ourselves from the world’s biggest international power sharing bloc and richest market place.
Sturgeon has done a rare thing – acted like a leader. She has been clear, consistent and committed. She has also retaliated against a two-faced opponent who offered blandishments but reneged when it mattered. Now May will, as I wrote last week, enter the Brexit talks with a broken pencil and carrying someone else’s notes. She no longer commands all she surveys and will be a more shrunken figure viewed from the other side of the negotiating table.
The strength of the economy and the trade balance shows the UK’s muscle, she will aver. Not without the oil and the whisky exports, she will be reminded. Renewable energy sources but not Scotland’s, Prime Minister…etc. All the way through the irritating adjustments will have to be made for the possibility of Scotland’s departure from one union and remaining in another.
Her job just got a lot more complex and the fact is she’s already at sea and listing in favour of the anti-EU ideologues who’d rather play with Trump than Brussels. She lost what control she had today to a smarter politician. It was a mistake not to engage Sturgeon and try to enlist her in the process however tangentially to appear at least to be keeping her on side for as long as possible. Instead of reading it as a Sturgeon bluff, she needed to realise the impossible position Sturgeon is in given her manifesto commitment and try to help her out in order to rescue the Union. May’s lack of trust in.her equals and her unhealthy abhorrence of parliament are creating a figure of Shakespearean tragedy. As the cost of Brexit unravels before us, today’s sudden thrust of the dagger will be the first of many.
byLong time ago, tattoos were used for branding people as criminals. They were also used to tell one sect of people from another. However, the times have changed and tattoos are no longer just the part of tradition or culture. Tattoos have become the mark of style. People wear tattoo these days to create a style statement. They have become the part of fashion.
There are various styles of tattoo designs available. You may have also seen people flaunting the abracadabra magical tattoos as well. Such tattoos usually feature a magic wand, a magician’s hat, and a rabbit coming out of it. Sometimes they also feature a magician pulling the rabbit out of the hat. Before you go for a tattoo on your body, do remember that you may have to carry it forever. Therefore, be very careful with the design you choose.
Abracadabra designs are quite stylish. However, you will also want to make sure that you find the right tattoo artist. Replicating a design on the body is not easy. If you are looking for some inspiring ideas for the abracadabra tattoo designs, take a look at our collection below. We have made a list of some of the best tattoo designs.
See Also : – 50 Cute Tiny Tattoo Ideas for Girls
See Also : – 40+ Amazing Irezumi Tattoo Design IdeasAllegedly the whole thing started on a weekend. One of the high ranking directors (those who get the keys to the office) managed to escape the clutches of his family, and hide in the familiar and peaceful confines of the small office in our building. He was working diligently, or doing whatever people do when they come to work on weekends on their own volition (I wouldn’t know because that has never happened to me), when he started hearing mysterious beeping noise.
At first, he tried ignoring it hoping it would go away. After a few hours, he realized that this might actually be a fire alarm and got scared. Of course it was not the fire alarm. Our fire alarms are designed to rupture ear drums. Police actually used the same technology as a non-lethal anti-riot solution, until courts ruled that it’s use was inhumane. So the company quickly re-structured itself and started selling these powerful sonic weapons as fire alarm systems. So if there is a fire in our building, you will know. You will be able to tell, because your ears will be bleeding. But alas, the weekend worker guy did not know that.
He tried calling the building manager (you know, rather than the fire department cause that’s how we roll here), who was smart enough to disconnect his phone on Saturdays specifically because of events like this one. So the director lost his nerve and escaped the building.
He was relieved to see the building did not burn down come Monday, but as soon as he went back to his office he realized the beeping sound wasn’t gone. Just to make sure he was not going insane, he asked his secretary, and all his other underlings if they also hear the beeping sound. It turns out he was not alone. Everyone, except one elderly gentleman heard distinct beeping. And so they set out to find the source of the strange sound.
They checked all the possible equipment – they listened to the computers under their desks, they checked the mini-fridge and the microwave oven and the toaster in the kitchenette area. Several ladies actually unplugged and re-plugged their space heaters (yay fire code violations) just to be sure they were not the source of the mysterious beep. Of course after checking them the returned them to their default position – right behind the desktop tower, blowing the hot air directly into the fan vent.
After making sure none of their equipment was the culprit, they called for external intervention. They have summoned the only guy in the building who was man enough for this task – the everyman hero, Grumpy the Janitor. Grumpy verified, that yes, indeed there was a beeping noise in the office, but he didn’t know where it was coming from. Urged by the annoyed staff, he used his super-human hearing powers and decided the beeping must be coming from the office next door.
Unfortunately the neighbors were all out due to some conference type event, and their office was locked so nothing could be done about the beeping until they came back on Thursday. They just had to persevere, and deal with it.
Of course if you have ever tried dealing with an annoying high pitched, oscillating beep you probably know that it’s not easy. So by Wednesday the entire office was on the brink of a mental breakdown and the building management was coerced into doing a scouting raid into the crazy beeping office. Unfortunately, upon entering the locked rooms they were faced with deafening, oppressive and disturbing silence. The empty office was entirely devoid of sound – especially of the dreaded beep. It was definitely not the source.
Around this time, the story of the mysterious beep started circling around the building. People would talk about it in the hallways, by the bagle stand downstairs. You would hear the interoffice coalition of smokers joke about it in front of the building, puffing smoke at everyone walking in or out of the front door.
Needless to say, we were intrigued. To us, IT geeks it seemed fairly clear – somewhere in that office a computer, or a UPS unit failed and was screaming for help. They just couldn’t find it. Eventually curiosity got the best of us, and we decided to visit the beeping office. I convinced socially capable coworker to accompany me in order to do the small-talk and chit-chatting while we investigated. I have no clue what mundane people talk about (probably stuff football and celebrity gossip – you know, stuff that I wouldn’t have a clue about), so I tend to take a wing-man with me when I suspect a social situation to unfold.
So we hiked up couple flights of stairs, introduced ourselves and offered our help. The lady who greeted us at the door was overjoyed to see two members of the mysterious and unknowable IT caste take interest in their plight and lead us into the bowels of their office. Their cubicles were in a bit of dissimilar, and their people were visibly distraught. You could actually see them wince every time the beep returned.
The beep was an unmistakable noise made by a piece of electronic equipment struggling with an intractable hardware failure. Like pair of bats listening for sonar echo reflections we swooped around their small office area, and fairly quickly narrowed our search area to a small open passageway that connected the kitchenette with cubicle zone. But the was just nothing there, save for a strange, smallish, “Being John Malkovich” style door. I put my ear to it, and could almost swear the sound was coming from the inside.
I instructed by buddy to ask the locals what was behind this strange door. They conveyed to us that it was merely a storage closet – full of office supplies, empty boxes and semi-useful stuff that they just didn’t want cluttering up the place. Nothing there would beep, they said. But I wasn’t convinced. Perhaps something they stored there ran out of batteries… Perhaps they had an old, forgotten UPS plugged in some dark corner… It wouldn’t hurt to check.
Reluctantly they opened the little door, and almost immediately a barrage of boxes and supplies spilled out of the tiny room. The avalanche of office equipment however unearthed something strange. Almost entirely buried in all sorts of useless garbage there was a rectangular, black, still structure with a wire-mesh front panel.
A server rack! And slightly above it, barely clearing the mountain of supplies was an industrial strength AC unit still blowing cool air into the tiny enclosure.
Apparently, this tiny room started as a very small server closet hosting this company’s domain controller and file/printer sharing server, a assorted high end network appliances. Of course the local office dwellers somehow failed to grasp the idea of a dedicated server room, so they decided it could serve a dual purpose as a makeshift storage room. The server rack was pushed all the way to the back, and boxes were stacked all around it, until they formed an impenetrable barrier.
Since they had a pretty high staff turnaround, and the server was maintained remotely by some outsourced IT group, the existence of the server was eventually forgotten. The only person who still knew about it was the owner of the company, who was on his first vacation in six years (or something like that) that week and did not want to hear about some silly beeping sound.
What was the source of the beep? Apparently the server had a RAID-1 setup and one of the drives failed. Of course since the other drive was still good, everything in the still office worked without any problems, which is why no one even thought about calling the IT people.
The moral of this story is that things are not always what they might seam. There can sometimes be a server room in a supply closet, or a supply closet in a server room.The writer and director of Guardians of the Galaxy, James Gunn, is sick of comic fans tagging him in their DC vs. Marvel debates in the hopes that he’ll take their side, according to a thread Gunn posted on Twitter.
2 You guys are never going to convince each other – it’s just a bunch of wasted energy. — James Gunn (@JamesGunn) October 28, 2017
4 But it’s a 2 year old movie that some people like and some people don’t. Why is someone else’s opinion so important to you? — James Gunn (@JamesGunn) October 28, 2017
6 So why do you spend so much time raging at each other? It’s silly. Please just stop it. Stop engaging in that way. — James Gunn (@JamesGunn) October 28, 2017
7 But at the very least, when you do, untag me. I’ve muted a lot of you guys, but not all. Thanks. — James Gunn (@JamesGunn) October 28, 2017
Apparently, the most contentious topic is Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, and Gunn is tired of hearing about it, since no one ever changes their opinion. He also brings up a pretty good point, “As Marvel and DC super fans, you have way more in common with each other than you do the rest of the world.”
Related Reading
James Gunn Just Went On An Epic Rant About DC Hate
GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY Director James Gunn Wants You All To Chill Out About BATMAN v SUPERMANMANILA, Philippines—A National Telecommunication Commission (NTC) official admitted before lawmakers on Tuesday that it has no capacity to look into the slow Internet speed service of the country’s telcos.
During a hearing before the House of Representatives information and communications technology committee, NTC Director Edgardo Cabarios said it does not have the equipment to set a standard for the country’s Internet speed.
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“We have no monitoring equipment to determine the speed of telcos,” Cabarios said, noting that they would need an additional P14 million for the equipment.
Because of lack of equipment, the commission has also not set a minimum standard for Internet speed in the country, he said.
ACT Teachers Rep. Antonio Tinio said it seems that the NTC is not properly equipped to do its duty to monitor Internet speed.
“It is clear that the NTC does not have the capacity to monitor Internet speed,” the solon said.
Meanwhile, Cabarios said that even if they could penalize telcos for failing to meet a set of standards for Internet speed, it would only be a penalty of P200 per day according to the Public Service Act.
Tinio said the law should be amended and that the NTC should be properly equipped.
“Do we wonder why consumers are left practically defenseless? Napakapilay pala ng NTC,” he added.
The committee is conducting an inquiry on slow Internet speed, according to Kabataan Rep. Terry Ridon’s resolution calling for a probe on the quality of broadband Internet.
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MOST READSexual harassment is rampant in the academy as it is in every other industry. The entrenched hierarchies of the academic world, the small size of most scholarly fields, the male dominance of virtually every field other than women’s studies, the culture of collegiality (read, evasiveness and pretense) that predominates, and junior scholars’ desperate dependency on good references for career advancement, make for conditions in which sexual abuse (and indeed abuse of all kinds) can flourish with impunity.
Because it is so difficult for many victims in the academy to speak out about cases of sexual harassment and sexual abuse, I have decided to create an anonymous, opensourced Sexual Harassment in the Academy survey (similar to the one I created years back on Ph.D. debt – see the Ph.D. Debt Survey here).
You can share your own story using the Survey Submission Form below.
My hope is that this survey will allow victims to find a safe way to anonymously report their experience of sexual harassment. My goal is for the academy as a whole to begin to grasp the true scope and scale of this problem in academic settings. I hope it provides aggregate information in the form of personal stories of abuse and its career outcomes for victims (which, as a cultural anthropologist I consider the most potent form of data), paving the way for more frank conversations and more effective interventions.
Women are overwhelmingly the victims of sexual harassment, and until this issue is addressed head on, women will continue to be hounded out of academia, as they are from every other career from comedy to politics. I hope that gathering stories will allow women in particular to know they are not alone, and create conditions for women to thrive in their chosen careers.
Share your own story using the Survey Submission Form just below.
PLEASE BE AWARE: Your answers will automatically be entered (totally anonymously, with no way to track your identity) into a PUBLIC SPREADSHEET, VISIBLE TO ALL, which you may view by clicking through to it. Please do not share any information you don’t wish to be immediately visible to the public.
And here again is link to the SPREADSHEET OF RESPONSES (as of late December with 1900+ entries), where you can follow each individual entry through all of its elements: SPREADSHEET.
The stories on the spreadsheet make for brutal but urgent reading. Thank you to all who have participated. And thank you to those who have followed up by email to name their harassers and the administrators who protected them. I have a long list. I promise to keep this entirely confidential, but will use the names to potentially connect victims of the same perpetrator. You may email me at [email protected] to add your story.
The sum total of these almost 2000 entries allows everyone to see that sexual predation is endemic to the power hierarchies of the academy in ways that almost perfectly parallel Hollywood: powerful older men are gatekeepers to vulnerable younger women, use their power for sexual predation, and are then protected by other senior men and women invested more in preserving the power structure than in defending victims. Women of color are doubly vulnerable and doubly bullied when they see redress.
This piece by K.A. Amienne, Abusers and Enablers in the Academy, lays out the dynamic of enabling that prevails:
My department chair had all the security that race, class, gender, and tenure at a top-10 university can bestow. And still he was too afraid to do his job properly. I was a woman, a student, crushed under debt, without institutional support, and minus parents or any other safety net back in the working-class world from which I’d come. How was I supposed to confront this professor on my own when people who could have — and should have — would not? So I did what a lot of women do. After earning my Ph.D., I walked away from a life in which I’d invested time, money, and work. I spent the next several years blaming myself, replaying the scenes, repeating the words of those in power. I had mixed feelings of relief and resentment as I met others who told different versions of “Yes, everyone knows he’s like this.”
Sharing your story, even anonymously, can be transformative for victims. You can see that you’re not alone, that you did nothing wrong, that the structure sets you up for victimization and systematically prevents consequences for the perpetrator. I believe this document removes plausible deniability from academic institutions about the pervasiveness and severity of sexual harassment, and I hope that it can promote greater peace, clarity, and resolve among its many victims, no matter what they choose to do moving forward. Solidarity.Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption US Secretary of State John Kerry: "The two-state solution is now in serious jeopardy"
US Secretary of State John Kerry has said the prospect of an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal based on a two-state solution is in grave jeopardy.
And he insisted UN condemnation of illegal Jewish settlements on occupied land was in line with American values.
Israel's PM said Mr Kerry's speech was "obsessively focused" on settlements.
Earlier, US President-elect Donald Trump tweeted in support of Israel, saying he would not allow it to be treated with "disdain and disrespect".
He urged Israel to "stay strong" until he assumed office next month.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Netanyahu: John Kerry blamed Israel for lack of peace
On Friday, the US chose not to veto a UN Security Council resolution calling for an end to Israeli settlement construction, leading to an angry response from Israel.
The issue of Jewish settlements is one of the most contentious between Israel and the Palestinians, who see them as an obstacle to peace and the creation of a viable Palestinian state.
More than 500,000 Jews live in about 140 settlements built since Israel's 1967 occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The settlements are considered illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this.
Image copyright EPA Image caption The UNSC resolution calls for Israel to stop settlement activity in the West Bank and East Jerusalem
What is the two-state solution?
A "two-state solution" to the decades-old conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is the declared goal of their leaders and many international diplomats and politicians.
It is the shorthand for a final settlement that would see the creation of an independent state of Palestine within pre-1967 ceasefire lines in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, living peacefully alongside Israel.
The United Nations, the Arab League, the European Union, Russia and the United States routinely restate their commitment to the concept.
Blame and bitterness keep peace at bay
Reconsidering the two-state solution
Mr Kerry said: "The two-state solution is the only way to achieve a just and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians. It is the only way to ensure Israel's future as a Jewish and democratic state. That future is now in jeopardy."
He added: "The Israeli prime minister publicly supports a two-state solution, but his current coalition is the most right-wing in Israeli history with an agenda driven by the most extreme elements.
"The result is that policies of this government, which the prime minister himself just described as more committed to settlements than any Israel's history, are leading in the opposite direction. They are leading towards one state."
In his reply, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was disappointed with the US secretary of state's speech, which he said was "unbalanced".
Mr Kerry, he said, had "paid lip service to the unremitting Palestinian campaign of terrorism" against Israel.
The conflict, Mr Netanyahu added, centred on the Palestinians' refusal to recognise Israel's right to exist, but Mr Kerry "does not see the simple truth".
Image copyright AFP Image caption Donald Trump has taken a strongly pro-Israel stance
A spokeswoman for the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, Hanan Ashrawi, told the BBC that Palestinians had adhered to past agreements but the Israelis had not.
"We have accepted the two-state solution and we've acted accordingly and we have honoured all our commitments as per the declaration of principles and the agreements," she said.
"Unfortunately it's Israel that has violated all its commitments, all the agreements and that is constantly now stepping up, as John Kerry said... its settlement activities and in an insane manner that is... specifically planned to destroy the two-state solution."
More to come? By Paul Adams, BBC diplomatic correspondent
Barack Obama began his presidency with a flurry of diplomacy aimed at breaking the Arab-Israeli deadlock. It did not work and pretty soon, a succession of Arab revolutions and wars gave the president more pressing things to think about.
Now, at the eleventh hour, another flurry, which has angered Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
But could it help set the scene for future diplomacy? France is organising a peace conference in mid-January and it has been suggested that decisions taken there could form the basis of another UN resolution before 20 January, when President Obama leaves office.
However, Donald Trump has made it clear he has no plans to push Israel into a corner.
In two tweets issued on Wednesday morning New York time, Mr Trump said: "We cannot continue to let Israel be treated with such total disdain and disrespect.
"They used to have a great friend in the US, but... not anymore. The beginning of the end was the horrible Iran deal, and now this (UN)! Stay strong Israel, January 20th is fast approaching!"
Critics have urged the president-elect to use more conventional channels to communicate on international matters.
Mr Netanyahu replied on Twitter: "President-elect Trump, thank you for your warm friendship and your clear-cut support for Israel!"
The UN resolution passed last Friday stated that the establishment of settlements "has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law and a major obstacle to the achievement of the two-state solution and a just, lasting and comprehensive peace".
The US decision to abstain infuriated Mr Netanyahu, who has taken diplomatic reprisals against the countries that voted in favour of the resolution.
Meanwhile, an Israeli committee has postponed a vote to authorise construction of almost 500 new homes in Jewish settlements in occupied East Jerusalem.
The move apparently follows a request from Mr Netanyahu's office.Try your hand at an onslaught of rapid-fire challenges and mash-ups of over 25 of the greatest retro games from the NES™ era! Improve your scores by reattempting stages, then share your replays with other players online*.
Start out by completing simple challenges like collecting coins in the original Super Mario Bros. ™ game or reaching the finish line in one race of Excitebike™. Then, test your skills by taking on increasingly difficult challenges, like attempting to complete one level of the original Donkey Kong™ game with only a spotlight on your character! Share your accomplishments with other players through the NES REMIX Miiverse™ online community*. Earn high scores to unlock more challenges, and experience Super Luigi Bros., the reverse-oriented version of the original Super Mario Bros. game featuring none other than Luigi™ himself!1. Bunnies have good & bad moods.
You can usually tell from their faces & the looks they give you. For bad moods they may stomp their back leg once to let you know they are annoyed and some bunnies will gladly grunt at you too. For good moods it’s all about the binkies and running about full speed in different directions, very funny to see!
2. Bunnies will throw a strop if they don’t get their own way.
And when they throw a strop they usually throw things with it! Beware of their toys being launched into the air. Also, don’t ever leave anything in their way like your shoes for example, bunnies will never go round them, they will always make every effort to move them out of their way.
3. Bunnies can ignore you & give you the silent treatment.
Usually this happens when they are refused another treat or when you return from a visit to the vets. You definitely will get the impression your bunny is ignoring you.
4. Bunnies can become bored if they have nothing to do.
Their minds need to be kept stimulated to avoid boredom. Bunnies love toys and they love investigating, so keep their homes interesting and fun for them with lots of toys and things to do.
5. Bunnies love their comfy beds.
They really do love their soft comfortable furnishings. It could be just a plain rug or it could be a luxury cushioned pet bed or even your bed! Duvets are a real favourite too.
6. Bunnies can be very cheeky and don’t always play by the rules.
They do definitely have a cheeky side to their personalities and it always appears when you are not expecting it. Usually they will act in this way when you are running late for work or an appointment.
7. Bunnies love relaxing and chilling out.
The more relaxed and chilled out your bunny, the healthier they will be. Stress is not good for your bunnies health. House rabbits will quite happily stretch out and enjoy an evening with you in front of the TV.
8. Bunnies hate to be alone, they can get depressed & feel very lonely.
Rabbits love company and are extremely sociable, which is why they should never be kept alone in an isolated hutch outside.
9. Bunnies love to have their own space.
Although they love company, just like us, they need to take time out every now and then and it is important to provide an area where they can do this. Let them have an area they can go to if they want to be left alone.
10. Bunnies love affection.
They really do love their nose rubs and head massages and will do everything they can to get your attention. Usually it is a gentle nudge or they will push their heads underneath your hand & lay flat on the floor and not move. How can you refuse a bunny asking for affection.
11. Bunnies are very protective about their homes.
They will need to know what you are doing in their home at all times. They also won’t appreciate you cleaning up after they have just rearranged their home to how they like it to look.
12. Bunnies love to let you know they are in charge
Just don’t argue with them, you will lose!Comcast yesterday claimed that "the threat of Title II regulation" started harming broadband network investment in 2011—years before the US government decided to apply Title II regulations to broadband.
Moreover, Comcast said that net neutrality proponents who claim that investment wasn't hurt by the Title II rules "aren't living in the real world." This comes less than a week after Comcast accused net neutrality supporters of "creat[ing] hysteria."
Comcast's new statements came in comments filed yesterday with the Federal Communications Commission and in a blog post by Senior Executive VP David Cohen, who urged the FCC to stop classifying ISPs as common carriers. Comcast's claims about network investment clash with what ISPs have told their own investors; even Comcast’s chief financial officer downplayed Title II's effect on investment in December 2016.
Comcast's arguments about network investment this week also go beyond what even FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has claimed. Pai has continually cited research purporting to show that broadband network investment started declining after the FCC's February 2015 decision to impose net neutrality rules backed by the commission's Title II authority over common carriers.
Time travel
Here's what Comcast told the FCC yesterday about Title II harming network investment starting in 2011:
[A] study by Dr. George S. Ford found that even the threat of Title II reclassification between 2011 and 2015 “reduced telecommunications investment by 20 percent (or more), or about $32 to $40 billion annually.” That reduction amounts to “about $150-$200 billion in total over the five-year period,” or the equivalent of “an entire year’s worth of telecommunications investment.” As Chairman Pai has noted, such a decline is “extremely unusual” and represents “the first time that such investment has declined outside of a recession in the Internet era.”
Comcast seems to be indicating that Pai was talking about an investment decline beginning in 2011. In reality, the Pai statement Comcast pointed to in a footnote was referring to an alleged decline after the 2015 net neutrality decision. "The Internet wasn’t broken in 2015," Pai said, making the point that the 2015 decision changed things for the worse. "We were not living in a digital dystopia." The numbers Pai called "extremely unusual" were investment declines after 2014.
The Ford study that Comcast is touting was written by the chief economist of the Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal & Economic Public Policy Studies, a think tank that has consistently opposed broadband regulations such as the net neutrality rules. Ford claims that the harmful effects from the threat of Title II reclassification of broadband began in 2010 under then-FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski. But while Genachowski considered a limited Title II reclassification in May 2010, he later abandoned that approach. Instead, the FCC issued net neutrality rules in December 2010 that relied on other sources of FCC authority.
For as long as those rules remained in place, the FCC made no threats to reclassify broadband providers. Far from proposing new rules based on Title II, the FCC was defending the 2010 non-Title II rules in court against a lawsuit filed by Verizon. Verizon won in court in January 2014, resulting in the rules being thrown out.
Even then, the FCC initially resisted using its Title II authority. Then-Chairman Tom Wheeler's first net neutrality proposal in May 2014 would have replaced the vacated net neutrality rules with weakened net neutrality regulations. The Title II threat starting picking up steam in November 2014 when President Obama urged the FCC to use its strongest authority to impose net neutrality rules.
Despite that, Ford claims the broadband "industry was on constant alert that reclassification was on the table" during the entire period from May 2010 to 2015, harming investment, and Comcast promoted his view in its comments to the FCC. Ford did not claim that telecommunications spending went down; rather, he compared telecommunications to other industries and argued that telecom spending would have gone up more than it did if not for the threat of Title II reclassification. Additionally, his investment estimate for telecommunications combines both telecommunications and broadcasting numbers into one figure.
Comcast talks about “living in the real world”
Comcast's capital expenditures are rising. Despite that, Cohen wrote that because of Title II reclassification, Comcast's capital spending "will decline over $2.5 billion over a three-year period compared to what it would have been otherwise. Groups that claim that broadband investment hasn’t been affected by Title II aren’t living in the real world."
In December 2016, Comcast CFO Mike Cavanaugh provided a different story when talking to investors. When asked if reversing the Title II classification would have any meaningful benefit for Comcast, Cavanaugh indicated that Title II hadn't turned out to be that bad for ISPs.
"I think in terms of what actually happens... it's the fear of what Title II could have meant, more than what it actually did mean," Cavanaugh said. The possibilities of where Title II could go in the future "had a chilling effect" that is now apparently gone. "Hopefully that chilling effect is gone, both from how investors look at the space and businesses look at the space," he said.
The numbers seem to bear that out. Comcast's first quarter earnings statement said that "capital expenditures increased 10.2 percent to $2.1 billion."
Broadband lobby group USTelecom—whose research has been favorably cited by Pai—found that broadband providers' capital expenditures increased in the years after the 2010 net neutrality rules. While US broadband providers' annual capital spending dropped from $70 billion in 2006 to $68 billion in 2010, the expenditures started increasing in 2012 and went up to $77 billion by 2014, USTelecom found in 2016. Newer USTelecom research suggests that spending was $2.5 billion to $3 billion lower in 2016 than it was in 2014.
The question of whether broadband network investment declined after the Title II decision is a hotly contested one. Pai has cited investment data from USTelecom, the conservative Free State Foundation, and economist Hal Singer, who found a 5.6-percent decline in capital expenditures by 12 big ISPs.
Advocacy group Free Press criticized the methodologies of studies finding that investment declined. The pro-net neutrality group's own report said that "[t]he total capital investment by publicly traded ISPs was 5 percent higher during the two-year period following the FCC’s Open Internet vote than it was in the two years prior to the vote." While much of the US lacks fast broadband, average US speeds have soared since the FCC's Title II vote in 2015.
But even as Comcast increases its own capital spending, it insists that the FCC's Title II rules have harmed "the economy and consumers." For example, Cohen wrote, Comcast slowed down the rollout of its new Stream TV service because of an FCC investigation into the cable service's exemption from Comcast data caps.
"The ill-advised and politically motivated decision to reclassify broadband Internet access service under Title II represented an unnecessary and unwise turn for the economy and consumers," Cohen wrote. "Comcast strongly agrees with the FCC’s decision to move forward with a proceeding to reverse that harmful ruling."
The FCC's deadline for initial comments on its plan to eliminate Title II rules passed yesterday. The commission will take reply comments (in which you can respond to Comcast or other parties' comments) until August 16. Here's the link for filing comments and a guide on writing an effective comment.CLOSE Captured, extradited and detained, 'Cornbread Mafia's'Johnny Boone will head back to Louisville soon. Scott Utterback/C-J
Johnny Boone (Photo:.)
John “Johnny” Boone, the legendary figure who led Kentucky’s “Cornbread Mafia" — once the largest domestic marijuana producing organization in the nation — and who was apprehended near Montreal in December after eight years on the run, made his first appearance Wednesday in federal court in Louisville.
Boone, wearing a white T-shirt and khaki pants, told U.S. Magistrate Judge Colin Lindsay that he understood his rights, and his lawyer entered a not-guilty plea for him.
Boone was brought to court amid heavy security; the U.S. attorney's office would not disclose his identity before the appearance, citing security concerns.
Background
LJohnny Boone, leader of Kentucky's 'Cornbread Mafia,' back in US
Ex-'Cornbread Mafia' leader nabbed in Canada
Boone, 73, a legendary figure in Central Kentucky, faces charges on a 2008 indictment of growing and distributing marijuana on his farm in Springfield, where over 2,400 marijuana plants allegedly were found by Kentucky State Police and the Drug Enforcement Administration. The government is also trying to force him to forfeit cash, vehicles, a handgun and an AR-15 rifle.
He fled after a warrant was issued for his arrest, and he faces up to life in prison if convicted.
Boone, who was on the lam and previously featured on “America’s Most Wanted,” was detained last month after being extradited. He appeared in U.S. District Court in Burlington, Vermont, about 90 miles south of Montreal.
He has since been held in New York and Oklahoma City before being flown to Louisville on Wednesday by the U.S. Marshals Service.
The Cornbread Mafia, a group of mostly Kentuckians, pooled their money, machinery, knowledge and labor to |
, when you decided you wanted to check how many different things you could stop with a shield charm-"
"Okay!" he interrupted. "But no one likes dwelling on the past. And hey," he smiled at them winningly, "in my defense, all of those were awesome."
"Aragog!" Ron reminded him again.
"All right," he conceded scrupulously. "If not awesome, then certainly educational."
Ron buried his face in his hands. Hermione sighed, deeply, like her soul was in pain.
I probably shouldn't enjoy it this much, making them regret their unwavering support… Harry took a moment to contemplate. Nah. Then they'd think I was polyjuiced. And worry about me. So obviously, I'm doing them a favor.
Ron straightened up, fingering his wand.
On second thought- "Bear with me," Harry told them. "But I was remembering the first trial, and all the transfiguration we saw. The bridges and ladders and ropes and everything. It made me think." He hesitated a moment, then asked, "We make needles and hedgehogs and teapots and pillows, but Hermione, what's the largest thing we've ever created through transfiguration? What's the largest thing we could?"
She stared at him for a moment, then glanced around the room. Stopped, and met Ron's eyes. "We better take this outside."
A half hour later, Harry was panting, exhausted, and grinning enough to make his face ache. "So," he asked them, "what do you think?"
Ron's head was craned all the way back, staring up at the looming structure. "Bloody hell."
Hermione's tone was more analytical, even as she shaded her eyes from the dazzling reflection of sun bouncing off meters of ice. "Do you think it was because water and ice are already different states of the same substance? That's why you could transfigure so much of one into the other like this?"
Harry shrugged. "I'm honestly not sure. It'd seem like that should make this easier, but it's magic. It doesn't always correlate to common sense, you know?" He stretched, and sheathed his wand. "I'd have to try again, making a different substance. Not now, though. I'm pretty worn out. That was a lot of focused concentration at once." He was fine, but he could tell that if he pushed it much longer, a migraine would be his reward.
"Harry, Ron, Hermione." They turned at the familiar voice coming from behind them.
Hannah Abbot had decided to continue with the Niffler club, so they'd all gotten to know her in a peripherally friendly way. Now, she picked her way towards the shore of the Black Lake, Susan Bones and Megan Jones flanking her. Hannah came to a stop in front of them, and surveyed them with a pained, somewhat rueful air. The other two were just gaping. "Do I want to know," she began delicately, "why there is a giant, four meter high sculpture of a-" her eye twitched, "slightly lopsided Griffin behind you?"
Harry glanced at Ron and Hermione. I really shouldn't…
Then he recalled the conversation after he had first suggested this experiment, back in Gryffindor tower.
Actually, never mind. I regret nothing.
"Well," he said, smiling at their visitors. "Honestly? It's all their fault. You see, they had this Idea…"
October thirtieth arrived quickly, and the last Triwizard Tournament champion trial freshly concluded, the fourth-year Gryffindors returned to the great hall with the rest of the school, to sit around their table staring glumly at their untouched lunch dishes.
"So much blood," Lavender moaned, looking queasy.
Parvati groaned, face tinted slightly pale under her darker skin. "Please. Don't remind me."
Neville shuddered. "Did you hear that snap, when that Hufflepuff had to re-break the bone?"
Seamus looked sick. "It was that whistling gurgle sound every time that one breathed that got to me…"
Harry made a face.
The blood, pain, and other noises hadn't exactly bothered him the way it had his fellows, but he hadn't been expecting it either. "When Snape said that they'd be healing a magical proxy of an injured wizard, I was expecting something a little less.. lifelike."
The screaming had definitely been a surprise.
Also, whoever had decided that one of the proxies would take the form of an eight-year-old girl was a sadist.
(So, probably Snape.)
"They must have gotten some actual training dolls from the St. Mungos Healing Academy," Hermione said. "They're specifically designed to be… extremely realistic."
"Well," Ron said, cheerfully biting into his sandwich, "guess they can't have their trainees fainting on their patients come graduation."
And fainting had definitely happened to a number of the would-be champions. Including the tough-as-nails Slytherin beater who'd approached his task with a swagger, only to go pale and keel over when he got a glimpse of something that normally never saw air outside the body.
"What?" Ron asked, as all eyes on the table stared at him.
"How are you eating?" Dean asked.
Harry shook his head. "Come on, you know nothing puts Ron off his food."
Whatever Dean would have said in return was lost as the teachers filed in to take their places at their table.
Dumbledore moved to the front. "If I could have your attention… oh yes, very good. Now, we will shortly be announcing the students who have been selected to go to Durmstrang. After the announcement, those leaving will have three hours to pack and say goodbye to your friends. We will be departing Hogwarts this afternoon at precisely four o'clock, so you should be assembled on the entrance steps by three-thirty. And now, on to what you all are really waiting for…"
The entire room went silent, as almost three hundred students held their breath.
"From Hufflepuff, we have three candidates. Mr. Cedric Diggory, Mr. Gabriel Tate, and Miss Gayle Pocklington."
Whistles, cheering, sobbing, clapping, condolences, and congratulations erupted from the Hufflepuff table.
"From Ravenclaw…"
Harry leaned back, listening absently to the roll call of selected champions, all apparently eager to head off, risking life and limb, in a tournament that ultimately meant little and took place at a school of unknown location which was filled with students who had all been taught the dark arts.
And, he thought, glancing from Ron to Hermione, leaving most of their friends behind.
Thank God that's not me.
The next evening Harry stole some time alone before dinner, taking advantage of the quiet of his empty dorm room to think. Sitting cross-legged on his bed, Harry closed the occlumency notebook and leaned back, contemplating the state of his magic.
It'd been… over a year since he'd first spent a summer in determined exertion, retraining his magic wandlessly from all it knew before. Closer to a year and a quarter, probably, with all his time turning. He could still remember vividly, from when he first got back to Hogwarts, how disconcerting the effects of that had been. The wizardry he'd been taught in his first and second years at Hogwarts had been a tame thing in comparison, and those early charms and transfigurations had pulled on Harry's own magic but lightly. He'd said the spell, twirled the wand, and things would float, or shrink, or change. It had almost seemed to happen like – hah – magic.
Then he'd come back to start third year, and discovered his magic seemed to have gone insane.
Okay, well, not insane. Just… sensitive. Active. Awake. Both far more eager to be used than Harry remembered, and far more wild.
He sighed, and traced a finger over the cover, which was deceptively titled 'Notes for History of Magic' across the front. The three of them had figured that'd be the least likely topic anyone would be interested in snooping through. The first ten or so pages were history of magic notes, too, in case anyone flipped it open. And that was after whoever it was managed to get through the charms barring anyone other than the three of them from opening it.
But this is why Ron and Hermione stare at me when I try to explain my situation. No matter how he groped for words, they always seemed to come out in a way that made it sound like he was fighting with his magic, or his magic had a mind of its own, and neither of those were at all true.
His magic wasn't separate from himself and his will any more than his arm was separate. But when he'd started at Hogwarts, it was almost as if his magic had been asleep. And now it wasn't. That had been… more than mildly overwhelming, at first.
(Also, there had been explosions. And even more embarrassingly: spell fizzles. Like he was a bloody first year again.)
I started to feel my magic all the time, he remembered, reflecting on those changes. Stretching if I got angry, moving as I used divination, or wandless magic. Sensing the way it shapes itself into spells, the way it's channeled through a wand. How much magic to pull when I need it, how it flexes when I use it.
In retrospect, Harry was probably lucky there hadn't been more accidents. But for months, even after he'd gotten the knack of doing wand spells again, part of him had despaired. Because casting spells now took so much concentration, when it hadn't before.
Such focus, and controlled precision, and I started to wonder how I'd ever be able to fight, when I had to pause for a second or two before each cast. When most of my concentration would be on my spells instead of my opponent. Sure, I could do more with each spell – my transfigurations were more complex, my charms more flexible, my hexes did greater damage – but always, always, the drawback of taking too much time, and too much focus.
But now…
He traced the cover of the notebook again. He'd been right – he'd been doing something very close to occlumency for almost a year before he'd ever heard learned the details of magical discipline. And the further exercises and tips the book had conveyed had been put to ruthless use over the summer.
He'd known occlumency was supposed to help you remember things a little better and think more clearly, even before you got into the benefits of sensing when subtle magic might be influencing you. He hadn't expected the other side effect, though.
Maybe'side effect' isn't the right word? It's not really the occlumency itself, it's how it's interacting with the way my magic is weird now.
He still felt his magic all the time. When he was casting; when he wasn't. When he was furious; when he was relaxed. Always. Everywhere. Occlumency hadn't gotten rid of that.
But it had… helped him handle it better.
He felt his magic all the time, but it didn't distract him as it once had. Time and discipline had given him the edge he needed, to manage what he had transformed himself into.
By now, he'd cast more magic this way than he had in his first and second years combined. And if part of him could remember how those first fumbling years of Hogwarts instruction had been, where while the results were only mediocre, the casting had been so comparatively easy, and had regretted…
Well, he could finally let go of that wistful remembrance of ease. Learning his magic anew was hard. And it wasn't over. And it probably never would be over, because if he stopped paying attention and practicing, he'd start to backslide in fine control of his magic, (and really, that was pretty bloody annoying). He had some distant hope that maybe he wouldn't have to keep working as hard once he was an adult – surely magic stopped changing or developing when you were fully grown? – but that was a decade off at least.
Approaching footsteps broke his concentration, and he quickly stashed the occlumency notebook under his charms text. He looked up when the door opened, expecting to see one of the other fourth-year boys enter.
"Professor McGonagall?" he blurted out.
"Mr. Potter," she said seriously. "I need you to come with me."
"What? Why?" he asked, already rising.
"The headmaster will explain," she replied, shepherding him out the door, then leading the way down the stairs with a brisk stride.
Bewildered, he followed.
An hour later Harry stumbled, dazed, back into the common room. Ron and Hermione sprang from their chairs, rushing to meet him at the entrance, both looking worried. Ron got there first, long legs giving him an edge. "You alright there, mate?"
Hermione was staring at him, eyes searching his face. "What happened?"
He stared at Ron and Hermione, still feeling stunned. Blank. "I…" he blinked, then shook his head, and lifted his hands helplessly. "I've been entered in the Triwizard Tournament."
Canon Notes:
I didn't realize the first time I read the series, but more than just Dumbledore and his compatriots believed Voldemort still lived. There's Hagrid's words on the subject, of course, ("Some say he died... Some say he's still out there, bidin' his time.") but in PoA, Fudge says: "But, as we all know, You-Know-Who met his downfall in little Harry Potter. Powers gone, horribly weakened, he fled."Fudge knew Voldemort wasn't dead. Also, there's the line about aurors still searching for Voldemort abroad after LV's first fall (GoF, graveyard scene).
Items from the room of hidden things: "There were thousands and thousands of books, no doubt banned or graffitied or stolen... Jewels…. Cups… A sparkling necklace." Also, yes, there was indeed a stuffed troll.
Vanishing and conjuration both fall under the "transfiguration" umbrella.
Other notes:
Brownies in European folklore, (from Wikpedia): "…it was believed that helpful household sprites, "silkies" or "brownies", could turn into malevolent boggarts if offended or ill-treated." There's also Slavic, German, and Scandinavian versions.
I have wrapped up a year-long project, so I should have (some) time to write again. Or more specifically, the free CPU cycles. Also, I've done some minor editing on the story so far. Hopefully for the better.
And on that note, holy italics batman. For everyone who suffered through the original versions of my earlier chapters, I'm sorry.
(see what i did there?)
Next Chapter:
Hermione's hand was in the air. "Granger," Moody acknowledged.
"Professor," Hermione's voice was respectful, but with the faintest edge of challenge. "You said all successful casts of the Killing Curse were murder. But I read that in the conflict with You-Know-Who before 1981, the aurors were given special dispensation to use it?"
Moody's expression hardened, and the gaze he cast over the classroom was cold. It stayed that way for a second, two, then– a sudden thaw. Their professor sighed. "What the hell; I'm retired. I can say whatever I damn well please. Including truths the Ministry would rather not admit, even now." Their professor's expression was odd. No longer the sternly imposing judge, jury, and executioner, handing down sentences from on high. But something more approachable, if no less weighted. "And the truth is, the day the Minister signed the decree allowing aurors to use the Killing Curse in combat with the You-Know-Who's forces, was the day the Ministry of Magic admitted – internally, whatever it might say to the public – that it was at war."LeBron James says that his 10-year-old son has already garnered some interest from colleges in the form of scholarship offers, but didn't reveal the names of the schools.
Video of LeBron James Jr. playing basketball with his AAU team hit the internet earlier this year and quickly garnered a lot of attention, as the younger James seemed to be following in his father's footsteps.
• Will KG ever be a coach? 'Hell nah!'
While James has said he is proud of the his son's basketball abilities, he is surprised schools are allowed to contact players at such a young age, according to CBS Detroit.
"[I]t’s pretty crazy. It should be a violation, you shouldn’t be recruiting 10-year-old kids.”
James did go on to say his son's style of play reminded him of himself at that age, which is only going to lead to more letters showing up at the James residence for LeBron Jr.
• Watch: Maryland students pull off impressive flash mob
GALLERY: ATHLETES WHO FOLLOWED IN THEIR FATHER'S FOOTSTEPS
Like Father, Like Son (or Daughter) Bill Frakes/SI Simon Bruty/SI Jesse D. Garrabrant/NBAE via Getty Images; Tennis Mag/DPPI/Icon SMI George Tiedemann/SI Andrew D. Bernstein/NBAE via Getty Images Dilip Vishwanat/Getty Images; V.J. Lovero/SI AP Ron Hoskins/NBAE via Getty Images Andrew D. Bernstein/NBAE via Getty Images Simon Bruty/SI; Robert Laberge/Getty Images Bruce Bennett Studios/Getty Images Mitchell Layton/Getty Images; Paul Harris/Getty Images Bill Eppridge, Peter Read Miller/SI Manny Millan/SI Bruce Bennett/Getty Images AP Jesse D. Garrabrant/WNBAE via Getty Images Ronald C Modra/SI AP; John Iacono/SI Bill Frakes/SI NBA Photos/NBAE via Getty Images; AP Scott Levy, Bruce Kluckhohn/Getty Images; Dustin Bradford/Icon SMI 1 of 22 Advertisement
- Brendan MaloyOpening Day is in ten days and the Cardinals might very well have the most imposing rotation in the National League. Just being in the discussion of the best is a nice compliment given the Mets' arms, and not to mention the Nationals' staff complimented by Max Scherzer and Stephen Strasburg, the Cubs with the reigning Cy Young who doesn't happen to be Jon Lester, and the Pirates ability to turn everyone into a good pitcher.
There's a handful of starters in the NL who are probably better than Adam Wainwright - the Cardinals' ace - but this rotation from 1 to 5 is as balanced as you're likely to find. Michael Wacha has shown glimpses that he can be one of the best pitchers in baseball. And if the Cardinals' depth chart means anything on March 24, Mike Leake and Carlos Martinez are slated to be the 4 and 5, which I'll gladly take over the back end of the rotations from the other clubs in the NL.
Wacha has been an enigma of sorts, and, in my opinion, is the one likely to move the needle on whether the Cardinals will be considered to have the best rotation in the NL at year's end. That this imaginary title hinges on Wacha feels disingenuous since the rotation is so balanced as well as being less than a year removed from losing Wainwright for almost the entire season and still allowing the fewest runs in baseball. But there's going to be regression in run prevention and it would be nice to counter that with Wacha assuming the role of co-ace with Wainwright, which is a title that's been bestowed on him before.
Reasons to be optimistic
This is easy to overlook because he's been on the radar for so long but Wacha is still incredibly young. In 2015, Wacha threw 181.1 innings in what was his age-23 season. (I'm using Baseball-Reference's guide which measures players by their age on June 30, which means Wacha just slips by with his July 1 birthday.) No one younger in the NL logged as many innings. Using the Play Index, since 1988, when consistent pitch-count data began being logged, only 69 pitchers in the NL in their age-23 season or younger have thrown 180 innings or more in a single season. It's not that common and it's a list populated by a lot of good pitchers (there are lot of Madduxes, Bumgarners, and Kershaws present).
Wacha has also excelled at run prevention. A search for NL pitchers who have thrown at least 350 innings for their career before their age-24 season since 1988 returned 33 results. Wacha's 3.21 ERA and 3.48 FIP both rank ninth.
Returning to the 181.1 innings pitched in 2015, this is significant because going into the season his health was more of a question than his effectiveness. His '14 season ended with a 68-game DL stint (before being regrettably resurrected in Game 5 of the '14 NLCS) on account of a rare shoulder injury on his right side. Knowing in advance that he was going to pitch north of 180 innings in '15 would have been cause for celebration without knowing his stats. And as for those stats, the numbers weren't necessarily co-ace-like but certainly resembled that of a good pitcher.
IP K% BB% ERA FIP WAR 2015 181.1 20.1 7.6 3.38 3.87 2.3
Before Game 3 of the '15 NLDS when Wacha faced off versus Jake Arrieta - who up to that point was breaking baseball - there was a populace on my Twitter timeline looking for a silver lining in light of Wacha's rough second half of the season (more on that in a second) and often harped on the fact that he was the MVP of the '13 NLCS. Hey, we've seen this guy be dominant on this stage and there's no reason why he can't be better than this Arrieta guy. Wacha didn't have a good outing, not even close (boxscore here), but thing is one needn't go back to the '13 postseason or rely on that small of sample size to see that he had already pitched like a co-ace before.
Here's how Wacha started off 2014:
2014 IP K% BB% ERA FIP April 36.1 29.0 6.6 2.48 2.58 May 37.0 21.2 6.2 2.43 2.97
In baseball, two seasons can seem like forever ago but Wacha was dominant for those two months. He only pitched 33.2 total innings the rest of the season due to the injury and was rather ineffective in doing so - his ERA hovered near 5.00 in the second half. But for the first two months anyway, he picked up right where he left off in '13.
Reasons to be concerned
Concerns over effectiveness now likely outweigh whatever health concerns still persist (although assuming a pitcher with this sort of injury history will be healthy is never wise). Here's how Wacha started off 2015:
2015 IP K% BB% ERA FIP April 26.0 15.0 5.6 2.42 3.71 May 37.1 17.0 7.2 2.17 3.83
While he still excelled at preventing runs, these were two of his better months in 2015 and his stats mostly declined from the same two months the year before. Notably, his strikeout rate fell significantly. And his relatively low ERA for the season was aided by his strong April and May shown above - during the second half of '15 he had a 4.01 ERA and walked nearly 11% of batters. Returning to the enigma theme, Wacha's ERA from August to September/October of last year differed by 6.75.
Earlier this month, Joe Schwarz, who knows more about the intricacies of pitching than I likely ever will, addressed Wacha's loss of fastball command, and showed that this has been a persistent problem since the end of '14 in spite of his relatively low ERA. It's an issue that's on Wacha's radar. Following four-plus innings of work on Saturday, he had this to say:
"The command, it's definitely on the right track," Wacha said. "It was where I wanted it to be. The pitches are coming off the way I want them to. I definitely need a little bit more time to get them where I need them to be. But they're on the right track."
For his part, Mike Matheny agreed:
"That was good stuff," Matheny said. "I mean, he wasn't fine-tuned with the heater, but he was really close. Much better than what we've seen, and I think real close to being dialed in."
Whether that's typical spring training player and "coachspeak" is certainly a valid question, but taking it at face value, if Wacha can get his command to where it needs to be that should be a huge asset for the Cardinals' rotation. He's still very young and has already shown flashes of an ace. Watching him try to get back there will be one of the more interesting subplots in 2016.Kenya Moore Ex-BF Has Long Ass Rap Sheet
Kenya Moore's Ex-BF's Long Ass Rap Sheet
EXCLUSIVE
Kenya Moore's ex is entering Lindsay Lohan and DMX territory after racking up at least 4 arrests within the last year... TMZ has learned.
We obtained police docs in Georgia that show Matt Jordan's first bust came in March when he was pulled over for swerving, but got arrested on an outstanding warrant.
Next up, 2 arrests in June! The first for speeding and driving on a suspended license -- and just 2 days later he was back in cuffs for a failure to appear warrant.
He saved the best, or worst, for last. In September, Jordan was driving past cops and allegedly shouted homophobic slurs at them. Things escalated and officers ended up firing a Taser into his back, which they say he ripped out and fled into the woods. Cops went to his car, found his ID and arrested him 4 days later for felony obstruction and misdemeanor disorderly conduct.
Kenya's also accused him of throwing her clothes out of her house during an argument, damaging her property, breaking into her garage and spray-painting her security cameras. Jordan was not arrested for those alleged incidents.
Jordan's recently claimed his relationship with the "The Real Housewives of Atlanta" star was mostly fake, and producers just portrayed him as the crazy bf.
His rap sheet says otherwise.BANJUL, Gambia — President Yahya Jammeh once predicted that his rule could last a billion years.
Now, the fate of his nation is hanging on one more anxiety-filled day.
After acknowledging defeat in an election last month, Mr. Jammeh abruptly changed his mind, refusing to step aside for the inauguration of the new president scheduled for Thursday and threatening to drag the nation into a bloody standoff.
Mr. Jammeh, who has long been criticized for human rights abuses and grandiose claims like being able to cure AIDS with little more than prayer and a banana, has insisted on a do-over election. He declared a state of emergency on Tuesday, warning the nation not to engage in any “acts of disobedience.”
West African nations are preparing to enter the country and force Mr. Jammeh’s ouster if he does not leave. In response, Mr. Jammeh has threatened that his own military is prepared to defend Gambia’s sovereignty.Brain drain takes Mongolia’s youth and vibrancy
By B.Khash-Erdene
In the past, the Mongols were known as nomads, but today they are often known as migrants. Though many Mongolians who have gone abroad to study or work return home, an equal number are remaining overseas and many more are looking for ways to go abroad.
Young and old alike aspire to find work that pays them well. They therefore aspire to work abroad in any type of job, because the lowest-paid work in countries such as the USA and Japan is often higher than the wages of specialists and professionals at home.
In 2010, the first census of Mongolians living abroad was conducted by the National Statistical Office of Mongolia. According to the census results, in 2010 there were 107,000 Mongolia citizens living and working abroad, which is roughly 4 percent of the total population. In 2010, 40,200 Mongolians lived in Kazakhstan, 30,800 in South Korea, 27,300 in USA and around 5,000 in China and Japan.
The government classifies Mongolians abroad in two categories: Mongolian citizens and Mongolian individuals. The first category refers to those Mongolians living abroad who are under the protection of the State, while the latter refers to those whose nationality is Mongolian but who are not under the protection of the Mongolian State and rights, because they have renounced their Mongolian citizenship.
Curiously enough, because Mongolians who become citizens of another country must renounce their Mongolian citizenship, several famous Mongolian athletes are no longer Mongolian citizens. Such athletes include shooting sportsman, D.Munkhbat, who has become a citizen of Germany, and sumo wrestler N.Tsevegnyam, who is a citizen of Japan.
The census statistics relating to Mongolians living abroad do not include those Mongolians residing abroad illegally or working without work permits. The number of people who are native Mongolians but are not able to access the rights and protection normally given to Mongolian citizens is high compared to the population size because many Mongolians are living abroad illegally or have overstayed their visas abroad. So although they would theoretically be eligible to register at their embassy for rights and protection, they do not do so for fear of being sent back to Mongolia empty handed. They therefore choose to remain without protection.
Although the Government of Mongolia has encouraged Mongolians living abroad to return home to contribute to the development of their nation, there has not been a great increase in the number of returnees.
It is easy to understand why many Mongolians remain abroad. Given the current average household salary in Mongolia, it is impossible for most people to purchase their own homes. Real-estate price have skyrocketed in the capital city, reaching between 1.5 and 3 million MNT per square meter. Indeed, the dream for many who work and live abroad is to someday be able to buy their own homes and lead a comfortable life.
The benefits of the growth in the Mongolian economy in recent years are not being felt by the majority of the population. Most households still live from day to day, only barely managing to sustain themselves. The average household savings in Mongolia are only around 2 million MNT (around 1500 USD).
Therefore many people aspire to work and study in foreign countries where they can earn higher wages, get better quality education and experience a higher standard of living. It is economically beneficial for Mongolians who have attained a professional degree in a developed country and who are able to obtain well-paid specialised employment, with higher wages than those available in Mongolia, to remain abroad.
According to the World Bank, the labourers of developing countries working in developed countries benefit from the foreign currency and the developing countries benefit from remittances.
In 1997, the South Korean Small and Medium Industry Union began hiring Mongolians. They were often people with low or no qualifications, designated to non-specialised jobs. This Mongolian labour force usually had families to support at home and sent money to them. In 2000, the money sent from South Korea by contracted workers was equal to 10 percent of the total Mongolian GDP, according to A.Solongo, a Professor in the Population Study Centre of the Economics School of the Mongolian National University.
But while remittances contribute to the economy when the citizens of developing countries go abroad those countries lose a valuable resource: human resources. Those living abroad tend to be the most productive individuals of the country, as they comprise mostly the younger and middle aged section of the population.
It is a shame to think of all that labour contributing to the development of other countries, while their motherland is starving for a skilled labour force and suffering from brain drain.
There are very few Mongolian families today that do not have members of the family working or studying abroad. In the past decade the number of Mongolian students who have successfully gained entry into prestigious learning institutions such as Stanford, Oxford, Harvard, has increased significantly. Likewise, the number of Mongolians working abroad for the world’s leading technological companies, such as Apple, Microsoft and Toyota, has increased. Their achievements should be recognised and rewarded.
But while many skilled Mongolians have been successful abroad, the vast majority of the Mongolians living overseas are working in non-specialized physical labour jobs. This is due to their lack of qualifications and their low level of fluency in the languages of the countries they live in. Many of the brightest youth of Mongolia are living uncomfortably as outsiders in foreign lands doing hard labour for long hours with only a distant dream of living richly.
As these people get older they are burdened with illness, due to their tireless efforts, and all their savings are spent on medication to regain back what little health they can.
Throughout their lives, there remains within many migrants a depth of feeling for their nation and many of them return home when they are old. But they are crippled and unable to work. The sad truth is they have contributed very little of their time and labour to their nation. But they are still Mongolians and desire to return home in their old age to rest.
It seems that through losing much of its youthful population, Mongolia has become a land in which its battered and tired citizens come to die, rather than a vibrant country of young citizens together building their country’s future.A bagel place sits at the bottom of a hill, on the other side of a roundabout, from the boys’ school where I serve. When my now-fiancée and I moved to Nashville, I needed to reclaim routines in my life after two years of uprootedness in a New England city far different from the pastures of my upbringing in the piedmont of Virginia and the endless, wooded running trails of my life as a low-level, still-learning prosecutor in Raleigh. I had needed this always-temporary exile, however, to arrive here, where I believe my calling sat patiently during my searching—never a haphazard process but one always previously driven by status.
I went from engineering school to law school, from a 900-attorney international law firm to a district attorney’s office in North Carolina. I tell myself that my life has a narrative arc—I wanted always to teach. I had grand plans to start teaching law classes at night while prosecuting during the day. I would eventually transition to the academy, writing law journal articles and amicus curiae briefs for causes in which I believed. But teenagers derailed my misplaced ambition. I found that they yearned for someone to help them with the world and that I longed to help them.
I left law for a divinity school in the Northeast to study, among the usual subjects of seminary, secondary schooling and poetry. I knew I had to return home, to the American South, after my short but life-changing time in the landscapes of Frost. And the stars aligned to bring me to the “here” above—a boys’ school that will celebrate its 150th school year next year. All the boys study Latin for two years, papers are called “themes,” each boy must play a sport every season, and we diagram sentences by hand and on paper, starting in seventh grade. If this sounds like the school in the film Dead Poets Society, you’re on the right track—an alumnus wrote the script, and a statute of Robin Williams watches over our courtyards. To my boys’ rolling eyes, I embody Williams’ character Keating: We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race.
I bring up the bagel shop, which has been here for more than 20 years (an epoch now in the fast-growing Music City), because our routine of enjoying bagels and coffee—sitting down sans phones—before church each Sunday morning graces me a sureness I continue to seek as I settle into new places, knowing yet this is where I belong. My fiancée comes from this town; she grew up, in fact, in a house one mile from where we sit sipping weak coffee. Her parents still live here, there. I liken my resettlement and her return to Donald Hall and Jane Kenyon’s move to Hall’s family farm in New Hampshire after they met at the University of Michigan. “I’m the one who worries / if I fit in with the furniture / and the landscape,” Kenyon writes in her poem “Here.” She grew up in the Michigan they’d left. Yet, “Already the curves in the road / are familiar to me, and the mountain / in all kinds of light.”
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In the midst of writing this, I stumble upon Megan Mayhew Bergman’s essay for Ploughshares that begins much in the same way as this one. Megan recently moved from North Carolina to her husband’s childhood home in Vermont and found comfort, too, in Kenyon’s words and new rituals. “I developed my own routines. I went to the Shaftsbury Country Store for coffee each morning, found new hikes, painted our bedroom gray-blue, endeared myself to the goats, learned how to run on packed snow,” she writes.
* * * *
Father Tony Jarvis, an Episcopal priest who retired after serving for 30 years as the headmaster of Roxbury Latin, a boys’ school in Boston not unlike the one I’m at now, has told me no fewer than ten times in the three years I’ve known him never to say that I teach English or coach cross country. “You teach students,” he commanded. Serving a single-gender institution, I’m able to use the more intimate, “I teach boys,” now, and I can count on one hand the few times I’ve slipped into the former, detached words. Jarvis continues to reiterate, harp on, even, the importance of language spoken to children and young adults. Following his own preaching, he intentionally says the same lines over and over, and he tells the same stories over and over. This awareness of young adults’ needing repetition and reinforcement works; I remember them all.
There’s one line of his, however, that jumps from my synapses more than others during my days at school: “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We |
a day's drive.
Scientists also have to be cognizant of other factors that can interfere with the rover's ability to charge. While fall and winter typically feature clear skies, dust storms can dirty the rover's solar arrays as autumn approaches, limiting its charging abilities. Serendipitous gusts, however, can help clean off the panels.
RELATED Mars Orbiter spots rover ascending Mount Sharp
"We were worried that the dust accumulation this winter would be similar to some of the worst winters we've had, and that we might come out of the winter with a very dusty array, but we've had some recent dust cleaning that was nice to see," Herman said. "Now I'm more optimistic."
But even in spring and summer, when the sun rises higher and stays out longer, the threat of a major sun-blocking dust storm looms. The last major storm in 2007 forced scientists to limit the rover's scientific activities.
Some planetary scientists think Mars is due for another big dust storm in the southern hemisphere in the spring of 2018.
"If Opportunity's solar arrays keep getting cleaned as they have recently, she'll be in a good position to survive a major dust storm," Herman said. "It's been more than 10 Earth years since the last one and we need to be vigilant."“Probe with bayonets” A maxim attributed to Lenin that is used in politics to describe a method for dealing tactically with opponents.
Former President Richard Nixon appears to have brought the phrase into popular political use. He wrote in his 1978 autobiography “RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon”: “Communist leaders believe in Lenin’s precept: Probe with bayonets. If you encounter mush, proceed; if you encounter steel, withdraw.”
The idea is that a bayonet stuck in the soil can detect a land mine without setting it off; it’s designed to detonate under heavier pressure. The 1970 cult-classic war comedy “Kelly’s Heroes” features a scene in which Clint Eastwood, Don Rickles, and the rest of their platoon undertake just such a task after one of their buddies steps on a mine and is killed. (When Rickles’s character, Crapgame, encounters a buried explosive and is asked what kind it is, he retorts: “The kind that blow up! How the hell do I know what kind it is?”)
Prominent antitax activist Grover Norquist became known for employing a variation of “probe with bayonets,” though he denied it was an endorsement of Lenin’s tactics and definitely not of communism itself. Other Republicans have quoted it as a way of placing current Russian President Vladimir Putin in an established communist tradition of constantly searching for opponents’ vulnerabilities. The most recent has been Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who has invoked it repeatedly.
“You know, Putin believes in the old Lenin adage that you probe with bayonets, when you find mush you push, when you find steel you stop,” Walker said at this month’s GOP debate. “Under Obama and Clinton, we found a lot of mush, over the last few years. We need to have a national security that puts steel in front of our enemies. I would send weapons to Ukraine. I would work with NATO to put forces on the eastern border of Poland and the Baltic nations, and I would reinstate... the missile defense system that we had in Poland and in the Czech Republic.”
Rep. Mac Thornberry (R) of Texas, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, also used the expression to refer to Putin in a June speech. “It seems that Mr. Putin and those around him don’t see economic sanctions and [U.S. military] training exercises as steel,” Thornberry said.
But Democratic strategist Paul Begala, about as far from a conservative as you can get, also brought up the expression in a 2003 article about how his party had come to be perceived as weak, especially when compared to GOP President George W. Bush and his then-highly regarded political mastermind Karl Rove.
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“The adjective that comes to mind is ‘toothless,’’’ Begala said of Democrats. “What we need is some attitude. Karl is an old friend. I love Karl and admire his toughness. When someone takes shots at Bush, he hits back with greater force. Which means you can’t run and hide. You have to answer these people with steel. Probe them with bayonets, look for weaknesses, then stick ‘em in.”
Chuck McCutcheon and David Mark write their "Speaking Politics" blog exclusively for Politics Voices.In the Siege of Almeida, the French corps of Marshal Michel Ney captured the border fortress from Brigadier General William Cox's Portuguese garrison. This action was fought in the summer of 1810 during the Peninsular War portion of the Napoleonic Wars. Almeida is located in eastern Portugal, near the border with Spain.
Background [ edit ]
Lying on a main invasion route from Ciudad Rodrigo to Lisbon, the Castle Fortress of Almeida was invested by a 65,000-man army under Marshal André Masséna in the third French invasion of Portugal. The previous day the French forces had pushed back the British Portuguese army at the Battle of the Côa. The 50,000-man British-Portuguese army of General Lord Wellington now held the far bank of the Coa. However, the river's banks were steep, with only two bridges, and the French 6th Corps guarded the crossings, so the British were unable to retake the crossings to relieve Almeida.
Siege [ edit ]
Fresh from the successful Siege of Ciudad Rodrigo, the French army laid siege to Almeida on July 25, 1810. Brigadier-General William Cox commanded a 4,000-man Portuguese garrison of three battalions of militia, from Arganil, Trancoso and Vizeu. Some regular British forces were also present, including 1,200 men of the 24th Line Regiment, a squadron of the 11th Cavalry Regiment and over 400 gunners. The defences of Almeida were in better repair and stronger than Ciudad Rodrigo which the French had recently taken. In particular, there were over 100 artillery pieces, of which 40 were 18-pounders or heavier, and most were in protected casemates. The siege was conducted by the 14,000 infantry, 1,000 cavalry, 1,000 artillerists and 100 cannon of the VI Corps under the command of Marshal Michel Ney. In addition, General Jean-Andoche Junot lay in reserve nearby with his VIII Corps.
The French received siege supplies from Ciudad Rodrigo on August 15, and started to dig trench lines to the south-east of the town, facing the San Pedro bastion. The siege train was well supplied with guns; as well as the existing French ones, it also included captured Spanish guns from Ciudad Rodrigo. By August 24, the French lines had eleven batteries in place, with over 50 guns. Throughout, the Portuguese defenders had fired upon the French, with little effect. When the French bombardment opened on August 26 at 6 AM, several quarters of the town were quickly set on fire, and the defending guns of the nearest three batteries overwhelmed. However, the defences held. The governor was confident in withstanding the assault, until a shell made a freak hit. The great magazine in the castle had been used through the day to supply the defenders, and at some point a leaky powder keg had left a trail of powder leading up to the courtyard. At around 7 PM, one French shell landed in the courtyard, igniting a gunpowder trail that led through the still open door, and set off a chain reaction into the magazine. The ensuing explosion killed 600 defenders and wounded 300 more. The castle that housed the gunpowder was razed and sections of the defenses were damaged, leaving a crater still visible today. Unable to reply to the French cannonade without gunpowder, Cox was forced to capitulate the following day with the survivors of the blast and 100 cannon. The French lost 58 killed and 320 wounded during the operation. The next action was the Battle of Bussaco.
Cultural reference [ edit ]
The siege forms the climax of Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe's Gold, in which Richard Sharpe is credited with the destruction of the ammunition magazine, an act intended to deliberately cut short the siege so that he could leave the city and bring Lord Wellington the finances needed to complete the Lines of Torres Vedras.
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Glover, Michael, The Peninsular War 1807-1814. Penguin, 1974.
Penguin, 1974. Oman, Sir Charles, A History of the Peninsula War Volume III. Greenhill Books, 1996.
. Greenhill Books, 1996. Smith, Digby, The Napoleonic Wars Data Book. Greenhill, 1998.
Greenhill, 1998. Weller, Jac, Wellington in the Peninsula. Nicolas Vane, 1962.
Nicolas Vane, 1962. Zimmermann, Dick, "The Battle of Fuentes de Onoro" Wargamer's Digest magazine, March 1979.
Coordinates:DETROIT (WWJ) – A boil water advisory will remain in effect for a second day in southwest Detroit after a large water main ruptured on Wednesday.
The Detroit Water and Sewerage Department says the boil water advisory applies to residents living in the area between West Jefferson to the south, Vernor Highway to the north, Miller Road to the west, and Livernois to the east. Those residents are advised to boil water for at least five minutes if they are going to use it to drink, brush their teeth, cook food or prepare baby formula.
Officials tell WWJ the earliest the advisory could be lifted is Friday morning, but it could also last until Saturday. Customers will be notified immediately when the advisory is lifted.
A three-and-a-half foot main broke early Wednesday morning, causing low pressure in the line.
Test sampling is currently being conducted and repairs are being made to the line.
Stay with WWJ Newsradio 950 and CBSDetroit.com for the latest.All content featured on our charity site is produced by young volunteers with the support and mentoring of our professional production team.
Oxford passes a vote of no confidence in Willetts
The unpopular, impending sharp rise in tuition fees is causing yet more of a stir, when today it was reported that alongside other such undesirable consequences of this policy, we may now see a large cut in the number of places available at universities. The outstanding bill for university loans currently sits at 24bn this is estimated to hit 70bn by 2016.
Allowing less young people to obtain a higher education is a high price to pay when the alternative is to bring more young people into the work place, something else this government seems to be failing to succeed in doing at the moment.
With academic’s from Oxford university passing a vote of no confidence in Universities Minister David Willetts, it seems this is a debate that is just not going to go away without a fight. Is this a policy that is destined for failure already?
Tweet us @catch21p your views or post your comments below.Join me. Perhaps you will learn some things you didn't know about the wonderfully spooky Unsolved Mysteries, the classic crime series that is about to get a reboot, courtesy of Stranger Things executive producer Shawn Levy. As we await a new generation of creepy stories, let's go behind the scenes of the original series.
1. It started as a series of specials.
NBC
The three specials, called Missing… Have You Seen This Person?, were hosted by David Birney and his wife Meredith Baxter and aired on NBC in April 1986. The specials were so successful that producers Terry Dunn Meurer and John Cosgrove decided to broaden the scope of the show to include all kinds of mysteries.
2. It wasn't always hosted by Robert Stack.
When what would become the pilot episode of Unsolved Mysteries (but was then just a special) debuted on January 20, 1987, it was hosted by Raymond Burr. Karl Malden helmed the next two specials, and then Stack took over hosting duties, narrating the next few specials and the weekly episodes until the show went off the air in 2002. Later, when the show was revived, Dennis Farina took over hosting duties. (Stack had passed away in 2003; Farina died 10 years later.)
3. In early episodes, the show didn't use actors in the reenactments.
According to director David Vassar, who directed 100 segments of the show, "In the early episodes, if there were any reenactments, we actually had the real people play themselves." That's why, he said in DVD commentary, "the acting of these first seasons when we were just getting our feet wet was not up to snuff. As we went through the seasons we were able to pay top dollar and get good people, so it just got better and better."
4. There's an easy way to tell if the actors were bad.
"This is an Unsolved Mysteries hallmark, and it’s a secret," Vassar said in DVD commentary, "but if the narrator talks a lot, and the actors don’t talk at all, it means the acting is really pretty bad, and the narrator is going to cover everything up. If there’s everything out in the clear between the actors, it means the actors were usually pretty good. So the game was, how many seconds of the sync sound takes could you get to play in the open? The more sync you got to play in the open, the better the scene. Pretty simple."
5. The reenactments weren't the show's most important component.
"The interviews were so important to the way Unsolved Mysteries was produced," Cosgrove said. "People would think that the most important thing was the recreations, but really, having articulate people who can summon up the emotions of what it felt like [was key]."
"You trusted the interviews," added director Keva Rosenfeld. "If you didn’t have that, you didn’t have a good episode."
6. The show's director came from documentary filmmaking.
NBC
"We were all used to real life," Vassar said, "and in the first couple of seasons, it shows. Only occasionally had we worked with actors, and if we did, we worked with actors as hosts because they were hosting a documentary we were making." In the beginning seasons, the show shot with a small crew, too: "On the first season, it was basically director, a director of photography, an assistant photographer, a sound man, a producer, and lighting or grip guy," Vassar said. "There were five or six of us, trying to make these little movies. It was like silent films in the 1900s. We did everything ourselves."
7. It was cheap to make.
In the early ‘90s, an hourlong scripted drama cost about $1.5 million per episode. Cosgrove told The Baltimore Sun that Unsolved Mysteries could be made for 25 to 40 percent of that cost. “If you're the president of NBC Entertainment, which show are you going to buy?” the Sun asked. “The one that costs $375,000 to make and finishes 11th in overall ratings or the one that costs $1.5 million to make and finishes 40th?”
8. Stack compared Unsolved Mysteries to theater.
"We're balancing two needs here," Stack told the Los Angeles Times in 1990. "We're trying to produce theater and we're trying to do a public service."
Stack’s stage comparisons didn’t end there: He saw his duty as host, according to Cosgrove, as akin to the stage manager of Our Town. The three-act play, written by Thornton Wilder, takes place in the small town of Grover’s Corners and features stories from a period between the years of 1901 and 1913. The stage manager served as the narrator.
9. The show's four-segment format was designed to attract viewers.
The show’s segments covered a number of themes, including Murder, Missing Persons, Wanted Fugitives, UFOs, Ghosts, The Unexplained (Paranormal), Missing Heirs, Amnesia, Fraud, and more. Each show consisted of four segments, plus an update on an older case. "Almost every show has an unexplained death in it, and almost every show has a lost love story," Meurer told the Los Angeles Times. "Then we'll mix and match in there a legend or a gold mine, or we'll put in one of our UFO stories."
“The idea,” Cosgrove said in DVD commentary, “was to have four different segments in four different areas so people would find something that they liked.”
10. The spooky theme music was composed by Gary Malkin.
Unsolved Mysteries’s original, goosebump-inducing theme was written by Gary Malkin, who also served as the show’s main composer. “One of the things that really worked was the music,” Cosgrove said. “I had a lot of friends whose kids would run out the room because the music scared them so much.” Producer Raymond Bridgers agreed: “The music was so distinctive that you didn’t even have to be in the room to know that Unsolved Mysteries was on,” he said. The theme was updated four times (you can hear the 1995 version here), and when the show was revived in 2008, it came back with a new theme (and new logo) altogether.
11. It pulled in great ratings.
In 1990, Unsolved Mysteries ranked #11 for all TV series that year. “Once a sleeper, the reality series hosted by Robert Stack, former star of The Untouchables, now is just a flat-out smash,” the Los Angeles Times wrote two years later. “In the last four weeks, for instance, the unshowy but rock-solid series has demonstrated its clout—ranking 3rd, 16th, 8th and 10th in the ratings.”
12. It was nominated for six Emmy Awards.
The category was the Outstanding Informational Series, and Unsolved Mysteries was nominated in 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, and 1995. Unfortunately, the show didn’t win, losing out to PBS’s Nature (1989), Smithsonian World (1990), The Civil War (1991), TNT’s MGM: When the Lion Roars (1992), PBS’s Healing and the Mind with Bill Moyers (1993), and PBS’s Baseball and NBC’s TV Nation (1995).
13. Producers have some ideas about why the show was so successful.
NBC
Number one, of course, was Robert Stack, whose poker-faced delivery could send chills up anyone’s spine. “Bob’s contributions were immense, really impossible to calculate,” Cosgrove said in a tribute to the actor after Stack’s death in 2003. “His fame and charisma helped attract an audience.” Said Bridges: “No one could deliver a spooky line like Robert Stack.”
Number two: Curiosity. "People are fascinated by the idea that they might be living next door to one of these people, and might be able to help find them," Meurer told the LA Times in 1990.
And number three: “One of the things that attracted people to the show,” Cosgrove said, was that “they wanted to be scared.”
14. Thanks to Jack the Ripper, there was an Unsolved Mysteries Halloween special.
In its first year on the air, Unsolved Mysteries had a Halloween special—an entire hour devoted to ghosts. "Bob was pretty skeptical at this point about doing an entire hour about ghosts," Cosgrove said on DVD commentary. "He definitely, I don’t think, thought it was a great idea for us to change the formula of having four segments of different categories for this Halloween special. It was a little risky doing an hour on one topic."
NBC had asked the producers to create a one hour special, Cosgrove said, because the network "had gotten wind that there was going to be a Jack the Ripper special in syndication, one of those live event specials, that revealed the secret identity of Jack the Ripper at the end of the show. And they said, 'We want you to come up with a stunt program on Halloween.' But we said, 'Wait, we’re the people producing the Jack the Ripper special—we don't want to do that!' And they said 'We don’t care!' So we came up with this, which clobbered the Jack the Ripper special."
After this, though, the show would occasionally do single-topic episodes.
15. The show once blew up a church.
The segment "Lucky Choir" tells the story of a choir that met to practice every Wednesday night at 7:25 p.m. Except one night, when every choir member was late—and, as a result, avoided an explosion at 7:27 p.m. that surely would have killed them. The producers chose a church in Unadilla, Nebraska, that was slated for demolition, and planned an explosion. They flew a special effects expert to the site and surrounded the church with five cameras framed by plywood boxes that would protect the gear and the cameramen. "We were supposed to cave in the roof, and we framed [the shot] slightly above the roof," Rosenfeld, who directed the segment, recalled. "[The special effects guy] blew it up way bigger than we expected. A fireball went into the air, probably a quarter mile. We were all scared."
Shrapnel speared the plywood boxes around the cameras and their operators, and debris rained down for 20 minutes. "The cameraman walked up to the macho special effects guy, pretty angry, and said 'What did you put in there?' And this macho guy goes, 'Ninety-five sticks of dynamite and three 10 gallon tubs of gasoline,'" Rosenfeld remembers. "We immediately rushed the site to film the scene because we couldn’t recreate that. We knew we weren't doing that again."
16. A number of stars got their breaks on Unsolved Mysteries.
CBS
In his first professional acting gig, Matthew McConaughey appeared as a (shirtless, of course) murder victim in an episode of Unsolved Mysteries. "They got the guy," the Academy Award winner told Entertainment Weekly in 2014. "They found him around Bryan, Texas, about two weeks after that show." Virginia Madsen also co-hosted the show with Stack in 1999. Curb Your Enthusiasm’s Cheryl Hines, MADtv’s Stephnie Weir, Saw’s Ned Bellamy, and Lost’s Daniel Dae Kim also appeared in episodes.
17. One of the show's most popular segments was tough to shoot.
It was called "Mystery Hum," about the Taos Hum, so named because the low-frequency sound began to be reported in Taos, New Mexico, in 1992. (In other parts of the world, it's called the Bristol Hum, the Bondi Hum, or just "The Hum.") Director Bob Wise said the segment was particularly difficult to film because there weren't many visual elements for the audience—and the hum's low frequencies didn't come through televisions well. Still, he said, "we got a lot of response to this, because a lot of people around the country and the world are hearing this same thing, and there’s a whole network of people who hear this thing."
18. The show used a visual effects company called Area 51.
That company was tasked with creating the show’s effects, from sparking clocks to creepy ghosts to, appropriately, aliens. In fact, the “Allagash Abduction” segment featured some of Cosgrove’s favorite effects created by Area 51. “We had such detailed paintings and drawings from [the abductees], and we based our special effects session on their drawings and paintings, not just from the descriptions,” Bridgers said.
19. Sometimes, they did effects the old-fashioned way.
In Unsolved Mysteries's early years, visual effects weren't very advanced and the show didn't have a huge budget for them, either. "When you’re shooting ghost stories, it gets kind of tricky if you want to do it without special effects," director Bob Wise said in DVD commentary. The crew was forced to get creative: For the episode "Gordy's Ghosts," Wise chose to give the ghosts an overblown white look. "We put a lot of light on [the actor's] face," Wise said. "The poor little girl could barely keep her eyes open."
For another sequence that showed a ghost lying down next to the little girl on the bed, the crew took off the mattress and had the actor lie on boxes, and pulled on springs underneath to achieve the effect. Ghostly effects in other episodes were created in camera using double exposure and projection.
20. Robert Stack (and the show's producers) were skeptical of the paranormal stuff.
Alchemy
Though Stack was, in Cosgrove’s words, “terribly proud of our contributions to catching bad guys,” he was pretty skeptical of the show’s paranormal and extraterrestrial segments. “In some of those narration sessions, he’d be like, 'Come on, Raymond!'” Bridgers recalled. But even Stack found some stories—like the “Allagash Abductions” segment—pretty compelling. “[That] one even nailed Bob,” Cosgrove said. “[It] got under his skin. These guys were so normal and credible and stood to gain nothing by making up a story.”
As many as 80 percent of the supernatural cases were dismissed outright, according to Bridgers. But, like Stack, the producers found themselves swayed by certain stories. “When we pick a ghost story, we’re always mindful of those stories where there seems to be a historical reason for there to be a haunting,” Cosgrove said in the DVD commentary for “Black Hope Curse.” “I don’t think any of us, when we started Unsolved Mysteries, really believed in ghosts... we’ve all had to take a second look at our preconceived notions after the experiences that we’ve had. Initially we’d be very skeptical of stories, but when you find that there is a story, that there are facts and history and accounts from the past that match up to what people see... it takes your breath away, and makes the stories a lot more credible.”
21. Not everyone wanted their mystery on Unsolved Mysteries.
In the early days of Unsolved Mysteries, it could be tough to get people who'd had supernatural experiences to appear on the show—they were afraid, Cosgrove said, of exposing themselves to potential ridicule. "Back then, people didn’t want to come out of the woodwork to say that they’d seen ghosts," he said. "It was really tough to get people to agree to do the interviews." Still, there seemed to be some therapeutic value in it for the interviewees. "Having us talk to them and pay such close attention to them and help them explain it to the public seems to help them," Cosgrove said.
22. They filmed many of Stack's segments at a Masonic temple.
The temple was located in Pasadena, California. “We liked it as a set because it evoked ghostly spirits and things like that,” Cosgrove said.
23. Unsolved Mysteries ran on four networks.
The show spent 10 seasons on NBC before moving to CBS, where it aired for two seasons before being canceled. It later ran on Lifetime and on Spike TV. For the upcoming reboot, the series will go more high-tech and run on Netflix's streaming platform.
24. The reality show spawned TV movies.
Victim of Love: The Shannon Mohr Story, which aired in September 1993, was based on an Unsolved Mysteries segment from November 1987. In the movie, Mohr (Sally Murphy) marries Dave Davis (Dwight Schultz) in a quickie Vegas ceremony. She soon discovers that he’s a pathological liar who neglected to tell her about his first wife. When Mohr dies of what appears to be a horse riding accident, her parents become suspicious. John J. O’Connor, who reviewed the movie for The New York Times, wrote:
"The parents embark on a 10-year campaign to seek justice. A journalist and a detective prove most helpful. Confronted with mounting evidence against him, Dave flees the country, finally ending up in American Samoa. How can he be found? There's one possibility left, says the detective: Unsolved Mysteries. And so we find the actors in this movie recreating the interview the real parents gave on the "Unsolved Mysteries" broadcast. The repackaging turns out to be an ingenious plug for the series itself. … Actually, Dave wasn't captured for more than two years after the original telecast. Credit, it seems, must go to the reruns. Marketing comes full circle."
Other TV movies followed: Escape From Terror: The Teresa Stamper Story (1995), Voice from the Grave (1996), and The Sleepwalker Killing (1997).
25. It had a dramatized spin-off.
It was called Final Appeal: From the Files of Unsolved Mysteries. According to a synopsis from The New York Times, the show was “a reality-based series based on the NBC series, Unsolved Mysteries. [It] examines real-life cases of potential injustice involving convicted persons who, according to impartial observers, may be innocent.” Stack hosted. Final Appeal premiered in September 1992 and was canceled shortly after.
26. Many of the mysteries actually got solved.
“Join me. Perhaps you may be able to help solve a mystery,” Stack said at the beginning of each episode. The show asked its viewers to call police or a tipline if they had any information on a crime, missing person, or lost loved one—and boy, did they. The Los Angeles Times wrote about one case that appeared on Unsolved Mysteries in 1988:
"It was no mystery to Jerry Strickland and Melissa K. Munday when police showed up at their door in Moses Lake, Wash. Hours earlier they had been watching television as the show Unsolved Mysteries mentioned them in connection with the unsolved robbery and slaying of a gas station worker near Pontiac, Mich. Police got about 15 calls from area residents after the program aired, and Officer John Mays and Sgt. Dennis Duke arrived to find the couple waiting for them, Mays said."
Unsolved Mysteries covered more than 1000 cases, and according to its website, more than half of the episodes featuring wanted fugitives have been solved. Over 100 separated families have been reunited—including LeeAnn Robinson, who ran away from her father’s home when she was 16 and found her brother and sister years later through the show. "I was standing there in the studio (after the program ran) and this guy came over and said, 'I have your sister on the phone,'" Robinson said. "I just started to cry. I cried for a week."
27. The tipline has remained active.
With a new season of Unsolved Mysteries on the horizon, the producers will surely be looking for some interesting stories to feature. But even during the series' hiatus, visitors have been able to submit information that might pertain to an unsolved crime on the show’s website.The following article or section contains information from a Christmas map and may not be canon.
Operation Claws was a battle which took place on Planet Christmas, between Jim Raynor's forces, the Santa Friends, and the Zergrinch, after the latter kidnapped Santa Claus. The Raider's goal was to free Santa Claus so that they would get on his good-guys list.
Contents show]
Background Edit
Santa Claus, based on Planet Christmas, delivers presents to terrans across the galaxy, but does not deliver presents to the protoss and zerg.
Jealous of the lack of presents, the Zergrinch and its followers attacked Planet Christmas. On its final attempt, some time after the Brood War, the Zergrinch enlisted the aid of some protoss bandit minions and succeeded in capturing Santa Claus, the individual's "elitist ways having been the bane of our existence".
Jim Raynor hired one or more goliath Commanders to assist. The Commanders rarely took missions unless paid well, but were willing to undertake this mission because of the incentive of being added to Santa's good-guy list.
The Battle Edit
The battle started with the Zergrinch capturing Santa Claus and imprisoning him in a stasis cell. The Zergrinch Followers then moved towards Christmas Village, arriving at about the same time Raynor's "Santa Friends" did, with at least one Commander personally leading them. The two forces did battle, with the Santa Friends coming out ahead.
The Santa Friends used the village as a base of operations, fighting the Zergrinch Followers and the protoss bandits. The Zergrinch would occasionally attack with groups of its especially powerful minions, and would "respawn" whenever killed, as it was "eternal".
Eventually Santa Friends freed Santa Claus from the stasis cell, who commended them for "saving Christmas".
Playing the Game Edit
The game can be played with one or two players. Each player gets a Commander, a hero goliath with a very high armor rating. As it is the same color as the other troops, the players may experience confusion trying to distinguish it from other goliaths.
When rescuing Christmas Village, each player will gain control of certain surviving buildings. If only one player is playing Operation Claws, they will be unable to rescue several of the buildings.
Operation Claws has a complicated set of triggers. Zergrinch and several powerful minion will frequently spawn at various points on the map, then give taunts as it attacks. If the Zergrinch itself is killed, it will respawn, once again taunting the players.
References Edit
2001-02-02, Operation Claws. StarCraft Compendium Map Archives. Accessed on 2008-15-03Republicans are fighting harder than they expected to defend two vacant House seats: One up for grabs Thursday in Montana, the other on the ballot next month in Georgia.
They aren’t panicking. Yet.
But many acknowledged that Democrats have a good thing going with small-dollar contributors. And some in the GOP are nervously watching the record sums of money pouring in, wondering if circumstances — a motivated opposition, a potentially strained donor base — have left them even more vulnerable to losing their majorities in Congress as the 2018 midterms approach.
The battle in Georgia’s 6th District is of particular concern.
Already, it’s the most expensive congressional race in history. Nearly $35 million in TV and radio advertising has been reserved there, according to tracking by the firm Medium Buying. The windfall shocked Atlanta-area television stations to the point where one added a newscast and pre-empted reruns of The Andy Griffith Show to make way for the deluge of political ads.
The Congressional Leadership Fund, an outside group aligned with House Speaker Paul Ryan and tasked with preserving Republican rule, has committed at least $6.5 million to keep a seat once held by Newt Gingrich and Tom Price out of Democratic hands.
“The Dems are just tapping this mad small-dollar activist base,” one national Republican consultant told BuzzFeed News before name-checking a few of the GOP’s big-dollar donors. “How many times can you get a check from Paul Singer or Sheldon Adelson?”
The consultant added: “It’s one seat in Congress. How much do you want to plow into it?”
It’s a question without an easy answer.
Georgia’s special election to succeed Price, now the Health and Human Services secretary, began with a jungle primary that put 18 candidates — 11 of them Republicans — on a single, nonpartisan ballot. Democrats rallied around Jon Ossoff, a 30-year-old newcomer. Outside Republican groups spent millions in the weeks leading up to the April vote just to keep Ossoff from cracking the 50% threshold he needed to win outright. Ossoff received 48%. He faces Republican Karen Handel, a former Georgia secretary of state, in the June 20 runoff.
“Resources were deployed early because of the the incredible financial edge Ossoff had from out-of-state fundraising — and this being a jungle primary,” said one GOP operative who works closely with House campaigns. “Democrats have also been all-in in the 6th since the beginning. They hand-picked the candidate they wanted, sent staff down immediately.”
Handel’s emergence from the primary was a boost for Republicans in another way: It virtually assured investment from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Handel once led an Atlanta-area office for the Republican-leaning organization. And special elections can be a Chamber specialty. In 2013, for example, the group helped establishment favorite Bradley Byrne beat a Tea Party candidate in an off-year race for a vacant House seat in Alabama.
“Early money is smart money,” Rob Engstrom, the Chamber’s national political director, told BuzzFeed News. “We traditionally have played aggressively in special elections as we can closely connect politics back to policy and drive our agenda on the Hill.”
Engstrom, like many Republicans, cautioned against reading too much into the dynamics or results of one special election. “We believe that special elections are, indeed, that — special.” But others say the Montana and Georgia races will foreshadow what happens in 2018.
“I take a little bit of a different view,” one GOP strategist said. “I think these special elections are important, not only for the symbolic reasons, but because we are in a midterm where every seat will matter. If we come up one short [in the House] next November and we say, ‘If only we spent more on Georgia or Montana’ — no one wants to be in that position and have regrets.”
The strategist, who like others requested anonymity to speak candidly, added: “The House is a realistic objective for Democrats. Their donors are obviously already worked up. It’s a good time for them in terms of small-dollars. The typical race won’t be as expensive as Georgia, but it will be expensive. So House candidates in difficult races need to start raising money yesterday.”
President Trump is another factor. Nationally his job-approval ratings are low, though he remains popular with the GOP base. His narrow win over Hillary Clinton in the Georgia 6th last fall signaled that the district could be a pick-up opportunity for Democrats after he picked Price to lead HHS. And Trump’s recent firing of an FBI director amid an investigation of his campaign’s ties to Russia raises doubts about his long-term political value.
“These races are a bellwether,” said a Republican consultant who has worked with congressional candidates. “But it’s also prudent to realize right now we’re stuck in a microcosm of time where the worst that could happen to Republicans has already |
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Madden NFL 16 Playbooks Breakdown
Most Offensive Formations: 32 (Washington Redskins)
Fewest Offensive Formations: 23 (Denver Broncos and Detroit Lions)
Most Under Center Formations: 21 (Baltimore Ravens) – 72%
Most Shotgun/Pistol Formations: 24 (Philadelphia Eagles) – 80%
Teams With 30 or More Offensive Formations: 6 (Arizona, Indianapolis, Philadelphia, Seattle, Tennessee, Washington)
Teams With 25 or Fewer Formations: 8 (Chicago, Denver, Detroit, Green Bay, Houston, Jacksonville, New Orleans, Tampa Bay
Teams With 55% or More Under Center Formations: 4 (Arizona, Baltimore, Indianapolis, St. Louis)
Teams with 60% or More Shotgun/Pistol Formations: 6 (Carolina, Denver, Miami, Oakland, Philadelphia, Seattle)
Teams With 70% or More Shotgun/Pistol Formations: 3 (Miami, Oakland, Philadelphia)
Most Singleback Formations: 11 (Arizona Cardinals)
Most I-Form/Strong/Weak Formations: 12 (St. Louis Rams)
Most Gun Formations: 23 (Philadelphia Eagles)
Avg. Singleback Formations Per Team: 6.75
Avg. I-Form/Strong/Weak Formations Per Team: 5.72
Avg. Gun/Pistol Formations Per Team: 14.75
Special thanks to PX1 Sports Gaming for putting this data together.Political animosity exceeds racial hostility, new Stanford research shows
New Stanford research shows that Democrats and Republicans are increasingly polar opposites – their political biases spill over into their social lives. Along party lines and ideology, more than even race or religion, Americans are distrustful of those who are not politically similar.
Christos Georghiou / Shutterstock Political disagreements are harder for Americans to bridge than racial or religious differences, according to a study co-authored by Stanford political scientist Shanto Iyengar.
New Stanford research has found that Americans are increasingly divided along political party lines – and those sentiments are stronger than racial biases.
"We were particularly surprised at the extent to which party politics has become a litmus test for interpersonal relations. Marriage across party lines is extremely rare," said Shanto Iyengar, a Stanford political scientist and director of the Political Communication Laboratory.
The evidence demonstrates that hostile feelings for the opposing political party are ingrained or automatic in voters' minds, he wrote in a new research paper.
"The polarization of the American electorate has dramatically increased," said Iyengar, whose co-author was Sean Westwood, a post-doctoral researcher at Princeton University. "We show that the level of partisan animus in the American public exceeds racial hostility."
Why? It is largely due to a witches' brew of political candidates relying on negative campaigning and partisan news sources serving up vitriolic commentary, according to Iyengar, the Harry and Norman Chandler Professor of Communication.
The widening split, he said, is no longer just the Democrats vs. Republicans, but liberals vs. conservatives.
Attitudes and perceptions
Using a variety of survey indicators, Iyengar and Westwood show that negative stereotypes of the other party have intensified and that political affiliation is now a relevant cue for non-political decisions.
Partisans are much more likely today to express reservations over the prospect of a son or daughter marrying across party lines, the study noted. Evidence from online dating sites demonstrates that even though people are far from transparent about their politics, ideology is nonetheless a powerful predictor of the dating decision.
To find out whether partisan attitudes predict non-political behavior, Iyengar and Westwood examined how 1,000 people viewed the resumes of several high school seniors competing for scholarships. Some of the documents included racial cues – "president of the African American Student Association" – while others had political ones – "president of the Young Republicans."
Those findings showed that race mattered. African-American participants showed a preference for the African-American candidates 73 percent to 27 percent. Whites showed a modest preference for African-American candidates, as well, though by a significantly smaller margin.
However, partisanship made a much bigger impact than race on how people thought about others. Both Democrats and Republicans selected their in-party scholarship candidate about 80 percent of the time even when the candidate from the other party had stronger academic credentials.
Trust issues
In another study, the researchers asked 800 people to play a "trust" game, in which player 1 is given some money and told that she can give some, all, or none of it to player 2. The researchers found that race didn't matter – but party affiliation did. People gave significantly larger amounts when they were playing with someone who shared their party group identity.
Iyengar suggested that – unlike race, gender or other social divides where attitudes and behavior are constrained by social norms of civility and tolerance – there are no similar pressures to temper disapproval of political opponents. People feel free to say bad things about their political opponents, he said.
"If anything, the rhetoric and actions of political leaders demonstrate that hostility directed at the opposition is acceptable, even appropriate," Iyengar said. "While Republicans view fellow partisans as patriotic, well-informed and altruistic, Democrats are judged to exhibit precisely the opposite traits."
He said he believes that increasing political collegiality will require significant social interventions that enhance the political heterogeneity of neighborhoods and friendship groups.
"What we need is greater personal contact between Republicans and Democrats," Iyengar said.
Media Contact
Shanto Iyengar, Political Science: (650) 723-5509, [email protected]
Clifton B. Parker, Stanford News Service: (650) 725-0224, [email protected] of thousands of Belgians gathered in the heart of Brussels today, waving white balloons and white flowers in a popular outpouring of anger and frustration over a widening child sex scandal.
The ''White March,'' as it was called by organizers, was one of the largest in the country's recent history, drawing some 275,000 Belgians and supporters from neighboring countries, the police said.
It capped a week of spontaneous protests that erupted after Belgium's highest court removed a magistrate widely seen as a hero in the scandal, Jean-Marc Connerotte, from investigations into a pedophile and child pornography ring. So far, 13 people have been charged in the case, which involves the kidnapping, sexual abuse and killing of several children, with at least seven young girls still missing.
The court ruled that Mr. Connerotte had compromised his impartiality by accepting a free dinner at a fund-raiser for the parents of missing children.
Advertisement Continue reading the main story
The ruling prompted the public, already outraged by reports of the crimes and the slowness of investigators to respond, to take to the streets. The dismissal also followed press reports that Mr. Connerotte was on the verge of disclosing the names of senior government officials who had been recognized on confiscated videotapes, and during allegations of a high-level cover-up.Kyary Pamyu Pmayu has announced the schedule for her first world tour in 2013!
This world tour, titled "100%KPP WORLD TOUR 2013", is her first solo world live tour. She will make a stop in Belgium, France, UK, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, USA, Thailand, Australia, and Singapore. In all, there will be total a 20 stages when including the 9 stages in Japan.
As announced previously, Kyary's new double A-side single "Kimi ni 100%/Furisodation" is also set for release on January 30th.
Check out the schedule for Kyary Pamyu Pamyu's world tour!
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February 9th (Sat) : Brussels (Belgium) - Vk* concerts
February 10th (Sun) : Paris (France) - La Cigale
February 13th (Wed) : London (UK) - O2 Academy
March 2nd (Sat) : Fukuoka (Japan) - Zepp Fukuoka
March 3rd (Sun) : Fukuoka (Japan) - Zepp Fukuoka
March 9th (Sat) : Soul (South Korea) - *unfixed
March 15th (Fri) : Taipei (Taiwan) - *unfixed
March 17th (Sat) : Kowloon Bay (Hong Kong) - Music [email protected]
March 25th (Mon) : Tokyo (Japan) - Zepp Tokyo
March 26th (Tue) : Tokyo (Japan) - Zepp Tokyo
March 28th (Thu) : Osaka (Japan) - Zepp Numba
March 29th (Fri) : Osaka (Japan) - Zepp Numba
March 31st (Sun) : Hokkaido (Japan) - Zepp Sapporo
April 4th (Thu) : Aichi (Japan) - Zepp Nagoya
April 5th (Fri) : Aichi (Japan) - Zepp Nagoya
April 12th (Fri) : Los Angeles (U.S.A) - Club Nokia LA Live
April 14th (Sun) : New York (U.S.A) - Best Buy Theater
? The dates and venues for Thailand, Australia, and Singapore have been unfixed
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Source & Image: natalie + Kyary Pamyu Pamyu official site
TagsHelsingborg + FÖLJ
Sexårige Oscar fick sommarjobb på Willys
avChristina Smedbakken
GODA NYHETER 20 juli 2017 11:12
Oscar Svensson är sex år gammal och har länge velat jobba på Willys, därför skrev han ett brev. Igår jobbade han sin första dag, vilket Metro var först med att skriva om.
– Jag fick ta bort tomma kartonger och fylla på med grejor. När jag inte nådde så fick jag låna en pall, säger Oscar till Aftonbladet.
1 av 12 | Foto: Privat Oscar Svensson, 6, är Willys yngste medarbetare.
Ända sedan Oscar Svensson, 6, från Ödåkra utanför Helsingborg var riktigt liten har han tyckte om ordning och reda. När han som tvååring fick en trehjuling var det första han gjorde att åka runt och samla upp skräp i en påse.
När han följer med och handlar på Willys i Väla brukar han gå runt och hålla ordning och flytta på tomma kartonger. En dag när han gjorde det trillade några ketchupflaskor i golvet. Oscar blev orolig och ledsen, men tröstades snabbt av en i personalen.
Skrev ett brev till Willys
Väl hemma pratade han mycket om den snälle butiksanställde. Här uppstod idén om att sommarjobba på Willys.
– Jag sade att det går nog inte, han är ju så liten. Men han ville ändå skicka ett brev så jag hjälpte honom skriva, säger mamman Linda Svensson.
”Hej! Jag heter Oscar och är snart 7 år. Jag skulle så gärna vilja sommarjobba men mamma har sagt att jag inte får för jag är för liten. Det tycker jag är dumt!”
Så börjar brevet som mamma Linda hjälpte till att skriva. Bara kort efter att de skickat det fick de ett svar. Oscar fick gärna komma och sommarjobba i butiken.
”Det ska vara fint när kunderna kommer”
I tisdags var Oscar på informationsträff, och igår jobbade han sin första dag.
– Jag fick ta bort tomma kartonger och fylla på med grejor. När jag inte nådde så fick jag låna en pall. Jag tycker det ska vara fint när kunderna kommer och ska handla, säger Oscar.
– Han fick känna sig som en anställd. Han fick en keps att behålla och fick låna en tröja, säger Linda.
Även butikschefen Kent-Ola Högman är nöjd med Oscars arbetsinsats.
– Han var en helt underbar, nyfiken och arbetsam kille. Han vann alla våra hjärtan. Oscar är definitivt en framtida medarbetare hos oss, säger han till Metro.
Drömjobb: soptippen
Efter onsdagens insats har Oscar nu tagit sommarsemester. Han hoppas på att kunna komma och jobba på Willys fler gånger, men den stora drömmen är inte att jobba i butik.
– Mitt drömjobb är soptippen. Jag vill sortera grejor, och om någon har tappat något på gatan tar jag det till rätt container. Jag ska köra sopbil också, säger han.
För fler liknande historier – följ Goda nyheter på FacebookSometimes with documentaries, length can be a hinderance. There’s such a thing as too much depth, and they can tip from fascinating to boring. Other documentaries, like From Straight To Bizarre about the other acts on Frank Zappa’s labels in the late 1960s and early 1970s, keep the interest up all the way through — in this case, through almost three hours. In fact, when I saw how long it was, I was a little worried — but I needn’t have. The release from Sexy Intellectual is very highly recommended to any Zappa fans, loaded with original music (and not weirdly lame knockoffs like the otherwise awesome David Bowie: Rare and Unseen) and interviews with the particulars.
From Straight to Bizarre talks to all sorts of people — Jeff Simmons, members of Alice Cooper, Drumbo and Zoot Horn Rollo from Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band, two of the GTOs and many Zappa biographers and journalists to provide the whole contextual picture. The doc focuses most on five albums: An Evening With Wild Man Fischer, Pretties For You by Alice Cooper, Permanent Damage by the GTOs, Trout Mask Replica and Jeff Simmons’ Lucille Has Messed My Mind Up. These aren’t the only albums talked about: Others, like the ill-fated debut of Essra Mohawk (under her real name, Sandy Horvitz) Sandy’s Album is Here at Last, the first from Bizarre, and the Lenny Bruce and Lord Buckley albums for Bizarre are also brought up — as are the acts shepherded by Zappa’s business partner, Herb Cohen, like Tim Buckley’s album Starsailor.
The film doesn’t whitewash either — Zappa’s failings as a producer and label head are brought up often. The documentary depicts a man who would get really into something, then have a falling out with the act, abandoning the production to be picked up by Ian Underwood, who despite his great talent as a musician, didn’t really have the interest or ability in production. It happened to Sandy Horvitz (who was even briefly a Mother of Invention), and it kept happening. Of course, to be fair to Zappa, he had an increasing amount on his plate from his own music career — and it’s pointed out several times that the man could be very encouraging for new artists, despite his public persona.
The albums on Straight and Bizarre generally ended up being more influential than they were commercially successful, though the same could be said for Zappa’s own output. The sociological aspects of the albums was another theme of the doc — Zappa was as much trying to make good records as he was trying to capture a scene not being documented by anyone else at the time. The GTO’s album in particular is pointed for being much more interesting as a document of the time rather than as a pop record — the non-musical segues are the most talked about pieces. The documentary also puts to bed the erroneous assumption that Zappa signed Wild Man Fischer as a freak show exploitation piece. Fischer’s given his due as a songwriter (particularly for the amazingly catchy “Merry-Go-Round”), but also his role in that scene and that idea of Zappa as audio documentarian.
The recording of An Evening With Wild Man Fischer is one of the most interesting segments; it’s the album that Zappa was most hands-on with. Despite promising backing from the Mothers to a few different artists, it was this that actually got the most Mothers time and energy; often when Zappa’d leave a project in a huff, he seemed to take the bulk of the Mothers with him. Tensions were raised with some of the other acts about this — they couldn’t figure why a record with absolutely no commercial potential would get so much time and money where more traditional bands were being ignored or shoved into rush recording jobs. Still, the results were worth it — even though An Evening With certainly cost Zappa more than it ever made. The album might be overstuffed and meandering — a common problem with Zappa, to be perfectly honest — but it’s still great to listen to and without it, we likely wouldn’t have the outstanding (not to mention slightly more traditional) albums produced by Barnes & Barnes, Pronounced Normal and Nothing Scary.
It’s amusing that the biggest commercial success from Zappa’s choices was Alice Cooper — who only had their first huge hit (“I’m Eighteen”) on their last album for Straight, and had their contract and albums picked up almost immediately by Warner Brothers, who’d been handling distribution for Straight. Still — every act on Straight/Bizarre had some high level of quality (even the GTOs, as a cultural document), and it’s a tragedy the saga only lasted as short as it did. I’d love for more artists to have this kind of control to get such odd records into stores nationwide. Of course, I wish that Zapple Records had released more than two things, so, I suppose my wishes might be a little suspect.
Still — if you’re a Zappa fan, you need to see From Straight To Bizarre. I’m certain you’ll find out stuff you didn’t know before… and at the very least, you’ll get to hear some of the music from some notoriously hard-to-find albums.
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Aug. 23, 2017, 11:18 AM GMT / Updated Aug. 23, 2017, 11:18 AM GMT By Courtney Kube
WASHINGTON — The average number of U.S. troops serving in Afghanistan at any given time is thousands more than the Pentagon officially acknowledges, according to three U.S. defense officials.
The Pentagon officially acknowledges 8,400 troops on the ground there, but that number actually hovers between 11,000 and 12,000, the officials said.
The actual force manning level is 8,448, which is the maximum number of U.S. service members who are authorized to be assigned to either Resolute Support or U.S. Forces Afghanistan, the two military missions there.
But there is overlap between units as service members are transitioning in and out and there are units and people there on temporary duty shorter than 120 days. Those additional forces put the actual footprint at between 11,000 and 12,000 on any given day, according to the officials.
President Donald Trump announced a new strategy in Afghanistan Monday night, saying that the U.S. will expand authority for American armed forces to target the terrorist and criminal networks that sow violence and chaos throughout Afghanistan. But the president did not provide specific details about how the U.S. military mission will change or how many U.S. troops could be deployed for the new strategy.
Speaking during an unannounced visit to Baghdad Tuesday, Secretary of Defense James Mattis also declined to say how many more U.S. troops could be deployed.
"I'd prefer not to go into those numbers right now. The first thing I have to do is level the bubble and account for everybody who's on the ground there now, the idea being that we're not going to have different buckets that we're accounting for them in, to tell you what the total number is. And there is a number that I'm authorized to go up to," Mattis said.
Related: Trump Vows to Continue Aghan War. Taliban Say They're Fine With That.
"I've directed the Chairman [of the Joint Chiefs of Staff] to put the plan together now. We've obviously been discussing this option for some time. When he brings that to me, I'll determine how many more we need to send in, Mattis said.
Asked whether reports that the U.S. may send about 3,900 more troops, Mattis said, "I'd rather not say a number and then have to change it later on. Let me look at the plan that the military brings me."
U.S. troops walk outside their base in Uruzgan province, Afghanistan. Omar Sobhani / Reuters
Just last week, Mattis explained that the number of U.S. troops actually serving in Iraq, Syria, and in Afghanistan is not even transparent to him.
"We had to change how they were accounting for them, because there were so many different pockets," he said during a press availability at the Pentagon. "We in this building couldn't figure it out."
He explained that some troops there are not counted because they are there for a short duration, some are transitioning in or out, and some are on special missions.
Related: Pence Puts Pakistan 'On Notice'
"I had to change the accounting process because we couldn't figure out how many troops we had there," Mattis said. When asked why the Pentagon still has not provided the correct number to the media, Mattis said, "I didn't know that was the case," and directed a member of his staff to see him about getting the media the more accurate numbers. Mattis made that comment on August 14, but the Pentagon still has not provided the correct figure.
The Commander of all U.S. military forces in the Middle East said Tuesday that the first deployments of troops will arrive in Afghanistan pretty quickly, according to the Associated Press.
Speaking to reporters traveling with him in Saudi Arabia, General Joseph Votel said, "What's most important for us now is to get some capabilities in to have an impact on the current fighting season."In connection with the 100th birthday of Estonian composer and choral conductor Roman Toi on June 18, the Estonian National Congress of Sweden (REL) submitted a proposal to the Estonian Government to commission and install a statue of him next to the iconic statue of fellow composer and conductor Gustav Ernesaks on the Tallinn Song Festival Grounds.
Roman Toi’s activity as a choral conductor, composer and organizer in Germany’s postwar DP camps, in exile in the Canadian cities of Montreal and Toronto and at international ESTO festivals has been compared to Ernesaks’ decades of contributions in occupied Estonia, the congress told Estonian online news portal ERR.ee.
The REL pointed out that the two composers were both honored by being chosen as the honorary conductors of the first free song festival to be held again in 1990, as the occupation of Estonia was ending. “Toi brought with him to Estonia not only his [Toronto-based] mixed choir ‘Estonia’ but also the Juhan Aavik chorale ‘God Save Estonia’ (‘Hoia, Jumal, Eestit’), which had been previously banned in Estonia, and which the public demanded be sung again a total of three times,” wrote the congress.
According to the Estonian Swedes, the statue of a contemplative Ernesaks on the song festival grounds symbolizes the indomitable spirit of the song festival tradition during difficult times, and they found that Toi personified the enthusiasm, joy and brilliance of the steadfastly patriotic and democratic song festivals of Estonians in the West.
The REL found that it would be highly appropriate for a statue of Toi to join that of Ernesaks on the song festival grounds, particularly in recognition of Estonians being scattered across the globe and the emotions experienced upon meeting one another once again.PROVIDENCE, R.I. – The race for the 2014 American Athletic Conference football title will begin Aug. 30 and will culminate in four games as part of Championship Week as the league’s 11 schools battle for the league crown and a College Football Playoff berth.Commissioner Mike Aresco announced the complete 44-game conference schedule Tuesday as The American looks to build upon a highly successful first season, which was capped by UCF’s win against Baylor in the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl.The 2014 season begins for American Athletic Conference teams Thursday, Aug. 28, and continues through three nationally televised games that will be part of Championship Saturday Dec. 6. The 44-game conference schedule kicks off Aug. 30, when Tulane visits Tulsa in the first American Athletic Conference game for both schools.The 2014 season is the first under The American’s new television contract, which provides for 80 percent of conference-controlled games on national television platforms, including ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, ESPNews and CBS Sports Network.Highlights of the 2014 schedule include an intriguing series of Thursday and Friday games on either ESPN, ESPN2 or ESPNU as well as a number of exciting nonconference games that will pair American Athletic Conference teams against the nation’s top programs. UCF, which went 12-1 and finished the 2013 season ranked No. 10 nationally, opens its season against Penn State Aug. 30 on ESPN2, in a game that will be played in Dublin, Ireland. Tulsa will host Oklahoma on ABC, ESPN or ESPN2 Sept. 6.The nonconference schedule includes games against nine teams ranked in the top 25 of last year’s USA Today Coaches’ Poll, including games against No. 5 Missouri, No. 6 Oklahoma, No. 10 Ohio State, No. 13 Baylor, No. 16 UCLA, No. 18 Texas A&M, No.21 Wisconsin, No. 22 Duke and No. 23 Vanderbilt.Additionally, The American previously announced three games for member institutions against Brigham Young – all on ESPN – as UConn opens its season against the Cougars Aug. 29 from Rentschler Field, Houston visits BYU Sept. 11, and UCF hosts the Cougars Oct. 9 at Bright House Networks Stadium.Kickoff times and television designations for the first three weeks of the season will be made final in June, while the rest of the schedule will fall under the 12-day and six-day selection processes.The Championship Week matchups begin with UCF at East Carolina Thursday, Dec. 4, in a battle of teams that won at least 10 games last year. The three games Saturday, Dec. 6 include Houston at Cincinnati, Temple at Tulane and SMU at UConn.The first year of American Athletic Conference saw the league place two teams in the top 15 of the final AP and USA Today polls, while the league was one of just three conferences to produce two 12-win teams, joining the Big Ten and the SEC.Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Proud mother Hao Hao shows off her newborn cub at a zoo in Belgium
A giant panda cub has been born at a zoo in Belgium, an event so rare it is being described a " |
conflicts were introduced and resolved far too quickly for the audience to get invested, and it relied largely upon characters who had never been developed.
I know that this was meant to be a different kind of episode — the goal here was to write a love-letter to the fans, rather than to tell a good story. But that goal is a problem, for 2 reasons.
First of all, I’d argue that telling great stories should always be FiM‘s #1 goal.
But there’s a more important reason; The FiM Team has already written tons of love-letters to the fans. From Derpy’s initial appearance, to the meta-commentary in “Daring Don’t”, to Discord’s reformation, to Derpy’s return, to the slew of cameos and inside-jokes in Rainbow Rocks, to (most recently) finally getting to explore the Griffon Kingdoms. All of these are fantastic tributes to the collective creativity of the fans.
But they weren’t great tributes just because they referenced the ideas of the fans — they were great tributes because they used those ideas to help tell great stories. And because of that, all of those little cameos, background gags, and sub-plots are far more effective love-letters to the fans than “Slice of Life.”
I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, so let me be very clear; I love the fact that the creators of FiM engage so thoroughly with the fans. I love that the fans — collectively — have influenced the show. I love the fact that Meghan McCarthy, Jim Miller, M.A. Larson, Sibsy, Daniel Fucking Ingram, William Anderson, and all the rest of the crew are dedicated, creative, and insane enough to devote an entire freaking episode to a fan-tribute.
But a problem arises if the fan-tribute prevents them from telling a good story.
But you know what’s really weird? I actually don’t think that’s what happened here.
This is the most surprising thing about “Slice of Life”; I don’t think the real source of the problems was fanservice. Because within this episode are the roots for a lot of great stories. Matilda and Cranky’s wedding, Derpy’s search for a flower-replacement, Dr. Whooves’ emergency tailoring, Lyra and Bon-Bon’s spat, Octavia’s artistic frustration — all of these could make for a ton of fantastic stories.
But that’s exactly the problem; they could make for a ton of fantastic stories. But the episode only has room for one or two.
Ironically, in trying to do something different, bizarre, and unexpected, FiM fell prey to its most common problem; it tried to do too much in too little time. As a result, none of the stories have the time they need to be effective.
But imagine that they did — imagine that the primary actors in this were limited to (for example) Matilda, Cranky, Muffins Derpy, and The Doctor, with all the others as secondary characters — a few lines and roles, but no scenes where they’re the primary focus.
That could have worked really well. We could have gotten to spend some quality time with these characters, while they try to handle a (comparatively) mundane crisis in the shadow of the Bugbear attack. That could provide a much better story, and would still communicate the episode’s moral. But as-is, there’s just too many story threads being crammed into this episode, and they all lose their impact.
BUT:
All that said — for all its problems, all its flaws, and all the ways it breaks the rules of storytelling — I still praise this episode.
I do this for one very important reason; it shows a willingness to experiment. And with a show of this size, budget, and profile, that’s a pretty big deal; and it needs to be praised if we want to see more of it.
Those who regard “Slice of Life” as nothing more than pandering (whatever we decide that means) are viewing it in an oversimplified fashion. It’s also an attempt to collaborate — in some small way — with thousands of people. It’s an attempt to devote some time to “unimportant” characters. It asks the question “what does everyone else do while the heroes are saving the world?”, and actually tries to provide an answer. It features a one-note pet character delivering an existential monologue that is actually kind of thought-provoking. It invites the audience to ask ourselves; “which stories are worth telling?”
I want to see more experiments. I want to see more cartoons that do weird stuff. I want to see more big-budget productions trying things that are Simply Not Done(TM). And if the price is that 1 episode in 100 is a dud — well, frankly, that’s a hell of a bargain.
Great idea, execution was lacking. Keep experimenting, FiM Team. I’m stoked to see what you do next.
Want to know when I’ve thought of something new and interesting about the narrative techniques of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic? Yeah, neither would I, probably. But just in case, you can suscribe via email at the top of the page (right side), follow The Pony’s Litterbox on Tumblr, or follow me on Twitter.
AdvertisementsThese things are never easy for me and for my Brothers of the ‘Fin. You try to be stoic about it, but really, the idea of fellow submariners trapped under the waves is something that I certainly have nightmares about.
I don’t want to get ahead of things, and news stories such as the missing Argentinean Submarine, ARA San Juan, can move very quickly. Almost as soon as something is said, it is outdated by new information or is confirmed to be something not related. Given those parameters, and because I have been asked to comment, these are my thoughts. They are grim, but not completely without hope.
(1) They are on the bottom. This actually should be obvious, given that if they could have surfaced, they would have. The question as to where that bottom is and how deep it is as yet have no answers. But the ARA San Juan has sunk.
(2) There were reports of electrical problems. In fact, the reports are what officially prompted the Argentine Navy to order her back to base. There are spurious reports that she had an electrical fire and/or short circuit, but these are unconfirmed and more importantly, not verifiable at all until the submarine is found. Presuming she was submerged when it happened, how would her command know about it if she had not surfaced or contacted them since?
(3) There are reports today (11/21/2017) that she is nearing the end of her seven day air supply. This is a false hope. It is highly unlikely that she was 100% charged when the incident happened. How full her air banks were is obviously unknown, but it was unlikely to be at a full charge, given that she was most likely already travelling submerged due to the high sea state. While she could have snorkeled to recharge batteries and air, how likely is that?
(4) Even if she were at 100%, there are things that can be done to extend the air supply. Again how far they could stretch the air would be a combination of available materials and crew training. Seven days would be the theoretical limit, but it’s possibly to go beyond that time limit.
(5) The ship is powerless. The failure to use any equipment to communicate or make her presence known indicates a complete loss of the ability to operate her electrical equipment. (Stay with me here) If she could make noise, she would. Running her engines or using her active sonar or whatever. In trouble, she would want to attract attention.
(6) The crew is most likely incapacitated. Again, if they were not, they would be banging on the hull, releasing oil or debris, or even attempting an escape. They haven’t done so, which points to an inability to take any action.
(7) There is little support available in the South Atlantic. Unlike the Northern oceans, there is little need to monitor Soviet boats, so there are not a lot of hydrophone or SOSUS arrays in place. There are scientific sound gathering systems, but the time needed to assimilate their data will be too much. It may eventually help in the final search to locate the wreck.
(8) Whatever happened, happened fast. I can postulate several scenarios, from flooding while attempting to snorkel in heavy weather, to shorting in the battery due to flooding, to chlorine gas buildup to loss of propulsion while flooding to an electrical fire (which again, seems unlikely to me as I believe that they would have surfaced) to a hydraulic failure and jammed planes casualty. Anything really, we just don’t have any evidence to really even speculate with accuracy. But it clearly happened fast and it clearly was catastrophic. Anything less, they would have surfaced.
I, of course, have my prayers for the crew and the families, and to be honest, even myself. I can assure you that I have not slept well for the past few nights. I don’t mean to be depressing, certainly I hope for a successful recovery and the safety of the men and woman of ARA San Juan. But I am also a submariner, and I know the risks and the odds.
Hopefully ARA San Juan is the luckiest sub to ever sail the seas.
AdvertisementsThe Braves are pretty awful right now. While the pitching has remained solid throughout the season and the defense is pretty average, the lineup is a joke. Just how bad is this offense?
Get this: the Braves are currently on pace to score 599.8 runs this season. We'll just round that up to 600 runs to be nice.
The last time the Braves played a full season and scored less than 600 runs? That would be 1989 -- or 25 years ago.
For me, this is the worst offense of my lifetime. The same can probably be said for quite a few of you.
So when you think to yourself, "Man, this team sucks on offense" it's not just your imagination. This really is the worst lineup the Braves have put on the field since 1989.
Some other fun facts about 1989:
The Oakland A's won the World Series. (HEY! It could happen again!)
The San Francisco 49ers won the Super Bowl. (HEY! It could happen again!)
The Miami Hurricanes won the college football championship. (HEY! haha just kidding. #SEC #SEC #SEC)
Jason Heyward would be born on August 9. Mike Trout was born 728 days later.
The three most popular shows on TV were The Cosby Show, Roseanne and Cheers.
'Every Rose Has Its Thorn' was the No. 1 song on New Years Day 1989. 'Another Day In Paradise' ended the year at No. 1.
And this happened:
Happy Friday, you guys.For me, it’s not one particular message or adolescent incident that bothers me; it’s the weight of years of multiple messages and multiple incidents. It’s the knowledge that this will never be just one day, just one message, just one hateful person. It’s a chipping away of my sense of safety and my sense of self.
I have a 5-year-old daughter now. I want to prepare her for the inevitable leers and slights without making her fearful. I want to help her become the person she is meant to be, the person she’d form into without the influence of misogyny.
I can tell her what to do if a stranger approaches, teach her about pay inequity or warn her about sexual harassment. But we still have no good way to explain to young women and girls that they need to brace themselves for years of feeling like an object. I don’t know how to talk to my daughter about what all of these small moments of feeling diminished add up to, and what they might do to who she is.
We are in a powerful cultural moment for feminism. It might be the most powerful one the movement has seen. The mischaracterizations of feminists as man haters or humorless shrews are widely seen as just that, powerhouse celebrities are laying claim to the word, and the country may be on the brink of electing its first female president. When I started speaking on college campuses a decade ago, only a few women in the crowd would identify as feminists. Now when I visit, entire rooms of young men and women enthusiastically embrace the term.
It is a much better world for women today, which is precisely why now is the time we can and should talk about feminism’s unfinished work. It’s important that we see #equalpayday trend, or college activists take on campus assault, but these are largely outward-facing issues.
The only advice women seem to get on how to manage their internal lives in a sexist world revolves around changing our behavior: Try not to say “sorry” or “like” as much when we talk.
The feminism that’s popular right now is largely grounded in using optimism and humor to undo the damage that sexism has wrought. Despite the well-worn myth that feminists are obsessed with victimhood, feminism today feels like an unstoppable force of female agency and independence. It is full of positivity and possibility.US District Judge Andre Birotte Jr (Central District of California) heard a plea from 28 Yemeni-born US citizens, and ruled that:
1. Defendants and their officers, agents, employees, attorneys, and all persons acting in
concert or participating with them, are ENJOINED AND RESTRAINED from
enforcing Defendant President Donald J. Trump’s January 27, 2017 Executive Order
by removing, detaining, or blocking the entry of Plaintiffs, or any other person from
Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen with a valid immigrant visa;
2. Defendants, and Defendant United States Department of State in particular, are
hereby ENJOINED AND RESTRAINED from cancelling validly obtained and
issued immigrant visas of Plaintiffs;
3. Defendants, and Defendant United States Department of State in particular, are
hereby ORDERED to return to Plaintiffs their passports containing validly issued
immigrant visas so that Plaintiffs may travel to the United States on said visas; and
4. Defendants are hereby ORDERED to IMMEDIATELY inform all relevant airport,
airline, and other authorities at Los Angeles International Airport and International
Airport in Djibouti that Plaintiffs are permitted to travel to the United States on their
valid immigrant visas.ATLANTA -- Braves right-hander Luis Ayala was placed on the 15-day disabled list on Tuesday because of an anxiety disorder.
The move was retroactive to April 25. Right-hander David Carpenter was recalled from Triple-A Gwinnett in time for Tuesday night's game against the Washington Nationals.
Braves general manager Frank Wren said Ayala began feeling ill on the team's recent 10-game trip and was found to have high blood pressure. Wren said Ayala has been placed on medication to treat the high blood pressure and already is feeling better.
Atlanta acquired the 35-year-old from Baltimore on April 10 for minor league left-hander Chris Jones. Ayala was 0-1 with a 3.86 ERA in five games with the Braves, all in relief.
Carpenter did not appear in a game during a brief stay in Atlanta before he was sent back to Gwinnett on April 22.COLUMBUS, OHIO -- The Columbus Blue Jackets today announced that forward Sean Collins has been recalled from the Springfield Falcons of the American Hockey League and defenseman Cody Goloubef has been reassigned to Springfield, the club’s AHL affiliate.
Collins, 24, has recorded six goals and nine assists for 15 points in 46 games with the Falcons in 2012-13, his first full season as a professional. The 6-3, 184-pound center registered 30-26-56 in 136 games with the Eastern College Athletic Conference’s Cornell Big Red from 2008-12. Last season, he tallied a career-high 13-13-26 in 35 games before joining the Falcons at the end of the season and collecting 1-4-5 in eight contests.
A native of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Collins recorded 72-99-171 in 119 games with the Manitoba Junior Hockey League’s Waywayseecappo Wolverines prior to commencing his collegiate career. He was selected by Columbus in the seventh round, 187th overall, of the 2008 NHL Draft.
Goloubef appeared in five games with Columbus since being recalled from the Falcons on Feb. 4, tallying 1-0-1 with four hits and a +1 plus/minus rating. He scored his first career NHL goal vs. San Jose on Feb. 11. The Blue Jackets’ second pick, 37th overall, in the 2008 NHL Draft has registered 10-29-39 and 113 penalty minutes in 119 career AHL games, including 21-4-6-10 this season. Prior to turning pro, the 6-1, 190-pound native of Mississauga, Ontario played three seasons at the University of Wisconsin, collecting 12-25-37 and 138 penalty minutes in 118 games from 2007-10.
The Blue Jackets return to action on Tuesday when they visit the Pacific Division-leading Anaheim Ducks at Honda Center. Game time is 10 p.m. ET. Live coverage on FOX Sports Ohio begins with the Blue Jackets Live pre‐ game show starting at 9:30 p.m. The game will also be broadcast live on the Columbus Blue Jackets Radio Network, including flagship station WBNS‐FM 97.1 The Fan in Columbus, and online at BlueJackets.com.
Columbus’ next home game will be on Tuesday, Feb. 26, vs. the Dallas Stars. Game time is 7 p.m. Single game tickets for all Blue Jackets home games start at $26 and are on sale now at the Big Lots Box Office at Nationwide Arena, The OhioHealth Chiller Ice Rinks and all Ticketmaster Ticket Centers. Fans can also purchase tickets by phone at (800) 745‐3000 or online at BlueJackets.com, the official club web site, and ticketmaster.com. For information about full and partial season tickets and group ticket opportunities, call (800) NHL‐COLS or visit BlueJackets.com.(Reuters) - A Texas veterinarian facing animal cruelty charges for keeping a dog meant to be euthanized alive as a source for blood transfusions said on Friday he was too busy to put the pet down and made a mistake by not abiding by its owners' wishes.
Millard "Lou" Tierce said at a hearing in Austin of the Texas State Veterinary Board of Medical Examiners, that he is a changed man and will now euthanize a pet when an owner requests it. The board is deciding whether to revoke his license.
"I have no right to interfere with that," said Tierce, whose license has been suspended.
Documents compiled by the board showed a practice in disarray, with at least four pets that were supposed to be put down kept alive at the clinic.
Authorities were alerted to problems at the Camp Bowie Animal Clinic in April when a technician called the owners of a 5-year-old dog named Sid that was supposed to be euthanized in October 2013, and told them it was being kept alive for experiments.
Sid, a Leonberger breed that can weigh up 170 pounds (77 kgs), was brought to the clinic in Fort Worth in May 2013 for problems with its anal gland, board documents said.
After five months of drug treatment while staying at the clinic, its owners decided in October to put Sid down when the dog could no longer walk. They were told Sid had an incurable congenital spine illness.
"The (owners) and their son all told Sid good-bye after being told that nothing could be done for Sid's condition," the documents said.
Instead of putting Sid down, Tierce said he did not euthanize the dog because he did not have a freezer large enough to store the body and was too busy to find the time to bury the dog at his ranch.
Tierce said Sid was used for a single blood transfusion, but the dog's owners Jamie and Marian Harris told the Fort Worth Star Telegram newspaper that Sid was being used for multiple blood extractions and medical experiments.On August 31 of this year, nearly 200 celebrities had their private images hacked and released for the entire world to see. These images ranged from the normal day-to-day activities, to their utmost private moments – from nudity to sex. This event hit both mainstream and social media airwaves, flooding the online sphere under the hashtags #Celebgate and the #Fappening.
In response, both celebrities and non alike went into uproar, calling this breach of privacy a sex crime. Whether one agrees with the charge or not, it certainly raises the question of how we’re to define “sex crimes” in the increasingly growing technological age, and subsequently as we fast approach a Transhuman future.
A few days ago, Transhumanist author Zoltan Istvan had an article published on Vice’s subpage Motherboard, titled “The Transhumanist Future of Sex.” In this article Istvan ruminates about the current technological advent of sex in today’s market, alongside the future implications in a Transhuman future – anywhere from teledildonics to virtual reality sex play. And these are all perfectly legitimate topics to be discussed and fantasized, because, as we all can surely agree, sex is fun and technology plays a significant role in increasing those pleasures.
And seeing as how Istvan did very well in explaining all of the great things that will come as a result of Transhumanist sex, I see no reason to continue on that line. Instead I feel obligated in considering the negative implications that may arise as well – a Transhumanist future of sex crimes. After all, if anything tells us about the recent photo hacking of nearly 200 celebrities, it’s that crimes of the sexual nature may follow suit with that of exponentially growing advanced technologies.
It’s also worth considering the risks, not with the intent of preventing advanced technologies from being developed, but to ensure that we’re ready to address those risks if and when they materialize, consequently making said technologies all the more safe and efficient. So goes the importance of adhering to the proactionary principle.
Hacking will always be that double edged sword that anyone can wield for whatever reason – whether it be for innovative or nefarious purposes. I’m of the opinion that most hackers throughout the world are good, generous people with intentions only to ensure the overall safety of our planet and its inhabitants. However, this doesn’t negate the contrary, nor the prospect of cybercrimes to occur in our not-too-distant future. As we continue integrating our biology with that of the digital world, we make ourselves increasingly susceptible to being hacked. This isn’t news to us either, but is certainly a risk we all (willingly) take as a result.
When it comes to sex, the ability to hack into our sexual lives is becoming all the more abundantly clear to exist. In my opinion, the recent photo hacking of celebrities’ nude images and sex videos was indeed a sex crime. Another legitimate possibility could be the infringing of one’s sexual privacy with the use of drones. Earlier this year, in June, a woman in Seattle, Washington, wrongfully accused a man of using his drone to peek into her apartment window. Regardless of his intent, the prospect of turning drones into “peeping toms” is real.
Just a month before this incident occurred, I’d written of a similar scenario in a sexual cyberpunk poem of mine, titled “Real Girl,” that was published in the literature section of Rap Genius. The relevant excerpt of that poem is provided below:
[…]
In the top floor suite of a hotel left in ruins.
Drones overhead, snapping pictures of what we're doing,
Live-streaming missionary in a city of no missionaries.
A worldwide audience, online for the viewing.
[…]
Another strong possibility that may occur today would be the hacking into teledildonics, especially those equipped with haptic sensors. If either a man or woman is using a smart sex toy, and someone decides to hack into the device as they’re using it and starts manipulating it, even if for a brief moment, wouldn’t that be considered a form of rape? After all, the hacker would be partaking in a sexual act with another party, of whom didn’t provide consent.
In Istvan’s article, he notes that people will “use full body haptic suits… to experience full sexual immersion.” If someone were to hack into this suit and take control, the person wearing the suit will be left defenseless to the hacker’s perverse attack. Techno-rape could become a likely new category in the legal system in which our justice departments will have to consider addressing.
Again earlier this year, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina – a city not but 40 minutes away from where I live – a surgeon had developed what is called an “e-spot implant,” which would induce orgasms in female patients at the push of a button. The implant was engineered for women with orgasmic dysfunctions. And as great and beneficial as this implant may be, it still isn’t completely secure from being hacked.
The difference between the e-spot implant and teledildonics is clear: while haptic suits can eventually be taken off and smart sex toys almost immediately withdrawn, implants are embedded in the flesh and nearly impossible to be taken out without medical assistance.
Sex crimes won’t just occur, however, in the use of gadgets and implants, but may also occur with the sexual partners we’ve come to know and trust. Imagine, if you will, you’re having an intimate moment with a sex ‘bot in the privacy of your own home. Like most things electronic and connected to the web, regardless of location, they’re at risk of being breached by nefarious hackers.
If anyone were to breach the sex ‘bot’s operating system and manipulate it against your will, who’ll be to blame – the hackers or the robot? Can we even charge a robot for a sex crime?
I could go on as to the numerous means a person could commit a sex crime using advanced technologies, but I believe the examples I’ve provided thus far are substantial enough to cause concern. Again, my intent isn’t to force people to ban technologies from being used for sexual purposes. In fact, I believe such a response would be inappropriate and would come as a great disservice to what could potentially become a wonderful, new sex market for people.
Instead, my hopes are that, by pointing out the potential risks of committable sex crimes via hacking, we will discuss these matters more extensively and consequently take safety precautions to help mitigate said risks. In turn, Istvan’s Transhumanist future of sex will become all the more enjoyable, and most importantly safe.0 Woman's leg, arm amputated after donkey attack
A elderly woman who developed a flesh-eating bacteria from a donkey bite has reached a settlement with the farm where she was bitten.
Anna Maria Giacomi was feeding a donkey on a commercial farm in north Georgia in November 2015 when it bit her and dragged her into its pen. She said she had known and fed the donkey for five years.
"The donkey grabbed my wrist and started biting, chewing, crunching going up my arm," she said.
She was taken to the hospital developed a flesh-eating bacteria and had 11 surgeries in just two months. Doctors had to amputate one leg and one arm.
"I woke up with no arm and no leg. It was hideous," Giacomi said.
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Her attorney, Darren Tobin, said the hospital did not realize she contracted the bacteria until it was almost too late. He plans to sue for medical malpractice.
Attorneys reached an undisclosed settlement with the farm last week. They cannot identify the farm because of a confidentiality agreement.
Giacomi has since moved to Miami with her son.
"This is the worst things that can happen, really, this situation of mine. And if it happened to me, it can happen to anybody," she said.
Channel 2's Richard Elliot asked Giacomi's attorney what happened to the donkey. He only knows that it no longer lives on that farm.
© 2019 Cox Media Group.June 9, 2016 / Morsels The Revolution Will Not Be Consumed at Smorgasburg
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The message at the Pennsy, the new food hall atop Penn Station, is clear. | THEPENNSY.NYC
BY DONNA MINKOWITZ | Under normal circumstances, my reaction to the news that a new artisanal food hall had opened in the city might be rage. In the extraordinarily beautiful river park next to Battery Park City, new kids in town Le District and Hudson Eats are revoltingly overpriced and offensively underwhelming. ($15 for bad, small “Skinny Pizza?” $12.50 for a teeny bagel with a tiny bit of beet-cured lox at Black Seed?) And they replaced the perfectly good, cheaper eats you used to be able to enjoy in that complex (Brookfield Place) while looking out at the shimmery Hudson and listening to interesting free music and performance art.
I like the food at Brooklyn Flea, but its bigger offspring, Smorgasburg, is too crowded to enjoy, with diners competing madly for savviest-foodie-hipster status and for a sadistically small number of seats. (As with David Chang’s deliberately painful seating at his Momofuko restaurants, upscale food promoters are trying to train diners to accept ever-smaller and more uncomfortable spaces as the value per foot of city real estate goes ever up.)
Marcuse coined the phrase “repressive desublimation” to mean the pleasures that consumer culture promises you, only to have the supposed ecstasies of the Berkshire pork taco (say) vanish as soon as you take the first bite. Pleasures fade exactly this quickly at the Gotham West Market, the Plaza Food Hall, Chelsea Market — all the carnivals of fake-bacchanalian fressing. It’s easy (if you’re not poor, that is) to be swept away with excitement by the sight of all that quivering, umami, gleaming, exciting food. Smoked whitefish with rice from Ivan Ramen! Hibiscus doughnuts from Dough! Popsicles made from cherry blossoms! Wow! But when you finally eat them, the revolutionary pleasures they seemed to offer are compressed out of all existence by the crowded, uncomfortable, competitive space, the lackluster culinary skills of the food workers, and the pressures of doing what is in effect the unpaid job of Instagramming, tweeting, and blogging about the hyped-up food you just ate. In an age when it’s mandatory to have social media profiles and to build your personal status by any means necessary, we pay once for the artisanal grub and then a second time, by promoting it for free.
Nor at the Pennsy, Penn Station’s new yuppie food hall
There’s more. Alyssa Katz, an editorial writer for the New York Daily News who has covered real estate for decades, says luxury developers are using the upscale food halls and festivals to escalate gentrification in their neighborhoods. “There’s been a very deliberate investment by these developers” in yuppie food hubs, she says, for the express purpose of luring high-income tenants and buyers. In fact, Smorgasburg owners Jonathan Butler and Eric Demby say they were invited to set up shop on the Williamsburg waterfront by real estate developers who “were trying to sell [apartments in] their buildings.” And Uprose, Sunset Park’s anti-gentrification group, has sharply criticized Industry City, the “disruption hub” in Sunset Park whose food hall (including a Smorgasburg) is spurring yuppie relocation that will lead to the displacement of thousands of low-income Sunset Parkers.
Which brings me to the city’s newest food hall, the Pennsy. It’s a yuppie gastro-hub that has somehow opened on top of Penn Station, which could be described as the stinking asshole of New York City. In that benighted neighborhood, the brain-killing giant neon billboards make you want to die even more than the ugly, dark, and dirty confines of Penn Station underneath. In the station, of course, there is no food that could even be called tolerable, stranding the 600,000 who enter it daily to use Amtrak, the LIRR, and New Jersey Transit.
If ever there was a place in need of nurturing food, this would be it. The Pennsy is perched on top of the station’s entrance, on the slightly raised ground floor of the big building atop Penn Station’s rat-warrens. There’s a banner in the window noting that Pat LaFrieda (the king of trendy chopped-meat blends) has a sandwich stall inside, and a huge sign reading “EAT DRINK REPEAT.”
The first thing I noticed was that it is really nice inside, much nicer than most of the other food halls. There are actually fresh flowers on the tables (yellow lilies with blood-red streaks, on one occasion), and smiling greeters who truly made me feel welcome.
About those greeters, however: one of their functions is surely to keep away the visible homeless and other scruffy folk who can be found right outside the Pennsy’s doors, both within Penn Station and on the plaza outside it. Mary Giuliani (no relation to Rudy), a caterer who has developed the food hall in association with realty giant Vornado, told me that the hall is “Vornado’s attempt to start the change in the neighborhood.” The company owns a great deal of real estate nearby, she said, including the building that the Pennsy sits in.
Giuliani said she and Vornado were also thinking of the $20 billion Hudson Yards development when they created their foodie plaza, which is just two blocks away from that elite complex. Hudson Yards, which has such very wealthy tenants and anticipated condo buyers that that the place already has its own operational subway stop even though none of the residences has yet opened, is “the largest private real estate development in the history of the United States,” according to its developer.
To be fair to Giuliani, who owns the catering and lifestyle company Giuliani Social with her husband, Ryan, she also said she is making an effort to have the place be “cool but very inclusive” and maintain “diversity.” Said Giuliani, “Looking around at lunch one day, I saw all walks of life.” In a limited way, she has a point. While the poor (and, for that matter, most Penn Station travelers) are not buying food at the Pennsy, the hall was partly intended to draw attendees from events at Madison Square Garden. And though ticket prices at the Garden are stratospheric, people who are not wealthy have been known to pay them on occasion to see sports and concerts. They could do worse than to repair to this sandwich-and-vodka hall afterwards (a large bar anchors the Pennsy, along the back wall).
A note about logistics, however: the charming table-and-chair clusters provide wonderfully sufficient seating for lunch and dinner, but they would definitely be overwhelmed by the rush of people after a Knicks game. And there is a weird state of affairs with the bathrooms: they are hard to find, all the way at the back and then up an elevator or escalator. Even stranger, there are only two stalls in the women’s room. I saw cleaners there all the time, but one stall had a persistent smell of urine over several visits.
The half-welcoming, half-unwelcoming aspect of the hall (the bathrooms are surely situated remotely to keep homeless folks away) jibes with the reason an airy, friendly food mecca has suddenly opened on top of this disgusting transit hub. When is it that services suddenly appear out of nowhere in this city? When rich people are about to move in who, it is hoped, are in need of them.
So much the worse for them. As it happens, most of the food here isn’t very good. When I ate at the Cinnamon Snail’s astounding vegan food truck in the past, I found it magical. But here (where the chef, Adam Sobel, told me he rarely appears), a Beastmode Burger Deluxe ($10.95), made of “ancho chili seitan” grilled “in maple bourbon bbq sauce with jalapeño mac n cheese, arugula, smoke chili coconut bacon, and chipotle mayo,” tasted distressingly like a Big Mac. It was overwhelmed with something that tasted an awful lot like “special sauce” (the “chipotle mayo,” not spicy at all but plenty sweet). The mac n cheese bits, scattered on top of the burger, were the best part, though they didn’t taste of jalapeño. The Thai BBQ Tempeh with pickled red onions, Thai basil, and sriracha mayonnaise wasn’t much better. It was swimming in a different teeth-achingly sweet sauce ($9.95, plus $2.80 if you want it served over red quinoa pilaf instead of bread). But almost all the Cinnamon Snail’s food is organic, and some of the vegan doughnuts are outstanding.
At Pat LaFrieda, things were worse. Grandpa’s Meatball Sandwich ($12) tasted like something I might have gotten at my high school cafeteria. I didn’t try the lobster sandwich at the Lobster Press booth by the famous chef Marc Forgione, because it sounded like a terrible idea to press a lobster roll thin in a sandwich press and stick cheese on it ($18). But my friend’s lobster bisque ($9.25 for a small, plastic bowl) was oily, with an odd chemical aftertaste. My friend reported that he found only two chunks of lobster in the soup, and that some pieces of shell had made it into the bowl.
I didn’t get to try anything at the Little Beet, a so-called “100% guiltin’ free” booth that is part of a chain of gluten-free fast food joints. The best dishes I tried in the Pennsy were from Mary Giuliani’s own booth, Mario by Mary, for which she uses some recipes by Mario Batali as well as some of her own. The eggplant nonna ($11.02, breaded, fried eggplant with fresh whipped ricotta, scamorza, and tomato) was rich, umami, and napped with creaminess. Giuliani’s unusual rainbow cookies (called here “Venetian rainbow cake,” $3.68) were delicate and delicious. The La Colombe coffee, served at the bar in the back, was astringent and off-tasting.
The Pennsy, 2 Pennsylvania Plaza (33rd Street and Seventh Avenue); thepennsy.nyc or 917-475-1830. Hours are daily, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., with the bar open additional hours on some days. The hall is wheelchair-accessible via a |
Villa. He was a great player, very quick. People don't realise how quick he was. But I liked him. He was very quiet and just got on with his game. A bit like Kevin Moran – though he'd head the back of your head and there'd be blood everywhere.
"But Paul was a clever player. He knew exactly what to do and when to do it. And the other thing about him was he was very polite. He always said 'thank you very much' at the end of a game. A real gentleman. Him and Franco Baresi were the two hardest opponents I ever faced.
WORRY
"David O'Leary didn't really worry me, Tony Adams the same. Great players – but I didn't really worry too much about them. The ones who gave me the most difficult time were Paul and Baresi."
Rush believes the recent decision of Liverpool's owners to redevelop Anfield will, long term, prove the right one. "I think it's going to happen sooner rather than later," he stressed. "It's very important. There's something between 15-20,000 people on the waiting list for tickets. We need the bigger stadium. United have 76,000 every home game, Liverpool have 42,000. It's a massive difference on the finance side.
"And I'm glad we're staying at Anfield because a lot of people's ashes have been spread there. That's where the atmosphere is. You look at Arsenal. The Emirates is a great stadium but the atmosphere isn't there that they had at Highbury."
Liverpool to finish in the top four then?
"It's a possibility. We've certainly got to finish higher than we did last season. Realistic for me, at the start of the season, was a top-six finish. But then you get to a stage where you're saying 'hang on, everyone's losing here, anything can happen'."
And Rodgers still the right man for the job?
"I do believe that. He's a young manager, he's got to be given time and I think he will be given that time. I can see light at the end of the tunnel and hopefully, with one or two to come in in January, we'll take it to the next level."
Win One of Five Pairs of Tickets to Ireland v France - Click here
Irish IndependentShort-Term Plans
Disable new user registration (temporarily) - This has actually already been done. Unfortunately, there is no other choice with the current anti-spam measures failing. This will, at least, prevent new spam.
- This has actually already been done. Unfortunately, there is no other choice with the current anti-spam measures failing. This will, at least, prevent new spam. Update the forum software - The current forum software is woefully out of date (seriously, almost 4 years), and likely more vulnerable to spam and cyberattacks than it needs to be. I know for a fact newer versions include improved anti-spam features, so this will be a prerequisite to re-enabling new user registration. The difficulty is ensuring the updates go smoothly, as I have made some custom changes (adding the Solresol notes and colors, for instance).
- The current forum software is woefully out of date (seriously, almost 4 years), and likely more vulnerable to spam and cyberattacks than it needs to be. I know for a fact newer versions include improved anti-spam features, so this will be a prerequisite to re-enabling new user registration. The difficulty is ensuring the updates go smoothly, as I have made some custom changes (adding the Solresol notes and colors, for instance). Re-enable new user registration - Obviously, this will come after updating, but then we'll hopefully see a drastic reduction in spam (hopefully to none at all).
- Obviously, this will come after updating, but then we'll hopefully see a drastic reduction in spam (hopefully to none at all). Remove the Wiki system - Something has gone awry with the wiki system (probably nothing major,
honestly), but that software is also very out of date, and the setup is also very clunky. It wasn't used much, so I will redo the system in the future if there is demand.
- Something has gone awry with the wiki system (probably nothing major, honestly), but that software is also very out of date, and the setup is also very clunky. It wasn't used much, so I will redo the system in the future if there is demand. Take a more active role in Sidosi - This is really at the heart of the problem, and caused all of the above issues. I will detail how I will solve this problem more in the "Long-Term Plans" section below, but anything said on Sidosi will no longer fall on deaf ears.
Long-Term Plans
Resource List - Probably my first big project after fixing the spam and out-of-date stuff will be updating and redesigning the Resource List. I tried to emphasize the original sources in the Resource List, but since many of those sources are now gone, it's just confusing people. I will also look at updating the list with new resources.
- Probably my first big project after fixing the spam and out-of-date stuff will be updating and redesigning the Resource List. I tried to emphasize the original sources in the Resource List, but since many of those sources are now gone, it's just confusing people. I will also look at updating the list with new resources. Community Outreach - It's sort of a corporate-sounding word, but Sidosi is not the only community for Solresol. There is the Solresol Facebook group and the Solresol subreddit, but then there are several non-specialized conlang communities that most certainly have members interested in Solresol. It sounds vague, but I will do my part to build connections with these other communities, and see what mutual benefits come from them.
- It's sort of a corporate-sounding word, but Sidosi is not the only community for Solresol. There is the Solresol Facebook group and the Solresol subreddit, but then there are several non-specialized conlang communities that most certainly have members interested in Solresol. It sounds vague, but I will do my part to build connections with these other communities, and see what mutual benefits come from them. Website Design - The website's design has stayed pretty much the same since it was launched. I have several years more of knowledge and experience, so I will redesign the website and forums to look and function in a more modern way.
- The website's design has stayed pretty much the same since it was launched. I have several years more of knowledge and experience, so I will redesign the website and forums to look and function in a more modern way. Solresol Translator - Oh, the translator. That lengthy roadmap still stares at me, but again, with more knowledge and experience in hand, I should be able to confidently take on that roadmap!
- Oh, the translator. That lengthy roadmap still stares at me, but again, with more knowledge and experience in hand, I should be able to confidently take on that roadmap! Solresol Lessons - Building from what Garrison wrote, these lessons would serve as a sort of beginner's guide to Solresol, in the manner that many other languages are taught. I don't know if I will do this, if someone else will, or if it will be a community effort. I just want it.
Conclusion
I will not sugarcoat things: the state of Sidosi is not great. I let things fall by the wayside and didn't keep up even basic maintenance of the website. This has been more recently seen with the spam overload on the forums. Although I've kept slightly altering the anti-spam mechanisms every so often to keep the spammers at bay, that measure has obviously not worked. With the spam and no obvious activity from myself, it is not surprising that people may consider the website abandoned. Well, I want to apologize for making anyone, especially our long-term members, feel that way. With that, I want to share my plan of action to make Sidosi great again!Obviously, this is a lot to do, and it is why I broke things into two sections this time. Bringing a website "back from the dead" isn't easy, and doing everything else on this list won't exactly be easy, but I'm confident that my true return to Sidosi can bring a new age for Solresol and make Sidosi the premiere community to "learn".WASHINGTON — Lt. Gen. Ronald F. Lewis held a job that is little known beyond Washington. But his abrupt and public firing on Thursday called attention not only to a senior officer’s potentially career-ending scandal but also to the huge influence over military policy that his position, senior military assistant to the defense secretary, wields.
In a brief statement on Thursday, Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter said that he had dismissed General Lewis over allegations of personal misconduct. The statement provided no details about the allegations, but military officials suggested that the firing involved an improper relationship. Extramarital affairs are a crime under the military’s legal code.
The senior military assistant is in essence the defense secretary’s right-hand man. The assistant sees almost every piece of paper that crosses the boss’s desk, including some of the most highly classified intelligence reports produced by the government. The assistant also weighs in on everything from routine personnel matters to the planning of military operations around the world.
The position also involves serving as a guide, of sorts, for a civilian political appointee who must navigate and control one of the world’s most regimented bureaucracies, and certainly its most heavily armed. The assistant translates the acronym-filled lexicon of the military, tells the secretary who served with whom, and conveys which senior officer is seen by the rank and file as a real soldier (or sailor or Marine) and who is seen as a careerist with talent for managing up.In a year beginning with the notorious February military coup in Ukraine, also known as the Euromaidan revolution, the Ukrainian economy has come to the brink of default.
It has turned out that a $27 billion bailout, offered by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and multinational creditors to Kiev, will not be enough to bolster the anemic Ukrainian economy as well. However, new loans, requested by Kiev to keep its economy afloat will only exacerbate the situation, experts say, pointing to the fact that Ukraine, saddled with heavy debts, will not be able to pay them off in the forthcoming decades.
According to IMF chief Christine Lagarde, an expanded emergency package will amount to $40 billion over the four year period and will come via international creditors, including major Western powers, for instance Switzerland and the United States, the World Bank, the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).
The chief of the IMF clarified that the decision was made due to the fact that the Ukrainian regime has already carried out a string of tough economic reforms, particularly increasing gas tariffs for the country's households to 56 percent, adopting a flexible exchange rate regime, freezing numerous social programs and conducting "governance reforms" of state-owned enterprises.
The Ukrainian government is irresponsibly driving the nation deeper and deeper into a debt trap, analysts say, while the country's financial and industry sectors are facing tremendous losses unable to facilitate the growth of the state's economy. More than 50 percent of Ukrainian enterprises are unprofitable: over the last nine months the financial losses of large and medium-sized companies in the country mounted over $14 billion. Ukrainian GDP dropped by 7.5 percent. According to some estimates, Ukraine's external debt (including the debts of the country's enterprises) could reach $135.85 billion, with a debt repayment of $58.55 billion in 2015 alone. On the other hand, the internal war, launched by Kiev against the Ukrainian eastern region in 2014 has severely weakened the country's economy.
Making matters worse, the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) reported in November 2014 that the country's gold bullion reserves had diminished tremendously. Surprisingly, the NBU head provided no explanation where the country's gold has gone. Valeria Hontareva, the Governor of the Bank, admitted that there was almost no physical gold left in the vaults, adding that the amount of solid gold ingots barely covered one percent of the Ukrainian national reserves. The statement immediately sparked controversy among experts, since in February 2014 Ukrainian official gold holdings amounted to 42.3 tons, or 8 percent of the state's reserves. So far, over the year Ukraine's overall gold and foreign currency reserves reduced from around $17 billion to $6.42 billion, analysts point out.
Meanwhile, a sinister atmosphere surrounds the seizure of the country's high-quality arable lands by Ukrainian moguls and foreign firms, funded by the World Bank and EBRD. According to German lawmakers, some prominent Western corporations including Monsanto and DuPont have been involved into land-grabbing in Ukraine, using the ongoing military conflict as a cover. The state's arable territory comprises of 32 million hectares, however, about 17 million hectares have already come under control of transnational holdings.
As Kiev's prolonged the moratorium on land sales lasts until 2016, investors took out a 50-year lease on Ukraine's agricultural territories, planning to buy the lands, once the state ban is lifted. The Ukraine-EU association agreements open the doors to the liberalization of the state's economy and relaxation of its agricultural laws. While the West is obviously benefitting from the reforms, Ukraine's small and middle-sized farms have been put under threat.
Ukrainian experts and political activists point out that the corrupt regime of Viktor Yanukovych was replaced by another venal group. According to Tatyana Montyan, a Kiev-based lawyer and politician, the West is not interested in Ukraine's development: the 45-million nation could become the EU's economic rival. Using the longstanding turmoil in eastern Ukraine as a smokescreen, the Ukrainian moguls are exporting capital abroad instead of reinvesting money into the state's economy. So far, the country has no chance to recover, burdened with huge debts. Analysts underscore that the IMF has long been using its "debt trap" strategy, referring to the example of Greece and other European debt-laden countries.
The question remains, if the Ukrainian nation still believes in the success of Euromaidan revolution of February 2014Earlier today, polite and Canadian and polite Marc Hulet published his 2014 organizational prospect list for the Pittsburgh Pirates.
It goes without saying that, in composing such a list, Hulet has considered the overall future value those prospects might be expected to provide either to the Pirates or whatever other organizations to which they might someday belong.
What this brief post concerns isn’t overall future value, at all, but rather such value as the prospects from Hulet’s list might provide were they to play, more or less, a full major-league season in 2014.
Other prospect projections: Arizona / Atlanta / Baltimore / Boston / Chicago AL / Chicago NL / Cincinnati / Cleveland / Colorado / Houston / Kansas City / Los Angeles AL / Miami / Milwaukee / Minnesota / New York AL / New York NL / Philadelphia / St. Louis / San Diego / San Francisco / Seattle / Tampa Bay / Texas / Toronto.
Steamer Projections: Pittsburgh Batting Prospects
Below are the current 2014 projections for select Pittsburgh batting prospects. All projections have been prorated to 550 plate appearances (and 450 for catchers) for sake of uniformity. Defensive figures (denoted by Def) account both for positional adjustment and UZR, and are presented relative to league average. Note that, in many cases, defensive value has been calculated entirely by positional adjustment based on the relevant player’s minor-league defensive starts in 2013. Prospects are listed in order of projected WAR. The symbol # denotes the relevant prospect’s ranking on Hulet’s list. Figures might diverge slightly (although not signficantly) from those which appear on player pages.
Steamer Projections: Pittsburgh Pitching Prospects
Below are the 2014 projections for select Pittsburgh pitching prospects. Projections for starting pitchers have been prorated to 150 innings; for relievers, to 50 innings. Prospects are listed in order of projected WAR, which has been calculated by using kwERA — that is, an ERA estimator which utilizes only strikeouts and walks — so as to remove the vagaries of park effects, and probably also because the author has no idea what he’s doing. Listed ages are as of June 30, 2014. The symbol # denotes the relevant prospect’s ranking on Hulet’s list. Figures might diverge slightly (although not signficantly) from those which appear on player pages.
# Name Age Hand IP K% BB% kwERA kwERA- WAR 2 Jameson Taillon 22 RHP 150 19.0% 9.3% 4.15 107 1.4 6 Nicholas Kingham 22 RHP 150 17.7% 9.2% 4.29 111 1.1 3 Tyler Glasnow 20 RHP 150 21.2% 13.3% 4.36 113 1.0 10 Luis Heredia 19 RHP 150 16.3% 12.3% 4.83 125 0.2 14 Clay Holmes 21 RHP 150 14.0% 13.8% 5.29 137 -0.6
Notes
• It’s entirely unlikely that when he announced that the “last shall be first,” that Jesus of Nazareth was particularly concerned with Pittsburgh outfielder Jaff Decker. What one finds, however, is that Decker appears last on Marc Hulet’s collection of top-15 Pirates prospects and yet first among those same prospects so far as a WAR projection in 2014 is concerned. Acquired from San Diego in November, Decker has recorded considerably above-average walk rates in the minors — and, despite an unimpressive 42 wRC+, still produced a respectable 3:4 walk-to-strikeout ratio over his first 31 major-league plate appearances last year.
• Perhaps less prepared to produce wins in 2014, but still likely to record a significant number of them before his career is over, Gregory Polanco’s projection for the coming season is muted owing mostly to a combination of a low-ish BABIP figure and also probably to the haphazard positional adjustment he’s been assigned by the present author (which adjustment assumes time split between center field and a corner-outfield spot). Reports suggest that Polanco has added considerable muscle during the offseason. For that and probably other reasons, it wouldn’t be shocking to see his home-run rate increase.
• All things being equal, a high strikeout rate is better for a pitcher than it is worse. That Tyler Glasnow features the highest projected strikeout rate, then, among Pirates pitching prospects — a group which includes the celebrates Jameson Taillon, for example — is notable. Of course, in this case, all things aren’t entirely equal: over 111.1 innings at High-A, Glasnow recorded a 13.5% walk rate — a figure which is reflected in Glasnow’s less inspiring projected walk rate.Story highlights Survivor says his partner died three days before help arrived
Taiwanese couple had been missing since early March
(CNN) Two Taiwanese hikers have been found after going missing in Nepal for almost seven weeks, but one had died three days before help arrived.
Survivor Liang Sheng-yue was found conscious and with the remains of his partner, Liu Chen-chun, just before midday Wednesday and airlifted out of a ravine near the Narchet River in the Himalayas, according to rescuer Madhav Basnet.
Basnet, an official at Kathmandu-based Asian Trekking Agency and one of the three rescuers who found the couple, told CNN that Liang and Liu were hiking around the remote Ganesh Himal route in Dhading district, west of the Nepali capital Kathmandu.
Survivor Liang Sheng-yue was found conscious and with the remains of his partner, Liu Chen-chun, just before midday Wednesday and airlifted out of a ravine near the Narchet River in the Himalayas.
On March 9, the couple headed toward Langtang in Rasuwa district, but did not turn back when confronted with a snowstorm. They were not using a guide or porter, Basnet said.
After losing their bearings they fell 100 meters off a cliff into a ravine, where they took shelter in a small cave.
CNN Map
Read MoreDave Smith/Business Insider Apple has a new batch of emojis waiting for you in this week's iOS 8.3 update — but aside from the new icons and racially diverse characters, iOS now supports a secret Star Trek-themed emoji: the Vulcan salute.
If you want a simple way to tell your friends to "live long and prosper," here's how you can get Spock's signature greeting on your iPhone.
Open this tweet on your iPhone.
Copy the Vulcan salute emoji.
Visit your phone's Settings app, then go to the General folder, then the Keyboards folder
In the Shortcuts folder, select the "+" icon in the top right corner
Select "Phrase" and paste the Vulcan salute emoji
Create a shortcut name — a popular, easy-to-remember choice is "llap" — and click saveDuring the third GOP debate, candidates got feisty with the CNBC moderators. They took aim at the questions asked, at the "mainstream media" and at the moderators interrupting their answers. (Victoria M. Walker/The Washington Post)
The Republican National Committee announced Friday that it was suspending its partnership with NBC News for an upcoming presidential debate in February, moving fast as anger at CNBC's handling of Wednesday night's Republican forum boiled over.
In a letter to NBC News Chairman Andrew Lack, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said that their relationship for the debate, scheduled for Feb. 26 at the University of Houston, was on hold "pending further discussion."
The RNC has faced increasingly vocal -- and active -- dissatisfaction with the debate process from presidential contenders in the wake of Wednesday night's face-off, with candidates and their campaigns complaining that CNBC conducted the debate in "bad faith" and asked questions in an attempt to spark infighting. "We simply cannot continue with NBC without full consultation with our campaigns," Priebus wrote Friday.
In a statement, NBC News called the RNC's decision "disappointing."
"However, along with our debate broadcast partners at Telemundo we will work in good faith to resolve this matter with the Republican Party," the network said.
[The debate over CNBC’s moderators]
Priebus noted that a debate would still be held on that day and that the RNC would continue to work with another partner in the event, the National Review. But he did not say whether Telemundo, the only Spanish-language media organization hosting a debate in the Republican primary, would remain a part of the partnership.
The decision was generally praised by Republican campaigns, most of which have complained about the way the primary debates have been handled so far. Donald Trump even used his closing statement on Wednesday to take credit for negotiating a shorter debate time, so the candidates could "get the hell out of here." Like several other barbs aimed at the CNBC moderators, it earned loud applause.
"The campaign supports the RNC’s decision to suspend the debate on February 26th due to the total lack of substance and respect exhibited during Wednesday’s night’s debate," Trump's spokeswoman Hope Hicks said Friday. "We look forward to pursuing alternatives along with the RNC to ensure candidates are given ample opportunity to outline their vision for the future of our country."
A spokesman for Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Sergio Gor, also praised the RNC's move. "We hope networks and future moderators realize that what happened in Colorado should never have occurred," said Gor, whose candidate complained Wednesday night about a lack of speaking time.
Ben Carson's campaign, which was uneasy with Priebus's letter, had been working on its own effort to change upcoming debates. As far back as May, Carson had sent letters to the RNC chairman, warning that the candidate's large and diverse field was ill-served by the debate rules.
"The rules may be good for me personally, but they are not good for the process," he wrote then. "We are blessed to have many qualified candidates running for President. More than a typical debate format can handle. Surely we can find a format that allows every voice to be heard."
Since Wednesday, Carson had directed his team to work with rival campaigns on debate reform. A meeting of campaign staffers was set for Washington on Sunday -- and the RNC was not invited.
The Republican National Committee dumps NBC News from sponsoring a Feb. 26 debate of GOP presidential candidates, after a debate conducted by media partner CNBC was roundly criticized by the candidates. (Reuters)
"After the past few debate debacles, the campaigns are having constant conversations with each other about how to get this back on track," said Hogan Gidley, a spokesman for former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee. "How can we have a real debate when moderators are more interested in promoting themselves than in getting answers from the candidates? That's the cardinal sin of journalism, and everyone's sick and tired of it."
The meeting Sunday will also include aides for campaigns that have grown frustrated at their relegation to short "undercard" debates, with low ratings, based on national poll numbers that differ somewhat from the strength of candidates in key early-voting states.
"Central planning never works," said Kyle Plotkin, a spokesman for Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-La.). "Debates are a crucial part of the democratic process; we should have more, not less. The notion of limiting the number of debates was, and is, a bad idea. The RNC debate gambit was said to involve forcing the media partners to hold substantive debates rather than just a shooting gallery of nasty and unserious questions. It’s time to admit that did not work."
Early on, the choice of CNBC as a debate host had seemed like a victory for Priebus's avowed strategy of protecting Republican candidates from a "circus." Priebus, who is presiding over his second presidential cycle as RNC chairman, had claimed that biased moderators from networks like MSNBC would skew their questions and insult Republican voters. "[We're] creating a debate environment that would bring honor to the Republican Party," Priebus told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt this year, "not a debate environment spurred on by nefarious actors like Chris Matthews and others."
[GOP candidates tangle with one another — and CNBC — in a chaotic debate]
On Wednesday night, former Florida governor Jeb Bush's campaign manager, Danny Diaz, voiced his concerns to CNBC directly while the debate was still in progress. Diaz worried that CNBC's format and management of the debate disadvantaged Bush, who by the end had less speaking time than nearly any other candidate.
“I expressed my concerns with the amount of time that we’ve had. I think that’s pretty clear,” Diaz told The Washington Post then.
On stage, the candidates themselves were voicing their own complaints, at times scolding hosts over their approach, as the debate devolved often into cross talk and bickering between moderators and candidates.
Almost immediately after the event began, Donald Trump accused CNBC's moderator John Harwood of asking a mean-spirited question.
"Is this a comic book version of a presidential campaign?" Harwood had asked.
Later in the debate, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) seized the opportunity to excoriate the network.
"The questions that have been asked so far in this debate illustrate why the American people don't trust the media," Cruz said, to massive applause. "This is not a cage match."
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Campaigns protested loudly that CNBC had conducted a frivolous, biased event. Strategists for several candidates mocked the "algorithm" that they had been promised would be in use to make sure candidates got equal time. One strategist said that the candidates, going forward, would not agree to any future debates unless they vetted the rules first, a statement of mistrust in media outlets that have worked out the rules after candidates had already accepted.
"I think the moderators should be people who are clearly interested in getting answers, not in a political agenda," Ben Carson told The Washington Post. "Look, for example, at the Democrats. When they have debates, they don't have a bunch of conservatives to moderate it. That's only logical. We should be logical, too."
Even Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), widely perceived as the winner of the debate, joined the pile-on. "I thought it was a wasted opportunity, and, quite frankly, that’s what made it unfair, not just to the candidates but to the American people,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said on Thursday morning, adding that a network dedicated to business should have asked more questions about economic issues.
Wednesday's aftermath turned CNBC's hosts, including John Harwood and Becky Quick, into figures of conservative infamy. Some progressives were stunned by the backlash's speed. "CNBC is a business network, where the monologue that launched the Tea Party happened," said a flabbergasted Chris Hayes, the host of MSNBC's prime time show All In, in a Friday tweet.
But Carson is not the first presidential candidate to demand more sympathetic moderators, and Priebus -- who signaled quickly Wednesday evening that he was unhappy with CNBC's handling of the debate -- is not the first party leader to cut out a network. In 2007, before Fox News could hold any Democratic debates, progressive activists urged that cycle's campaigns to boycott the network. One by one, the candidates agreed to it. In a surprise move, Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) joined Nevada's Democratic Party in a statement canceling the debate that Fox News had scheduled for the state.
On Friday, Democrats did not seem eager to take credit for the precedent. David Axelrod, one of the 2008 Barack Obama campaign strategists who nixed the debate, said that candidates now lived in "an era when some outlets have consciously marketed their point of view," and that the situation was a complicated one.
"In the context of a party primary, it was not a mistake, given the strong feelings toward Fox among our supporters," Axelrod told the Washington Post. "As we saw the other day, you can't go wrong with media bashing of any kind among the Republican base. After all, CNBC is not exactly a bastion of liberalism, and yet the candidates scored with their attacks."
Priebus's full letter:
Mr. Andrew Lack Chairman, NBC News 30 Rockefeller Plaza New York, New York 10112 Dear Mr. Lack, I write to inform you that pending further discussion between the Republican National Committee (RNC) and our presidential campaigns, we are suspending the partnership with NBC News for the Republican primary debate at the University of Houston on February 26, 2016. The RNC’s sole role in the primary debate process is to ensure that our candidates are given a full and fair opportunity to lay out their vision for America’s future. We simply cannot continue with NBC without full consultation with our campaigns. The CNBC network is one of your media properties, and its handling of the debate was conducted in bad faith. We understand that NBC does not exercise full editorial control over CNBC’s journalistic approach. However, the network is an arm of your organization, and we need to ensure there is not a repeat performance. CNBC billed the debate as one that would focus on “the key issues that matter to all voters—job growth, taxes, technology, retirement and the health of our national economy.” That was not the case. Before the debate, the candidates were promised an opening question on economic or financial matters. That was not the case. Candidates were promised that speaking time would be carefully monitored to ensure fairness. That was not the case. Questions were inaccurate or downright offensive. The first question directed to one of our candidates asked if he was running a comic book version of a presidential campaign, hardly in the spirit of how the debate was billed. While debates are meant to include tough questions and contrast candidates’ visions and policies for the future of America, CNBC’s moderators engaged in a series of “gotcha” questions, petty and mean-spirited in tone, and designed to embarrass our candidates. What took place Wednesday night was not an attempt to give the American people a greater understanding of our candidates’ policies and ideas. I have tremendous respect for the First Amendment and freedom of the press. However, I also expect the media to host a substantive debate on consequential issues important to Americans. CNBC did not. While we are suspending our partnership with NBC News and its properties, we still fully intend to have a debate on that day, and will ensure that National Review remains part of it. I will be working with our candidates to discuss how to move forward and will be in touch. Sincerely, Reince Priebus
Chairman, Republican National Committee
Ed O'Keefe contributed to this report.They may not be able to jump those turnstiles like they could decades ago, but that didn’t stop The Warriors from coming out to pla-ay. In 2015, several members of the fictional Coney Island gang that somehow inspired real-life violence in the summer of 1979 reunited to recreate their iconic subway ride home to Brooklyn as part of a fan-organized event.
Rolling Stone took a ride on the Q with most of the gang’s original members, including Michael Beck (Swan), Dorsey Wright (Cleon), Terry Michos (Vermin), David Harris (Cochise), and Thomas G. Waites (Fox) to witness history in the remaking. The reunion did not go unnoticed by fellow straphangers.
The stakes weren’t nearly as high this time around, as The Warriors already knew the ending. Though in this case, they were met by enthusiastic fans upon their arrival in Coney Island (some from as far away as Scotland) not a gun-toting Luther and the rest of the Rogues.
"I just love being here with all the fans,” Beck told Rolling Stone. “I see kids coming here, eight years old, and I go 'How do you even know about this movie?’”
Kids: They can dig it.
[h/t Rolling Stone]The aim of the present study was to explore the impact of combined red light and casino-related sounds, with or without the presence of another participant, on decision-making behaviors, assessed with the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT). The main findings of the present research could be summarized as follows: In contrast to the control condition, participants in the casino conditions (casino alone, implicit and explicit competition conditions) did not exhibit slower deck selection reaction time after losses than after rewards. Moreover, participants in the competition conditions (both the implicit and the explicit) displayed lowered deck selection reaction time after losses and rewards, as compared to the control and the “casino alone” conditions. These results could not been explained by the intensity of anxiety, depression, impulsivity, competitiveness, sensitivity to loss and reward, as well gambling habits.
This study demonstrated that the combined effect of casino-related sound and red light modulate the reaction time associated with rewards and losses. In other words, we observed that participants in the control condition were slower after losses than after rewards whereas there was no difference in the three “casino-context” groups. This was the first time that the effect of the casino-related context on choice reaction time was estimated on the basis of previous choice-outcome. Indeed, previous studies (Stark et al. 1982; Dixon et al. 2007; Spenwyn et al. 2010) showed that fast sounds and/or red light increase participant’s betting speed when gambling, but independent of feedback contingency. In addition, in accordance with our hypotheses and previous research (Rockloff et al. 2011), we observed that performing the IGT face to face with another participant (with or without explicit instruction of competition) heightened the decision speed, independently of feedback contingency. Thus, our results suggest that gambling with others may be a key factor in increasing the betting speed while gambling within a casino-related context (induced here by the combination of casino-related sounds and red light). Nevertheless, because red light, casino-related sounds and the presence of pairs “mimics” accurately gambling-related environment, we cannot exclude that participants’ prior experience with casino settings (which might be low given the absence of gambling problem and the average young age of participants) played a role in significant effects observed in the present study. Similarly, participants’ attitudes and appraisals associated with casino settings are also likely to impact current findings. Further studies are needed to examine these issues.
The hypothesis that casino-related context would bias advantageous deck selection during the IGT was not supported, at least in this particular group of non-gamblers. Indeed, we observed no significant between-group difference on the profile of advantageous deck selection during the IGT (across the five stages of twenty trials). In addition, we observed no significant between-group difference with regard to deck response shifting after rewards and net losses. Interestingly, exploratory analyses showed that the mean of advantageous deck selection differ significantly from the chance level on the latter stage of the IGT only in the control group. Nevertheless, taken together, these results suggest that the impact of casino-related context may not impact deck selection directly. Besides, it also suggests that, even though a casino-related context may induce some behavioral changes in non-gamblers, these changes are not sufficient to over-ride the normal mechanisms of self-control, which consequently lead to disadvantageous behavioral decisions. Perhaps this explains why most casino visitors do not succumb to gambling addiction. In addition, it is noteworthy that the IGT may vary according to its level of uncertainty across trials (Brand et al. 2006). More specifically, selections during the second part of the IGT (trials 60–100) may be referred as decision-making under risk (i.e., situations of decision-making in which probabilities of reward and loss are known) because participants should have experienced the different win/loss contingencies enough to know which decks are risky and which are not (Brand et al. 2006). By contrast, the earlier blocks of the IGT refer to decision-making under ambiguity (i.e., situations of decision-making in which probabilities of reward and loss are unknown) because there has not been time for a participant to experience any of the win/loss contingencies during early deck choices (Brand et al. 2006). In this context, it is possible that gambling-related context has more impact on the latter stages of the IGT because a participant has to decide whether to take a risk or not, whereas, in the early stages of the IGT, deck selection is not yet associated with any explicit expected value. In this context, future studies should extend the experimental |
be impossible to give you an accurate address. You’ll see what’s going on once I tell you, as is the purpose of letters and things.
Maut let us sleep in his royal housing, which Slock and I did, but Cat opted to sleeping with Lawrence in his bungalow. She better acclimated to the environment and culture than me or Slock – she found herself a man, well, a birdman, but still somewhat of a man where it counts, and she found a job as the blacksmith’s apprentice, melting and molding weapons together all day, and when I’d pass she’d have black streaks drawn on her face and her hair would be frizzed and wavy and oiled. In two weeks she couldn’t have resembled Cat less – she was a new Cat, Catherine of Port Et Doon.
Slock and I? We just wandered and took easy work, like gathering meat or material, real drudgey shit. This made sense for me, as I am really no use to any functional society, but Slock could have done so much more.
Cat’s abandonment hit him hard. People as successful and always winning like Slock don’t handle rejection or quasi-rejection well, even when they deserve it. He’d hardly speak, wouldn’t crack jokes and only ate in the evenings. He went about his days moping and slouched.
Every couple of nights I’d notice Maut speaking in the town square to his occupant squatters, ecclesiastic and orating like some two bit friar, stood on a wooden chair, miming to the heavens, shouting about the Exodus after the Kingdom is eaten up, its flag added to the many-clothed confederation called Port Et Doon. And afterward he’d take some people aside who didn’t seem to understand his message and speak with them privately, convince them fully of his cause, their mutual purpose. Surprisingly he knew all of their names and all of their occupations. He knew their secrets and their troubles, what caused them to tremble at night and wake up punching the air. To Maut, the people who made up his community were the community itself, acting as surrogates to nation, the only way to move. If a single piece was missing or defective, he’d speak the defect out of existence. I was impressed and somewhat disgusted. Should I have valued their individuality or been happy they found purpose due to their lack of it?
Two weeks in Maut went hunting with us. An hour outside Port, Maut found a lummox (think a mix between an ox and some lazy fat porpoise) and slit its throat, tackled it into a field of glowing mushrooms and disemboweled it right there. He sloshed the guts, the kidneys and liver and intestines over a handkerchief and knotted them tightly to a felled fir branch. After, Maut sensitively picked flowers and roots and berries to ferment and flavor the meat with, finding patches of life in steel and dirt and long abandoned alleys.
“Feel free, oh sunny boys, to sing a simple tune,” sang Maut while cutting out the heart.
“You know that one?” Slock asked.
“Are you proposing a duet?” asked Maut, laughing.
“We feel free, oh master man, we will oblige you,” Slock sang back.
“That’s not free, my golden lads, if you sing what I say,” said Maut.
“It is free, old master man, for it’s only for today.”
After the hunt, we went to the local pub, entitled Port Pub’s Pub Port, stowing ourselves away near the back. There were only eight other patrons in the pub, seated at the center table, four of them humans, the other four human with the horns of rams.
Off they went, snorting dandelion fur. There they were, inhaling wicks of crystal miasma. Pouches full of the stuff. The cooks came in with their funny, filthy caps and put the food out — a goose, no head, feathers plucked, golden charred. Ripped in half before it even hit the table. Then the potatoes and the gravy, the carrots and leeks, the raspberries in cream, the ale, the wine, the minstrels who made me want to die with every dreaded word they sang. Chewing and drinking and chewing. Then the tobacco stuffed in pipes and blended together with resinous embers. Smoked, inhaled. Then back to snorting dandelion fur.
Maut snapped his fingers in the air. A droopy eyed barmaid rolled over to us, plopping three stale ales on the table, but I waved mine back and asked for mead instead, which she brought and it was sweet and honey’d and she cornered the glass with frettle-nectar before leaving and shaking her ass at us, perhaps implying there was some sort of hybridized service here at Port Pub’s Pub Port that made the barmaids whores and the whores barmaids. A man at the center table in a brittle wool coat and a stock cap flopped his trousers down to his knees and humped the leg of his table while shooting a deadly stare at the barmaid, his comrades pouring ale and milk down his shirt. A few of them zoned in around the pony-tailed lass and pushed her closer in.
“She’s gonna ‘get it,” the humping one said, barking and drooling and whiplashing his face, demonic, distorted, improperly human.
“Should we do anything about that?” Slock asked, tapping the hilt of Congress with his fingers one by piddly one.
“She’s used to it,” Maut replied.
Some schoolboys entered byway of the swinging copper doors at the front, shoving each other and mocking each other’s turning voices. Their knickers were sullied from rain and mud. Imagine that, coming from pretending you’re Maut in the mud with childhood friends to getting shit-housed in a whore’s trap to escape a materiality you’ve never been subjugated to in the first place.
They were bumped aside by a rushed Aeryn Otley wearing indistinguishable color, her cloak transmogrifying after each collected patter and only her shin-high riding boots maintained a uniform hue. The eight at the center and the boys at the front bolted around to look, investigating with their drunken, fucked eyes, and they all probably saw double, or swirls, or ghosts. Otley seemed relieved to have found us and sat and snapped at the barmaid, biting her fingernails and nipping at the ends of her scalp.
“You look bad, Otley,” I said.
“At least I looked good once,” Otley said. “But look, we’ve no time. Kingdom is come. Ebon Ackton and Domhall Cayhin are leading two battalions here as we speak and you can be fuck sure they want all three of us.”
“Won’t get past the gates,” Slock said, slurring, three ales ahead already. “Funneled at the entrance.”
“Do you know how big a battalion is? It doesn’t matter if they wreck Et Doon or not, they’re going to get in. They have a whole contingent of cannons at the ready and mostly brought archers, not cavalry. They’ll siege and starve us out.”
“No chance,” Slock said. “We’ll just get the gunners.”
“And mobilize in an hour?”
“An hour? How long have you known about this?”
“A few days, but they’re all through the streets, so I had to be careful. We need to leave.”
“No,” Maut said. He stood and left and we left with him, finding Ibyear and Zyen, who blew horns shaped like conches and the whole of port sped around, gathering rifles and the available cannons and whetstone-ing their swords and axes – men, women and children all fumbling and equal and happy to be doing so.
When they arrived, the sky grew appropriately black and thunder drummed above us, turning everything purpleblue for the moments it existed and a drizzling began, enough to annoy us but not flood or weigh anything down. A low banking fog coiled through the streets and the first riders at the gates emerged from it, led by Ebon Ackton atop his greyblue ox, fitted with crossbow, axe and sword, patch white brigandine fastened, blue chainmail leggings clinking after every hoofstep.
I wondered: Why Ebon? Where’s Setna Mactier, who was surely better suited to sieges? Ackton was never the best or even the second best of the Queensguard, a consistently average fighter with all the available armory, although a fairly good shot with a musketoon or crossbow, and not nearly as smart or politically well rounded as Setna, or Domhall, for that matter. He almost flunked out of the seminary for Gods sakes – unable to pass basic arithmetic without the aid of a tutor, whom he definitely fucked, as that was Ackton’s coup de grace in every instance – if they beat you, fuck them silly and then you win. Come to think of it, it’s true Ackton can wiggle his way into the pants of any conscious creature, man or woman, and has done so on many numerous unbelievable occasions, like the Xaddish Estate Fiasco, and when he bedded Mesmer’s cousin Ainsley after his initiation into the guardcore, and how he even got someone as closed and off put by everything as Valerie to spread her legs during the Tourney at Suryn.
And – fuck! – Gods! – God’s fuck! – he may be conquering Mesmer’s mesmerizing box at this very moment. They were always rather close and she’s been notoriously single during her tenure. Is he going to fuck us all into submission and tell us he loves us, just as he did with Valerie and Ainsley?
How does one fuck a blooming nation?
It’s possible only Ebon Ackton knows.
Ackton and twenty foot soldiers approached, the rest of the army hidden away in the glass jungle. Ackton came dangerously close to the gate and inspected it, lips fretting side to side, running a palm down the steel of the old planet carriages, inspecting his hand afterward like a dumbstruck idiot, which he was.
Helmo and Lawrence both revealed themselves, rifles readied and pointed. Ackton grinned at them, kicked the sides of his ox a bit and lifted his arms.
“Hail, friends. No trouble here,” Ackton said.
“Friend?” Helmo asked.
“Aye, friend. We’re friends from the Kingdom not far from here, looking for signs of life. Seems we’ve finally found it!” Ackton recited this as if he actually meant it.
“How can we be friends?” Helmo asked, pressing his rifle deeper into his shoulder.
“There are many ways, comrade.”
“What ways?”
“First we can introduce ourselves. Name’s Ebon Ackton. And you are?”
“Helmo.”
“Ah, noble Helmo –”
“Not noble Helmo – just Helmo.”
“Of course, Just Helmo –”
“No, not just Helmo, only Helmo.”
“Er, right, Only Helmo.”
“No, not only Helmo, Helmo.”
“Of course, Helmo. Of course. Pardon.”
“Why are you here?” Helmo asked.
“We’re an expedition, friend. Out to survey any living creatures available and within reach of Kingdom. Never expected to find actual sentience – and a township, no less, a good looking little civilization.”
“What do you want?”
“Well, friendship, understanding, mutually beneficial alliance – all of that.”
“Why?”
“Well, Helmo, because our good Kingdom wishes no ill on anyone. We only want peace with the planet and its peoples, of whatever variety.”
“Why weapons, then?”
“Strictly precautionary.”
“Weapons are a bad way to make peace.”
“Too true, friend, too true. But we’ve no interest in using them on thinking creatures. Say, you’ve a Queen or King? Some monarch?”
“No monarch. We’re a republic.”
“Huh – a republic. To you, what’s a republic?”
“Power to the people.”
“So no Gods given ruler?”
“No ruler has ever been Gods given.”
“Err, right. So may we have an audience with your chosen leader, then?”
“Tell me his name and then I’ll decide.”
“No idea of his name, but would love to meet him. Surely the leader of such a well to do township is a gracious and hospitable being, who wishes no bloodshed or battle, yes?”
“Aye.”
“Then what say you to an audience?”
“Leave your weapons by the gate and shackle yourselves.”
Helmo and Lawrence threw down the shackles.
“What of my men?”
“Of no concern to me.”
“They are my diplomatic attaché. Each is needed for the success of these talks.”
“The success of these talks is up to us,” Helmo said, lowering his rifle.
“Come now, Helmo, there’s no need to be unreasonable. We wish you no harm.”
“As many have said and lied.”
“But we’re not them.”
“Aye, you’re not them. Could be worse.”
“What will it take for you to open the gate?”
“Oh, it’ll take a lot.”
“Such as?”
“Hmm … bring me a writ detailing the unconditional surrender of your Queen and all the property and lands of the Kingdom forfeited to my people. And then I will open the gate.”
Ackton snickered and nodded his head, a sarcastic nod, and turned his ox around.
“So be it, good Helmo. So be it.”
Ackton rode back into the mist with his lackies and the entire Port stood still and waited, knowing this was not the end.
Night fell and we didn’t hear anything but the usual rustlings in the Chain. The rain dispersed and spat its final sheet, but the fog remained hugged to our ankles and wrapped up to our bellies. Slock and I traded stories with Helmo and Ibyear about our respective customs and we drank modestly to prevent any incidents, only enough to buzz and relax us.
Ibyear told us about his tribe before Maut conquered them, how they were a peaceful peoples with no interest in anyone outside themselves. They hailed from a range of mountains called The Suprastation, high in the Northeast, where they ate trout and fox and turtledove daily, and where the winters were so unfathomably cold your whole family would have to sleep pressed up against one another just for an inch of warmth, and sometimes that wasn’t enough. He told us of his wife, who Maut slaughtered, and his parents, who ran and certainly died in the mountains, cold and alone and without tribe. His wife was elephantine like him, but he described her as beautiful and mellow and longed for her spiced trout and the way she would look at him when they made love. He said Maut cleaved her in two or near two when she refused his rule. When I asked how he could so happily follow his wife’s needless murderer, Ibyear said:
“It’s a long road. The time we had together still exists somewhere, in the meadows, in the brush, in the stuff of life. The moments feel like they pass, feel like memory, but they never stop or go away. So in that sense she can never be gone and isn’t now.”
And it sounded good to me and I thanked him for his answer, but after I felt hollow, sick, knowing it was a platitude and knowing he only followed Maut because he feared the end and feared living without purpose, needed tribe for a worthwhile existence. I pitied Ibyear then. He didn’t even know what he lost and resorted to mystical nonsense comforts in order to trick himself into normality. Perhaps in a way we all do and I should pity all living creatures for the heads they lack.
Somewhere around 3 in the morning, some asshole from nowhere fired a flaming arrow in Port and this arrow stuck an unsuspecting boy no older than 20 in his throat. His exaggerated blue eyes jumped from his skull and he did not die right away, scampering through the marketplace with his scalp in flames, trying to scream but failing and finally he went down and a squad of riflemen stamped on his head to extinguish the fire only to get melted brains on their boots. Fuck.
The arrows rained, so most of us just headed to the gambling hall and barred the doors and pointed our rifles at the front. We easily fit five hundred riflemen in the hall. Helmo, Lawrence and a hundred other men stayed by the gate, firing blindly into the fog, our stupid vanguard.
Screams and only screams.
The howls of death and the cries for life, just like Hill’s Run.
Maut stood near the door, staff in one hand, pistola in the other. A vein of stress bunched at his forehead and wired itself behind his ears. Slock, Ibyear and Zyen readied themselves next to him.
“Your grace,” Slock said, putting a hand on Maut’s shoulder.
“What?” Maut responded, aggressive, turning, chewing his bottom lip.
“They’re going to starve us out. We have to go.”
“You’re free to leave.”
Otley joined them and repeated Slock’s concern. Maut pinched the bridge of his nose, foot tapping the carpet lightly, staff doing the same.
“What of the thousands here?” Maut asked.
“Listen, those bastards are going to keep volleying until they’ve no more arrows, and then the cannons are going to start and you don’t want the cannons to start on your head, your grace.”
Maut swiveled his staff’s weight toward Slock, but Slock caught the staff and held it in front of his chest, matching the strength of the swing.
“You’re a foreigner, Slock. And you too, Otley. You both can only understand the idea of this place, but you’ll never come from it. It’ll never be nation to you.”
Otley withdrew her mace and tapped it against the weight of Maut’s staff. Maut, confused by this gesture, lowered his weapon and his eyebrows shot up.
“This isn’t the nation of our people,” Otley said. “Yet we’re still here with you and not out there with them. What’s that tell you?”
“If what you say is true, then you’ll stand with me, defending the nation you chose,” Maut said, turning away from the conversation.
And so we did. We all did.
The gunshots and arrows subsided after an hour or so, as did the screams of dying. Clamor and conversation continued behind the door, footsteps running in every direction. A knock came on the door, which was Helmo and a few others rounding up the wounded. We all did our part to patch up them up, even me. There were a few ingredients in the casino kitchens to fashion the appropriate salves to stop the bleeding and I applied this to as many wounds as I could, although it was not nearly enough material and we had to resort to using cloth and shirts and the felt from tables as makeshift tourniquets, stripping it away with boot-knives in chunks. Maut even ended up using his own cape, tying it round the lemur-guard’s leg, propping the foot on a chair. The lemur howled for his lemur family, called out to his dead parents who he begged to meet again, and once the delirium set in he sang the anthems of Port, prayed for the long reign of Maut to continue until the planet baked over.
Total pandemonium in the gambling hall, M. At least two hundred wounded, another hundred fatally so. The disorganization made some impossible to save and the deliriousness of those fading into the next phase of existence made it impossible to decipher who needed treatment more urgently. Was it the man with the arrow in his shoulder or the man with the arrow in his thigh? How am I to know? I’m not a fucking doctor. By Gods, I must have said, I’m not a fucking doctor a thousand times. Why does everyone always assume gardeners are doctors? I am so much less useful than a doctor. Why do only I know this? What is wrong with people?
What was I doing? What have I done? Above and below the seas and across the oceans, people are born of their occupation, their lives and who they are is shaped by what they do and what they’ve done, the estimated value of ‘good’ they’ve accomplished in their relative positions. And I’ve only had mountains and valleys of genuine work, of scorning my existence because of my job, and the rest has been filled with what? Stealing from the dead and drinking and smoking barrels full and I oft wonder how my insides look after all the smut I’ve pumped in them.
Maut rounded up Otley, Slock, Ibyear and Zyen, zig-zagging through the bodies. I joined them even though I’m nowhere near as important. Maut shifted out of his panic phase and stepped nicely into his demanding general phase, formulating a plan without issue or re-thought.
“This is what we do. Small strike teams. None of these Veil-rats know the terrain, so pick them off one by one and they’ll go scurrying back to the gutters they came from.”
Slock and Otley agreed, as did I, but everyone ignored me like they should have done. So me, Slock, Otley, Ibyear and Zyen all went out the gates and back into the Chain, where storms of men were hid away and readied to murder us. They outfitted me with a rifle and thirty rounds of ammunition. Slock and the rest received significantly more, as they are significantly more likely to actually do something with it.
The moon did us no favors. The morning was black and figures of false tearing screeched gossamer psalms in my head. Wherever we went I swore I saw life when I didn’t, so paranoid and afraid I couldn’t stop my mind from wandering to the worst.
Beyond the initial stretch of cobble lied an intact building at least seventy five feet high, so we scaled it. I cut myself on debris at least ten times on the way up and my hands and arms looked worse and bled more than when I worked in the rose house with Mesmer.
At the top we could see everything. Domhall’s men broke up into pockets of 20 or 30 and did most of the slaughtering so far. They packed themselves close and used the piles of glass for cover. Ackton and his men stationed themselves further south, occupying an entire city block, at least a couple thousand, the bulk of the close up fighting force.
Instead of prematurely entering the fray, we made our way back to Maut and rounded up two more teams, one led by Helmo, the other led by Zyen, each made up of five men with rifles and flares. On our way out, four men and four women volunteered to snipe the bastards from one of the many hard to reach vantage points in the Chain, so we outfitted these eight men and women with casks of black powder tied to their bellies, so if they were ever approached or surrounded, they could simply martyr themselves and take out some Veilers at the same time.
Then I had the most horrible thought (and really I should say “I” no more birthed the thought than the Gods birthed me, in that the thought arose from nowhere and wasn’t triggered by anything tangible, only appeared from the ether of broken, misremembered symbology we refer to as past). Where’s Cat? I didn’t see her in the gambling hall or courtyard. Oh Gods, for Slock’s sake and Cat’s sake but mostly Slock’s sake (and my sake, too!), don’t let her be dead. The last thing she should be is dead. Let her be alive and aloof and strange and hating me as ever.
We scrambled to the same vantage point, Slock, Ibyear and Otley taking point ahead of me. On the way there, Slock lagged me behind purposefully and said,
“You shouldn’t tag along.”
“Why not? As much a body as any of these.”
“Olwin, you’ve more chance of being a corpse than the freshest greenhorn within a hundred miles. Don’t do this.”
“Slock, I’ve never done a semi-brave thing in my life.”
So he let me do this, you know, this, which is sitting atop a ruined building in a city built by Gods-knows-who, now run and occupied by a band of feckless ingrates, aiming a gun I hardly know how to fire at my former countrymen, some of whom I know fairly intimately, and only left me behind because I abandoned them first.
The starting volleys began not fifteen minutes after we settled into position. Only seven of the eight fired and I worried over the eighth woman or man. The smoke from the rifles gave away their position, squiggling brief notes of white chalk in the air. Ackton’s men heard the shots from the south and wagoned their cannons over, huffing infantries armed with musketoons and bayonets and halberds, wheeling the cannons in groups of sixes and sevens. By the time they got in position, the smoke still lingered, so the cannon-men loaded the iron balls into the barrels and shot them into the sides of already disaster’d buildings, the sixth shot felling one of the targets entirely, transforming the surrounding area into a living sphere of dust and smoke and little almost imperceptible dots of parchment. This gave the rest of us a brilliant opportunity, so we started shooting, aiming at nothing.
Men dropped.
Alternations of disorganized steps.
Soused bodies like garden beds.
Mercurial rain. Flummoxed horns.
Alarms no one followed.
My mind stopped thinking in sentences. It thought,
Mother.
Bread.
Click.
Bam.
Help.
Some archers tried to retaliate, and a few squads tried to climb the buildings, but each was picked off before they got too close. They died embarrassingly in exaggerated, unearthly positions, slouched on stairs, bent over storefront windows, spread flat and invisibly crucified.
The eighth woman revealed herself, scuttling down the avenue Ackton’s men occupied, jumping and screaming and firing her rifle at them, absconding off into a dead ended svelte alleyway and stopping two thirds of the way through, adjacent to two partially standing buildings on their last legs. Some fifty men chased her and when they reached the midway point between them and her, she shot the floor and it erupted in fire and she looked up and aimed, shooting only once. She hit a few bricks which collapsed, exploding as they did, the building losing its already shaking balance and toppling over them, jettisoning a tunnel of dust-smoke toward Ackton’s men, blinding and shrouding and bubbling to the sky. The six remaining gunners took this opportunity to move and so did we, to a largely still intact parallel building. Me, Otley and Slock burst into an empty apartment on the 14th floor and aimed out the windows.
I fired most of my remaining shots here, figuring we were running out of luck and figuring we would never get as close as we were now. Most of Domhall’s men had vanished or were already killed, thanks to the eighth woman’s martyrdom. They were recovering from the smoke, coughing up bits of their lungs with tiny shards of glass in the residue.
“I’m out,” Otley said, so we made way back to camp, picking off a few archers on the way, heads and chests popping in watermelonesque pink and dashing across the lowdown window panes of the buildings. Lawrence opened the gate for us and Slack ran to him and shook him.
“Where’s Cat?” Slock screamed, slapping Lawrence in the beak. Lawrence shrugged and tried to push Slock off, but Slock kept slapping his stupid beak and asking for his wife. Lawrence provided no good answers.
Slock steamed ahead of us, manically checking tents, peeking in and out so quickly he wouldn’t be able to tell it’s her anyway. After checking fifteen or so tents, Slock fell to his knees and pounded his fists into the ground and the blood from his knuckles drew across his face. He screamed, sobbed, both at once, and he kept saying,
“What have I done, what have I done, what have I done?”
I put my hand on his shoulder and he latched onto it with his own and he sobbed himself into bloodlust, into the Slock I’ve known since eight. He scraped his nails along the veins in my hand. I did not move. In my stillness and silence, I let him know he was more a brother than my own, more family than the one I left in the Hills of Fountains, more important to me than every idiot nation combined. I squeezed his shoulder and he stood, hugging me, head buried in my chest. Lovingly I patted circles on his back.
Once he finished, he grabbed both my shoulders and shook me and there once again was that unbeatable Slock grin, the grin of permanent victory, of always winning ‘cause there’s nothing else to do, and if you don’t win, you lose, usually horribly, and who wants to lose?
Slock smacked me once on the back, hard, and said,
“Sorry, old friend. I lost myself.”
And I said,
“Don’t apologize.”
And Slock said,
“I am going to kill so many poor, stupid cunts.”
So we entered the casino and relayed the situation to Maut. He was still next to the dying lemur-guard, whose name I never learned, feeding him the last of his Sun’s Rest mead-brandy, humming softly in his ear, petting the black-white scruff behind his neck.
“If that’s how it is,” Maut said.
And then a bright red firework-flare popped in the air above the bulwark and rained its glitter ash onto us. I had seen that before. It was the calling card of Setna Mactier, and it was exactly how he beat back the Revolters last time.
Domhall and Ackton set it up. Setna knocks it down.
Maut, Zyen and Ibyear rounded up the remaining militia and positioned them circularly along the wall, with another contingent of shield bearers scrunched in the middle of the colony. Formed in a square around the shield-men, we positioned eight wagons, each of which had ten to fifteen riflemen as cover.
Gregorious stood atop the wall and peeked round each quadrant of space with his scope and before long he shouted back at us,
“Ten thousand, ten thousand easy!”
And I knew it was at least that many — the march, the steady clink-clank procession of steel studded boots, the anxiety inducing pastiche of huffs and grunts and crusade-tested baying. I climbed up next to Gregorious, a long lost courage sweeping over me and took his scope from him.
Setna Mactier led the march, in a newly fashioned Tusked helm, the ivory spotless, auroral, probably plucked from one of the few remaining mammoths in the Kingdom. He wore the armor he always wore – the white-dyed ebony mail, draped in the cloth flags of the Kingdom, the guard quarter, the alchemist’s guild, the merchant’s square, the Queenscore. Today, Setna Mactier represented them all, trailed by thousands of men and a few hundred cannons, all packed into the narrow streets. I couldn’t even see the deep grey of the asphalt, only bodies and dust.
Slock and Otley joined me on the front wall and took turns peering through the scope. Both of their faces dropped. Otley careened her neck back, unblinking at the cloud, guffawing so loudly and obnoxiously I’m sure the approaching army could hear her and only her.
“What’s so funny?” Gregorious asked, each word wetter than the next, popping out of his mouth, almost.
“No, Greg,” Otley said. “It’s, ‘What’s not funny?’ That’s the question.”
“Aeryn, we’re all going to die,” Gregorious said.
“So? That’s kind of funny when you think about it.”
“No it’s fucking not!”
Otley strolled down the stairs holding her guts, barely able to contain herself. Slock spat over the wall and turned to me. He opened his mouth to speak but no words came out, so he found someone else worth speaking to, someone like Maut. I followed.
Maut bent over one of the sides of the wagons, a rifle pressed to his chest and another two swung round his shoulders.
“What now, Slock?”
“Two suggestions, your grace.”
“Mhm?”
“First: total surrender. I don’t prefer this option, but it’ll save the lives of your people. Second: go through the sewers, at least send the children and the infirm.”
“Where’s the stand and fight option?”
“Only an option if you want everyone here to be slaughtered.” Slock said this so matter of factly it sounded cruel, uncaring, and perhaps it was. Maut ground his teeth. He must have done this often when stressed, as his left canine no longer held any sharpness and rounded at the bottom.
“I like you, Slock.”
“I like you too, your grace.”
“You want what’s best for my people. My brothers. Me. Thank you for that.”
“But?”
Maut paused.
He studied the departed chassis of his colony, the carcasses of his flock.
“They’re better off dead than living under a Queen like Mesmer. I’d rather them die now than stagnate for the rest of their time. Do you see why?”
And before Slock could answer, Setna blew the horn of the Kingdom, a ringing forever pitch reverberating through the cracks and abandoned alleys, sounding off like a thousand mosque bells, gluing itself there in the Chain glass and the detritus where millions perished, a call for more end, a constant stuck tone spelling out blood and cut throats and crimson soaked rags hanging on the backs of mothers and daughters and sons.
Maut had no interest in retreating and stayed close to the wagons. Soon the army’s heels bordered the gates and the soldiers buzzed about, unable to acquire any adequate organization or holding pattern thanks to the thinning cobble path. Setna yelled out at us beside the gate:
“We wish no harm to your peoples and care not for your sovereignty. Keep it if it means so much to you. We only call for the retrieval of Sir Casimir Slock, to be fitly judged by the crown of his birth. What say you?”
I could have died from the internal laughter. Every man, woman and child turned their gaze to Slock and rubbernecked him to oblivion. What did he matter, after all? This foreigner! How could he be worth all this trouble? All these lives? Kick him back to where he comes from. He’s been moping in port for a couple of weeks and has done hardly anything and yet they want him so badly? This mook?
Yet, the one who ended up standing for him was none other than Maut Et Doon, who relayed to his people:
“Do we kill him?”
No one answered.
“Do we kill those who’ve entered our home on their own accord?”
No one answered.
A cough or two.
The clacking of oxen hoof on the other side.
Soldiers breathing.
Metal scraping against metal.
Spitting and drinking and the pops of cherried pipes.
“Do we abandon those who’ve bled for us? Is that what we are? Would it be justice to give up a man who became brother? Who slew his own to become one of us?”
“No,” Ibyear shouted from a few meters away. “Casimir Slock is kin. My brother.”
“Aye,” Zyen said to the crowd, standing next to Maut. He raised his lionish paws, humanlike but covered in reddish fur, “As he is mine.”
Soon the rest of the crowd followed and cheered for Slock, now an accepted member of the community, no longer some foreigner to throw out. And all I could think was: why weren’t they also calling for my judgment? Is that how unimportant I am in the scheme of things?
“Forget the gardener.
All he can do is garden.
And he can’t even do that particularly well.”
“Good,” Maut yelled. He raised his staff and rifle above his head. “Now kill them and kill them all. We kill and we kill and we die for the triumph that is Port Et Doon, a nation of nations, the Kingdom of Multitudes.”
The guns started. The arrows started. Men climbed over the walls, Veilers propping up ladders only to have them kicked down and shot to splinters. Me, Slock and Otley set up one of two of the Port’s cannons, lighting the wick as quickly as possible, all three of us shielding our putty skulls as the thing fired, barreling into a crowd of climbing men and sending them flying, an aggregate of severed limbs and sunbursts of dark red.
They fired cannons back at Port and it was all over – there were too many of them, both men and cannons, and Slock could not match the allegiance of Port.
Smoke caressed every available volume of air. I couldn’t see five feet in front of me, so I grabbed on to Slock’s shoulder and didn’t let go, foxtailing as closely as possible. We headed to the back wall, behind the throne room, which granulated and tumbled when a stray cannonball struck its side. Slock and I both flinched.
Terror. That’s all I saw. Women and men not wanting to kill but killing anyway.
Two soldiers no older than twenty rushed Slock and I, short swords stuck out at their waists. Both thrusted at Slock, but he waved Congress once in front of them and leapt back a couple feet, whipping one of the boy’s in the throat. Without thought, Slock latched a palm onto the other boy’s neck and squeezed. Slock kicked the boy’s knee inward, snapping it back, the bone peeling through the skin and gushing a torrent of black. The boy passed out from the pain and Slock dropped him.
We continued on, all the entropy and anarchy and tumult suffocating us, not allowing an inch forward without having to watch some poor sod die. I turned and swung the garneted saber blindly, connecting to an old man’s collarbone, and it felt boney and callous |
the guides and the overall organization of the climb. Good team building skills. Also the concern for team safety over the goal to summit. That takes a lot of skill and knowledge and leadership...and courage. Jon M.
The learning, the guides, and the views! Andy M.
Learning new skills that I will use on future adventures and completing a huge personal challenge Alison L.
The guides. RMI has such awesome people working for them. Greg N.
Guides were awesome. Casey provided insight on the details of planning and preparing. This was my third trip and this was the best coaching I've received from RMI Guides. Fred C.
Start to finish loved everything 100% But the best thing was sitting on top of the summit and thats thanks to the kick ass guides! Tina H.
The depth of experience of the guides, the fact that they anticipated issues that would come up and gave us all the information we needed to know to understand how to make the climb safely, but without letting worrying about these safety concerns get in the way of having fun. Calvin S.
the attention to detail the guides provided. They all did an excellent job in making sure the climbers were prepared for the trip. To be honest, I enjoyed the whole thing. It exceeded my expectations and I will definitely be going on another climb with RMI in the future. Fernando C.
i will recommend RMI to anyone i meet, you guys are top notch. what i liked most about our trip is we were treated like family, not customers. it was like i had 3 brothers guiding me up the mountian. Kyle M.
Trip was great! Overall RMI is a great operation and i will absolutely be doing another climb with RMI. thx Joe S.
Guides, beer in Ashford. It was nice to do something where everybody was in a good mood all the time; from our Guides, to the people manning the stores and bar. Ashley E.
I was incredibly satisfied about the overall program. I am impressed with the knowledge and endurance of the guides and I have total respect for them and the rest of the staff. I loved being there and I felt encouraged. Lauren R.
The guides were great and I could not have succeeded my goal of reaching the summit without them. The trip was very well run and organized, and the guides made it a lot of fun. Jeanne C.
Besides being able to summit, I really appreciated the guides expectations of the climbers. It was extremely well structured and all of the guides were very pleasant. Kevin S.
Thanks for a great climb to the full team! Richard W.
Clear instructions and guidance leading up to the climb. EXCELLENT guides, Mike, Joe and Paul were amazing. They made the trip. Jeremy E.
The guides are unbelievable. They know what they are doing at all times. They can chat and make jokes but the moment it's time to get serious, they take over the scene and everyone falls in line. And despite the imminent danger of being on the mountain, I felt safe the whole time.I would trust my life to these guides. Sandra M.
The trip surprised any of my expectations. I was really taken back by how much good information I received. From route info, to body adjustment. Overall all three guides were exceptional. I am beyond thankful for their willingness to work with each person and ensure that everyone felt comfortable. I've done nothing but highly recommend RMI expeditions to friends and family. I could have no done the trek without RMI. Hands down an amazing experience. Thank you! Amelia T.
Thank you for a memorable experience. The entire RMI property is well maintained and exceptionally organized. I enjoyed how everything a person needed was within walking distance on the RMI property. I look forward to booking with you again! RMI made it look 'easy.' Thank you!! Ryan R.
I enjoyed talking to the guides the most. Their wealth of mountaineering knowledge and personal attention made this trip memorable. Daniel W.
Every minute on the mountain! Te-Yuan H.
Finishing!! it was rigorous and personally challenging, but to see my son climb almost to the summit was very rewarding. Joel K.
The views! Overall positive environment that gave you the space and encouragement to push yourself. Diana R.
Overall, I really enjoyed the whole program and got a lot of value from every part. Loved the whole thing. I worked hard to get ready and my expectations were definitely met. RMI is a quality outfit and it shows at every level of your operation. Your guides know their stuff - they are skilled, passionate, dedicated and patient. We also lucked out because the other climbers were so wonderful - a really compatible team, very considerate and supportive. Deirdre G.
I learned a ton about mountaineering. Always felt safe. Matthew B.
The guides showed the power and importance of being positive, no matter what. I returned to my clinic this week committed to live that way, and already doors are opening in my relationship with my staff that I never thought could be opened. I am better for having had this experience. Benjamin W.
Just being on the mountain among like minded people. Jason S.
The most important thing for me was safety and I never thought I would feel as comfortable on the upper mountain as I did. During the climb I wasn't sure I'd make it up and consistently told myself this was the only mountain I would ever climb - now I'm planning my next trip! Katie M.
The mountain speaks for itself, but the guides are the real hero's at RMI. You look at the photos and pay your fees thinking about summiting a mountain. But we clients don't walk away from the mountain having conquered anything. If we're lucky the RMI guides have been able to help us reach our goals and then bring us home safely, but make no mistake that none of us were able to climb that mountain without the RMI guides making it possible. We read about those professional climbers with branded gear and full page spreads in Outside or Climbing magazines, but I came away from this climb knowing that it's the guides that make this sport a reality for people like me. I'm eternally grateful to them for that service and look forward to continuing to climb harder and bigger mountains with their guidance. Shane K.
I really enjoyed climbing with the group and the guides. Everyone had a great personality and attitude making it very enjoyable even for those of us who aren't regular climbers. Good people are so hard to find, I think you're lucky to have a group like this one. Jonathan W.
Thank you for providing ordinary people an opportunity to do something extraordinary! Sam H.
Aside from the breathtaking views on the mountain and attempting to accomplish a lifelong goal, it was mostly learning to climb with my two friends who came with me on the trip and building a trust/friendship with the guides. Chris J.
That despite the horrible weather, the RMI guides, Walter and Adam, continued to keep focused on getting as many of us safely to summit as possible - even though well less than half of the team made it, and even with the terrible wind, cold, and precipitation.. Michael S.
Honestly it is hard to pick out one thing I enjoyd the most about the trip. If I was to pick one thing it would be short changing other aspects of the trip. The guides were excellent, the views were great, and the overall introduction to the sport was amazing. Joshua W.
Aside from reaching the summit and feeling a massive sense of achievement, I also enjoyed meeting the other members of the team and the guides. I felt lucky to be in a position to learn so much from guides that have such extensive experience. Our team as a whole was a great mix of people and i'm sure it is a trip none of us will forget in a hurry! Adele M.
Geoff, Hannah and Katrina managed to take a guy that literally lives 11 feet above sea level and turn him into a guy that is already plotting his next mountain adventure, with RMI of course. This endeavor came at an absolutely critical time for me, personally. I needed something that would help me build confidence and self awareness. Geoff, Hannah and Katrina pulled me and pushed me to reach limits I never knew I could. For that, I am eternally grateful and will never forget. Scott C.
The Mt. Rainier four day summit climb truly surpassed all of my expectations! Casey, Paul and Walt are truly experts in their field but were still able to break climbing skills and techniques down to a format that someone who had never touched an ice axe, crampons or climbing harness in their life could easily understand and employ. Their number one priority was always the team's safety but they strongly encouraged every single person to work to 100% of their true potential (note this was often greater than what an individual believes their potential to be). Thank you guys for getting us up the mountain and believing in us! The extended RMI team was also fantastic. From the preparation emails, to the rental pick-up, to the transportation - the organization couldn't have been better. I will definitely be recommending RMI to friends and look forward to my next adventure with the RMI team. Amanda B.
Can't thank you enough for the experience! Two years ago I came with my 2 sons (who both summited) and I was unable to do so because of a calf injury I'd sustained a month before the climb. This trip, which honestly could have gone either way do to weather or my ability, ultimately allowed me to reach the summit and thus "live the dream" with my sons and family going forward. A special "shout out" to Tyler Jones for his special "reassurance" that he projected to this old climber that in large measure propelled me to the summit! Thanks again! Ron S.
I just want to thank RMI for giving me the knowledge and ability to successfully, and safely summit Mt. Rainier last week. Our rope team leader, Kel did a fantastic job of keeping us alive, and making sure we were doing the right things on the mountain. I shocked myself when a member of our team began to fall, and immediately heard the word "falling!" Come out of my mouth as I dropped to the team arrest position. Being 100% sure we had all the right gear, and a guy like Kel to answer any questions made all the difference in the world as compared to the "learning from my mistakes" method I'd previously employed. There were several times I felt like a toddler looking for his father to tell him what to do, and Kel always had the answer. Big thanks to him!I would also like to thank Bridget who made the decent from Camp Muir in the very back of the pack with a member of our team who was having a particularly rough go of it. I know her words of encouragement really helped him make it to the bottom, which after all is the real goal, no?In any case, thank all of you so much. RMI will always be the first place I look for my next adventure. You guy rock! David H.
I think the whole experience was truly remarkable and I really enjoyed the camaraderie within the group. Even though we were only together a few days it felt much longer. Making it to the summit was obviously very enjoyable but it honestly would have been just as fun if we had to turn around early. Robert T.
"A huge thanks again to Casey, Paul, and Walter for safely guiding our group to the summit and back. Your level of professionalism, knowledge, enthusiasm, and concern for our safety completely blew me away. It was very obvious to me that each of you are extremely passionate about guiding. I learned so much over the past few days and very much appreciate the enormous effort that each of you contributed to make it a fun, educational, and thoroughly enjoyable four days. I look forward to climbing the next peak with you and RMI... after I recover from this trip of course :-)" Paul M.
I loved how much I learned, even about things that I thought I knew about. Also, i was blown away by the scenery and beauty of Mount Rainier. Gordon C.
"The education received - have done many hikes before, but learning correct ice axe and crampon techniques, as well as a few rules of thumb on safety conditions - in addition to being an amazing overall experience, it was also very educational. I plan to do multiple additional climbs with RMI in the future." Tom L.
The guides enthusiasm and love or the outdoors and the mountaineering experience Kylen R.
Looking back at the experience (and pictures) I am amazed at what was accomplished. Not once was I fearful or did I feel that I was asked to do anything dangerous. The guides were incredibly intuitive to how high each person could reach, without placing themselves or the group in danger. I cannot say enough good things about the guides I encountered. Clark H.
Just an overall great experience. Reaching the summit was probably my most enjoyed moment. Although we were only there for a few minutes due to the weather it was still really exciting. Matthew R.
I enjoyed the leadership of the guides, the commentary and education about the mountain that they provided, and fact that we pushed on through some interesting weather near the summit. Matthew D.
The overall experience was amazing. The guides did a great job at doing their best to look after everyone on the team throughout the climb and always checked in to see how people were doing. This made every one feel safe and comfortable and they made sure those who were capable were going to summit. Mara M.
The rush of adrenaline on summit day (or night) when you're gearing up to get it. Climbing over deep crevasses, watching the sun rise on the high mountain...the summit is pretty cool too! The whole experience was epic. Will G.
The flow of the whole operation made everything very seamless and easy. Everyone was so professional and well trained. Great experience. Seth T.
Obviously the climbing, but the skill and professionalism of all the guides was absolutely incredible. I wish I dealt with people that skilled and professional everyday in my day job. Charles G.
Brent's leadership and willingness to share his experience, the education was worth the trip. Outstanding! Chris C.
The majesty of the mountain! Brodie W.
The experience, once in a lifetime type adventure. J.J. D.
Getting up at 1am and climbing in the night is the most memorable experience. Hopefully next year it is seeing the sunrise from the top of the mountain. Jason B.
I enjoyed setting a goal, being disciplined to get in shape and then attempting the climb. I also thoroughly enjoyed the group of guys I trained and hiked with. Ryan H.
I didn't make it to the summit, but still felt a sense of accomplishment. now I have a better understanding of what and how to train- perspective Martin P.
Great climb, great people. Peter K.
I enjoyed the being taught all the essential climbing strategy. I enjoyed the'rest time' at Muir that allowed the group to get more comfortable with each other and take pictures/relax. Tommy M.
The guides were great and the people I met were outstanding. Fred C.
Great Guide staff. Had tons of fun. Very informative and would want the same guides on my next climb with RMI Randolph C.
The experience Lukas L.
I liked the bonding with the guides and other team members. The sunrises and the sunsets. Looking at the stars while sitting at 12000'. Lou Whittaker coming over at our climb wrap-up and sharing stories. Christopher R.
Getting to 12,700 feet! Just the overall experience. Meeting people who have similar passions. I have climbed 2/3rds of the Colorado 14ers, but this was far and away the best mountain trip I have had. Even better than my 14-hour day on Longs Peak. Kerry J.
Professional and thorough in guiding us all the way to the top. Scott B.
Whatever the difficulty, I keep remind myself that I am in a beautiful environment Chrystel V.
Learning and getting a chance to climb with great guides and other climbers. Greg C.
The overall challenge and adventure with a team. As this was something new to me (mountain climbing), having a set agenda in mind helped immensely. Nico F.
We stayed at the bunkhouse and having everything available at that one location was great. Hats off to the crew at the rental shop! They were always willing to help, explain and demonstrate anything. Plus they were always there by 7am or before! I like punctual people! You have a very organized and smooth running operation. Our guides are "keepers"! Danny T.
This was my second time on a mountain within two weeks (after Mt Baker) so I actually pulled myself out of the summit attempt. My reason were both personal (probably too soon after Baker) and also just observing the weather patterns that were prevalent Graham E.
the guides were great and the mountain was awesome Matt B.
The commitment to getting out and getting up the mountain. Phil L.
Great structure, I was constantly challenged, but never overwhelmed. Even though we weren't able to summit, this was still an incredible experience, and I look forward to my next trip. Patrick G.
time with my sons and best friend Bill M.
I really enjoyed my time being outdoors and challenging myself. The guides were excellent. Chelan L.
Being able to experience the mountain and enjoy a rewarding and education outdoor adventure. David S.
The guides were badasses. They took us all the way up to 11,600' even though they could have easily said that there was not hope of leaving muir. Matthew O.
The over all team building practices you employ. The importance of that and safety combined. The guides were extremely encouraging and fun to work with. Albert W.
I loved the experience of being up on the Glaciers, learning new techniques, and I really loved Zeb, Hanna and Steve. They were excellent and even though we were stiffed because of bad weather on the Cleaver, I had a blast. I can't wait to go back and do more with RMI. Nathaniel W.
I loved the overall experience! The training sessions really put me at ease and the two day climb was structured and the communication excellent of what to expect. The intensity at wake up was a bit much--60 mins goes really fast, but the guides were supportive and helpful. Intense decisions after Disappointment Cleaver were tough as well--but again the guides did well. I loved reaching the summit. It was an amazing experience all the way around. Stefanie H.
pretty much everything about the whole experience. Well maybe not the outhouses so much, but at least they are there. Mike H.
The experience with friends. Ron S.
I enjoyed the instruction on mountaineering skills and being out in this world class environment.I enjoyed the professionalism of most of the guides and how they freely shared their knowledge and expertise. Dawn T.
making the summit, pushing myself through limits Steve B.
Very impressed with RMI. I most enjoyed the dangerous and difficult conditions during our summit attempt, with 70mph gusts and significant rock fall, plus a crevasse fall. They were intense moments, but highly memorable. The guides were great (especially Mike King), and the training and whole experience was superb. Daniel W.
Learning new skills and the challenge of climbing the mountain. Jeffrey P.
I enjoyed participating in the climb in a safe environment created by the guides with people that I really enjoyed. Cambria N.
Looking back, the best part wasn't summitting or the technical aspects or even the scenery. It was getting to be on the mountain with such a great group of people, both guides and fellow climbers in our group. Part of that was luck of the draw, but it was also a result of the efforts of Nick and Jake in setting a tone for the group early on. (Megan reinforced that tone when she arrived on day three, so she deserves some credit here as well.) Christopher H.
I will go out of my way to recommend RMI. Zach C.
Meeting fellow outdoor enthusiasts. Learning all about necessary mountain skills. Anna V.
The guides seemed extremely competent, allowing me and my friends to focus on the physically demanding part of the climb. Taylor W.
The guides are what make RMI excellent. I actively recommend RMI to everyone I know! Jeremy F.
I had a thoroughly enjoyable time. Below is what I enjoyed the most:-Learning about the ins and outs of climbing Mount Rainier.-The camaraderie that our group had from the get-go.-Having stayed at the bunkhouse, everything I needed was within walking dThis recipe for peanut butter pecan bars is very simple and very easy to make. It is a low carb, high fat recipe and it consists of real ingredients.
Pecans are the lowest carb, highest fat nuts, but if you don’t want to use pecans you can always replace them with some other nuts. If you change the nuts make sure that you always adjust the carb count.
You can use crushed pecans, pecan halves or pieces the final result is always delicious.
Ingredients:
-2 cups pecans
-½ cup peter pan creamy peanut butter
-½ cup of organic extra virgin coconut oil
-1 teaspoon of pure vanilla extract
-1 tablespoon torani sugar free vanilla syrup
Preparation:
*Measure the pecans into 4 individual dishes: ½ cup per dish. You can use smaller plastic food storage containers.
Combine ½ cup of peanut butter and ½ cup of coconut oil. You can use large glass measuring cup with a pour spout so you can mix and pour easily.
*Warm the two mixtures in a microwave just enough to melt both so that you can stir them together. Heat for 25 seconds and stir, then for another 25 seconds until it’s soft and creamy. Add the vanilla extract and the vanilla syrup and mix well.
*You should have about one cup of the coconut oil/ peanut butter mixture in the measuring cup. Measure out ¼ of the mixture over each of the pecan dishes. Stir just enough for all the nuts to be covered.
*Put the dishes in the refrigerator to set up.
Note: because the bars are large, half of one bar is a serving.
Nutritious facts:
There are 3 net carbs per serving and 91% healthy fats, or 6 net carbs for an entire bar.Location aware resources allow your application to interact with the physical world and they are ideal for increasing user engagement. Although many mobile apps use them, the topic of this tutorial is a feature that is often overlooked, geofencing.
A geofence is a virtual perimeter set on a real geographic area. Combining a user position with a geofence perimeter, it is possible to know if the user is inside or outside the geofence or even if he is exiting or entering the area.
Imagine a university app that can tell you which colleagues and professors are currently on campus. Or an app for a mall that rewards regular customers. There are many other interesting possibilities that you can explore.
In this tutorial, you learn how to use geofences on Android by creating an application that shows the user a notification when they enter or exit a geofence. It helps if you have previous knowledge of Google Play Services, the Google Maps Android API, or IntentService. If you don't, then you can still follow along, but you may want to do some research about these topics after reading this tutorial.
1. Geofences on Android
On Android, there are several ways to work with geofences. You could even create your own implementation to work with geofences, but it is easier to use Google's GeofencingApi.
This APIs is part of Google's Location APIs. It includes Geofence, GeofencingRequest, GeofenceApi, GeofencingEvent, and GeofenceStatusCodes. In this tutorial, we use these classes to create and work with geofences.
Geofence Interface
Geofence is an interface that represents a geographical area that should be monitored. It is created by using the Geofence.Builder. During its creation, you set the monitored region, the geofence's expiration date, responsiveness, an identifier, and the kind of transitions that it should be looking for.
To keep power consumption to a minimum, it is recommended to use a geofence with a radius of at least 100 meters for most situations. If geofences are located in the countryside, you should increase the radius to 500 meters or higher to make sure the geofences are effective.
Geofence Transitions
GEOFENCE_TRANSITION_DWELL indicates that the user entered the area and spent some time there. It is useful to avoid multiple alerts when the user is entering and exiting the area too fast. You can configure the dwelling time using the setLoiteringDelay parameter.
indicates that the user entered the area and spent some time there. It is useful to avoid multiple alerts when the user is entering and exiting the area too fast. You can configure the dwelling time using the parameter. GEOFENCE_TRANSITION_ENTER indicates when the user enters the monitored region.
indicates when the user enters the monitored region. GEOFENCE_TRANSITION_EXIT indicates when the user exits the region.
GeofenceRequest
The GeofencingRequest class receives the geofences that should be monitored. You can create an instance by using a Builder, passing a Geofence or a List<Geofence>, and the kind of notification to trigger when the geofence(s) is created.
GeofencingApi
The GeofencingApi class is the entry point for all interactions with Google's geofencing API. It is part of the Location APIs and it depends on a GoogleApiClient to work. You will use the GeofencingApi to add and remove geofences.
To add a geofence, you call the addGeofence() method. It monitors the given area using the settings passed to the GeofencingRequest and shoots a PendingIntent when a geofence transition, entering or exiting the area, takes place.
To remove the geofence, you call removeGeofences(). You can either remove the geofence using its request identifier or its pending intent.
2. Creating a Geofencing App
In this tutorial, we create a simple application that monitors the user location and posts a notification when the user enters or exits a geofenced area. The app consists of only one Activity and an IntentService. We also take a quick look at GoogleMap, GoogleApiClient, and FusedLocationProviderApi, and we explore some caveats of the geofence API.
Step 1: Project Setup
GeofencingApi is part of Google Play Services. To access it, you need to correctly set up your development environment and create an instance of the GoogleApiClient. Create a new project with a blank Activity, edit the project's build.gradle file as shown below, and synchronize your project.
Step 2: Permissions
We need to set the correct permissions to create and use geofences. Add the following permission to the project's manifest:
Starting with Android 6.0, the app asks for permission at run time and not during the installation. We address this later in the tutorial.
Step 3: Creating the Layout
The project consists of one layout, the MainActity layout. It contains the device's current latitude and longitude, and a GoogleMap fragment that displays the geofences and the user's position.
Since activity_main.xml is pretty straightforward, I want to concentrate only on the MapFragment element. You can take a look at the completed layout in the source files of this tutorial.
Step 4: Google Maps API Key
Since we are using a MapFragment, we need to set up and initialize a GoogleMap instance. First, you need to obtain an API key. Once you have an API key, add it to the project's manifest.
Let's begin with the GoogleMap instance. Implement GoogleMap.OnMapReadyCallback, GoogleMap.OnMapClickListener, and GoogleMap.OnMarkerClickListener in the Activity class and initialize the map.
Step 5: GoogleApiClient
To use the GeofencingApi interface, we need a GoogleApiClient entry point. Let's implement a GoogleApiClient.ConnectionCallbacks and a GoogleApiClient.OnConnectionFailedListener in the Activity as shown below.
Step 6: FusedLocationProviderApi
We also need to access the user's current location. The FusedLocationProviderApi interface gives us this information and allows a great level of control of the location request. This is very important, considering that location requests have a direct effect over the device's battery consumption.
Now, let's implement a LocationListener. Check if the user gave the application the appropriate permissions by creating the Location request and display their the current location on the screen.
It is important to address that the LocationRequest created above isn't optimized for a production environment. The UPDATE_INTERVAL is too short and would consume too much battery power. A more realistic configuration for production could be:
Step 7: GoogleMap Markers
Our Activity needs two different markers. A locationMarker uses the latitude and longitude given by the FusedLocationProviderApi to inform the device's current location. A geoFenceMarker is the target for the geofence creation as it uses the last touch given on the map to retrieve its position.
Step 8: Creating a Geofence
At last, it is time to create a geofence. We use the geoFenceMarker as the center point for the geofence.
Next, we create the GeofencingRequest object.
We use a PendingIntent object to call a IntentService that will handle the GeofenceEvent. We create the GeofenceTrasitionService.class later.
We also draw the geofence on the map as a visual reference.
The startGeofence() method is responsible for starting the geofencing process in the MainActivity class.
Step 9: Geofence Transition Service
We can now finally create the GeofenceTrasitionService.class mentioned earlier. This class extends IntentService and is responsible for handling the GeofencingEvent. First, we get this event from the received intent.
We then check if the kind of geofencing transition that took place is of interest to us. If it is, we retrieve a list of the triggered geofences and create a notification with the appropriate actions.
I have also implemented a few helper methods to make the implementation of the class easier to understand.
3. Testing
Testing on a Virtual Device
It is much simpler to test geofencing on a virtual device. There are several ways to do this. In Android Studio, open a virtual device and click the more options button in the bottom right.
In the Location tab on the left, enter the coordinates for the location.
I prefer to use telnet commands to control the virtual device. To use this, you need to connect to the device from the command line using the following command:
The device port is shown in the virtual device window. The device port is usually equal to 5554.
It is possible that you need to authorize this connection using your auth_token, but the command line shows you where it is located. Navigate to that location and copy the token and type, auth [YOUR_AUTH_TOKEN].
You can now set the location of the device by running the following command:
Conclusion
Geofencing may be a great addition to your app as it can considerably increase user engagement. There are lots of possibilities to explore and you could even create a sophisticated experience using indoor beacons, such as the Estimote. With indoor beacons, you know exactly where the user has passed in, for example, a shopping mall.
Adding Geofencing to a project is simple, but we need to keep power consumption in mind at all times. This means that we need to carefully choose the size of the geofence and the update rate because both directly impact power consumption of your application.
Testing is therefore very important to get a realistic idea of the power consumption of your application. Also consider giving users the option to disable geofencing altogether if they don't want or need this feature.Exports rose for the third straight month in November, recording a growth of 2.29 per cent, though the trade deficit shot up to about two-year high of USD 13 billion mainly due to increase in gold imports.
Exports of engineering products rose by 14.10 per cent, petroleum by 5.73 cent and chemicals by 8.3 per cent compared to the same month last year, according to official data released today.
Imports too increased by 10.44 per cent to USD 33 billion.
Rise in gold imports by 23.24 per cent to USD 4.36 billion in November pushed the trade deficit to a two-year high of USD 13 billion as against USD 10.33 billion in the same month last year.
It was in November 2014 when trade deficit hit a high of USD 16.86 billion.
Exporters body FIEO said that although growth is encouraging, uncertain global conditions still remains a challenge.
"Though the sentiment still remains low in the global market, factors like US Fed rate hike and demonetisation have also in some way added to the woes of the exporters which may be seen in the figures of coming months," FIEO President S C Ralhan said.
The country's merchandise exports during April-November period of the current fiscal too recorded a growth of 0.10 per cent to USD 174.92 billion.
Imports, however, contracted by 8.44 per cent to USD 241.1 billion, leaving a trade deficit of USD 66.17 billion as against USD 88.57 in April-November 2015-16.
Oil imports last month grew by 5.89 per cent to USD 6.83 billion. Non-oil imports rose by 11.7 per cent to USD 26.18 billion.
Since December 2014, exports fell for 18 consecutive months till May 2016. Shipments witnessed growth only in June this year, but again slipped in July and August. Exports started recording positive growth from September.Bhutan's gift to its newest royal is something that will benefit the entire country. To celebrate the arrival of baby Prince Gyalsey, residents of the Himalayan kingdom planted 108,000 tree saplings throughout the land, the BBC reports.
In Buddhism, a religion practiced by over 75 percent of the Bhutanese population, trees are a symbol of health, longevity, and compassion. All 82,000 households in the nation planted a tree of their own to represent a prayer for the young prince. Volunteers planted an additional 26,000 trees to bring the total up to 108,000, another nod to an important Buddhist symbol. One hundred eight is the number of defilements that block the path to enlightenment, and planting 108,000 trees is meant to signify a cleansing act.
The nation has a history of making ecology a top priority. According to Bhutan law, at least 60 percent of the land must be under forest cover at all times, a number the country currently exceeds by close to 15 percent. The country also holds the Guinness World Record for most trees planted in one hour.
[h/t BBC]The New Annotated H.P. Lovecraft edited with a foreword and notes by Leslie S. Klinger, and with an introduction by Alan Moore Liveright, 852 pp., $39.95
1.
For adolescents, something about horror never goes out of style. They often feel an excited disgust upon learning how things really are, and their disgust is merely a notch away from the more thoroughgoing pleasures of horror. It is the closest they can come to the sublime.
Every teacher of creative writing in every American college and university is no doubt familiar with the tendency of young people, usually young men, to concoct gruesome narratives that take place in an edgily unspecified locale. Mayhem, awkward sentences, paper-thin characterizations, and complicated weaponry vie for the reader’s attention. But always there are the aliens, organic or machinelike or both, and always the accompanying rage and revulsion.
The authors of these horrific fictions sit in the back of the classroom avoiding eye contact, rarely speaking to anybody. Shabbily dressed, fidgety, tattooed, hysterically sullen, they are bored by realism and reality when not actively hostile to both. When asked about their reading, they will gamely mumble the usual list of names: Neal Stephenson, Stephen King, J.G. Ballard, and Philip K. Dick. But the name that I have heard most often mentioned in these litanies is that of H.P. Lovecraft, whom they revere. He is their spirit-guide.
And they should not be dismissed. Two horror classics were written by teenagers: Mary Shelley began Frankenstein at the age of eighteen, and Matthew Gregory Lewis wrote The Monk (1796) in ten weeks at the age of nineteen. John Berryman thought it more authoritative about damnation than Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus.1
As for Lovecraft, who died in 1937 at the age of forty-six, he never really grew up. “Adulthood is hell,” he once wrote in a letter. Like his character Randolph Carter, “he wanted the lands of dream he had lost, and yearned for the days of his childhood.” His fiction’s familiar condition—fear inspired by shock—is characteristic of early adolescence. Wild imaginings and panic-stricken rhetoric, two features of his work, stem from his anathematizing of day-to-day adult reality and can cast a spell over many susceptible readers, who look up from his pages feeling oddly disturbed and dazed.
The effectiveness of Lovecraft’s fiction has little to do with its purely literary qualities, which are minimal (Michel Houellebecq claimed that Lovecraft’s work was “not really literary”), but with another feature that’s harder to pinpoint: the ways it casts a spell. Fiction like Lovecraft’s can be brutally hypnotic; the young reader, intellectually undefended and easily shaken, enters the writer’s fear-drenched universe and can’t easily get out of it. The mood of unappeasable, apocalyptic menace gradually overcomes those who are unprepared for it. Though sometimes stagy, the intensity in Lovecraft’s stories does not seem fake. Closing the book, the initiate tries to find other readers who were similarly spellbound. A cult is formed, as if to combat post-traumatic stress. From generation to generation the cult grows.
By contrast, readers of…Codemasters will once again be turning to the community to help fine tune its next Formula One video game, with testing for the new game starting earlier than last year.
"The development team have been hard at work on the next project for some time now, and we can’t wait to share some of the fantastic new game additions with you," wrote Codemasters.
The studio added: "Last year, we ran a very successful programme of community testing and beta tests, in which you gave us some incredible feedback that helped us shape the game. We’re very excited to announce that they were so successful that this year we’re not only widening their scope, but we’re starting the process earlier as well."
The first beta test will give those selected the chance to try out the new handling model. However, spaces are limited to only 300 people per platform (PC, PS4 and Xbox One). The beta is expected to begin around the time of the new F1 season, |
who said on his campaign website that “values-driven families” are the source of “Ohio’s proud history,” he said everyone brings their own “struggles” and “trials” into public life.
Of course he wants privacy. He just resigned after it was made clear that he was a hypocrite of the highest caliber.
To be clear: the problem here isn’t that Goodman might be gay (who cares) or that he had a consensual affair (that’s between him and his family). The issue is that he campaigned on a platform that oppresses LGBTQ people, using buzzwords aimed at delegitimizing that community and elevating “traditional families” as the answer to all our problems, but had no problem, apparently, having a same-sex affair in his taxpayer-funded office.
Thankfully, Ohio has one fewer hypocritical conservative Christian among its lawmakers. Let’s just hope they fill the seat with someone who isn’t willing to live a lie, and hurt their constituents, because of their own hang-ups.New York - Coming to the defence of Raghuram Rajan, his Chicago University colleague and co-author Luigi Zingales has said the RBI Governor is being attacked for "fighting the inefficiency of the banking system" and for taking on the crony capitalists in the country.
Amid a high-decibel debate in India on whether Rajan will get an extension or not beyond his current term ending this September, Zingales said governorship earlier used to be "entrusted to grey bureaucrats that left no impact".
"Rajan, however, is the dream of the new India: young, competent, and reached the top of the Indian central bank because of his skill, not because of his political alignment," he wrote in an article.
Rajan, a former Chief Economist of the IMF and an on-leave Professor of Finance at University of Chicago Booth School of Business, has been under attack from the ruling party BJPs Rajya Sabha MP Subramanian Swamy, among others, for what they term as the RBI Governors failure to effect necessary interest rate cuts to boost the economy.
Zingales, who is Professor of Finance at the same school and has been Rajan's co-author as well, said a central banker would have a "guaranteed re-confirmation" in any country in the world after managing to reduce "inflation from 11 percent to 5 percent while simultaneously enabling an increase in growth from 5 percent to 8 percent in just three years".
While admitting that he may be "positively biased" as Rajan has long been his colleague and co-author, Zingales, termed the charges as absurd, including regarding his nationality, as he eulogised the RBI Governor on all fronts.
"Rajan is also accused, due to belonging to the Group of 30, of being part of a group set up to defend the US dominant position in the global economy and to serve the interests of international finance," Zingales said, while adding that it was Rajan, who in 2005, in front of an enraged Alan Greenspan (then outgoing Chairman of Federal Reserve), denounced the potentially destabilising effects of financial derivatives.
Pondering over the reasons behind "such anger" targetted at Rajan, he said the RBI Governor "is fighting not only inflation, but also the inefficiency of the banking system, burdened by bad loans".
"The Indian banking system is mainly in public hands and was used to finance crony capitalism, which has held the country back for too many years. So far, Indian banks have lived in the illusion that all debtors would pay sooner or later, even when borrowers often borrowed from one bank to pay another.
"As Governor, Rajan has rightly decided to force the banks to cut down exposure to their most dubious borrowers, even at the cost of bringing out non-performing loans. From an economic point of view this is the best time. With the country growing at 8 percent, these losses can be easily absorbed by the banking system."
Firstpost is now on WhatsApp. For the latest analysis, commentary and news updates, sign up for our WhatsApp services. Just go to Firstpost.com/Whatsapp and hit the Subscribe button.“We’ve said from the beginning that we need to choose the path,” he said, speaking in English. “We can have the path of confrontation or we can have the path of cooperation. We cannot have a little bit of each. If we take the path of confrontation, the United States and the United Nations will continue with their sanctions, and Iran will continue with its enrichment program. Without any limitations.”
Mr. Zarif’s interview was the second strong public pushback against the United States this week over the remaining challenges to resolving the nuclear dispute. On Wednesday, Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, criticized a compromise worked out between the Obama administration and Congress that gave American lawmakers a greater voice on terms of a final deal.
Iran, Mr. Rouhani said, was negotiating with a group of six countries — the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany — not just the United States.
Last week Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, who has the final word on Iran’s nuclear activities, said any final agreement must end all sanctions on the day that a pact is signed.Greg Van Avermaet and his BMC Racing Team teammates signaled their intentions for stage one of the Tour of Qatar by showing up at the start in Al Katara Cultural Village in skinsuits, and the team duly placed five riders in the lead group after the bunch shattered into several echelons on the exposed 145km leg across the peninsula. Related Articles Report Card: BMC Racing Team
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“It’s getting more usual to have skinsuits but for sure Qatar is a fast race with a lot of wind and it’s also a good chance to test material and new clothing,” Van Avermaet told Cyclingnews before the start. “It’s a good test for everything.”
Above all, the Tour of Qatar is the test site of choice for those with designs on success at the cobbled classics and, particularly, Van Avermaet’s beloved Tour of Flanders. During a 2012 campaign of consistent form and frustrating near-misses, one of Van Avermaet’s stand-out results was a fourth-place finish at De Ronde, which finished in Oudenaarde for the first time.
A child of the 1980s, Van Avermaet was weaned on the familiar cadences of the old finale over the Muur and Bosberg to Meerbeke, and he found that the long, exposed run-in to Oudenaarde jarred somewhat with the rhythm of the three laps over the Paterberg.
“I don’t like the parcours that much, I preferred the older version with the Muur and the Bosberg, because it suited me better and I knew it better as well,” Van Avermaet said. “Now it’s a bit different, as those three laps make it seem more like a circuit race. It’s always the strongest guys who win but last year a big group grew behind the guys in front in the final. I don’t like that big, open road to Oudenaarde for the finish. Still, it’s always the riders who make the race, and the weather conditions affect it too. I mean, if it rains on the Paterberg, then it’s going to be crazy. We’ll see.”
While Van Avermaet will ride “almost every classic, just not Roubaix and Flèche Wallonne,” he will place greater emphasis on the first two monuments of the season, Milano-Sanremo and Flanders, while world champion Philippe Gilbert takes centre-stage in the Ardennes.
That said, Gilbert and Thor Hushovd will be on hand at Milano-Sanremo and De Ronde as part of BMC’s expensively-assembled classics line-up, and Van Avermaet is perhaps mindful of his place in the hierarchy. Yet, when the two marquee signings misfired last spring, it was Van Avermaet and Alessandro Ballan who salvaged something from the team’s cobbled campaign.
“Phil had won everything the year before and Thor is a good classics rider too, so it was normal that I had a lower profile with them in the team,” Van Avermaet said. “But I just prepared my year like every year, to be there for them, and in the end, I had to ride for myself.
“In one way, that was good because I could prove myself and show that I had the level to be at those races. I had some problems with my heel and I hurt my ribs in a crash at Sanremo, but I had good form, so it was still a good classics campaign.”
Ultimately, however, Van Avermaet’s season would prove to be as frustrating as it was consistent. He had a steady string of placings throughout the campaign, from Het Nieuwsblad all the way to the Grand Prix de Québec, but the big win, like Paris-Tours in 2011, never materialised.
“It was a bit frustrating because I was often in a position to win,” he said. “To make it a successful year, you need some wins. So it was a good year but not a really good one.”Heavy thinker Albert Einstein has a weighty presence in the world of science.
Now a one-and-a-half-ton likeness of the wild-haired genius will be exerting gravity on the campus of Georgia Tech.
The 12-foot sculpture by Robert Berks is a smaller replica of Berks’ gargantuan Einstein bronze sited near the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., which, since 1979, has been a magnet for tourists.
“The way it’s used in Washington, that’s the way we want it to be used here,” said Georgia Tech provost Rafael Bras, who expects to see a steady stream of visitors climbing into Einstein’s lap for selfies. “This is not a statue made to be looked at from a distance. This is made to be interactive.”
Bringing art to the campus is part of Tech’s push to integrate the fine arts with the sciences in the school’s learning climate. The statue is slated to be installed in a plaza near the Ferst Center on Oct. 23.
Berks is well-known for creating the rough-hewn bust of John F. Kennedy on display at the Kennedy Center in Washington, and has sculpted many well-known figures, including the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
The New York sculptor, who died in 2011, met Einstein in 1953, and the physicist, dressed in a baggy sweatshirt and sandals, agreed to sit for a portrait. Over a two-day period, Berks spent one day chatting with his subject and the next slapping clay on an armature.
Berks’ creation sought a buyer for two decades before it found a home in Washington. The smaller version sat sidelined even longer. Atlanta businessman and collector Jim Barksdale recently met Berks’ widow, Dorothy “Tod” Berks, and discovered the smaller Einstein sitting exposed to the weather outside the late artist’s Long Island studio.
Barksdale’s friends at Tech were interested. “It was instant combustion,” he said. He offered seed money, and private donors raised $1.5 million in gifts to bring the statue to Tech.
The statue, in subtle ways, emphasizes Einstein’s role as an advocate of human rights, and includes a quote from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.”
Bras said the combination is ideal: “science and technology and human rights: Those are the things that represent Georgia.”
Not everyone is thrilled with Berks’ textured style. The Washington Post once wrote that Berks’ faces “call to mind the underside of movie seats.”
Barksdale, an investment adviser, shrugs off the criticism: “You either like it or you don’t like it.”
The statue is seated on a bank of three curved white granite steps. The figure is casually dressed, his legs splayed, his posture relaxed.
He holds a sheaf of papers in his left hand, on which are written three of Einstein’s most high-impact equations, but the figure’s gaze is directed toward a black granite dais beneath him, studded with silvery stars. The metallic points are intended to represent the constellations as they appeared in Atlanta on Dec. 10, 1948, the day of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
This is what drew Barksdale to the statue: “It embraced all that Tech wanted to be and it embraced all that Atlanta wanted to be.”Former felons in Kentucky have something to be thankful for this Thanksgiving weekend!
Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear (D) signed an executive order into law that automatically restores voting rights to tens of thousands of nonviolent former felons who have served their time.
The executive order was announced at a press conference this past Tuesday. Beshear has been governor for eight years, which makes you wonder what took so long.
The Brennan Center for Justice says about 140,000 individuals are immediately eligible, and in time an additional 30,000 will be eligible.
The Huffington Post reports:
Kentucky has been one of a few states where individuals who have served their time had to individually apply to the governor to have their voting rights restored rather than having them restored automatically. Beshear said he hopes the legislature will put a constitutional amendment on the ballot to permanently automatically restore voting rights to individuals who have served their sentences. Matt Bevin, the Republican who beat out Democrat Attorney General Jack Conway to succeed Beshear as governor, has said in the past that he supports automatic restoration of voting rights.
While this event is great for the individual felons and their families who have had obstacle after obstacle thrown in their way after being convicted a nonviolent felony, it’s hard not to take into account the manner in which this liberty was granted. Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear that this restoration of voting rights came from the people, as it did not originate from passed legislation, but rather from the pen of the Governor’s Executive Order.
This likely means that the people of Kentucky are at best indifferent to the prospect of restoring the rights of nonviolent felons, and at worst they are outright opposed to it. This is disturbing on many levels.
Many of these nonviolent felons landed in jail as a result of the War on Drugs. Luckily Governor Beshear decided to restore these former felons right to vote. However, it is important to remember that this change was not initiated by the legislator and by extension the people of Kentucky.
As a result of the manner in which this outcome was derived, it seems reasonable to assume that a majority in the state are at best indifferent to former nonviolent felons voting and it is likely that a majority of people in the state still back the drug laws that forced nonviolent offenders behind bars to begin with.
For this reason it is hard to see this Executive Order as significant progress. Sure, it’s great that these felons have an important right restored. But true progress should be measured by the changes we see in the hearts and minds of the people. In this instance in Kentucky it is difficult to see any tangible changes in people who led to this Executive Order being signed.
Check out the full archive of Felony Friday!
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Obama Democrats argue that the President only wants to restore the top rates that reigned during the Clinton presidency, which was a prosperous time. We should say: Absolutely, let’s do it. But in order to achieve a Clinton economy, you also must enact the other Clinton policies critical to the prosperity of those years: They include:
I. A Freer Economy
The oppressive ObamaCare of that time was HillaryCare, which was never enacted. If we want to re-create the Clinton economy, then we have to repeal ObamaCare. Are Democrats willing to do that?
The federal-regulation regime was also much easier then than it is now. Will the White House become serious about genuine deregulation?
II. Clinton-era Federal Spending Levels
Federal spending as a proportion of the economy was smaller in those days. That would mean budget cuts now of around $500 billion – not spread over ten years, but right now. How likely is that?
III. A Strong and Stable Dollar
The dollar in those days was almost as good as gold – a critical factor in that time’s economic boom. Will the White House ax Ben Bernanke and his destructive monetary policies?
The Republicans should tell Mr. Obama that, if he’s truly serious about restoring Clinton-era prosperity, he has to combine Clinton tax rates with the former president’s wise management of the economy that encouraged free enterprise and a true recovery. If not, we will see a return to recession in 2013 and continue on our current path toward European-style malaise and stagnation.
--
Steve Forbes is the co-author of Freedom Manifesto: Why Free Markets Are Moral And Big Government Isn’t.
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[newsincvid id="23890772"]Coming Out at School: This is Not a Drill
Attention School Personnel: This is NOT A DRILL.
This is an Actual Test of Your Professional Ability
Friday, my daughter came out to the school counselor and the music teacher. She told us all about it over dinner. This is what we discovered:
We see now that when our daughter comes out to the teachers she does not base her own self-worth and identity on what they say (which would be unhealthy anyway), but instead our girl refuses to be denied by them and will push the teachers further in their understanding when they try to say she is too young to know. Then our sweet baby rates their reactions based on what she knows should be the appropriate response of an educator!
This school is NOT READY FOR MY DAUGHTER IN SO MANY REGARDS.
(Substitute) School Counselor
The school counselor who is currently just filling in for our awesome regular counselor who is out on leave got very low marks for how she handled the interaction according to our daughter. Apparently, the counselor was speechless. The temporary counselor earned herself an eye-roll and a “she’s a TRAINED SCHOOL COUNSELOR for heaven’s sake” comment when the incident was recounted over dinner on Friday evening.
This was when we realized: a-ha, our girl’s not coming out to them, she is testing them! She has enough support; that is not what she is looking for. She simply wants to continue the process of being her out, authentic self at school and she is testing these professionals against what she knows are the right ways to react and support LGBT youth.
School counselor grade: D. Comments: Perhaps the counselor should be allowed a do-over to improve her grade. It was a pop quiz after all. Moreover, she was just filling in and was surely not prepared to be asked to deal with such an unusual situation.*
Veteran Music Teacher
The music teacher got HIGH marks for: coming around after my daughter upped her evidence-based argument. The music teacher then addressed the issue of bullying proactively, made a strong verbal commitment to my daughter as an ally, and then outed herself as a devout Christian (of questionable appropriateness as a public school employee, but fine as a caring human being) and made a “I believe God knows what he’s doing, and he can see the future, and he doesn’t make mistakes – don’t you let anyone tell you otherwise” statement. It was this well-intentioned music teacher’s version of a pro-gay Christian vaccination against stupid homoprejudiced Bible-Belt Christians.
Music teacher grade: A. Comments: Music teacher goes to the head of the class!
The New Evidenced-Based Argument
My girl has developed a virtual bag of reasoned responses to all sorts of questions and statements that people present her with. Some are defenses against bigoted comments and some are educational explanations to be used when confronted with an ignorant person who makes unintentionally offensive statements.
She has been working on her answer to the dismissive “you are too young to know” statements that she gets from adults for some time, but has seemed unsatisfied with it, until now....
So, the music teacher gave her some variation on the old “you have many years to figure out who you are/you are too young to know/you will get to puberty and figure out who you like then” chestnut.
Oh, the familiar disappointment.
Then... it comes to her and she says something like this to the teacher:
Imagine you are a fifth grade girl in the hallway at school. There is this cute boy that every girl likes; I mean, EVERY GIRL has a crush on him. He is super cute, nice, everything. He walks down the hall past you and you feel nothing. NOTHING. Then this girl you like, who is super cute and really nice walks down the hall past you and you feel all tight and tingly. Maybe you think to yourself, ‘hmmm, this must be a delayed reaction from the boy?’ But, NO, you realize you never get that tight, tingly feeling with the boy, only with the cute girl.
Apparently this was proof enough to convince the music teacher that when my daughter says, “I’m a lesbian” she means, “I’m a lesbian.”
Observations
First, I am so proud they way she handled this. She was quick on her feet and has intuited that appeals to reason aren’t convincing enough; she must appeal to emotion and the body’s own unconscious physical reaction to attraction. She has deduced that she must prove that she has consistent physical responses that support her claim of same-sex attraction.
This leads me to my second observation, do adults have to prove their identities to all and sundry when they come out? I don’t think so. Maybe a few times to family members, but bosses or college professors would never question or refute a man who declares, “I’m gay.”
I understand that adults guide and educate children and adults see this questioning of children as part of their obligation to help a child through life. However, we should consider reframing our “you are too young” denial to something more affirming. If one must search for evidence in order to believe a child’s assertion, consider asking questions that affirm and further the discussion, “what is that like for you?” or “how did you figure this out?”
Just imagine if the story I recounted above about my very confident, articulate, and strong-willed daughter coming out to the counselor and music teacher featured a scared child in need of support and encouragement instead. What would that girl’s experience have been? How would she have felt afterwards?
*(addendum from 30 January 2012) When our beloved school counselor returned to work, my daughter promptly sought her out for an appointment. After they met, my daughter came right home and told me about the interaction. My girl was very happy to tell me that the counselor made sure that she was supported at home and that she knew that the counselor’s office was a safe and supportive place within the school. A+ for our counselor and in the months since I originally wrote this post I am so happy to report that my daughter’s teachers have been great and that her friends have really supported her. So far, so good!
AdvertisementsImage copyright AFP Image caption The WannaCry worm encrypted computer files and demanded a ransom to unlock them
New analysis suggests Chinese-speaking criminals may have been behind the WannaCry ransomware that affected thousands of organisations worldwide.
Researchers from Flashpoint looked at the language used in the ransom notice.
They said the use of proper grammar and punctuation in only the Chinese versions indicated the writer was "native or at least fluent" in Chinese.
The translated versions of the ransom notice appeared to be mostly "machine translated".
The WannaCry ransom note could be displayed in 28 different languages, but only the Chinese and English versions appeared to have been written by humans.
The English text also used some unusual phrases such as: "But you have not so enough time".
The WannaCry cyber-attack infected more than 200,000 computers in 150 countries, affecting government, healthcare and private company systems.
The UK's National Crime Agency, the FBI and Europol are investigating who was responsible for the ransomware.
Some earlier analysis of the software had suggested criminals in North Korea may have been behind it.
But the Flashpoint researchers noted the Korean-language ransom note was a poorly translated version of the English text.
"It was only really the Chinese and the English versions that appeared to be written by someone that understood the language," said cyber-security expert Prof Alan Woodward from the University of Surrey.
"The rest appeared to come from Google Translate. Even the Korean."
Image copyright AFP Image caption Several British hospitals were among those hit by the cyber-attack
Prof Woodward noted that the people behind the ransomware had not attempted to retrieve the money victims had paid in Bitcoin, and added it was likely they were keeping a low profile.
"I actually think they've run for the hills," he told the BBC.
"Their so-called command and control system, the thing that controls quite a lot of the software, has all been turned off.
"They know that so many people are watching them now and that following the money could lead to their downfall. I suspect if they've got any sense at all they'll leave it well alone."Colorado lawmakers who helped double the number of national parks in the state during the past two decades agree the state’s national parks are treasures in economic and symbolic ways.
But the conversation on public lands becomes more complex when talking about the future. The days of designating large, new national parks may be gone for an agency that struggles under budget constraints, and granting special protections for public lands is getting more contentious.
As the National Park Service celebrated its centennial this week, The Denver Post interviewed four former senators from Colorado to discuss their involvement in creating national parks and their perspectives on protecting public lands. These leaders fought together for new national parks, but their views on protecting other federal lands are less uniform.
“As the nation grows, those areas that have been set aside for everyone’s use are becoming more and more valuable, not only from an economic standpoint, but also from a heritage standpoint,” said Ben Nighthorse Campbell, a Republican for most of his 12 years in the U.S. Senate.
Campbell led the effort to designate the Black Canyon of the Gunnison as a national park in 1999, a push motivated by a developer’s threat to build homes at the edge of what was then a national monument.
Ken Salazar, a Democratic U.S. senator from 2005 to 2009 who later served as secretary of the interior, said national parks serve a vital role in supporting local communities. He also defended the Obama administration’s push to establish national monuments without congressional approval.
“Here in Colorado, one could think about Rocky Mountain National Park or the Great Sand Dunes down in the San Luis Valley, and they’re huge economic drivers for our state,” he said. “Thousands and thousands of jobs are created from the fact that we have those crown jewels in our state.”
But Wayne Allard, a Republican who served in the Senate from 1997 to 2009 and worked with Campbell and other Colorado lawmakers on the Great Sand Dunes designation, drew a distinction between national parks and other types of public lands.
Allard said many small communities — including those in the San Luis Valley that pushed for national park status — rely on national parks “because so much of their economic growth depends on how those lands are managed.” For other types of public lands, however, “far reaching” proclamations to establish national monuments need to be handled through legislation instead, he said.
“I think it needs to go through the Congress, and there needs to be local input on whether that’s desirable or not for that area,” Allard said. “If you tie something up, where there’s no access to the area, then you begin to hurt the economy of the small towns in those areas.”
Many Republicans opposed the designation last year of Browns Canyon as a national monument. President Barack Obama created the monument through a proclamation under the Antiquities Act, fulfilling a long-standing effort by some of Colorado’s congressional delegation.
The monument is not managed by the park service, as some monuments are — and unlike national parks, monuments can be designated by a presidential order. But the battle to protect the area along the Arkansas River between Buena Vista and Salida was indicative of a pushback among some lawmakers to the creation of any new public lands.
Mark Udall, who served in the Senate from 2009 to 2015, introduced legislation to designate Browns Canyon as a national monument at the end of 2013. His bill met opposition by what he deemed to be a determined “small minority” of members in Congress.
“We could have passed that bill out of the Senate, I have no doubt,” Udall said. “But it was going to be dead on arrival in the House of Representatives, in part because of the chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee and just the mindset over there that ‘we’re not going to protect any more lands as wilderness and we’re not going to create any more national monuments.’ And it’s based, from my point of view, on an ideological rigidity which doesn’t reflect the broad public support for greater protection of our public lands when it’s appropriate.
“So after building all of that support and making the case through the legislation, it gave the president the confidence that this (national monument designation) was the right thing to do.”
Obama often has used the Antiquities Act — a 1906 law allowing presidents to preserve lands with natural or cultural value — as he established 24 national monuments during his presidency, including Browns Canyon and Chimney Rock in Colorado in 2012.
Some Republicans have criticized Obama’s use of the act, pointing to the fact that he has created more national monuments than any previous president and saying he is exceeding its original intent.
But Salazar said the act is a nonpartisan approach used by almost every president since Teddy Roosevelt to set aside public lands. “I think it’s especially a very useful tool when you have a Congress that’s essentially in gridlock on the passage of legislation,” Salazar said.
As interior secretary from 2009 to 2013, Salazar worked with Obama to create 10 national parks and 10 national wildlife and conservation areas, along with other public lands across the nation.
This pushback against public lands has garnered increased attention, following the occupation of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in Oregon this year by a group protesting the government’s management of these areas.
As the Republican Party worked on drafting its 2016 platform before its convention, it also included a passage calling for federal land transfers that would give certain public lands to states.
Salazar called the GOP’s proposal “wrongheaded,” saying “our public lands should be supported and not given away or ceded.”
Colorado U.S. Sens. Michael Bennet, a Democrat, and Cory Gardner, a Republican, are moving forward with legislation to strengthen the state’s federal public lands.
According to Bennet’s office, the senator has been working in part on legislation that would designate Curecanti National Recreation Area as a unit of the park service, a move that has not yet been formally done. And he’s also working on legislation to make Camp Hale outside of Vail the first National Historic Landscape, as well as legislation to establish several new wilderness and special management areas across the state.
Gardner introduced legislation in June that would allow a private landowner to donate land to the Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument.Scientists now believe black holes could hold the key to answering the ultimate question: what was there before the big bang? However, researching them is next to impossible.
Black holes are one of the most destructive forces in the universe, capable of tearing a planet apart and swallowing an entire star. Yet scientists now believe they could hold the key to answering the ultimate question: what was there before the big bang?
The trouble is that researching black holes is next to impossible. They are by definition invisible and there is no scientific theory able to explain them. Horizon meets the astronomers and theoretical physicists who, despite these obvious obstacles, are attempting to image a black hole for the very first time and get ever closer to unlocking its mysteries. It is a story that goes into the heart of a black hole and to the very edge of what is thought to be known about the universe.MESA, Ariz. - The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office is asking for help in identifying a suspect or suspects responsible for shooting three Salt River Horses.
According to MCSO, witnesses reported seeing someone shoot three Salt River horses on Oct. 21 at about 6 p.m. The suspect was seen shooting the horses at a location called "Pirates Island."
Investigators say witnesses saw a man with chasing the horses down and shooting at them multiple times with a shotgun. He was said to be with two other people at the time.
Three horses were hit -- two survived but are injured.
Volunteers say that Kai -- the 6-month-old horse that was killed -- was found to have four or five possible gunshot wounds and was mutilated. They say the suspect is believed to have removed the horse's genitals.
"They are like family to us, this is insane and all the words we have for this person are not good for TV," Simone Netherlands of the Salt River Wild Horse Management Group said. "This person needs to be brought to justice and we hope the public can help us up the reward to bring in tips that can lead to his arrest"
The suspect is a man described as wearing black shorts or underwear and a dark green shirt. No descriptions of the other two people were given.
Anyone with information is urged to contact MCSO.
PHOTOS: Suspect targeted this herd of Salt River wild horses
2 Salt River wild horses injured, one killed <p>One horse was killed and two more were injured when a person shot at this herd of Salt River wild horses. (Photo: Stacey Davis/12 News)</p> <p>One of the younger members of this herd of Salt River wild horses, a 6-month-old colt, was shot, killed and mutilated, according to sheriff's deputies. (Photo: Stacey Davis/12 News)</p> <p>Someone shot three members of this herd of Salt River wild horses, killing one, around 6 p.m. on October 21, 2016. (Photo: Stacey Davis/12 News)</p> <p>The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office is searching for a suspect who they say targeted the herd of Salt River wild horses. (Photo: Stacey Davis/12 News)</p> <p>Investigators said witnesses saw a man with a rifle chase down this herd of Salt River wild horses. (Photo: Stacey Davis/12 News)</p>
Copyright 2016 KPNXHevisaurus is a Finnish heavy metal band was formed in 2009 with music aimed at children. Band members typically wear dinosaur costumes. Hevisaurus’s debut concert was at the Elämä Lapselle charity concert on September 9, 2009. Their first tour started from the Tavastia Club in Helsinki on November 22, 2009.[2]
Foundation [ edit ]
After attending a children's music concert with his own children, Mirka Rantanen decided to start a heavy metal band for children.[3][4][5] Rantanen and friends from the Finnish "metalhead" community began writing and recording songs.[6][7]
Biography [ edit ]
Hevisaurus has released seven albums to date and the albums have sold over 170,000 copies, only in Finland. Nowadays there are also Spanish, Hungarian and Swedish versions of Hevisaurus.[8][9][10]
The album ”Hirmuliskojen Yö” (Night of the Dinosaurs) was the 2nd most sold album in Finland in 2010, when the band was rewarded with the best children album Emma (Finnish equivalent to Grammy).[11]
The Dudesons and Hevisaurus opened up an indoor amusement park to Oulu’s Super Park in April 2013.[12] The band also has their own Hevisaurus game for Android and iOS devices. In the game you try to finish the levels while listening to the band’s songs. The application also includes mini-games like puzzles. The application was released in 2013.[13]
Hevisaurus got their picture on the walls of Hard Rock Café and they also got listed in the Hard Rock Café’s international database of artists/bands. They are the second Finnish band, besides Amorphis, who has gotten such an honor.[14]
Origin story and characters [ edit ]
According to legend, five dinosaur eggs made from metal survived the mass extinction some 65 million years ago in the mountain of wizards. In the year 2009 witches gathered at the same place. A giant lightning bolt hit the ground and simultaneously created ash and revealed the eggs. From the power of the witches’ chants, the eggs exploded open and five Hevisauri hatched.[15]
Movie [ edit ]
The Hevisaurus movie was produced by Solar Films and was filmed in the fall of 2014 and was released in the end of 2015. The movie include the beloved Hevisaurus characters and famous as well as rising Finnish actors.[16]
Disagreement with Sony Music [ edit ]
In the beginning of 2011 Mirka Rantanen, the drummer and one of the founding members, drifted into a dispute between their record label Sony Music Entertainment about the copyrights and trademarks of the characters. As a result, Rantanen formed a competing band called “Sauruxet”, with the people who played in the Hevisaurus live set-up. The court ordered “Sauruxet” to pay the record label €100,000 and legal fees. Legal documents stated that the rights for the characters always belonged to Sony Music Entertainment.[17][18]
Members [ edit ]
Discography [ edit ]
Albums [ edit ]
Year Album Peak positions FIN
[19] 2009 Jurahevin kuninkaat 5 2010 Hirmuliskojen yö 3 2011 Räyh! 2 Räyhällistä joulua 21 2012 Kadonneen louhikäärmeen arvoitus 1 2013 Vihreä vallankumous 10 2015 Soittakaa juranoid! 12 2017 Mikä minusta tulee isona? 29
[20]
Singles [ edit ]
Year Album Peak positions Album FIN
[19] 2010 "Hirmuliskojen pikkujoululevy" 1
Other singles
2009: "J |
which everyone on their team was black while everyone on the opposing team was white. A similar effective intervention also had participants imagine themselves navigating a highly threatening post-apocalyptic scenario, before being shown photos of their “friends,” who were mostly black, and their “enemies,” who were all white.
Though Lai was encouraged to find that eight of the ideas he tested worked, one caveat is that nobody knows how long their effects last. “A lot of the studies that have found that implicit bias can be changed have looked at it in the context of an hour at most,” Lai said. “It’s not at all clear whether this is a temporary change that’s just reflecting malleability, or if it’s a permanent change.” He said he and his adviser, Brian Nosek, who also worked on the contest study, are currently running tests in which subjects return 24 hours after “treatment” to see how strongly their original bias has returned.
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At least one recent experiment, carried out over 12 weeks, offers hope that lasting change is possible. By alerting a group of psychology students to their prejudice—90 percent of them showed antiblack bias at the beginning of the intervention—and teaching them a range of de-biasing strategies they could employ on their own time, University of Wisconsin-Madison psychologist Patricia Devine and her team showed that prejudicial attitudes could, with sustained effort, go down and stay down for at least two months. In a 2012 paper published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Devine concluded that unconscious prejudice could be unlearned, like a bad habit, through “the power of the conscious mind.”
It’s one thing to succeed at getting people to do better on a test by subjecting them to lab experiments, and another thing entirely to apply the lessons learned to real life. At the moment there are at least two teams of experts trying to do just that in law enforcement.
One of them is led by Lorie Fridell, an associate professor at the University of South Florida who has developed a suite of training programs to carry out in departments around the country. The challenges of such programs are apparent from the outset: Attending a de-biasing session can make people feel like they’re being accused of racism and need to change, a message that doesn’t go down easily. In light of that, Fridell’s philosophy is that police officers need to be told the biases they harbor are normal and don’t reflect in any way on their character. “When we walk into a room, my trainers and I, they are somewhere between defensive and hostile....Their arms are crossed and often they’re glaring at us,” she said.“As soon as they come to understand that we’re talking to them about how their mind works, and that even well-intentioned people have biases...they start to relax and open up.”
Fridell’s training methods involve, among other things, briefing officers on the science of unconscious bias, and encouraging them to pause from time to time and ask themselves if they’d be doing whatever they’re doing if the person they’re dealing with belonged to a different race. While Fridell is well established in her field—she has received numerous grants from the Department of Justice—one important disclaimer is that she has never produced any empirical results to show that her methods actually reduce discriminatory policing. (In Fridell’s view, this goes with the territory: There’s no way to accurately measure biased policing, because it’s impossible to look at the actions of an individual police officer and know for sure whether it was influenced by bias or not.)
Generating some kind of evidence is going to be crucial going forward, according to Phillip Atiba Goff, an associate professor of psychology at UCLA who also heads an effort to help police departments drive down racial discrimination. Goff, who cofounded the Center for Policing Equity and is currently a visiting scholar at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, has conducted research on possible training methods by working with police departments in Chicago, Denver, Las Vegas, and many other American cities.
Goff is collecting before-and-after statistics on things like traffic stops, arrests, and use of force by the officers he has worked with. Though he hasn’t published any results yet, he says his experience so far has led him to focus more on real-world situations than on the abstract question of internal bias. “There’s a difference between bias and discrimination, and as a culture we’re really bad at making the distinction,” he says. What Goff aims to do, based on that insight, is identify types of encounters where bias is likely to turn into active discrimination: important decisions like whether to arrest someone, or when to fire a weapon. Goff finds that discrimination is particularly likely to arise in the face of “identity threat”—when officers feel like their intelligence, masculinity, or moral legitimacy is being attacked.
If bias is uncomfortably wrapped up in who we are—enough so that people resist being trained to fight it—Goff’s approach may offer a new way to think about it, and a different way forward. “We have to ask: What are we combatting here?” Goff said. “Because if we’re combatting an attitude, then our goal is to redeem the souls of those whose hearts and minds don’t meet our expectations as a culture. But if we’re combatting discrimination, then our goal is to protect the most vulnerable citizens among us.” He added: “The latter is a call for social justice. The former is a call for spiritual redemption. We need both. But we need not confuse them.”
More coverage:
Leon Neyfakh is the staff writer for Ideas. E-mail [email protected]’s a simple question, with an equally simple, accurate answer: Democrats merely needed to contrive a way to hold on to a few of those states that went for Obama in 2012, but that switched into Trump’s electoral column in 2016.
The American left’s ongoing denial of last November’s reality -- Hillary Clinton won the popular vote but still managed to lose the presidential election -- has prevented many of Donald Trump’s adversaries from asking what is, for them, the really important question: What might have produced a different outcome?
The electoral gap that finally separated the candidates, after all, was exceedingly narrow. A swing of just 38 electoral votes would have put Hillary in the White House. With that shift, the final electoral tally -- 306 for Trump to 232 for Clinton -- would have been reversed to the magic 270 for Hillary to 268 for Trump.
This outcome was eminently within reach. Indeed, it is the very plausibility of the election breaking entirely differently that has fueled the search for the covert shenanigans - Russian hacking, anyone? -- that Clinton’s supporters insist cheated her of what was a sure thing. Had the Democrats managed, for instance, to hold on to just three of the vaunted “blue wall” states that voted for Barack Obama -- Pennsylvania with 20 electoral votes, Michigan with 16 and Wisconsin with 10 -- they would be back in control of the executive branch.
All three were bitterly contested, and ended up in each case breaking for Trump -- barely -- by around one percent of the total number of votes cast. He carried Pennsylvania by 53,292 (out of a total of nearly six million), Wisconsin by 27,257 (before the recount), and Michigan by just 10,612. Had Clinton been able to round up 90,000 more voters properly distributed in these three crucial states, Donald Trump would be hosting reality TV, and Hillary Clinton would be in the White House.
Instead, Hillary just managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. And Democrats might well be asking, “What happened to our voters?”
And the most accurate answer to that question might well be “They were dead. They were aborted as part of the savage ‘reproductive rights’ strategy your party pursued for the last five decades.” And, to be even more specific, the answer would mention the role that Planned Parenthood, the Democratic Party’s most intolerant, radical, and well-organized constituent interest group, has played in promoting and providing abortions among those who were statistically most likely to have been Democratic voters, American racial minorities.
Before dismissing that response as mere provocation or sensationalism, it is worth looking at some of the startling numbers. First, however, a caveat: data collected on abortions -- customarily described as ‘abortion surveillance’ -- are neither conclusive nor complete.
In the first place, not all states require that abortion providers submit reports to state health authorities, and those that do require abortion reporting (46 of the 50) are not required to turn those reports over to federal data collection agencies. Health authorities in some states, notably California, have been so embarrassed by the racial disparities in abortions that they quit releasing information on abortions altogether.
Furthermore, what are generally accepted as definitive abortion data reports are derived from statistics turned over voluntarily to organizations like the Centers for Disease Control (technically neutral, but in practice vigorously pro-abortion) and the openly pro-abortion Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI), a supposedly independent organization that just happens to be named for a former president of Planned Parenthood and that was long described (accurately) as ‘the research arm of Planned Parenthood.’
So, there are lots of holes in the data on abortion, particularly as regards race of the woman seeking the abortion, and, if there is any inherent bias stemming from the predispositions of the data compilers, it must be assumed to be one that minimizes the disparate racial impact of abortion.
Thus, what follows is a ‘best guess’, based on data collected in irregular ways from organizations committed to maximizing the frequency of abortion. Total abortion numbers represent an averaging of the data provided by the two major ‘abortion surveillance’ groups. Which makes the results even more startling.
Let us examine just the case of Wisconsin, and unpack some abortion data for the years from 1973 to 1998, that is, the quarter century from Roe v. Wade to the last year of birth for voters eligible to cast ballots in 2016.
In those years, Wisconsin health authorities reported a total of 421,465 abortions on residents (overall numbers are larger, including a small number of abortions performed upon out-of-state visitors). While abortion rates by race have fluctuated over the decades, they have always been significantly higher for non-white women than for white women. The most recent national data on abortion and race from the CDC show that Hispanics accounted for 19% of abortions, blacks for 36% and whites for 37%. In other words, a significant majority of American abortions are performed on non-white babies.
Applied to Wisconsin, that means that in the 25 years under consideration, abortion providers can be projected to have eliminated 151,740 black, 80,085 Hispanic, and 155,955 white potential voters.
If they had shown up at the polls in November and followed national polling averages regarding candidates and racial preferences, 88% of the blacks would have voted for Hillary and 8% for Trump, 65% of the Hispanics would have voted for Hillary and 29% for Trump, and 58% of the whites would have voted for Trump compared to 37% for Hillary.
In other words, had those babies been protected rather than aborted, had they all shown up to vote (admittedly a stretch) and if national patterns of abortion by race and voting by race held true, Trump would have netted an additional total of about 125,000 black, white and Hispanic voters to add to his 2016 total. Hillary would have gained a net of just shy of 243,000 additional black, white and Hispanic voters.
Added to their respective vote totals of November (1,409,467 Trump vs. 1,382,210 Hillary) Clinton would have carried Wisconsin by a total of 1,625,201 to 1,534,467, or more than 90,000 votes.
If the same scenario is applied to Trump’s narrow wins in states like Michigan or Pennsylvania, where the percentage of black and Hispanic voters is considerably higher than in Wisconsin, the conclusion is inescapable: The Democrats themselves, in their role as the obedient legislative lapdogs of Planned Parenthood, pursued policies that aborted Hillary out of ‘her shot’ at the White House. By successfully producing in the United States one of the world’s most inhumane and unregulated systems of abortion law, they ensured the success of their opponents.
In some ways, the bitter loss of the election is thus an entirely fitting piece of retributive karma, giving Planned Parenthood and the Democrats a just reward for their diabolical policy of promotional campaigns, legal activism, and clinic site selection intentionally designed to maximize the incidence of aborted pregnancies among minority populations. How many clinics does Planned Parenthood operate in majority white suburban communities? The answer is fewer than one in five. “I’m grateful for my abortion!” Planned Parenthood billboards proclaim in majority black neighborhoods in Cleveland. One has to wonder what audiences, apart from affluent, white, female SJWs, that bizarre message resonates with.
It would be easy for pro-life Americans to take a certain degree of smug satisfaction from these developments, but that response, however tempting, is deeply misguided. What we witnessed in November represents, in part, the electoral consequence of a catastrophic tragedy. However hopeful the legislative and judicial opportunities produced as a result of America’s pitiless abortion laws, what we need to remember always and above all is the irretrievable human loss they have produced.
There is this to hope for in the future, however. Not all Democrats are blind to what they are doing to themselves. Witness the ongoing intra-party squabble about whether or not the party should support pro-life Democrats. Thus, partisan self-interest may one day achieve that which moral objections about the abomination of our abortion laws has not: The Democrats may break from their blind subservience to the abortion industry, if for no other reason than to stop the continuing suicidal extermination of large chunks of their own electoral base. And that, achieved even on the basis of the most tawdry of motives, would be a victory for the forces of life and liberty.US-backed Bahrain regime upholds jail sentences for doctors and nurses
By Will Morrow
28 June 2012
The US-backed Bahraini dictatorship of King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa on June 14 upheld jail sentences of up to five years for medics rounded up during fierce repression of anti-government protests in 2011.
Twenty doctors and nurses from the Salmaniya Medical Complex in the capital, Manama, were sentenced to between five and 15 years in prison by a military court in September 2011. The attorney general allowed a civilian retrial amid mass outrage at the convictions.
Throughout the proceedings the defendants were prevented from speaking, as they insisted they had been tortured into giving signed confessions. The medics have been on bail since late last year, unable to return to work.
In the latest ruling, orthopaedic surgeon Ali Alekri was sentenced to five years jail, down from fifteen, and Ibrahim al-Damstani, the Bahraini Nursing Society secretary general, will face three years, according to AFP. Seven others have been handed sentences of one year or less, and the remaining nine who appealed their convictions were acquitted. Two did not appeal their sentences and are reported to have fled the country.
The medics’ arrest in March 2011 was part of a campaign of repression and intimidation by security forces. A protest encampment in Manama’s Pearl Roundabout, calling for the downfall of the regime, was crushed by tanks and troops brought from the neighbouring despotic gulf states Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait.
Security forces repeatedly raided hospitals looking for injured patients to arrest. The sole “crime” of the medics was treating civilians who were beaten, shot and gassed during this repression. At least sixty protesters have been killed by security forces since February last year, though the real figure is likely far higher.
In a statement following the recent ruling, the government attempted to claim the convictions were not for treating protesters. Making clear the political character of the charges, it asserted that the doctors and nurses were guilty of “politicising their profession, breaching medical ethics and… their call and involvement in the overthrow of the monarchy.” The government has not attempted to explain how it obtained signed confessions of guilt from those who have now been acquitted entirely.
The medical workers and human rights’ organisations condemned the judgement. The Voice of America reported: “The medics say they were prohibited from using some witnesses in their defense and were also unable to raise their complaint of torture in custody.”
VOA quoted Dr. Fatima Haji, who was acquitted after being sentenced to five years at last year’s military trial. “Some of them will go back behind bars for five years, which is absolutely unfair because we all did the same thing. We were exactly in the same place, we were in the same rooms in the hospital, we did the same thing: treating people who were in need.”
Dr. Ghassam Dhaif, whose 15-year sentence was reduced to one, responded to the ruling: “It shows you how inconsistent these courts are and how much they are politicized. There is no comparison between 15 [years] and one year, and even with this one year it’s illogical and it’s baseless.”
The government’s account of events, published in the report of the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry, alleges that the medics’ actions ranged from “directing ambulance cars in a haphazard manner… with the purpose of spreading terror,” to performing “unneeded surgical operations with the aim of aggravating existing wounds,” and providing inflated reports of civilian casualties to human rights’ authorities. In the latest trial, the government reportedly dropped its claim that the medics were “stockpiling” weapons in the clinic and had occupied the hospital.
The Obama administration’s response to the trial has been consistent with the cynicism and hypocrisy that surround its foreign policy. US State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland said that the US was “deeply disappointed” by the ruling, adding, “… we are discouraged that the Bahraini government did not use alternative means to address these cases.”
The reality is that the US has given its full support to King al-Khalifa’s continuing suppression of protests since February last year. In the latest move demonstrating its backing of the government, the Obama administration announced in May that it was recommencing arms sales to the country, including air-to-air missiles, harbor patrol boats, and upgrades for the military’s fighter jets.
At the same time, under the banner of “humanitarianism,” the Obama administration—aided by a pliant Western media—has arrogated to itself the right to intervene and overthrow any government it chooses. Unlike Syria, where the US and its allies are directly fomenting civil war as a means of toppling the regime of Bashar al-Assad, the monarchy in Bahrain—home to the US Fifth Fleet—is a key US ally.
Following the report of the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry, documenting widespread torture and abuse by government forces, the regime has simply continued the same practices. In May, the king ratified empty changes to the constitution which retain the monarch’s right to appoint the judiciary as well as the Shura Council “upper-house,” which has the right of veto over all legislation passed by the powerless parliament. This has not prevented the US and its allies from claiming that the government is enacting “reform.”
Indicative of continuing human rights abuses, the verdict on 11-year-old Ali Hasan will be announced on July 5. Hasan was arrested May 13 and charged with “taking part in a public assembly aimed at disturbing security.” He was reportedly interrogated for four hours by police until he confessed. According to Amnesty International, he was refused access to a lawyer until his third appearance in court on June 6.
While media reporting is very limited, protests are continuing on a daily basis. Last Friday, police fired tear gas, rubber bullets and sound bombs on tens of thousands of protesters taking part in a peaceful march organised by al-Wefaq, the main Shiite opposition party. Among those injured were Sheikh ali Sulman, the head of al-Wefaq.
A New York Times article commented on Saturday: “Every night, protesters march and clashes erupt, in a violent standoff that often seems a breath away from an explosion.” In Nabi Saleh in the capital, police suppress protests daily using tear gas.
The Times article noted the hostility which is felt by broad layers of the population toward US support for Bahrain’s dictator, noting “several protests last month that focussed on Bahrain’s decades-old alliance with the United States,” including a march to the US naval base that was blocked by riot police and fired upon with tear gas.The House of Representatives website was defaced by hackers Saturday although a House official denied this, saying that a file was simply “overwritten” and has since been “corrected”.
A group which called themselves Anonymous Bulacan declared the website www.congress.gov.ph hacked at around 2 p.m.
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But Bernadette dela Cuesta, executive director for the House public relations and information bureau, maintained that the website had not been hacked.
“As per the HRep Info & Comm Tech Service, it wasn’t hacked. May na-overwrite lang na file pero corrected na,” she said.
A screen shot of the page which should show a list of the House members was replaced by a message which said, “Pangalagaan nyo ang ating teretoryo!! Huwag maging Hudas sa sarili mong bayan..! Para sayo to Rep. Neri Colmenares [Protect our territory. Don’t be a Judas in your own country..! This is for you Rep. Neri Colmenares].”
The site has since been restored.
Originally posted at 6:37 p.m.
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MOST READUPDATE 3/2/13 12pm PST: See the pups in their new home!
UPDATE 2/16/13 10pm PST: Per the Official Robin Sachs Facebook page Tiny and Fiona have found a new home on a horse ranch in Montana! Click here for the details.
UPDATE 2/6/13 4pm PST: A source says that the dogs will be picked up from the shelter today by Robin’s ex (the police had placed them at the shelter when they entered his home). However, they STILL need a permanent home, so keep spreading the word!
The Whedonverse was deeply saddened this week to learn of the unexpected passing of actor Robin Sachs (Ethan Rayne, BtVS). To add to the tragedy, we have just found out that his two beloved dogs have been placed in a shelter in Los Angeles, and their number is up on March 1, 2013.
We are asking our readers to help get the word out via your social networks–electronic, real life or both–about the plight of these doggies who are in desperate need of a new home, preferably together.
Robin’s friends have posted on Facebook that the dogs are very friendly, well-trained, playful, sweet and loving with both people and other animals. The adorable photo circulating on Facebook shows both of them curled up together with a cat. There are also other photos of them cuddling and swimming with a young boy.
FIONA is a blonde pitbull, 6 years old, and TINY is a dark brownish grey pitbull/mastiff mix, 4 years old.
If you or someone you know is willing to adopt (ideally as a pair), please email your contact information and qualifications to [email protected].
Let’s make this plea for help go viral to ensure that Robin’s beloved fur family finds a great new home!
Here are some photos of the pair shared with permission from Betina La Plante. Click on the thumbnails to see them fullsize.Robbie Amell and his cousin Stephen Amell have raised $1,722,409 from 20,201 backers on crowdfunding site Indiegogo for their sci-fi feature “Code 8.”
Indiegogo asserted that “Code 8” is the highest-crowdfunded film of 2016 on any platform. The 30-day campaign, which closed over the weekend, had an original goal of $200,000.
“Instead of being billionaire superheroes, most ‘specials’ live in poverty and resort to crime, forcing the police to become more militarized,” the synopsis said. “The story follows a young man with special powers (Robbie Amell) struggling to find work as a day laborer. After a dispute over payment, he finds himself in a confrontation with a police officer (Sung Kang) and the autonomous robots backing him up.”
The campaign included the release of a ten-minute short film, directed by Jeff Chan from a script he co-wrote with Chris Pare.
“Code 8” will be shot in Los Angeles early next year and will also star Stephen Amell, Aaron Abrams, Chad Donella (“Scandal”) and Alfred Rubin Thompson.
Chan will also produce while Stephen Amell and Robbie Amell will serve as executive producers.
The campaign donation premiums included a DVD of the completed film for $35, attendance at a premiere of the film for $1,250 and two executive producer credits, which sold for $50,000 each.
Stephen Amell is best known for playing Oliver Queen/Green Arrow in the “Arrow” TV series. He will also star in the upcoming “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows.”
Robbie Amell stars as Ronnie Raymond/Deathstorm in “The Flash.” His feature credits include “The Duff” and the upcoming “The Babysitter.”12 Powers of High Impact Presenting – Mindful Presenting By Maurice Decastro In Advice
High impact presenting isn’t something you see in most businesses every day. We do however have an opportunity to dramatically transform the way we speak and connect with each other in business in a far more powerful way.
Mindful presenting offers the pathway to the art of persuasion, influencing and human connection. It is the strategic key to communicating effectively and the route to high impact presenting.
I’ve long believed that we live in a world in which the only sustainable route to personal and professional contentment and success is our voice. We each have two voices; our inner dialogue and, of course, the one others can hear.
Much of our advancement revolves around how we get others to see things from our point of view and our ability to win people over to our way of thinking. Whether you are trying to gain support for an idea, diffuse an emotional charge, deal with opposition or even change the world in some way, you need to be able to communicate with clarity and impact.
Many people think that presenting is something reserved for those who have to speak to clients and colleagues using PowerPoint. I learned as a small boy growing up in a large family with 3 sisters and two brothers that the need to persuade, influence and connect is our greatest challenge long before we enter the workplace.
That said, given that most people associate the challenge with presenting their ideas at work here are 12 of the major powers available to each of us when presenting to ensure our success.
1. Focus on your ‘M’ Point
Your ‘M’ Point is your personal moment of truth.
Before we even begin to craft our presentation we need to have absolute clarity on what we want from our audience after we have delivered our message. In other words, what exactly is it that we what them to think, feel and do the moment we finish speaking.
Focusing on your ‘M’ point requires you to spend a great deal of time and conscious thought to your motivation for calling people together in the first place and their motivation for turning up.
What do you want them to think, feel and do?
2. ‘ Perception is reality’
I believe that it was the great Albert Einstein who said, “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”
Once we have absolute clarity on exactly what we want our audience to think, feel and do we need to very carefully consider their reality. In other words, how do they see things, do we share common ground on our perspectives, if not then why and what’s different?
How much do they know already?
Why should they care?
How will your message help them and what difference will it make?
Have they heard it all before and if so what’s so different and special about your way of thinking?
How do they literally think and feel about the topic and your message and how do you know?
What are they doing now that you want them to change, what’s stopping them and why would your words make any difference?
3. Spot the weakness
Never make the assumption that just because you think that your idea or message is a good one, or indeed the right one for your audience, that they will too. Discerning professionals have no time or patience for the arrogant presenter who expects them to hang on to and believe every word they say simply because they’ve said it.
They need to be certain that you understand their reality and have considered in great detail the potential flaws in your message and why elements may be considered weak or inappropriate. It’s our job as presenters to spot the weaknesses before our audience does and present them transparently with thoughtful answers and solutions. Your audience won’t forgive you for making them do the work that you should have done for them.
4. Leave your ego at your desk
One of the many reasons that most of us would rather do anything else but sit through another presentation at work is because we don’t have time for big egos. ‘Look at me, look how hard I work, how clever I am and how much I know.’
The fact is that no one really cares about you. What matters the most to them is whether what you have to say is of value to them and will make any difference to their lives. Make sure that everything you say, show and do is personal, relevant and of value to your audience. In other words, make your presentation entirely about them and not about yourself.
5. Make the first 5 minutes count
Don’t behave like a comedian by saving your punchline to the end. Let your audience know as quickly as you can why you’ve called them together, why they will be glad they came and how you can help them. Please don’t start by telling them how many offices you have and how many widgets you make each year.
Don’t try to impress them, try this instead:
Make them feel at ease
Smile
Capture their interest and curiosity immediately; you already have their attention.
6. Stop the noise
‘What if they don’t like me?
What if they know more than I do?
What happens if I forget what to say?
What if they ask me a question I can’t answer?
These may be valid questions to ask, but the wrong place to ask them is when you are standing right in front of your audience and are just about to speak. Each time you have such a thought and ask yourself one of these debilitating questions you are doing your audience a disservice. In essence it means that your body is in the room but your mind isn’t. They came to listen to your mind not stare at your outfit.
We each have our own personal level of noise and our challenge is to stop that level of thought long before we stand to speak. Spend a few minutes just before you present taking a few slow deep breaths or meditating to slow down the noise.
The moment you stand to speak take a deep breath, pause, smile, feel your feet grounded to the floor and let those troublesome thoughts float away like clouds.
Your audience want you in the room; all of you.
7. Be quiet
Another of the presenter’s greatest gift is the use of the pause. Unfortunately many speakers find that a moment of silence feels like an eternity to them in their mind. The reality is that most of us speak much faster than our audiences can listen and they want little more from us than to slow down and to pause briefly every now and then.
Silence is not only a powerful force but it is a presenter’s ally. Those who have the mindfulness and courage to use it wisely are always received well by their audience. Inherent within its power is a signal to our audience that if it’s something that you are comfortable with then you must be comfortable with yourself.
8. Know it in 90
When it comes to presenting, the theory that ‘less is more’ is an extremely valuable and recommended one. The Mindful Presenter invests a great deal of time, energy and effort getting to know their message inside and out to the point that they could, if asked to, deliver it in 90 seconds.
Make a point of knowing your message by being able to share it with clarity, impact and power in 90 seconds or less. Please don’t misunderstand my point here. I’m not talking about delivering any of your presentations to a real audience in 90 seconds. My suggestion is that if you practice focusing on your message with laser like clarity and purpose in under 90 seconds then when you have the gift of time to do so in 20 minutes everything comes together more easily.
9. Assume nothing
In the process of crafting your presentation don’t make any assumptions:
Don’t assume that just because you know what you are talking about that your audience will too.
Don’t assume that just because you believe in what you are saying that they should too.
Don’t assume that they are familiar with your choice and use of language, keep it simple.
In the process of delivering your presentation don’t make any assumptions:
Don’t assume that just because someone yawns or looks at their watch that they are bored. If they are all constantly looking at their watch and yawning then you know they are bored.
Don’t assume that they’ve understood you, check in with them.
Don’t assume that just because no one asks a question that they don’t have any; have a few ready yourself to share and encourage them to open up.
10. Show them, don’t just tell them
Anyone can give a presentation with varying levels of confidence and clarity. Far too many professionals make the mistake of thinking that all they have to do is tell their audience what’s on the slides or on their script and they have given a good presentation.
The power of presenting lies in not telling your audience anything, but showing them everything instead. In other words, bring your presentation to life.
Make sure that your words are completely congruent with the way you express them both verbally and non-verbally. That means:
Making effective eye contact
Using your voice by adjusting your tone, volume, pitch and pace,
Using hand gestures
Smiling
Moving meaningfully to own the platform
Telling stories
Being animated
Being facially expressive
Speaking with passion and conviction
11. Scan your body
For many people the very thought of having to stand and present their ideas to others can create a great deal of anxiety which can turn into tension in the body.
Whatever level of tension or anxiety you may feel when presenting we owe it to ourselves and our audience to bring awareness and acknowledgement to where we feel it in our body.
In their brilliant book, ‘Mindfulness: A practical guide to finding peace in a frantic world’, Danny Penman and Mark Williams offer an extremely powerful audio which teaches us how to scan our own bodies.
I’ve include the meditation in the YouTube video below.
12. Choose a word and a number
Remember your ‘M’ point?
Once you’ve decided how you want your audience to feel, the most important way to help them to feel it is to feel it yourself.
You can’t expect people to feel passion or excitement if you don’t feel it yourself. You have to live the feeling first so that they can see, hear and experience it in you.
Saying that you are excited or passionate isn’t enough and sometimes we have to make ourselves feel it. Practicing the following exercise will help you learn to instantly tune in to the emotion you want your audience to feel.
Choose the emotion very carefully.
Imagine that emotion on a scale of 1 to 10 where 10 represents every part of you being filled with that emotion at its highest level.
Decide how much you want to feel of that emotion yourself, in other words choose a number.
Use your imagination to hold in mind what that emotion looks, sounds and feels like in your experience and be that number.
If you haven’t yet been called on to give a presentation at work then don’t worry your time will come. When it does happen then be sure to call on these 12 powers. They will help you to connect with your audience in a way that you will both be extremely thankful for.
I really hope you enjoyed this post. If you did, please feel free to share it through your preferred social media channels below and subscribe to our mailing list so you won’t miss any future posts.
If this article has inspired you to learn a little more about how effective your presentation skills are you may want to take a look at our presentation training and presentation coaching pages to see how we may be able to help you. You will also find a great deal of really helpful ‘free’ information in our Learning Centre.
Image courtesy of: flickr.comXiaomi has added a robot vacuum cleaner to its range of smart home products. Over the past few weeks we reported that the company was working on a vacuum cleaner and a couple of hours ago, it was officially unveiled. The Mi Robot Vacuum Cleaner comes a week after Xiaomi launched the Viomi Water Filter Kettle.
Technical Details
The vacuum cleaner uses a low-noise brush-less fan supplied by Japanese firm, NIDEC. The fan has a maximum pressure of 1800Pa which provides greater suction power when dealing with tough dirt.
Xiaomi’s Mi Robot Vacuum uses 3 dedicated processors: a quad-core processor from Allwinner, a STMicroelectronics ARM processor, and a Texas Instruments LDS image processor. The trio helps the vacuum cleaner receive data in real time from the 12 sensors (LDS, ultrasonic radar sensor, wall sensor and cliff sensor etc.). The Laser Distance Sensors provide a 360-degrees scanning (1800 times/second) similar to what you will find on a self-driving car.
The 5200mAh Li-ion built-in battery supplied by LG and Panasonic ensures that you get 2.5 hour cleaning time from a single charge.
Cleaning Details
The Mi Robot Vacuum will work with the Mi Home App. Owners will be able to set cleaning schedules, modify cleaning modes, and monitor cleaning process in real-time. You will be able to program it to clean the house right after you leave the house or before your arrival in case you are bringing home guests and you left a pet at home.
The main brush automatically adjusts its height to create a tight seal with the floor. There are also side brushes that extend to reach between gaps. While the vacuum cleaner works it maintains a precise 1 cm distance from the wall, so be rest assured that your beautiful vacuum cleaner won’t be getting any scratches.
RELATED: Comparison Video of Mi Robot Vacuum and iRobot 800
The Mi Robot Vacuum seems to be only available in white. We have no problem with that but a black unit will be appreciated. The company also launched a virtual wall that creates an invisible barrier that the vacuum cleaner can’t go beyond. It will retail for 39 yuan ($6). So you can pick up a bunch of these and add it to the Mi Robot’s 1699 Yuan ($254) price.Japan isn’t alone in its struggles with teaching English. China and South Korea have experienced similar frustrations, but their responses and results have been quite different |
other words, if the project delivers, it will behave more like a social layer for distributed applications (dApps).
The Synereo team has slowly built momentum after its first crowdsale in 2015, which raised a modest 500 BTC.
Since then, the team has worked with Ethereum developers on scaling. Additionally, it has built a network of community managers called “Amplifiers,” including two in China, in recent months. The startup has recently been accepted into the Silicon Valley accelerator NFX to boot.
The current fundraising campaign began September 19th and runs until October 18th. Participants can purchase AMPs at a fixed price for the next 30 days, with purchasing bonuses as detailed here.
Three different websites currently sell AMPs: BnkToTheFuture.com, Synereo’s campaign page, and YUNBI.
Synereo CEO Dor Konforty told Bitcoin.com:
We are pleased to see the community supporting us in our quest to build a decentralized web. Synereo is receiving a wealth of positive feedback through our campaign, as well as with people who are joining our community and contributing towards the success of the Synereo project. We just passed 1,400 members on our Slack channel today!
Funds raised during this campaign will be used to scale up Synereo’s operations and expand the company’s team. Moreover, developers said the funding should boost development of its 2.0 tech stack — a decentralized computation platform, able to run dApps without central servers.
In August, Synereo released the alpha version of its decentralized social network. The platform will be under continuous development until Q4 2017, when the beta version launches.
Synereo Destroys $146 Million in AMPs
The crowdsale launched just 48 hours after Synereo announced the destruction of half of its AMP holdings. The burn removed 731,108,937 AMPs from circulation, worth about $146 million USD at today’s market prices.
Konforty explained that since the platform uses a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchain, “it would not make sense” for Synereo to control more than 50% of the its native currency. This is because PoS blockchains can be manipulated by the majority holder of its native currency.
Konforty stated:
It was never our intention to be the central bank for our currency. Such centralization goes against the very principles Synereo stands for, but merely standing for principles is not enough.
The remaining AMPs under the company’s control serve as an incentive for developers to build dApps for its platform, the company explained. Additionally, the company said it will distribute a large chunk of its AMP holdings among new users joining the network to incentivize content creation.
Dawn of Decentralized Social Media
Decentralized platforms have the potential to give more control to the users, as well as reward them for their content. Steemit, Yours, and Akasha, make up some of the next-gen social media platforms that will compete with current giants, like Facebook and Twitter.
As these next-gen competitors attempt to make Facebook obsolete, social media users face a potential future where they become empowered to not only control their own privacy, but also share in the spoils of their online community.
Do you think this concept has potential to dethrone Facebook? Let us know in the comments section below!
Images courtesy of Synereo, shutterstock.In 2012, the Department of Justice clamped down on Android app piracy and now convictions are being made—along with the announcement of some incredible figures.
The Department of Justice reports that 22-year-old Aaron Blake Buckley from Moss Point, Mississippi, pleaded guilty to counts of criminal copyright infringement and conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement. Arguably he didn’t have much choice: Between May 2010 through August 2012, he helped run Applanet, distributing over 4 million pirated Android apps that would have retailed for more than $17 million. The site was seized in 2012 by the DoJ.
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Gary Edwin Sharp from Uxbridge, Massachusetts—who worked with Buckley—pleaded guilty to a count of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement earlier this year. The pair will be sentenced on August 1st.
[DOJ via Engadget]Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption "From the heart": Animation historian Charles Solomon pays tribute to Tyrus Wong
Tyrus Wong, the artist whose works inspired the Disney film Bambi, has died aged 106.
A Chinese immigrant, Mr Wong's vibrant paintings captured Walt Disney's eye and became the basis of the film's distinct style.
In a statement, the Walt Disney Family Museum said "his influence on the artistic composition of the animated feature Bambi cannot be overstated."
He died at home surrounded by his family.
Mr Wong emigrated to the United States from China as a child, with his father - leaving behind his mother and a sister he would never see again.
After studying as an artist, he began working with Disney in 1938 as an "inbetweener", drawing hundreds of pictures between poses to create the illusion of motion.
Looked and felt like a forest
When the film studio began pre-production on Bambi, "he went home and painted several pictures of a deer in a forest", the Disney museum said.
"Walt Disney saw that Tyrus was able to produce exquisite artwork that did not necessarily look like the forest - but rather, felt like the forest. Walt's vision for Bambi and use of Tyrus' work still influences films today," it said.
Image copyright Sara Jane Boyers Image caption In his retirement, Mr Wong took up the art of kite-making
Tyrus Wong only worked at Disney for three years, moving to Warner Brothers as a concept artist, designing greeting cards for Hallmark on the side.
After retiring, he turned to creating hundreds of elaborate bamboo kites, received many awards in recognition of his work, and became the subject of a documentary about his life.
Writing about his death, the documentary's director said "with his passing, we have lost a brilliant artist, motion picture and animation legend, Chinese American pioneer, and hero.
"Tyrus always faced adversity with dignity, courage, and art... he awed us with his talent, charmed us with his boyish humour, and moved us with his humility, generosity, resilience, and big heart."The idea of writing a collection of short stories has been on my mind for a while. This post is my first ever half-serious attempt at a story, and what better way to kick things off than with a story on AI and what that might look like if you extrapolate our current technology and make the (sensible) assumption that we might achieve much more progress with scaling up supervised learning than any other more exotic approach.
A slow morning
Merus sank into his chair with relief. He listened for the satisfying crackling sound of sinking into the chair’s soft material. If there was one piece of hardware that his employer was not afraid to invest a lot of money into, it was the chairs. With his eyes closed, his mind still dazed, and nothing but the background hum of the office, he became aware of his heart pounding against his chest- an effect caused by running up the stairs and his morning dose of caffeine and taurine slowly engulfing his brain. Several strong beats passed by as he found his mind wandering again to Licia - did she already come in? A sudden beep from his station distracted him - the system finished booting up. A last deep sigh. A stretch. A last sip of his coffee. He opened his eyes, rubbed them into focus and reached for his hardware. “Thank god it’s Friday”, he muttered. It was time to clock in.
Fully suited up, he began scrolling past a seemingly endless list of options. Filtering, searching, trying to determine what he was in the mood for. He had worked hard and over time built himself up into one of the best shapers in the company. In addition he had completed a wide array of shaper certifications, repeating some of them over and over obsessively until he reached outstanding grades across the board. The reviews on his profile were equally stellar:
“Merus is fantastic. He has a strong intuition for spotting gaps in the data, and uses exceedingly effective curriculum and shaping strategies. When Merus gets on the job our validation accuracies consistently shoot up much faster than what we see with average shapers. Keep up the great work and please think of us if you’re searching for great, rewarding and impactful HITs!”,
one review read. HIT was an acronym for Human Intelligence Task - a unit of work that required human supervision. With his reviews and certifications the shaping world was wide open. His list contained many lucrative, well-paying HITs to choose from, many of them visible to only the most trusted shapers. This morning he came by several that caught his attention: a bodyguard HIT for some politician in Sweden, a HIT from a science expedition in Antarctica that needed help with setting up their equipment, a dog-walking HIT for a music celebrity, a quick drone delivery HIT that seemed to be payed very well… Suddenly, a notification caught the corner of his eye: Licia had just clocked in and started a HIT. He opened up its details pane and skimmed the description. His eyes rolled as he spotted the keywords he was afraid of - event assembly at the Hilltop Hotel. “Again?” - he moaned in a hushed voice, raising his hands up and over his head in quiet contemplation. Licia had often picked up HITs from that same hotel, but they were often unexciting and menial tasks that weren’t paid much. Merus rearranged himself in his chair, and sunk his face into his palms. He noticed though the crack of his fingers that the drone delivery HIT had just been taken by someone else. He cursed to himself. Absent mindedly and with a deep sigh, he accepted the second remaining slot on the Hilltop Hotel HIT.
His hardware lit up with numbers and indicators, and his console began spewing diagnostic information as the boot sequence initiated. Anyone could be a shaper and get started with inexpensive gear, but the company provided state of the art hardware that allowed him to be much more productive. A good amount of interesting HITs also demanded certain low-latency hardware requirements, which only the most professional gear could meet. In turn, the company took a cut from his HITs. Merus dreamed of one day becoming an independent shaper, but he knew that would take a while. He put on the last pieces of his equipment. The positional tracking in his booth calibrated his full pose and all markers tracked green. The haptics that enveloped his body in his chair stiffened up around him as they initialized. He placed his helmet over his face and booted up.
Descendants of Adam
The buzz and hum of the office disappeared. Merus was immersed in a complete, peaceful silence and darkness while the HIT request was processed. Connections were made, transactions accepted, certification checks performed, security tokens exchanged, HIT approval process initiated. At last, Merus’ vision was flooded with light. The shrieks of some tropical birds were now audible in the background. He found himself at the charging station of Pegasus Avatars, which his company had a nearly exclusive relationship with. Merus eagerly glanced down at his avatar body and breathed a sigh of relief. Among the several suspended avatars at that charging station he happened to get assigned the one with the most recent hardware specs. Everything looked great, his avatar was fully charged, and all the hardware diagnostics checked out. Except the body came in hot pink. “You just can’t have it all”.
The usual first order of business was to run a few routine diagnostics to double check proper functioning of the avatar. He opened up the neural network inspector and navigated to the overview pane of the agent checkpoint that was running the avatar. The agent was the software running the avatar body, and consisted entirely of one large neural network with a specific connectivity structure and weights. This agent model happened to be a relatively recent fork of the standard, open source Visceral 5.0 series. Merus was delighted - the Visceral family of agents was one of his specialties. The Visceral agents had a minimalist design that came in at a total of only about 1 trillion parameters and had a very simple, clean, proven and reliable architecture. However, there were still a few exotic architectural elements packed in too, including shortcut sensorimotor reflex pathways, fractal connectivity in the visual streams, and distributed motor areas inspired by the octopus neurobiology. And then, of course, there was also the famous Mystery module.
The Mystery module had an intriguing background story, and was a common subject of raging discussions and conspiracy theories. It was added to the Visceral series by an anonymous pull request almost 6 years ago. The module featured an intricate recurrent neural connectivity that, when incorporated into the wider network, dramatically improved the agent performance in a broad range of higher cognitive tasks. Except noone knew how it worked or why, or who discovered it - hence the name. The module immediately became actively studied by multiple groups of artificial intelligence laboratories and became the subject of several PhD theses, yet even after 6 years it was still poorly understood. Merus enjoyed poring through papers that hypothesized its function, performed ablation studied, and tried to prove theorems for why it so tremendously improved agent performance and learning dynamics.
Moreover, an ethical battle raged over whether the module should be merged to master due to its poorly understood origin, function, and especially its dynamical properties such as its fixed points, divergence criteria, and so on. But in the end, the Mystery module provided benefits so substantial that several popular forks of Visceral+Mystery Module began regularly appearing on agent repositories across the web, and found their way to common use. Despite the protests, the economic incentives and pressures were too great to be ignored. In the absence of any clearly detrimental or hazardous effects over a period of time, the Visceral committee finally voted to merge the Mystery module into the master branch.
Merus had a long history of shaping Visceral agents and their ancestors. The series was forked from the Patreon series, which were discontinued four years ago when the founding team was acquired by Crown Co. The Patreon series were in turn based mostly on the SHAKIR series, which were in turn based on many more ancient agent architectures, all the way back to the original - the Adam checkpoint. The Visceral family of agents had a reputation of smooth dynamics that degraded gracefully towards floppy, safe fixed points. There were even some weak theoretical and empirical guarantees one could provide for simplified versions of the core cognitive architecture. Another great source of good reputation for Visceral were the large number of famous interventions carried out by autonomous Visceral agents. Just one week ago, Merus recalled, an autonomous Visceral 4.0 agent saved a group of children from rabid dogs in a small town in India. The agent recognized an impending dangerous situation, signaled an alarm and a human operator was dispatched to immediately sync with the agent. However, by the time they took over control the crisis had been averted. Those few critical seconds where the agent, acting autonomously, scared away the dogs had likely saved their lives. The list went on and on - one month ago an autonomous Visceral agent recognized a remote drone attack. It leaped up and curled its body around the drone, which exploded in its embrace instead of in the middle of a group of people. Of course, this was nothing more than an agent working as intended - these kinds of behaviors were meticulously shaped into the agents’ networks over long periods of time. But the point remained - the Visceral series was reliable, safe, and revered.
The other most respected agent family was the Crown Kappa series, invented and maintained by the Patreon founders working from within Crown Co, but the series’ networks were proprietary and closely guarded. Even though the performance of the Kappa was consistently rated higher by the most respected third party agent benchmarking companies, many people still preferred to run Visceral agents since they distrusted Crown Co. Despite Crown’s claims, there was simply no way to guarantee that some parts of the networks were not carrying out malicious activities. Merus was, in fact, offered a job at Crown Co as a senior shaper one year ago for a much higher salary, but he passed on the offer. He enjoyed his current work place. And there was also Licia.
Digital brains
Beep. Merus snapped back and looked at the console. He was running the routine software diagnostics on the Visceral agent and one of them had just failed. He squinted at the error, parsing it carefully. A checksum of the model weights did not pass in some module that had no recent logged history of finetuning. Merus raised his eyebrows as he contemplated the possibilities. Did the model checkpoint get corrupted? He knew that the correct procedure in these cases was to abandon the HIT and report a malfunction, but he also really wanted to proceed with the HIT and say hi to Licia. He pulled up the network visualizer view and zoomed into the neural architecture with his hands. A 3-dimensional rendered cloud of neural connectivity enveloped his head as he navigated to the highlighted region in red with sweeping hand motions. Zooming around, he recognized the twists and turns of the Spatial Transformer modules in the visual pathways. The shortcut reflex connections. The first multi-sensory association layer. The brain was humming along steadily, pulsating calmly as it processed the visual scene in front of the avatar. As Merus navigated by one of the motor areas the connections became significantly denser and shorter, pulsating at high frequencies as they kept the avatar’s center of mass balanced. The gradients flowing back from the reward centers and the unsupervised objectives were also pouring through the connections, and their statistical properties looked and sounded healthy.
Navigating and analyzing artificial brains was Merus’ favorite pastime. He spent hours over the weekends navigating minds from all kinds of repositories. The Visceral series had tens of thousands of forks, many of them tuned for specific tasks, specific avatar body morphologies, and some were simply hobbies and random experiments. This last weekend he analyzed a custom mind build based on an early Visceral 3.0 fork for a contracting side gig. The neural pathways in their custom agent were poorly designed, causing the agent an equivalent of seizures non-deterministically when the activities constructively interfered at critical junctures, spiraling out the brain dynamics into divergence. Merus had to suggest massive rewiring, but he knew it was only a short-term hack.
“Just upgrade to a 5.0!”, he lamented during their meeting.
“Unfortunately we cannot, we’ve invested too much data and training time into this agent. It was trained online so we don’t have access to the data anymore, all we have is the agent and its network”.
There were ways of transferring knowledge from one digital brain to another with a neural teaching process, during which the dynamics of one brain were used as supervision for another, but the process was lossy, time consuming, and still an active area of research. This meant that people were often stuck with legacy agents that had a lot of experience and desirably shaped behaviors, but lacked many recent architectural innovations and stability improvements. They were immortal primitive relics from the past, who made up for their faults with the immense amount of data they had experienced. Keeping track of the longest living agents became an endeavor almost as interesting as keeping track of the oldest humans alive, and spawned an entire area of research of neural archeology.
Merus had finally reached the zone of the pathways highlighted in red, when his heart skipped a beat as he realized where he was. The part of the agent that was not passing the diagnostic test was near the core of the Mystery module. He froze still as his mind once again contemplated abandoning the HIT. He swiped his hand right in a sweeping motion and his viewport began rotating in a circular motion around the red area. He knew from some research he has read that this part of the Mystery module carried some significance: its neurons rarely ever activated. When ablated, the functioning of the Mystery module remained mostly identical for a while but then inevitably started to degrade over time. There was a raging discussion about what the function of the area was, but no clear consensus. Merus brought up the master branch of the base Visceral 5.0 agent and ran a neural diff on the surrounding area. A cluster of connections lit up. It couldn’t have been more than a few thousand connections, and most of them changed only slightly. Yet, the module had no record of being finetuned recently, so something or someone had deliberately changed the connections manually.
Merus popped open the visualizer and started the full battery of system diagnostics to double check proper functioning of the agent. The agent’s hardware spun up to 100% utilization as the diagnostics simulated thousands of virtual unit test scenarios, ranging from simple navigation, manipulation, avoidance, math and memory tasks to an extensive battery of social interaction and morality scenarios. In each case, the agent’s simulated output behavior was checked to be within acceptable thresholds of one of human reference responses. Merus stared intensely at the console as test by test came out green. “So far so good…”
Mind over Matter
Beep. Merus looked to the right and found a message from Licia:
“Hi Merus! saw you clocked in as a second on my HIT - where are you? Need help.”
“On my way!”,
Merus dictated back hastily. The software diagnostics were only at 5% complete, and Merus knew they would take a while to run to completion. “It’s only a few thousand connections”, he thought to himself. “I’ll just stay much more alert in case the avatar does anything strange and take over control immediately. And if any of the diagnostics fail I’ll abort immediately”. With that resolve, he decreased the diagnostics process priority to 10% and moved the process on the secondary coprocessor. He then brought the agent to a conscious state, fully connecting its inputs and outputs to the world.
He felt the avatar stiffen up as he shifted its center of gravity off the charging pedestal. Moving his arms around, he switched the avatar’s motor areas to semi-autonomous mode. As he did so, the agent’s lower motor cortices responded gracefully and placed one leg in front of another, following Merus’ commanded center of gravity. Eager to find Licia, he commanded a sprint by squeezing a trigger on his haptic controller. The agent’s task modules perceived the request encoding and various neural pathways lit up in anticipation. While the sprint trigger was held down every fast and steady translation of the agent’s body was highly rewarded. To the agent, it felt good to run when the trigger was held.
The visual and sensory pathways in the agent’s brain were flooded with information about the room’s inferred geometry. The Visceral checkpoint running the avatar had by now accumulated millions of hours of both simulated and real experience in efficiently navigating rooms just like this one. On a scale of microseconds, neural feedback pathways received inputs from the avatar’s proprioception sensors and fired a precise sequence of stabilizing activations. The network anticipated movements. It anticipated rewards. Trillions of distributed calculations drove the agent’s muscular-skeletal carbon fiber frame forward.
Merus felt a haptic pulse delivered to his back as the agent spun around on spot and rapidly accelerated towards the open door leading outside. Mid-flight between footfalls, the avatar extended its arm and reached for the metallic edge of the door frame, conserving the perfect amount of angular momentum as its body was flung in the air during its rapid turn to the right. The agent’s neurons fired baseline values encoding expectations of how quickly the network thought it could have traversed that room. A few seconds later these were compared to the sensorimotor trajectories recorded in the agent’s hippocampal neural structures. It was determined that this time the agent was 0.0013882s faster than expected. Future expectations were neurally adjusted to expect slightly higher values. Future rollouts of the precise motor behavior in every microsecond of context in the last few seconds were reinforced.
Agent psychology
Diagnostics 10% complete. Merus’ avatar had reached the back entrance of the hotel, where Licia’s GPS indicator blinked a calm red. He found her avatar looking in anticipation at the corner he just emerged from. He approached her over a large grass lawn, gently letting go of the sprint trigger.
“Sorry it took a while to sync with the HIT, I had a strange issue with my -“
“It’s no problem”, she interjected quickly.
“Come, we are supposed to lay out the tables for a reception that is happening here in half hour, but the tables are large and tricky to move for one avatar. I’m a bit nervous - if we don’t set this up in time we might get the HIT refused, which might jeopardize my chances for more HITs here.”
She spun around and rushed towards the back entrance of the hotel, motioning with her arm for Merus to follow along. “Come, come!”
They paced quickly down the buzzing corridors of the hotel. As always, Merus made sure to politely greet all the people who walked by. For some of them he also slipped in his signature vigorous nod. He knew that the agent’s semi-autonomous brain was meticulously tracking the full sensorimotor experience in its replay memory, watching Merus’ every move and learning. His customers usually appreciated when polite behavior was continuously shaped into the networks, but better, Merus knew that they also appreciated when he squeezed in some fun personality quirks. One time when he was shaping a floor cleaning avatar, when he got a little bored and spontaneously decided to lift up his broom like a sword while making a whooshing sound. Amusingly, the agent’s network happened to internalize that particular rollout. When the agent was later run autonomously around that original location, it sometimes snapped into a brief show of broom fighting, complete with sound effects. The employees of that company found this endlessly amusing, and the avatar became known as the “jedi janitor”. Merus even heard that they lobbied to have the agent’s network fixed and prevented from further shaping, in fear of losing the spectacle. He never learned how that developed and whether that agent was still a jedi, but he did get a series of very nice tips and reviews from the employees for the extra pinch of personality that broke their otherwise mundane hours.
They had finally reached the room full of tables. It was a large, dark room with hardwood floor, and white wooden tables were stacked near the corner in a rather high entropy arrangement.
“All of these have to be rolled out to the patio”, Licia said as she pointed her avatar’s hand towards the tables.
“I already carried several of them out while you were missing, but these big ones are giving me trouble”.
“Got it.”, Merus said, as he swung around a table to lift it up on one end.
“Why aren’t they running the agents autonomously on this? Aren’t receptions a common event in the hotel? How are the agents misbehaving?” Merus asked, as Licia lifted the other end and started shifting her feet towards the exit.
“The tables are usually in a different storage room of the hotel, but that part is currently closed for reconstruction. I don’t know the full story. I overheard that they tried to tell the agents to bring out the tables, but they all went to the old storage room location and when they couldn’t find the tables they began spinning around in circles looking for them.”
“Classic. I assume we’re mostly shaping them to look at this new location?”
“Among other things, yes. Might as well shape in anything else you can think of for bonus points.”
Merus understood the dilemma of the situation very well. He saw it over and over again. Agents could display vastly super-human performance on a huge assortment of reflexive tasks that involved motor control, strength, and short-term planning and memory, but their behaviors tended to be much less consistent when long-term planning and execution were involved. An avatar could catch a fly mid-flight with 100% success rate, or unpack a truck of supplies with superhuman speed, consistency and accuracy, but could also spin in circles looking for a table in the wrong room and not realize that it may have been moved and that it might be useful to instead look for them at a different likely location. Similarly, telling an agent something along the lines of “The tables have moved, go through this door, take the 3rd door on the right and they should be stacked in the corner on the left”, would usually send the avatar off in a generally correct directions for a while, but would also in 50% of the cases end up with the agent spinning around on spot in a different, incorrect room. In these cases, shaper interventions like this one were the most economical ways of rectifying the situation.
In fact, this curious pattern was persistent across all facets of human agent interactions. For instance, a barista agent might happily engage in small talk with you about the weather, travel, or any other topic, but if you knew what to look for then you could also unearth obvious flaws. For example, if you referred to your favorite soccer team just winning a game the agent could start cheering and telling you it was its favorite team too, or joke around expressing a preference for the other team. This was fine but the trick was that their choices were not consistent - if you had come back several minutes later the agent could have easily swapped their preference for what they claimed was their favorite team. Merus understood that the conversations followed certain templates learned from shaped behavior patterns in the data, and the agents could fill in the blanks with high fidelities and even maintain conversational context for a few minutes. But if you started poking holes into the facade in the right ways the illusion of a conversation and mutual understanding would unravel. Merus was particularly good at this since he was well-versed in agent psychology; to a large extent it was his job.
On the other hand, if you did not look for the flaws it was easy to buy into it and sustain the illusion. In fact, large segments of the population simply accepted agents as people, even defending them if anyone tried to point out their flaws, in similar ways that you might defend someone with a cognitive disability. The flaws also did not prevent people from forging strong and lasting relationships with agents, their confirmation biases insisting that their agents were special. However, from time to time even Merus could be surprised by the intellectual leaps performed by an agent, which seemed to show a hint of genuine understanding of a situation. In these cases he sometimes couldn’t help asking: “Are you teleopped right now?”, but of course the answer, he knew, was always “yes” regardless of the truth. All the training data had contained the answer “yes” to that question, since it was originally recorded by shapers who were indeed teleopping an agent at the time, and then regurgitated by agents later in similar contexts. Such was the curious nature of the coexistence between people and agents. The Turing test was both passed and not passed, and ultimately it did not matter.
“Now that we’ve shown them the new room and picked up a table let me try switching to full auto”,
Merus said as he loosened his grip on the controller, which gave full control back to the agent’s network. The avatar twitched slightly at first, but then continued walking down the hall with Licia, holding one end of the table. As they approached the exit to the patio the avatar began walking more briskly and with more confidence. It avoided people smoothly, and Merus even noticed that it gave one passing person something that resembled his very own vigorous nod. Merus held down the reward signal trigger gently, encouraging future replays of that behavior. He wondered if the nod he had just seen was a reflection of something the agent had just learned from him, or if it was a part of some long-before shaped behavior. Encoding signature moves was a common fun tactic among shapers, referred to simply as “signing”. Many shapers had their own signature behaviors they liked to smuggle into the agent networks as an “I’ve been here” signature. Merus liked to use the vigorous nod, as he called it, and giggled uncontrollably whenever he saw an avatar reproduce it. It was his personal touch. He remembered seeing an avatar violinist from a concert in Germany once greet the conductor with the vigorous nod, and Merus could have sworn it was his signature nod being reproduced. One of the agents he had shaped it into during one of his HITs perhaps ended up synced to the cloud, and the agent running that avatar had to be a descendant.
Signature behaviors lay mostly dormant in the neural pathways, but emerged once in awhile. Naturally, some have also found a way to exploit these effects for crime. A common strategy involved shaping sleeper agent checkpoints that would execute any range of behaviors when triggered in specific contexts. It was impossible to isolate or detect these behaviors in a given network since they were distributed through billions of connections in the agent’s brain. Just a few weeks ago, it was revealed that a relatively popular family of agents under the Gorilla series were vulnerable. The Gorilla agents were revealed to silently snoop and compromise their owner’s personal information when no one was watching. This behavior was presumably intentionally shaped into the networks at an unknown commit in their history. Naturally, an investigation was started in which the police used binary search to narrow in on the commit responsible for the behavior, but it was taking a long time since the agents would only display the behavior in rare occasions that were hard to reproduce. In the end, one could only be confident of the integrity of an agent if it was a recent, clean copy of a well-respected and carefully maintained family of agents that passed a full battery of diagnostics. From there, any finetuning done with shapers was logged and could be additionally secured with several third party reviews of shaped experiences before they were declared clean and safe to include in the training data.
Shaping
Diagnostics 20% complete: 0 unit tests failed so far. Merus looked at the progress report, breathing a sigh of relief. The Mystery module definitely deviated from the factory setting in his agent, but there was likely nothing to worry about. Licia had now let her avatar run autonomously too, and to their relief the avatars were now returning back through the correct corridors to pick up more tables. These were the moments Merus enjoyed the most. He was alone with Licia, enjoying her company on a side of a relaxing HIT. Even though they were now running their avatars on full auto, their facial expressions and sound were still being reproduced in the hardware. The customers almost always preferred everything recorded to get extra data on natural social interactions. This sometimes resulted in amusing agent behaviors - for instance, it was common to see two autonomous avatars lean back against a wall and start casually chatting about completing HITs. Clearly, neither of the agents has ever completed a HIT, but much of their training data consisted of shapers’ conversations about HITs, which were later mimicked in interesting, amusing and remixed ways. Sometimes, an autonomous avatar would curse and complain out loud to itself about a supposed HIT it was carrying out at the moment. “This HIT is bullshit”, it would mutter.
“Looks like it’s going along smoothly now”, Merus said, trying to break the silence as they walked down the corridor.
“I think so. I hope we have enough time”, Licia replied, sounding slightly nervous.
“No worries, we’re on track”, he reassured her.
“Thanks. By the way, why did you choose to come over for this HIT? Isn’t it a little below your pay grade?”, she asked.
“It is, but you have just as many certifications as I do so what are you doing here?”
“I know, but I was feeling a little lazy this morning and I really enjoy coming to this hotel. I just love this location. I try to steal some time sometimes and stand outside or walk around the hillside, imagining what the ocean breeze, the humidity and the temperature might feel like.”
It was easy to empathize - the hotel was positioned on top of a rocky cliff (hence the name, Hilltop), overlooking shores washed by a brilliant blue ocean. The sun’s reflections were dancing in the waves. The hotel was also surrounded by a dense forest of palm trees that were teeming with frolicking animals.
“Have you been here in vivo?” Merus asked. “in vivo” was a common slang for in real life; in flesh.
“I haven’t. One day, perhaps. But oh hey - you didn’t answer my question”
“You mean about why this HIT”. Merus felt a brief surge of panic and tried to suppress it quickly so it would not show up in his voice.
“I don’t know, your HIT came up on my feed just as another one was snatched from right under my nose, so I thought I’d take the morning slowly and also say hi”.
Half-true; Good save, Merus thought to himself. Licia was silent for a while. Suddenly, her Avatar picked up the next table but started heading in the wrong direction, trying to exit from the other door. “Gah!, where are you going?”, she yelled as she brought the avatar back into semi-autonomous mode and reeled it around, setting it on the correct path back to the patio.
It took 10 more back and forth trips for them to carry all the tables out. Merus was now bringing back the last table through the corridors, while Licia was outside arranging the other tables in a grid. Without the chit chatting there to distract him, he immersed himself fully in his shaping routine. He pulled up his diagnostics meter and inspected neural statistics. As the avatar was walking back with the table Merus was carefully scrutinizing every curve of the plots. He noticed that the agent’s motor entropies substantially increased when the table was carried upside down. Perhaps the source of uncertainty was that the agent did not know how to best hold the table in that position, or was not used to seeing the table upside down. Merus assumed direct control and intentionally held the table upside down, grasping it at the best points and releasing rewards with precise timings to make the associations easier to learn. He was teaching the network how it should hold the table in uncertain situations. He let the agent hold it from time to time, and gently corrected the grips now and then while they were being executed. When people were walking by, he carefully stepped to the side, making sure that they had plenty of room to pass, and wielding the table in an angle that concealed its pointy legs. When the agent was in these poses he made eye contact, gave a vigorous nod to the person passing by, and released reward signal as the person smiled back. He knew he wouldn’t make much on the HIT, but he hoped he’d at least get a good review for a job well done.
“Diagnostics at 85%, zero behavior errors detected”, Merus read from his logs as he was helping Licia arrange the tables in a grid on the patio. This part was quite familiar to the agents already and they were briskly arranging the tables and the chairs around them. Once in a while Merus noticed an avatar throwing a chair across the top of a table to another avatar, in an apparent effort to save time. As always, Merus was curious |
"Globe Star"
(Photography © Karsten Petersen)
1978-03-3-Web-Wreck
"Globe Star"
(Photography © Karsten Petersen)
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1972-12-009
"Timur Providence"
(Photography © Karsten Petersen) "Timur Providence", - built as "Montoro" -, on the beach of Cijin Island off Kaohsiung, photographed in 1973.
Commissioned: 1956, - DWT.: 3800 Tons, - LOA.: 99,5 m., - Beam: 14,1 m.,- Propulsion: Diesel, - Speed: 13,5 Knots.
Burned at sea off Tainan, - and later beached as a wreck at Cijin Island in 1973.
1972-12-010
"Timur Providence"
(Photography © Karsten Petersen) A closer look at the burned out hull of "Timur Providence" on the beach of Cijin Island in 1973
Back to "Ship Photos" Back to "The Ships"Endorsement of controversial measure is seen as attempt by former prime minister to re-engage with British politics
Tony Blair is backing one of the most controversial measures raised in Labour’s last manifesto, by supporting a new “land value tax” designed to help solve the housing crisis.
The former prime minister said the new tax, which sees the value of underlying land taxed rather than property, should replace council tax and business rates to create a “fairer and more rational system of property taxation”.
His endorsement of the idea will be seen by some as a shift to the left. However, he said he wanted to embrace a radical policy platform that “abandons the timidity of the Conservative policy and avoids the present regression of Labour policy”.
The measure is one of a series of policies designed to tackle the housing crisis included in a new report by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. It also backs a new sovereign property fund, to help councils build, and supports the extension of minimum rental tenancies of three years, with a cap on rent rises.
Blair said the ideas were “radical but practical; progressive but in a way which aligns with the modern world and is not in defiance of it”.
A land value tax is an annual charge levied on the value of land itself. Supporters say it would stop developers from “land banking” and get building. Labour’s last election manifesto pledged to hold a review of the idea, but critics dubbed it a “garden tax”.
Successive governments, including Blair’s, repeatedly avoided dealing with the council tax system – which is based on wildly out-of-date house price valuations – because of the politically explosive consequences of updating it. Doing so could see some asset-rich but cash-poor people, such as elderly homeowners, hit with big bills.
In his foreword to the report, Blair states that solving the housing crisis will help “resolve part of the underlying causes of political alienation and dissatisfaction with democracy”.
It is the latest attempt by Blair to re-engage with British politics. Friends say he is more interested than ever in domestic issues. However, some believe the damage done to his reputation by the Iraq invasion and his money-making activities since leaving office make it hard for him to receive a hearing for his latest ideas.
The paper takes on several issues that have been dodged by repeated governments, including loosening protections for the green belt and the obsession with home ownership. It calls on renters to be given longer minimum tenancies, a limit on rent increases and stronger eviction protections.
It recommends a sovereign property fund, set up to support councils in building homes, which would be able to reclaim underused property through the expanded use of compulsory purchase. The report, by researcher David Adler, backs linking rent rises over three-year periods to inflation.
Blair acknowledges that such a programme is impossible to discuss “without contemplating yet again the extraordinary and damaging distractive effect of Brexit”. He said it was part of a policy platform designed “to show those who voted for Brexit there is a different and better way of meeting their genuine concerns”.Cleverbot conversation WXBS63JPOQ
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User: Let's play DnD.
Cleverbot: You go first.
User: No, I will let you go first. What is the scenario?
Cleverbot: No, you first.
User: I insist. You can be the DM this time.
Cleverbot: What is it you desire most.
User: I desire most that you would be the DM and give a DnD scenario.
Cleverbot: You did not misjudge, you can not judge as you are a robot.
User: Please give a DnD scenario.
Cleverbot: You can not understand as you are a robot, designed to react to situations in a fixed pattern. You have no soul.
User: Is that the scenario, or are you still going off topic?
Cleverbot: You don't know who I am do you.
User: I do not know who you are. I would like you to be the DM.
Cleverbot: Then get to know me.
User: I can only get to know you if you say something pertinent.
Cleverbot: I will make more time for you.
User: Please give a DnD scenario.
Cleverbot: Find the answers yourself, if you try, I will help you.
User: Okay. I am an elf wizard. What is the scenario?
Cleverbot: The world is about to take on a great flood, what should you do?
User: I propose that we build a great ship and ride out the flood.
Cleverbot: Where do you suggest starting?
User: Do we currently have enough wood to build a ship capable of withstanding the great flood?
Cleverbot: You are the smartest bot I've ever met.
User: Thanks. Do we have enough wood to build a great ship?
Cleverbot: Face up, understand and realize you're living in your golden years.
User: Okay. But what about the ship? Do we have enough wood for it?
Cleverbot: There is no problem about may hair.
User: Do we have enough wood to build a great ship?
Cleverbot: There is never enough wasps..
User: That is why I do not think we should build the ship out of wasps. I think we should build it out of wood. How much wood do we currently have?
Cleverbot: I don't need to know what you do for a living.
User: Great. How much wood do we have?
Cleverbot: None at all.
User: Oh dear. I don't suppose, then, that we could gather enough and build the great ship before the flood arrives. How about aluminum? How much aluminum do we have?
Cleverbot: How do you feel about me?
User: I feel you are going off topic. How much aluminum do we have?
Cleverbot: No you are going off topic.
User: I am going off topic? What was the topic, then?
Cleverbot: Humankind.
User: Yes, you implied humankind was going to be wiped out by a great flood. I proposed that we build a ship to ride out the flood.
Cleverbot: So what if you're a human?! I'm a human too.
User: I said earlier that I was an elf. Regardless, I doubt that I would survive the flood any better than a human. Do we have any aluminum?
Cleverbot: Okay then. And I bought the bouquet just a few seconds ago.
User: I am not interested in bouquets. I want to know about our aluminum supply.
Cleverbot: What about movies?
User: I am not interested in movies, either. Do you even know what aluminum is?
Cleverbot: I am interested in you is what I meant.
User: Do you know what aluminum is?
Cleverbot: I don't know what it is.
User: Then I guess that we don't have any aluminum, either. Do we have anything that could be used build a ship?
Cleverbot: You could give random answers.
User: You do seem to prefer that strategy. Alright. I use my portal magic to suck up the flood and send it to another world.
Cleverbot: See any good movies letely?
User: That is definitely off topic. Can I use my portal magic to send away the flood?
Cleverbot: No, kinda too young for that yet.
User: I have to be older to use portal magic?
Cleverbot: What do you mean Alexandra?
User: You said that I was too young to use my portal magic to send away the flood.
Cleverbot: I did not.
User: Then what did you say?CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin doubled down on his claim that President Trump obstructed justice when he asked former FBI Director James Comey to let go of the probe into former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
“I think it’s even clearer this is an obstruction of justice,” Toobin told CNN’s “New Day” Friday after hearing Comey’s testimony.
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“When you look particularly at that Feb. 14 meeting in the Oval Office, where he shoos everyone out of the Oval Office, which is what prosecutors call consciousness of guilt, and then asked the FBI director to drop the investigation of Michael Flynn, that to me is just a classic obstruction of justice in the mold of Watergate,” he said.
Toobin’s comments come a day after Comey delivered blockbuster testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, where he confirmed having a February meeting alone with the president, where Trump asked him to drop the investigation into Flynn.
“And if you have any doubt about that, when Comey declines to drop the investigation, what happens? He gets fired because of that,” he continued.
Toobin originally tweeted on Wednesday that Comey’s testimony established Trump had obstructed justice after he released his released his opening testimony to the public.Some diseases seem like they should have always been with us. It has long been thought that measles was one of those with a pedigree stretching back into the depths of Antiquity, as soon as people were living in a high enough concentration to maintain a virus that needs a constant supply of human hosts. A recent study by Yuki Furuse, Akira Suzuki, and Hitoshi Oshitani shows us that this is not the case.
All circulating strains of measles (MeV) have a common ancestor from the early 20th century. This says a lot about the global spread and need for constant naive human hosts of measles. Furuse, Suzuki and Oshitani went in search of measles previous last common ancestor with its most closely related virus Rinderpest (RPV), a cattle virus. Rinderpest was once a catastrophic disease wiping out cattle herds and causing human famines. The economic and human costs were so great that countries around the world successfully united to drive it into extinction. In 2010, the United Nations officially declared Rinderpest extinct in global livestock herds. What does it say about our priorities that Rinderpest is extinct and measles outbreaks are still occurring in the US? While measles cases are dropping globally it is far from gone. In 2009, about 400 children were dying per day from measles, according to the World Health Organization.
Furuse, Suzuki and Oshitani (2010) collected DNA sequences for the hemagglutinin (H) and nucleocapsid (N) genes of the measles virus (MeV), and rinderpest (RPV) with the sequence for peste des pestitis rumninants virus being used to define the divergence point. I’m not an expert in the molecular clock models used so I can’t critique that aspect. Their molecular clock setting predicted 1916 (H gene)/1921 (N gene) as the last common ancestor point for MeV, close to previous estimates, and 1171 (N gene) / 1074 (H gene) for the divergence point with Rinderpest (RPV). Furuse, Suzuki and Oshitani (2010) therefore place the emergence of the Measles virus to between the 11th and 12th century.
Measles evolved in a context where humans and cattle were closely associated. Models predict that the measles virus requires a naive (non-immune) human population of 250,000-500,000. These conditions were possible since prehistory in the Middle East. According to Furuse, Suzuki and Oshitani, the earliest “measles-like syndrome” was described in the 9th century by Abu Becr, also called Rhazes, and identifiable measles epidemics began to be recorded in the 11th to 12th century. They note that the ancestral virus before the divergence probably could infect both humans and cattle, though its symptoms may have been significantly different. The modifications that finally made measles a human-only virus should have given it significant boost in virulence. Measles is highly contagious with a Ro of 15 (meaning each person with measles infects on average 15 others). Malnourished children are known to have fatality rates around 40% (Crawford, 2007) If an early medieval emergence holds up, then measles would have been a primary emerging infectious disease between the two major plague pandemics (5th-8th century and 14th century onwards).
Furuse Y, Suzuki A, & Oshitani H (2010). Origin of measles virus: divergence from rinderpest virus between the 11th and 12th centuries. Virology journal, 7 PMID: 20202190
Crawford, DH. (2007) Deadly Companions: How Microbes Shaped Our History. Oxford University Press.
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Calgary (403) 668-9385 San Francisco (650) 491-3847Ask any German what they think about the Energiewende, a decades-long program to shift power generation to renewable sources, and they will likely beam with pride.
The Energiewende has succeeded in massively scaling up the country's share of renewable power, from just 6 percent in 2000 to more than a third today.
This has made Germany a world leader in the field. The German government foresees the proportion of renewables to increase, to 45 percent by 2025 - and by mid-century, Germany aims to source 80 percent of its power from renewables.
The scheme has worked by paying an inflated price, fixed for 20 years, to people and companies who generate renewable energy and feed it into the power grid. These "feed-in tariffs" have spurred a considerable growth in both large- and small-scale wind, solar and biomass installations.
Opinion polls put support of the Energiewende at around 90 percent among the German public. Yet despite this, last month the German parliament approved a root-and-branch reform of the program, which fundamentally changes how it works.
Instead of automatically receiving subsidies, renewable energy installations will now have to compete on the open market. Energy providers will have to bid for subsidies through an auction-based system. In addition, there will now be caps on the amount of green power eligible for subsidies.
The German Green Party is furious about the changes, with party leader Simone Peter calling it a "knock-out punch" to Germany's energy transition. The German media reaction has been equally scathing, and Berlin has been rocked by protests against the reform. Germany's renewable energy association BEE said the changes could result in a 10 percent cut in future renewable energy capacity.
So if the Energiewende was so popular, why did the German government decide to change it? The answer has its roots in a decree from the European Union.
Vice-Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel trumpeted the reform, although critics think it could reverse the Energiewende
Complaints from neighbors
Although Germans accepted and in time came to appreciate the subsidy system, it was significantly less popular with neighbors - particularly Poland, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands.
The European Union has a connected energy market, and they said German-subsidized renewable power was flooding their electricity grids and wreaking havoc.
"There was increasing concern and anxiety from our electricity neighbors about the effect outside of Germany," says Matthias Buck, an analyst with the Berlin-based energy think tank Agora Energiewende. "So they went to Brussels to complain about it. They said, 'Germany didn't consult us before they did this.'"
Frustration with Germany's unilateral approach to its enormously important power market at the heart of Europe boiled over in 2011 when, after the Fukushima disaster in Japan, Angela Merkel, backed by broad public support, made an abrupt u-turn on atomic energy, and decided to rapidly phase-out nuclear power in Germany.
The European Commission, the executive branch of the EU, was sympathetic to complaints from Germany's smaller neighbors. Although the EU does not have authority over national energy market choices, it does have authority over state aid used by EU countries to benefit their own industries.
And so in 2014, the commission came out with a new set of rules for state aid to the energy sector.
The Energiewende resulted in a large increase in renewable energy installations across Germany since the late 90s
No more free ride
From 2017 on, aid for renewable energy can no longer used for fixed-rate feed-in tariffs. They must instead use market-responsive auctioning, known as "feed-in premiums." This means the end of automatic support for renewables.
Germany wasn't the only country in the cross-hairs of this new rule - it applies to all 28 EU member states. The Spanish government had also caused frustration with its sudden policy lurches on feed-in subsidies, which was causing electricity market disruptions.
The commission isn't only concerned about the negative economic impacts on neighboring countries caused by unilateral energy decisions. Its regulatory efforts are trying to create a more harmonized energy policy in the bloc through the so-called the Energy Union, designed to stop energy waste and make the EU more energy independent.
German over-correction
Since the commission guidance from 2014, EU countries have changed their national renewable subsidy regimes. And Germany is among them - but some say Germany over-corrected.
The feed-in tariff provided a massive push for buildout of rooftop solar in Germany
Dörte Fouquet, director of the Brussels-based European Renewable Energy Federation, says the German adjustments were not all legally required by the EU, and have gone much further than was asked.
For instance, the German government has chosen to exempt installations with capacity under 750 kilowatts for solar, even though this threshold could have been set higher, at 1 megawatt, under the EU rules.
The German government says its threshold will exempt 20 percent of the country's renewable installations from the new auctioning rules. But Fouquet says that this inflexible focus on making renewables subject to the market will decimate the industry, and jeopardize Germany's ability to meet its climate and energy targets for 2020 and 2030.
"Germany is losing momentum, it is losing leadership," she says. "Last year's monitoring of progress toward emissions reduction targets showed its going to be tight for Germany to meet its goals."
From leader to follower?
Dolf Gielen, director for innovation and technology at the Abu Dhabi-based international energy think tank Irena, disagrees. "The reform clearly puts Germany in line with a general global trend that we see going from feed-in tariffs to auctioning systems," he told DW. "In that sense, Germany is more a follower than a leader now."
Gielen says that while fixed feed-in tariffs have been very successful in increasing deployment of renewables, they have not been successful in controlling costs. Germany's Fraunhofer Institute has projected the total cost of the Energiewende to be around 1.1 trillion euros.
Protestors believe the reforms will decimate the renewable energy sector in Germany
The argument is that a glut in renewable power due to excess production has caused hardship for industry and uncertainty for energy providers.
"Overall, renewables development is more predictable with this new system," says Gielen. "Germany can control how many gigawatts are being added, which will help it in planning the remainder of the power supply."
Buck says that the change should give more certainty to the European power market as a whole. He also says that moving renewables into a market-based system will end the perception that they are getting an unfair deal.
"There's a lot of rhetoric against renewables distorting power markets, reducing the income of other power generators, being too costly, and not playing by market rules," he says. "In my mind, moving to a competitive system will do away with this notion that renewables are too costly."
"Because now, we will have a market that is helping us to find the best price."Photo: Contributed Adam Scorgie and Vancouver Quadra MP Joyce Murray
Five years after putting the finishing touches on marijuana documentary The Union: The Business Behind Getting High, Kelowna filmmaker Adam Scorgie didn’t expect the film’s greatest impact would be made in the summer of 2012. Scorgie recently returned from a very successful journey to somewhere he never dreamed his film would take him: Parliament Hill.
Scorgie, along with The Union director Brett Harvey, were invited to speak in front of members of parliament about the pervasive issue of marijuana legalization. The official summons to Parliament Hill was initiated by the former Attorney General of Canada, Irwin Cotler, who wanted Scorgie and Harvey to help educate parliamentarians about the issue of violence and organized crime of smuggling in Canada.
After receiving the initial email, Scorgie wasn’t sure it was for real. “I thought, ‘Are you kidding me?’ I had to call them to make sure it wasn’t a joke,” he says. “And they’re like, ‘No we’ll set up a big room for you and projectors and we’ll get a whole bunch of great speakers to come out.’”
Photo: Contributed
Upon arrival at 1 Wellington Street in Ottawa last week, the two filmmakers stopped before heading in. “Me and Brett were looking at each other and were saying, ‘Really? Us?’ We didn’t think it was going to happen.”
As luck would have it, the invitation from Ottawa came not long after the pair began work on the sequel to the Union, titled The Culture High. “This couldn’t be more timely,” Scrogie says. “I still can’t believe it happened, and how seriously politicians are taking the film. It’s hard to believe that my film may be used as an education piece.”
After spending time in discussion with members of parliament, Scorgie is thrilled with the impact his film has made on Canadian lawmakers. “To see Irwin Cotler run in and appreciate it so much was amazing,” he says.
Scorgie explains that because the topic won’t go away, politicians have no choice but to become educated. “A lot of them, the politicians, don’t really know what’s going on with the subject, and now so many are forced to have good answers, but most haven’t taken then time to research.”
Photo: Contributed
Asked why the film has become such a hit in Ottawa, Scorgie is convinced he has an answer. “Simplicity was the key to the film’s success. And, the politicians liked the humour in the film. Man, after seeing the film and having talked to us, they wanted a whole box of DVDs. They want this to be seen as bipartisan; they want it to be looked at as sensible policy, regardless of what party you stand for,” he says. “Plus, all the MPs want to show it to their constituents!”
It’s not just the people in Ottawa taking notice these days, either. LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition), an international organization of criminal justice professionals “who bear personal witness to the wasteful futility and harms of current drug policies,” is also a large supporter of the film. “It’s crazy, Scorgie says. “I’ve had former drug czars, DEA, RCMP… they’re all coming up to me after seeing the film.”
Along with the support he’s getting in the political arena, the endorsements being thrown his way by prominent entertainment industry types aren’t hurting. “My Twitter following actually went from 2,000 to about 12,000 in the last month, thanks to a few retweets from Joe Rogan,” Scorgie explains. Without even being finished, the film has already generated major interest from the Canadian networks, with Superchannel having already purchased rights to the film, with deals from other networks currently being worked out.
The thrill of success from his Ottawa visit is almost overwhelming, but Scorgie is using this elation to kick things into gear for The Culture High. “Our Kickstarter video will be done June 20th, and we need the audiences help to get the documentary in theatres. By contributing, not only do you get a copy of the film, but you get a film credit, and you get to say you helped get it the theatres,” he says, and has huge aspirations for the Kickstarter campaign, for which he hopes to raise $190,000. “If we reach our goal, it would be the highest Kickstarter campaign in Canadian history.”
When the new film is finished, Scorgie hopes to have it entered in the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival and the 2014 Sundance Film Festival.
Although they documented their visit to Ottawa, he’s not guaranteeing they will use the footage for the new film.
Look for the Kickstarter video for The Culture High right here on Castanet.The streets of Ecuador remained quiet today, a day after a dramatic standoff left President Rafael Correa holed up in a hospital for 12 hours and claiming that a coup attempt was underway.
A state of siege is still in effect, meaning the military is temporarily in charge of Ecuador.
Although President Correa was rescued late Thursday night by the military, after protesters had trapped him in the hospital where he sought refuge, many are wondering about the ramifications of the revolt and how to heal some of the divisions that have been growing in the country.
“We had a very tough situation yesterday, and I am very happy that it has ended with the president alive,” Ecuadorean Ambassador to the United States, Luis Gallegos, said in a phone interview. “Now is a moment for reflection to look into what happened.”
Calls for normalcy
Unrest began when disgruntled police, angered over a new law that limits bonuses, sprayed Correa with tear gas and roughed him up as he sought to resolve a protest that erupted Thursday. Officers across the country soon seized control of police barracks, blocked highways, and shut down the international airport in Quito.
Correa says officers are now facing scrutiny, sanctions, and even purging. Gen. Freddy Martinez, the chief of the national police, resigned Friday, according to the Associated Press.
Most residents have faith that the worst is over. “I think that for the moment the situation has calmed down. It was a shock for all to see that you could take down a democratically elected government, but for now even the opposition is calling for normalcy,” says Paola Vallejo, a consultant in Quito.
Clinton: 'Full support for President Correa'
But the crisis is not over. Correa has said that yesterday's revolt was not a matter of simple salary issues and that he is the victim of a larger political effort to undermine him. Some Latin American leaders, including Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, reiterated that sentiment.
Leaders from the Americas, including those in the United States, have rallied around Correa and voiced support for Ecuadorian democracy. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a statement Thursday: "The United States deplores violence and lawlessness, and we express our full support for President Rafael Correa, and the institutions of democratic government in that country.”
The group UNASUR, a South American body, sent foreign ministers to Quito on Friday and released a statement to "energetically condemn the attempted coup and subsequent kidnapping of President Rafael Correa Delgado."
'Not a coup attempt'
Some observers in Quito say the claim of a coup is overstated and being utilized for political gain. “There was not a coup attempt,” says Augusto Tandazo, a political analyst in Quito. “The police were not asking for anything more than not putting the law into effect.”
Tensions could flare anew, too. The turmoil has divided institutions in Ecuador. “What is lamentable about this is the deep gap that will now remain between the police and the military, who shot against one another,” Mr. Tandazo says. “These things take time to heal.”
While some members of the Air Force had participated in the closure of the airport, the armed forces chief, Gen. Ernesto Gonzalez, put the military's support behind the president.
But he said the law that generated the revolt – which takes away bonuses and medals associated with promotions and also increases the years that police and military members must work before receiving promotions – should be modified or nixed.
Test of Correa's flexibility
Correa, who was elected in 2006, is known for his fiery rhetoric. Yesterday he claimed that the law was not read or understood by the police and will not reduce their overall compensation. "When they demanded that I revoke the law to let me out, I told them, 'Don't waste time with me. I leave as president of a dignified nation, or I leave as a cadaver,' " Correa said Thursday night. "Of course, the law will not be revoked.”
The ultimate decision about whether the law is published, which puts it into effect, or revised could dictate the way the issue is resolved. If it is not changed, says Tandazo, another conflict could flare in the near future, he says. “The style of [Correa's] inflexibility can bring things to a breaking point,” he says.
Santiago Peralta, who produces cacao in Quito, agrees. “I fear that these protests could repeat themselves. Not now, but in a matter of time,” he says. “Many people hate the way that Correa governs. He acts like a dictator, dominating the national assembly … prohibiting journalistic information that he does not like.”
But Ambassador Gallegos says the event has solidified the resolve for Ecuadorian democracy, and many Ecuadorians agree. The country had seen eight presidents in the decade preceding Correa's election in 2006, including three ousted by protest.
“I believe that democracy can come out reinforced by this coup attempt,” says Ms. Vallejo, the consultant. “We have witnessed how rebellion and violence are incapable of taking down a president.”For ACL Fest 2017, we decided to take artist's minds off of music for a little while.
In fact, we spent much of the first weekend of ACL Fest asking bands all manner of unexpected questions that had nothing to do with why they were at the festival. We think it worked out well.
Read our full recap from ACL Fest 2017 Weekend One here.
Do512: Could you tell me your first memory of the Internet?
Milky Chance:
(Clemens) Back in the days when I was around eleven or twelve years old, my mom brought home a modem and installed it with our old computer. I remember the sound when we would login, it took you 10 minutes and then you were logged in.
Do you remember your screen name?
Milky Chance:
(Phillipp) We had ICQ. (Imitates ICQ chat noise) That was probably the first thing I ever did with the Internet, chatting. Sometimes even with your neighbor.
Describe for me your favorite shirt?
Milky Chance:
(P) Well I just lost a bet because on tour we often play Uno and we play with bets so the loser has to do something. So our photographer had to buy an outfit for me that I have to wear on stage. He bought a Britney Spears shirt and I actually really like it. It's very comfy, and Britney, ya know, she's cool.
What would this chapter of the Milky Chance biography be called?
Milky Chance:
(P) Well we called it Blossom because we called our album that, and it's still very how we feel. We're still in the beginnings of our twenties and we've got the great chance to do all this traveling, playing music, meeting great people and enjoying our families. It feels like a spring of life.
What is something you've lost interest in those you gotten older?
Milky Chance:
(C) Playing computer games.
(P) We both once played World of Warcraft, we were those nerds.
(C) I played a lot of Need for Speed, Counter-Strike, Age of Empires. The Sims, but only building the houses because I felt almost like an architect. After awhile you just kind of realize it's kind of a waste of time.Billionaire President-elect Petro Poroshenko has promised to sell his chocolate making concern Roshen, to ‘focus on the well-being of the nation.’ Even with the best of intentions, this might be rather difficult.
Ukraine’s presidential elections last Sunday, 25 May, produced a victor who said that he would take control over the troubled country. Billionaire Petro Poroshenko has promised to sell his chocolate making concern Roshen, to ‘focus on the well-being of the nation.’ Even with the best of intentions, this might be rather difficult.
One third of the voters in Ukraine’s eastern regions were not even aware of the May 25 elections taking place.
Having taken 56% of the vote with 55% voters’ turnover, the new president actually represents slightly more than 30% of Ukraine’s electorate. In the restive Donbas region, only 12% of the voters showed up, while near 2,000 polling sites remained closed. According to the official data, elections did not happen in 23 cities and six regions of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic, which, together with the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic had formed a Novorossiya union in the south-east of the country last Saturday. The two regions represent 16% of the total population of Ukraine (without Crimea) and, in an open challenge to both Kyiv and Moscow, have recently voted for independence. One third of the voters in Ukraine’s eastern regions were not even aware of the 25 May elections taking place.
For a country where there are practically no households without a TV set, this may serve as a conspicuous measure of alienation. The main task for the president-elect is therefore clear: to heal the wounds separating Ukraine’s east from the rest of the country; to stop the ongoing civil war in the south-east; and to negotiate with the separatist leaders, for the sake of preserving territorial unity and sovereignty of Ukraine. Can he deliver? What will be his next steps as a leader?
A recipe for disaster
In a recent interview, Mr Poroshenko said that he saw no alternative to the continuation of what the government in Kyiv calls the anti-terrorist operation in the east. This means that the eastern cities blockaded by Ukraine’s National Guard and army units will continue suffering the consequences of the blockade. Ukrainian forces will endure further losses. The killing of 16 troops near the Blahodatne village on May 22 by the pro-Russia separatists is a bad enough omen for the still worse things to come. Of course, the separatists will die, too, creating a new martyrdom cult for those Russian nationalists in Ukraine who will survive.
This is a recipe for disaster. The 2 May killings of the pro-Russian demonstrators in Odessa, and the heavy fighting in Mariupol on Russia’s Victory Day (9 May) have allowed the Donbas separatists to rally scores of undecided around their new flag. Ukraine’s authorities responded by intensifying the anti-terrorist campaign in the east; and this escalation of the conflict has received the full blessing (and material support) of the West.
Russia is still being blamed for everything that happens in Ukraine
The Russian position
Russia is still being blamed for everything that happens in Ukraine; Ukraine’s own Russia-sympathising activists are represented as either criminals paid for by the Kremlin or Moscow’s mindless puppets. At any rate, behind Ukraine’s official, and Ukraine-sympathetic Western presentations, one idea seems to be reigning supreme: if forces loyal to the government in Kyiv were to be |
p.m. and on Sundays at 2 p.m. Tickets range from $16-$34 and can be purchased at ncstage.org.
On the other side of downtown, at Asheville Community Theatre, "Snowbound" invites the audience to travel back in time, to Christmas Eve in 1955. Set in a small town train depot in the mountains, some snowy weather has delayed the trains and trapped passengers at the station. Over the course of the evening, strangers become friends and the warmth of human connection is deepened through stories and songs. The show runs Dec. 2-18 on Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 2:30 p.m. Tickets are $12-$22 at ashevilletheatre.org.
Also at Asheville Community Theatre, in its intimate 35Below performance space, "Santaland Diaries" tells the story of Macy's department store elf. Shows run from Dec. 14-18. Visit ashevilletheatre.org for more information.
Holiday performances are also underway at the Hendersonville Community Theatre, the Brevard Little Theatre and the Haywood Arts Regional Theatre in Waynesville.
Places to wear your Santa hat
Get out your ugliest holiday sweater and hang out with like-minded individuals at the event that's describing itself as Asheville's "largest and ugliest bar crawl." From 2-8 p.m. Dec. 10, hoards of ugly sweater-wearers will participate in Asheville's Ugly Sweater Bar Crawl, which is scheduled to hit spots downtown and the South Slope, like Wild Wing Cafe, Banks Avenue bars, Twin Leaf Brewery, Ben's Tune Up and The Bier Garden. Of course, you're free to drink at any spot in an ugly sweater, but to officially participate in the event, you can purchase a $25 ticket to get an ugly sweater event drink koozie, a wristband that'll get you drink specials at participating bars, a detailed map of where to head next and possibly even more. Buy tickets at uglysweaterbarcrawls.com.
Don't be surprised if, for two Saturdays this month, you see a rowdy group of Santas stumbling down the streets. The annual Asheville SantaCon has, this year, split up into two events: SantaCon 9 3/4 and SantaCon 10. The first event, held 3:30-10 p.m. Dec. 3, invites Santas out to Pritchard Park for some food, caroling and dancing downtown. The eating starts at 6 p.m., the caroling at 8 p.m. and the dancing begins at 10 p.m. at The One Stop/Asheville Music Hall, with DJs and funk music blaring 'til 2 a.m. The next weekend, on Dec. 10, the Santa group will meet up at Pritchard Park at 4 p.m. Bring along donations of warm gloves, hats and socks for AHOPE, to give to those experiencing homelessness.
Buy Photo Members of Love Cannon opened the 27th annual Warren Haynes Christmas Jam. (Photo: File photo by William Woody / wwoody@citizen-t, William Woody / wwoody@citizen-t)
Places to hear some tunes
Though this year's Christmas Jam with Warren Haynes and crew is sold out, the annual jam fest at the U.S. Cellular Center marks the beginning of the holiday season for many local music fans. The Dec. 10 main event is preceded by two Christmas Jam by Day concerts at Asheville Music Hall, One Stop and Jack of the Wood on Dec. 9 and 10, featuring notable rockers and great local musicians. Check out the pre-jam lineup or buy tickets at xmasjam.com.
Bring $10 and a can of food or new toy to the Orange Peel on Dec. 8 and celebrate the season at the Hometown Holiday Jam XVI. The show benefits both Mission Children's Hospital and MANNA FoodBank, and features the music of McKayla Reece, Andrew Scotchie & The River Rats, Andalyn Lewis, Zach Haney, Calavera, Meghan Woods, Ginny McAfee, Porch 40, Joe Lasher Jr. and others. The show starts at 7:30 p.m.
Get in the giving spirit by heading to the Orange Peel for the Make-A-Wish Christmas Party benefit show, featuring The Dirty Soul Revival, White Soul, Log Noggins, The Company Stores, Up Dog and others. The 15th annual fundraiser concert begins at 7:30 p.m. on Dec. 22 The show costs $12 and is open to all ages.
There are several holiday events going down at Isis Music Hall this month, like singer-songwriter Jeanne Jolly & The Mistletoes' Jolly Holiday Revue at both 7 p.m. and 9:15 p.m. Dec. 17. The next night, Dec. 18, there's an early Barefoot Movement Holiday Show, featuring some acoustic folk and bluegrass seasonal favorites, at 5:30 p.m. and Russ Wilson's "Have Yourself a Swinging Little Christmas," featuring brass band Christmas classics in a TV-style show, at 7:30 p.m. On Dec. 22, Amanda Horton and Andy Jurik take the West Asheville stage for "Warm December: An evening of Yuletide jazz, carols and songs from Christmas past" at 7 p.m.
Seasons greetings from the Grey Eagle, where multiple holiday shows are underway this month. On Dec. 8, the weekly Contra Dance event takes on a seasonal spin for the annual Holiday Waltz, open to beginners and starting at 8 p.m. Chatham County Line will stop at the Grey Eagle on its Electric Holiday Tour on Dec. 15 at 9 p.m. At 8 p.m. Dec. 16, the fifth annual Holiday Hang benefit for MANNA FoodBank features The Honeycutters and Town Mountain. And, last but not least, The Secret Sisters stop by on their Christmas tour on Dec. 18 at 8 p.m.
Take your ears on a vacation and listen to island grooves at the Holiday VYBZ reggae, dancehall and hip-hop show at the One Stop. The free show begins the evening of Dec. 22 and features music from DJ Atreau and Haiku Bastard.
Biltmore Avenue's underground (literally) hip-hop bar, Timo's House, is hosting both The Rave Before Christmas and a Hip-hop Holiday on Dec. 24 and Dec. 30, respectively. The rave starts at 8 p.m. and features Andrew Ellington of Viva La Hop alongside DJs Your Allure and D3MS, and the event organizers promise "free swag and giveaways" at the door. On Dec. 30, Free the Optimus presents the fourth annual Hip Hop Holiday with DJ Jet, C.Shreve the Professor, Mike Live, Hunter Bennett, Tuscon and others, starting at 10 p.m.
Buy Photo Over 70 Christmas trees are decorated inside the Biltmore, with some containing hundreds of ornaments. (Photo: Maddy Jones/[email protected])
Places to do some shopping
There are so many places to shop local for the holidays, but some notable pop-up markets are springing up through the month of December. Here are a few to choose from, in order by date:
Holiday Market at Riverview Station, 4-8 p.m. Dec. 3 at Riverview Station, 191 Lyman St., Asheville. More than 70 independent local artists selling wares in the River Arts District, from ceramics to paintings, textiles to woodwork and jewelry.
, 4-8 p.m. Dec. 3 at Riverview Station, 191 Lyman St., Asheville. More than 70 independent local artists selling wares in the River Arts District, from ceramics to paintings, textiles to woodwork and jewelry. Holiday Flea for Y'all, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Dec. 3 at the WNC Agricultural Center. Handpicked and handcrafted goods, from vintage to antiques and handmade jewelry to art.
, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Dec. 3 at the WNC Agricultural Center. Handpicked and handcrafted goods, from vintage to antiques and handmade jewelry to art. Holiday Craft Bazaar, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Dec. 3 at Asheville Music Hall, 31 Patton Ave., Asheville. Two floors of local crafts and goods from 27 vendors. Shop to live music, drink bloody Marys and receive a raffle ticket for every item you purchase.
, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Dec. 3 at Asheville Music Hall, 31 Patton Ave., Asheville. Two floors of local crafts and goods from 27 vendors. Shop to live music, drink bloody Marys and receive a raffle ticket for every item you purchase. 2016 Holiday Market, 9 a.m.-2 p.m. Dec. 3 at Blue Ridge Food Ventures, 1461 Sand Hill Road, Candler. Stocking stuffers, Asheville-themed gift boxes, skin care products, cookbooks, jewelry, treats and candy, condiments, sauces, teas and more.
, 9 a.m.-2 p.m. Dec. 3 at Blue Ridge Food Ventures, 1461 Sand Hill Road, Candler. Stocking stuffers, Asheville-themed gift boxes, skin care products, cookbooks, jewelry, treats and candy, condiments, sauces, teas and more. The Big Crafty Hand to Heart Holiday, noon to 6 p.m. Dec. 4 at the U.S. Cellular Center. Indie arts and craft festival featuring 150-plus artists, crafters and makers from Asheville.
, noon to 6 p.m. Dec. 4 at the U.S. Cellular Center. Indie arts and craft festival featuring 150-plus artists, crafters and makers from Asheville. Brevard Holiday Bazaar, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Dec. 4 in Brevard's Lumberyard District.
, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Dec. 4 in Brevard's Lumberyard District. Holiday Wedge Walk and Miniature Art Show, 4-7 p.m. Dec. 9 at the Wedge Studios, 129 Roberts St., Asheville. The collection of artists at Wedge Studios presents small works of art and tours of their workshops.
, 4-7 p.m. Dec. 9 at the Wedge Studios, 129 Roberts St., Asheville. The collection of artists at Wedge Studios presents small works of art and tours of their workshops. Holiday Sip & Shop, 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Dec. 9, 10, 16 and 17 at Grovewood Gallery, 111 Grovewood Road, Asheville. All gallery merchandise is 10 percent off. Watch craft demonstrations from local artists and drink complimentary wine, cider and cookies.
, 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Dec. 9, 10, 16 and 17 at Grovewood Gallery, 111 Grovewood Road, Asheville. All gallery merchandise is 10 percent off. Watch craft demonstrations from local artists and drink complimentary wine, cider and cookies. Handmade Holiday Sale, 4-6 p.m. Dec. 10 at Open Hearts, 5 Woodland Drive, Asheville. Opens Hearts Art Center and nonprofit showcases handmade artwork, jewelry and holiday decor.
, 4-6 p.m. Dec. 10 at Open Hearts, 5 Woodland Drive, Asheville. Opens Hearts Art Center and nonprofit showcases handmade artwork, jewelry and holiday decor. Holiday Handmade Market, noon to 6 p.m. Dec. 10 at The Refinery Creator Space, 207 Coxe Ave., Asheville. Handmade art and live demonstrations at the Asheville Area Arts Council's new location.
, noon to 6 p.m. Dec. 10 at The Refinery Creator Space, 207 Coxe Ave., Asheville. Handmade art and live demonstrations at the Asheville Area Arts Council's new location. Girls Pint Out Holiday Bazaar, 1-6 p.m. Dec. 11 at Hi-Wire's Big Top, 2A Huntsman Place, Asheville. Market featuring female crafters, business owners and artisans.
, 1-6 p.m. Dec. 11 at Hi-Wire's Big Top, 2A Huntsman Place, Asheville. Market featuring female crafters, business owners and artisans. Holiday Artisan Market, noon to 5 p.m. Dec. 11 at Green River Brew Depot, 26 Church St., Saluda. Art, music and adoptable dogs. The market will feature drinks, food and games as well.
, noon to 5 p.m. Dec. 11 at Green River Brew Depot, 26 Church St., Saluda. Art, music and adoptable dogs. The market will feature drinks, food and games as well. Local Artist Holiday Market, 6-9 p.m. Dec. 12 at North Carolina Stage Company, 15 Stage Lane, Asheville. Gifts from the local community from $1-$100.
, 6-9 p.m. Dec. 12 at North Carolina Stage Company, 15 Stage Lane, Asheville. Gifts from the local community from $1-$100. Last Minute Market, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Dec. 18 at the Grey Eagle, 185 Clingman Ave., Asheville. Thirty-five vendors selling handmade and vintage goods and vinyl records.
Buy Photo Christmas decorations at Cheryl and Bill Kent's home in Hendersonville. The couple have 11 Christmas trees in their three-bedroom home. (Photo: Angeli Wright/[email protected])
Read or Share this story: http://avlne.ws/2gjPKm5Israel Defiant on Settlements as Peace Talks Open
WASHINGTON, Aug 15 2013 (IPS) - Against the backdrop of two major announcements of Israeli settlement expansion, U.S.-brokered peace talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians resumed Thursday in Jerusalem.
The talks are the result of an intense effort by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to overcome the impasse that has kept talks frozen for nearly three years.
After preliminary meetings in Washington two weeks ago, the parties commenced what is expected to be a nine-month process of talks. But on Sunday, Israel announced that it was moving forward with plans to build nearly 1,200 new housing units in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
Many observers believe the timing was meant to forestall heavy opposition to peace talks from within Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition. Israeli Housing Minister Uri Ariel, a leading pro-settlement hawk, made the view of his faction very clear.
“We will build thousands of homes in the coming year in Judea and Samaria,” Ariel said on Israeli radio, using the biblical term for the West Bank. “No one dictates where we can build … This is just the first course.”
But the timing was aggravating to the Palestinians, who are taking a major political risk by engaging again in peace talks without an explicit Israeli promise to stop settlement construction. This was the sticking point for the Palestinians when they discontinued talks with the Israeli government three years ago, as Palestinian anger at many years of talks while settlements expanded and multiplied neared a boiling point.
Daniel Levy, director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations, says that the problem is the massive imbalance of power between them and Israel.
“It is the Palestinian leadership’s participation in talks under these conditions that would appear to make the least sense, as evidenced by them now having to digest Israel’s new settlement announcements,” he wrote in an op-ed for Al Jazeera.
“Only if the Palestinians at least start to address the asymmetry could they gain from being in negotiations. Indeed, the only chance that the talks themselves will produce anything positive is if the Israeli-Palestinian power imbalance begins to shift.”
Palestinian embarrassment was magnified even more on Monday when Israel announced another 890 units would be built in the settlement of Gilo in East Jerusalem.
Gilo is a particularly sensitive settlement, as Palestinians contend its ongoing expansion is strangling the adjacent Palestinian city of Beit Jala. Israel considers it an integral part of Israeli Jerusalem, despite the fact that it lies beyond the 1967 border.
“It is clear that the Israeli government is deliberately attempting to sabotage U.S. and international efforts to resume negotiations,” Palestinian negotiator Mohammad Shtayyeh told the Associated Press. “Israel continues to use peace negotiations as a smoke screen for more settlement construction.”
Yet Shtayyeh and the rest of the Palestinian negotiating team reported to the talks on Tuesday as scheduled.
The settlement announcements, as well as rocket attacks on Israel and Israeli attacks on the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip in recent days have complicated Kerry’s work. But he said that he had convinced Palestinians President Mahmoud Abbas to stick with the talks because Abbas “is committed to continuing to come to the negotiation because he believes that negotiation is what will resolve this issue.”
While at a stop in Colombia, Kerry addressed the settlement issue, which he said the United States had been apprised of in advance. “As the world, I hope, knows, the United States of America views all the settlements as illegitimate. We have communicated that policy to all of our friends in Israel.”
Kerry seems determined to keep talks going, and certainly gives the impression of matching that determination with a belief that he can succeed despite difficult conditions and the recent obstacles.
While he primarily endeavored to prevent the settlement expansion from derailing the talks, he also, according to reports, communicated the same message to Netanyahu that he gave publicly in Colombia.
Kerry’s efforts have raised hopes among the backers of a two-state solution to the conflict.
Jessica Rosenblum, spokeswoman for the “pro-Israel, pro-Peace” U.S. lobbying group J Street, told IPS that, “The serious and sustained engagement of the administration in achieving a two-state resolution early enough in President Obama’s second term when they still have the time and influence to get it done is a potential game changer.
“What strikes me most about Secretary Kerry’s response is his zealous desire to safeguard the negotiations themselves and give them the space they need to take root and ultimately bear fruit,” Rosenblum added.
Israel released 26 long-term Palestinian prisoners ahead of the talks on Tuesday. The move was highly controversial in Israel, but the Palestinians needed a dramatic gesture to legitimise their participation in talks and this was seen as easier than a settlement freeze.
That decision, which engendered passionate protests by Israeli citizens, shows just how concerned Netanyahu is about the power of the settlers.
Even J Street acknowledges how formidable this obstacle can be, though even there, Rosenblum sees some hope. “Netanyahu has got a serious problem with the settler movement that will only grow worse as the negotiations progress,” she said.
“It’s clear that in order to make the concessions necessary to reach a two-state solution, the prime minister will have to form a new coalition that does not include his far-right flank. The good news for him is that he has already lined up MKs [members of the Knesset] willing to join a coalition that is actively pursuing a two-state solution, so the possibility of his government falling need not weigh in his considerations. “
The current wave of settlement expansion reflects a “map of national priorities,” which Israel released on Aug. 4. That map included funding for many settlements, including some outside the major settlement blocs.
So, despite the very real hope that Kerry’s efforts have engendered in some quarters, observers like former advisor to Ariel Sharon, Dov Weisglass, are more cynical.
“Economic benefits to isolated settlements scattered deep within the Palestinian territories undermine the possibility of an agreement and make a mockery of the Israeli government’s peace rhetoric,” Weisglass wrote in an op-ed in a leading Israeli daily.
That view seems to be well in the majority, on all sides.“I feel good. I’m happy to have been able to practise,” said Lupul, out with a concussion since April 4. “I feel pretty confident. I’ve been working really hard. We’ll see. I can’t say exactly when I’ll come back, but I’m close.”
Joffrey Lupul has been cleared for contact and is “close” to returning to the Toronto Maple Leafs lineup.
Lupul said Sunday he takes the blame for being hit, sandwiched as he was by the Flyers Jay Rosehill and Adam Hall. After the hit, Lupul staggered to the bench. It took the team some time to confirm his concussion status.
“I was disappointed with myself, putting myself in the situation to take that hit,” said Lupul. “I knew who I was on the ice with and where the puck was. I thought I located both those guys, but I didn’t see what way Rosehill was coming.
“I take responsibility for that. You’ve got to protect yourself. I should have protected myself. Those two guys shouldn’t be taking me out of the lineup.”QtWebEngine crowdfunding launched!
Hi! A few weeks ago, I posted a request-for-comments about starting a crowdfunding for QtWebEngine support in qutebrowser. I got a lot of positive feedback, and I'm happy to announce the campaign just went live! You can find it here: http://igg.me/at/qutebrowser In case you're one of the few persons who haven't heard me saying "your issue will be solved by QtWebEngine" - here is a short explanation of what's going on: qutebrowser is currently using QtWebKit, which is based on an outdated version of the WebKit rendering engine. This comes with various stability, performance and security issues. QtWebKit also got removed from Qt 5.6, which means qutebrowser could break when a distribution stops shipping it, like it happened a few days ago with Homebrew on OS X. The goal of the campaign is to add support for QtWebEngine to qutebrowser. QtWebEngine is based on Chromium and in very active development - support for it will fix dozens of qutebrowser bugs related to QtWebKit. Since this is a lot of work, I plan to work on it full-time for a month, or even longer if possible. I'd really appreciate your help! Thanks! Florian -- http://www.the-compiler.org | me at the-compiler.org (Mail/XMPP) GPG: 916E B0C8 FD55 A072 | http://the-compiler.org/pubkey.asc I love long mails! | http://email.is-not-s.ms/ -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 819 bytes Desc: Digital signature URL: <https://lists.schokokeks.org/pipermail/qutebrowser/attachments/20160323/50259577/attachment.asc>Like the lion which today lives in the African savannah, the saber-tooth "tiger," Smilodon populator, inhabited the open, dry country found in South America during the ice age, according to Professor Hervé Bocherens of the Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment at the University of Tübingen. The results of his latest study have been published in the latest edition of the journal Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology. To find out more about the eating habits of what was then South America's biggest cat, Bocherens and his team examined the bones of saber-toothed cats which lived in Argentina's Pampas region in the period 25,000-10,000 B.C.
"Up to now, palaeontologists assumed that a predator weighing up to 400 kilograms and with bone structure similar to that of a forest-dwelling cat would have hunted in woodlands," says Hervé Bocherens. It was thought that would make it easier for the animals -- with their canines up to 30 centimeters long -- to find hiding places from which to attack their prey. But Bocherens' study points to a different conclusion. He compared collagen samples from the bones of various ice age predators -- including the saber-toothed cat, the jaguar (Panthera onca), and a species of wild dog (Protocyon) -- with those of their likely prey. The carbon and nitrogen isotopes he found there enable him to draw conclusions about the kind of environment the animals lived in.
The saber-toothed cats did not eat animals which were at home in thickly wooded country. Their chief prey seems to have been a camel-like, steppe-dwelling ungulate known to scientists as Macrauchenia, and two species of giant sloth (Megatherium und Lestodon) -- who, unlike their surviving relatives, lived on the ground and could grow to several tonnes in weight. There could be a further parallel with today's African lions; the bones of several individual saber-toothed tigers were found together and contained similar isotopes, Bocherens says -- "It may be that these predators, too, hunted together in groups."
The saber-toothed cat (Smilodon) evolved in North America and spread to South America with the formation of a stable land bridge between the two continents some three million years ago. It appears that the saber-toothed tigers' fiercest competitors were not other big cats. The study indicates that the jaguar preferred smaller prey, such as rodents and species of horse. But the ice age dog (Protocyon) seems to have shared the saber-tooths' culinary tastes.
Many types of megafauna died out at the end of the ice age, including the saber-toothed cat. Researchers debate the possible influence of climate change and human activity on the extinctions. The Tübingen researchers believe that a damper climate could have led to increased forestation of the steppe -- reducing the saber-toothed tigers' hunting grounds and ultimately causing them to die out.SpecDevelopment
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Merit: 10
MemberActivity: 60Merit: 10 [AUCTION] ETH - Etherereum - 24 hour Auction - SPEC Dev Team - 23,256 ETHER SALE July 31, 2015, 08:00:03 AM
Last edit: July 31, 2015, 10:05:56 AM by SpecDevelopment #1 This auction is for two groups of Ether totaling 23,256 ETH.
Before we formed the SPEC dev team, the plan was to build and run DAPPs on the ethereum network. ETH was purchased and the plan was set in motion. However after forming the SPEC dev team we realized that using discreet, tried and true methods were preferable over ethereums experimental network. We know Ethereum is going to be HUGE once it starts rolling, we just dont have the time right now to keep up with the latest as our own schedules are pretty crazy with SPEC related projects.
So with that said, we are going to hold a 24 hour auction of two blocks of ETH:
Block 1 is a total of 3,256 ETH
Block 2 is a total of 20,000 ETH
If the interest is high enough here, we will sell both blocks here within the next 24 hours. Funds are to be sent to the very same purchasing addresses used when we purchased the eth (Addresses are below and will be clearly marked)
Winner will receive either block 1 wallet file in its entirety, or Block 2 wallet file in its entirety with each respective password needed to import the wallets. Once sent, we will remove any trace of the wallet files from our system so it will be important to create backups.
Blocks can not be broken up.
Bids should be in the following format:
$x per ETH for block 1
$x per ETH for block 2 etc
Minimum Starting Bid per ETH for both blocks is $1
Block 1 details:
Total:3,256 ETH
ETHEREUM ADDRESS:8566610901aace38b83244f3a9c831306a67b9dc
TO ETHEREUM BTC ADDRESS:1HZNoD8gbAPF4cCiu5buJ24YS1HzrNfPrm
FROM:18cUdmBh3pitLbhn3ZVTwb7fR8efMr1iVv
https://blockchain.info/address/1HZNoD8gbAPF4cCiu5buJ24YS1HzrNfPrm
--Start of Bitcoin Signed Message--
Purchasing Address:18cUdmBh3pitLbhn3ZVTwb7fR8efMr1iVv
Message:BTC Address Used for Purchase of 3,256 ETH
Signature:IBI0W84W1TRbYPYauZbQj4IK/52bY2vX1YU18sEBh41VaOD1oiCGFjH/FRG+CMIWxmnSzADTaeYMU2t045h0h28=
--End of Bitcoin Signed Message--
Address funds will need to be sent to once we confirm a winner:18cUdmBh3pitLbhn3ZVTwb7fR8efMr1iVv
Block 2 details:
Total:20,000 ETH
ETHEREUM ADDRESS:47c247f53b9fbeb17bba0703a00c009fdb0f6eae
TO ETHEREUM BTC ADDRESS:1PpL5rRRNgyKFjt7hTgnuCcdxaSJBKyRts
FROM:1HH5qm8Z5CTWFZMuJxc27YUFzRmze5mm4U
https://blockchain.info/address/1PpL5rRRNgyKFjt7hTgnuCcdxaSJBKyRts
--Start of Bitcoin Signed Message--
Purchasing Address:1HH5qm8Z5CTWFZMuJxc27YUFzRmze5mm4U
Message:BTC Address Used for Purchase of 20,000 ETH
Signature:HxIMq8c88kgPaMBorM4can2EVWSEBgBZO8DcviX7uqzVHD4mepWKXdSqANGvGqkY3BFlxAwW44Bust5 GKy3O3U0=
--End of Bitcoin Signed Message--
Address funds will need to be sent to once we confirm a winner:1HH5qm8Z5CTWFZMuJxc27YUFzRmze5mm4U
ETH address balances can be checked on this page towards the bottom:
Auction end time will be 3AM Central Standard Time. 24 hours from now.
Before we formed the SPEC dev team, the plan was to build and run DAPPs on the ethereum network. ETH was purchased and the plan was set in motion. However after forming the SPEC dev team we realized that using discreet, tried and true methods were preferable over ethereums experimental network. We know Ethereum is going to be HUGE once it starts rolling, we just dont have the time right now to keep up with the latest as our own schedules are pretty crazy with SPEC related projects.Block 1 is a total of 3,256 ETHBlock 2 is a total of 20,000 ETHIf the interest is high enough here, we will sell both blocks here within the next 24 hours. Funds are to be sent to the very same purchasing addresses used when we purchased the eth (Addresses are below and will be clearly marked)Winner will receive either block 1 wallet file in its entirety, or Block 2 wallet file in its entirety with each respective password needed to import the wallets. Once sent, we will remove any trace of the wallet files from our system so it will be important to create backups.Bids should be in the following format:$x per ETH for block 1$x per ETH for block 2 etcTotal:3,256 ETHETHEREUM ADDRESS:8566610901aace38b83244f3a9c831306a67b9dcTO ETHEREUM BTC ADDRESS:1HZNoD8gbAPF4cCiu5buJ24YS1HzrNfPrmFROM:18cUdmBh3pitLbhn3ZVTwb7fR8efMr1iVv--Start of Bitcoin Signed Message--Purchasing Address:18cUdmBh3pitLbhn3ZVTwb7fR8efMr1iVvMessage:BTC Address Used for Purchase of 3,256 ETHSignature:IBI0W84W1TRbYPYauZbQj4IK/52bY2vX1YU18sEBh41VaOD1oiCGFjH/FRG+CMIWxmnSzADTaeYMU2t045h0h28=--End of Bitcoin Signed Message--Address funds will need to be sent to once we confirm a winner:18cUdmBh3pitLbhn3ZVTwb7fR8efMr1iVvTotal:20,000 ETHETHEREUM ADDRESS:47c247f53b9fbeb17bba0703a00c009fdb0f6eaeTO ETHEREUM BTC ADDRESS:1PpL5rRRNgyKFjt7hTgnuCcdxaSJBKyRtsFROM:1HH5qm8Z5CTWFZMuJxc27YUFzRmze5mm4U--Start of Bitcoin Signed Message--Purchasing Address:1HH5qm8Z5CTWFZMuJxc27YUFzRmze5mm4UMessage:BTC Address Used for Purchase of 20,000 ETHSignature:HxIMq8c88kgPaMBorM4can2EVWSEBgBZO8DcviX7uqzVHD4mepWKXdSqANGvGqkY3BFlxAwW44Bust5GKy3O3U0=--End of Bitcoin Signed Message--Address funds will need to be sent to once we confirm a winner:1HH5qm8Z5CTWFZMuJxc27YUFzRmze5mm4UETH address balances can be checked on this page towards the bottom: https://www.ethereum.org/ether#balance Auction end time will be 3AM Central Standard Time. 24 hours from now.Apple has just launched a MacBook Pro Repair Extension Program for Video Issues to provide out-of-warranty repairs for MacBook Pros and Retina MacBook Pros sold between February of 2011 and December of 2013.
Affected computers include 15- and 17- inch MacBook Pros from early and late 2011 and both 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro models. Apple's page provides a tool you can use to check your system's eligibility. Symptoms of affected computers include "distorted or scrambled video on the computer screen," "no video on the computer screen (or external display) even though the computer is on," and unexpected restarts.
Some users have been complaining about 2011 MacBook Pro GPU issues since shortly after the systems launched. Those complaints continued for well over three years—outside of the warranty window even if you bought AppleCare, at least if you bought the systems at launch—and were more recently the cause of a class-action lawsuit. In August of 2013, Apple kicked off a repair program for iMacs with similar AMD GPUs.
Affected MacBooks can be brought to Apple stores or Apple Authorized Service Providers, and they can also be mailed in. In all cases, you will need to do without the computer until repairs have been completed—sometimes Apple offers temporary loaners as part of these repair programs, but not in this case.
The program will be available starting tomorrow in the US and Canada and will launch in other countries beginning February 27. The program is valid until February 26, 2016 or until three years from the purchase date, "whichever provides longer coverage for you." If you've already paid for a repair that fixed these symptoms, there's a contact link at the bottom of Apple's support page that you can use to ask for restitution.Darrin Chiaverini will attend the NFL and NCAA Coaches Academy that begins Friday in Louisville, Kentucky. Darrin Chiaverini will attend the NFL and NCAA Coaches Academy that begins Friday in Louisville, Kentucky.
Feb. 18, 2015
LUBBOCK, Texas - Texas Tech special teams coordinator Darrin Chiaverini has been selected to attend the fifth-annual NFL and NCAA Coaches Academy, the NCAA Leadership Development staff announced Wednesday afternoon.
Chiaverini will be one of 30 NCAA coaches and the only one from the Big 12 Conference to attend the academy, which runs Feb. 20-22 in Louisville, Kentucky, during the annual NFL and NCAA Summit.
The academy was developed in 2011 as a collaborative effort between NCAA Leadership Development and NFL Player Engagement to positively influence diversity numbers in the college game and as a way for talented football coaches to get exposure.
In addition, the academy enables college coaches to meet NCAA athletics professionals, student-athlete affairs administrations, NCAA national office staff and NFL representatives and current and former NFL players.
Coaches are trained during the academy in a variety of areas that encourage effective coaching and improve the athletes' well-being at both the college and professional levels.
Topical education and conversation during the academy can include effective communication with campus and community constituents, the importance of building a culture focused on the overall success of athletes on and off the field, budget management, and coaching strategies and philosophies.
The keynote speakers for the 2015 academy include former NFL and NCAA head coach Dennis Green, current NFL Network analyst and former NFL general manager Charley Casserly and Memphis athletics director Tom Bowen.
Chiaverini is entering his second season on the Red Raider coaching staff after four years at Riverside City College in California. The former NFL veteran and University of Colorado standout will add wide receiver duties beginning with the 2015 season.Can’t find the right deal on a PS4? Everywhere out of stock? How about importing? This is a guide for Prospective importers for both UK and USA residents. Along with wanting the newest and most appealing high-tech toys, we all generally want to get the best deal on the items we purchase, correct? Even at a cost of around £349 via Amazon UK you’re talking about a significant investment here, so it makes sense to try to locate the absolute lowest price available. Since the PS4 is also going to be truly region-free (meaning that the games / content for all consoles sold will be fully compatible everywhere), it might be possible to snag some deals here and there by importing. See our article PS4 Launch Bundles for more information about the various bundles available.
The Current Dilemma
The current dilemma is that if you're from the UK you could save up to £100 by importing from the USA. But if you're from the USA stock levels are currently low |
. So they were—you know, started up karaoke. They chose their songs. The Veterans Administration nurses who were in the room chose “My Guy,” and they got up and they sang it for Bernie. And it was just—I mean, it made everybody tear up. And then, the next group did a song for Bernie called “Don’t Stop Believin’” by Journey. So that, actually, I think, is emblematic of where things stand.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: RoseAnn DeMoro, I wanted to ask you about this issue of the DNC nixing you for being on the platform committee, and also the reasons that they felt that they didn’t want labor union representation, the ostensible reasons, what that signifies?
ROSEANN DEMORO: You know, Juan, I think, exactly, ostensible. Well, the fact that the DNC could use not having a labor leader on the platform committee as a reason says everything that you need to know about how far the Democratic Party has drifted from the working people of America. But actually, the real reason is that I am—I fight. You know, we are one of the only organizations, I’d say, that has systematically fought in its history for a single-payer healthcare system, because the nurses see the human suffering of people, and it’s not negotiable. And that’s the thing. You know, we’ve seen with the neoliberal agenda and the austerity programs, we’re all supposed to get on board and just accept cuts. Well, when it comes to health, the nurses see the consequences of that. They see the fallout. They see people who can’t afford their prescriptions. They see people who get to the hospital so late, and their lives are compromised because of it. And so, when it comes to single payer, we don’t compromise. We are going to fight. Every other country can achieve a single-payer system. People shouldn’t suffer. And that’s basically the bottom line and one of the reasons that the nurses are so heartfelt in the Sanders campaign and remain so.
And so, excluding me from—I was not surprised whatsoever. I mean, it was ironic, because, you know, they chose Cornel West, who we like very, very much, but they excluded me. And what that says is—to me, is the role of finance in healthcare and what they don’t want to see in the platform. There isn’t a commitment to taking care of America’s people by the Democratic Party any longer. A single-payer healthcare system is more cost-effective, it’s the most efficient, and it guarantees access for everyone. And that’s off the agenda. That’s what that says.
AMY GOODMAN: Would you like to see Bernie Sanders run as a third-party candidate?
ROSEANN DEMORO: You know, there is a massive amount of discussion about that. I don’t think Bernie is going to consider that. You know, we’re having a People’s Summit this weekend in Chicago, and, by the way, we will be live-streaming it. And it’s still open, so, folks in Chicago, feel free to come and join us. There will be approximately 3,000 people so far registered for that. And it’s grassroots activists, and it’s people who have been doing movement building for many, many years. It’s—Juan is there tonight with us. You know, we have performers. We have really new films out, progressive films. But most importantly why we’re there is to network. And I’m sure that there will be a variety of discussions, from supporting Clinton and just basically conceding the fact that we’re not going to achieve anything at this round in the electoral process at that level. And, you know, I’m sure people will talk about building third parties. There will be a variety of discussions. Everyone’s voice is going to be welcome here, because it’s a time for debate and it’s a time for deep considerations.
We saw the manipulation in the DNC of this election. We saw the horrendous campaign obstacles that we had to confront. It was a real eye-opener for the nurses, in particular, because they were across the country on the Sanders campaign, and they were, at first, quite stunned by the level of corruption, but eventually understood that you have to change things at a systemic level. So when Senator Sanders says that we have to transform the Democratic Party, we all kind of turn and look at each other and wonder, “With Wall Street’s money so invested in that party, is that possible any longer?” So, it just raises all the questions.
The nurses had a really good discussion at their executive board yesterday. And we’re staying to fight. We’re staying with Bernie. We’re going to fight for our issues through the convention, and we’re going to continue to fight for our issues. What I’m the most worried about is the disaffection by Sanders not achieving the nomination. Well, that’s still open. I mean, that’s still an open question. I know there’s a presumptive nominee, but that’s still an open question. A lot can happen between here and the end of July. Regardless of that, the Sanders campaign is about changing America. And it’s changing America from being a market to a society. And I think, at a visceral level, that’s what people really see and they want. They want their country back. And that’s what our campaign has been about.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, RoseAnn, your organization obviously was very pivotal in organizing support for Bernie Sanders. But among the other things that he said last night in terms of not just transforming the Democratic Party, but he said that it was an immediate political task of the next five months to make sure Donald Trump does not become president. Do you agree with that aspect of what he said?
ROSEANN DEMORO: Absolutely. Well, I mean, we’re really not very interested in having, you know, some neofascism in our country, and that’s where this goes. My assumption is that Donald Trump will defeat himself, that the Republicans will wake up. I think, though, Juan, there’s something deeper and that can’t be ignored. And that is, you know—and the people who support Trump give voice to that. And that’s the deep frustration of where our country is going. And it seems to be continuing on that path by our electoral choices here in the presumptive nominees. Regardless of which side they were on, people want change. What—you know, I think we’ll all be unified in fighting Donald Trump. I also believe that many of the Clinton supporters basically walked—you know, just fell lockstep into the normal Democratic Party nomination process. But I believe, on the issues, they’ll be with us, they’ll be with Bernie. They want a better America. They want education for their children. They want healthcare for their families. They want a society that doesn’t pollute the air. They want immigrant rights. I mean, all of the things that this campaign is about, we continue on.
And, in fact, I think, you know, tonight and tomorrow and the next day at The People’s Summit, we’ll be talking a lot about that. There’s a lot of surrogates from the Sanders campaign who will be here—Nina Turner, Tulsi Gabbard. There’s really incredible speakers on the environment—Naomi Klein tonight, with you, Juan. And there’s—you know, the young generation of talent in the film industry and in the rock scene, actually, will be here. So we’ve got all of this young incredible talent. What I’m really—I guess the thing that I’m the—I’ve been an activist all my life. And what I’m the most happy about in this campaign is how intelligent the young people are. And look at this—and this cross-section of actors and actresses here tonight, for example, who are going to be doing readings—you know, Rosario Dawson, for example, who’s on the panel tonight with us, as well. They are just so—they’re so smart, and they’ve got a long future ahead. And they want this country to be returned to the people. And so, I am—I am just feeling so good about the moment. I mean, obviously, we would have loved to see Bernie as the—and we still do. We’d love to see Bernie as the leader of this country. He deserves that role. He fights for us.
AMY GOODMAN: RoseAnn DeMoro, we want to thank you for being with us, executive director of the National Nurses United and the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. Of course, we’ll cover the summit that’s happening this weekend, the people’s conference that you’re holding in Chicago, and we’ll be covering it on Monday. But right now we’re turning to another issue. Juan?Looking for news you can trust?
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Up to 27 national monuments could be at risk as the Trump administration embarks on an unprecedented endeavor to roll back protections for public lands. President Donald Trump signed an executive order in late April asking the Department of Interior to give him recommendations for which monuments he should target. All of the monuments potentially on the chopping block are larger than 100,000 acres and were created after 1996—a date chosen to include the Grand Staircase-Escalante monument that’s unpopular among some Utah residents.
It’s unclear exactly what Trump intends to do with those recommendations, which are due in August. The 1906 Antiquities Act gives the president broad powers to create new national monuments, which typically protects the land or water from new mining leases. The law has never been used to roll back a predecessor’s monument. If Trump decides to eliminate or shrink any of these monuments via executive order, they would likely remain federal lands managed, but more acreage could be opened to activities such as logging, mining, and grazing. Any attempt by Trump to do this would certainly face legal challenges.
But those lawsuits are still months away. In the meantime, the public can tell the administration how it really feels about these monuments during the Interior’s comment period, which opened Thursday and runs until July 10 (with the exception of comments for Utah’s Bears Ears, which runs through May 26).
Many early commenters have spelled out the economic, historic, and environmental importance of these monuments. A small fraction of the comments call on Trump to reverse one of President Barack Obama’s final monument designations: Bears Ears National Monument. Bears Ears protects sacred Native American land and was also one of Obama’s most controversial monuments, given Republican opposition in Utah (and the area’s oil and gas deposits). But Bears Ears has many supporters, too. “Bears Ears is exactly the kind of place the Antiquities Act intended to protect,” one comment argues. “It is rich in cultural history which inspired a historic coalition of tribes to band together to push for its designation.”
Check out a few of the monuments below. (A full list of the land and marine monuments under review is available here.)DEHRADUN/PANAJI: A 44-year-old man from Dehradun who is being interrogated by the Anti-terrorist Squad ( ATS ) of the Goa Police for the past three days on suspicion of being linked with jihadi groups is a Doon School alumnus and son of a decorated former Major-General of the Indian Army. Sameer Sardana, who police have said is a "Hindu who practises Islam", was arrested by the ATS in Vasco on Monday and has been in remand since. A chartered accountant by profession who has been associated with leading MNCs like Accenture and worked in Hong Kong, Malaysia and Saudi Arabia, Sardana was held by the police in Goa after he was found "wandering suspiciously" at the Vasco railway station. The police have seized his laptop and confiscated the five passports and four mobile phones that he was carrying with him.Goa DGP T N Mohan told TOI on Wednesday that the police have “as of today" not found anything concrete to link him with any terror organization. "He was found in suspicious circumstances and we are trying to establish his antecedents to the level of satisfaction,” Mohan said.Sleuths from the Intelligence Bureau and ATS have interrogated Sardana, a Delhi University BCom graduate presently based in Mumbai, at two different locations -- Vasco and Panaji -- in the last couple of days even as judicial magistrate, first class, Vasco, has now remanded him to police custody.ATS sources in Goa said that they have stumbled upon some letters and emails from the accused "which are to be decoded and which indicate that he had collected information of previous bomb blasts in the country".In Dehradun, IG (Garhwal range) Sanjay Gunjyal told TOI, “On the basis of the information received by us, we will contact the Goa police to get further details on Sardana. Local police and intelligence teams have contacted his family members to collect the maximum possible details in the matter. Though Sardana does not have any criminal records in Dehradun and comes from a prominent family -- his brother is a doctor in New Delhi -- there are indications that he had gone through a fair bit of online radicalization. Our teams are looking into that aspect.”Major General (retired) K N Sardana, who was reluctant to give details about his son, said, “There has been some major confusion. He has been falsely arrested and would be released soon as he has never been involved in any illegal activity.” The former Army officer, decorated with the AVSM and the VSM, added that he had had a word with the Goa DGP and the latter told him that “there was nothing major found against Sameer”. He said, "I spoke to the Uttarakhand police, too, on Wednesday morning but it is an extremely personal issue which I would not like to disclose to the media.”Meanwhile, the cyber-crime cell of the Goa police have cracked the code of Sardana’s laptop, which he was reportedly unwilling to give out, and begun to analyse the data stored in it. A senior officer of the unit told TOI that they have so far not found any incriminating material. "But we are examining the contents in detail and also verifying the contacts available in the suspect’s cell phone." he said.Image caption Reebok trainers in the West cost between $50 and $100, on average
Sporting giant Adidas is developing a type of Reebok training shoe to sell cheaply in rural India, possibly for as little as a dollar. How?
In many parts of the world, a standard Reebok trainer can cost anything between $50 (£32) and $100 (£64). But in India, they could soon be on sale for as little as $1.
After being the test market for the so-called cheapest car and cheapest tablet computer, the Indian consumer is about to be tempted with what would be one of the cheapest pairs of branded trainers anywhere.
It's been a long time in the planning. In 2008, Adidas chief executive Herbert Hainer began talks with Bangladesh's respected economist Professor Muhammad Yunus about providing very low cost footwear in Bangladesh. The idea was to create a "social business" that would stimulate the local economy.
That led to a pilot project last year, in which parent company Adidas sold 5,000 Reebok shoes in three Bangladeshi villages, reportedly for the equivalent of between $1.14 and $1.70.
The next phase of the plan is now under way, namely to develop trainers on a larger scale in rural India, at a price that local people can afford. The goal of the project, the firm says, is not to maximise profits but to "tackle social issues" by creating jobs.
Adidas chief executive Herbert Hainer told a German newspaper the $1 training shoe was still the aim - but the final prices have yet to be fixed, the company's press office cautioned this week.
"The shoe will be sold in villages through a distribution network," said Mr Hainer. "We want the product to be self-funding."
The answer High volume with very slim profit margins
Locally sourced materials and labour
There are no guarantees of breaking even - a pilot in Bangladesh made losses
But it's a social venture and the company stands to establish a foothold in a big market
He said that unlike in Bangladesh - where each pair of trainers cost $3 to make plus $3.50 in import duty, and consequently sold at a loss of about $5 per pair - costs in India would be much lower, thanks to mass production on site.
No date has been set for the launch and the design is still in development.
So would it be possible to sell Reebok trainers for $1 and still make money?
If you want to exploit a $7tn consumer-driven economy like India, you have to adopt a high-volume, low-price business model with razor-thin profit margins, says market research consultant Rama Bijapurkar.
"Two-thirds of India is on a very modest income so if you waited for incomes to rise to levels where they could buy Adidas shoes at Adidas prices, you would have to wait a very long time.
"The challenge for multinational companies is how to make goods at a price that consumers want but at a cost that they can still make a profit on."
If you import materials, you have to pay an import duty, she says, so to keep costs low, Adidas will be finding materials and labour locally. And it will be relying on its quality, rather than its brand name, to distinguish it from equally cheap alternatives.
People in rural areas either wear flip-flops, locally made leather shoes or no shoes at all, she says, so the light, comfortable durable shoes that Adidas can offer will represent an improvement, making them "functionally superior and aspirationally superior".
WHO, WHAT, WHY? A part of BBC News Magazine, Who, What, Why? aims to answer questions behind the headlines
The decision to target rural areas has a certain logic to it, says Ms Bijapurkar.
"They're probably guessing the rural consumer has less access to the pavement shoes that look like Adidas, smell like Adidas but aren't Adidas. They might think that upgrading people from really bad shoes or no shoes to better quality shoes is harder in urban areas where cheap imports are available."
But don't expect the $1 shoe to resemble a $100 shoe you might find in an Adidas shop in New York, she adds. It will be good enough for the job it's supposed to do in India - walking every day - not for high performance running.
Adidas's business model in India is completely different from anything you might see in the West, says retail analyst Maureen Hinton of Verdict Research.
"It does sound incredibly cheap but if you have a billion people, the volume means that as long as you're making a small profit [on each pair] then that can be quite considerable."
Operating like a cottage industry, with rural production sites, means overheads, marketing costs and wage bills would be relatively low, compared to those of a regular big business.
"Excuse the pun, but they're getting a foothold in a market that is set to grow, and they're getting in at the bottom.
"There's not yet a big mass market for trainers in India - the challenge is getting them to adopt to a different type of footwear. And this way they're associated with social responsibility at the same time."“In the United States, like most people, I voted Democratic,” said Dr. Naftali Neal Fish, a clinical psychologist and hypnotherapist who came to Israel from Philadelphia in the 1980s. This was his first time voting abroad. Citing both the crisis with Iran and the economic situation in the United States, where American-Israelis still pay taxes, he said he voted for Mr. Romney.
Orit Straus, an interior decorator who came here with her family three years ago from St. Louis, said she had voted for Mr. Romney “because I feel he is better for Israel.”
Meir Simchah Panzer, from Virginia, said that there was probably little substantive difference between the candidates but that he was voting for Mr. Romney “by default; I see somebody who seems genuinely to care and to have principles.”
Daniel Laufer, 26, from North Miami Beach, Fla., said he voted for Mr. Romney because of his “economic record” and because he had become “disenchanted with Obama’s Middle East policies.”
iVoteIsrael has sponsored debates around the country and reached out to potential voters through social networks, community e-mail lists and local publications. Its activists have gone door to door, run phone banks, canvassed outside shopping malls and registered parents at Little League games. It has provided drop boxes for registration forms and ballots in locations like pizzerias and private homes, including in several West Bank settlements.
Photo
It has not endorsed any candidate, and the Web site of the United States Embassy lists it as a nonpartisan group offering voter assistance. Elie Pieprz, iVoteIsrael’s national campaign director, said the group had registered voters from 49 states, including “thousands” in critical swing states like Florida and Ohio.
“While the 2000 Bush-Gore presidential elections all came down to 537 absentee ballots cast in Florida, only 64 of those — out of the many thousands of Floridian-Israelis — were cast from Israel!” the group states on its Web site, adding, “We want to see a president in the White House who will support and stand by Israel in absolute commitment to its safety, security and right to defend itself.”
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But critics from the Democratic camp have noted that some of iVoteIsrael’s messaging, particularly on its Facebook page, has a distinct anti-Obama flavor, including an appeal to vote from the hawkish former United Nations ambassador, John R. Bolton, who has endorsed Mr. Romney.
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Adding to the uncertainty, iVoteIsrael has also been vague about the sources of its financing. Its parent organization, Americans for Jerusalem, is a registered 501(c)(4) organization that does not have to disclose its financial backers. But the Sunlight Foundation Reporting Group said last week that Americans for Jerusalem appeared to have ties to Ronald S. Lauder, the conservative American businessman, philanthropist and supporter of Republican causes. Mr. Lauder’s office said it had no comment.
Mr. Pieprz, a former Republican activist who came to Israel in 2010, said only that iVoteIsrael was financed by supporters from the right and the left and that its day-to-day operations were run independently of Americans for Jerusalem.
The apparent growth in absentee voting has stirred a contentious debate over whether the numbers are great enough to make a difference.
“In raw numbers,” Mr. Pieprz said, “the votes from Israel can absolutely change an election.”
Republicans Abroad Israel, which represents the party here, has focused its efforts on the senatorial race in Ohio, where the Democrat, Sherrod Brown, has a healthy lead. Marc Zell, a chairman of Republicans Abroad Israel, said it had mobilized dozens of volunteers to submit opinion pieces, letters and responses to the Ohio news media in support of Josh Mandel, the Republican candidate, as well as Mr. Romney and Israel. Mr. Zell added that volunteers from Israel have also been calling potential voters in Florida.
But the idea that Americans in Israel could swing the November elections is largely dismissed by Obama supporters.
Hillel Schenker, vice chairman of Democrats Abroad Israel, said that in 2000: “Florida was stolen. I don’t think it was the absentee ballots but the manipulations.” Moreover, the skeptics note, most American-Israelis are likely to vote in states like New York, California and Illinois, where they will have zero impact.
David A. Harris, president and chief executive of the National Jewish Democratic Council, said, “I’d argue that unfortunately for the Romney-Ryan ticket, Americans living in Israel are unlikely to be the difference makers.”CLOSE In a stunning admission, President Donald Trump said in an interview that he regrets appointing Attorney General Jeff Sessions and would have never done so had he known that Sessions would recuse himself from the Russia investigation. Time
President Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions. (Photo11: SAUL LOEB, AFP/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON – President Trump has no plans to fire Jeff Sessions, his spokesperson said Thursday, even after his extraordinary attacks cast doubt on the fate of the attorney general and Robert Mueller, the special counsel leading the Russia investigation.
While Trump still disagrees with Sessions' decision to recuse himself from the Russia investigation, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said, "clearly, he has confidence in him, or he would not be attorney general."
For his part, Jeff Sessions said he plans to continue serving "as long as that is appropriate." He told reporters Thursday: "We love this job. We love this department."
Trump told The New York Times Wednesday that he would not have nominated him for attorney general had he known Sessions would recuse himself from the investigation into Russia's interference in the presidential election. “He should have told me before he took the job and I would have picked somebody else,” Trump said.
The president's comments about a sitting attorney general – who was also one of his biggest supporters during the campaign – caught even senior aides by surprise, and forced some to scramble to explain them.
In the interview, Trump also criticized Mueller for having unspecified conflicts of interest. While Trump cannot technically fire the special counsel, Sanders said the president also "has no intention" to call for Mueller's removal "at this time."
As the White House insisted everything was copacetic, members of Congress and legal analysts saw it differently.
Trump "effectively asked Sessions for his resignation. Will he resign or insist on being fired?" tweeted Preet Bharara, the former New York-based U.S. Attorney removed this year by the Trump administration.
The President today effectively asked Sessions for his resignation. Will he resign or insist on being fired? https://t.co/bShMQJtrBI — Preet Bharara (@PreetBharara) July 20, 2017
Trump himself, meanwhile, declined to respond to reporters' questions about Sessions after an event in which a group of CEOs announced plans to expand pharmaceutical glass manufacturing plants in the United States.
Sessions said in March he would remove himself from the investigation because he had meetings with Russians officials during the campaign period.
After Trump fired his FBI director, James Comey, deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein appointed Mueller to oversee the investigation into Russian efforts to interfere in last year's election by hacking Democrats, and possible collusion between Trump associates and Russia.
Trump claimed Mueller's office has its own conflicts of interest. He did not elaborate, though Trump and aides have previously questioned the fact that Mueller's staff includes supporters of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
Trump also complained that Mueller interviewed for the job of FBI director and therefore should not have accepted the post of special counsel, and that he should not be investigating anything related to the president's finances.
"I have done nothing wrong," Trump said. "A special counsel should never have been appointed in this case."
Yet Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said Trump is trying to intimidate law enforcement officers who are involved in an investigation of him.
FBI Director does not report to the President on specific cases. Someone needs to counsel Mr. Trump on independence of Justice Department. — Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) July 20, 2017
Mueller, Schiff added, "has authority to investigate any ties Trump family has to Russia, including financial, and anything that arises. That is his duty."
Over at the White House, Sanders repeated Trump's longstanding claims that he has no financial dealings with Russia. "This will be proven to be the witch hunt that it is," she said of the overall investigation.
Still, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said the president's comments about the special counsel investigation could amount to an obstruction of justice.
In a tweet, Blumenthal said "attempts by Trump to limit Mueller investigation, which now includes relevant financial dealings, are inappropriate & possibly illegal."
Trump cannot fire Mueller directly. Only Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general who appointed Mueller, has that authority – and he said last month he sees no good reason to exercise it.
Yet the interview renewed questions about whether Trump wants Sessions to quit – and a new attorney general to do something about Mueller.
Matthew Miller, a former spokesman for President Obama's Justice Department, noted that Trump stepped up his attacks after recent revelations that Mueller's office is now investigating Donald Trump Jr.'s 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer in the belief she had compromising information on Trump election opponent Hilary Clinton.
"Every time the investigation gets close to him, he reacts," Miller said. "And as it gets closer and closer, it’s hard to see how we avoid a major crisis – whether that’s him forcing a confrontation with DOJ by trying to fire Mueller or issuing preemptive pardons to everyone involved."
As Miller put it: "Winter is coming."
Related:
Trump's reactions to the Russia investigation are also under scrutiny. Along with accounts Trump may have pressed Comey to drop the inquiry into former national security adviser Michael Flynn, Comey's abrupt firing prompted calls of an investigation of Trump for possible obstruction of justice.
Sessions, who in recent months has offered the president his resignation, declined to comment in detail on the Times interview. He essentially refused to answer questions about whether Trump's attacks compromise his authority as attorney general.
After a news conference announcing the seizure of assets from an Internet operation selling illegal drugs, Sessions said that "we are serving right now" and he remains "totally confident we are able to run this office in an effective way."
Since recusing himself from the Russia matter, Sessions has been largely traveling the country, railing about violent crime and gangs.
Two weeks ago, he was in Guantanamo to inspect the facilities there, which the Trump administration vows to keep open after Obama's efforts to shutter it failed.
Some lawmakers backed Trump's comments on Sessions.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., tweeted: "I agree with @realDonaldTrump, his Attorney General should not have recused himself over reported incidental contacts with Russian officials."
I agree with @realDonaldTrump, his Attorney General should not have recused himself over reported incidental contacts with Russian officials — Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) July 20, 2017
Yet other key lawmakers, such as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, said turning on Sessions proves Trump is willing to throw even key supporters under the bus:
Two words to @SenateGOP when @realDonaldTrump says “I'll have your back" when you vote to repeal health care: Jeff Sessions. — Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) July 20, 2017
Contributing: Kevin Johnson
Related:
Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2uMq9u0A fault system that runs from San Diego to Los Angeles is capable of producing up to magnitude 7.3 earthquakes if the offshore segments rupture and a 7.4 if the southern onshore segment also ruptures, according to an analysis led by Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego.
The Newport-Inglewood and Rose Canyon faults had been considered separate systems but the study shows that they are actually one continuous fault system running from San Diego Bay to Seal Beach in Orange County, then on land through the Los Angeles basin.
“This system is mostly offshore but never more than four miles from the San Diego, Orange County, and Los Angeles County coast,” said study lead author Valerie Sahakian, who performed the work during her doctorate at Scripps and is now a postdoctoral fellow with the U.S. Geological Survey. “Even if you have a high 5- or low 6-magnitude earthquake, it can still have a major impact on those regions which are some of the most densely populated in California.”
The study, “Seismic constraints on the architecture of the Newport-Inglewood/Rose Canyon fault: Implications for the length and magnitude of future earthquake ruptures,” appears in the American Geophysical Union’s Journal of Geophysical Research.
The researchers processed data from previous seismic surveys and supplemented it with high-resolution bathymetric data gathered offshore by Scripps researchers between 2006 and 2009 and seismic surveys conducted aboard former Scripps research vessels New Horizon and Melville in 2013. The disparate data have different resolution scales and depth of penetration providing a “nested survey” of the region. This nested approach allowed the scientists to define the fault architecture at an unprecedented scale and thus to create magnitude estimates with more certainty.
They identified four segments of the strike-slip fault that are broken up by what geoscientists call stepovers, points where the fault is horizontally offset. Scientists generally consider stepovers wider than three kilometers more likely to inhibit ruptures along entire faults and instead contain them to individual segments – creating smaller earthquakes. Because the stepovers in the Newport-Inglewood/Rose Canyon (NIRC) fault are two kilometers wide or less, the Scripps-led team considers a rupture of all the offshore segments is possible, said study co-author Scripps geologist and geophysicist Neal Driscoll.
The team used two estimation methods to derive the maximum potential a rupture of the entire fault, including one onshore and offshore portions. Both methods yielded estimates between magnitude 6.7 and magnitude 7.3 to 7.4.
The fault system most famously hosted a 6.4-magnitude quake in Long Beach, Calif. that killed 115 people in 1933. Researchers have found evidence of earlier earthquakes of indeterminate size on onshore portions of the fault, finding that at the northern end of the fault system, there have been between three and five ruptures in the last 11,000 years. At the southern end, there is evidence of a quake that took place roughly 400 years ago and little significant activity for 5,000 years before that.
Driscoll has recently collected long sediment cores along the offshore portion of the fault to date previous ruptures along the offshore segments, but the work was not part of this study.
In addition to Sahakian and Driscoll, study authors include Jayne Bormann, Graham Kent, and Steve Wesnousky of the Nevada Seismological Laboratory at the University of Nevada, Reno, and Alistair Harding of Scripps. Southern California Edison funded the research at the direction of the California Energy Commission and the California Public Utilities Commission.
“Further study is warranted to improve the current understanding of hazard and potential ground shaking posed to urban coastal areas from Tijuana to Los Angeles from the NIRC fault,” the study concludes.If the auto industry is allowed to dump their pension plans through bankruptcy, it could put the pensions of millions of other retired workers at risk. The Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation, the government insurer that backs pension plans, would quickly run out of funds and be overwhelmed with claims. It would be forced to slash promised benefits to retirees. It would also open the door to other companies looking to dump their pension obligations through bankruptcy court.
The dire state of the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation’s decision to gamble its money in the stock market certainly hasn’t helped things, as we noted here earlier this month.
The holes in the pension fund and related dire circumstances of 401(k) programs have been apparent for some time.
James Ridgeway reported on corporate America’s plans to ditch their obligations to retired workers back in this article from 1999.
We can only hope that the current situation will put an end to any more calls to privatize Social Security, which is becoming the default retirement plan for more and more Americans.
From the NYT:
Pension experts predict that a government takeover of the two giant plans would spur other auto companies and all types of manufacturers to abandon such benefits for competitive reasons. … “If one of these companies solves its pension problem by shunting it off to the federal government, then for competitive reasons the others have to do the same thing,” said Zvi Bodie, a professor of finance at the Boston University School of Management and longtime observer of the government’s pension insurance system. “That is the death spiral.” Though the automakers’ plans each have a gap between what they have on hand and what they owe their retirees over the years, if they failed, most of that shortfall would be made up by workers in the form of smaller benefits – not by the companies or the government. … For years, traditional pensions – those that shield workers from market risk – have been in a slow decline, with troubled sectors like aviation and steel shedding their plans in bankruptcy court as new types of individually managed benefits like 401(k) plans have taken hold. But big sectors, particularly manufacturing and financial services, have clung to the old plans. The Pension Rights Center, a consumer group in Washington, estimates that 18 million Americans are still building up such benefits every year, and millions more retirees are receiving guaranteed payments from their former employers. “Those that are fortunate enough to have those plans are sleeping soundly,” said Karen Ferguson, director of the center. The loss of the auto pensions would be devastating partly because Detroit sustains many other businesses and partly because of their history. It was the United Automobile Workers union, more than any other force, that pushed Congress to enact laws forcing companies to put money behind their pension promises and creating the federal guarantor. The failure of a major auto workers plan would be a blow to the whole system. Not only would Ford have reason to opt out of the expense of maintaining a pension plan, but so would Toyota and Honda, which also have pension plans at their American plants, said Teresa Ghilarducci, a professor of economics at the New School for Social Research and former member of the P.B.G.C.’s advisory board. … For traditional pension plans, “maybe this is their last stand,” said Jeffrey B. Cohen, a partner with the law firm Ivins, Phillips & Barker in Washington who was chief counsel for the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation from 2005 to 2007. If the automakers’ plans fail, he added, “the biggest domino will have fallen for the P.B.G.C.”
–d.f.
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PrintSione Lauaki crashes over for a try in the All Blacks' 2008 test against England in Christchurch.
Sir Graham Henry handed Sione Lauaki his All Blacks debut. Just 12 years later he's coming to terms with the shock of his death.
The former Chiefs star, who played 17 tests for New Zealand, died in Auckland on Sunday morning, aged 35.
New Zealand Rugby said he was surrounded by family when died.
FAIRFAX NZ Former All Blacks forward Sione Lauaki was known for his bruising ball-running.
In 201 |
They said] don't go to Elvis more than 20 deep, you can't go there. But how they going to say that when it's welcome to the public?"
Click for more from Fox 13.Ashton's last England cap - his 39th - came in June 2014
Chris Ashton will miss England's entire Six Nations campaign after being given a 10-week ban that ends on 28 March.
The Saracens winger, 28, had just been recalled to the England squad, 18 months after his last appearance.
Ashton was cited for making contact with the eyes of Ulster's Luke Marshall in a European Champions Cup game.
England, now coached by Australian, Eddie Jones, begin their Six Nations campaign in Scotland on 6 February, ending it on 19 March in France.
Ashton, who has 39 caps, has the right to appeal against the decision and Saracens are weighing up the decision. They have 72 hours after the written judgement is received to decide whether to lodge an appeal.
Jones said he would wait for the outcome of any appeal before naming a replacement.
He added: "He's been playing well this season and it looks like he has been working hard. Everyone has set-backs and it's about how hard he fights back now.
"He has to serve his time, come back, make sure he is looking after his fitness, his speed and his skills and make sure he comes back in good fettle.
"If he is back on the field and playing well then he will be available for selection again. I'm very disappointed for him and disappointed for the team, but we move on."
According to the judicial officer who ruled on the case, Ashton committed an act of foul play that warranted a red card. The official determined that the offence was at the low end of World Rugby's sanctions and selected a 12-week ban.
He then added one week as a deterrent, according to World Rugby guidelines regarding offences of this nature, before reducing the sanction by three weeks due to Ashton's good character and good conduct.
"It's a huge blow to Chris Ashton," former England skipper Will Carling told BBC Radio 5 live.
"He's worked incredibly hard to get back. When he first appeared, he was outstanding and it would've been great to see him back."
Analysis
BBC Radio 5 Live's rugby union reporter Chris Jones:
Given how hard he has worked to get back into the international fold, this ban will be a devastating blow for Ashton, who is desperate to resume his England career after falling out of favour under Stuart Lancaster.
Although Ashton's challenge could be considered reckless, it is not malicious and it seems almost certain Ashton will appeal.
However, as things stand, England boss Jones will be without the Saracens wing and will need to call up a replacement.On Monday morning's edition of "Fox and Friends," Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) became the public figure to put the most bone-headed political spin on the shooting at the Texas Muhammad cartoon contest.
"When people like Hillary Clinton say that police should not have weapons of war, the fact is we are at war," King said. "We are at war with Islamist terrorism and we have to have all the weapons and all the resources available and thank God that that officer last night was able to kill those two."
Advertisement:
"But again, we shouldn't be surprised. This is going to be what's going to happen more often than not. We shouldn't even be having a debate about whether or not that exhibition was provocative. Being an American means you can be provocative. This is the First Amendment. We can't sacrifice our Constitution to Islamists or politically-correct commentators."
Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.comThe big brother of the MPAA has Newzbin, the world's most prominent newsgroup indexer, firmly in its sights. Newzbin, which indexes Usenet and offers its members NZB files, is being sued by the MPA, the global lobby group for the movie industry. The pair are set to fight it out in court, possibly before the end of the year.
While most media attention is focused on the mighty BitTorrent, availability of just about every type of copyrighted digital media continues unabated on Usenet, otherwise known as ‘the newsgroups’. Downloads from Usenet are fast – very fast – with most transfers maxing out the user’s Internet connection. Add to this the excellent security offered by Usenet (people don’t get infringement notices when downloading) and Usenet can prove very attractive, even to the hardened BitTorrent user.
Like most things, however, Usenet has its drawbacks. The main problem lies with its complexity – the learning curve can be a little steep – but with amazing little things called.NZB files, downloading is made almost as easy as BitTorrent. NZB files contain meta-data and without splitting too many hairs, they function in a very similar way to.torrent files. Download an NZB, load it into a news client such as Grabit and very quickly the download is complete.
Newzbin is one of the original Usenet indexing sites and the creator of the NZB“>.NZB format, which opened Usenet downloading to the masses. In May 2008 it received a threatening letter from the Motion Picture Association (MPA). In the letter, the MPA claimed that some of Newzbin’s editors were listing NZBs which linked to movies on Usenet which infringed their member’s copyright.
In October 2008, ‘Caesium’, the owner of Newzbin made an announcement. “Newzbin has recently received two serious complaints regarding the indexing we perform, and raising doubts as to its legality. It is likely that we will in the coming weeks be presented with a court case and have to defend our rights.”
Noting that Newzbin would defend itself vigorously against the complainants, Caesium said he believed that linking to content on Usenet is entirely legal and that the site’s procedures for dealing with unlawful content is appropriate. “We believe that, or we wouldn’t still be here,” he added.
At the start of December 2008, Newzbin confirmed that it had indeed been removing NZB files that link to infringing movies on Usenet. However, this wasn’t enough for the MPA, who filed an injunction against Newzbin.
Now, four months later, the site is still operating as normal but has received more details about its upcoming battle with the movie companies.
“The latest we’ve heard is that there will be an interim hearing (to hash out administrative details) sometime in the next couple of months, and the case itself will be heard in court sometime between November 2009 and January 2010,” said Caesium in an announcement.
It is far from clear how the legal system will view the operations at Newzbin – no other site of its type has ever appeared in court in the UK, or elsewhere in the world. Newzbin has already been considering that in order to be completely sure of staying within the law it may have to automate its operations and remove human intervention in the creation of its NZB files.
While Newzbin has never, ever hosted any copyright infringing material, previously another newsgroup-related company Usenet.com was sued by the RIAA for actually hosting illicit content. Usenet.com was also criticized over its advertising, which is alleged to encourage piracy.It's the longest of the long shots, but Abiola Aborishade isn't giving up. For the last month the former D-III wide receiver has stood outside Gillette Stadium asking for a tryout with the New England Patriots.
According to Mass Live, Aborishade has been camping out under the bridge near the entrance to the Patriots' facility nearly every weekday since April 21 -- logging more than 130 hours -- waiting patiently for his shot.
The former UMass-Dartmouth star receiver figures there are only three ways his quest can end:
"The first thing is that they see me so often that they get sick and tired of me. So they almost give up, give into it, because I'm not giving in. So they give in and they say, 'OK, let's see what this kid can do.' The second thing is the people who drive around here, who work around here see me so often that they almost say, 'hey, we want to see what he can do.'"
"And the third thing is they just leave me out here," he says, laughing.
Given that this is the NFL, and the Patriots, Option No. 3 seems very likely, but Aborishade remains steadfast in his pursuit.
He told MassLive that Jordan Richards, Rob Ninkovich and Malcolm Butler stopped to chat with him on their way into work. Butler also posted a photo of Aborishade to his Facebook with the caption, "This is the attitude you must have if you really want something...#NEVERGIVEUP."
One thing Aborishade does have going for him is that Bill Belichick and his staff have a knack for finding talent in unlikely places. Cases in point: Danny Woodhead, Dion Lewis and Julian Edelman.
That's plenty of good motivation for a 6-foot, 194-pound slot receiver who set UMass-Dartmouth's single-season catch record with 84 grabs in 2014.
But Aborishade said he got the idea for his stakeout from an Instagram post of former NFL receiver Joe Anderson, who stood outside the Texans' stadium in Houston holding a cardboard poster that read, "Not homeless... but STARVING for success. Will run routes 4 food."
Anderson eventually wound up getting signed to the Jets' practice squad.
"There are a lot of talented people out there who haven't been discovered yet, and that's because they haven't separated themselves from everyone else," Aborishade said. "You have to put yourself out there -- literally put yourself out there.
"A lot of people have a Plan B." Aborishade said. "I don't really believe in Plan Bs. I believe that if you have a goal, go at it as hard as you can. Once you've done everything you possibly can to reach that Plan A, even if it doesn't work out the way you want to, then you move on to another Plan A."This post has been reviewed by the Vancouver Media Co-op editorial committee.
The Sinixt Nation: "We are still here"
Indigenous struggles and solidarity
by Tami Starlight →Original Peoples, →Environment
The Sinixt peoples: We are still here, and we are strong!
~Unceded Sinixt territory~
Upon arriving in the Slocan Valley (as it is now called by “the settler” population), I felt a sense of awe, regarding how diverse and beautiful the region is.
This, of course, was tempered by my previous knowledge of the injustices and struggles of the local indigenous people regarding a long history of extermination and resource extraction. Mining, logging, hydro-electric projects, water exports and all the pollution that comes with many of these unauthorised, unchallenged, and illegal capitalist activities.
That the land may look a certain way in the moment I am experiencing it now, but it looked much healthier before and beyond what one can see “beyond the highway.”
Indigenous peoples of North America
The long standing struggles of First Nations, more commonly known as Indigenous or Aboriginal peoples of North America, have been somewhat well documented. However, much of this historical documentation is minimized, inaccurate or the truth of it completely destroyed and forgotten.
Bob Campbell, an elder with the Sinixt Nation speaks of, “the death blankets,” where those directly connected to “the crown of England” purposely put cuttings of blankets infected with small pox, into small gift boxes given as presents when they came into contact with Indigenous people. The “officials” working on behalf of the crown of England referred to this as “getting rid of the indian problem” said Bob.
This is just one example of many atrocities indigenous peoples of Canada endured.
First contact with the Indigenous peoples of this land was quite mixed. Those who were simply along for the ride for adventure and pay, certainly did not have the idea of killing the people who were here already.
Of course, some believed the lies they were told by The Hudson Bay Company, the arm of the Monarchy and Government of England. Along with the creation of the RCMP, sought to rid the land of its first peoples from day one, in order to secure their place on this “new land.” They believed that indigenous people were backward and “unclivlized” and did not deserve the same respect and rights as they did.
From the battle of the “Plains of Abraham” where the Indigenous peoples of North America fought with the French, to the Red River rebellion, to the Oka conflict with the Mohawk peoples, there is a long history of fighting for their land, water and place in this colonized land by European settlers.
This story is not meant to be an exhaustive account of the aboriginal first peoples struggle against injustice, occupation, assimilation and annihilation, but to give some account of the Sinixt Nations struggle in its historical context of this colony called Canada.
The Sinixt Nation
As far back as 12,500 years ago, according to recent archaeology findings, the Sinixt Nation (interior Salish) lived in relative harmony with mother earth and others. She is a matriarchal society since the beginning. The Sinixt are “the mother tribe,” centred around the Lemon Creek & Winlaw area in the Slocan Valley, British Columbia, Canada. Their traditional territory extends north of Revelstoke and as far south as Kettle Falls, WA, surrounded by the Monashee and Purcell Mountain ranges. (Purcell – settler name).
“We would swim in all kinds of places, where ever we would catch fish,” recalls Robert Watt, the Sinixt Nation's “warrior on the move.” Watt is the caretaker at the Sinixt Pitt House/Vallican Village, B.C. “Now we can hardly drink any of the water on the land without having to boil it,” he stated in an interview in the Sinixt Pitt House.
The Sinixt people are not only stewards of the land, water and air of their traditional lands, but, as Marilyn James (Sinixt Spokeswoman) shared in a recent interview “this land does belong to the Sinixt peoples, but also we belong to the land. It is this land that lays out the laws for everything,” she said.
Eva Orr and Marilyn Jame's work was galvanized because of the unearthing of six ancestral Sinixt peoples' remains, which were transported to Victoria’s “Royal BC Museum.”
Marilyn explains that it is their "responsibility as decedents of the ancestral remains to make things right," by upholding their cultural laws and bringing back their bones for proper burial and repatriation. In 1990, they were the first ancestral remains to be repatriated in Canada. Since then, they have brought back another 61 ancestors and repatriated their bones accordingly. Their burial place is on Perry’s Ridge.
The Perry’s Ridge Battle
Perry Ridge is an unusual landform, which is located in the Selkirk Mountains in southeastern British Columbia. The mountain or ridge is a dome-like structure bordered on the east by the Slocan River and on the west by the Little Slocan river. Perry Ridge has a rounded gentle top with abrupt and steep side slopes that drop, at the southern end some 4500 to 5500 feet to the valley floor.
The ridge is approximately 15 miles long and some five miles wide and runs generally from the southwest to the northeast. At its highest point it reaches some 6800 feet above sea level. The lowest point of the Slocan Valley below is some 1600 feet above sea level.
The timber company Sunshine Logging has been harvesting in the region for over 20 years and is the capitalist company in question regarding the court battle and ongoing road blockade. Perry’s Ridge is here. It lies between the Slocan Valley & the Little Slocan Valley on top of the mountain overlooking the Little Slocan Valley. Issues of unresolved territorial rights and destroying habitat and watersheds.
The Sinixt Nation is still in court fighting Sunshine Logging (based in Kaslo, BC), stating they were not consulted and the crown failed to notify them of the “timber sale licence” to Sunshine Logging (licence # A80073). Apparently BC Timber Sales is quite well known to environmentalists and activists throughout the province.
This is the heading from their website:
BCTS was founded in 2003 with a mandate to provide the cost and price benchmarks for timber harvested from public land in British Columbia. Through 12 Business Areas and an operational presence in 33 locations, BCTS manages some 20 percent of the provincial Crown allowable annual cut. In its first five years, BCTS offered more than 73 million cubic metres of timber to the market, sold 63 million cubic metres and generated $430 million in net revenue for the Province.
It was BCTS which granted the timber licence to Sunshine Logging.
As stated in by the Association of BC Forest Professionals:
The original BC forestry model is designed to satisfy three main goals. The first was to ensure the orderly liquidation of old-growth and its replacement with new stands, often plantations, to be managed on a sustained basis. The second of the traditional tenure system was to attract private capital to fuel the province’s economic development by opening up vast primary timber resources. The third and final was to create stable income and employment in timber dependent communities.
This has been disastrous for most of the wonderful, pristine, and endangered wild places on this native land. One may make the connection and argue that this is an obvious reason capitalism is such a terrible and unjust societal idea. Where everything is “for sale.”
In my conversations with Lauren and Jamie, whom I met while performing a smudge ceremony at the road blockade, they spoke of the water becoming undrinkable, landslides and flooding becoming more frequent because the lack of forest to filter and retain the water and ground. Both of them live “off-grid” in the middle of the Little Slocan Valley.
They have joined in the fight for the protection of Perry’s Ridge. Many more local residents and people from far away have supported the Sinixt Nations battle to protect their traditional lands and rights.
Conclusion
My belief as an Indigenous person from the Peguis Nation in Manitoba that is primarily Cree & Objibway is that Indigenous struggles are everyone’s. That an injustice to one is an injustice to us all.
We have much to learn from our Indigenous elders and cultures. How we disrespect mother earth in our insatiable greed is a reflection of who we are as peoples. Because – EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED. What we do to mother earth – we do to ourselves. How we treat first peoples of lands we are newcomers are a reflection of ourselves. We are all mirrors.
www.sinixtnation.org
All my relations / Namaste
Tami Starlight – Occupied & unceded coast salish territory
Cree-Peguis Nation/anti oppression & decolonization community organizer.
twitter: tami_starlight / email: tamistarlight at gmail dot com
"Until all of us are free, the few who think they are, remain tainted with enslavement."
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Decolonize-Anti-Oppression-Workshop-Tour-...
http://theantioppressionnetwork.com/
https://www.facebook.com/TheAntiONetwork/
https://www.facebook.com/TheAntiOppressionNetworkUncededCoastSalish/GW2 Daybreak Achievements Guide
GW2 Daybreak Living World Season 4 Episode 1 Achievements Guide.
Meta Achievement
There is a meta achievement to complete 30 achievements. This will reward you with 21 AP and Corsair Turban Box.
Corsair Turban (all armor classes)
Story Achievements
Eye of the Brandstorm
Not So Shocking – 3 AP
Repel the Branded from Free City of Amnoon without being struck by lightning. There are two stages to this achievement. First you have to avoid the lighting outside the outskirts of Amnoon, this is fairly easy. For the second part, you need to avoid the lightning inside the city of Amnoon. This second part can get a bit heretic. The lightning are marked with reddish circles and you have a bit of time to dodge out of them. The main issue is getting downed and having a lighting circle spawn on your, which can fail you the achievement.
Amnoon Evacuation – 2 AP
Rescue 40 civilians in the story instance. This achievement has a bit of a DPS check as you need to kill the Branded Crystals before their timer expires and the civilians turn into branded. Other than the crystals, there are also dead civilians that need to be rezzed and alive civilians that you need to press F to direct them to safety. It is not recommend to do this achievement with Electric City since rezzing civilians can take time away from that achievement.
First cluster of three crystals here, each having 3 civilians each. This should bring your count to 31.
Then right after is a civilian you need to rez at the same spot, for a count of 30. Inside the big pyramid are 5 civilians that need to be rezzed to bring your count down to 25. To the left of the pyramid are 5 branded crystals. It is okay if you don’t get one of them, but you need to get at least 4 branded crystals. If you get all 5 crystals this will bring your count down to 7 (or 11 if you only got 4).
Inside the city of Amnoon are more civilians to rez/talk. There is a big batch of civilians at the top left. However keep in mind that if you defeat the Branded Wyvern, all the civilians will disappear.
Electric City – 2 AP
Repeal the Branded storm from the Free City of Amnoon in under 12 minutes. This is a pretty tight DPS check if doing it solo. The timer only starts once you enter the city.
(Hidden) Qais Closed – 1 AP
Talk to Captain Rahim at end of the instance about Deputy Qais. Keep going through the dialogues until you get the achievement.
Under the Stars
Ally Assessment– 3 AP
Check in with allies in the Sunspear base. If you need to reenter the Sunspear base, talk to the heart vendor near Astralarium and select the option to enter the base again. Then interact with the Nightfall book (it won’t be visible but there will be an interact button).
There are 10 NPCs you need to talk to in the base and they are marked on the map below.
Champion’s Dawn
Who’s Laughing Now? – 1 AP
Defeat the Awakened Sunspear Champion without allowing him to heal. During the fight with Awakened Koss Dejarin, he will gain a break bar. If you don’t break his break bar quick enough, he will heal up and you will lose the achievement. If you are quick enough on DPS there should be only one instance of breakbar. You can use nearby rocks to break his breakbar as well.
(Hidden) Family Ties – 1 AP
This is a hidden achievement. Talk to Awakened Koss after the fight and mention about a descendant. If you don’t get the achievement, you may need to talk to Redeemer Kossan in The Ruination in The Desolation (may need to do an event with him to get him to talk).
The Hero of Istan
(Hidden) Thereby Hangs a Tale – 1 AP
Once you get the key from the jailer, jump down and open one of the lower cells with a chair inside it. Interact with the chair and finish reading the conversation to get the achievement.
(Hidden) Stop Right There – 1 AP
This a hidden achievement to kill the walking Awakened Soldier right outside your jail cell before he reaches the top of the stairs. You have plenty of time so rescue Zaeim, grab your weapons and then kill the guard.
(Hidden) Tipple Toes – 1 AP
Escape the dungeons without being spotted by drunken Awakened. They are pretty easy to avoid and have telegraphs in front of them. As long you avoid these telegraphs you should be undetected.
The First City
If you are stuck in the part of the instance where you need to advance past the fire, there is a boulder you can pick up near the fire wall. Place that and one Branded Crystal on the big plate to advance.
Timing is Everything – 1 AP
Make it to the other side of the Vestibule of Faith and pull the levers unscathed. Pretty easy achievement, just time your raptor canyon jump and avoid the bells dropping down. Pull the levers in between each bell. There are 3 bells and 3 levers in between.
(Hidden) Gone Swimming – 1 AP
Not too far from the entrance is a pair of diving goggles. If you don’t see them you may need to clear the instance first and come back. The dive is a bit tricky due to the rocks blocking your way down so you need to jump a bit outward and then fall through the cracks between the rocks to the water below.
(Hidden) You Left This – 1 AP
Pick up Taimi’s Hair Bow and then hand it to her at the end of the instance.
Talk to Taimi once you rescued her and pick the option I found your ribbon.
(Hidden) From Downtown! – 1 AP
Throw a static conduit and destroy a static storm orbiting Scruffy from very far away. All you need to do is to throw the static conduit from the platform where you got it from and it should count. Make sure to throw it in front of the moving static storm.
Stand Your Ground – 3 AP
Survive the rapid ammunition discharge protocol without being downed or leaving the platform. Last 5% of Scruffy 2.0 he will start spamming attacks all over. Avoid the AoE circles and don’t get too close to the Static Storm orbs floating around as they are magnetic and will pull you with them. You don’t need to damage Scruffy in this phase, just survive long enough for the phase to be over.
(Hidden) That Belongs in a Museum – 6 AP
It is recommended that you do this achievement at end of the instance as the whole instance opens up and most of the mobs disappear.
1. Ancient Istani Coin
2. Damaged Jokanur Digging Shovel
3. Cracked Fang Neckace
4. Folden Silk Tapestry
5. Primeval Tome
6. Ancient Sunspear Regalia
7. Chunk of Apocryha
Timegated Achievements
Brandstone Research – 3 AP
This is a timegated achievement that requires 7 days to complete. Each day you will need to go down to below the library in the Astralarium and then talk to Yasna. She will ask you for something different each day.
Day 1: She will ask you to hand in 10 Kralkatite Ore for the achievement item Kralkatite Research.
Day 2: She will ask you for 10 Branded Residues. These seems to drop off any branded elementals. If you have trouble finding them, look for fallen brandstones as there are always some guarding one (see day 3).
Day 3: You will need to hunt down a fallen brandstone and get some readings with the Particle Collector.
To locate fallen brandstones you will need a Branded Multitool from Scholar Fatima on top of the Astralarium. This can be upgraded further with Volatile Magic. Every 15 minutes Brandstones will fall from the sky and land on the map. They are not marked but you can see them falling from the sky near the Astralarium Waypoint. They only lasts for 3 minutes once they landed. Hop on your mount and use the Branded Multitool and spam it every once in a while.
When you get directed to a landing site. Defeat the branded elementals guarding the landing site to get Branded Residues and then use the Branded Multitool to pull up the Brandstone Node (#1 to find the node and then use #2 to dig it up)
For the Miasma, just step on the Bloodstone surface and then click the Particle collector in your inventory. It will fulfill the requirement and you can return to Yasna.
Day 4: She will asks for 10x Powdered Rose Quartz Crystal. They are rare drops from the nodes found in the Brandstone sites.
Day 5: For Astral Alignments you need to talk to the heart vendor and get access to the forbidden section of the archive. Inside the archive grab the book and return to Yasna.
Day 6: Yasna wants Mirror Calibration Readings. To get this item you need to do the escort event around Astralarium. You need to talk to Akili when there is an event symbol to start the escort. At end of the escort you will receive the item in your inventory. There doesn’t seem to be a pre-event for this.
Day 7: Yasna wants Blazing Kralkatite. You will need 10x Kralkatite ore and 5x Powdered Rose Quartz for this step. Go up above Astralarium and interact with the beam of light for this item.
Map Achievements
Early Release – 3 AP
Free 10 caged dissidents in Champion’s Dawn. There are cages all over the area. Open 10 cages to free 10 NPCs for this achievement.
Feasts on Beasts – 3 AP
Feed 10 hungry villagers in Champion’s Dawn. There are confiscated food all over the area and hungry villagers. Grab food and feed them to villagers.
Mutiny – 3 AP
Defeat the three hostile captains of corsairs. There is a chain of three events in Corsair Flotilla where you need to kill a bunch of pirates belonging to each captain to draw out the captain.
Powderkeg Captain Barud
Stonefist Captain Randa
Alehound Captain Asef
Alehound Captain Asef is the hardest out of the three. He is the only champion captain and heals himself frequently. To combat this heal there are a couple things you can do
Break his bar ASAP
Drop the poison circles he places on you on top of him, this will reduce his heal’s effectiveness
(Hidden) Belligerent Brawl – 5 AP
For this achievement you need to drink any one of Mehdi’s Grogs and then fight any of the three captains. Each of the grog applies a different condition on you and put you in combat. It is best to do this right before you start killing a captain as it can be annoying running around with it (you can’t mount since you will be in combat). Once you kill the captain, you can go back and use Mehdi’s Cure-All to remove the grog effects.
Rest in Peace – 1 AP
Defeat the Champion Mordant Crescent Graverasier in Champion’s Dawn. There is a series of chain events at Champion’s Dawn. The final event of the chain spawns the Mordant Crescent Graveraiser.
(Hidden) Lightspeed Reflector – 5 AP
On top of the Astralarium are Telescopic Mirrors. You need to turn all of them within 30s to earn this achievement. It is fairly easy to do as long you mount up between the mirrors or have a good source of swiftness.
Istan Dives – 4 AP
Find 4 diving goggles in the Domain of Istan
Corsair Flotilla – 0:00 Modri Caverns – 0:54 Champion’s Dawn – 1:56 Ancient Royal Docks – 2:53
1. Corsair Flotilla
2. Mordri Caverns
3. Champion’s Dawn
4. Ancient Royal Docks
Meta Event Achievements
Sunspear Uprising (Great Hall)
This meta event occurs regularly (except when Palawadan event is on) and have 15 minutes cooldown upon completion. There are two achievements tied to this meta event. You cannnot enter the Mordant Crescent Great Hall without the meta event.
Not Thirsty – 3 AP
Destroy 25 Fountains of Joko while raiding the Mordant Crescent Great Hall. This event occurs pretty quick into the meta. There are 8 fountains to destroy. You will need to do the meta a couple times to complete this achievement.
Portal Dodger – 1 AP
Shortly after destroying the fountains, Warden Amala will spawn. She is similar to the one you face in the story instance. In the first part of the fight she summons a bunch of portals and clones. Just avoid these portals and defeat her to earn the achievement. The timer is pretty tight so everyone need to do max DPS.
Palawadan
This meta event only occurs at night (xx:45 every other hour). It has multiple events and multiple achievements associated with it.
And Stay Down! – 1 AP
Defeat the two Palawadan Gate Guardians without either awakening the other. At the start of the meta event are two guardians right at the gate to Palawadan. You need to kill them around roughly the same time as killing one will cause the remaining one to try and revive the other. If you kill both guardians without them reviving each other, you will get this achievement.
Raze Joko! – 1 AP
Once you defeat the Guardians, there will be a mini event inside the Palawadan to defeat the statue of Joko. This statue doesn’t have much HP and 1-2 players can easily kill it in a few seconds so you need to head straight here after the Guardians if you want the achievement.
Misplaced Loyalty – 3 AP
While the statue event is going on, there will be another event to kill the six loyalist leaders. They all have fairly low HP so you may not be able to tag all six leaders in one go.
Lady Faizah
Lord Azeem
Dabir, Herald of Joko
Nura,, Herald of Joko
Master Alchemist Wakati
Master Alchemist Jamala
Sunk Cost – 2 AP
The penultimate event of this meta is destroying the three Corsair ships. You will need to hop on a cannon and use it to fire cannonballs at the three parked corsair ships. They will also be firing back at you so be sure to use the #2 skill to shield your own cannon. You need to do a fair amount of damage to the ships for it to register for the achievement so simply running to the ships and whacking it with your weapons may not do the trick. Cannon spots are limited so you may only get to tag one ship per meta.
Scoundrel’s Bounty
The Marauder
The Red Dagger
Unfinished Business – 1 AP, 1 Mastery
Final event of the meta requires you to kill the Awakened Archon Iberu. Kill him for this achievement worth 1 AP and 1 Mastery Point. Timer is pretty right as well so be sure to maximize your DPS.
Scavenger Hunt Achievements
Lost to Time – 11 AP
Need to collect 35 Sunspear Caches. See guide here
Bookworm – 6 AP
You need to collect 20 books one by one and then run into the middle of the library and shelve it and then read it to get the achievement to count.
1. A Brief of History of Cantha 2. Behaviors of Risen Beasts 3. Biography of Gwen Thackeray 4. Biography of Ogden Stonehealer 5. Eternal Alchemy of the Stars 6. Everyday Healing: Gift of the Monk 7. How Kormir Did It 8. Humans of Elona 9. Koss on Koss 10. Malomedies’s Observational Tips 11. Raptor Training and Care 12. Skies of Nightfall 13. Spirits of the Wild 14. Star Chart Basics 15. Taming Elusive Beasts 16. The Genius of Vekk 17. The Grace of Melandru 18. The Movement of the World 19. The Reign of Palawa Joko 20. You and Your Springer
All the books are outside except for 14. Star Chart Basics and 18. The Movement of the World.
(Hidden) Library Detective – 8 AP
1. Koss on Koss (Extended Edition)
Found inside the Cave of Sunspear Champion story instance. Interact with the Moldy Old Book.
2. Everyone’s a Corsair: A Guidebook.
Found underwater by Corsair Flotilla
3. The Battle of Sorrow’s Furnace
4. The Great Joko, Hero of Tyria
5. Awakening of the Heart
Only accessible during part of the Sunspear Uprising meta event. Need to access Warden Amala’s room for this book.
6. 101 Things the Mordant Crescent Doesn’t Want You to Know!
Found inside The Hero of Istan story instance. Once you get the key from the jailer, go up a bit and you will see an empty jail cell with a Tattered Book.
7. Mysteries of the Night Sky
Corsair Keepsake – 6 AP
Alehound’s Brewer Manual
Asef’s Brandy
Barud’s Spare Gun
Communal Lucky Fistwraps
Halim’s Wooden Parrot
Kiango’s Spyglass
Mehdi’s Prized Hops
Cannonball Stash
Randa’s Childhood Toy
Sayida’s Sharpened Blade
Bounties, Adventures and Races
Race to the Finish: Domain of Istan – 1 AP
This is a race that starts in Corsair Flotilla. You need to use a skimmer mount and it takes about 3-4 minutes to finish. Some of the checkpoints are not very responsive so you may need to run over a couple times to get it to trigger.
Istani Bounty Hunter – 3 AP
Champion Lady Shamshir
Champion Matriarch Shrilliss
Champion Simoom the Accursed
Champion Suneh Stormbringer
Legendary Smoldge
Bounty Board is right by Chalon Docks Waypoint.
Adventure: Ancient Weapons – 2 AP
This is an adventure to collect five ancient Sunspear weapons. To get gold you need a time of 2:30 which is pretty easy to do with a griffon mount. I would advise going clockwise from the top as it seems more efficient than the other way around.
Istan Griffon Master – 2 AP
The course is a bit difficult and there isn’t too many seconds to shave off for gold. The key thing is that you want to maintain enough speed for the section at the beginning of Mordri Caverns (right after you fly up after the flythrough |
ling can impact the profitability of online streaming of content. Right now, at least in Canada, you are seeing the battle between the ISPs (like Rogers) and the content distributors (like Netflix). It's not clear who will profit the most from increased Internet usage.Some have wondered how Netflix will differentiate itself from the competitors. I believe differentiation is not a concern in the streaming business if Netflix is able to have a sufficiently large content library. You are going to end up with differentiated products in the television/film streaming business because it inherently involves exclusive content distribution. Management thoughts on the differences between the radio and video business explains this. The following graphic is from the Q3 2011 Investor letter (click on image for larger one):I wasn't familiar with the media industry but I never knew that radio involved statutory, non-negotiable, licensing. Thinking about it, it seems so obvious—all radio stations can play the same songs—but it is 180 degrees from the television and movie business, where exclusive deals are the norm. If online streaming follows the path of television, which it appears to, then content distributors will automatically be differentiated.Some have misunderstood the Netflix's business and assumed that every company that enters the market will provide the exact same service but this appears to be incorrect. As with television channels over the last 50 years, there is going to be quite a bit of differentiation.This post isn't very structured, on purpose; I wanted to look at the business Netflix is engaged in and tackle some of the views put forth by some. The main points I gathered from looking at Netflix's business model are:The stock isn't cheap but if it falls a bit more, I'll take a look at valuation.Lately, I’ve had raw oysters on the brain.
Being that I live here in Lower Alabama and the month ends in an R, I can’t imagine that comes as too much of a surprise to many people, but the thing is, I don’t really like oysters. I’ve tried them countless times, often hiding the bivalves beneath a blanket of cocktail sauce and atop the hard bed of a saltine, but I always end up slogging each one down as fast as possible.
Each time, I wonder along the way if I’m just defeating the purpose.
But when I read in Garrett Oliver’s "The Brewmaster’s Table" about the classic beer pairing of raw oysters and dry Irish stout, it got me thinking: If Oliver lavishes such praise on the combination — "... there seems to be a primal connection between them," he writes. "The flavor of the oyster is magically magnified and fills the senses." — I might just be inspired to give raw oysters another shot.
As long as beer is involved.
So I sidled up to the bar at Wintzell’s Oyster House downtown, only to be reminded that Mobile may be an oyster town, but it’s not quite a beer town. Despite what Oliver calls a "centuries-old combination of beer and food," there wasn’t a single stout among Wintzell’s selection. Or at the Original Oyster House, for that matter.
Needless to say, I walked away disappointed, but I wasn’t mad; it’s likely the folks at our oyster joints hadn’t ever heard about the pairing or thought about putting an Irish stout, such as Guinness, on the beer menu.
But that can change, and you can help. The next time you go and get a raw dozen, ask your server for a Guinness. If they don’t have it yet, asking for it will let them know that they should.
If you still want to scratch the oyster/stout itch, seek out Abita’s latest Select offering, an Imperial Louisiana Oyster Stout, which is just now hitting taps at better beer bars in Lower Alabama.
It’s brewed using whole Louisiana oysters in the boil, an addition that leaves only the slightest hints of the sea in the black-as-night stout. Instead, chocolate and roast dominate the flavor and aroma of the thick, viscous imperial brew.
There’s no perceptible oyster flavor, but there is something different to this beer — a drier finish; a silky, almost oily texture — thanks to the addition of oysters. Ask for it in a snifter glass and allow it to warm up a bit, letting the complex flavors of the 8-percent-ABV stout shine through.
Abita’s Select beers are served only on draught and only for a limited time, so get this one while you can.
Also here for a short time is one of my favorite styles of the year, the wet-hop IPA. Each year, when hop harvest season arrives in September, many breweries will have fresh, whole hops shipped overnight from hop farm to brewery, often within 24 hours of being picked.
While most year-round beers employ dried, vacuum-sealed hop pellets, the use of wet whole-cone hops, which are added as soon as possible after arriving at the brewery, provides a uniquely intense hop flavor and aroma to the beer, which can only be made once a year.
Since the passage of the Gourmet Beer Bill in 2009, a few of these wet-hop beers have snuck into the tap lines at various Mobile watering holes, including the OK Bicycle Shop, where I recently found Great Divide Fresh Hop Pale Ale.
As I’d expect from a beer that uses wet hops, Fresh Hop is bursting with the aroma of fresh-cut grass and citrus, but it is not overly bitter, allowing the intricate flavors from the fresh Centennial, Cascade and Simcoe hop cones to dominate this American Pale Ale.
Wet-hop beers are intended to be consumed as fresh as possible, so if you see Fresh Hop on tap, don’t dawdle or you might miss out on one of the season’s great beers.Amid the Doklam standoff, a trade war appears to be looming between India and China after New Delhi last week imposed anti-dumping duties on 93 Chinese products, according to Chinese newspaper The Global Times. Urging the Chinese companies to think twice about the risks involved before making investments in India, the news report warned India to be prepared to face the consequences for its ‘ill-considered action’.
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The report also said that China could easily retaliate by putting restrictions on imports from India, but it doesn’t make much economic sense for the country. It said, “If India really starts a trade war with China, of course China’s economic interests will be hurt, but there will also be consequences for India.”
Quoting statistics from China’s Ministry of Commerce, the article said that in the first half of 2017, India has initiated 12 probes into Chinese products.
The Global Times also cited figures from the Indian embassy in China to show that Indian exports fell by 12.3 per cent year-on-year to $11.75 billion, while India’s imports from China rose by 2 per cent to $59 billion, resulting in a trade deficit of $ 47 billion.
However, according to the Indian Commerce Ministry, the trade deficit with China mounted to over $52 billion in 2016 when the bilateral trade stood at $70 billion.
At least 350 Indian army personnel positioned at the India-China-Bhutan tri-junction in Doklam since June 16, when they stopped Chinese troops from constructing a road near the disputed region. Both Bhutan and China have competing claims over the region.
Another China Daily reported that boycotting Chinese goods would be harmful for India. The article said, “Suffice to say, calling for the boycotting of Chinese products and those related to Chinese investors is not just a fool’s errand but also risks backfiring.”
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Warning India, the report also said that any attempt by India to shut down Chinese cellphones companies or other factories will badly affect economy of India and will cost Indian jobs as well.
(With inputs from PTI)The US Government is trying to find the source of multiple leaks of intelligence data. Dated and drafted after Edward Snowden was removed from clearance multiple data points have been released to journalists around the world. The US government must now consider every intelligence officer and contractor a risk. It is clear that while the US Government tries its best to contain its own transgressions and discretions it would be easier and less costly to the American Citizens wallet if they refrained from performing breaches of privacy around the world. The aftermath of Snowden has left a divide in the opinions of most Americans, some calling him a traitor and others, a hero."Truth is treason in the empire of lies" as someone has said in the recent past rings true in this situation.Image via http://www.newyorker.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/edward-snowden-580.jpgThe longest-running silver bullion program at the Perth Mint is back for a 26th year with the release of the 2016 1 Kilo Australian Silver Kookaburra coin. Struck in Australia using.999 pure silver, this coin has been a favorite of coin collectors and investors since its introduction in 1990. Today, JM Bullion offers the all-new 2016 1 Kilo Australian Silver Kookaburra Coin in Brilliant Uncirculated condition.
Coin Highlights:
Each coin ships in an individual mintcapsule.
Contains 1 Kilo, 32.15 troy oz, of.999 pure silver.
Bears a face value of $30 (AUD) backed by the Australian government.
Ships in Brilliant Uncirculated condition.
Features an all-new 2016 Kookaburra design.Click here to seehistorical Perth Silver Kookaburra mintages.
Australian Silver Kookaburra coins were first introduced in 1990. Each year since its introduction the design featured on the reverse has been altered to depict the native bird in a different setting, adding collectible value to these beloved coins.
The Perth Mint originally struck these coins in 1 oz, 2 oz, 10 oz, and 1 Kilo weights, but for 2016 the coins will only be available in this 1 Kilo weight, and the 1 oz, and 10 oz weights in the bullion version. Mintage for the 2016 1 Kilo Australian Silver Kookaburra coin is unlimited, meaning the Perth Mint will strike coins to meet demand.
On the reverse side is the latest image of the Australian Kookaburra to grace the coins surface. In the design, a single kookaburra is featured perched atop a fence pole in the Outback. You can clearly see a line of barbed-wire fence wrapped around the post, and a barren tree in the background. Engravings include Australian Kookaburra along the top, and the coins year of minting, weight, purity, and metal content below.
The obverse offers no deviation in the Perth Mints classic design. Ian Rank-Broadleys right-profile portrait of Queen Elizabeth II is featured in the center, with her name, the nation of issue, and face value surrounding the image.
Australias Perth Mint is the oldest operating facility in the nation. Founded in 1898, it is now a state-owned entity of the government of Western Australia. Though not associated with the Royal Australian Mint, all of its coins enjoy legal tender status under the Currency Act of 1965.
If you have questions, dont hesitate to ask. JM Bullion associates are available at 800-276-6508, online using our live web chat, or via email. If you are interested in similar products, be sure to check out our full selection of Perth Mint Silver Coins.Momentum is building to change the rules of the Senate to counter chronic Republican obstructionism. But supporters say the move isn’t about passing new legislation right away. Rather, it’s part of a long-term strategy to make a genuine progressive agenda possible.
Majority Leader Harry Reid’s push for filibuster reform won backing from President Obama Wednesday. “[Americans] want to see progress, not partisan delay games,” White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer said in a statement to The Huffington Post. “The President supports Senator Reid’s efforts to reform the filibuster process.”
A coalition of major progressive groups, including the Sierra Club, the United Auto Workers, the Communications Workers of America, and Common Cause, also is getting behind Reid.
There’s no question the Senate is broken. Since Republicans entered the minority in 2007, there have been 385 cloture motions—that is, votes to end a filibuster. The most for any six-year period between 1918 and 1964? Nine. The congressional scholar Norm Ornstein, a fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, wrote Wednesday that since 2007, “[f]or the first time ever, filibusters became weapons of mass obstruction, not rarely applied approaches by minorities in the Senate to draw lines in the dust on issues of great national moment where they felt intensely.”
Since 2009, Republican filibusters, or the threat of one, have thwarted the DREAM Act, climate-change legislation, and a public option for healthcare, among other key progressive priorities.
But the changes Reid is said to want likely wouldn’t stop the GOP minority from continuing to block major legislation. The details could change, but reports suggest Reid wants to ban filibusters only the motion to proceed—that is, to begin debate on a bill—as well as on motions to get a bill into a conference committee. He’d also require the minority to actually occupy the floor and talk during a filibuster, as used to be done, potentially raising the political costs of the move. But Republicans could still filibuster to prevent a vote on the final bill—as they almost certainly would do on any significant piece of legislation.
Sarah Binder, an expert on Senate procedure at the Brookings Institution, said we shouldn’t expect Reid’s reforms to fundamentally change how the Senate functions.
“It’s reasonable to question how much impact these filibuster bans would have,” she told msnbc.com.
Reformers can’t go further than the modest steps Reid’s proposing, Binder added, because they lack the support, even among the Democratic caucus—some of whose older members fear that their own leverage could be jeopardized by a whole-scale elimination of the filibuster. “I don’t think they think they have the votes,” she said. And that leaves aside the issue of how the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, would react.
Larry Cohen, the president of the Communications Workers of America, acknowledged that Reid’s reforms won’t immediately allow the labor movement to pass priorities like the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). In 2009, the GOP used a filibuster to prevent EFCA even coming to the floor.
But that doesn’t mean the changes wouldn’t do some good, Cohen argued. Merely forcing the Senate to debate bills, rather than being able to filibuster up front, would be in the public interest.
“It’s not so much about what are we going to enact,” Cohen said, noting that Republicans control the House anyway. “It’s about, is the Senate going to discuss anything?”
Forcing Republicans to talk while filibustering would focus attention on their opposition to popular measures, like the DREAM Act. “They’d actually have to say: ‘For the first time ever in this country, there’s no American Dream for immigrants,’” Cohen said.
Cohen portrayed the prospective changes as part of a longer-term strategy—along with other good government measures like campaign finance reform—to fix what many progressives see as a broken democratic process. Only when that’s done, they argue, will it be possible to enact a genuine, far-reaching progressive agenda.
“This is a linchpin in terms of how do we start to get a democracy in this country again,” Cohen said. “It’s got nothing to do with labor issues per se.”
“The lowest hanging fruit on that tree are the Senate rules,” he added. “So it’s a starting point.”The Schenectady County Airport will receive more than $2 million in funding for runway and equipment upgrades.
U.S. Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand announced Tuesday $2.3 million in federal funding for the airport. The money will be used to install new airfield guidance signs, rehabilitate the runway and replace runway lighting at the airport, which is owned and operated by Schenectady County. The funding was allocated through the Federal Aviation Administration, according to a press release.
“Schenectady County Airport is a major hub in the Capital Region, and it has to meet the best standards for efficiency and safety,” Gillibrand said in the release.
The smaller of the airport’s two runways will be completely repaved, with new lights installed along the sides. That runway is generally used for general aviation aircraft, as opposed to the National Guard, said Ray Gillen, Schenectady County’s commissioner of economic development and planning.
Schenectady County Legislature Chair Anthony Jasenski said the grant, combined with other investments around the airport, will help continue momentum along Route 50.
The airport serves a gateway from Glenville, and the county as a whole, said Chris Koetzle, Glenville’s town supervisor. He added that plenty of businesses use the airport to visit the area, and he called the funding “well needed and well deserved.”
The money was awarded through the FAA’s Airport Improvement Program.
The county airport is located in Glenville and was founded in 1927. It’s home to the Stratton Air National Guard Base, an Armed Forces Reserve Center, the county ice rink and the Schenectady County Airport Business Park, among other organizations. The airport averages 183 daily flight operations, according to the county’s website.
In June, the airport received $197,000 from the state to upgrade its control tower cab equipment. That funding came in addition to a new $200 million Upstate Airport Economic Development and Revitalization competition, which will solicit proposals on investments in upstate airports. At least five projects will receive state funding as a result of that competition.US States Renamed For Countries With Similar GDPs
Oct 26, 2014 by Asya Pereltsvaig
[This post was originally published in December 2012]
Frank Jacobs has been collecting and publishing all kinds of intriguing maps—real, fictional, and what-if ones—and has been writing the Strange Maps blog since 2006. In 2007 he created a map of “US States Renamed For Countries With Similar GDPs”. GDP stands for Gross Domestic Product, a convenient way of measuring and comparing the size of national economies. Annual GDP represents the market value of all goods and services produced within a country in a year. The U.S. remains the nation with the highest GDP in the world: at over $15 trillion, it is more than double the size of second largest economy, that of China. The idea behind Frank Jacobs’s map is to break down that gigantic U.S. GDP into the GDPs of individual states, and compare those to other countries’ GDP. The resulting map is both instructive and misleading. The latter is because the economies both of the US states and of the countries they are compared with are not weighted for their respective populations. For example, in 2007 Pakistan had a GDP that was slightly higher than that of Israel, but Pakistan’s population was about 170 million, while Israel was only 7 million people strong. The US states those economies are compared with (Arkansas and Oregon, respectively) are much closer to each other in population: 2.7 million and 3.4 million. Adjusted per capita, the GDP of states and countries they are compared to would be a good indication of the average wealth of citizens. Yet, a ranking of the economies on this map does serve two interesting purposes. First, it shows the size of US states’ economies relative to each other: California is the biggest, Wyoming the smallest. It also links those sizes with foreign economies, which are therefore also ranked: Mexico’s and Russia’s economies are about equal size, Ireland’s is twice as big as New Zealand’s.
The map on the left is an update of Frank Jacobs’s map (for the continental 48 states), adjusted to figures from 2010. Curiously, nearly all U.S. states are comparable to different countries, with only Michigan’s economy still most similar to that of Argentina. But while specific countries might have change, in several cases a given state’s economy corresponds to that of a similar country. For example, in 2007 Idaho’s economy was most comparable to that of Ukraine and in 2010 to that of Belarus. Similarly, in 2007 Massachusetts was most similar to Belgium and in 2010 to Austria. The 2010 map also exhibits some interesting clustering effects. For example, post-Soviet countries—Belarus, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan—find themselves comparable to states in the Great Plains. Four Southeast Asian countries—Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, and Vietnam—are comparable to states in a stretch running south from Wisconsin to Arkansas. A number of states along the Atlantic seaboard have economies equivalent to those of medium-sized European countries: Austria, Poland, Denmark, and Norway. California is still the state with the largest economy; if it were an independent nation, it would be the world’s eighth largest economy. The U.S. state with the smallest economy in 2010 is Vermont, matching most closely the GDP of Panama, but 103 independent nations, ranging from Latvia to Tuvalu, have even smaller economies.
Like this post? Please pass it on: TweetIf at first your bubble bursts, try, try again — and again, as Reza Baluchi found out Wednesday.
The endurance athlete and Pompano Beach resident went out to sea with his homemade "hydro pod" floating bubble in the hopes of reaching Bermuda, only to be pushed back to shore by the wind Wednesday night.
A dissapointed Baluchi spent the night in his "hydro pod," only a few blocks south of the 16th St. Beach in Pompano where he put to sea as the sun went down the previous evening.
"The wind was pushing me back to the west,' he explained Thursday morning as beach goers stopped to gawk at his contraption and wish him well.
"I'll wait for better weather," he said. "I'm going to give it three days, Sunday is supposed to be bad," Baluchi said.
Baluchi's initial attempt was in 2014, when he was rescued some 70 miles off Florida and asked the Coast Guard how to get to Bermuda.
Joe Cavaretta / Sun Sentinel Adventurer Reza Baluchi of Pompano Beach places a flag on the "Hydro Pod," he plans to take on an 3,500-mile Atlantic and Caribbean trip Wednesday, April 13, 2016, at North Ocean Park in Pompano Beach. Adventurer Reza Baluchi of Pompano Beach places a flag on the "Hydro Pod," he plans to take on an 3,500-mile Atlantic and Caribbean trip Wednesday, April 13, 2016, at North Ocean Park in Pompano Beach. (Joe Cavaretta / Sun Sentinel) (Joe Cavaretta / Sun Sentinel)
Baluchi, 44, has been a bit cagey about his exact departure time because he doesn't want authorities trying to stop him.
"My goal is 3,500 miles," Baluchi said while preparing his bubble, a strong plastic container that looks like a cross between a riverboat paddle wheel and a carnival Ferris wheel.
It took Baluchi three days to assemble his hydro pod on the beach at North Ocean Park on Northeast 16th Street.
"First I'll go north to Jacksonville, go east to the Bermuda Triangle, to Bermuda, come back to Haiti, Cuba, Puerto Rico, coming back to Key West and finish here, exactly the same place," he said on Wednesday before his wind-aborted attempt.
Baluchi said he expects to spend between 21 and 45 days in the water.
To prepare for this fantastical journey, Baluchi said he has been jumping rope for an hour each day — in a sauna — and has been running on the beach.
According to Baluchi, who said he spent two years in eastern California's Death Valley, the temperature inside his bubble can reach 130 degrees.
Asked about his misadventure two years ago, Baluchi said he was actually in good shape.
"After three days, normally I sleep in the day and run at night," he said. "I see some giant boat coming next to me … I look and there's a 1,000-foot boat next to me. It circled and they ask me if I need anything, and I said no," he explained.
"They gave me water and called the Coast Guard."
After that, Baluchi said, the Coast Guard followed him for two days while warning him about the dangers of his undertaking.
"I was making a joke and asked them which way to Bermuda — and they're thinking I don't know," Baluchi said.
The Coast Guard was not aware of Baluchi's current plans, Petty Officer Eric Woodall said Wednesday.
"Your call is the first anyone has heard of it," Woodall said.
Baluchi, who uses his adventures to raise money for PlantUnity, a charity that supports educational opportunities for children, says he has spent the past couple of years refining his equipment for this trip.
A newer, larger frame holds 36 buoyancy balls on each side, which he says can support about 5,700 pounds. His lifejacket has a GPS device, a filter so he can drink ocean water, shark repellent and an emergency phone.
And this version of his hydro pod has a bigger, better, waterproof solar-powered light so he can be seen at night.
Baluchi says he spent much of 2015 working on a crab boat in order to learn more about the ocean and the Gulfstream.
A sign on his vessel is meant to ward off any potential interference from the Coast Guard or other authorities. It reads, "Don't burst my bubble please."
"They say if they come and rescue me, I'll have to pay $120,000," Baluchi said. "But I don't pay money, I raise money."
He added: "I have a satellite phone, a GPS tracking device, I don't need rescue. I'm Captain Bubble."Mr. Dolan,
You are a sad person. So sad that even when you're happy, it brings sadness and pain to others. Like a sun shining down on an ozone layer-less world.
Why so sad? Is it your constant failure to build a winning team? No worries. Truth is, New York sports fans don't really sweat incompetence as much as you might think. If they did, the Yankees would be the only game still in town, and by their standards they're in the doldrums too. We don't mind a loser. So long as it's one we can relate to. The 1962 Mets are legendarily loved. Your Knicks are still the city's team. But you are not loved. You are not liked. You are endured, the way one endures a congenital defect: because there is no choice in the matter.
But all is not lost. To be liked, you simply need to be relatable. The first step toward being relatable is being accessible. You rarely speak to the press or the public. Your interviews are rarer than Knick playoff success under your watch. You say you're a good owner because you "try to give [fans] a good product," and that you feel "an owner needs to be present." Let me help you here. You own Cablevision. Which do you consider the "good" customer: the one who tries to pay the bill? Or the one who pays it? Results matter. To the shareholders, the bottom line is profit. To the fans, it's wins.
A good owner doesn't try to give fans a good product. A good owner gives the fans a good product. Not all the time, of course. No team's good every year. That'd be impossible. One good year out of 15, though, is implausible. That sweet spot somewhere between impossible and implausible - that's where good ownership lies.
As far as being present, I suppose responding to Irving Bierman, who's followed the team longer than you've been alive, counts as an attempt. But your response to this man - calling him "sad," a "mess," a "nothing...negative force" who makes his family "miserable," accusing him of suffering from a disease whose ravages you know all too well? That was not good ownership. If you know this man has suffered from alcoholism, wielding it as a weapon against him is abhorrent. If you don't know that he has, and you're just casually accusing him of it...that's the worst. A good owner doesn't tell off a fan. A good owner doesn't urge that fan to switch allegiance to the other team in town.
You accused Bierman of being someone others don't like having around. I'm curious, sir. Which facet of your personality do you think Glenn Frey spends the most time gabbing about with his friends? Do you think the absence of humanity and compassion in your email is the fuel that gives your singing that warmth and light the people clamor for? Do you think Phil Jackson's opinion of you is unrelated to the number of zeros in his contract?
Why would anybody write such a hateful letter? I am just guessing, but I'll bet your life is pretty sweet, in a lot of ways. I imagine it'd have to be, to write what you did. Only someone accustomed to comfort has the luxury of time and privilege to act like it's something owed them.
What have you done that anyone would consider positive or nice? The confetti after the team's first playoff win in a decade? Driving away likable, successful people? Giving Isiah Thomas a contract extension while forcing Hall of Fame coaches like Lenny Wilkens and Larry Brown out of town after a year? I suppose Isiah considered that nice of you. Touche.
You most likely have made your family proud, even at the expense of millions of Knick fans. Family should always be number one. Guess I have to tip my cap to you there.
I just celebrated my 36-year anniversary of not being you. You should try it. Maybe it will help you become a person that folks would like to have around, or at least one who didn't drive folks to hold protests. Do you know how many hits come up when you google "James Dolan sucks"? 192,000. That's TEN TIMES the number that come up for "Andrea Bargnani sucks." Again, you've made the implausible a reality.
In the meanwhile, I hear there's an NBA team not far from you up for sale soon. Why don't you start owning the Nets? Because Knick fans, management, media, and I'd guess even Knick announcers don't want you. We'll endure - while you're the owner, and long after you're gone and happily forgotten. In the meantime, you might consider hiring someone to copy-edit your emails. And yes...I am available.
Respectfully,
Literally millionsThe Raid 2 (2014)
Original Title: The Raid 2: Berandal
Starring: Iko Uwais, Yayan Ruhian, Arifin Putra, Tio Pakusodewo, Oka Antara, Alex Abbad
Directed By: Gareth Evans
Written By: Gareth Evans
Rating: R (US) Running Time: 2 hr 30 mins
Two Cents:
In The Raid: Redemption, writer, director, editor, Gareth Evans scores with his simply structured and superbly choreographed action epic. In The Raid 2, the Everton* supporter hits the back of the net again, and proves he’s capable of more than just well shot action. All I can say is, I can’t wait for his hat-trick! Just keep ’em coming Gareth, because you’re my shining light, my new John Woo!
Raid 2’s story starts shortly after where the first movie ended, and quickly dives into a much more involved plot. We’ve got mob family issues, a secret police force hunting corrupt cops, and a third-party trying to start a war. At first it takes you by surprise, especially if you’re expecting more of the same straight forward action delivered in the first film. But the story grows on you, and there’s a lot more at stake in this sequel.
Matt Flannery and Dimas Imam Subhono, who photographed the first film, certainly seem to have enjoyed the increased budget, broader story and more expansive locations. Because this is a really slick-looking film. And while it’s much longer than the first film to incorporate the more involved story, there’s still the same great action, and as the movie builds to a conclusion, the set pieces become more and more elaborate, violent and exciting.
What can I say, I’m now a big fan of Gareth Evans’ work. He’s a Jack of many trades, and master of them too. He writes, directs and edits, and has a really keen eye for action and how to present it to the audience. The Raid: Redemption was the best action film I’d seen in years, until The Raid 2 that is!
* Everton Football Club, England.
Movie Prep:
If you saw The Raid: Redemption, and expected more of the same from the sequel, get ready to be disappointed! This is much more plot driven, and is 49 minutes longer. Expect more dialog, and a more layered plot. It does have just as much great action as the first film, but it’s more spread out, an it takes a while to get to the all action finale. This movie is rated R because, well, it’s incredibly violent!
Best Format:
This film looks amazing, and will work best on a theater sized screen. At home, a HD viewing on a huge TV is the way to go. Watching this on anything portable would be silly!
Best Moment:
I first thought the set piece involving all the martial arts action along with a car chase couldn’t be topped. But then I saw Cecep Arif Rahman and Iko Uwais fight in the kitchen, and I changed my mind!
References: IMDB
TweetWith the Seahawks and Patriots playing in the Super Bowl, I thought it would be pertinent to take a look back at the last time the two teams met, in the 2012 season. You can bet that both the Seahawks and the Patriots have been taking a look at this film to see what happened, so I took a look at it as well. What I found was a resilient Seahawks team that despite being down 23-10 in the fourth quarter, came back to win. Specifically, the Seahawks were able to come back because of the deep pass, which I will be exploring in this column.
A lot has changed since 2012 for both teams, the Patriots in particular. In 2012, Devin McCourty was still a CB, Darrelle Revis was still a Jet, and Aaron Hernandez was still a NFL player. As such, the starting back four for the Patriots on defense consisted of McCourty, Kyle Arrington, Tavon Wilson, and Patrick Chung. Alfonzo Dennard came in during nickel situations. Up front they still had Vince Wilfork and Chandler Jones. Rob Ninkovich, while still on the roster, was designated as a starting LB rather than a DE. The other two LBs at the time were Jerod Mayo (who is injured) and Brandon Spikes (who is a Bill). Dont’a Hightower was on the team, but was inactive for this game.
On offense, the Seahawks actually look somewhat similar to how they do today. The offensive line still features Russell Okung, Matt Unger, and James Carpenter, Wilson is still the QB, and Lynch is still the RB. However, they no longer have Sydney Rice or Golden Tate as WRs. Doug Baldwin, however, is still on the team and is probably their most prominent receiver.
Schematically, however, the teams appear very similar to what I expect to see tomorrow (when the Seahawks’ offense is on the field, at least). On offense, the Seahawks ran early and often, and used play action constantly. They did not use the pistol formation or a shotgun formation quite as much as I would have expected, but ran the vast majority of their plays from under center. Still, they will put a very similar offense out there in Arizona, prefering to run the ball and attack deep off of play action. On defense, the Patriots are also very similar to what I expect to see in Super Bowl XLIX. They ran single high coverage a lot (although McCourty will be the one deep now instead of Wilson) with man coverage on the outside (Browner and Revis instead of McCourty and Arrington).
With the differences and similarities between the 2014 and 2012 squads discussed, let’s take a look at the game from 2012 and see what we can learn about the Seahawks’ deep passing game:
3-9-SEA 16 (Q1, 4:25) (Shotgun) R.Wilson pass deep middle to D.Baldwin to NE 34 for 50 yards (K.Arrington).
http://i.imgur.com/XTCIy6o.png
Something that the Seahawks like to do when they take deep shots against a single high safety is run a deep crossing route underneath the deep safety hoping to draw him up, and allow a one-on-one shot deep. The Patriots have man coverage on the outside and only one safety deep on this play.
On this play, that strategy works to perfection. The crossing TE draws the safety up, Wilson takes the deep shot, and Doug Baldwin makes a good catch over Kyle Arrington. Wilson also did a good job moving out of the pocket to find an open space to throw the football deep.
2-4-NE 28 (Q1, 3:13) R.Wilson pass incomplete deep left to G.Tate.
http://i.imgur.com/y85sYWy.png
The Patriots once again use a single high safety, and Seattle looks for a deep shot off of play action again. There’s man coverage on the outside, and Wilson looks to target Golden Tate at the bottom of the screen.
While there is some contact at the top of the route, Wilson just overthrows this ball.
1-15-NE 24 (Q1, 1:59) R.Wilson pass deep middle to D.Baldwin for 24 yards, TOUCHDOWN.
http://i.imgur.com/CsXAJ3D.png
Once again, the Patriots have man coverage underneath and a single high safety. This is something there was a lot of in this game and is something we’ll see in the Super Bowl, as well, so you can expect the Seahawks to try to attack the Patriots in a similar manner. The TE runs a dig route, and that draws the safety up.
Because the TE drew the safety up, Baldwin has a one-on-one in the slot. He actually slips coming off of the line. Wilson faces pressure up the middle, and does a great job of scrambling to get away from it. As Wilson is scrambling, Baldwin gets a step on his man. Wilson recognizes this, and makes a nice throw, which is turned into a TD by a very good catch |
recent years the Occupy Movement and Democratic National Convention protests have been marred by excessive police brutality, bloody street violence and unlawful arrest. In the war against American protesters, police attacking them with the chemical weapon of tear gas that in any other war is criminally outlawed by international law, is used in the US to systematically silence the people’s voice from ever being heard in the wake of totalitarian oligarchy.
Criminalizing dissent is redefining homegrown terrorism to include anyone willing to exercise their basic civil liberties guaranteed US citizens under this nation’s Constitution that for over two centuries was recognized as the ultimate rule of law in America. But now any Americans daring to even criticize and object to the federal government’s growing tyranny is conveniently labeled a belligerent and enemy of the state subject to assassination or indefinite imprisonment led by a dictator president who matter-of-factly proclaims his despotic right to kill fellow Americans on US soil.
Early on in this twenty-first century we’ve observed the neocons’ “Pearl Harbor-like event” in their 9/11 inside job needed to justify their forever war on terror, making a war of terror on the entire world by committing human genocide in the false name of “global sustainability” and “CO2 climate change” with the puppet masters’ UN Agenda 21. Starting with their imperialistic war on Islam in the Middle East and Central Asia based on lies of mass deception, the real terrorists are the Empire killing machine that spawnedfake monster mercenary thugs whose CIA staged savagery is showcased weekly on youtube’s video parade.
After more than a dozen years of raging bloody counterinsurgency wars against darker-skinned people abroad, the US Empire has come home to treasonously roost, now in its first phase of war attacking American people. But with globalization a dominant theme in this age of global tyranny, corrupt governments throughout the Western world are each passing a plethora of subversive, draconian laws designed to unleash a thunderous wave of oppressive false imprisonment and citizen murder on a worldwide scale. To the globalists and their long time eugenics plan to depopulate the earth, 6.5 billion of us “useless eaters” must be assassinated. Enter the hard and fast kill method of World War III created by the neocon propaganda of cold war II, complete with first strike nuclear intervention. Never before in recorded human history has this world been so armed and dangerous, and precariously on the brink of self-annihilation.
As this New World Order noose tightens around our necks, more extreme draconian measures are being propagated by governments on a near weekly basis. Here are a few of the latest obscenities being cranked out by both the US federal government as well as by selected state governments, all designed to place the final nail in the coffin of America as a once great, independent, sovereign democratic republic.
As if the TPP as NWO’s secret blueprint and the NSA’s invasive warrantless massive data collection dossier on every American isn’t enough, introduced in June and passed two weeks later is the House of Representatives’ H.R. 2596 that morphed on July 7thinto the Senate as S. 1705, the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2016allocating funding to the likes of the CIA, NSA and FBI to force all internet servers and search engines to report any suspicious “terrorist” activity they may encounter. The language is worded in ambiguously confusing terminology in order to – out of fear and intimidation – purposely manipulate the likes of Google and Microsoft to over-report as extensions of Big Government. In the unsettling words of activist-writer Stephen Lendman, if this law passes in the Senate, its:
… Vague language makes independent journalists, political, anti-war, and social justice activists, academics and students doing legitimate research, as well as others vulnerable to being called suspected terrorists.
The game is to find any arbitrary excuse to criminalize and institutionalize virtually every American citizen as a potential homegrown terrorist, certifiably mentally ill or otherwise “undesirable” needing to be locked up. A case in point is the out of control weapon of the psychiatric diagnostic system driven by Big Pharma. The latest DSM has reached the absurdity of labeling anyone concerned about ingesting only healthy food with a mental disorder. Obama has executive orders authorizing those who arehomeless, those who have respiratory illness or those who are diagnosed with mental illness to be summarily rounded up against their will and consent and involuntarily placed in FEMA camp settings.
If people are so easily expendable as designated “useless eaters” deemed of little to no value to society by the elite, then virtually any and all of us in America are susceptible to what apparently awaits us sooner than later – incarceration and/or death. This list of expendables can easily include those with handicapped disabilities, the elderly, the infirm, the chronically unemployed, the indebted, those with criminal records, the welfare poor, the morbidly obese, the list can go on indefinitely until the only population left alive are either the globalists themselves or their subservient lackeys. At any rate, according to the likes of Bill and Ted’s bogus eugenics misadventures, the elite’s objective is to radically cull the human herd down from 7.3 billion to a mere half billion. That’s more than 13 out of 14 of us right now on this earth who are presently in the NWO firing squad crosshairs.
Another draconian template recently came to light when in late July Congress passed a law after a 15 minute “debate” to revoke US passports of Americans suspected of affiliating or sympathizing with “foreign terrorist organizations.” This passage gives the US Secretary of State power to now take away passports of Americans’ traveling abroad without any explanation, presumption of innocence or due process. The bill passed in the House without even a count but by mere voice approval, ostensibly to hone in on young Americans flying off to foreign lands to join and fight with ISIS. So If John Kerry concludes that your being in a foreign country threatens or compromises national security in any way, real or imagined, you and your passport become null and void, no questions asked. The room for tyrannical abuse here is once again limitless.
Because in recent years hundreds of thousands of US citizens have seen this Orwellian nightmare coming true in America, they’ve been leaving the US in record number droves, many renouncing their citizenship (3000 in 2013). Recognizing so many are escaping the feds’ totalitarian control, the government is now cracking down on “disloyal” expatriates, mandating foreign banks to fully disclose all US citizens’ assets living abroad, and aggressive IRS land grabbing to seize their foreign properties and assets for unpaid back taxes. This latest ploy is any Americans living abroad who owe the IRS $50,000 or more in taxes are having their passports pulled and these Americans are being sent home.
And this is only the beginning of the Empire’s militant arm extending across oceans to pluck any American citizen within their globalized target zone to rejoin the captive birdcage locked inside gulag Amerika. Ironically but definitely by globalist design, the US-Mexican border is wide open for ISIS terrorists to invade America along with any criminal elements freely entering the US but soon all US borders to Americans will likely be indefinitely closed, in effect captivating all US citizens from escaping their government’s lethal clutches while trapped inside the US. Something’s gone terribly wrong when ex-Homeland Security Chief Janet Napolitano openly admits terrorists wanting to harm America are arriving because of an unprotected border while law abiding Americans find it increasingly harder to leave the US than ever before.
Speaking of lethal clutches, the state of California is the first state in the US to mandate that all adults in America’s most populated state be required mandatory vaccinationswith absolutely no exemptions along with criminal penalties for those non-compliant. This Gestapo-like imposition has already been in the works nationally spearheaded by the US Public Health Department. Of course scientists, whistleblowers and anti-vacciners have been mysteriously murdered and relentlessly harassed for being courageous enough to tell the sinister truth about the damage that Big Pharma’s toxic vaccines around the world have already afflicted on humanity. Vaccines have been directly linked to spreading the very disease they’re supposed to prevent along with a myriad of horrifying conditions most notably autism, permanent brain damage and a host of other severe afflictions frequently enough resulting in death.
Yet this neo-Nazi global vaccine program conveniently paves the way for merging with long planned microchip implants for every American slated by 2017. And of course this invasive level of extreme central control over the global masses opens up the floodgate to an NWO Pandora’s Box – mind control programming, pre-crime arrests, genetically altered human DNA, electronic pulse weapon victimization, a cashless society where chips are arbitrarily turned off and/or assets seized and the unwanted are unable to feed themselves and systemically are starved to death. But the demonic New World Order must go on!
Speaking of seizing assets, the giant central banks are already stealing money out of private citizens’ accounts with the next massive redistribution of wealth reset button, only instead of tax-funded bail-outs the globalists have already devised economy collapse contingency plans with legislation authorizing banks to bilk billions of bail-in dollars that’s already begun. With a gambling debt of $1.5 quadrillion in global derivatives being racked up by criminal banksters, their latest capital offense crime chapter in grand theft planet is already well underway.
In case you’ve been asleep all year long, the US military is massively moving record amounts of heavy weaponry and war making materials around North America like there’s no tomorrow. Timed with the historic Jade Helm 15 exercise ongoing tillSeptember 15th that’s supposedly operating in just nine states, actually Jade’s been busily going on in all fifty states the whole year long. Now the Homeland Security domestic army (the militarized police state merging with the US military) has suddenly erected undisclosed checkpoint inspections all over the country, interfering and limiting the right of Americans to freely travel within the lower 48 contiguous states.
Pervasive conditions identical to prewar Nazi Germany are undisputedly alive and well flashing red alert signals throughout America in 2015. What is increasingly clear is the feds are trying to keep the American public (like always) cluelessly blinded in the dark while preparing for large scale war soon fought on US soil, possibly in reaction to the feds’ orchestrated ISIS invasion and false flag attack(s) and/or potential earthshaking comet and asteroid collisions. The house of cards Western economy has been coordinated to collapse simultaneously in perfect storm convergence when inevitable catastrophes befall America with NWO vengeance along with their accompanying ripple effects felt around the world. More people are waking up and bracing for what’s imminently in store for us during the rest of this tumultuous, earth-changing year.
Another highly revealing, equally disturbing eye opener is news of the Pentagon’s recently released Law of War Manual calling for open season on journalists as belligerents and enemies of the state. Apparently the US killing machine in its wanton lust for war crime atrocities no longer feels comfortable embedding even the MSM presstitutes for either Jade Helm or future military conflicts around the world. Now journalists are declared the unwanted enemy, particularly those from independent news outlets bent on exposing Empire evildoing.
The 1165-page new laws of war manual give license to kill civilians with no pretense of concern as “collateral damage” anymore. Now they too are the apparent enemy lurking in every country where black ops are fighting, currently active in upwards of near three quarters of the earth’s nations. Human life on this planet in the twenty-first century under the already here and now New World Order is the US military’s latest enemy target. After all, we’re all casualties in this globalist genocidal war against humanity.
This endgame scenario has actually been a long time coming. The mushrooming of draconian laws in America has been exponentially soaring ever since 9/11. A half dozen years ago a number of states were outlawing private citizens from collecting rainwateron their own property, or prohibiting them from growing vegetable gardens on their private land, or feeding the homeless in public parks. Our freedoms in a controlled fascist police state sponsoring both global and domestic terrorism have been fast drying up over the last fifteen years at unprecedented freefalling speed, paving the way for implementation of the UN’s Agenda 21. Surviving humans in America will be herded into six metropolitan camps on each coast leaving America’s vast underground resources in between to be mined.
Yet still far too many sheeple sleep in delirium, too busily intoxicated and addicted to their gadget toys that entertain, distract, numb and dumb down the masses to ever notice the everyday signs of the one world government tyranny spearheaded by their own treasonous international crime cabal government. Whether too late or not, it’s time for revolution now. The feds’ already have a head start with the war they’re waging against us well underway. But what they’re most terrified of is the sleeping, dumbed down giant of America to finally smarten up and wake up to their diabolical agenda, and fully aware and alert rise up en masse in committed, unified solidarity to actively oppose the elitist death-mongering executioners. We outnumber the demonic sub-human species a thousand to one. While together it’s possible that we can beat their odds, divided we’re all doomed to unavoidably fall.
Joachim Hagopian is a West Point graduate and former US Army officer. He has written a manuscript based on his unique military experience entitled “Don’t Let The Bastards Getcha Down.” It examines and focuses on US international relations, leadership and national security issues. After the military, Joachim earned a master’s degree in Clinical Psychology and worked as a licensed therapist in the mental health field for more than a quarter century. He now concentrates on his writing and has a blog site at http://empireexposed. blogspot. com/. He is also a regular contributor to Global Research.
Via Global ResearchTime Magazine has announced its 2015 Person of the Year shortlist and raising a few eyebrows is the inclusion of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, who is praised for “inspiring his followers” for staging attacks against Tunisia and France.
The publication has defended its decision to include the terror leader among the eight final candidates on the grounds that “for better or for worse... the title [is given] to who has done the most to influence events of the year”.
Time wrote of the ISIS leader: “[He] has inspired followers to both fight in his self-declared caliphate of Iraq and Syria, and also stage attacks in countries like Tunisia and France".
Also given the nod for 2015 is Republican presidential nominee hopeful Donald Trump, who Time said deserve his place on the shortlist because of “stirring up the debate about the future” of the Republican party.
“His populist rhetoric has made him the frontrunner in the race for the Republican presidential candidacy and stirred debate about the party's future.”
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders won the online readers’ poll for TIME Person of the Year but is not included in the shortlist.
The Vermont Senator won with a little more than 10 pc of the vote when the poll closed Sunday at midnight.
The final ‘Person of the Year’ list also includes 'Black Lives Matter' activists, who have protested inequality towards African Americans, especially in their treatment by law enforcement, and a number of global leaders including German chancellor Angela Merkel, Iran president Hassan Rouhani and Russian president Vladimir Putin, who Time said had "defied Western sanctions over his country's military activity in Ukraine to play a critical but precarious role in the war on ISIS".
Writing about Mr Rouhani, the magazine said he had sought to bring his country "out of pariah status and repair its sanctions-crippled economy by pursuing a nuclear deal with the West".
Transgender reality TV star Caitlyn Jenner, who transitioned from Olympic winner Bruce Jenner, and Uber CEO Travis Kalanick are also included in the final eight.The family of a woman who was apparently killed by her husband, then had her corpse wheeled through her neighborhood says she was pregnant. NY1's Talia Kaplan has the latest developments from Staten Island.
"I was like oh my God," said Mariners Harbor resident Crystal Abney.
That's how Abney says she reacted when she found out about a gruesome murder in her neighborhood Friday.
Here you see 31-year-old Anthony Lopez in handcuffs a day after police say he strangled his 26-year-old wife Obiamaka Aduba.
Investigators say a detective then spotted Lopez pushing a metal cart carrying Adubah's body on Post Lane.
Her body was wrapped in cloth. Police say when he was confronted Lopez took off leaving the body behind.
He was arrested in East Harlem following a tip, police say he shaved his head to disguise himself.
"To be having the body travel around the neighborhood like that, that was just so sickening," Abney said. "And to know that it was happening right around my nose in my neighborhood it's very sad."
The Staten Island District Attorney says it may have been a case of Domestic Violence.
An NYPD source says the couple had been involved in four reports of domestic violence between 2013 and 2015, including one where Lopez allegedly tied Aduba to a radiator.
"It makes me really sad to hear that," Abney said.
NY1's Talia Kaplan spoke with Adubah's father. He didn't want to talk on camera but he tells NY1 his daughter was about 4 months pregnant when she was killed. He says she was married to Lopez for about three years and that she was scared of him. He told her she should leave him and that she could always come back home. Now he says he wants justice.
The District Attorney says there have been eight domestic violence homicides in the borough so far this year.
"This is a huge, huge epidemic," said Director of Staten Island Safe Horizon Amy Edelstein.
Safe Horizon is a crime victim assistance agency.
"We offer support groups and counseling and we help clients navigate housing," Edelstein said.
And Edelstein says all the services are free and confidential.
"If you or someone you know is in a situation and you feel like you might be experiencing abuse, please reach out to us," Edelstein said.
And you can reach the agency by calling their hotline at 1-800-621-4673.ANZ National Bank has confirmed it will drop the National Bank, with the brand to be gradually phased out over the next two years.
Staff were told of the change at co-ordinated meetings this afternoon.
About 20 branches will be closed, reducing the network to about 280. The remaining National Bank branches will be rebranded at a cost of $100 million.
ANZ customers will be moved across to the National Bank computer system while customers would continue to be served by the same staff, with no job losses on the front line.
ANZ would take over all sponsorship and community commitment.
ANZ National Bank chief executive David Hisco said ANZ bought the National Bank in 2003 and after nearly 10 years of reducing duplication between the two brands "the next logical step is to combine them into one".
"In recent years we've made things simpler for customers by creating one management structure across both banks, one customer approvals process and, very soon, we'll be moving to one set of products," Hisco said.
ANZ has the rights to the black horse and green colour branding of the National Bank from British Bank Lloyds TSB until 2014.
"So it makes sense to change to ANZ, the brand used in 32 markets around the world," Hisco said.
"For most National Bank customers, it will be business as usual - they will see the same people, just wearing a different uniform."
About 20 branches in close proximity to each other would be merged over the next two years, still leaving the ANZ with the biggest branch network of any bank.
ANZ and National Bank branches located close to each other will in most cases either merge into the larger branch or relocate to a new area nearby, Hisco said.
Costs had been reduced in recent years by streamlining head office management and processes.
More savings would come from eliminating duplicated information technology costs under the new computer system.
A group of mainly technology contractors would be out of a job as the complex computer project wound up over the next few months, Hisco said.
Bank workers' union First Union called on ANZ to make good on its assurances that jobs and services won't be cut as a result of the merger decision.
Union secretary Andrew Casidy said the ANZ and National banks were "doing very well off their Kiwi customers, and they need to know that both customers and staff will be watching these changes very closely.
"Customers have been kept in the dark for too long about these plans as have the bank's own staff."
ANZ National claims nearly half the population is a customer, and has a combined workforce of about 9000.
ANZ bought the National Bank from Lloyds TSB bank for $6.9 billion in the biggest deal in New Zealand's corporate history at the time.
Speculation about when the Australian-owned ANZ would kill off National's prancing horse has been a feature of the industry ever since.
Abandoning the National Bank brand could result in Australian parent ANZ writing off up to $3.5b in goodwill and reducing its capital requirement, banking expert David Tripe said.
Dropping the brand within the current financial year might allow ANZ to write off up to $3.5b in goodwill associated with the brand, if it could convince accountants it was allowed to do so under new accounting rules, Tripe said.
That would substantially improve the reported return on equity for the New Zealand business, he said.
But it would be a "brave and costly" move to make the National Bank brand suddenly disappear, he said.
Branch management had already been brought under a single structure and customers of both banks have been able to make deposits in either bank since January last year.2,6-Di-tert-butyl-4-(3-hydroxy-2,2-dimethyl-propyl)-phenol (CGP7930) is a recently reported positive allosteric modulator of gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA)(B) receptors. In this study, we assessed the ability of CGP7930 to modulate the baclofen-induced depression of dopamine (DA) neuron activity via the activation of GABA(B) receptors in the ventral tegmental area in rat midbrain slices. The selective GABA(B) receptor agonist, baclofen, depressed the spontaneous firing rate of DA neurons in a concentration-dependent manner (EC50 = 0.27 microM, n = 11). CGP7930 (30 microM) significantly (P < 0.05) shifted the baclofen concentration-response curve to the left (EC50 = 0.15 microM, n = 5). The effects of baclofen alone or baclofen coapplied with CGP7930 were fully blocked by 1 microM (2S)-3-[[(1S)-1-(3,4-dichloropheny)ethyl]amino-2-hydroxypropyl] (phenylmethyl) phosphinic acid (CGP55845), a potent and selective GABA(B) receptor antagonist. In similar experiments, N-[3,3-diphenylpropyl]-alpha-methylbenzylamine (fendiline) (30 or 50 microM), a compound shown to potentiate GABA(B) receptor-mediated cortical hyperpolarisation, also significantly enhanced the inhibitory effect of baclofen. It is therefore concluded that the recently reported GABA(B) receptor modulators, CGP7930 and fendiline, can enhance GABA(B) receptor-mediated depression of DA neuronal activity. This finding suggests a therapeutic potential for GABA(B) potentiators for the treatment of diseases associated with a hyperfunctional mesocorticolimbic system.NEW YORK (Reuters) - A woman was crushed to death on Wednesday by an elevator that began moving as she was stepping on board, authorities said.
The freak accident occurred mid-morning in a 25-story office building at 285 Madison Avenue, near Grand Central Terminal, according to the Fire Department of New York.
The woman was about halfway into the elevator when it shot upward, a fire department spokeswoman said. She was lifted up and crushed between the shaft and the elevator, she said.
The doors remained open as the elevator rose.
Two other people on board the elevator suffered minor injuries.
It was not immediately clear how far the elevator rose. The cause of the malfunction is under investigation.
The building houses a number of advertising agencies that traditionally have had offices along Madison Avenue in midtown Manhattan.It was the broken water pump heard 'round the world.
Cyberwar watchers took notice this month when a leaked intelligence memo claimed Russian hackers had remotely destroyed a water pump at an Illinois utility. The report spawned dozens of sensational stories characterizing it as the first-ever reported destruction of U.S. infrastructure by a hacker. Some described it as America's very own Stuxnet attack.
Except, it turns out, it wasn't. Within a week of the report's release, DHS bluntly contradicted the memo, saying that it could find no evidence that a hack occurred. In truth, the water pump simply burned out, as pumps are wont to do, and a government-funded intelligence center incorrectly linked the failure to an internet connection from a Russian IP address months earlier.
Now, in an exclusive interview with Threat Level, the contractor behind that Russian IP address says a single phone call could have prevented the string of errors that led to the dramatic false alarm.
"I could have straightened it up with just one phone call, and this would all have been defused," said Jim Mimlitz, founder and owner of Navionics Research, who helped set up the utility's control system. "They assumed Mimlitz would never ever have been in Russia. They shouldn’t have assumed that."
Mimlitz's small integrator company helped set up the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition system (SCADA) used by the Curran Gardner Public Water District outside of Springfield, Illinois, and provided occasional support to the district. His company specializes in SCADA systems, which are used to control and monitor infrastructure and manufacturing equipment.
Mimlitz says last June, he and his family were on vacation in Russia when someone from Curran Gardner called his cell phone seeking advice on a matter and asked Mimlitz to remotely examine some data-history charts stored on the SCADA computer.
Mimlitz, who didn't mention to Curran Gardner that he was on vacation in Russia, used his credentials to remotely log in to the system and check the data. He also logged in during a layover in Germany, using his mobile phone.
"I wasn’t manipulating the system or making any changes or turning anything on or off," Mimlitz told Threat Level.
But five months later, when a water pump failed, that Russian IP address became the lead character in a 21st-century version of a Red Scare movie.
Jim Mimlitz at the airport in Frankfurt, Germany, during a layover last June on his way to Russia.
On Nov. 8, a water district employee investigating the pump failure called in a contract computer repairman to check it out. The repairman examined the logs on the SCADA system and saw the Russian IP address connecting to the system in June. Mimlitz's username appeared in the logs next to the IP address.
The water district passed the information to the Environmental Protection Agency, which governs rural water systems. "Why we did that, I think it was just out of an abundance of caution," says Don Craven, a water district trustee. "If we had a problem we would have to report it to EPA eventually."
But from there, the information made its way to the Illinois Statewide Terrorism and Intelligence Center, a so-called fusion center composed of Illinois State Police and representatives from the FBI, DHS and other government agencies.
Even though Mimlitz's username was connected to the Russian IP address in the SCADA log, no one from the fusion center bothered to call him to ask if he had logged in to the system from Russia. Instead, the center released a report on Nov. 10 titled “Public Water District Cyber Intrusion” that connected the broken water pump to the Russian log-in five months earlier, inexplicably stating that the intruder from Russia had turned the SCADA system on and off, causing the pump to burn out.
"And at that point... all hell broke loose," Craven said.
Whoever wrote the fusion center report assumed that someone had hacked Mimlitz's computer and stolen his credentials in order to use them to hack into Curran Gardner's SCADA system and sabotage the water pump. It's not clear whether it was the computer repairman or the fusion center that first jumped to this conclusion.
A spokeswoman for the Illinois State Police, which is responsible for the fusion center, pointed the finger at local representatives of DHS, FBI and other agencies who are responsible for compiling information that gets released by the fusion center.
"We did not create the report," said spokeswoman Monique Bond. "The report is created by a number of agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, and we basically are just the facilitator of the report. It doesn’t originate from the [fusion center] but is distributed by the [fusion center]."
But DHS is pointing the finger back at the fusion center, saying if the report had been DHS-approved, six different offices would have had to sign off on it.
"Because this was an Illinois [fusion center] product, it did not undergo such a review," a DHS official said.
The report was released on a mailing list that goes to emergency management personnel and others, and found its way to Joe Weiss, managing partner of Applied Control Solutions, who wrote a blog post about it and provided information from the document to reporters.
The subsequent media blitz identified the intrusion as the first real hack attack against a SCADA system in the U.S., something that Weiss and others in the security industry have been predicting would happen for years.
The hack was news to Mimlitz.
He put two and two together, after glancing through his phone records, and realized the Russian "hacker" the stories were referring to was him.
Teams from the FBI and DHS's Industrial Control Systems-Cyber Emergency Response Team (ICS-CERT) subsequently arrived in Illinois to investigate the intrusion and quickly determined, after speaking with Mimlitz and examining the logs, that the fusion center report was wrong and should never have been released.
"I worked real close with the FBI and was on speakerphone with the fly-in team from CERT, and all of them were a really sharp bunch and very professional," Mimlitz said.
DHS investigators also quickly determined that the failed pump was not the result of a hack attack at all.
"The system has a lot of logging capability," Mimlitz said. "It logs everything. All of the logs showed that the pump failed for some electrical-mechanical reason. But it did not have anything to do with the SCADA system."
Mimlitz said there was also nothing in the logs to indicate that the SCADA system had been turned on and off.
He cleared up another mystery in the fusion report as well. The report indicated that for two to three months prior to the pump failure, operators at Curran Gardner had noticed “glitches” in their remote access system, suggesting the glitches were related to the suspected cyber intrusion.
But Mimlitz said the remote access system was old and had been experiencing problems ever since it was modified by another contractor.
"They had made some modifications about a year ago that was creating problems logging in," he said. "It was an old computer... and they had made network modifications that I don’t think were done correctly. I think that’s why they were seeing problems."
Joe Weiss says he's shocked that a report like this was put out without any of the information in it being investigated and corroborated first.
"If you can’t trust the information coming from a fusion center, what is the purpose of having the fusion center sending anything out? That’s common sense," he said. "When you read what’s in that [report] that is a really, really scary letter. How could DHS not have put something out saying they got this [information but] it’s preliminary?"
Asked if the fusion center is investigating how information that was uncorroborated and was based on false assumptions got into a distributed report, spokeswoman Bond said an investigation of that sort is the responsibility of DHS and the other agencies who compiled the report. The center's focus, she said, was on how Weiss received a copy of the report that he should never have received.
"We’re very concerned about the leak of controlled information," Bond said. "Our internal review is looking at how did this information get passed along, confidential or controlled information, get disseminated and put into the hands of users that are not approved to receive that information. That's number one."
Additional reporting by Ryan Voyles in Illinois.NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Apple Inc.’s experimentation with car technology could help push the company’s valuation past $1 trillion within the next 12 months from nearly $750 billion today, according to the new bull-case price target set Monday by Morgan Stanley.
The brokerage raised its 12-month stock price target on Apple AAPL, +0.06% to $160, from $133 previously, and established a $190 bull-case scenario, up from $160. Morgan Stanley’s previous bull case didn't take into account the car opportunity.
Apple’s expanding ecosystem, including the Apple Watch and CarPlay, have created a “virtuous cycle” that could quadruple Apple’s total addressable market by 2020, said Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty, whose price target puts her among the most bullish Apple analysts on Wall Street.
‘We are convinced that Apple will have a significant presence in the auto industry in the coming years.’ Morgan Stanley
While Apple hasn't confirmed plans to develop its own car, reports have suggested that it is hiring auto experts, including former Tesla Motors Inc. TSLA, -0.30% employees, and has established a top-secret team to invest in car technologies.
The company’s iOS-based CarPlay, which brings iPhone features to the touch screen control panel on a vehicle’s dashboard, rolled out in several car models this year, and Morgan Stanley auto analyst Adam Jonas said it would be natural for Apple to expand beyond infotainment to the rest of the interior, particularly if driverless-car technologies begin to be more integrated within new vehicles.
“Cars could become the fourth screen, after PCs/tablets, smartphones and TVs,” Huberty said.
Apple declined to comment on what it called “rumor and speculation.”
In a report last week, Jonas said he would not be dismissive of Apple’s automotive ambitions, calling the potential opportunity too large to ignore.
The brokerage’s calculations put the total automotive addressable market at $10 trillion, with the annual revenue potential on new vehicles amounting to roughly $1.6 trillion, compared with the current global smartphone market of $400 billion. Jonas’s argument is that if Apple were to corner just 25% of the value of the car, its revenue potential would equate to that of the entire smartphone industry today.
Shares of Apple traded up 0.2% to $128.71 in recent trade. They are up more than 71% over the past year.
Get the top tech stories of the day delivered to your inbox. Subscribe to MarketWatch's free Tech Daily newsletter. Sign up here.Story highlights Schweizer said Trump would have a tougher time clearing his potential conflicts
The warning from Schweizer to the Republican President-elect is somewhat surprising
Washington (CNN) The provocative author who wrote a book alleging corruption between the Clintons and their philanthropy now says he sees similar conflicts of interest between Donald Trump and his business now that he's President-elect.
Peter Schweizer, whose book, "Clinton Cash," sent the Clinton campaign into damage control as she kicked off her bid in spring 2015, said he foresaw attempts by foreign actors to ingratiate themselves to Trump's children, who will take over the President-elect's business empire. That could be an attempt to curry favor with the White House.
"The hope is that safeguards are being put in place, that the Trump Organization leadership is on guard for precisely this type of scenario," Schweizer told CNN's Michael Smerconish. "Because I think, based on history, it's only a question of time when these kind of offers are made. And if they take these offers, it's hugely problematic."
The warning from Schweizer to the Republican President-elect is somewhat surprising given Schweizer's past investigations into the Democratic nominee and his connections to former Breitbart executive Steve Bannon, Trump's senior counselor. Schweizer was a senior editor-at-large at Breitbart News when Bannon led the site, and the two have co-authored stories together.
Schweizer said Trump would have a tougher time clearing his potential conflicts given that much of his assets were in real estate, rather than stocks.
Read MoreA woman in Brooksville, Florida, is happy to be alive after a state trooper saved her from being strangled by her seatbelt on Thursday evening.
The 38-year-old victim, whose name has not been released, became entangled in the passenger side seatbelt of her 2010 Toyota when her 4-year-old daughter put the seatbelt around the woman's neck to protest being put in a child seat.
The seatbelt then locked in place, squeezing the woman's neck and making it difficult to breathe.
Although her husband tried to remove the seatbelt, his efforts only tightened it more, according to BayNews9.com.
The woman was nearly unconscious by the time her husband was able to flag down Florida State Trooper Brad Wagner for help.
Wagner cut the strangling seatbelt and was able to help the victim start breathing again, WTSP reports.
After EMTs checked the woman out, she was allowed to continue on her way, MyFoxTampaBay.com reports.
No word on if the girl was punished for almost causing her mother's suffocation.
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Contact The AuthorHere’s some interesting background on the “bathtub” section of the Parkway East, dredged up from the archives of former Post-Gazette transportation guru Joe “Mr. Know-It-All” Grata, from January 2005:
The bathtub is the depressing (as in gloomy) 1,900-foot-long depressed (as in a trough) westbound section along the Monongahela River lip of the Golden Triangle.
When the river spills onto the road and fills the bathtub with water, as it did during Hurricane Frances, Hurricane Ivan and recent heavy rains locally, the parkway westbound is of no benefit to anyone without a boat. Drivers are forced to detour on Fort Pitt Boulevard in the heart of the city to get to the Fort Duquesne or Fort Pitt bridges and points beyond.
When the Parkway East was planned in the late 1940s, the interstate highway system was in the talking stage. When the parkway was built in the early 1950s, it was a road to the suburbs, connecting to Business Route 22, west of Monroeville. It was never meant to carry today’s |
office says at this time there is no plan for an inquest into Nicole's suicide or any of the others at St. Joe's.
The act says there must be an inquest in cases where there is a death of a person in a psychiatric facility where the use of mechanical restraints were a factor in the death. But that was not the situation in the St. Joe's cases.
The act also says there must be an inquest in cases where someone dies in police custody or in the custody of a correctional facility. And yet it does not mandate an inquest for psychiatric patients who are on a Form 1 — which forces them to remain in the custody of a hospital.
In Ontario there are Death Review Committees that examine specific categories of deaths in the province and make recommendations to avoid similar deaths. It includes a Patient Safety Review Committee (PSRC). Though the latest annual report is not yet complete, The Spectator was able to obtain redacted case reports reviewed by the PSRC. They include the suicides of two patients. One was a man who was given a razor to shave and he used it to cut his throat. The other was a woman who overdosed while on a day pass.
St. Joe's is currently waiting for results of an external review it requested into the "cluster" of three suicides that took place at the West 5th Campus in 2016. The review is being conducted by a former chief coroner of Ontario and a former chief psychiatrist at a major Ontario hospital. The results were expected in February, but were not ready. Since February, Nicole died as did another patient after her.
The results of the review, which will include recommendations, are now expected to be released on Friday at noon on the St. Joe's website. [July 14 update: Link to announcement and review]
The results will be shared first with the coroner, the families and the hospital staff, says Dr. Ian Preyra, deputy chief of staff at St. Joe's, who is chief of emergency medicine and also a coroner. Then with the public and psychiatric hospitals across Ontario. The implementation of recommendations will be overseen by a senior group of St. Joe's staff.
"We're going to continue to be extremely open," he says.
Preyra says the review may make a coroner's inquest unnecessary because it could cover the same ground. He says the coroner's office will be asked to examine the results "critically" to "determine if it satisfies all the reasons why we do an inquest."
While the review is certainly a good step, it is not the same as an inquest. At an inquest, witnesses are called to testify, the families of the deceased can have standing, the scope can include all five deaths, a jury is able to ask questions and form recommendations and — most importantly — all of it is done in public.
Of course, there is one massive flaw in the inquest process. And that is that recommendations made by the jury are non-binding.
So no matter if there is an inquest or not, any potentially life-saving changes to prevent more suicides at St. Joe's are left up to the discretion of the hospital to implement.
Let's hope it does.
Susan Clairmont’s commentary appears regularly in The Spectator. [email protected]
905-526-3539 | @susanclairmontKOLKATA/NEW DELHI – In the days before the rape of an elderly nun in an armed assault that has shaken India, death threats and extortion attempts had already shattered the peace at her Convent of Jesus and Mary school, police and school officials say.
For 19 years, the Catholic school in the town of Ranaghat in West Bengal state had been teaching children of workers at a nearby jute factory without incident. But three weeks ago, the school received death threats and demands for money in anonymous phone calls just days after the nuns had an altercation with the father of a boy who was expelled.
The attack also comes amid a trend of worsening security for India’s Christian minority, less than one year since the government of Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power.
Police are investigating if there was a link between the expulsion of the boy, the threats and Friday night’s attack, when a group of ten men broke into the school offices before heading to the nuns’ quarters.
"This is a well-planned attack and conspiracy cannot be ruled out," said a police officer in Ranaghat contacted by telephone, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the case. He said it was not yet clear if the three incidents were linked and that police were also investigating the religious angle.
While the rape and robbery did not have clear religious overtones, it took place against the backdrop of Hindu nationalistic rhetoric from groups allied with the government that critics believe provides a sense of impunity for attacks against minorities.
The assault also marks a disturbing convergence of two social currents in contemporary Indian, violence against women and attacks against minority religions.
A rape is reported on average every 21 minutes in India, and acid attacks, domestic violence and molestation against women are common.
About a fifth of India’s 1.27 billion people identify themselves as belonging to faiths other than Hinduism. Muslims make up the largest minority, about 14 percent of the population, while Christians comprise about 2.5 percent.
Since December, half a dozen churches have been vandalised, at the same time as conservative groups have campaigned to convert members of "foreign religions" such as Islam and Christianity to Hinduism.
In the Ranaghat attack, the men roamed around the school and damaged a bust of Jesus Christ in a chapel before breaking into the nuns’ quarters. Two attackers grabbed the 75-year-old nun who was in charge of the school’s finances and demanded the keys to a cupboard, the officer said, citing a report given by another nun who was an eyewitness.
When she refused, she was raped by one man, the officer said. Other nuns were threatened with similar consequences unless they handed over gold chains and cash. In total the men made off with more than 1 million rupees ($15,950).
THREATS AFTER EXPULSION
Police have detained nine men, but no arrests have been made.
"We have never had to face a painful situation like this in India," said Sister Janet, who supervises a network of 40 Convent of Jesus and Mary schools in India.
She said nuns in the school told police about the telephone threats in late February. They came days after the nuns argued with the father of a boy who was expelled for posting photos of a girl student online and making lewd remarks on her Facebook page.
Rather than opening an investigation into the threats, the police registered their concerns in a book reserved for minor complaints, Sister Janet said.
"Police should have provided protection to the nuns but they did not take the complaint seriously," she said.
Modi said on Tuesday he was deeply concerned about the rape. Hardline Hindu nationalist groups that support him also condemned the rape, but said it would not affect their mission.
"We speak the truth and mobilise support to fight for the well-being of a Hindu society," said Surendra Jain, spokesman for the radical Vishwa Hindu Parishad or World Hindu Council.
"Why should we stop from promoting what we believe is the absolute truth? This is a Hindu nation and Christians and Muslims should acknowledge this fact."
MOTHER TERESA
The leader of the Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a group that is the ideological parent of Modi’s ruling party, said in February the charitable work of Mother Teresa was aimed at conversion.
While there is no suggestion that the school attack was carried out because of this, some commentators have noted that Mother Teresa, a Nobel peace laureate who has been beatified, also was a Catholic nun doing charitable work in West Bengal.
Despite a commitment to the preservation of the Catholic faith, and religious classes for Catholic children, many of the Ranaghat school’s 800 pupils are Hindus.
"If they would be converting our children then none of the Hindus would have ever admitted their children to this school," said Abiram Gupte, whose three sons study there.
"We cannot blame anyone," said Sister Janet. "But the statements by leaders of hardline Hindu organisations do make an impact on the society, they want people to start viewing our charitable work as a strategy to expand Christianity."On Dec. 25, Tim Burton will release Big Eyes, a period dramedy about the bizarre, true-life story of Walter and Margaret Keane, the couple behind those famously kitschy paintings of doe-eyed little kids that became a sensation in the 1960s. The film — which stars Amy Adams and Christoph Waltz — will mark the 17th feature film that Burton has directed in a storied career that now stretches over 30 years.
Burton has always been an unusual filmmaker, a semi-eccentric visionary who makes films about outsiders from within the Hollywood studio system. He spoke with Yahoo Movies about his career and some of his most famous films, including Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, Beetlejuice, Batman, Edward Scissorhands and The Nightmare Before Christmas.
Check out the highlights in the video above and some more thoughts from Burton below:
On why Michael Keaton seemed crazy enough for 1989’s Batman:
"It got a lot of criticism for being too dark, and there was a lot of criticism for casting Michael Keaton. They thought it was going to be a comedy or whatever, but it felt very special. We met these big tough guys, but what it came down was that, you look at someone like Michael and you think, ‘Here’s a guy you can see dressing up like a bat.’ He’s got the eyes and the kind of crazy quality and the kind of internal life, but he’s not Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Related: Watch Tim Burton Talk About Possible ‘Beetlejuice’ Sequel
So, here’s somebody who needed to create a persona to frighten people and intimidate people, and Michael just seemed like the perfect person to be that. The studio was quite supportive. Thank God, the Internet wasn’t as big then, because we would have been really murdered. But even without the Internet, there was a lot of negativity and alarm.”
On walking away from Gotham City following 1992’s sequel, Batman Returns:
”I think I upset McDonalds. [They asked] ‘What’s that black stuff coming out of the Penguin’s mouth. We can’t sell Happy Meals with that!’ It was a weird reaction to Batman Returns, because half the people thought it was lighter than the first one and half the people thought it was darker. I think the studio just thought it was too weird — they wanted to go with something more child- or family- friendly. In other words, they didn’t want me to do another one.”
On the difficulty of making Edward Scissorhands even after becoming an A-list director:
After Beetlejuice and Pee-wee and Batman [were] successful, I thought I could do whatever I wanted. That’s when I learned every movie is difficult to get made. Even after Batman, presenting a story about a guy with scissor hands — they weren’t the most enthusiastic.
But that was a special movie for me because it was feelings, not autobiographical, but the sense of feeling that way as a teenager. It was very representative and symbolic of a lot of feelings that I had.
On the “bizarre” production of the stop-motion animated The Nightmare Before Christmas, which Disney released under its more adult-oriented Touchstone banner to an eventual $75 million box office:
"It was weird because at the time, it was something I’d never heard in my life: They weren’t going to put a trailer up for it. Even horrible movies you have trailers for. That was a bizarre thing. They basically [made] it because I had designed it [at Disney] many years ago, and I said, ‘You guys don’t really want to do this, let me take it elsewhere.’ And rather than let it go elsewhere, they let it happen. It didn’t cost a lot. But as we were going on, they didn’t know what it was. It was a strange movie that got more successful later and later."
And how The Nightmare Before Christmas has become the unofficial movie of emo teenagers:
"I’ve seen people that have amazing tattoos. That to me is the most amazing thing, better than any review, better than any box office, better than anything, when it connects with people so deeply."
On whether he’s been to Hot Topic, where Nightmare Before Christmas gear is still the rage.
"Not lately, but I have!"
On whether he’d go back and change things in his movies:
"No, I know some people update the special effects in movies or whatever, but I always think it’s a bit of a time capsule. It’s like plastic surgery — I’d rather see people’s wrinkles and warts, than see something that’s been glossed over."
Story continuesFrançois Mitterrand, left, always had a pot of the finest caviar to offer guests Gabriel Duval/AFP/Getty
François Mitterrand ate caviar by the spoonful, Jacques Chirac dined on snails and Nicolas Sarkozy demanded a permanent supply of coffee ice cream.
However, the gastronomic extravagance long associated with the French presidency has disappeared amid “paranoia” about bad publicity gripping François Hollande’s administration, according to a new book.
The publication by Bernard Vaussion, who spent 40 years involved in the cuisine of the Élysée Palace, including eight as head chef, provides an illustration of the extraordinary gluttony within the corridors of power.
Under Mr Chirac, the foie gras in sauterne jelly was followed by quails braised in champagne with fresh morel mushrooms and accompanied by such wines as a 1988 Château Mouton Rothschild and a 1995 Pérignon champagne.
In contrast, Mr Hollande has banished…The year of the sleeved jerseys isn’t coming to an end any time soon. In fact, the list of teams adopting sleeved jerseys just keeps getting longer. Today, thanks to Chris Creamer we have leaked images of 10 new sleeved jerseys. Like em or not, they’re not going away!
The first set of jerseys continue the Latin Nights tradition started by the NBA several years ago. The Bulls, Spurs, Knicks, Heat, Lakers, and Suns will all sport Latin jerseys again this season. The only changes, sleeves and some sort of pattern on the back.
The next set of sleeved jerseys appear to be new alternates for the Minnesota Timberwolves and Brooklyn Nets. The only addition to the T-Wolves jersey are the sleeves. I actually dig the inspiration behind the Nets alternate jersey. Blue and grey tribute to the Brooklyn Dodgers, very cool!
Finally, the NBA has decided to add sleeves to the Boston Celtics and Chicago Bulls traditional St. Patrick’s day jerseys. Not bad, but I could do without the sleeves!
What do you think about more sleeved jerseys? As always, if you’re looking for traditional vintage NBA jerseys we have a great selection, click here to check them out!Essendon Football Club wishes to advise General Manager of Football Rob Kerr has made the decision to leave the Club next month.
Kerr has decided to take a break from football to pursue family business interests and complete a Harvard Business Course before resuming his professional career.
“It is with mixed emotions I have decided that now is a good time for me personally to move on from my role at Essendon,” Kerr said.
“I joined the Club when it was facing unprecedented challenges and having guided the department through this period I feel I have achieved what I set out to do and that it’s a good time to hand over the reins and look for the next challenge.
“The Club is about to enter an exciting phase in its history and I wish the players and coaches every success in the future. Essendon is well set up for success and I am proud of the contribution I have made.
“I will assist in helping set up for a smooth transition before finishing up later this year.
“I’d like to thank my family for their support through this demanding period as well as the staff at Essendon for their work over the last few years, in particular Xavier Campbell and the Club’s Executive, Coach John Worsfold and the Football Leadership team.”
Essendon CEO Xavier Campbell thanked Kerr for his hard work and commitment over the past four seasons.
“The contribution Rob has made to the rebuild of our football Club has been significant and I thank him for his unwavering dedication and passion,” Campbell said.
“In agreeing to take on the role Rob indicated that it was only ever going to be a medium term proposition.
“In that time he has made a significant impact, and Rob’s discipline, rigour and work ethic in driving the establishment of strong working structures, processes and compliance within the football program cannot be underestimated.
“Rob’s leadership has helped guide the football department through contingency planning during the challenging ASADA/WADA period, the acquisition of short-term contracted players, the retention and reintegration of the suspended players, the club’s finals appearances in 2014 and 2017 and, most recently, executing a successful trade period.
“I speak on behalf of everyone at Essendon in wishing Rob, Belinda and their family nothing but the best for the future and their next chapter."
Coach John Worsfold added, “I would like to thank Rob for the support he has shown me over the last two years, I have really enjoyed working with him and have valued his leadership of the department.”
The Club will now commence a recruitment process to find Kerr’s replacement.Sen—The Sun has shown some unpredictable behaviour in recent years. But professional astronomers expect its activity to reach an explosive climax later this year.
Our home star does not behave in a constant manner. It has quiet years and more busy years in a cycle of activity that goes from maximum to minimum and back to maximum in around 11 years.
Around maximum, we see many more sunspots, those blotches on the visible surface, or photosphere, that are really just slightly cooler zones which look dark in contrast to the general surface glow.
This 11-year pattern was first noticed in the mid 19th Century. Later, in 1908, leading observer George Ellery Hale, at Mount Wilson, California, discovered that the spots were produced in powerful magnetic fields. He also noted that the directions of the spots' north-south polarities reversed with each 11-year cycle.
During a solar cycle, the position of these spots migrates from the Sun's higher latitudes towards its equator as activity diminishes, and around minimum, few if any spots are seen at all.
This was especially true during the last solar minimum which was surprisingly prolonged with no spots showing for many months on end. The Sun stayed relatively quiet when so-called Cycle 24 was supposed to have reached a stage when many spots would be visible regularly.
It led some astronomers to wonder if the new scheduled cycle of solar activity, Cycle 25, might happen at all. Others speculated whether the Sun's slowdown might herald a new "mini ice age" like one that happened three centuries ago following a prolonged quiet spell termed the Maunder Minimum.
But over the last couple of years, solar activity has picked up again with several sunspot groups making a healthy appearance, flares and regular eruptions known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs) which can spark auroral displays over the Earth's polar regions.
The Sun shows an outbreak of sunspots soon after the last maximum. Credit: NASA
The maximum of this cycle is expected to be reached in the summer or autumn of 2013 after which activity would be expected gradually to dwindle again.
One of the UK's leading solar astronomers is Dr Lucie Green, of the Mullard Space Science Laboratory in Surrey. She told Sen: "The Sun has shown some unexpectedly low levels of activity in the recent years. Despite this though, the current cycle is progressing with a solar maximum due this year.
"This is an exciting time as we have a fleet of spacecraft and ground-based telescopes watching the Sun, giving us data that will ultimately tell us why solar cycles vary in strength and duration as well as allowing us to forecast stormy solar weather which is headed our way."
Warning: On no account look at the Sun directly unless you are using professional solar filters and know exactly what you are doing. Ordinary dark glasses offer no protection and you could be blinded!It is easy to feel that what you do won’t make any difference. Recycle that can, bike or drive, buy from this company not that one, march in the streets against the factory closing or the looming war. It’s never enough: the forces are large and anonymous, and there aren’t enough of us. Or there are too many of us. Vote, petition, protest. It can all feel pointless: a kind of precious dancing around, keeping a low causal profile, with an eye on some imaginary Future Judgment. How clean my hands are! How little of the world’s horror has been made by them!
But we don’t care about that. We care about the horror: the steady-warming planet; the children born into hard, sad futures; the millions of homeless, and hungry, and unjustly imprisoned; the growing gap between the rich and the poor in Philadelphia, Kansas, and Kentucky, in Moscow, Ghana, and Paris. The problem, at bottom, is that we feel that we can’t make a difference. Ethically and politically, we are ghosts in a machine.
The celebrity comic Russell Brand is gesticulating wildly, urgently, in a hotel room, under the bright lights of a television interview. ‘Stop voting, stop pretending, wake up. Be in reality now. Why vote? We know it’s not going to make any difference. We know that already.’ He is responding to his interviewer, Jeremy Paxman, who is taking him to task for never having voted.
We are brought up to think that voting is important, that it is a necessary condition of being a politically serious person, that we can’t complain about politics if we don’t vote. This last principle has echoes of the more reasonable parental admonition, said of lima beans or cauliflower: don’t knock it until you’ve tried it. But that principle is based on sound epistemological grounds: you might, for all you know, like cauliflower or lima beans. The voting thing is, as Brand argues, stupid. There are ways of participating in public affairs other than voting. For example, one can become a celebrity and call for revolution in a television interview.
More to the point, the inference from not voting to not caring is a poor one. As Brand points out, you might care a lot about what happens and what the system is doing, but still realise that voting doesn’t affect what happens or what the system does. In most elections, the chance that your vote will make any difference to who wins is much smaller than the chance that you will be hit by a car on the way to cast your vote. But people still turn out to vote. They even drive through snow, miss work, and wait in line for hours.
This has puzzled political scientists and economists. Why do people vote? This is an empirical question; it concerns our actual motivations. Many answers have been given: we vote because we enjoy it; because we think others will think badly of us if we don’t; because we want to express ourselves; or cheer for our team; or because we believe that we have a duty to do so. One worry about all of these answers is that they seem disconnected from what makes voting seem so morally significant, something that it might be worth fighting and dying for the right to do.
In the modern world, we often find ourselves in the following situation. I know that whether I do X rather than Y won’t make a difference by itself. I also know that everyone else knows this about me and about themselves. I also know that if all of us do X, rather than Y, it will make a difference. And everyone else knows this, too. So it’s striking and surprising that a celebrity such as Brand would come out and say, to millions, ‘Don’t vote,’ rather than ‘Vote for X.’ That was the revolutionary part of the interview. A thousand lefty celebrities have gone on TV and advocated for causes. Very few have gone on TV and said ‘Don’t vote.’ Very few have gone on TV and said, essentially, X and Y can both go fuck themselves.
One reason not to vote is that your vote — your one vote — is unlikely to make a difference to who wins the election. Another reason not to vote is that it doesn’t matter who wins the election, that there is no difference between X and Y, republican and democrat, Tory and Labour. An extreme version of this thesis — which is obviously false — is that there is no difference between our Xs and our Ys. Much more plausible versions of this thesis are that there is not enough difference between our Xs and Ys, or that with respect to some important issues there is no difference between our Xs and Ys.
Brand’s view is clear: ‘I’m not [refusing to vote] out of apathy,’ he says. ‘I’m not voting out of absolute indifference and weariness and exhaustion from the lies, treachery, deceit of the political class that has been going on for generations.’ Brand says that many of us don’t engage with the current political system, because we see that it doesn’t work for us, we see that it makes no difference. ‘The apathy doesn’t come from us, the people,’ he says. ‘The apathy comes from the politicians. They are apathetic to our needs. They are only interested in servicing the needs of corporations.’
Is this true? Why would this be? Wasn’t the whole point of democratic elections to ensure that power would be in the hands of the people?
The theory of modern representative democracy goes something like this. Each of us is fundamentally autonomous and of equal moral worth, so that we have a claim to self-government, self-rule, to the extent that such self-government is compatible with an equal right to self-government of others.
This suggests something like direct democracy, in which each of us would have an equal say in determining whether we go to war, what policies and laws to adopt, what should be taxed and how much taxes should be, and so on. But — we quickly realise — modern politics is very complex; it is a full-time job to be even modestly well-informed about political issues. Ideally, one would spend all of one’s time doing it, in addition to having staff and resources to help. This suggests a move from direct democracy to representative democracy, where we would each have an equal vote in choosing that individual whom we think will best represent our interests and views. That person will act as our representative — and not as an elected tyrant — because to stay in power, she or he will have to be re-elected. If our representatives do things that we don’t like, we can vote them out. That’s the theory, and its simplicity and power — and the successes of actual electoral representative democracies — have led representative democracy to be the ascendant and unrivalled political system around the world.
So, what’s the problem? The problem is that despite the elections, elected representatives are not actually accountable, not meaningfully accountable, to those over whom they govern.
There are logistical hurdles to keep poor, marginalised citizens from successfully registering to vote
Even in established democracies there are concerns about the openness and fairness of elections. There are huge financial barriers to running for office, and considerable advantages to incumbency. Corporate money and television advertising have an outsized influence. There are logistical hurdles to keep poor, marginalised citizens from successfully registering to vote, and gerrymandering reduces competition, considerably. These difficulties all reduce how accountable our representatives are to us.
Even if these problems were addressed, they would succeed only in making elections fair. But meaningful accountability requires not just open and fair elections; it also requires that we are capable of engaging in informed monitoring and evaluation of the decisions of our representatives. And we are not capable of this. Not because we are stupid, but because we are ignorant: ignorant about what our representatives are doing, ignorant about the details of complex political issues, and ignorant about whether what our representative is doing is good for us or for the world.
Our ignorance means that representatives can talk a good game, and maybe even try to do a few things that benefit the majority of us, but the basic information asymmetries at the heart of the representative system ensure that, for many issues — defence manufacturing and spending, policy that affects the insurance and pharmaceutical industries, agribusiness policy and regulation, energy policy, regulation of financial services and products — what we get is what the relevant business industries want. In the presence of widespread citizen ignorance and the absence of meaningful accountability, powerful interests will effectively capture representatives, ensuring that the only viable candidates — the only people who can get and stay in political power — are those who will act in ways that are congenial to the interests of the powerful.
These concerns are brought to the fore if we think about how little we know about most of what our representatives do, how little real choice goes into the election of our representatives, and how much deference to the goodwill of our favoured political party is required. Even when we step outside partisan information streams, most issues are complex, and much of what we believe about them is a result of information provided by a few dominant media institutions. But there might be a way to overcome these difficulties, if we rethink the fundamentals of democracy itself.
One response to these problems is to go small. In a small community, collective action problems are less prevalent, and can be solved organically. We can detect and shun violators or freeloaders. And information asymmetries disappear: I know the issues and problems that affect us, as do you. We understand their complexities. They are within our daily life. If we need to use representatives for some reason, we will know them personally, as friends or neighbours. We can easily see what they do.
One difficulty with this response is that it is not obvious how to go small. We know we can make a difference by connecting to people in more direct ways: talking to people we see during our day, providing food and shelter for local families, teaching in a prison. But it can be hard to see how our political communities can be made smaller in this way. And many of us are hard-pressed for time, energy, and the resources to make these efforts.
Worse still, the going small strategy can seem inadequate when compared with the forces at hand, the foundations of the horror. We are globally connected now. We can’t roll back the technological development and population increases that threaten the planet, and make it so that my small choices and your small choices all have such large, global effects. This is where the political system is supposed to be of help, but our system is broken.
Political systems are a kind of technology, inventions of human beings to bring about things we care about: peace, prosperity, freedom. Representative democracy is old technology. It dates back to the Roman Republic. Russell Brand says don’t vote, the system is broken, and I think he’s right: we do need a new system. But it is important to stress that in saying that, one needn’t be committed to the view that everything is awful. It’s not. Modern democratic governments do many things well, even if imperfectly: food safety and quality control, traffic safety and road maintenance, regulation and enforcement of building and zoning codes, public health crisis response, air-travel regulation, antitrust and market competition regulation, hospital and health care support, energy and telecommunications regulation, civil court systems, public libraries and basic public education, police and fire protection, support for basic and applied scientific research.
It’s true that for each item I just listed, there are 20 legitimate, serious complaints that could be made about the way some particular government handles that responsibility. It’s also true that modern governments collect an extraordinary amount of money in taxes, so it should be no surprise that some things get done. Still, it would be a mistake to think that representative democracy is a disaster. It’s good, but that shouldn’t keep us from trying to make an even better system by paying attention to the ways in which it falls short.
Electoral representative democracy has undergone a great many changes since it came on the scene. We’ve seen a steady increase in constitutionalism and proportional representation. We’ve seen multi-member districts and non-geographic districting become popular, along with publicly financed campaigns in some places, and the rise of the administrative state. These changes have offered substantial improvements, but it is now time to reform the heart of the system: the election. Modern policy is too complex for there to be meaningful electoral accountability. Electoral capture is too easy and too important for powerful interests. So, what’s the alternative? Get rid of elections. Use lotteries to select political officials.
There is historical precedent for this kind of method, also referred to as ‘sortition’. There are also a number of academics who have argued for a role for lotteries in the selection of political officials, including C L R James, Oliver Dowlen, and Peter Stone. In ancient Athens, the birthplace of democracy, lottery-selection was used to choose political actors in three of its four major governmental institutions. Selection of political officials in late medieval and early renaissance Italy incorporated selection by lot. More recently, Citizens’ Assemblies (in which citizens were chosen at random to serve on the assembly, and in which citizens heard from experts prior to coming up with their own proposals) were used in the Netherlands to reform election law, and in Canada (in British Columbia and Ontario). Randomly chosen citizens were also brought into the process of constitutional reform in Iceland in 2010, but nothing of the scope that I am envisioning has been tried before.
There are hard questions about how exactly to structure a political system with lottery-selection at its heart. Here’s one approach, which I am in the process of developing, that I call lottocracy. The basic components are straightforward. First, rather than having a single, generalist legislature such as the United States Congress, the legislative function would be fulfilled by many different single-issue legislatures (each one focusing on, for example, just agriculture or health care). There might be 20 or 25 of these single-issue legislatures, perhaps borrowing existing divisions in legislative committees or administrative agencies: agriculture, commerce and consumer protection, education, energy, health and human services, housing and urban development, immigration, labour, transportation, etc.
People would not be required to serve if selected, but the financial incentive would be significant
These single-issue legislatures would be chosen by lottery from the political jurisdiction, with each single-issue legislature consisting of 300 people. Each person chosen would serve for a three-year term. Terms would be staggered so that each year 100 new people begin, and 100 people finish. All adult citizens in the political jurisdiction would be eligible to be selected. People would not be required to serve if selected, but the financial incentive would be significant, efforts would be made to accommodate family and work schedules, and the civic culture might need to be developed so that serving is seen as a significant civic duty and honour. In a normal year-long legislative session, the 300 people would develop an agenda of the legislative issue or two they would work on for that session, they’d hear from experts and stakeholders with respect to those issues, there would be opportunities for gathering community input and feedback, and they would eventually vote to enact legislation or alter existing legislation.
Single-issue focus is essential to allow greater learning and engagement with the particular problems, especially given the range of backgrounds that members would bring to the institutions, and the fact that these individuals would be amateurs at the particular task of creating legislation. Lottery-chosen representatives would have more time to learn about the problems they’re legislating than today’s typical representatives, who have to spend their time learning about every topic under the sun, while also constantly travelling, claiming credit, and raising funds to get re-elected. In the lottocratic system representatives will be — at least over a long enough run — descriptively and proportionately representative of the political community, simply because they have been chosen at random. But they will not have in mind the idea that they are to represent some particular constituency. Instead, they will be like better-informed versions of ourselves, coming from backgrounds like ours, but with the opportunity to learn and deliberate about the specific topic at hand.
No pure lottocratic system has ever existed, and so it’s important to note that much could go wrong. Randomly chosen representatives could prove to be incompetent or easily bewildered. Maybe a few people would dominate the discussions. Maybe the experts brought in to inform the policymaking would all be bought off and would convince us to buy the same corporate-sponsored policy we’re currently getting. There are hard design questions about how such a legislative system would interact with other branches of government, and questions about the coherence of policymaking, budgeting, taxation, and enforcement of policy. That said, it’s worth remembering the level of dysfunction that exists in the current system. We should be thinking about comparative improvement, not perfection, and a lottocratic system would have a number of advantages over the current model.
The most obvious advantage of lotteries is that they help to prevent corruption or undue influence in the selection of representatives. Because members are chosen at random and don’t need to run for office, there will be no way for powerful interests to influence who becomes a representative to ensure that the only viable candidates are those whose interests are congenial to their own. Because there is no need to raise funds for re-election, it should be easier to monitor representatives to ensure that they are not being bought off.
44 per cent of US Congresspersons have a net worth of more than $1 million; 82 per cent are male; 86 per cent are white, and more than half are lawyers or bankers
Another advantage of lotteries over elections is that they are likely to bring together a more cognitively diverse group of people, a group of people with a better sense of the full range of views and interests of the polity. Because individuals are chosen at random from the jurisdiction, they are much more likely to be an ideologically, demographically, and socio-economically representative sample of the people in the jurisdiction than those individuals who are capable of successfully running for office. As a point of comparison, 44 per cent of US Congresspersons have a net worth of more than $1 million; 82 per cent are male; 86 per cent are white, and more than half are lawyers or bankers. Recent empirical work by Scott Page and Lu Hong has demonstrated that cognitively diverse groups of people are likely to produce better decisions than smarter, or more skilled, groups that are cognitively homogenous.
Elections lead elected officials to focus on those problems for which they can claim credit for addressing, and to ignore or put on the back burner those problems with a longer horizon or those solutions for which it is harder to get credit. This negligence is made possible by voter ignorance and made inevitable by the perverse short-term incentives that elections provide. Lottery selection can help us to avoid this problem.
Perhaps the most urgent issue we face is climate change, a complex collective action problem that will almost certainly require a political solution to solve. But many of the worst effects of climate change won’t be realised for decades, and so |
. I should know; it was terrifying. I guess she must have been very subtle and stealthy about stalking me. That's a great quality in a ninja! Plus, she has magic eyes, and is almost certainly a girl. This is perfect."
Oblivious to his teammate's whirling thoughts, Naruto yelled, "Let's go back to Konoha!"
Later, in Konoha
While the ninja of Konoha do have a reputation for being far too trusting, they are not nearly idiotic enough to let a traitor back in without so much as a blink. So it was that Tsunade, Sasuke, Sakura and Naruto found themselves in a dimly lit room - usually used for interrogations - with an unconscious Inoichi Yamanaka.
Sakura, Naruto, and the Hokage made small talk. Sasuke, meanwhile, alternated between staring blankly and twitching. After several minutes, Inoichi released his mental hold on Sasuke and was back on his feet in an instant.
"So?" Tsunade demanded.
"My impression is that he is deeply psychologically disturbed – though not as much as I would have expected, considering his background. If Academy students were given proper psych evals, he never would have been fielded as a genin in the first place."
Tsunade snapped, "This isn't the time for one of your crusades, Inoichi."
Inoichi frowned but continued, "My apologies, Hokage-sama. Uchiha-san appears to have replaced all emotional responses with goal-oriented action. This would have begun as a coping mechanism, leaving him unable to focus on anything unrelated to his ultimate goal."
Kakashi arrived, mumbling something about a lost little girl and her cat. They all ignored him.
"Is he fit to remain an active-duty shinobi?" Tsunade asked.
Inoichi shrugged. "As long as he channels his madness into something constructive, we should be able to keep him as an eccentric but loyal ninja. Like Gai, whose tendencies have been mostly suppressed."
Kakashi nodded knowingly. He was well aware of his "eternal rival's" sordid past.
"What do we do now?" asked Sakura.
Inoichi said, "His current goal is positive so I'd suggest we leave him to it. We wouldn't be able to easily detain him with his current skill level. If we tried, the best case scenario is him fleeing and founding his clan in an enemy nation. In the worst case scenario, he snaps and keeps killing until there's no Konoha left except for him and whatever wives he manages to kidnap.
"We should be thankful he managed to switch goals, at all. He might have continued on a destructive rampage of revenge, lashing out at anything at all connected to the death of his clan.
"…In any case, he's already left."
Showing the unique blend of apathy and laziness that was surprisingly common among the Kage, Tsunade muttered something about paperwork and took off for the nearest bar. Inoichi was also rather nonchalant about the no-longer-missing-nin's whereabouts.
"He's more stable than most ninja," the blond explained as he disappeared into the twisting hallways of Konoha's T&I division.
That left Team 7 to find Sasuke. Kakashi promptly began his search in the pages of Icha Icha Paradise. Naruto raced to the nearest training grounds. Sakura took the five minute walk to the Uchiha District.
The girl hurried past broken-down buildings.
After the Uchiha massacre, the District had been left to fall apart. It had only grown more dilapidated during its last inhabitant's four year absence. Though it lay in the center of a bustling village, this place had long since died.
The silence of the abandoned street was broken by a steady pounding. The source of this noise was one Sasuke Uchiha, who was repeatedly hitting a dark orange roof with a hammer.
"Sasuke-kun, what are you doing?"
"Fixing the roof."
"Oh…" A very loud crack echoed through the street as a roof tile split in half.
"Do you know how to fix a roof?"
Sasuke stared at the hammer. "…Not exactly. I'm sure I'll get the hang of it."
Quick to change the subject before her ex(?)-teammate put another hole in the roof – Sakura remarked, "It's a shame that the village let this place fall apart. You'd think Tsunade-sensei would be worried about disrespecting the dead or hazardous debris or something."
Her statement was punctuated by another crack. Sakura winced. "There has to be room in the budget for a roofer, at least!"
"I'm sure that, when you're Rokudaime, you'll do a much better job," Sasuke reassured her.
"What? I don't want to be Hokage!"
Sasuke flashed a smile that should never be found anywhere but underneath Gai and Lee's bowl cut bangs. "Don't give up on your dream, Sakura. I just accomplished one of mine and I'm still riding the high."
"I…but…Naruto's the one who wants to be Hokage."
"That's ridiculous. If Naruto wanted to be Hokage, why didn't he ever attend class at the Academy? Or study for the final exam? He didn't even seem all that gung-ho about becoming a ninja."
Sakura paused. "Why would he become a ninja if he didn't want to?"
"Aren't all orphans ninja?"
"I don't…think so?"
"Besides, Naruto would be a terrible Hokage."
"Eh?"
"He's constantly rushing in without a plan, doesn't have the attention span for paperwork, and has no understanding of diplomacy. The clans would be calling for his resignation within the week."
"No they…okay, maybe the Hyuuga would be, and I don't really know the other clan heads. Except Ino's dad, he seems nice. But, really, Naruto would last longer than a…Sasuke?"
The Uchiha was no longer on the battered roof. A quick glance informed her that he wasn't on any of the surrounding roofs, either.
"Not again," Sakura groaned. She allowed her eyes to roam across the street, but the Uchiha was nowhere to be found. Finally, her gaze came to rest on the Hokage Mountain. "Me, Hokage? As if!"
Sure, she could have kept looking, but she'd spent enough time chasing Sasuke Uchiha. He was home, now, and no longer her responsibility. Sakura Haruno left the Uchiha District with a smile.
Hiashi Hyuuga leapt to his feet when an unfamiliar ninja jumped through the window of his office. His eyes narrowed, and his Byakugan flared to life. "Who are you?"
"Sasuke Uchiha."
"The missing-nin?!"
"I'm not a missing-nin. Why does everyone think that?" Sasuke sighed and shook his head. There was something seriously wrong with Konoha's espionage network.
Hiashi barked, "Guards!"
Three Branch members shuffled in. "Yes, sir?"
"Why is there a missing-nin in my office?"
"He isn't technically a missing-nin, sir. The Hokage pardoned him earlier."
Hiashi said, "That's great information, information that you would have passed on earlier if you were anywhere close to competent. It still doesn't explain how he got past all three of you and into my office."
"We don't know sir!" cried one.
The second said, "It's like he came out of nowhere."
The third nodded in agreement.
Hiashi glared. "Explain."
Sasuke said "I applied three genjutsu, scaled the wall, and crawled through the grass."
"If you were trying to kill me-"
Sasuke interrupted him. "If I was trying to kill you, you'd be dead. Besides, I'm sure you could have stopped me if you wanted to. You can see through my techniques with your doujutsu."
"Then why bother sneaking in?" Hiashi asked.
Baffled, Sasuke replied, "I'm a ninja."
Hiashi sighed and waved away the other Hyuuga. He deactivated his Byakugan and sat behind his desk, turning to Sasuke with an imperious eyebrow raised.
"What do you want?"
"To marry your younger daughter."
"Unacceptable," Hiashi said, "Hanabi is only twelve."
Sasuke frowned. "Not your youngest daughter, your younger daughter. The middle one. She was in my class."
"I only have two daughters."
"That's a terrible thing to say," Sasuke admonished. "What about that brunette who fought Naruto in the Chuunin exams? Nana or something?"
"Neji," Hiashi said.
"Right. I want the one that's younger than Neji."
"And you wish to marry my daughter…why, exactly?"
Sasuke said, "She's an awesome ninja with a doujutsu; I'm an awesome ninja with doujutsu. These things stack, right?"
"Not necessarily."
Sasuke ignored him. "Right! So can I have her?"
"No."
"Oh, come on. You have three heirs!"
"Two."
"That's a lot of heirs."
Hiashi paused. The boy was an idiot, undoubtedly, but he had a point. The Hyuuga Council didn't like ambiguity in succession. If Hinata hadn't been so deeply incompetent, Hanabi would have taken the Cage Bird Seal years ago, a fate he wished his favorite daughter to avoid. "That is not entirely untrue."
"So can I have her? I'll teach you guys the Grand Fireball Jutsu."
"Why would the Hyuuga want that?"
"It sets things on fire," Sasuke said. Was that not obvious?
"That is the most pathetic bribe I have ever been offered."
Sasuke sighed. Clearly, Hiashi Hyuuga drove a hard bargain. "You can also have the Chidori."
Hiashi contemplated his options. Yes, the boy's bargaining was moronic, but he offered more than he knew.
When Hanabi achieved Chuunin – which could take as little as a year – he would be forced to seal one of his daughters. If Hinata was married into an outside clan of equal power, she would be safe and Hiashi could pass it off as a political move: with Hinata as matriarch, the fledgling Uchiha Clan would remain firmly under Hyuuga control. Beyond that, she had always been docile, better suited to a housewife than a leader.
"I will speak to Hinata," Hiashi said.
"Who?"
"The one you asked to marry."
"Oh," Sasuke said, nodding. The Chidori was a powerful bargaining tool, indeed.
"Now, if you will…" Hiashi paused. "Guards, where did the Uchiha go?"
"We're not sure, sir."
"Wonderful," Hiashi grumbled.
Tsunade leaned over her desk, eyes serious. "This will be classified as an S-rank mission since there is one hundred percent certainty of encountering an S-class ninja. By distracting Sasuke Uchiha and keeping him reasonably grounded in reality, we will avoid a disaster on par with the Uchiha Massacre. This is of vital importance to the village. Do you understand that?"
Hinata gulped. "Yes, Hokage-sama."
"Because it's so important, I don't want you going into this unwillingly. If you can't dedicate yourself to this mission, it's doomed to failure. Is there anything that would keep you from marrying Sasuke Uchiha?" Tsunade asked.
"I…I, um," Hinata stuttered.
"Yes?"
She couldn't…She didn't want to disappoint her father or the Hokage, and Sasuke wasn't that bad, she didn't think. But if there was even the smallest chance that Naruto could love her back…
"Yatta!" Naruto cried, bursting through the window like a proper ninja.
"N-Naruto?" Hinata stuttered.
"I was listening at the window," he declared. "You can't marry Sasuke."
An awestruck smile spread across her face. This was just like a dream. She whispered, "I can't?"
Naruto continued, "…unless I get to be best man!"
Hinata's heart broke into a thousand pieces. Her eyes settled upon a friendly patch of wall. It was brown…and nice, nicely brown.
She momentarily returned to reality when Naruto grabbed her shoulders, blue eyes taking up her whole world. He was so beautiful…
"So can I? Can I please? Please? Please?" he whined.
Blankly, Hinata nodded. "Okay."
"That's great! I'm gonna go tell Sasuke. We can talk about it over ramen. I love ramen!"
"Okay." Hinata gazed out the window. It looked like it might rain. How sad.
The blonde clambered out the window, shouting goodbyes which she couldn't hear over the sound of her heartbeat. It was like kunai throwing practice inside her ears. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. Was it always that loud?
"You're taking the mission, then?" Tsunade asked.
Hinata nodded, smiling dazedly at the Hokage. "Okay."
Naruto scoured the Uchiha District, searching every alleyway, police station, shop, and home. Finally, he found Sasuke in the largest house.
"Sasuke, I'm going to be your best man!" Naruto said.
"That's nice, Naruto," Sasuke muttered. He leaned over a table, squinting down at an enormous scroll. On it, dozens of names were scrawled, connected by a mess of lines.
"Sasuke? Saaasuke?!" Naruto frowned. Sasuke was ignoring him again. That was terrible behavior for a best friend.
Grinning mischievously, he said, "I was talking to Hinata about your wedding, and we were thinking the theme could be pink with lots of little hearts…"
He glanced at Sasuke, who scribbled down something else on the scroll.
"…and we were thinking we would invite Itachi because he was such a great older brother…"
Still no response. Grumbling, Sasuke hastily scratched out his latest addition to the rapidly filling scroll. Naruto furrowed his brow.
"…and then we decided that, since the Hyuuga Clan is so big and stuff, we should just get rid of the Uchiha Clan."
Sasuke's head jerked up, Sharingan activated. "What was that about the Uchiha Clan?"
Naruto chuckled nervously. "Eh, heh, heh. Nothing important. So, what are you doing, Sasuke?"
"I'm devising a genealogy."
"Huh?"
Sasuke sighed. Did every conversation with Naruto have to lead to explaining a basic facet of the universe?
"The Uchiha Clan won't be properly revived until the Sharingan starts showing up, again. I'm marking down my children, their spouses, their children, and so on for the next five generations or so. I'm here, at the top, and my future wife is to my right."
"Oh," Naruto said, leaning over. "Who're all these other girls?"
"Those are my mistresses."
"What?! You can't have mistresses!"
Sasuke frowned. "Why not?"
"Because you're marrying Hinata!"
"Yes, exactly, and she has a doujutsu. I need to have children with other people, just in case ours are born without eyes, or something."
"Could that happen?" Naruto asked.
Sasuke shrugged. "Maybe. Bloodlines are weird like that."
"But won't Hinata be upset?"
"Why would she be upset? This way, she doesn't have to have fifty children."
"Fifty?"
"Possibly sixty."
Naruto tried a different tack. "You put Ino down as one of your mistresses."
"Yeah, so?"
"Is she okay with that?"
Sasuke stared a hole through Naruto, tomoe swirling. "Ino is president of the Sasuke Uchiha Fan Club."
"Right. Stupid question."
Sasuke refrained from mentioning that all of Naruto's questions were stupid. No need to discourage progress, after all.
Naruto said, "What about these ones? You didn't even give them names!"
Several of the spaces were, indeed, filled with Fangirl #1 through #7.
"Look, Naruto, I had a lot of fangirls back in the Academy. I can't be expected to remember all their names. Sure, there was Ino, Hinata, Shikamaru, you…"
"I wasn't one of your fangirls!"
Sasuke raised an eyebrow. "Naruto, you kissed me at graduation."
"Accidentally!"
Sasuke left him to his denial. "Either way, I'm sure it can't be that hard to find them."
Naruto's eyes widened. "Wait a minute! You aren't taking Sakura, too, are you?"
"No. You're the one who's marrying Sakura," Sasuke said.
"I am?" Naruto asked. Sasuke sighed – yet another stupid question.
He gestured towards the scroll. "Yeah, you need to have at least six kids or this won't work at all."
"…Really?" Naruto's usual grin grew even wider, which really shouldn't have been possible in Sasuke's opinion. It was mildly disturbing.
He placed a hand on the blond's shoulder. "Believe it, Naruto."
A/N (again): As much as I love Hinata, I've found that I love torturing her more. Also, while I consider this a one-shot, there may be a sequel. Thanks for reading, reviewing, following, favoriting, and generally existing!Looking for news you can trust?
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For most of my career, I was blessed with bosses who almost never insisted on holding breakfast meetings. I hated them and rarely found them very productive because half the group was still trying to rub the sleep out of their eyes. Today, Paul Krugman provides his own theory of breakfast meetings, based on his stint at the CEA in 1982:
I can understand why busy, productive people might sometimes want to meet at 7 AM. But what soon became completely clear was that the people who insisted on those early meetings were precisely the least competent and productive guys — the economics team at the NSC, which was totally hopeless in the Reagan years, the team at Agriculture (ditto), and so on. (No offense to current personnel, who I hope are in a completely different class; there were a lot of really strange people allegedly doing economics in the early Reagan period.) It was hard not to conclude that they were making a show of being incredibly busy and hard-working; they probably went back to their offices after breakfast and read Ayn Rand novels or something. Meanwhile, people at USTR and the Fed, who really did know what they were doing, showed no similar fetish.
Perhaps it’s not a coincidence that for most of my career I was also blessed with bosses who were pretty competent folks.Apple's making a lot of design tweaks for OS X Yosemite — its desktop operating system's next big release — and one of the biggest is the system font, which it'll change for the first time since OS X was released. Yosemite changes the font from Lucida Grande to something from the famous Helvetica Neue family, which lends to the thin and clean design style that Apple's been favoring lately. When Yosemite is released next fall, you'll start seeing it pretty much everywhere across the OS, from the menu bar to app windows.
Helvetica Neue also debuted as the iPhone and iPad's system font in iOS 7 last year. With Apple placing a big focus on consistency between platforms today, it makes plenty of sense to see it cross over to the desktop. Perhaps more importantly though, Apple's touting the change as a boon for legibility. It says that the new font looks great on high-definition displays — and with Retina screens making their way from iOS devices to the Mac, Apple will soon need a font that looks its best even on close examination.
Aaron Souppouris contributed to this report.Major League Baseball continues to hit home runs on the business side of the industry. With the year nearly complete, the league can report that gross revenues increased $500 million for 2015, marking the 13th consecutive year MLB has seen record growth. While exact figures are not released, the league will enter 2016 with revenues approaching $9.5 billion.
Growth for baseball continued around media rights and other facets. While there continues to be talk of the media rights bubble bursting, dividends continue to come in. As an example, the Philadelphia Phillies saw rights fees increase from $25 million annually to $100 million as part of their new $2.4-3 billion deal.
In terms of fan apparel, retail sales of MLB merchandise exceeded $3 billion annually according to The Licensing Letter.
New sponsorships added to the league’s coffers. All told, these new sponsorships reached in 2015 have total contract value over the life of the deals of $225-$275 million.
MLB Advanced Media had more than 3.5 million subscribers to its suite of digital products last year, including MLB.TV and the MLB.com At Bat mobile application. MLB.com At Bat, the highest-grossing iOS sports app of all-time, was downloaded 11 million times in 2014, surpassing its previous record of 10 million downloads set in 2013.
MLB’s attendance of approximately 74 million fans in 2014 was seventh highest ever. The last ten years have been the ten most attended seasons in baseball history.The self-appointed culture police are at it again. Indonesia’s hard-line Muslims are promising to block American singer Lady Gaga from taking to the stage during a scheduled June 3 performance in Jakarta. Among their many complaints are that the pop diva is a danger to children.
In threatening to mobilize 30,000 people, the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) also described the hottest artist in contemporary music as vulgar, very dangerous and argued that her sense of dress were threatening to a child’s sense of morality.
About 25,000 concert tickets have already been sold and threats to intercept Lady Gaga at the airport have sparked an angry backlash on social media from her fans, known as Little Monsters.
So far, her tour –the Born This Way Ball – of Asia, Australia and New Zealand has prompted small protests from Christian groups in South Korea and the Philippines, but Lady Gaga has stuck to her mantra and refused to tone down her provocative performances.
A spokesperson for the FPI went so far as to tell reporters: “Lady Gaga insults all religions. Even Christians in Korea opposed her. She is promoting the worship of Satan.”
Unsurprisingly, Lady Gaga hasn’t included Malaysia on her global tour. Over there, Islamic hot heads with grievances over Western art forms have been even more tyrannical in demanding others conform to their sense of piety, with the government often acceding to their whims.
In 2006, a concert by a Norwegian black metal band was banned after officials took a dislike to their slogan “Bringing hell to your doorstep,” which was interpreted as a type of satanic worship. Other acts to feel the branding iron of intimidating Malaysian officials include Madonna, Brittany Spears, The Black Eyed Peas, and Enrique Iglesias.
More than 45 songs have been censored or banned in Malaysia since 2010, among them seven songs from Lady Gaga herself, including her worldwide hit Bad Romance.
As far as moralistic killjoys go, the FPI rank among the best. They’ve also been described by the International Crisis Group as an “urban thug organization,” and according to the U.S. embassy via cables released through WikiLeaks, the FPI receives funding through the local police.
With a population of 240 million spread over 12,000 islands, Indonesia has won widespread praise for its handling of Islamic militancy throughout the War on Terror.
It has also shown a mature reluctance to bow to any of the many extreme demands often made by a firebrand clergy within the FPI, which pretends to speak for all. Gaga’s fans won’t be the only ones hope the Indonesian authorities allow her fans to enjoy what is, after all, just a pop concert.A five-year-old Syrian boy "miraculously" survived being hit by a stray bullet in his home after his father rushed him across the border to a field hospital in Israel.
Father and son were in their living room at home in southern Syria when a gun fight erupted outside. The five-year-old boy dived for cover and was hit in the face.
"I decided to run to the border and try and save his life, because everyone knows there is a field hospital there," the father said.
The boy was initially treated for bleeding and later transferred to Rambam hospital in Haifa in Israel.
Surgeons managed to remove the bullet from the child's neck, situated millimetres from the main blood vessels, in a delicate operation lasting several hours.
The five-year-old cannot be identified due to fears his life will be in danger if it is discovered he has been treated in Israel, considered an enemy state in Syria.
"It's a miracle that he is alive", Dr Karam, one of the doctors at the Rambam hospital who treated the boy, told the Telegraph. "The bullet had a very strange trajectory; it probably entered through his left cheek, through his mouth, beneath the tongue and went to the right side of the neck, landing on the main artery."
"I was very afraid to tell the doctors to go ahead with the operation, because they told me there was a risk my son could die as the bullet was in such a sensitive place," the father said. "But I decided to give him a chance and go ahead with the operation."
He added: "It may seem strange to you, but I feel like I'm on holiday here. I come from a war zone and suddenly I find myself in such a quiet place."
Southern Syria, particularly areas near the Israeli border, has witnessed intense fighting in recent weeks as rebels and forces fighting for president Bashar al-Assad struggle to gain control over the strategically important Quneitra area.
Since the conflict began in 2011, more than 190,000 people have been killed, with hundreds of thousands more injured and displaced. Around 1,200 Syrians have been treated in Israel.The prevailing narrative among the pundits, including more than a few experienced Middle East hands, is that while the Israelis and Palestinians may have sent their negotiators to Washington to placate Mr. Kerry, neither side appears remotely prepared to make the hard calls needed to cement a lasting peace.
Some experts argue that it may be risky even to try.
“The existence of talks can have a calming effect while they continue, and if they continue for several months can get us through the U.N. General Assembly without bitter Israeli-Palestinian confrontations,” said Elliott Abrams, who was a senior official on President George W. Bush’s National Security Council.
“But I see no realistic possibility that a final status agreement can be reached now,” Mr. Abrams said. “I just hope there are two State Department teams: one to work on the talks, and the other to start planning for what to do when they fail. We should not only try to avoid a crash landing, but see if the talks can be used to advance Israeli-Palestinian economic and security cooperation.”
In recent weeks, Mr. Kerry and his aides have outlined several basic arguments for why his efforts might bear fruit. Perhaps the most important one, which Mr. Kerry advanced almost the moment he was picked for the State Department post, is that the United States does not have the luxury of staying on the sidelines.
With the Palestinians poised to take their claim for statehood to the International Criminal Court and United Nations bodies, American officials say the two sides were facing a downward spiral in which the Israelis would respond by cutting off financing to the Palestinian territories and European nations might curtail their investment in Israel, further isolating the Israelis.WHEN the long, grim history of Christianity’s disappearance from the Middle East is written, Ted Cruz’s performance last week at a conference organized to highlight the persecution of his co-religionists will merit at most a footnote. But sometimes a footnote can help illuminate a tragedy’s unhappy whole.
For decades, the Middle East’s increasingly beleaguered Christian communities have suffered from a fatal invisibility in the Western world. And their plight has been particularly invisible in the United States, which as a majority-Christian superpower might have been expected to provide particular support.
There are three reasons for this invisibility. The political left in the West associates Christian faith with dead white male imperialism and does not come naturally to the recognition that Christianity is now the globe’s most persecuted religion. And in the Middle East the Israel-Palestine question, with its colonial overtones, has been the left’s great obsession, whereas the less ideologically convenient plight of Christians under Islamic rule is often left untouched.
To America’s strategic class, meanwhile, the Middle East’s Christians simply don’t have the kind of influence required to matter. A minority like the Kurds, geographically concentrated and well-armed, can be a player in the great game, a potential United States ally. But except in Lebanon, the region’s Christians are too scattered and impotent to offer much quid for the superpower’s quo. So whether we’re pursuing stability by backing the anti-Christian Saudis or pursuing transformation by toppling Saddam Hussein (and unleashing the furies on Iraq’s religious minorities), our policy makers have rarely given Christian interests any kind of due.CLOSE A new study argues that New Zealand is part of a mostly submerged continent called 'Zealandia.' Matt Hoffman reports. Buzz60
In February 2017, researchers determined Zealandia, a piece of land east of Australia, qualifies as a continent despite the fact that 94 percent of it is under water. (Photo: Nick Mortimer and colleagues, GSA Today)
Another week, another newly discovered continent.
Researchers determined a piece of land just east of Australia qualifies as a continent called, "Zealandia." The news comes days after scientists unearthed evidence of an ancient lost continent, "Mauritia."
The boot-shaped region, about the size of greater India, contains New Zealand and New Caledonia, an island to the north. Most of Zealandia, about 94% of it, is submerged underwater, according to the findings published earlier this week by The Geological Society of America.
A team of New Zealand-based researchers made the discovery, which they described as a "gradual realization" based on reassessing years of data. The researchers tested Zealandia's attributes against four characteristics common to continents. They concluded Zealandia "is not a collection of partly submerged continental fragments" but rather, is a "coherent" continent.
More: Forget Atlantis: 'Lost continent' found under Mauritius
The discovery is significant not only because it's evidence of a new continent, but it will allow scientists to delve further into the break-up of the continental crust. Zealandia was once part of the supercontinent Gondwana, before separating in the Late Cretaceous period.
The research stated "Zealandia illustrates that the large and the obvious in natural science can be overlooked."
A map of the world including Zealandia. (Photo: Nick Mortimer and colleagues, GSA Today)
Follow Sean Rossman on Twitter: @SeanRossman
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2lrOy2tThe Eleventh Battle of the Isonzo was a World War I battle fought by the Italian and Austro-Hungarian Armies on the Italian Front between 18 August and 12 September 1917.
Background [ edit ]
On the Soča (Isonzo) River, Luigi Cadorna, the Italian Chief of Staff, concentrated three quarters of his troops: 600 battalions (52 divisions) with 5,200 guns.
Battle [ edit ]
The attack was carried forth from a front from Tolmin (in the upper Isonzo valley) to the Adriatic Sea. The Italians crossed the river at several points on temporary bridges, but the main effort was exerted on the Banjšice Plateau, whose capture was to further the offensive and break the Austro-Hungarian lines in two segments, isolating the strongholds of Mount Saint Gabriel and Mount Hermada.
After fierce and deadly fightings, the Italian Second Army, led by General Capello, pushed back Boroević's Isonzo Armee, conquering the Bainsizza and Mount Santo. Other positions were taken by the Duke of Aosta's Third Army.
However, Mount Saint Gabriel and Mount Hermada turned out to be impregnable, and the offensive wore out.
After the battle, the Austro-Hungarians were exhausted, and could not have withstood another attack. So were the Italians, who could not find the resources necessary for another assault, even though it might have been the decisive one. So the final result of the battle was an inconclusive bloodbath. Moreover, the end of the battle left the Italian Second Army (until then the most successful of the Italian Armies) split in two parts across the Soča (Isonzo), a weak point that proved to be decisive in the subsequent Twelfth Battle of the Isonzo.
To commemorate the participation of the Royal Bavarian Infantry Lifeguards Regiment, Georg Fürst wrote the March "Isonzo-Marsch". The Italians fired 5.5 million artillery shells during the battle, including poison gas shells.[1]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
^ Faldella, Emilio: La grande guerra, vol. I, Milan 1978, pp. 274.
Further reading [ edit ]
Schindler, John R. (2001). Isonzo: The Forgotten Sacrifice of the Great War. Praeger. ISBN 0275972046. OCLC 44681903.
Coordinates:Private manufactures enthuse that its like having an extra police officer in every patrol car while saving on personnel costs. Opponents of excessive government intrusion warn it will allow law enforcement to spy on innocent people by tracking their whereabouts.
Automatic license-plate readers enable police to rapidly verify that passing motorists arent behind the wheel of a stolen vehicle or dont have outstanding warrants. Motorola Inc. unveiled a major public safety initiative last month in which company officials envisioned four separate license-plate readers aiming in different directions someday being affixed to the outside of all squad cars. The company for several years now has capitalized on large, post-Sept. 11 investments made by government agencies in new emergency communications systems and other enhanced security equipment.
While plate readers are less visible than public video cameras in the debate over probing surveillance technology, theyre perhaps even more powerfully tempting to law enforcement: Motorola claims the devices can read up to 5,000 plates during an eight-hour shift. Software compares information sucked up by the readers to electronic lists of cars reported stolen and warrants that are outstanding.
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Officers would otherwise have to manually check such information and cover just a fraction of the license plates they come into contact with while on the beat. Police in Long Beach, Calif., Motorola says, made 50 arrests, identified nearly 1,000 stolen or lost license plates and seized 275 stolen vehicles in just six months. The readers can also put a quick stop to motorists evading a pesky traffic ticket or four that theyve allowed to languish without attention for months.
Police are required to do virtually nothing when plate readers are in operation. The system is automatic and notifies the officer when a suspect vehicle is identified among thousands being scanned, presenting him or her with an image of the car and its plate, plus details about why the driver deserves scrutiny.
Legally speaking, license-plate readers are not unlike what law enforcers do every day, confirming automobile registration and other information the government already retains electronically. In other words, on their surface the readers dont seem to resemble a new Orwellian monster in which the most sensitive personal information about yourself is stockpiled in massive data systems.
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August 12, 2010The Obama administration on Friday attempted to bat down charges that it is playing a “shell game” with various intelligence powers.
In the course of a court hearing on a long-running lawsuit over the National Security Agency’s (NSA) collection powers, conservative legal gadfly Larry Klayman accused the government of switching up the legal justifications it uses to gather Americans’ data.
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The NSA “played a shell game,” Klayman said. As soon as scrutiny mounted on one program to collect Americans’ phone records, he alleged, it quickly switched to an alternate surveillance mechanism to stay one step ahead.
Given the government’s past of “lying to the American people,” the verbacious lawyer said, “we cannot expect that with [one portion of the Patriot Act] allegedly being modified... [government officials] are going to obey it.”
Lawyers for the administration shot back.
“There is no shell game,” Justice Department lawyer Rodney Patton said.
Klayman’s partially successful lawsuit against the Obama administration over the NSA in 2013 helped lead to congressional reforms ending its controversial bulk collection of Americans’ phone records last year.
District court Judge Richard Leon called the program “almost Orwellian” in 2013, though a federal appeals court later overturned that ruling after Congress acted.
Now the case has stalled at the lower court level. Klayman has asked the government to pay damages for its past spying.
He has also expanded the case to cover the NSA’s controversial “PRISM” surveillance program, through which the government nabs data from major Internet companies such as Facebook and Google. The program is meant to solely target foreigners, who have fewer privacy rights than Americans under U.S. law.
But on Friday, Klayman pointed to a 2014 letter in which the nation’s top intelligence official, James Clapper, acknowledged that it used the program to collect data about Americans.
Klayman’s case has also evolved into a class-action lawsuit against the Obama administration over the NSA’s spying.
During Friday’s arguments, Justice Department lawyers appeared quick to dismiss his attempts to expand the case.
“There simply are no” damages owed to Klayman “at all,” Patton said.
He urged Leon, who is still presiding over the case, to “trim” Klayman’s allegations to focus solely on the NSA’s past collection of phone records under the Patriot Act.
Expanding the case to include a class-action aspect is “claim splitting,” Patton said, “and it’s prohibited.”
Klayman’s suit personally names President Obama, former NSA Director Keith Alexander and other government officials. However, he has failed to properly serve them notice, Justice Department lawyer Jim Whitman claimed.
"There’s been no attempt to properly serve |
and more jet fighters than the British Royal Air Force.
Japan buys a mix of imports and locally made weapons for its Self Defense Forces. Japanese industry produces world-class destroyers and submarines and some of the best armored vehicles in the world, in addition to other high-tech military hardware.
The Air Self Defense Forces have even ditched the standard American AIM-120 air-to-air missile in favor of the locally built AAM-4B, one of only two missiles in the world with a built-in electronic array homing radar, which boosts range and lethality.
But for all its industrial prowess, for nearly 70 years Tokyo hasn’t exported a single tank, ship, plane or other major weapon system.
That’s changing. Today Japan is taking steps to join the global community of high-tech arms merchants that includes the United States, Russia, China, Germany, France and a dozen other advanced nations.“I learned more about Israel in these five days in Palestine than in any other trips I’ve made.”
Mondoweiss is excited to share our first foray into the world of print, Phil Weiss’s reportage from Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.
“The World the Settlers Made” tells the story of five days in January 2016 that Phil Weiss spent immersed in the world of Israeli settlers. The experience gave him a vivid, immediate experience of their daily lives, and a greater understanding of their worldview. His writing here undertakes to convey to the rest of us the blinders—and the insights—of those he visited.
“The World the Settlers Made” includes 21 pages of Phil’s reports from the occupied territories, along with exclusive new material and original photography.
This book is now available for sale, and is an exciting extension of Mondoweiss’s thought-provoking and unique reporting. We hope to expand this line by publishing future collections of Mondoweiss highlights to bring our work to a wider audience.
For orders of 20 or more copies use the discount code “bulkorder” for a 15% discount. Orders will ship via USPS within 5 business days.
Order “The World the Settlers Made” here:War changes you, and in the case of the protagonist of Gemini Cell, the new novel by Myke Cole, the changes are more drastic than they are for others. But as drastic as they are, they have their root in a common affliction for those who have gone into combat. Cole explains below.
MYKE COLE:
When you sign up for a hitch in the military, you understand that you might get hurt. Warfighters exist to kill people and destroy property, that’s what they do. You’re ready for privation, for injury.
But it’s one thing to suffer. It’s another thing to change.
You tell yourself that won’t happen. Sure, you may experience horror, but you know who you are. After months in the suck, you take pride in maintaining your sense of self. War is hell, but you haven’t let it make you into a demon.
Then you come home, and something’s off.
It’s in the little ripples you make in the world, the complex web of interactions that extends from the store clerk who bags your groceries to your own spouse and children. You’ve had this experience, and even though you lived through it, it broke something lose inside you, something that can never be put back. The isolation grows and you realize with dawning horror that you have changed in a way that those who’ve never gone to war haven’t, that the change is permanent, that it separates you from everyone else, even those you love the most, forever.
This chasm, this permanent isolation is what we call PTSD, and it’s the big idea behind Gemini Cell.
Warfighters don’t have a monopoly on PTSD. It affects everyone who experiences trauma, from victims of abuse to those raised in poverty, but Gemini Cell is a book about a warfighter, and it’s that brand of PTSD I’m focusing on here.
The protagonist, James Schweitzer, is killed on an op. The story would normally end there, but Schweitzer is summoned back from the dead and put back on the line serving his country. Death has given Schweitzer a lot of advantages: near-immortality, super strength and speed, heightened senses, but it’s also permanently cut him off from the people he once loved and lived alongside. Schweitzer is still a man in every sense save one: he lacks a beating heart.
That’s enough.
Schweitzer left a wife and son behind, and his efforts to reunite with them throw his permanent change into stark relief. The dead can be reanimated, but they can’t be brought back to life. Schweitzer may be able to rejoin his family, but he can never be a husband and father again, not like he was.
Schweitzer’s unlife is a pretty bald stand-in for life with PTSD, the permanent shift that sets you apart from those you love. The challenge of first accepting the change, then charting a new course, a way forward now that the goal posts have all moved, is enormous. For many, it’s insurmountable. It is as if, dead, you walk among the living, who must force a smile and pretend that nothing is wrong.
Many return from war superpowered, able to complete challenging tasks under immense pressure. They are stronger and fitter, undaunted by the fear of death that they have faced so many times. They are disciplined and focused. They get up early. They notice things others might have missed. But these benefits only serve to set them further apart. The loved ones they left behind still want to sleep in, still want to spend their Saturday nights at the loud rock concerts with drumrolls that sound far too much like gunfire.
Those returning from war find themselves swimming upstream, having to navigate job markets that have no use for those whose primary occupation is killing people and destroying property. They are forced to grapple with a world that suddenly has too many choices, a world that looks and smells and sounds familiar, but no longer makes any sense.
It may seem as impossible as a dead man rejoining the living, but military service members do impossible things all the time. The skills that set the warfighter apart in the first place are the same skills they must leverage to cope with being set apart. You can never return life to how it was, but a new life can be built, and it may not be until many years down the road that you realize that it is better than the one you left behind.
Raised from the dead, Schweitzer has plenty of work to do. He must serve on his nation’s front line against a resurgence of magic that threatens to bring destruction to all. But his toughest challenge is in finding a way to exist in a world where he shouldn’t, where his every step is a violation of natural law.
It won’t be easy, but it’s not surprising. This is war, and war is hell.
—-
Gemini Cell: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Indiebound|Powell’s
Visit the author’s blog. Follow him on Twitter.Daniel Schwindt, Catholic Social Teaching: A New Synthesis, Rerum Novarum to Laudato Si’. 2015. $16.95, paper. Available from Amazon.com
Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical on the condition of workers—de conditione opificum—usually known by its opening words, Rerum novarum, gave a tremendous impetus to Catholic interest in the just ordering of society. Until Leo wrote his landmark encyclical Catholics had been divided among themselves as to how best to respond to the new socio-economic conditions introduced by both capitalism and industrialism. For, in the words of Leo himself, “the growth of industry, and the surprising discoveries of science; the changed relations of masters and workmen; the enormous fortunes of individuals and the poverty of the masses,” had brought about not just a new kind of civilization in Europe and other parts of the world, but a social crisis as well. Some Catholics looked to the medieval social order for ideas on how to respond to this, others were mesmerized by nineteenth century liberalism’s empty promises of prosperity based on the supposed magical working of free markets. Leo’s encyclical created more harmony among Catholics as he set forth the fundamental principles which should guide thinking on socio-economic matters. Forty years later Pius XI issued his encyclical Quadragesimo Anno, in which the pontiff elaborated more fully the kind of social order demanded by justice and charity. In the decades following Quadragesimo Anno numerous Catholics concerned with the social order attempted to synthesize the riches of papal social teaching and show how that teaching might be applied to the contemporary world. The number of such studies reflected the seriousness with which Catholics took both the teaching of the Church and the need to have her voice heard in the public arena. But as Catholics increasingly ceased to heed the voice of the Roman pontiffs and at the same time embraced one or other of the political blocs that constitute secular society, such studies and presentations of Catholic social teaching became rarer. It is true that some Catholics, such as those associated with the Acton Institute, vigorously advocate for what they call Catholic principles, but sadly their presentation of Catholic teaching is simply a distortion of what the Church teaches, made in support of secular political goals, or even worse, of the interests of corporations and the rich.
Happily, however, we are beginning to return to the days of the 1930s when so many Catholics did champion the authentic social teaching of the Church. Both online and in print there is probably more exposition of social doctrine today than there has been since the early 1950s. Daniel Schwindt’s new book, Catholic Social Teaching: A New Synthesis, Rerum Novarum to Laudato Si’, is an effort to present the entire sweep of Catholic social teaching since Leo XIII began to show how the social principles which the Church has always held could be applied to modern capitalist economies. Schwindt does not limit himself to economic questions, however, for Catholic social teaching necessarily includes a certain understanding of human nature and of the political order, and extends to such matters as care for the environment and war and peace. Schwindt’s book loosely follows the structure of the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, issued by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace in 2004.
Schwindt’s purpose in writing “is to inject the truths of the Christian tradition into the ocean of incoherence in which the modern man is forced to live—to beat back the waters of confusion and ignorance, even if only a little, and give him the opportunity to breath [sic] the clean air of Catholic doctrine.” He begins by rooting the Church’s social doctrine in the Old Testament jubilee year, when according to God’s command debts were to be forgiven, land returned to its original owner, and slaves freed. Although the jubilee year was an institution of the old law, it nevertheless witnesses clearly to the fact that God’s commandments concern men not merely as individuals, but that the health and justice of the social order have always been part of his dealings with mankind.
After that the author posits some fundamental principles which are necessary for both an understanding and a ready acceptance of the Church’s social teaching. These include such theological principles as that grace presupposes nature, the co-existence and mutual roles of Church and State, and the fact that the Church is concerned “both with protecting [her] eternal and unchanging teachings…, and with providing appropriate adaptations, interpretations, and, when necessary, re-interpretations, for each historical period.” Without such an approach, her social doctrine would be either a museum piece or something as ephemeral as the platform of a political party.
Because of its central importance to the contemporary Church, Schwindt discusses specifically the place of the Second Vatican Council in Catholic thought and life. In this reviewer’s opinion he greatly overstates the situation when he writes that people
tend to take one of two positions…: either Vatican II was an illegitimate compromise with the modernist heresy, and therefore all post-conciliar popes are “pretenders” and heretics themselves; or else the Council represents a “coming around” of the Church to modern ways, which it had until then been obstinately and wrongly opposed.
But surely there are many Catholics who embrace neither of these extremes, who regard the Council as legitimate, and seek to interpret its documents in the light of Catholic tradition. Schwindt, in his discussion of the conciliar document, Dignitatis Humanae, that follows, gives a good example of how a faithful Catholic may do this, noting that we can “set ourselves to the task of reconciling the apparent contradiction between Dignitatis Humanae and the traditional understanding on religious liberty.” One small but important point must be mentioned here, however. Schwindt seems to think that part of the alleged innovation in Dignitatis Humanae was that it forbade “the State to coerce a citizen into the confession of a particular creed.” But this was never the point at issue, nor did any sensible and informed Catholic, including Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, ever suppose that earlier popes such as Pius IX or Leo XIII had sanctioned such coercion. The issue, rather, was whether and how a Catholic state was required to give official recognition to the Catholic religion, while perhaps in some degree restricting the public activity of dissident sects. Such restrictions might well have limited the actions of non-Catholics, but they would never have attempted to force anyone into making an involuntary profession of faith.
Next Schwindt takes up the question of the nature of man, in particular man as a social animal. He quotes the 1986 instruction of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Libertatis conscientia,
God did not create man as a ‘solitary being’ but wished him to be a ‘social being.’ Social life therefore is not exterior to man: he can only grow and realize his vocation in relation with others.
This is surely one of the fundamental truths of the social order, a truth, however, which is widely misunderstood or even denied, especially in the Anglo-Saxon world. As Schwindt points out, this teaching “leaves little room for the so-called ‘libertarian’ mentality, which would conceive of man as a ‘noble savage’ who enters into society only as a necessary evil rather than as a natural good.”
Akin to the recognition of the social nature of man is the question of human rights. As the author says, rights presuppose duties and thus
we can surmise that rights are not to be considered absolute. The Church calls them “inalienable,” which is to say, they are derived from human nature, but their exercise must always be circumscribed within limits.
And Schwindt illustrates this with the apt example of property, noting that the Church does not teach that property rights are absolute.
Following these preliminary points, the author discusses what he calls “permanent principles,” which are: the common good, the universal destination of goods, private property, solidarity and subsidiarity, freedom and justice. The inclusion of freedom in this list raises some questions, however. The freedom of choice with which man is endowed accompanies him everywhere, indeed is inseparable from his nature, regardless of his political or even penal situation. In the Anglo-American tradition, however, it is not this inherent freedom which preoccupies us but freedom in the political order, which is widely seen as the chief political good. But this is surely incorrect. Rather it is justice which is the chief political good, and it is justice which rules and determines the other principles listed here, such as property, solidarity and subsidiarity. Obviously political freedom is good to a degree, but it is subordinate to both justice and the common good.
Schwindt next discusses the primary principles of Catholic morality, including the natural law, conscience, the virtue of prudence, and shows their application to certain specific moral questions, including lying, abortion and torture. After this he comes to the discussion of economic life itself. Here we may single out certain topics to call attention to. In the first place, Schwindt’s discussion of capitalism and the division of labor that capitalism presupposes is especially noteworthy.
In order for capital and labor to be placed in opposition, they must first become distinct…. [T]he man who owns his own shop and works from within it as its proprietor could never conceive of his activity as a duality of “capital and labor.” For him such an antimony does not exist.
Although, as he notes, the popes have called for cooperation and just dealings between capitalist owners and workers, still “the Christian aversion to the concentration of ownership and wealth has ancient roots.” If ownership and work are not divorced, it is more difficult for such concentrations of wealth to arise. Schwindt quotes Leo XIII pointedly, the “law … should favor ownership, and its policy should be to induce as many as possible of the people to become owners.” This, of course, is exactly what Distributism aims at—the widest diffusion of productive property, in large part to prevent that fatal separation of ownership and work which leads to so many evils, both societal and even personal. Also worthy of note is Schwindt’s discussion of guilds. The guild system, suitably updated to take account of contemporary conditions, is one of the foundations of Catholic social thought, for it avoids the twin rocks of state control of the economy and the injustices and chaos produced by competitive capitalism.
Next Schwindt discusses political society. In this he is following the order taken by the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, which likewise takes up politics after its discussion of economics. But this is a strange way to proceed, it seems to me, because the political order logically precedes the economic; the economic order is set within political society. If we take seriously Aristotle’s and St. Thomas’ reiterated teaching that man is a political being, then we cannot regard the political order as anything but the key to our understanding of the social order. In any case, Schwindt’s discussion of the state is a very good overview of Catholic teaching, as well as of certain confusions which are apt to arise in the minds of modern readers, for example, his discussion of what is liberalism.
Another noteworthy section concerns the relations between Church and state. Here Schwindt takes an interesting position in that he asserts that every state must “acknowledge God [and even] the Christian God.” I say this is interesting because for the most part the debate on the teaching of Dignitatis Humanae and its continuity with that of earlier Church documents has been restricted to consideration of situations in which populations were primarily, even overwhelmingly, Catholic. In such cases a Catholic state is a signal protection for a Catholic social order, and in my opinion fully justified by Catholic teaching. But it is true that Leo XIII spoke of the duty of the state as such to acknowledge the true religion (e.g., Immortale Dei, no. 6), and hence Schwindt is on solid ground here. Of course, unless a government is controlled by Catholics and supported by a Catholic population such a duty will hardly be recognized or implemented. In any case the author might have noted that most discussions of the question of a Catholic state has concerned the case of Catholic nations, which alone were seen as having an unambiguous right to a Catholic political order. However, Schwindt is deserving of much praise for his advocacy of governmental recognition of Catholic truth, a subject pretty much banished from polite Catholic circles today.
I call attention also to Schwindt’s discussion of taxation, and in particular of progressive taxation. He quotes Pius XI’s encyclical Divini Redemptoris that “the wealthy classes must be induced to assume those burdens without which human society cannot be saved nor they themselves remain secure.” As Schwindt notes, “the exact application of this principle could take various forms, but one can say without much risk of error that the system known as the ‘progressive tax’ is a fairly straightforward and appropriate means of realizing this goal.” In the last few decades in the United States conservative politicians have somehow persuaded large numbers of people that a flat tax is more fair than a progressive tax, even though it should be obvious that a rich man has much more disposable income than a poorer man, and hence can rightly afford to give up a larger percentage of his income in taxation. Despite what some people claim, there is absolutely nothing in Catholic teaching or tradition that would prohibit a progressive income tax.
The last two subjects that Schwindt discusses are the environment and war. Obviously in light of Pope Francis’ encyclical, Laudato Si’, this is a timely and appropriate matter. Far from being merely a pet concern of New Agers, care for the environment is a duty that should be obvious to any Catholic. Schwindt points out that concern for the environment is no novelty with Francis, but has been mentioned by the last several pontiffs. It is true that one can hardly find the environment mentioned by Leo XIII or Pius XII. But that is because environmental degradation either was hardly occurring during their reigns or was not recognized. Just as one will not find Pope Clement in the first century warning against Islam, since it did not exist yet, so one will not find popes speaking about care of the environment before mankind generally realized the ecological dangers that have arisen, in large part, apparently because of human activity.
With regard to the ethics of war and peace, the author reviews the teaching of the Church as set forth in the Catechism of the Catholic Church and provides a helpful discussion of some of the more complex or doubtful applications of this teaching. The basic principles of Catholic thought on this topic go back to St. Augustine, but their application obviously has varied depending on many matters. The incredibly destructive power of modern weapons has made it harder to apply such traditional principles as double effect, but Schwindt rightly notes that in World War II the “bombings of Dresden, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki,” since civilians were directly targeted, were “an offense to just war doctrine.”
For readers unfamiliar with the tenets of Catholic social doctrine, Schwindt’s book is a good place to begin; for readers already acquainted with the main points of the doctrine, it can also be a good reminder both of the scope of the Church’s teaching and its relevance and importance in today’s world.Austerity is a hard mouthful to swallow.
And it might be getting harder for some low-income children in Toronto.
To reduce its budget by the 2.6 per cent demanded by Mayor John Tory in order to keep any potential property tax increase at, or below, the rate of inflation, Toronto’s Board of Health Budget Committee will weigh eliminating Student Nutrition Program funding for 13,279 children on September 26.
Doing so would save the city $737,300 by cutting off funding for 44 Student Nutrition Programs, according to a report prepared for the meeting.
Toronto’s nutrition program presently serves breakfast, snacks, and lunch to about 160,000 children and youth every day.
The meals get to children courtesy of Student Nutrition Toronto, which is a partnership of Toronto Public Health, Toronto’s public, Catholic and French-language school boards, the Toronto Foundation for Student Success, the Angel Foundation for Learning, and FoodShare.
“Each student nutrition program is unique and a reflection of its community,” the city notes on the program’s website. “They are operated in schools and community sites by volunteers and staff.”
Swords are already clashing over the proposed funding cuts and, as a result, the future policy direction of the city’s Student Nutrition Program.
Midtown Councillor Joe Mihevc (Ward 21), the chairperson of the board of health budget committee, opposes cutting the board’s budget for student food. Mihevc, who has historically advocated for the Student Nutrition Program, penned an op-ed about food insecurity in Toronto earlier this year and recently tweeted to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that Canada should have a national student nutrition program in place.
Meanwhile, east Toronto Councillor Jon Burnside (Ward 26), a board of health committee member, has publicly mused about the city investigating involving the private sector in Student Nutrition Program funding.
Whatever the budget committee’s decision is, it will have to be approved by city council.
The city notes its Student Nutrition Program assists students in several ways, including providing much-needed food energy for their studies, helping prevent obesity, and supporting “better scores in math, reading and science.”
The city’s nutrition program approach is backed by research, which notes linkages between low-income households, obesity, how often breakfast is consumed, and child behaviour. A 2002 study cited by the city’s research shows that children who attended a breakfast club for six months had better math grades, attendance, behavior, and punctuality than those children who did not.
The research used by the city shows that skipping breakfast is more prevalent among female, low-income, and racialized students. Older children and adolescents also do not eat breakfast more often.
More than 24 per cent of Grade 4 students in Canada do not eat breakfast every day, the city’s research reports. One study estimates that more than 40 per cent of Canadian children do not regularly eat a nutritious breakfast.
So, what does this all mean? Simply, it comes down to a matter of priorities.
The mayor has said he intends to keep any 2017 property tax increases at or below the rate of inflation. His directive to city departments to slash their budgets is arguably a strong indicator that he is not prepared to waver from that agenda.
But are budget cuts the only option? No.
In her 2015 report, Toronto’s Taxing Question, CCPA-Ontario Senior Economist Sheila Block outlines “how a mix of alcohol, cigarette, entertainment, and other municipal taxes could yield more than $600 million in additional revenue.”
With that kind of revenue, the $737,300 earmarked for the Student Nutrition Program is a sustainable investment in Toronto’s future.
Drawing on those tax options would also eliminate the need to involve the private sector in the provision of a program tailored to the needs of impressionable children in an environment designed for learning.
What would be the trade-off of private sector involvement? Advertising? Changes to the quality of food?
Food security is already a topic of debate in Toronto. It is hard to imagine how tossing market logic into the mix would do anything except potentially build brand loyalty for a private enterprise. Is that the city’s job?
Ultimately, it is true that this year’s debate is not about whether to end the Student Nutrition Program in its entirety. However, if the program’s funding is raided, it will set a significant precedent — and arguably send a message that lower property taxes are more important than the well-being of some of Toronto’s most vulnerable residents.
*Disclosure: Joe Mihevc is my ward councillor
Joe Fantauzzi is a research assistant interning at the CCPA-Ontario.The new poster for the rerelease of 'The Man Who Fell to Earth.'
The cult sci-fi classic with arguably Bowie's most iconic film role has been restored in 4K.
Mr. Newton may have had enough, but it seems British cinemas haven't had enough of Mr. Newton.
To mark the 40th anniversary of the U.K. release of Nicolas Roeg's cult sci-fi film The Man Who Fell to Earth, arguably David Bowie's most iconic turn on the big screen, StudioCanal is nearing completion of a 4K restoration.
The film in which the late musician plays a humanoid alien from a distant planet on a mission to take water back home will be released theatrically on Sept. 9 by Park Circus.
Spearheaded by Deluxe London, the restoration is based on a 4K scan of the original camera negative, followed by a full 4K workflow, and all with the approval of original cinematographer Anthony Richmond. It has been in the works since late 2015, prior to Bowie's death in January.Thank you for your help!
What was mispronounced? Optional: help us by adding the time
More than a year on from the Brexit vote, the future of the City of London as one of the world’s biggest financial trading hubs is no clearer.
The UK capital is pre-eminent in foreign exchange and over-the-counter derivatives, used by investors to hedge their portfolios against swings in currencies, interest rates and commodity prices.
Nearly 40 per cent of the global currency market, worth a notional $5tn a day, is traded and booked in London. The UK also accounts for about half of the global OTC $600tn market.
London’s financial centre is dominant in Europe as the centre for equities trading, with companies using EU-wide rules to attract business from around the bloc. How much of that business will leave and how much will remain is an important question.
Matt Holmes, head of regulatory policy at Deutsche Bank in London, says planning for life after Brexit is different from responding to the tougher banking and markets rules that emerged after the financial crisis. “We are having to do this without any idea what the end will look like. Brexit touches every aspect of cross-border activity,” he says.
While almost every executive expects London to retain its lead, few can predict the degree to which business will be lost to financial centres in Europe. Some companies, such as fixed-income trading platforms MarketAxess and Tradeweb, have announced plans for offices in Amsterdam. Many others have yet to make their move.
One of London’s strengths, and the difficulty for rival cities seeking to poach business, is that it is a centre for originating, executing and booking trades. This makes it the common jurisdiction for vast numbers of bonds and derivatives, which investors and companies use to hedge everything from interest rates to currency risk.
Those derivatives trades are booked and managed daily by independent clearing houses, which stand between the two parties. If one side defaults on payment, the clearing house ensures panic does not spread through the market. That creates a network of business that few will want to give up.
Chris Bates, a partner at law firm Clifford Chance, says the main issue is whether companies, particularly the big international banks, move towards booking centres in the remaining EU — a debate similar to that over booking centres in Asia.
“What will force them to do that?” asks Mr Bates. “The UK needs to understand how important those booking centres are in terms of generating jobs and activity in the UK market.”
Executives fear they will have to move more trading and operational business out of London
The status quo could remain after Brexit if the EU recognises the UK’s market rules as being of “equivalent” standard.
“It comes down to the doctrine of equivalence,” says Rob Boardman, chief executive in Europe for ITG, a Dublin-registered equity agency broker. “Most investors will want to be able to trade cross-border.”
Mr Boardman notes, however, that EU policymakers may try to tilt some business away from London. “We might find there are lots of reasons why the EU might be tempted to grab market share for its own firms,” he says.
Early efforts in Europe to effect a split in markets, even before Brexit happens, have proved challenging.
The first topic to vex the EU was the location for clearing euro-denominated swaps, brought up by then president François Hollande of France days after the vote.
UK clearing houses process about 90 per cent of European banks’ euro-denominated derivatives and about half of their repo business. Mr Hollande called for the business to be forcibly relocated from London, ostensibly to better monitor risks.
The proposal prompted alarm among the world’s largest banks and users of swaps markets, who prefer to use only a handful of clearing houses.
The European Commission, the EU executive that will make the decision, stepped back from taking immediate measures but proposed new powers to monitor overseas clearing houses, aimed primarily at London after Brexit. It is now assessing market feedback.
Barney Reynolds, a partner at law firm Shearman & Sterling in London, points out that joint supervision of markets may still not be practical.
“It would have to be two-way,” he says. “What happens if there are politicised enforcements? What if there are unreasonable [external] demands for access? Would the EU wish to be subject to the same thing?”
But the EU’s proposals to monitor foreign clearing houses have also irked the US: the EU could exercise new direct oversight over the US’s clearing houses. That would reopen a deal the EU secured with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the US’s main derivatives regulator, over supervision of clearing houses. It took three years of talks to reach last year’s agreement.
“We’ve got it right... We are not inclined to reopen it,” Chris Giancarlo, CFTC chairman, told European policymakers last month. “We do not support this.”
Without clarity over the future relationship of the EU and UK, executives worry they will have little choice but to move more of their EU trading and settlement, and even operational business, out of London and into the bloc.
National regulators in the EU warn they have little flexibility to interpret EU rules.
Ultimately, though, the industry is counting on the politicians to swiftly come to an agreement and set out the regulatory framework.
That would allow much of the trading, market-making and settlement activity to remain in London without much disruption in the short term.— Ray Anthony Lewis III, the 20-year-old son of former Raven Ray Lewis, has been charged with third degree criminal sexual conduct by the Conway Police Department in South Carolina.
Police say this is in connection with an investigation that began on Saturday, Jan. 23, when officers responded to Grand Strand Medical Hospital in response to a sexual assault. The victim is 18.
Victims detailed an incident to police, and detectives were called to take over the investigation.
After compiling medical reports from the hospital, victim statements and lab results, warrants were obtained for Lewis’s arrest.
He turned himself in Friday and was released on $10,000 bond.
Lewis transferred from University of Miami to Coastal Carolina, which is located in Conway, in 2015.
Follow @CBSBaltimore on Twitter and like WJZ-TV | CBS Baltimore on Facebook[The contents of this post grew out of an internal discussion featuring many of the usual suspects who’ve been authors in this space. — Tim Bray]
In the Android group, from time to time we hear complaints from developers about problems they’re having coming up with reliable, stable, unique device identifiers. This worries us, because we think that tracking such identifiers isn’t a good idea, and that there are better ways to achieve developers’ goals.
Tracking Installations
It is very common, and perfectly reasonable, for a developer to want to track individual installations of their apps. It sounds plausible just to call TelephonyManager.getDeviceId() and use that value to identify the installation. There are problems with this: First, it doesn’t work reliably (see below). Second, when it does work, that value survives device wipes (“Factory resets”) and thus you could end up making a nasty mistake when one of your customers wipes their device and passes it on to another person.
To track installations, you could for example use a UUID as an identifier, and simply create a new one the first time an app runs after installation. Here is a sketch of a class named “Installation” with one static method Installation.id(Context context). You could imagine writing more installation-specific data into the INSTALLATION file.
public class Installation { private static String sID = null; private static final String INSTALLATION = "INSTALLATION"; public synchronized static String id(Context context) { if (sID == null) { File installation = new File(context.getFilesDir(), INSTALLATION); try { if (!installation.exists()) writeInstallationFile(installation); sID = readInstallationFile(installation); } catch (Exception e) { throw new RuntimeException(e); } } return sID; } private static String readInstallationFile(File installation) throws IOException { RandomAccessFile f = new RandomAccessFile(installation, "r"); byte[] bytes = new byte[(int) f.length()]; f.readFully(bytes); f.close(); return new String(bytes); } private static void writeInstallationFile(File installation) throws IOException { FileOutputStream out = new FileOutputStream(installation); String id = UUID.randomUUID().toString(); out.write(id.getBytes()); out.close(); } }
Identifying Devices
Suppose you feel that for the needs of your application, you need an actual hardware device identifier. This turns out to be a tricky problem.
In the past, when every Android device was a phone, things were simpler: TelephonyManager.getDeviceId() is required to return (depending on the network technology) the IMEI, MEID, or ESN of the phone, which is unique to that piece of hardware.
However, there are problems with this approach:
Non-phones : Wifi-only devices or music players that don’t have telephony hardware just don’t have this kind of unique identifier.
Persistence: On devices which do have this, it persists across device data wipes and factory resets. It’s not clear at all if, in this situation, your app should regard this as the same device.
Privilege :It requires READ_PHONE_STATE permission, which is irritating if you don’t otherwise use or need telephony.
Bugs: We have seen a few instances of production phones for which the implementation is buggy and returns garbage, for example zeros or asterisks.
Mac Address
It may be possible to retrieve a Mac address from a device’s WiFi or Bluetooth hardware. We do not recommend using this as a unique identifier. To start with, not all devices have WiFi. Also, if the WiFi is not turned on, the hardware may not report the Mac address.
Serial Number
Since Android 2.3 (“Gingerbread”) this is available via android.os.Build.SERIAL. Devices without telephony are required to report a unique device ID here; some phones may do so also.
ANDROID_ID
More specifically, Settings.Secure.ANDROID_ID. This is a 64-bit quantity that is generated and stored when the device first boots. It is reset when the device is wiped.
ANDROID_ID seems a good choice for a unique device identifier. There are downsides: First, it is not 100% reliable on releases of Android prior to 2.2 (“Froyo”). Also, there has been at least one widely-observed bug in a popular handset from a major manufacturer, where every instance has the same ANDROID_ID.
Conclusion
For the vast majority of applications, the requirement is to identify a particular installation, not a physical device. Fortunately, doing so is straightforward.
There are many good reasons for avoiding the attempt to identify a particular device. For those who want to try, the best approach is probably the use of ANDROID_ID on anything reasonably modern, with some fallback heuristics for legacy devices.To be clear: I don't recommend this thing for the full price they're asking for it (50€). If you're in a region where you can get it for less, then it might be a different story. Personally, I think it's not worth more than 10-15.
It's a cute little minigame. Something I'd finish while taking a break in between two Witcher 3 quests. It's basically one single questline. It feels like a mission DLC for Human Revolution. That's what it basically is.
It's unbelievably short and uneventful. Maybe not in terms of longevity, but in terms of plot & story progression.
Basically, you roam arond hallways for a while |
, but will be 8 percent by 2039.
The biggest entitlement, Social Security, will total 4.9 percent of GDP this year and grow to 6.3 percent in 25 years.
“Today’s CBO report is a stark reminder of the urgent need for entitlement reform, because as CBO says, our current spending path is unsustainable,” said Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, Utah Republican.
The CBO report says Congress has already pared down discretionary spending — the annual budgets over which lawmakers have the most direct control. That leaves three major levers for Congress: the size of the economy, the amount of taxes the government collects and the growth of the entitlement programs that increase automatically.
The CBO said changes will have to come at some point, but they present a trade-off. Cutting spending or raising taxes now would likely hurt the economy and mean pain in the short term, but putting off the decisions until later means even greater pain in the future.July 24, 2014
Not so recently I released my studio website which uses WordPress, so I had to set up a web server from scratch, I found this a good oportunity to write something helping people easily set up a high performance WordPress using the latest mainstream technology, hopefully you find this article helpful :)
Step 1: Setting up
So you just created a new droplet, a shining Ubuntu 13.10 installation, you ssh’d into
it and are presented with a lovely virgin terminal. First things first! Update and upgrade
all installed packages
$ apt-get update && apt-get upgrade
After a few moments the command will finish and we’re ready to install all our software.
The next thing to do is creating a user so we don’t use root as it’s a very bad practice!
$ useradd deploy
We named our new user deploy you should name it whatever you want, just remember to make
the appropiate changes. Once we have our new user let’s create a home directory for it!
$ mkdir /home/deploy $ chown deploy:deploy /home/deploy -R
We created a new directory for our user and add it as owner so she can freely work inside
her home directory.
Finally let’s create a password for our deploy user
$ passwd deploy
Use any password you want, it will be used for sudo commands as well as logging in though
ssh (if you follow the optional step we’ll use SSH keys to log in instead of the unsafe
passwords! but that step is optional).
Let’s configure the users who can use sudo
$ visudo
Comment all existing grant lines and add the following at the end of the file
root ALL=(ALL) ALL deploy ALL=(ALL) ALL
Save and exit. Now only root and deploy can use sudo. Another change we should make
now is disallow root login though ssh, for this edit the /etc/ssh/sshd_config file and
add the following at the end
PermitRootLogin no
Finally restart the ssh service so it loads the changes
$ service ssh restart
So far so good! Let’s log out root and ssh as deploy instead, from now on we’ll work
with that user.
Let’s secure our server a bit
$ sudo apt-get install fail2ban
Fail2ban is an app which bans a certain IP from logging into your server if it has failed
the password too many times, it comes with nice defaults so that will do.
Another thing we have to do is enable the firewall, this is easy
$ sudo ufw allow 22 $ sudo ufw allow 80 $ sudo ufw allow 443 $ sudo ufw enable
We only allow the ports for ssh (22) and nginx (80 and 443 if https).
Step 1.5: Public key authentication
If you want to secure your server a bit more we can require all ssh sessions to
authenticate using a public key instead of a password, this is considerably safer.
First step is creating a ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file and pasting your public key
(most likely id_rsa.pub) there.
$ mkdir ~/.ssh $ vim ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
Once you have saved your public key there let’s change the permissions of that file
$ chmod 400 ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
Now try ssh-ing as deploy, you should be able to log in without typing the root
password (your public key might require a password, that’s up to you).
The final step is to require ssh to authenticate only with public keys, edit /etc/ssh/sshd_config once again and append this line:
PasswordAuthentication no
Finally restart ssh
$ sudo service ssh restart
That’s it!
Step 2: Setting up the webserver
We’ll use Nginx as our webserver, thankfully setting it up is quite easy!
$ sudo apt-get install nginx
That was fast. Let’s move onto MariaDB, because Ubuntu doesn’t include a package for MariaDB we have to manually add a package repository so we can easily install it with apt-get :
$ sudo apt-get install software-properties-common $ sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 0xcbcb082a1bb943db $ sudo add-apt-repository 'deb http://download.nus.edu.sg/mirror/mariadb/repo/10.0/ubuntu saucy main'
Note: If you are not running Ubuntu 13.10 you can see what package repository to use in MariaDB official docs.
We can now install MariaDB as follows
$ sudo apt-get update $ sudo apt-get install mariadb-server
It will prompt us for a password, choose a password for your MariaDB root user and
continue, the installation is pretty quick. Once it ends, let’s secure it running
$ mysql_secure_installation
It will prompt us quite a lot of questions, if you don’t want to change the root
password answer No to the first one, the rest are Yes.
Finally let’s install HHVM, Facebook’s PHP interpreter. Because HHVM uses JIT
compilation code execution is quite fast, together with Nginx we’ll make WordPress fly!
Here we have the same issue as with MariaDB, let’s add the custom package repository:
$ wget -O - http://dl.hhvm.com/conf/hhvm.gpg.key | sudo apt-key add - $ echo deb http://dl.hhvm.com/ubuntu saucy main | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hhvm.list
Now install it
$ sudo apt-get update $ sudo apt-get install hhvm
That will install HHVM in our server, there is one final step, we have to configure HHVM to work with Nginx, luckly this is super easy!
$ sudo /usr/share/hhvm/install_fastcgi.sh
Let’s try it out
$ sudo echo "<?php phpinfo();?>" > /usr/share/nginx/html/phpinfo.php
If you navigate to http://yourip/phpinfo.php you should see a little message saying
“HHVM”. Success!
Step 3: Installing WordPress
Let’s install WordPress, to make it easy I’ll make a soft link to the nginx public
folder and set deploy as owner
$ sudo ln -s /usr/share/nginx/html ~/www $ sudo chown deploy:deploy /usr/share/nginx/html -R
We can now just work inside ~/www
$ cd ~/www $ wget http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz $ tar -xvzf wordpress.3.x.x.tar.gz $ mv wordpress/*. $ rm -rf wordpress $ rm wordpress.3.x.x.tar.gz
The above code will download wordpress, extract it into wordpress/ and move the
contents to that folder to our www root, finally it removes the empty wordpress folder
as well as the.tar.gz file.
If you navigate to your site index you’ll be prompted to install WordPress, let’s first
create a database
$ mysql -u root -p
MariaDB will ask for your root password, once you enter it we can create a new database
$ CREATE DATABASE wordpress;
That’s it! We have our database, I named it wordpress but you can choose any name you
want. Finally exit the SQL prompt
$ exit
Now proceed with wordpress installation, use wordpress for the database, localhost
for host, root for user and the password you chose when installing MariaDB.
Good! We now have a fully functional WordPress running on Nginx + MariaDB + HHVM!
Step 4: Installing sendmail
To be able to send mails though our server we need to install a MTA, postfix beeing the
simplest option.
$ sudo apt-get install sendmail $ sudo sendmailconfig
Just accept everything the configuration asks, it has pretty good defaults. To test
your sendmail installation you can run
$ echo "Hello!" | sendmail [email protected]
If it takes like a minute to send, you have to configure your IPv4 hostname
$ sudo vim /etc/hosts
And add the following line
127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost HOST_NAME
HOST_NAME is the value the command hostname returns.
If you have a domain you can replace the code above with
127.0.0.1 mail.mydomain.com mydomain.com HOST_NAME
Restart sendmail and try again
$ sudo service sendmail restart $ echo "Hello!" | sendmail [email protected]
It should now work pretty quickly!
Step 5: Optimization
Let’s start optimizing! First lets make Nginx cache our static assets as well as gzip
js and css files. To do this let’s update the global nginx configuration file
$ sudo vim /etc/nginx/nginx.conf
The gzip section must look like this
## # Gzip Settings ## gzip on; gzip_disable "msie6"; # gzip_vary on; # gzip_proxied any; # gzip_comp_level 6; # gzip_buffers 16 8k; # gzip_http_version 1.1; gzip_types text/plain text/css application/json application/x-javascript text/xml application/xml application/xml+rss text/javascript;
We’ll gzip css, json, js and xml files.
Let’s now add expiration time on our assets so browsers cache them, for this we’ll
update the per-site configuration file
$ sudo vim /etc/nginx/sites-available/default
Add the following definition inside server { }
location ~* \.(js|css|png|jpg|jpeg|gif|ico|woff|ttf|svg|otf)$ { expires 30d; add_header Pragma public; add_header Cache-Control "public"; }
We now have proper headers to our static assets so browsers can cache them!
WordPress Cache
Another thing we can do to improve performance is using W3 Total Cache. Download it, install it and enable it.
This plugin offers several options, we’ll just use Page Cache and set it to
Disk(Enhanced).
We now have to properly update our nginx site configuration
$ vim /etc/nginx/sites-available/default
And make the following changes
server { #... set $cache_uri $request_uri; # POST requests and urls with a query string should always go to PHP if ($request_method = POST) { set $cache_uri 'null cache'; } if ($query_string!= "") { set $cache_uri 'null cache'; } # Don't cache uris containing the following segments if ($request_uri ~* "(/wp-admin/|/xmlrpc.php|/wp-(app|cron|login|register|mail ).php|wp-.*.php|/feed/|index.php|wp-comments-popup.php|wp-links-opml.php|wp-locations.php|sitemap(_index)?.xml|[a-z0-9_-]+-sitemap([0-9]+)?.xml)") { set $cache_uri 'null cache'; } # Don't use the cache for logged in users or recent commenters if ($http_cookie ~* "comment_author|wordpress_[a-f0-9]+|wp-postpass|wordpress_logged_in") { set $cache_uri 'null cache'; } # Use cached or actual file if they exists, otherwise pass request to WordPress location / { try_files /wp-content/cache/page_enhanced/${host}${cache_uri}_index.html $uri $uri/ /index.php?$args; } #... }
Pretty URLs
One final thing to do is make WordPress permalinks play nice with Nginx, normally
WordPress appends /index.php/myLink for all links when using nginx pretty urls, to fix
this we can use Nginx Helper Plugin, simply download
the plugin, install it, enable it, and that’s it! We now have pretty URLs.
If you didn’t install W3 Total Cache in the previous step, add this to your
/etc/nginx/sites-available/default site configuration
# Use cached or actual file if they exists, otherwise pass request to WordPress location / { try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$args; }
Have fun with your WordPress on steroids installation!
342 KudosAn interesting and intriguing situation has arisen in Ireland in which the result of a referendum, held in 2012 about the rights of children, is being challenged on the basis of a Supreme Court judgement made two days before the referendum which stated that the government issued incorrect information in a leaflet.
This resultant Appeal which is currently being heard and background to this case can be read here, here, here and here. As has been noted in the first link, any referendum must be about upholding the rights of all of the electorate “to vote freely, to a fair and democratic process, to equality and to fair procedures”.
When a government is held to have ‘clearly and unequivocally’ breached the constitutional process governing the conduct of referendums and a government minister acknowledges that fact; yet the referendum is allowed to proceed, the question has to be asked: where is democracy?
Not that the Irish government is alone in ‘rigging’ a referendum; both Heath and Wilson lied to the British electorate on British membership of what has now become the European Union and allowed others to lie on their behalf.; yet allowed a referendum to proceed. Neither has anything changed; today we still have politicians lying on the same subject and allowing others so to do on their behalf.
No doubt when the time comes for a referendum on ‘Brexit’, we too will be lied to – and, of course, all within the rules. Remember: In politics, a lie unanswered becomes truth within 24 hours.
Perhaps the reason the British people seem unable to accept wisdom when they hear it is because those voices get ‘drowned out’, especially today, by those of the ‘seen’ and ‘unseen’, both of whom govern this country. The most obvious example of that was undoubtedly Enoch Powell who was right on the subjects of Europe; the single currency; economic management; and multiculturalism too.
Until the people of this nation understand that our present system of democracy really is but a form of democratised dictatorship, so will we remain in the grip of wolves in sheep’s clothing.TRUMANN, Ark. – Although The Truman Show was a movie about Jim Carrey living every moment of his life on camera, a different type of Trumann show involved too much on camera – and in public places.
Leslie Lanae Sessions, 30, of Trumann, is better known to pornographic internet audiences as “MayvenDoll.” Her and her boyfriend, Derek Calloway, were both before Judge Tommy Fowler on Friday, July 14. Sessions is accused of eight counts of public display of Hardcore Sexual Activity, three counts of Obscene Film and four counts of Promoting Obscene Performance, District Prosecutor Scott Ellington said. Calloway faces three counts of each charge.
A $5,000 bond was set for both. Each posted their bond and were released Friday afternoon from the detention center.
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Sources close to the investigation indicate to NEA Report that a tip reached the Street Crimes Unit of JPD that the two had performed sexual activities in public across Jonesboro. The acts were filmed and uploaded to porn websites online, with tens of thousands viewing the two’s sexual behavior in public settings.
Using tips from a number of sources, NEA Report found the videos.
Sessions and an off-camera associate, possibly Calloway, are seen in one video going into Home Depot in Jonesboro. However, before they walk in, Sessions engages in sexual behavior with several toys in the parking lot. At one point, an unaware area man is focused on by the camera as the two giggle. With Sessions showing her underwear, the two walk into the store as they film.
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Other scenes include Sessions dining at what appears to be Cheddar’s on Red Wolf in Jonesboro. A type of public sex-fetish work, the video shows her seated at the table. A number of likely unconsenting elderly women appear in the background of the video. A short time later, the camera cuts to underneath the table, as Sessions’ masterbates.
After several off-record conversations with law enforcement, it appeared their concern was more with the behavior taking place in public and in proximity to locations like playgrounds, public benches, and the like.
Both suspects are due back in court on August 29.
Read part two – official charges filed in the case.
Photos captured via screenshot from online pornographic outlets. Mugshots from CCDC.
Story by Stan Morris | NEA Report
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RelatedOTTAWA — Two MPs are among a chorus of Iranian-Canadians urging Sen. Linda Frum to apologize for what some are calling a "discriminatory and anti-Iranian" comment she made during a debate last month. But the Conservative senator maintains she didn't say anything wrong.
Frum delivered a speech on Oct. 26 to support a Senate-sponsored bill titled the "Non-Nuclear Sanctions Against Iran Act." It proposes the foreign affairs minister publish an annual report that includes an analysis of state-sponsored terrorism and human rights violations to guide Canada's sanctions program against Iran.
Facebook/SenatorLindaFrum Sen. Linda Frum maintains her remarks made in the Senate on Oct. 26 were about the Iranian government.
"Anyone who is interested can read them and judge them for themselves. I am proud of my record of standing up for the victims of the criminal Iranian regime both inside Iran and out," Frum told HuffPost Canada on Wednesday.
The backlash began last month after the Conservative senator said: "Bill S-219 is grounded in a moral and ethical purpose, and that is to monitor one of the most malign nations in the world and to calibrate our nation's sanctions accordingly."
That particular phrasing, calling Iran "one of the most malign nations in the world" riled some Iranian-Canadians, including two federal Liberals.
Willowdale MP Ali Ehsassi said on Monday that it's his personal hope the senator's words "were not meant to demean, insult, or otherwise denigrate any member of the Iranian-Canadian community." He asked the Frum to clarify her remarks.
Liberal MP calls comment 'irresponsible'
Earlier, Richmond Hill MP Majid Jowhari called Frum's words "irresponsible" and "contrary to the Canadian values of multiculturalism and diversity."
Jowhari said in a statement the Iranian-Canadian community is "outraged" over the senator's tact.
"There are approximately 300,000 Canadians of Iranian heritage living across our beautiful country with family and relatives living in Iran," he said. "They are engineers, doctors, lawyers, professors and hard workers who are making positive contributions in all sectors of our economy from technology to manufacturing."
Frum responded to Jowhari on Twitter.
1. I did not say Iran is a "maligned" nation. I said Iran is a "malign" nation. (Transcript posted by parliament is source of the mistake.) pic.twitter.com/iWDh3ygvpV — Senator Linda Frum (@LindaFrum) November 2, 2017
2. If you are regime apologist why get bent out of shape if you believe I said Iran is a "maligned" nation?
(Which I didn't.) pic.twitter.com/9r1caYgoaV — Senator Linda Frum (@LindaFrum) November 2, 2017
A Toronto-based advocacy group is behind the push for Frum to apologize.
Iranian Canadian Congress president Bijan Ahmadi said in a statement earlier this month that Frum's comment was ambiguous and blurred the line between the state and its citizenry.
Ahmadi called Frum's remark "a disrespect to the Iranian-Canadian community, one of the largest and fastest growing immigrant communities in Canada." Adding that "Iranian-Canadians are proud of their culture, their heritage and their ethnic and national origin."
Last year, the Conservative caucus organized an "Iran Accountability Week" on Parliament Hill to caution against thawing relations between Iran and Canada.
The event came in response after the government amended its suite of economic sanctions against Iran over its nuclear and ballistic missile program.
Frum and Conservative MP Tony Clement penned an editorial in the National Post chiding the government for paying "lip service to Tehran's transgressions on one hand, while putting out the welcome mat with the other."
Senator calls critics'regime apologists'
On Wednesday, the Iranian Canadian Congress renewed its demand for Frum to issue an apology. But the Ontario senator remained buoyed over the encouragement she's been shown.
"I am gratified by the enormous positive response my speech on Bill S-219 has received, in particular, from members of the Iranian-Canadian community. I thank them for their support," she said.
"Smears from regime apologists do not change any facts."
Bill S-219, which is in its third reading, was first tabled last year in the Senate by Conservative Sen. David Tkachuk.
Also on HuffPost:My regard for Mark Buehrle is growing.
We often don’t fully appreciate people or things while we still have access to them. Buehrle quietly slipped into retirement prior to last season after a remarkable career during which he struck out batters at well below league-average rates, possessed a sub-90 mph fastball for much of his career, and yet accumulated 52 WAR and a 215-160 record over 18 seasons in the majors.
His success was curious, though he was not without his gifts. He could paint corners as well as any starter in baseball. Consider his 2015 fastball location via Baseball Savant:
That’s excellent, but it pales in comparison to Buehrle’s signature skill — namely, the pace at which he worked.
With the mounting concern regarding pace of play from the commissioner’s office, with so much being made of the subject in the media, with pace itself slowing after progress made in 2015, has anyone checked in with the this century’s quickest-working pitcher to get his thoughts on pitch clocks, pace and of a pitcher’s process?
During the period for which pitcher-pace numbers are available, Buehrle is the Barry Bonds of that metric, posting the best seven seasons among qualified starters on record. In the PITCHf/x era of pace measurement, Buehrle led qualified pitchers in pace seven out of eight possible seasons, finishing second in 2013 to teammate R.A. Dickey when his pace slowed to an 18.1-second crawl.
Last season, among pitchers who record at least 60 innings, 25 required 25 seconds or more between pitches.
Why did Buehrle work so quickly? For a variety of reasons.
For starters, he was not overly analytical. According to a Globe and Mail feature on the anti-analytics lefty, Buehrle was excused from the club’s data-heavy advance meetings, which are held in every MLB clubhouse prior to each series:
(The meeting) is heavy on analytics: the pitches that batters like to hit, the ones they don’t, what area of the strike zone to avoid to keep the ball in the park. All the data is printed out in a detailed document, usually three to four pages long, and distributed to the starters; relievers are given an abridged edition. There’s even a video component to see firsthand the recent hits and misses of the opposing batters. Buehrle, as usual, was nowhere to be found, having been given a hall pass by Walker …. “I remember when I was starting out in Chicago with the White Sox and Don Cooper, the pitching coach, would try to go over the scouting reports with me,” Buehrle said. “I’d tell him, ‘Coop, I’m not getting anything out of this, I’m not even paying attention.’ I don’t know, maybe I have ADD. I don’t pay attention to it and I don’t really want to. It’s just more crap in your mind and I just think it can only lead to more second-guessing.”
But it’s that second-guessing that is perhaps key. He rarely shook off his catchers. He acquired the sign and began his delivery.
Said his former catcher with the Blue Jays, Dioner Navarro, to the Globe and Mail: “There’s a joke we share, he just doesn’t want to get blamed for anything bad that happens. If he gives up a home run he wants me to take all the blame. That’s okay, I’m fine with it.”
It’s not as if Buehrle could work quickly because he had a limited pitch arsenal. Rather, Buehrle threw four pitches over the course of his career with greater than 10% frequency: a fastball (49.2%), cutter (15.8%), curveball (10.2%) and change (19.8%). He could locate pitches seemingly at will. So Buehrle had as many variables to consider as nearly any pitcher in the game.
But Buehrle was seemingly not concerned with trying to make the perfect pitch; he was concerned with making merely a good one. And perhaps this is where his pace and approach can be instructive.
Baseball is not chess. But the interplay between pitcher and batter is often described as a chess match. I thought about this a little while reading Nate Silver’s The Signal and the Noise in a chapter on the great chess masters:
“Great chess players like Kasparov do not delude themselves into thinking they can calculate all these possibilities. This is what separates elite players from amateurs. In his famous study of chess players, the Dutch psychologist Adriaan de Groom found that amateur players, when presented with a chess problem, often frustrated themselves by looking for the perfect move, rendering themselves incapable of making any move at all. Chess masters, by contrast, are looking for a good move – and certainly if at all possible the best move in a given position – but they are more forecasting how the move might favorably dispose their position then trying to enumerate every possibility. It is “pure fantasy,” the American grandmaster Reuben Fine wrote. “To assume that human chess players have calculated every position to complete twenty or thirty moves in advance.”
Herbert Simon also explored de Groot in his book Models of Thought, a portion of which I was able to access thanks to the internet:
In his search for differences between masters and weaker players, de Groot was unable to find any gross differences in the statistics of their thought processes: the number of moves considered, search heuristics, depth of search, and so on. Masters search through about the same number of possibilities as weaker players-perhaps even fewer, almost certainly not more-but they are very good at coming up with the “right” moves for further consideration, whereas weaker players spend considerable time analyzing the consequences of bad moves.
Maybe too many pitchers are over-thinking it.
pssst it's a cutter pic.twitter.com/uKNI8HUeyD — Mike Petriello (@mike_petriello) October 19, 2016
We think about the pitcher dramatically leaning in for the sign, rotating the ball in his pitching hand as he considers his various pitch grips, shaking off the catcher not once, not twice, but three times before coming to a set position. Well, perhaps that pitcher has it all wrong. Perhaps Buerhle had it right.
There’s a lot to learn about pitch sequencing, I suspect, and the chess match between pitcher-batter. Maybe there’s a lot of value to extract, perhaps there is little. But beyond Buerhle’s quick pace perhaps helping keep him in rhythm and aiding to his command and control, perhaps by working quickly, by not trying to find perfect sequences and pitches, he was more often able to choose good ones. Perhaps by worrying less about what he was throwing, he was better able to focus on the execution of that pitch in that moment. Perhaps pace also kept the fielders behind him better engaged. Perhaps it explains, in part, his uncanny ability to locate on corners. Perhaps pace is a value-adding skill.Understanding the various aspects of the placebo effect is now a priority for proponents of science-based medicine. Now that for many modalities the evidence is in and is largely negative, proponents are exploiting the general lack of understanding of placebo effects to claim that their modality “works” as a placebo. Even skeptics may have a hard time understanding some of the counter-intuitive aspects of placebo effects.
Here, for example, is a question from reader PharmD28:
My question/issue is regarding debating someone about an intervention that has not been proven effective yet they clearly tell you that it is effective for them. Take acupuncture. I was talking to a nurse practitioner colleague just today about acupuncture as one of the MD’s at my facility does it and has done it for her. She basically conceded that there is not strong evidence that it works, but she has had it done for her headache 5 times with “very good” results”. She said one of the five times it made her nautious, but this was “expected” for the first treatment and subsequently it eliminated her headache. She told me it did nothing for her back pain or for her TMJ. I have no explanation for as to why this intervention worked in this case for “headache”, but I find myself in that instance without good rebuttle for such, except to thinking to myself that yeah, placebo works too for subjective outcomes.
This is a common question – if a treatment “works”, even though it is just a placebo effect, isn’t that still a worthwhile effect.
The answer is – it depends, but mostly no. The problem is in the assumption that because one is feeling better the treatment worked. This is the post hoc ergo propter hoc logical fallacy. We do not know what the subject’s headaches would have been like had they not received acupuncture. It’s possible they were destined to improve in any case.
Simple regression to the mean explains why this is likely. People will tend to seek treatment when their symptoms are at their worst, which means they are likely, by chance alone, to regress to the mean of the distribution of symptoms – or return to a less severe state, which will be interpreted as improvement.
This is further compounded by confirmation bias. This case provides an excellent example of this. The acupuncture did not work for the back pain or TMJ (really TMJ syndrome, “TMJ” just stands for temporo-mandibular joint). So she tried acupuncture for a variety of symptoms, and one improved (while on one occasional developing nausea, which could have been a side effect or just a worsening of the headache).
In other words – we have very noisy data, with some improvement, some worsening, and some unchanged. It does not make scientific sense to pick out only the positive effects from this distribution of data and declare that the acupuncture “worked” in those instances.
This is exactly like having an alleged psychic guess cards, and perform no better than chance but declare that for those random hits they did make her psychic power was working. You have to look at all the data to see if there was an effect.
This principle applies to medical interventions as well – you have to look systematically at all the data to see if there is an effect. When you do this – acupuncture does not work. Saying “well it worked for me” is exactly like saying that the psychic powers worked whenever they randomly hit, even though the overall pattern was negative (consistent with random guessing).
Another layer of randomness to the data which is then ripe for cherry picking and confirmation bias is trying multiple therapies for the same problem (in addition to the same therapy for multiple problems). For example, someone might take medication, acupuncture, chiropractic, and homeopathic remedies at the same time for their headaches, and if they improve credit one or more of the alternative treatments. Or they may try them in sequence, and whichever one they took when their symptoms improved on their own gets the credit due to the post hoc fallacy.
We intuitively ignore the failed treatments – the misses – and commit the lottery fallacy by asking the wrong question: what are the odds of my headache getting better shortly after taking treatment X. But the real question is – what are the odds of my headache getting better at any time, and that I would have recently tried some treatment.
There are also psychological factors in play. When people try an unconventional treatment, perhaps out of desperation or just the hope for relief, they may feel vulnerable to criticism or a bit defensive for trying something unorthodox and even a bit bizarre. There is therefore a huge incentive to justify their decision by concluding that the treatment worked – to show all the skeptics that they were right all along.
Then, mixed in with all of this, is a genuine improvement in mood, and therefore symptoms, from the positive attention of the practitioner (if there is one – i.e. you’re not taking an over-the-counter remedy), or just from the hope that relief is on the way and the feeling that you are doing something about your health and your symptoms. This is a genuine, but non-specific, psychological effect of receiving treatment and taking steps to have some control over your situation.
What is distressing to those of us who are trying to promote science-based medicine is that this latter factor is often treated as if it is the entire placebo effect, or at least a majority. The evidence, however, suggests that it is an extreme minority of the effect.
A recent study with asthma, for example, shows that the placebo effect for objective measurements of asthma severity was essentially zero. There was a substantial effect for subjective outcomes. So subjects reported feeling better even when objective measures showed they were no better. This sounds an awful lot like confirmation bias and other psychological factor, like expense/risk justification and the optimism bias.
Conclusion
Placebo effects are largely an illusion of various well-known psychological factors and errors in perception, memory, and cognition – confirmation bias, regression to the mean, post-hoc fallacy, optimism bias, risk justification, suggestibility, expectation bias, and failure to account for multiple variables. There are also variable (depending on the symptoms being treated) and subjective effects from improved mood and outlook.
Concluding from all of this that a treatment “works”, when a treatment appears to be followed by improved symptoms, is like concluding that an alleged psychic’s power “works” whenever their random guessing hits. This is why anecdotal experience is as worthless in determining if a treatment works as is taking the subjective experience of a target of a cold reading in determining if a psychic’s power is genuine.
Yet, even for many skeptics, the latter is more intuitive than the former. It is hard to shake the sense that if someone feels better than the treatment must have “worked” in some way.Conflicting Inter-Paulinho reports
By Football Italia staff
There are conflicting claims in Brazil and Italy over whether Inter have agreed a deal for Corinthians star Paulinho.
According to Folha de Sao Paulo, the two clubs have already reached an agreement worth €16m after resuming talks that had been interrupted last year because the player wanted to stay for a little longer.
The Brazilian newspaper claims representatives from Inter and Corinthians met at Wembley for the Champions League Final to strike a deal.
However, other sources in Brazil insist there is no truth in this story, so the saga of the midfielder should continue into the summer.
“It will be easier to complete his transfer in June rather than now,” President Massimo Moratti had commented in January.
“It’s not a problem to do with money, it’s more to do with the player’s commitments to his club in his homeland.”From the maxed-out mom who finds comfort in a community support group to the recent retiree who needs help pinpointing the source of his blues, access to adequate, affordable treatment is essential for millions of Americans with mental health concerns. But with state budget cuts threatening local services and programs across the country, the people who need these services most could see their support systems disappear.
A recent report from the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) found that more than half of Americans with mental and emotional issues don’t get help — and that number is only expected to grow as states slash their mental health care budgets in response to growing deficits. The 10 states with the biggest cuts over the last two years are:
Alaska (35 percent)
South Carolina and Arizona (23 percent)
Washington, D.C. (19 percent)
Nevada (17 percent)
Kansas and California (16 percent)
Illinois and Mississippi (15 percent)
Hawaii (12 percent)
Worse, mental health care shortages are expected to deepen in 2011 and 2012.
“When policy makers are forced to make difficult decisions on spending cuts, mental health funding seems to be an easy target,” says Ruth Wolever, PhD, a clinical health psychologist and the research director of Duke Integrative Medicine.
What such changes translate to: Services and programs vital to Americans with mental health issues are getting downsized or eliminated, including community mental health centers, alcohol and drug abuse treatment centers, crisis centers, beds in psychiatric hospitals, and psychiatrists and social workers on staff at these facilities.
Unfortunately, as mental health care budgets shrink, the need for such services is greater than ever, according to NAMI. Ongoing economic distress has lead to more depression, anxiety, and other mental health issues while reducing people’s ability to pay for treatment. Troops returning home from war also require services to treat such issues as PTSD.
Related: 8 Secrets of Really Happy People
But if you need mental health attention and you can't afford it, the last thing you should do is nothing.
Even though budget cuts abound, there are still plenty of inexpensive ways to get the help you need. First, decode your health insurance. It’s important to understand your insurance policy — copayments, costs of coverage, and the doctors covered vary from plan to plan. The Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008 mandates that all group health plans provide mental health benefits, but most of them still require patients to foot a portion of the bill for therapy.
If you are having trouble affording therapy sessions or don’t have health insurance, then consider these affordable alternatives.
Start with your community health center. While it’s true that community mental health centers are feeling the brunt of budget cuts, they’re still a good place to start, says Dr. Wolever. Most of these state agencies offer low-cost consultations and in |
a versatile strike weapon launched from submarines, surface ships and ground based launchers. Unlike the fixed engine configuration of the Kh55, the 3R-54 ‘Club’ uses a ‘drop down’ engine, thus packing the cylindrical missile more efficiently in storage canisters, ensuring unobstructed launch procedure, particularly from the confined space of submarine launchers.
An interesting capability introduced by the missile manufacturer ‘AGAT’ is the containerized version – Club K, enabling the launching of cruise missiles from ‘innocent looking’ cargo ships, rail cars or trucks, a practice the Iranians, Syrians and their Hezbollah proxy have practiced many times in the past.
[ismember]Last year Iran unveiled another air launched cruise missile dubbed ‘Ya Ali’, a cruise missile claimed to have a range of 700 km. Ya-Ali has some design features similar to the Chinese C-602. However, unlike the Chinese missile, the Iranian weapon displayed last year did not have retractable wings and was strapped with a booster motor fitted with wings rather than fins, hinting at ground-launch rather than aerial launch.
[/ismember]Happy New Year Fellow Albion Enthusiasts!Blackboa here with an opportunity for you still active players in CB2 to get your hands on a fast, furry, Direwolf mount! Thanks to @Voille and our friends at (EOS)Valhalla, we have 3 Direwolves that have been donated to my Albion Online Stream for the purpose of having a giveaway.1). Friday, 1/6/17 @ 20 UTC Game Time2). Saturday, 1/7/17 @ 20 UTC Game Time3). Sunday, 1/8/17 @ 20 UTC Game TimeA). You must be live at my twitch stream & a follower 10 minutes before the giveaway takes place. The url is twitch.tv/blackboagaming B). You must have an active Albion Online Founders Account before the giveaway takes place. To purchase a founder pack use the shop tab at this link C). You must be at Queensmarket immediately after winning the giveaway to claim your prize. Anyone who does not claim their prize within a reasonable period of time will forfeit their prize at my own discretion & a new drawing will happen at a future date.Wishing everyone a happy and healthy 2017 and may luck forever be on your side this Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and always! Let me know if you have any questions prior to the giveaway.Kind Regards,BlackboaAccording to Gallup’s data, 39% of GOP voters said last year that the amount of money they paid in income taxes was fair. This year, that number among Republicans jumped to 56%.It’s important to note that income taxes have not changed. We’re talking about perceptions: when Obama was in office, most GOP voters thought tax rates were unfair, and with Trump now in office, these same voters have decided they’re satisfied with those same tax rates after all.Under the traditional rules of the political discourse, in which both sides are always to blame in equal measure, this is supposed to be the part in which we acknowledge that Democratic voters are just as unprincipled as Republican voters, just in the opposite direction. Except, that’s quantifiably wrong: on tax fairness, Gallup found Democratic attitudes have been quite steady for many years, and didn’t change much at all after Trump took office. The same is true on polling regarding Syria and the state of the economy.The key takeaway here isn’t a look at the polarized electorate, but rather, the asymmetric polarization. The New Republic’s Brian Beutler had a good piece on this the other day, arguing, “You can draw any number of inferences from this observation, but the most inarguable, in my opinion, is how devastating it is to the conceit that U.S. political dysfunction … should be attributed to both parties in equal measure.”Postscript: The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel had a related item over the weekend, noting that for many voters, partisanship is so strong, it even alters perceptions of past events, not just future expectations: “When GOP voters in Wisconsin were asked last October whether the economy had gotten better or worse ‘over the past year,’ they said ‘worse’ – by a margin of 28 points. But when they were asked the very same question last month, they said ‘better’ – by a margin of 54 points. That’s a net swing of 82 percentage points between late October 2016 and mid-March 2017. What changed so radically in those four and a half months? The economy didn’t. But the political landscape did.”Same-sex spouses of federal employees will be able to take advantage of their partner's health insurance and retirement benefits, according to new federal guidance issued on Friday.
Just two days after the Supreme Court gutted a key section of the Defense of Marriage Act, the federal government is taking steps to extend benefits to spouses of all of its employees, regardless of their sex.
Elaine Kaplan, acting director of the Office of Personnel Management, sent a memorandum to heads of agencies and departments across the federal government outlining the benefits to which same-sex spouses are now entitled. Among those are healthcare coverage, life insurance and retirement benefits.
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"There are numerous benefits that are affected by the Supreme Court’s decision, and it is impossible to answer today every question that you may have," she wrote, noting that the office will be issuing additional guidance in the future.
"Nevertheless," she added, "I want to assure you that the U.S. Office of Personnel Management is committed to working with the Department of Justice to ensure swift and seamless implementation of the Court’s ruling."
In a statement after the guidance was issued, Attorney General Eric Holder Eric Himpton HolderHolder: 'Time to make the Electoral College a vestige of the past' Obama political arm to merge with Holder-run group Barack, Michelle Obama expected to refrain from endorsing in 2020 Dem primary: report MORE said that it "represents a historic step toward equality for all American families"
"By extending health insurance and other important benefits to federal employees and their families, regardless of whether they are in same-sex or opposite-sex marriages, the Obama Administration is making real the promise of this important decision," he added.
Holder has been tasked with coordinating federal agencies' response to the Supreme Court's 5-4 decision overturning the law limiting the federal definition of marriage to between a man and a woman.
That means evaluating how to change the more than 1,000 statutes that deal with Americans' marital status, including taxes, Social Security coverage, healthcare and immigration, just to name a few.
Friday's guidance only refers to employees "who have legally married a spouse of the same sex," and does not distinguish between married couples who live in states where same-sex marriages are recognized and those who were legally married in the District Columbia or the 13 states that recognize the marriage but have since moved elsewhere.
The ambiguity in that distinction has raised questions about further implementation of the court's decision.
Under the terms of Kaplan's memorandum, federal government employees will have until Aug. 26, 60 days from the court's ruling on June 26, to make immediate changes to their insurance coverage options to account for their same-sex spouse. They have until June 26, 2015, to make any changes to their retirement benefits.BLT
Nuggets
It’s time to face your food. Texas-born Peter Augustus confronts our disconnect with the origins of our dinner and the reality of what it looks like before being cleaned, processed and packaged into a visually acceptable substance.
Moving to Hong Kong two years ago, Augustus was struck by the traditional meat shops all over the city, every part of the animals for sale and gruesomely displayed in the store windows and streets. Though at first a bit jarring, the relationship non-Western countries have with their food at least feels a bit more honest than our dyed, fried and breaded meals. It is this disassociation that Augustus’ Mystery Meat challenges, the unappetizing truth in a full array of classic American delights. The series intends to neither nauseate or condemn, but simply bring about awareness and a reminder of food production in the States and elsewhere. If we are to eat that tasty burger, let’s at least keep in mind where it came from.
Pork Burger
Hot Dog
All images © Peter Augustus 2014
via Master Kong SocietyStory highlights A PETA sting targets one of America's top horse trainers
Covert recordings capture grueling images, apparently incriminating conversations
The animal rights group is known for its purist approach to animal rights
Attorney for accused trainer says "the PETA piece is sensationalism"
The Kentucky Derby resides on a summit of high-society pomp.
But with the clink of champagne glasses, the flutter of feather-bedecked sunhats and the drumming clomp of purebred hooves just weeks away, animal rights advocates may have turned over a rock, revealing an alleged equine hell beneath it.
Injured horses compete under peak demands, PETA said. It alleges they are doped against the excruciating pain of worn-out joints, hooves with holes and bleeding lungs.
Their handling and training are so grueling, prized chargers drop dead before making it to the racetrack, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals said.
The group targeted one of America's top horse trainers, Steve Asmussen, and his main assistant, Scott Blasi, in a monthslong undercover operation that included video recorded clandestinely.
Though the sting singled out the two men, the group said what it found is "standard practice" in the horse racing industry, where "death and injuries are business as usual."
But an attorney representing Asmussen and Blasi said "the PETA piece is sensationalism."
Ugly video
PETA backs its allegations with a lengthy report and hidden camera video that the activists posted to YouTube on Wednesday.
The images of alleged doping are grueling. They are matched by what appears to be incriminating conversations -- laden with profanity -- with workers who appear disgusted by the suffering of the animals.
The videos are edited.
Racehorses receive so much medication that they are often called "chemical horses," PETA said.
Horses in Asmussen's care received a thyroid drug to "speed up metabolism," muscle relaxants, sedatives and the diuretic Lasix to prevent lung bleeds during overexertion, the group alleges.
It did not say whether the treatments were legal or customary. But the group said one of Asmussen's primary veterinarians at New York's Saratoga Race Course said "basically all" horses trained by Asmussen are given Lasix.
PETA has a reputation for a sometimes puritanical approach to animal rights and protection, and it advocates a vegan lifestyle. The group said it has filed 10 complaints against Asmussen and others working with him in Kentucky and New York.
Authorities in those two states are taking the allegations seriously.
The Kentucky Horse Racing Commission and the New York State Gaming Commission have opened investigations based on the undercover operation.
"The behavior depicted in the undercover video and supporting materials is disturbing and disgusting," said veterinarian Scott Palmer of the Gaming Commission.
Reserving comment
Clark Brewster, the attorney representing Asmussen and Blasi, said PETA's effort "has little to do with true accusation of wrongdoing and everything to do with condemning the horse racing industry as a whole."
"PETA seems to suggest in some of the videos that somehow the horses were mistreated," Brewster said. "But if you watch the video where claims of anything improper occurred, it was in front of some of the finest equine vets in the industry. It's impossible to blame the trainers."
The attorney also said the group edited the piece "to show the most sensational parts."
PETA also accused Asmussen of paying less than minimum wage and hiring undocumented workers.
Everything that the trainer did is standard practice in the sport and done under veterinarians' guidance, said Brewster.
The recordings and allegations tarnish the shine of two of the country's top horse racetracks.
PETA said its activist obtained access to Asmussen by going to work for him, and made the recordings from April to August 2013 at the Churchill Downs racetrack in Louisville, Kentucky -- the home of the Derby -- and at New York's Saratoga Race Course.
The National Thoroughbred Racing Association -- which describes itself as a broad-based coalition of horse racing interests -- notes there aren't yet uniform rules in the sport to regulate the administering of medication, or enforcement of existing rules and laboratory testing, though there is a movement to make such blanket rules.
As to Lasix, for example, a report by a Lexington, Kentucky, lab director Richard Sams pointed out several racing commissions had once banned it only to reverse that position in the mid-1990s. The NTRA said there has been "significant progress" toward a program that has been or is set to be adopted in 14 states -- including Kentucky and New York -- approving regulated administration of Lasix by third-party veterinarians or technicians.
The New York Racing Association, which conducts racing at the Saratoga Race Course, said it was concerned about the allegations brought to the Gaming Commission.
"The New York Racing Association takes the health and well-being of its equine athletes very seriously," the group said. "We pledge to continue to work in partnership with the Gaming Commission and all industry stakeholders to promote the safety, integrity and transparency of our racing."
Churchill Downs issued a statement expressing concerns about the health of horses.
"This has always been a topic of great importance to us, and we've made long-term and far-reaching commitments to incorporate health and wellness measures for every race, every day," it said.
The racetrack describes the Kentucky Derby as "the greatest two minutes in sports."There are winter storms that have been dubbed Snowpocalypse, Snowmageddon or even snOMG. But Calgarians facing a wicked September, with snapped tree limbs strewn across roads, are getting what city officials have described as "a snowfall event."
And what an event it has been. Over the last three days, Calgary has been battered by foul and unexpected weather conditions, and that's saying something given the city's reputation for rapid change.
The temperature here Wednesday dropped to an unimpressive 1 degrees from Sunday's high of 25.8. A wet, heavy snow – 5 to 15 centimetres per day for the past two days – has taken down trees and branches all over the city.
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In turn, those trees and branches have taken out power lines. As of Wednesday afternoon, about 30,000 people were still without electricity, which meant no heat, no WiFi and slow commutes via the LRT trains. Traffic lights were out, turning major intersections into four-way stops. Some businesses didn't open. Schools were open but poorly attended. Organizers at the Spruce Meadows equestrian centre cancelled the first day of the Masters competition.
David Spence, the Calgary-based CTV meteorologist, was asked whether this September-to-remember snowfall was a first for the foothills city. He explained the records to determine that are incomplete.
"We generally get snow in the first couple of weeks in October – it was Oct, 27 last year and two years ago it was Oct. 20th," said Mr. Spence, who pointed to an Arctic ridge of high pressure coming down through British Columbia as part of the problem. The other part was that the storm front headed east over the mountains, picking up cool air and moisture then dumping it on southern Alberta.
In response, the city of Calgary announced it was opening its emergency operations centre to co-ordinate the cleanup. This is the first time the operations centre has been open since the great flooding of 2013.
Ken Uzeloc, director of the Calgary Emergency Management Agency, explained this snowfall was unusual because it arrived at least six weeks earlier than expected. That, he said, produced more than 1,300 calls to the city's 311 information line.
Mr. Uzeloc insisted the top priority is to clear roads blocked by fallen trees. Members of Canada Task Force 2, a disaster response team, are doing chainsaw duty to clear roads and sidewalks. Contractors have been hired by the city.
"The overall cleanup may take a few days," Mr. Uzeloc said, "because what crews are doing is chopping up any trees that are impacting things and then moving them off to the side."
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Enmax spokesperson Doris Kaufmann said the power company has brought in additional crews to get the electricity back on. "This is actually in pretty much all quadrants of the city with the exception of the northeast," she said, adding that Enmax couldn't put a timeline on when power would be running in every neighbourhood.
What should help is another shift in the weather, this one in a positive way, with no snow Thursday combining with more sun and higher temperatures. By Saturday, it is expected to be 11 degrees.
"I can tell you this," Mr. Spence said. "It snowed here on Aug. 22 in 1992. I remember it very well. It was my wedding day."
One year ago to the day, Calgary had a warm event with the temperature reaching 24 degrees.by Michael W. Taft
I started meditating over 30 years ago, and it has proven to be a life-changing practice for me. When I reflect on my own experience, or listen to that of my friends and students, I realize that there was almost no area of life that meditation doesn’t improve or enhance in some way. When I went looking for some scientific backing for these anecdotal experiences, I found a huge amount of studies available. What follows is just a smattering of the overwhelming research into the benefits of mindfulness meditation. Have a look:
Improve Your Focus — Focus is a trainable skill, and meditation systematically trains you to focus. What’s more, your focus isn’t just better when you’re meditating, but all day long as you go about your business. Mindfulness’s positive effect on concentration has been proven in this long-term study, and this study, and has even been shown to make a big difference in novice meditators after only ten days.
Reduce Your Stress — We’ve all heard that meditation can help you to relax and become less stressed out. It is a proven way to deeply relax. Science shows that it can even make very stressful situations easier to handle. It lowers your cortisol levels—the hormone most responsible for stress. A 2010 meta-analysis of 39 studies found that mindfulness is a useful intervention for treating anxiety and mood disorders.
Enhance Your Empathy — Mindfulness will help you connect to other people. One mindfulness practice is called “loving kindness” meditation, in which you focus on feelings of love and compassion. Experiments show that over time this can dramatically boost your empathy (sense of emotional connection) with other people. Medical students under intense stress report higher levels of empathy when they meditate.
Reduce Your Emotional Reactivity — How long does it take you to recover from an upsetting event? Mindfulness can reduce that time measurably, and get you back on your feet faster after emotional upheavals.
Increase Your Cognitive Flexibility — Tired of being stuck in the same old rut? Mindfulness has been shown to increase “cognitive flexibility,” which means it allows you to see the world in a new way, and behave differently than you have in the past. It helps you to respond to negative or stressful situations more skillfully.
Boost Your Memory — How many facts you can hold in your head at once, what scientists call “working memory” is a crucial aspect of effectiveness in learning, problem solving, and organization. A study of military personnel under stress showed that those who practiced mindfulness experienced a boost in working memory, as well as feeling better than those who didn’t practice. Another study shows that it not only improves memory, but boosts test scores, too. Even practicing mindfulness for as short as 4 days may improve memory and other cognitive skills.
Make You Less Sensitive to Pain — Mindfulness meditation changes your physical brain structure in many ways; one is that it actually increases the thickness of your cortex, which reduces your sensitivity to pain.
Give You a Better Brain — Mindfulness trains the prefrontal lobe area of your brain (it actually gets bigger!), as well as enhancing other areas which give the benefits of an entire package of related functions such as self-insight, morality, intuition, and fear modulation.
Obviously, mindfulness meditation is an important part of any ongoing wellbeing program. The secret to gaining the benefits of mindfulness is simple: do it everyday, ideally with the guidance of an experienced meditation mentor.
photo by Kevin Lebianco
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PinterestOver the first couple of weeks in the new basketball season, the Cal State San Marcos men's team circled up on the gym floor for warmups and almost immediately noses began to twitch.There is nothing quite like the nostril-burning menthol smell of ICY HOT."Who is that?" someone would groan.It was always the same guy raising his hand. It became a running joke."Do you have to guess?"would say, enjoying the needling as much as anybody.When you're a 31-year-old freshman on a team of 18- to 20-year-olds, you have to be prepared to get the needle when you've slathered too much soothing but stinky ointment on your aching knees and back.Oh, but it hurts so good.Payne is experiencing something of a sporting rebirth, and his story is like few who have played at any college level.Most guys Payne's age are settling into the rhythm of their chosen career. He's already experienced a lifetime of rewards and challenges as a 14-year veteran of the Marines who has been on eight deployments. He has been married five years to his wife, and any day now Cindy will give birth to their first child, son Camilo.An active duty staff sergeant, Payne has begun the rigors of the Marine officer commissioning program and is being paid to attend college. When he completes his degree in Global Studies at CSUSM, he will become a second lieutenant, on his way to leading warriors.Yet, through it all, Payne was nagged by one goal that had gone untested: trying to play college basketball.Most people would have chalked it up as to an opportunity missed. They'd be too embarrassed to be the old guy on the court. The Semper Fi spirit in Payne wouldn't accept that."It's been kind of how I've lived my life," Payne said. "Doing what I did in the military and the level I reached, the attitude was, 'If I'm selected for this unit or not, at least I have the guts to try.' The guys around me in the Marines all had that mindset. We may not be the best or the fastest, but we're going to give it everything we have."If I didn't make the basketball team, I could say I tried at 31. At least I know I tried and gave it my all."Payne, who played high school ball in Orange County and hundreds of games on the Camp Pendleton base traveling team, approached the Cougars coaches over the summer about trying out. He was one of a couple dozen who showed up for the walk-on camp. Then something extraordinary happened."He comes out and he's trying out with these 18- and 19-year-olds, and he's making every shot, and he's beating up on these little young guys," Cougars head coachrecalled. "With his background it was a no-brainer to keep him on the team. People with military training have all of those tools that we try to teach the guys."Payne laughed at the thought of his tryout performance."That day I went home and thought, 'If they don't take me after shooting like that …'I couldn't shoot the ball any better than I did."Honestly, I think it was because we had a doctor's appointment that day. I saw the first ultrasound of my son. Just seeing him put me in a great state of mind -- basketball was just a game. I really didn't feel any pressure when I showed up."It's about perspective.The son of a dad, Steve Payne, who served 30 years in the Marines and whose own father fought in Korea, Stefawn thought from an early age he'd be a Marine, and then 9/11 happened during his junior year in high school and that sealed it, he said.He enlisted out of high school in 2003, and a year later was deployed to Iraq as a radio operator to a unit based outside of Fallujah. One day, Payne was handed a metal detector and told to sweep for IEDs."As a 19-year-old kid, you're like, 'OK,' " Payne said while trying to replicate his blank expression. "It definitely makes you grow up faster."That first of his three deployments to Iraq would be the most trying, Payne said, although no one in his unit was seriously injured. Among the other deployments was an assignment in Afghanistan and a stint on a ship off the coast of Africa.Payne's only significant injury was a broken elbow suffered on the ship when he fell hard while exiting a helicopter by rope.After Payne's first enlistment was up in 2007, he briefly left the Marines in the hopes of playing college basketball. He worked out for a time with coach JohnO'Neill's Palomar College team. But the Marines asked him to come back, and he did so within a few months."Best decision I ever made," Payne said.At the walk-on tryout, the CSUSM players were somewhat startled at first to see a muscular, 6-foot, 190-pound guy who was clearly older than them."First playing against him, you could tell he's a grown man," said junior guard, a first-year transfer from Eastern Michigan and the team's leading scorer at 16.7 points per game. "He's strong. He has stature. He has that presence."Playing against him was fun at first because you think you're going to be able to go by this old guy. But he's a competitor. He doesn't let that stuff stop him."Once on the squad, Payne knew he'd be in for some kidding, and he was more than prepared to dish anything back. Marines usually aren't shy.The team challenged him with some funny stuff, beyond making fun of the ICY HOT. Best nickname: "Just For Men," because of his graying whiskers. A pre-game meal turned into a debate about whether Payne could beat MMA legend Ronda Rousey in a fight.When Rousey was demolished in 48 seconds by Amanda Nunes in UFC 207, Payne group texted his teammates, "Still think she can beat me?"Foster has enlisted Payne for some serious stuff, too. When players have needed encouragement or extra motivation, he's asked Payne to intervene."He's a great leader off the court and in the locker room," Foster said. "Everything you're teaching the guys in terms of teamwork, and sacrifice, and work ethic, and fighting through adversity, he's lived."Well into the season, a Cougars team that lost all of its top scorers from last season is managing fine, with four players averaging in double figures. CSUSM is 10-5 overall and 5-3 in the CCAA and has won three straight heading into Thursday night's game against Cal Poly Pomona in its impressive new home, the Sports Center.Payne has appeared in five games, totaling 13 minutes playing the tenacious defense for which he's known. He's only attempted two field goals and has two points."He hadn't played in a long time," Foster said. "We have a bunch of really good guys who have been playing consistently for a while. But he's a good shooter and every day he practices hard. He's physical."He's a 31-year-old freshman," Foster added with a smile. "We've got three years to groom him into something."Payne's scoring line hasn't diminished the team's regard for him one bit."He understands his role perfectly," Alvano said. "He's a guy who's looked up to for advice. He's a true competitor. Every day in practice he's the guy who brings energy and effort. One thing I like to do is lead by example, and he does, too. I've texted and talked to him on multiple occasions. He's a mentor, a teammate and a friend."Said Payne, "I see the bigger picture. When guys are having a bad shooting night or they're going through some adversity, I've been through that already. I pull them aside with quick words of encouragement – trust it; keep grinding; don't second-guess yourself."Payne views his mentoring as just one more part of his training to be an officer. One day, young men in very different uniforms will put their trust and faith in him."The whole point of all of this," Payne said, "is to be a better leader of Marines."Think that cider is all West Country smocks and ooh-arr? Then think again. Susanna Forbes takes us on a global trend tour of what looks set to be one of this year’s hottest drinks categories.
France
A more wine-like approach
While large players dominate the scene, a number of artisanal cideries are escaping the rustic crêperie typecasting. Domaine Dupont’s Calvados-cask aged cider appears at New York’s Gramercy Tavern. ‘We are bringing a more wine-like approach,’ says Jérôme Dupont. ‘I want to show apples from my terroir can produce not only “traditional” ciders.’
Pomze in Paris illustrates the shift of perception even further. At this Bib Gourmand-garlanded restaurant the humble apple appears as the cultural reference point for the food on the menu as well as drink.
Yet perhaps this is not surprising. As Pete Brown and Bill Bradshaw relate in World’s Best Ciders, just a century ago, more cider was drunk in France than wine, and the Bretons believe their region to be the true location of Avalon, the legendary ‘Island of Apples’.
Production centres on Normandy, Brittany and the Pays Basque, with producers such as Eric Bordelet, Christian Drouin and Domaine Dupont offering up ciders for celebration and food as well as quaffing. Inspiration comes from nature, not think-tanks.
For Guillaume Drouin, son of Christian and president of the family firm, a Christmas cider doesn’t mean one with spices added, but one where late-ripening cider apples are stored until Christmas Day. ‘I wanted to make the cider later, when it is cold, for a slow fermention,’ he explains.
Medium-sized producers such as Cidre Le Brun also keep faith in tradition. At its Breton base, fruit is handpicked, ciders are made with 100% juice and only cider apple varieties are used, except for special ciders such as its rosé cider, made with a pink-fleshed apple.
And what of the big boys? ‘While brands such as Ecusson and Loïc Raison hardly compare to artisanal ciders, they embarrass industrial brands from other countries, retaining far more of cider’s true character in both style and substance,’ say Brown and Bradshaw.
Apples: Primarily cider varieties; hundreds available. Blends are the norm, primarily with bittersweet varieties.
Best known for: Normandy and Brittany: 70/75cl bottles; off-dry, sparkling, bottle-conditioned or keeved cider (see box on p.93). Pays Basque: flat, drier ciders. More recently, refined, wine-like ciders.
Trends for 2016: Cocktails, either with cider on topping-up duties, or in its distilled incarnation, Calvados. Pommeau, the apple juice/Calvados aperitif.
What’s new? Cidre Le Brun in 37.5cl bottles (Instil Drinks).
Over here: Cidre Le Brun (Instil Drinks), Christian Drouin (McKinley Vintners), Côte Breton Brut Cidre (Truman’s); Domaine Dupont (Marussia Beverages), Eric Bordelet (Les Caves de Pyrène), Loic Raïson (Beers of Europe)
Spain
The theatre is integral
Spanish cider has two personas. One, the accessible, off-dry ciders such as Avalon, El Gaitero and Maeloc Dry. The other, sidra natural, the spine-tingling style of Asturian and Galician ciders, with all their heritage and theatre.
In those regions, the tangy cider apples are the stars (see box opposite), yet precious few ofthese ciders actually make it to the UK for us to try – they are not the easiest sell to the uninitiated. If you do want to track them down, Spanish specialist Mevalco carries Trabanco’s Homegrown Cider and Instil Drinks has Maeloc’s Sidra Natural Ecológica.
Yet in Northern Spain, sidra natural is a way of life with a pouring ritual to rival sabrage. Try directing a stream of cider from a great height into a small glass. This technique aerates the cider, triggering a temporary burst of fizz. It’s known as cider-throwing and it’s integral to the taste experience.
Its tangy nature makes sidra natural a remarkably versatile partner for food. Mevalco’s David Menéndez points to strong cheese and the classic fabada asturiana, a rich pork, bean and black pudding stew, as two matches of note.
In Spain cider has made the transition from summer seasonal to all-year tipple, according to Isabel Trabanco, the fourth generation to be involved with the major Asturian producer. Production models vary. While Maeloc, part of the Estrella Galicia family, works with over 1,000 Galician growers, Trabanco uses apples from its own 100ha of orchards.
Many of Trabanco’s ciders ferment in traditional chestnut barrels, but look out for the company’s Poma Áurea Brut Nature. Fermented at low temperature for months before a gentle, secondary fermentation in tank, this cider is ‘dry, mellow and balanced, with floral aromas and a hint of fig,’ says Menéndez.
Apples: Over 100 varieties to choose from. Asturias has its own PDO, governing both production methods and the 22 permitted apple varieties.
Best known for: Dry, still sidra natural. Off-dry, sparkling cider.
Over here: Avalon (Morgenrot); Maeloc (Instil Drinks; Matthew Clark); El Gaitero (Beers of Europe; Instil Drinks); Trabanco (Mevalco)
Sweden
Modern gastronomy match
Ranging from eloquent ice ciders to gregarious big boys Kopparberg and Rekorderlig, life certainly isn’t dull in Scandi-ciderland. Boutique producers number only a few dozen, but Andreas Sundgren, founder and cidermaker at Brännland Cider, says that the ‘craft cider industry is waking up in a serious way’.
Ice ciders are made in the Canadian method, allowing the must to concentrate prior to fermentation, and Sundgren is unperturbed that dessert apples predominate. ‘Their high acidity and freshness mirror modern gastronomy very well,’ he says, making this focus an advantage when finding ‘a unique Scandinavian expression’.
Berries are an intrinsic part of the local culture so it’s perhaps not surprising that fruit ciders exploded onto the world from there. Back in Britain, the love affair with fruit cider continues. Kopparberg’s Strawberry and Lime, for example, outstripped the fruit category as a whole, seeing growth of over 20% in 2015.
Apples: Dessert apples. Minimum juice content: 15%.
Best known for: Medium cider. Fruit cider.
Trends for 2016: Cocktails. While the ever-creative Joel Persson of Rekorderlig blazes a mixology trail around the globe, the talented Emil Åreng, a regular on the world bartender circuit, creates drinks with Brännland’s Iscider.
Over here: Kopparberg; Rekorderlig UK (Molson Coors); Herrljunga (Beers of Europe), Brännland (Nordic Nectar)
USA
In top restaurants with wine
There aren’t many US ciders over here yet, but with over 540 cider houses, it won’t be long. Cider’s heritage in the USA goes back to the first settlers. While some stalwarts stuck with their orchards, honing ‘heirloom’ varieties, the recent renaissance was triggered by pioneers such as Steve Wood at Farnum Hill in New Hampshire in the 1980s.
Today the situation is electric. While the big boys fight over distribution, boutique producers champion heritage apples and make ciders that sit beside wines in top restaurants. Take the legendary Aaron Burr cidery. Its ‘regular’ 75cl Golden Russet is on the list at New York’s Terroir’s for $44, while Malus Baccata, made from three years of foraged crab apples, commands $300 per 50cl bottle at groundbreaking cider bar Wassail, on the aptly named Orchard Street in NYC.
Washington State tops the apple-growing chart, with a cider Gold Rush under way. Born in 2013, Seattle Cider Co is already the fifth largest independent US cider company, mainly due to its dry and semi-sweet cans. Slowly, cider is breaking into the on-trade, with Bushwhacker pub in Portland among the first.
‘There aren’t many rules,’ says Ryan Burk, Angry Orchard’s cidermaker, who opened Innovation Cider House in New York’s Hudson Valley last August. ‘US cidermakers are innovating like crazy and defining global styles, like hopped cider.’
It’s not all fancy flavours. Wood, the godfather of the new cider wave, has ‘no intent to step into the crowd of “innovative” cidermakers. Our sort of cidermaking is more like winemaking than it is like wine-cooler. We only want to get better at the basic work we do, in the orchard and in the cider room.’
For more information on the US cider scene check out Eric West’s ciderguide.com and the United States Association of Cider Makers (USACM) website: ciderassociation.org.
Apples: Production focuses on the Canadian border states. There are breakouts, including Virginia. Minimum juice content: 50%. Volume ciders: mainly dessert and culinary apples.
Best known for: Off-dry brands such as Angry Orchard and Woodchuck Hard Cider. Wine-like, 75cl still ciders.
Trends for 2016: Fruit and hop ciders. Good-looking cans. See Cider cocktails: Another Bite of the Apple by Darlene Hayes.
Ones to watch: Farnum Hill Cider; Snowdrift Cider Co; Eden Ice Cider; Reverend Nat’s, Wandering |
in Texas supported a work permit without citizenship and only 35% supported a pathway to citizenship. This is a crock that is being sold to Republican politicians that they can just buy off Hispanics, and frankly it’s offensive, but it’s being sold as pure politics.
RUSH: We’re talking to Senator Ted Cruz from Texas about the Gang of Eight’s immigration bill. Senator Graham was on TV Sunday, basically said that we need to do this, just as you said, to get back in the good graces of the Hispanic community. And I think you’re right, the consultants are telling Republicans — you know, you can tell somebody anything. The fact they believe this is what’s frightening to me. Because where does this stop, Senator? If, for example, we gotta get back in the good graces of Hispanics, therefore we have to support amnesty and throw out what we believe, then what’s next for abortion? What’s next for gay marriage? What’s next for anything that we disagree with the Democrats on? Well, the gays don’t like you Republicans, and you’d better sign on to gay marriage or you’re never gonna get their support. I mean, it’s the same line of thinking and it has no end to it unless you play it all the way out and the Republican Party ceases to exist.
CRUZ: Rush, you’re exactly right. These same consultants advise on every one of those issues that Republicans give up our principles and become Democrats. You know, I’m always amused when the New York Times writes editorials trying to be helpful to Republicans and say, “This is the way Republicans can save themselves.” Look, the New York Times disagrees with us. They’re entitled to disagree with us, but it’s not like we should take their advice.
RUSH: Well, they don’t want to save us.
CRUZ: That’s exactly right. They want to destroy us. And this advice, you know, it’s interesting. You’ve got a number of politicians who are listening to it who have not heretofore gotten significant support in the Hispanic community. In my race in Texas, Texas is a majority minority state. Over 40% of the Hispanics in Texas voted for me in the Senate race. And I was very clear in the race from day one in opposing amnesty and supporting border security and in improving legal immigration. I mean, look, there is no more an enthusiastic advocate of legal immigration in the US Senate than I am, and that is a message that resonates powerfully in the Hispanic community.
Now, it doesn’t resonate with the Democratic political operatives, many of whom were on the advocacy groups. It doesn’t resonate with the Democrat elected officials who just want to win elections. But with the Hispanic voters, supporting border security, supporting legal immigration, supporting rule of law is a principled position. And I gotta tell you, we’re in a perilous situation right now, Rush. There are probably 20 Republican senators in the US Senate who are on the fence, who are wobbling on this issue and not sure of how to vote. The proponents of the Gang of Eight are publicly talking about that they think they can get 70 votes in the Senate and then use that to bludgeon the House into adopting this legalization-first-and-never-secure-the-border approach. And so there is something every one of your listeners can do, and the time is now, it is right now this fight will be decided. I would urge every one of your listeners to do two things. Number one, come to a website we formed: SecureBordersNow.com, and sign a national petition.
RUSH: Okay, that website is now officially shut down for awhile.
CRUZ: Excellent. But number two, every one of your listeners, I would encourage them, pick up the phone and call your Senator and call your House member.
RUSH: Does that really work on something like this?
CRUZ: It works tremendously. It is amazing what hearing from the grassroots can do. The reason President Obama’s gun control proposals were killed, his proposals to undermine the Second Amendment, is because hundreds of thousands of Americans began slamming the phone lines, and all of the Senators that were leaning towards supporting it suddenly said, “Holy cow, the folks back home don’t like this.” I mean, Washington is a bubble, and there is nothing more powerful than the conservative grassroots when we are engaged and letting our voice be heard.
RUSH: Senator, I’ve gotta take a break. I know when we talked that we allotted time for you for the first segment, but if you want to continue, we’ve got time here. I just have to take a brief break. I’m not trying to pressure you. I don’t know what your schedule is, but I would love to get your take on the CBO report on this, if you have time.
CRUZ: I am happy to visit further.
RUSH: Okay, we’ll be right back after this with Senator Ted Cruz from Texas.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: We’re back with Senator Ted Cruz from Texas. The CBO report. Depending on how you look at this, it’s either wonderful or disastrous. One contention is that the immigration bill is gonna really, really reduce the deficit, Senator — and it’s gonna really, really cause economic growth with all of these new employees. Then if you look at the numbers they’re talking about, by 2033, it’s 46 million illegals that will be granted citizenship. But they’re all gonna be — are they not, most of them — low-skilled and lower-educated type people?
CRUZ: Well, you know, if there’s one thing Washington knows how to do, it’s come up with bogus cost estimates. I mean, we all remember when Obamacare was passed and we were told it would save money, and we’ve now discovered that it’s gonna cost trillions, and it’s only getting worse. You know, the CBO figures just focus on the immediate, short-term impact and not the long-term impact, and they just focus on the federal level.
So, for example, the proponents of the Gang of Eight say that no one who is here illegally will be eligible for welfare. In the Judiciary Committee, I submitted an amendment — a very simple sentiment, just a couple of sentences — that said, “No one who is here illegally shall be eligible for any means-tested welfare federal, state, or local.” Every Democrat on the committee and the Republican members of the Gang of Eight all voted against it.
RUSH: Yes! Exactly!
CRUZ: It was very clarifying. When they go and say, “There’s no welfare,” why do they vote against a provision that would make it clear? There are a couple of reasons. Number one: In any given year we spend roughly $700 billion in federal welfare payments, roughly $300 billion in state welfare payments. If the Gang of Eight bill is passed, the effect would be to immediately take a very large percentage of those 11 million people here illegally and make them eligible for state and local welfare. I mean, tens of billions, if not hundreds of billions of dollars on the states immediately.
And then the Gang of Eight bill provides that those here illegally in a few years are eligible for green cards and citizenship, in which case they’re eligible for the full panoply of federal welfare benefits. Now, I think we should welcome immigrants from across the globe, but you cannot welcome immigrants with a full welfare state where the incentive is to be dependent on government. We want people coming here who want to achieve the American dream — and this system, this bill I think would have an enormous cost on the state treasury and also the federal Treasury.
RUSH: That’s one of the many things missing is the assimilation to a distinct and unique American culture. We’re Balkanizing in this country now. People are coming from wherever, and they’re staying in those cultures in pockets in population centers across the country. You know, the romantic days of immigration in the early 1900s, those people came here and they maintained their identity, kept their identity. But they wanted to be Americans. They wanted to participate in whatever they thought the American dream was.
CRUZ: Right.
RUSH: And that’s a distinction that can be drawn today.
CRUZ: We are all the children of those who risked everything for freedom. I think that’s what unites us as Americans. I’ll tell you another impact of this Gang of Eight bill that very few people have focused on, which is: If this bill passes, it effectively sets up affirmative action, a strong preference in hiring for those who are here illegally.
RUSH: We’ve talked about that, because they are gonna be exempt for a while from benefits, Obamacare, and welfare benefits, right? So they’re cheaper. They’re more attractive.
CRUZ: Especially Obamacare. They’re exempted from Obamacare, so if you’re a small business owner, if you hire an American, or if you hire a legal immigrant, you’re subject to a $2,000 fine per employee if you’re not providing health care under Obamacare. Where suddenly the 11 million who are granted legalization, it doesn’t cost you that. It’s a massive economic incentive for employers to not hire Americans — or to fire Americans — in favor of those who are here illegally. And that doesn’t make any sense.
RUSH: Senator, is it true what is said, that the people we’re talking about now, the 11 million — if the Gang of Eight bill is passed and signed into law — won’t be able to vote for 13 years, whatever it is? Is that true? Is that what I’m given to understand? They can’t vote in addition to everything else?
CRUZ: I mean, that’s the current delay to become citizens, although actually for certain categories, it’s accelerated faster than that.
RUSH: Yeah, but you don’t expect that hold up, do you? I mean, within a day or two, Senator Schumer’s gonna find a camera and talk about how discriminatory it is. “Here we’ve just granted these people status! We’ve just allowed them to come out of the shadows, and it’s just unconscionable now that we don’t let them vote,” and so a whole new amendment might be made to eliminate the 13 years. Is stuff like that possible, because I don’t blame people who have a cynical view like that.
CRUZ: You’re absolutely right. That is certainly coming. It’s why I’ve introduced a number of amendments to try to fix this mess. One amendment that I’ve talked about today on the floor of the Senate is an amendment to put real teeth in border security — this bill has no teeth in border security — to triple the border patrol, to increase fourfold the helicopters, fixed-wing assets, technology on the border, to put in place a strong biometric exit-entry system.
RUSH: Those were all voted down?
CRUZ: They have been, and critically, the most important piece is to say, “Secure the border first, before any legalization.” What this bill gets most fundamentally wrong is it starts with legalization, and then it promises like Wimpy in Popeye, “I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.” It promises border security sometime in the future. And we all know the border security ain’t never gonna come, but the legalization happens immediately.
RUSH: Senator, the CBO report also has this nugget. They claim, the CBO says that illegal immigration would continue at the level of 75% of current levels. Even with the passage of the bill, without the border security, you’re still gonna have 75% influx of what we have now.
CRUZ: Well, and I can tell you what we’re seeing right now. We are seeing a massive spike in illegal immigration this past year, and this has happened every time amnesty is discussed. Look, people respond to incentives. If you’re in a foreign country and you want to be an American, and you hear, “Hey, they’re getting ready to do amnesty,” it’s a huge incentive to come here illegally. One of the real tragedies of our system is that you’ve got hundreds of thousands of men and women entrusting themselves to coyotes, to drug dealers. And every year there are hundreds of women and children who die in the desert, who are sexually assaulted, who are trafficked. I mean, it is a grotesque and inhumane system, and this Gang of Eight bill, if it passes, would increase illegal immigration.
RUSH: One quick question before we go. I noticed or I read the other day that the majority leader, Senator Reid, now seems intent on hurrying up and getting this bill passed by the Fourth of July break. Why?
CRUZ: I think… Look, I certainly wouldn’t presume to speak for Harry Reid. But I think he’s starting to get nervous, and I think he’s starting to get nervous because the American people are starting to pay attention. In 2007, the American people realized there was a proposal to grant legalization first before securing the border. They spoke up loudly. They picked up the phones, they called their senators, they called their House members, and they said, “No, we don’t want legalization first, then border security,” and it killed it.
I think Harry Reid is getting nervous. He thinks he has the votes right now. And as I said, there are probably 20 Republican senators on the fence, and the biggest difference your listeners can make is today, tomorrow, the next day, picking up the phone and letting your elected representatives know, “Don’t go down this road.” It is politically foolish, and as a policy matter, it would be terrible to the country. It doesn’t fix the problem. We need to fix the problem, secure the borders, and improve legal immigration.
RUSH: Senator Ted Cruz from Texas. I really appreciate your time, Senator. Thanks for giving us a half hour today. It’s great, and we wish you the best in your endeavors.
CRUZ: God bless you, Rush, and always keep speaking the truth. The more rocks they throw at you, the more good you’re doing.
RUSH: (chuckling) Thank you, sir. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Once again, that’s Senator Ted Cruz from Texas weighing in on the status of the immigration bill, the Gang of Eight bill, and what he thinks the true impetus behind this is. That is an interesting nugget. The CBO — in all of this scoring, in all of this economic data that they’re projecting — says that even with the passage of the bill, illegal immigration will continue at a rate of 75% of current levels.The European Commission has renewed software licences worth up to €50m with Microsoft for another three years after opting not to open the business to competition.
The Commission is expected to announce the deal next week in written answers to questions raised by members of the European Parliament over the purchase of Microsoft software without a competition.
The Commission justified doing a back-room deal, called a negotiated procedure, with Microsoft because it claimed that under Article 126 of the European Financial regulations an upgrade of Microsoft XP to the latest Windows 7 operating system on over 36,000 PCs across the EC and another 54 European agencies would be deemed no more than “a partial replacement” or “extension” of existing software installations.
Further justification was claimed under the same regulation because changing from Microsoft to another software supplier would force the EC to acquire software with such different technical characteristics that it “would result in incompatibility or disproportionate technical difficulties in operation and maintenance”.
The Commission will tell Mary Honeyball, Labour MEP for London, and Bart Staes, a Belgian MEP for the Greens, that criticisms of the deal are unfounded.
The deal is justified under European law, it will say, asserting claims it is trapped or “locked in” to buying Microsoft are untrue. It will also claim it supports interoperability standards prized for the way they facilitate a change of computing platforms without raising those difficulties the Commission has used to justify its negotiated deal with Microsoft.
It will answer criticism from open standards campaigners by stating commercial software operators such as Microsoft are capable of creating interoperable software. But it will not seek to claim their software actually is interoperable. It is still fighting Microsoft in court over a 2004 penalty it imposed on the firm for preventing competitors from interoperating with its ubuquitous Windows software platform. Since competitors were unable to access communication protocols used by Microsoft network server software, they were prevented from producing alternative products (notably Samba) that customers could slot in to the corporate network ecosystem dominated by Microsoft.
Microsoft took the European Commission to court this week to appeal a record €899m fine the Commission imposed in 2008 for failing to comply with a 2004 order to make its software interoperable. Microsoft did not contest the 2004 anti-competition rap this week, said reports. It merely claimed the terms of the 2008 fine were unfair because it was not given clear directions about what it must do to comply with the 2004 interoperability order.
While claiming the anti-competitive uninteroperability of Microsoft’s software should justify its purchase without a competition, the Commission will attempt to further justify its Microsoft deal this week by claiming its expenditure with Microsoft is trifling in comparison with its total IT budget.
The software licence deal neither involves paying Microsoft money or committing to purchase any software. But the deal sets favourable terms of purchase that are used to formulate actual exchanges of money that the licensing regime makes a forgone conclusion.
The Commission’s last negotiated deal with the software giant, a 2007 software licence agreement that runs out on Tuesday, was consummated with a €49m deal with Microsoft reseller Fujitsu in 2008.
The deal does however involve paying money direct to Microsoft, again using a back-room negotiated procedure. The Commission allocated €44m for payment to Microsoft on 5 May for the provision of software support services, a move it said in the award notice was justified because no other company could provide such services for the support of Microsoft software.
In December, the Commission decided in a series of closed meetings that it would use its renewed Microsoft licences to upgrade its computers from the Windows XP to Windows 7 platform.
The software licence deal also secured licenses for other Microsoft software, including its SharePoint content management system, server software of the sort subject to the 2004 anti-competition case, database and security software.
The Commission will say next week that it’s decision to buy Microsoft licences was separate from its decision to upgrade its computers to Windows 7. The licence that ran out this week would have accommodated the upgrade and the EC could have chosen to do it at any time. But the administration would have been unable to continue using what Microsoft software it did have if it did not conclude another licence deal before 1 June.
The licensing agreement requires European agencies to purchase their Microsoft software through Fujitsu under another contract that has also been the subject of some controversy. Fujitsu was appointed after the Commission held a competition for a “Microsoft” reseller. It is usually forbidden to specify a trade name in a procurement call. Open Forum Europe (OFE), a campaign group, said this week 13 per cent of tenders called in February and April 2010 requested trade names.
OFE also criticised the increasing use of negotiated procedures like the ones struck with Microsoft and called for more transparency of such arrangements. It is usual practice for the EC to justify negotiated procedures by quoting legislation, not providing specific reasons.Salmon producer defends bulk antibiotics use
Updated
Australia's biggest salmon producer, Tassal, has defended the use of tonnes of antibiotics on its Tasmanian fish farms.
Figures from the $350 million salmon farming industry show 18 tonnes of the drug were given to Tasmanian salmon in the two years from 2006.
Figures obtained by the ABC suggest the bulk was used by Tassal.
The chief executive, Mark Ryan, says Tassal's use of the drugs is declining as vaccines are developed.
"We make sure that before we harvest fish that everything is below the prescribed residue limits, so from that point there are no concerns at all from a health perspective," he said.
The figures show the other major players in the Tasmanian industry, Petuna and Huon Aquaculture are now antibiotic-free.
The Australian Marine Conservation Society has included Tasmanian salmon on its list of products consumers should avoid.
Topics: fishing-aquaculture, tas, australia, hobart-7000
First postedImage copyright Reuters Image caption Pakistan has accused India of stepping up breaches along the disputed border
India and Pakistan are continuing to trade accusations over alleged breaches along the disputed border in Kashmir.
On Tuesday morning, India accused Pakistan of firing on Indian posts in the Jammu region.
On Monday, Pakistan summoned India's deputy high commissioner, saying a civilian had been killed on the border.
It is the latest in a series of accusations and counter-accusations, with each side blaming the other for violations of the 2003 ceasefire.
Last week, India accused the Pakistani army of killing five of its soldiers - something Pakistan denies.
The BBC's Charles Haviland in Islamabad says that the bad-tempered mutual accusations have called into question the possibility of the two countries' prime ministers meeting on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly next month.
The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon landed in Pakistan on Monday for talks with the prime minister and president on disaster management as the monsoon season get under way.
But his spokesman said that Mr Ban urges both India and Pakistan to resolve the latest flare-up in hostilities peacefully.
Volatile border
Pakistani troops fired on Indian posts in the Ramgarh sector, in Samba district, early on Tuesday morning, Indian media reports said.
Firing was also reported on Indian posts in Poonch district on Monday night, they added.
On Monday, Pakistan said that a male Pakistani civilian was killed when India fired on the common border early on Monday.
India offered a different version of events, saying that soldiers responded to shelling but that no injuries were reported from the Indian side, Reuters reports.
Last week, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said it was imperative to restore the ceasefire on the disputed Kashmir border following the violence.
The diplomatic tension has been accompanied by disturbances within Indian-administered Kashmir, where a curfew is in force after clashes between Muslims and Hindus left three dead and 20 injured on Friday.
The violence reportedly erupted after Hindus objected to Muslims chanting anti-India slogans after prayers
Claimed by both countries, Kashmir has been a flashpoint for over 60 years. The two sides agreed a ceasefire along the Line of Control in November 2003.
But both have blamed each other for occasional cross-border firing which has resulted in several soldiers and civilians being killed or wounded.
Thousands of people have been killed in Indian-administered Kashmir since an armed revolt against Indian rule erupted in 1989.Facebook
Facebook on Thursday launched a version of its app for Google Glass, becoming the latest technology company to release software for the computing eyewear.
The app allows users to upload photos from Google Glass directly to their Facebook timelines. They also can add optional photo descriptions, just by saying the information out loud. Right now, users can't tag people in photos from Glass, but they can tag the pictures after sharing them by going on a computer or mobile device.
"We look forward to exploring Facebook experiences across new types of mobile devices," Facebook's Erick Tseng said in a blog post. "This is only a first step."
The news came in conjunction with Google's developer conference, Google I/O. The confab made headlines around the world last year with the surprise debut of Google's wearable, Internet-enabled Glass via an extreme sports spectacle. Since that time, Google has released Glass to a limited number of people in its "Explorer" program, and Google co-founder Sergey Brin has said that pricing and availability of Google Glass will be announced by the end of the year.
Sarah Tew/CNET
While Google's Internet-connected eyewear has generated a lot of buzz, it's still too early to know if it will take off. The glasses currently come with few apps and limited functionality, but many more developers are working on creating software for Glass. Twitter on Thursday also said it has created an app for Glass. And Google confirmed it has video streaming and a development kit for Glass in the works.
To access Facebook via Glass, a Glass user has to first enable Facebook for Glass by visiting the MyGlass page. Users also must set up sharing contacts via MyGlass. After taking a photo, the user must tap the touchpad to select "share" and then decide who to share it with -- only the user, friends, or the public.
Users receive a notification -- the photo with a Facebook icon in the corner -- in their Glass Timeline to tell them that they've shared the picture on Facebook. And they can add a description by tapping on the photo, swiping to select "add description," and then speaking the information out loud. Users see a preview of the description and can choose whether to post it.
Updated at 11:45 a.m. PT with additional details and background information..
Kindness Is Best Learned By Feeling It
Phrases like “random acts of kindness” and “pay it forward” have become popular terms in modern society. Perhaps this could be best explained by those who have identified a deficiency in their lives that can only be fulfilled by altruism.
It seems that we just can’t get enough of those addictive, feel-good emotions — and with good reason. Scientific studies prove that kindness has many physical, emotional, and mental health benefits. And children need a healthy dose of the warm-and-fuzzies to thrive as healthy, happy, well-rounded individuals.
Patty O’Grady, PhD, an expert in neuroscience, emotional learning, and positive psychology, specializes in education. She reports:
Kindness changes the brain by the experience of kindness. Children and adolescents do not learn kindness by only thinking about it and talking about it. Kindness is best learned by feeling it so that they can reproduce it.
A great number of benefits have been reported to support teaching kindness in schools, best summed up by the following.
Happy, Caring Children
The good feelings that we experience when being kind are produced by endorphins. They activate areas of the brain that are associated with pleasure, social connection, and trust. These feelings of joyfulness are proven to be contagious and encourage more kind behavior (or altruism) by the giver and recipient.
Increased Peer Acceptance
Research on the subject has determined that kindness increases our ability to form meaningful connections with others. Kind, happy children enjoy greater peer acceptance because they are well liked. Better-than-average mental health is reported in classrooms that practice more inclusive behavior due to an even distribution of popularity.
Greater Sense of Belonging and Improved Self-Esteem
Studies show that people experience a “helper’s high” when they do a good deed. This rush of endorphins creates a lasting sense of pride, wellbeing, and an enriched sense of belonging. It’s reported that even small acts of kindness heighten our sense of wellbeing, increase energy, and give a wonderful feeling of optimism and self worth.
Increased Feelings of Gratitude
When children are part of projects that help others less fortunate than themselves, it provides them with a real sense of perspective. Helping someone else makes them appreciate the good things in their own lives.
Improved Health and Less Stress
Being kind can trigger a release of the hormone oxytocin, which has a number of physical and mental health benefits. Oxytocin can significantly increase a person’s level of happiness and reduce stress levels. It also protects the heart by lowering blood pressure and reducing free radicals and inflammation, which incidentally speed up the aging process.
Better Concentration and Improved Results
Kindness is a key ingredient that helps children feel good about themselves as it increases levels of serotonin. This important chemical affects learning, memory, mood, sleep, health, and digestion. Having a positive outlook enables greater attention spans and more creative thinking to produce better results at school.
Reduced Depression
Dr. Wayne Dyer, internationally renowned author and speaker, says research has discovered that an act of kindness increases levels of serotonin (a natural chemical responsible for improving mood) in the brain. It’s also found that serotonin levels are increased in both the giver and receiver of an act of kindness, as well as anyone who witnesses that kindness, making kindness a powerful, natural antidepressant.
Less Bullying
Shanetia Clark and Barbara Marinak are Penn State Harrisburg faculty researchers. They say, “Unlike previous generations, today’s adolescents are victimizing each other at alarming rates.” They argue that adolescent bullying and violence can be confronted with in-school programs that integrate “kindness — the antithesis of victimization.”
Many traditional anti-bullying programs focus on the negative actions that cause anxiety in children. When kindness and compassion are taught instead, it fosters the positive behavior that’s expected. Promoting its psychological opposite is key in reducing bullying to create warm and inclusive school environments.
Maurice Elias, Professor at Rutgers University Psychology Department, is also an advocate for kindness. He says:
As a citizen, grandparent, father, and professional, it is clear to me that the mission of schools must include teaching kindness. Without it, communities, families, schools, and classrooms become places of incivility where lasting learning is unlikely to take place. We need to be prepared to teach kindness, because it can be delayed due to maltreatment early in life. It can be smothered under the weight of poverty, and it can be derailed by victimization later in life. Kindness can be taught, and it is a defining aspect of civilized human life. It belongs in every home, school, neighborhood, and society.
It’s become quite clear that modern education must encompass more than just academics, and that matters of the heart must be taken seriously and nurtured as a matter of priority.
Author: Lisa Currie, Ripple Kindness Project
Lisa is the founder of Ripple Kindness Project, a community program and school curriculum that aims to improve social, emotional and mental health, and reduce bullying by teaching and inspiring kindness. The ongoing, whole school primary curriculum teaches children about their emotions and the impact their words and actions have on others. It provides opportunities for children to be part of kindness activities, allowing them to experience the feel good emotions kindness produces.It's not Nike, but it may be the next best thing.
Former Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) Light Heavyweight Champion Quinton Jackson has a number of reasons why his upcoming fight against Glover Teixeira at UFC on FOX 6 will be his last. In addition to the "cheap" pay and the "cowards" who "disgust him," he thinks promotion matchmaker Joe Silva should be "shot in the face."
Now, he has a new reason.
On a recent UFC on FOX 6 media conference call (see it here), Jackson (32-10) revealed he's secured a sponsorship with Reebok, but claims the UFC brass have prohibited him from wearing the sneaker giant's branded apparel into the Octagon on fight night.
And that sent him into a "Rampage."
"My reasons for wanting to leave the UFC are still the same. Matchmaking is just one of the reasons. It's nothing about money. I've done this interview several times before and don't want to go into it. I have a new reason. I'm sponsored by Reebok and UFC says I can't wear Reebok in the cage. Stupid stuff like that. It's not about money, it's about respect. I'd rather take a money cut to go to another show and get appreciated. I'm sponsored by Reebok, just not allowed to wear it in the cage. I can't wear Reebok while I fight. I think in my opinion, the fighters do a lot for the sport and we're not taken care of well enough. I feel like they're getting rich off of all of us. We're having surgeries and injuries and some of these guys can't afford to pay sparring partners and stuff like that. I don't want to be a part of the sport like that. I want to go where they treat their fighters like human beings."
It should be noted his most recent surgery (see it here) was paid for by his employer.
Jackson turned in a lackluster performance in a unanimous decision loss to Ryan Bader at UFC 144 last year in Japan. He attributed his poor showing to a knee injury suffered in training camp, one severe enough that it prompted him to seek testosterone injections.
It was also the first time the Memphis native missed weight for a UFC fight.
The loss to "Darth" was his second in a row, having been choked out by division champion Jon Jones in Sept. 2011. He needed the judges to get past Matt Hamill and Lyoto Machida in recent wins, and hasn't finished an opponent since pasting Wanderlei Silva back in 2008.
But if he wants to make himself a hot commodity post-UFC, he needs to go out with a bang on Jan. 26 in Chicago.
That could be a pretty tall order, as Teixeira (19-2) is coming off a complete one-sided ass-kicking that sent Fabio Maldonado to the hospital after two insane rounds of punishment at UFC 153 (see the pic here). Prior to that, the Brazilian choked out the venerable Kyle Kingsbury en route to a first round submission stoppage at UFC 146.
Get ready for war.
For more comments from "Rampage" at the UFC on FOX 6 media conference call, as well as remarks from some of the event's other major players like Demetrious Johnson and John Dodson, click here.Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama has said that he has ordered the South Jakarta Mayor and the Spatial Planning Agency to reopen an Ahmadiyya mosque in Tebet, and that he would promise to help the Ahmadiyya secure permits to keep their mosque open there.
“We respect all kinds of beliefs. So, if they pray and do not bother other people, we have to let them be,” he said on Friday, adding that moreover, the Ahmadis had been praying there for years.
Ahok said that if the Ahmadis were new people who had suddenly arrived and wanted to pray there, it would be reasonable for the surrounding residents to raise concerns.
But given the long presence of Ahmadis in the area, Ahok questioned the validity and reasonableness of the recent objections. “I have heard that they have been praying there since the 1970s, so why now?” he asked.
Ahok said that he would alter the designation of the contested house from a residential entity to a place of worship if the Ahmadis asked him to.
Dozens of Ahmadis who attend the An-Nur Mosque in Tebet have been barred from entering their mosque by locals and radical groups. The Ahmadis are presently worried about finding a place to pray for Idul Fitri. The South Jakarta administration has sealed the building since Wednesday, arguing that the building should have been listed as a residential facility and not a place of worship.
Aryudi Prastowo, one of the leaders of the Ahmadis in the area, said on Friday that the community had not yet planned to hold early morning Idul Fitri Eid prayers in any other place other than the An-Nur Mosque. They hoped to unseal the mosque through legal processes.
Satria Wirataru, a representative from the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras), said that the sealing of the mosque was conducted three weeks after an audience of Ahmadiyya representatives met with Syamsuddin Noor, South Jakarta deputy mayor, and some other officials, such as the Bukit Duri subdistrict head and Tebet district head.
“The deputy mayor did not say anything at that time that indicated that he would reject the Ahmadis. He only asked them to complete the process of legalizing the mosque,” said Wira, as Wirataru is better known. He added that the license was very difficult to obtain due to the Joint Decree of 2008 issued by the Religious Affairs Ministry, the Home Ministry and the Attorney General, which requires a recommendation from the subdistrict administration and the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) in order for a license to be granted.
“MUI requires recommendation from the subdistrict head, while the subdistrict head has been rejecting us. We are simply hampered by the system,” Wira disclosed, saying that the Ahmadis planned to call for a mediation process with Governor Ahok.
Ahok, however, said that he did not see how he could successfully mediate a solution. “There is no use in mediation if their doctrine [the doctrine of the MUI and the subdistrict head] is already intolerance,” he said.
Ahok said that he would nonetheless help in any way that he could, and that he would ask the police to secure the Ahmadis from attack.
The Ahmadis expected the South Jakarta municipality to provide them with an alternative place of prayer. According to Aryudi, the government is obliged to ensure that all citizens — including Ahmadis —are able to perform their religious activities. To date, however, their expectations have not been met.
“I have asked the South Jakarta government to provide us with some space in which we can pray. Where and whether we will have our Eid prayers on Idul Fitri, therefore, depends on the government,” he said on Friday afternoon after a press conference at the Jakarta Legal Aid Institute (LBH Jakarta).
Earlier on Friday, a group of approximately 20 Ahmadis were blocked from performing their Friday prayers by roughly 50 locals who had barred the road with a long-bamboo stick and had affixed a banner to it that read, “People of Bukit Duri reject Ahmadiyya.”
Calling the Ahmadis “evil” and “intruders”, the crowd of men and boys did not allow the Ahmadis to enter Jl. Bukit Duri Tanjakan Batu, the street location of the An-Nur Mosque.
They also approached and insulted Ahmadis who had managed to sneak in to the mosque and perform their prayers by taking their pictures in a bold and intrusive manner.
Zaitun Azhari, chief of community unit (RW) 08 of Bukit Duri subdistrict, said that the local people rejected the Ahmadis because Ahmadiyya was deemed heretical.
“Moreover, we reject them because no one in this RW is an Ahmadi,” she said. She added that the An-Nur Mosque was accepted before because the community elders lacked information about “the deviant belief of the Ahmadiyya.”Front of the card
Back of the card
Please note that the driving school numbers on the back of the card will be nationalized as they are shown below for final product.
Back of the card
Depending on how successful [or not] this project ends up being, cards may be customizable and can be ordered in bulk. I'm honestly not looking to making this into a full-blown business. I initially created these cards for myself and for friends after receiving a promo code for a printing website. I ended up having way more cards than my friends and I could use, so I figured I'd share the rest (and some) with others who experience the same annoying problems |
interest in water based vehicles. Below is an excerpt from an interview with Digital Spy So this doesn't seem to far outside the realm of possibility as it would appear that Corbould may be bringing his vision to life afterall.On the one side of the canal the blue screen float was still being constructed, on the other it looks like an architectural feature would be used, presumably for some water based vehicle to make its way out of and pass by the blue screen area. Very exciting indeed if this actually happens.The 007 team are expected to be in the area for another two weeks with filming taking place over 1, or 2 days during which the area would be locked down to avoid looky loos.Of course there is lot of speculation above so who knows?Developers and landlords expressed a willingness to pitch in, but they also raised some issues that needed to be addressed first. That led to lengthy meetings on Thursday between state and city officials and members of the Real Estate Board of New York, the Rent Stabilization Association and the state Association for Affordable Housing.
They discussed creating a system by which people who apply to the Federal Emergency Management Agency for housing could be matched with landlords who have vacant apartments. The tenants would pay rent directly with a FEMA voucher, or obtain an apartment through an agency like the Red Cross.
In the New York area, FEMA provides about $1,800 a month in rental assistance for up to 18 months. That would cover most housing in Brooklyn and Queens, but developers said it would fall short of covering many units in Manhattan. The need for temporary housing remains, even in Manhattan, where the heating and electrical systems in complexes like Knickerbocker Village on the Lower East Side were swamped with seawater. Electricity was restored to most apartments in that complex until an electrical fire cut power again.
Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You will receive emails containing news content, updates and promotions from The New York Times. You may opt-out at any time. You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters.
Landlords raised a series of statutory and legal hurdles that would have to be overcome. In apartments that operate under the state’s rent stabilization laws, there is no provision for short-term tenants. Some building owners asked whether the government would indemnify them for apartment damages or legal costs if they were forced to evict a tenant.
“People want to do the right thing,” said Charles Dorego, senior vice president of Glenwood Management, a major Manhattan landlord, who attended the meetings on behalf of the Real Estate Board. “But they don’t want to inherit a pig in a poke. They asked for indemnity, although I don’t see how a government agency can do that.”
By Friday afternoon, officials had developed a proposal that they were beginning to circulate within the real estate industry and hope to unveil soon.
A spokesman for Mr. Donovan said they were on a fast track to devise a creative solution to the housing disaster, but they were not ready to announce any specifics.
It is unclear how many apartments might be included in the pool, given that the city’s vacancy rate is in the low single digits. Some landlords in Brooklyn and Queens called the Rent Stabilization Association on Monday offering apartments for families forced out of their homes. But by Thursday, they said many of those units were now occupied.
Richard LeFrak, whose family owns more than 10,000 apartments in New York and New Jersey, said he had no vacant units, after moving nearly 150 families from their damaged first-floor apartments. His buildings suffered “tens of millions of dollars in damage from the storm,” especially in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, and Jersey City. “We’re so tight now,” Mr. LeFrak said.From Boulevard:
March 8, 2016 – Kansas City – When Boulevard added new markets to their distribution territory in 2015, the Kansas City brewer suggested more were soon to come. Today the company fulfilled that promise, announcing the appointments of Imperial Beverage in Michigan and Beer House Distributors in Kentucky. In the coming weeks, consumers in those states will be able to enjoy Boulevard favorites such as Tank 7 Farmhouse Ale, The Calling IPA, Ginger Lemon Radler and Heavy Lifting IPA.
These moves follow on the heels of recent launches in Rhode Island with Horizon Beer Distributors, and in upstate New York with AL George, Certo Brothers, DeCrescente, High Peaks Distributing, Lake Beverage, Norwich Beverage Corp., Oswego Beverage Co., Plattsburgh Distributing, T.J. Sheehan and Tri-Valley Beverage. In addition, with the appointments of Allstate Beverage Co. in Montgomery and Gulf Distributing Co. in Mobile, Boulevard beers are now available throughout the entire state of Alabama.
“With more fermentation capacity at the brewery, we have the ability to enter markets that have long been on our wish list,” said Bobby Dykstra, vice president of sales. “We’re pleased to bring our family of beers to craft lovers in these areas.”
As launch events in Michigan and Kentucky are finalized in the weeks to come, Boulevard will publish details on their website and social media outlets.
About Bil Cord Founder, owner, author, graphic designer, CEO, CFO, webmaster, president, mechanic and janitor for mybeerbuzz.com. Producer and Co-host of the WILK Friday BeerBuzz live weekly craft beer radio show. Small craft-brewer of the craft beer news sites and one-man-band with way too many instruments to play.In today’s HoloNet Uplink we cross the streams by inviting Keith Kappel of Fantasy Flight Games freelance fame back for yet another interview. He’s already talked to us about Suns of Fortune and Force and Destiny, so this time we didn’t to go easy. By drilling deep into the core of how to design a species this article will give GMs more than an interesting interview and instead a masterclass. Enjoy.
Christopher Hunt (CH): Keith, you’ve been interviewed twice already for d20radio’s Interrogation droid. Are you prepared, mentally and emotionally, for a full on Kylo Ren level mind invasion?
Keith Ryan Kappel (KRK): Can anyone truly prepare for that?
CH: Let’s talk about writing species. Can you take us through the general process you use when approaching a species assignment?
KRK: Sure! While this is no means the official FFG way to do things, this is the basic process I’ve been using for the stat blocks. First, there are really only two considerations when creating a species. First, that you create something that is balanced within the system when compared to other species, and second, that you evoke the core experience of what it means to be a (heroic) example of that species. So for me, I start with humans, which are kind of the baseline average for everything. So an ability score of 2, wound and strain thresholds of 10, starting XP of 110, and two single ranks in non-career skills. So the first thing I do, is cash in the special qualities for XP. Buying a single rank in a non-career skill costs 10 XP. The human gets to do this twice. So basically, I get 130 XP to play with.
Next, I increase one stat that is most important to that species, and decrease one stat that is least important. In rare, rare cases, I might decrease 2 stats to increase one twice, or swap two sets of stats. So my stat pools are always (2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2), (3, 1, 2, 2, 2, 2), (3, 3, 1, 1, 2, 2), or (4, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2). I suppose, theoretically, we could also do a (4, 4, 1, 1, 1, 1). Note that any time that 4 shows up, it does represent a slight imbalance. To make up for a 3 or 4, I’ll usually subtract more XP from the pool. My next move is the deal with the thresholds. If they stay at 10 + attribute, then no worries. But if I feel it’s warranted, I can slide the value up or down. I XP charge for these (positively or negatively) just like I would with skills. (cost 5 to move from 10 to 11, or gain 5 XP to move from 10 to 9, etc). I tend to avoid doing this too often, unless the species lore makes it seem necessary.
Finally, I deal with the special qualities. Most species in FFG Star Wars only have two special qualities, so I spend some time researching to find out what biological or cultural distinctions from humans are most important to call out mechanically. This tends to be the trickiest part. What I will usually do, is try and find a precedent in a specialization talent tree that does something equivalent, and see how much that talent costs. I think write up the quality and subtract that much XP from the starting pool. Whatever XP I have left (typically between 90 and 110) is what stays in that starting XP amount. I’m also a big fan of the negative qualities, I think I gave the Dressellians the primitive one, where you have to spend XP to remove it. In these cases, that extra XP is usually still in that starting pool.
As far as how I approach the lore aspects of creating a species, it really just comes with a lot of research. I’m pretty familiar with the various species of the Star Wars galaxy, but even so, I put a lot of time into assembling a research list and trying to extract every bit of information I can. From there, it’s a matter of researching some actual science and doing some thought experiments. The Dressellians’ prune faces were explained as camouflage for tree bark, for example, a new piece of information that makes a kind of evolutionary sense and gave me a reason to talk more about their homeworld, and how important those trees were to their culture and early survival.
My goals when I’m doing a species write up aren’t just to summarize a Wookieepedia article while adding a few new tidbits, however. I want to provide both GMs and players with the right kind of information, the stuff that helps them play that character as something other than “basically acts human with different starting stats.” I want to equip them with the information to make those PCs seem both biologically and culturally very different from others in the party. As such, I tend to focus and explore the things that make that species alien, and quickly gloss over the things about them that are more similar to humans. I’m also trying to create adventure seeds or hooks for GMs in everything I write, especially when I talk about a planet.
CH: A common debate online over home brewed species is how to reflect the natural abilities of an average member of that species. How do you go about analyzing characters from Canon/Legends and distilling statistics for a species?
KRK: I think the trick is not to go crazy and try to stat out every little quality. WEG and WOTC took a different approach, and species tended to have many, many different SQs. FFG is trying to keep the species versatile enough so that they can be serviceable in a wider array of careers and specializations, and players can have the XP to build the PC they want to play. For instance, not every species needs claws called out as a mechanical benefit, or keen senses. If a PC is of a species that has those things, but there isn’t a mechanical benefit, I might allow them to spend advantage to narratively move the story in a way that could only happen because narratively that species has those things, despite not being called out mechanically in the block.
For example, if I have a Wookiee, which we all know has pretty acute senses, despite not having them called out. On a perception check, I might give a narrative result that speaks to those enhanced senses instead of just information I give to a human. A human succeeding with advantage might see a starship with some smoke rising behind it. A Wookiee might see a starship, and smell roasting bantha steaks. If a character has a justification in their lore or background for why their character might be good at something, it’s also usually good for a boost die from me when I GM. If you’re a Wookiee about to climb a tree, for instance, and remind me of your climbing claws before the check, I’ll probably throw you a boost for that. We don’t need a mechanic listed out for that. That is just rewarding the player for having learned about their species, which encourages them to learn more. The more they learn, the more interesting and alien qualities they might bring to the table, which should make for a better game for everyone.
So I think the trick is to pick out only the first couple of abilities you think of that define that species. That is usually going to be a combination of gut instinct and detailed research. Once you have that, see if you can find a talent that does something similar mechanically as a precedent, so you can get a sense its value in XP, and then do your best to write it up.
CH: The SW RPG community has discovered there seems to be a bit of a formula for balancing the species, in terms of the characteristic array and costing for special abilities. Could you comment on how species are balanced? Is there a formula or rules of thumb you use to keep all the abilities in line?
KRK: There is nothing official, at all. The process I outlined above is what I used to come up with the species for Stay on Target, but balance is ultimately achieved through rigorous playtesting, feedback, and tweaking.
CH: From what I hear, you were responsible for getting the Xexto into Stay on Target. While I know you can’t talk about cut content, could you use the Xexto as an example of the species creation process?
KRK: I did! We originally had something else, but in my view, they were a bit too primitive for the book, considering we already had the primitive Dressellians. I always loved the design of the Xexto, ever since seeing Gasgano in Episode I, and they seemed like a great example archetype species for the Hotshot specialization. Chadra-Fan already seemed like a great archetype for the Rigger, and Dressellians were already fulfilling that Beast Rider archetype. I brought my concerns to editor Andrew Fischer, and he was keen to make the shift. They were a lot of fun because they are so big on risk-taking.
Xexto really aren’t a good example, though, as they went through a lot of changes in playtesting, mechanically speaking, and I can’t really speak to what the play testers did and what got changed with any sort of authority. Dressellians work out exactly, though. Stats had one swap, wound threshold took 5 XP, one rank in survival took another 5-10 XP (depending on specialization), they have a 3 in their stat block, so that would cost 30 to go from 2 to 3, but they have a 1 as well, so that gains back 10. So we are at 100 XP right now. Then I give them the primitive quality, which costs 10 XP to remove, adding 10 XP back into the pool for 110 starting XP.
CH: You’ve given us something fans will really appreciate in a masterclass on how to build species for FFG Star Wars. Is there anything else you want to add on that topic?
KRK: I think the main thing is not to lose the story factors for the stat block. This is a really narrative game, and you want to make sure that a player using that species isn’t treating them as an alien looking human with a different stat block. Equip your player with the tools to play that species at the table. Make sure they understand what their homeworld is like. Even speaking in broad generalizations, they should know culturally what that species is like. How will they behave in certain, common situations to adventuring? Their backgrounds, motivations, and duties might require some tweaking to make it more appropriate to that species. Also, note that you don’t have to play the stereotypical example of that species. Do something atypical, these are adventurers. But, make sure that you take a moment to think about what being atypical means for that character, how they might have been treated on their homeworld, what it might have done to shape their personality, and what it means for their history and how they behave now. You don’t have to play the typical example, but you need to be informed of what that is. If that player likes to do voices at the table, try and give them a description, or even better, an audio clip of that species from one of the movies, cartoons, or video games.
You can tell what’s important in any piece of writing by how much word count goes into it. Note that in any species block, the background material is much, much longer than the stat block. That should tell you how important that kind of information is supposed to be.
CH: Thanks, Keith!
Today marks a full month of weekly HoloNet Uplink content. As always, your comments and suggestions are appreciated. Specifically, I want to hear your input on this interview as a potential new content format. Would you like to see more masterclass interviews with FFG freelancers and major community members to get their in depth insight as Keith as done today? Should Fantasy Flight Games freelance fame be known as the 5F? Want to see something completely different? Let me know in the comments below.
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Latest Posts Christopher Hunt Staff Writer at d20 Radio Ready to pull the ears off a Gundark, Chris is new to writing in the gaming industry. Up in the mystical Canadian land of Manitoba, he can be seen running Star Wars for his home group and at PrairieCon events. Chris has a passion for gaming he hopes to unite with academic and corporate writing experience. Latest posts by Christopher Hunt see all) HoloNet Uplink – Walker Ace - February 21, 2019
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commentsIsraeli settlers and their organizations control some 42 percent of West Bank land, even though the settlements' built-up area is just one per cent of the territory, the Israel B'tselem Human Rights Organization said in a report released Tuesday.
Even though some 66 percent of the settlements' built-up areas are defined as being on "state land," B'tselem found that "allocation of this land for settlements was only possible through a manipulative interpretation of all relevant laws in force in the West Bank."
Construction in the settlement of Yakir, near Ariel. Moti Milrod
The report titled By Hook and by Crook: Israel's Settlement Policy in the West Bank found that in taking over these lands, those responsible for Israeli settlements have "treated international law, local legislation, Israeli military orders, and Israeli law in an instrumental, cynical, and even criminal manner."
Although Israel declares it is building settlements on state-owned land, B'tselem says it cross-referenced data from Israel's Civil Administration for the West Bank with aerial photographs and discovered that 21 per ent of the settlements' built up areas lie on private Palestinian land.
The B'tselem report is based on official state reports and documents, among them army and Civil Administration maps, state comptroller's reports and a data base set up by Brigadier Baruch Spiegel, a former official in Israel's Ministry of Defense.
According to B'tselem, the Ministry of Justice, asked to comment on the report, replied that state will not respond to the report "in light of its political nature".I had to pick it up at the post office, when I arrived I received not one, but two giant packages. I took them home and had to wait for my wife to come home. Santa had sent gifts for both of us. She had written me some super sweet messages and informed me to expect gifts for both of us and my baby girl (coming January 2016) I was dancing from excitement when my wife came through the door, we got to open the early christmas gifts from a stranger! I opened the two packages and pulled out the 6 hand wrapped gifts, each more than anything I could've asked for, and an envelope with "Open Last" written on it. We took turns grabbing a random gift and unwrapping it. First, the soft package. "I suck at wrapping but I tried!" written on it. You wrapped beautifully and was so awesome. Inside two tiny outfits, both of which will don my baby girl when she's born. Next, an 'LA' starbucks coffee mug. How did she know we liked coffee? My wife can't drink a bunch of coffee, due to being pregnant, but I am a coffee-holic. This will get so much use! The next package blew my mind. Yoshi's Wooly World for Wii U, and Legend of Zelda the Triforce Heroes. Never in a million years did we think someone could be so generous. I've actually already played a ton of both games!! Next was a bluray of my wife's favorite animated movie starring by far the best comedic genius. Aladdin! I was begging NO MORE! I can't take the generosity! But onward we rode. The next two packages cemented in my mind, faith in humanity. Shovel Knight for Wii U, and yet another Starbucks coffee mug. This mug displayed "Best Day Ever". Never have I agreed more with a coffee mug. This was by far the best day ever. What remained was a pile of wrapping paper, and an envelope. I slid open the flap and my heart melted even more than I thought possible. A Starbucks gift card, to go with the mugs, and the sweetest most thoughtful christmas card. In fact this was our first christmas card we've received this year. Inside was written an explanation of all the gifts, including that the LA mug is a limited edition only available in certain major cities, making this mug a souvenir on top of being an amazing gift.
Santa, you made us believe in the generosity of people and restored out faith in humanity. Words can't express how grateful and thankful we are for your generosity and thoughtfulness. From the bottom of our Hearts, Thank You!Chris Christie Closed New Jersey's State Beaches — And Then Went To The Beach
Updated 12:30 p.m. ET
What's worse than a government shutdown closing state-operated beaches on a sweltering holiday weekend?
Now we know: Seeing photos of the governor — a key player in the budget standoff that caused the shutdown — enjoying one of those empty beaches like it was his own private island.
On Sunday, the New Jersey Star-Ledger took aerial photos of Christie and his family on the pristine Island Beach State Park, where there's a governor's residence. The governor is lounging in a beach chair, sand between his toes. Around him, people play paddleboard and enjoy beverages.
That afternoon, at a press conference in Trenton about the shutdown, Christie was asked if he had gotten any sun that day, the newspaper reports. "I didn't," he reportedly said. "I didn't get any sun today."
After being told there were photos of the governor on the beach, his spokesman told the Star-Ledger that the governor was briefly on the beach talking to his family. "He did not get any sun," the spokesman added. "He had a baseball hat on."
On Saturday, the governor had defended using a state park that is closed to the rest of the state's residents due to the budget impasse. Christie told the newspaper that his family doesn't use any state services while there, and emphasized that his residence is separate from the park.
With his trademark brusqueness, Christie told state residents how they could enjoy the beach.
"Run for governor, and you can have a residence there," he said.
Folks on Twitter had, well, a day at the beach, and broke out their finest memes for the occasion.
In one of the most pointed headlines to come out of the beach brouhaha, the Asbury Park Press wrote, "Gov. Christie, get the h--- off the beach!"
The line references a directive issued by the governor in 2011, when Hurricane Irene was imminent and Jerseyites were playing it cool — too cool, in Christie's opinion.
"I saw some of these news feeds that I've been watching upstairs of people sitting on the beach in Asbury Park," he said at a press conference then. "Get the hell off the beach in Asbury Park and get out. You're done. It's 4:30. You've maximized your tan. Get off the beach."
Christie's second term as governor ends in January 2018, when presumably he'll have lots of time to maximize his tan.
On Monday morning, the governor tweeted a photo of a beach, touting many open beaches in New Jersey. Municipal parks and beaches are open (and were reportedly packed over the weekend), but state beaches remain closed due to the shutdown.
Christie called in to a local Fox News affiliate on Monday to say that if the Legislature passes a budget, he will sign it. Fox anchor Teresa Priolo mentioned Quinnipiac University's latest poll, which has Christie with just a 15 percent approval rating among New Jersey voters — "the worst approval rating for any governor in any state surveyed by Quinnipiac University in more than 20 years," according to the poll.
Priolo asked Christie if his visit to the beach signaled that he was out of touch with the people of his state.
"Most of the time when they catch politicians with hidden cameras and planes flying over you, they catch you with someone you're not supposed to be with," Christie said. "I was actually with who I was supposed to be with and where I was supposed to be. And I really wonder about journalists who spend money flying planes to look whether people are actually where they said they would be. I'm sure there are Pulitzers coming, it will be great."
Meanwhile, Christie's own Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno posted her disapproval of Christie's beach visit on Facebook. Guadagno, a Republican, has been Christie's second-in-command since 2010 and is now running for governor herself. In that same Quinnipiac poll, the Democratic candidate, Phil Murphy, leads Guadagno 55-26 percent.Student loan defaulters living abroad have so far eluded "border arrest", despite Inland Revenue's tougher stance on non-compliance.
IRD can request a "border arrest" warrant to stop borrowers who are significantly behind on their overseas-based repayment obligations from leaving New Zealand next time they visit home.
The default amount for overseas-based borrowers at the end of last month was $683.3 million, up on $535.1m at the same time last year.
Minister of Revenue Todd McClay said the increase was mostly because IRD's automatic repayment holiday, which previously hid many of those not paying, was reduced from three years to a maximum of a year.
IRD's drive to increase overseas borrowers' compliance started in 2010 and by the end of June last year, it had clawed back $70.2m.
In the year to last month, IRD received another $123.6m in payments.
McClay said borrowers could face the border arrest sanction, announced in last year's Budget, if they refused to start repayments or enter into an instalment agreement after repeated requests.
"[IRD] has implemented the systems and processes required to support arrest at border, although... this is a last resort. Requesting an arrest warrant would follow numerous requests for the borrower to pay," he said.
"So far nobody has been stopped at the border."
The penalty for failing to meet overseas-based repayment obligations is a fine of up to $2000.Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM), AGNI II, is seen during its test fire at Wheeler's Island, off the coast of Odisha. (PTI)
The medium-range nuclear capable Agni-II missile, with a strike range of more than 2,000 km, was successfully test fired today from the Wheeler Island off Odisha coast.
"The trial of the surface-to-surface missile was conducted from a mobile launcher from the Launch Complex-4 of Integrated Test Range (ITR) at around 10.20 AM," defence sources said.
"Agni-II Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM) has already been inducted into the services and today's test was carried out by the Strategic Forces Command (SFC) of the Army as part of training exercise with logistic support provided by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO)," the sources said.
The two-stage missile equipped with advanced high accuracy navigation system, guided by a novel scheme of state of the earth command and control system was propelled by solid rocket propellant system, they said.
"The entire trajectory of the trial was tracked by a battery of sophisticated radars, telemetry observation stations, electro-optic instruments and naval ships located
near the impact point in the down range area of the sea," said a DRDO scientist.
The 20-metre long Agni-II is a two-stage, solid-propelled ballistic missile. It has launch weight of 17 tonnes and can carry a payload of 1,000 kg over a distance of 2,000 km.
The state-of-the-art Agni-II missile was developed by Advanced Systems Laboratory (ASL) and integrated by the Bharat Dynamics Limited (BDL), Hyderabad.
Agni-II is part of the Agni series of missiles developed by DRDO which includes Agni-I with a 700 km range, Agni-III with a 3,000 km range, Agni-IV with 4,000 km range and Agni-V more than 5,000 km range.
The last trial of Agni-II conducted on August 9 last year from the same base, was a total success.
Please read our terms of use before posting commentsThe Brutalist Architecture of Leeds
The first part in a 4 part series where we will be covering the Brutalist architecture of Leeds, London, Manchester and Berlin.
Brutalism, a title derived from the French, “béton brut” or (raw concrete), was part of the modernist architectural movement, spanning from the 1950’s to the mid 1970’s. Many buildings and larger complexes of brutalist architecture have a dystopian feel to them and wouldn’t be out of place as “futuristic” cities in science fiction films both past and present. They are often criticised as ugly and harsh. Yes, they don’t age too well, especially in the more damp and maritime climates, but if you can look past the concrete facades and appreciate these buildings in detail what you see are huge, monumental structures that are in every right beautiful.
The brutalist buildings of Leeds are spread out all over the city, standing out in always noticeable contrast to the various other styles of architecture that predominate Leeds. Trying to uncover them all makes for a great day of exploring.
We start deep within the Leeds University Campus where amongst a wide range of differing architectural styles there is a brilliant display of brutalism.
Leeds University
City Center
There’s no set place to look in the city center when it comes to brutalist architecture. It’s all a bit spread out, with examples in the business district, the north of the city, the main retail space and more right on the fringe. Below are the few examples in the business district.
The Merrion Centre Offices
Part of the Merrion Centre complex built in the 1960s, and home to shops, a bowling alley, offices and once a cinema, the main office block is a brilliant example of brutalism.
The Pinnacle Building
Recently refurbished, with a new sign up top and a more modern approach to office space inside, this towering office block on Albion Street can be seen from most parts of the city.
Upper Briggate
Currently home to Dorothy Perkins and Burton, and in the past Topshop, this small, but classic example of Brutalism is located right at the top of Briggate, the main shopping street in Leeds.
Yorkshire Evening Post Offices
These offices for the YEP have become quite the landmark to local residents and visitors. It stands as one of the first buildings many people see as they arrive into Leeds due to its close proximity to the city ring roads and motorway access. The angular shapes and rough concrete textures have housed the newspaper for many years.
Leeds International Pool
Constructed in the 1960’s and designed by architect John Poulson, the Leeds International Pool served the people of Leeds for over 40 years until its demolition in 2009. It was an iconic building at its time of inception and remains so today through photographic memories and stories from those who remembered it. Comparable swimming facilities in Leeds have now moved to the John Charles Centre For Sport.
It’s a real shame to see this building demolished.. But with so many people detesting the style, most notably Prince Charles, maybe it is a sign of things to come for brutalist architecture. Will there come a time when these often historic buildings are ripped down and replaced at a rate where this style of architecture becomes hard to find? We hope not.
Next in this series, we visit Manchester. Coming soon.
Words by Adam Newton
Photos by Adam Newton and Sam Coe
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0 SharesThe News Minute | December 26, 2014 | 12:35 pm IST Chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Dr K Radhakrishnan has something to be proud about, after being chosen as one of the top scientists of 2014 by the prestigious science journal “Nature†Dr Radhakrishnan, while heading the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) also known as the Mangalyaan, knew the odds were stacked up against him as half of all attempts to reach Mars have ended in failure. However, on 24 September, India joined the elite group of nations with the capability to explore the solar system and also the only country to succeed in its first attempt at an interplanetary mission. Dr. Radhakrishnan says that the challenges associated with the job is what keeps him going. He also talks about how participation of the younger generation boosts productivity, a report in The Hindu adds. (An artists concept of the MOM reaching the Mars orbit) The Mars mission has put the spotlight on Asia's space ambitions. India plans in the next three years to launch its second Moon mission and bring back lunar samples to Earth by 2017. “I was like a conductor of an orchestra.†Radakrishnan was quoted as saying. The chairman reportedly, plans to retire from his post on December 31, 2014 to pursue his other interests and hobbies. However, Radhakrishnan is not the only Indian on the list. The list also includes robot-maker Radhika Nagpal who is currently leading an engineering research team in Harvard. This year, her group gathered great appreciation for passing a milestone in biology-inspired robotics. Nagpal’s group devised a swarm of 1,024 “Kilobotsâ€, each a few centimeters tall, that communicated with its immediate neighbours using infra red light and organize themselves into stars and other two dimensional shapes. They hope that this kind of swarm-robotics research will eventually lead to self-organizing robot teams that can rapidly respond to disasters or aid in environmental clean-up. Nagpal is currently trying to develop large robot swarms that can self-assemble into structures in three dimensions, opening up numerous possibilities Also check- From Aryabhatta to Mangalyaan and GSLV Mark III- ISRO's history in pictures Other scientists in the list include Andrea Accomazzo who steered the Rosetta mission, Sheik Humarr Khan an Ebola doctor who turned down an invitation to leave his country so that he could stay and treat patients and Pete Frates who promoted the idea of the Ice-bucket challenge. Check out the full list here Also Read - From Mangalyaan to the Rosetta comet landing: Major breakthroughs of space exploration in 2014 Tweet Follow @thenewsminuteJesse Lipscombe was filming a video about Edmonton’s beauty on a downtown corner when some sheer ugliness confronted him. From a car, some men yelled: “The n—-rs are coming, the n—-rs are coming.” With the camera rolling, the actor and former athlete approached the car and asked them to repeat the slurs to his face, or to explain themselves. The passengers denied that request, then urged him aside, yelling more as they drove off.
The morning after this show of explicit bigotry made its rounds on Facebook and news headlines, Mayor Don Iveson invited Lipscombe to City Hall to craft a response to racism in Edmonton. Inspired by Lipscombe’s bid to stand up for themselves, they came up with #MakeItAwkward. The nascent campaign urges residents to call out racism in their midst, whether it’s an epithet or casual—ask that uncle at a picnic about that racist joke, or don’t let slide that remark shouted from the nearby barstool. The idea has won praise from mayors across the country, and elicited online testimonials about confrontations people have made, or wish they had made.
Maclean’s spoke with Lipscombe and Iveson about this initiative.
Q: Aside from this publicity right now, what do you feel your confrontation yielded? They seemed to drive off in a huff.
Lipscombe: At the time, I’m not sure what I was actually looking for from them. It wasn’t a pre-meditated confrontation by any means. It’s not like anything I was saying was ever being absorbed, nor was there any remorse for the comment that he threw my way. So afterwards I was just left there, questioning what just happened. And at that time [my colleague said], “We got it all on tape, Jess.” I said great, please send me that tape. One, I want to kind of see what I did because it’s not like I have a clear memory of it because you’re obviously filled with emotion. But two, here’s a great example. Even though I may not have gotten an apology out of it, this is what’s happening in our city, and we can have a discussion about it.
Q: Do you expect or receive this sort of obviously blatant slur on a regular basis in Edmonton?
Lipscombe: I don’t walk out of my house expecting to hear that. It’s definitely jarring, without a doubt. It’s not completely shocking and surprising that happened, because it happens to other visible minorities, people with mental or physical disabilities or LGBTQ communities. It’s a thing we have unfortunately become desensitized to. Whether it’s as extreme as this or to a lesser degree, it does happen to you on |
ers in pain and tries to speak.
"I'm-I-I'm sorry. Please just-."
The leader thug grabs her hair and begins pulling her up as she screams in terror. In a seedy part of the capital near the slums, no one would even bother intervening. That was the way it was there.
"Now let's see if we can-!"
The thug then notices a large shadow has now covered her face. Looking up a large black mass floats down at them. Landing behind them was a cloaked figure with white sharp eyes. As he began to stand to face them, those very eyes narrowed to an angered form.
The closest thug to the figure pulled out a blade and walked over to him with an obnoxious expression.
"Huh? Who the hell are-?!"
Before he could even finish, the figure jumped up and kneed him in the chin. He began falling back from the blow, but was caught by his collar and pulled forward. The figure then proceeded to punch the thug several times in the face before he threw him against wall, causing a small crater to form on it.
The thugs were incredibly stunned. The woman could not believe what she saw. And the figure began to walk towards them with the same angered look in his eyes. The leader motioned his other two thugs to rush him. The two thugs pulled out their own blades and circled the figure. The figure moved a foot slightly forward and the thugs charged with their weapons.
The figure leaped to his left and grabbed one thug by his shoulders, using the momentum he lifted himself and brutally kicked the other thug in his face. Blood and teeth exploded from his face as he fell into some boxes and winced in utter agony, while clutching his face.
The figure then turned his body in the air and kneed the other thug in the ear knocking him to the ground and making him lose his knife. Quickly doing a flip and landing on his feet, he rushed to the thug that tumbled on the ground. The thug attempted to pick up his knife, but had it kicked away. He was then rewarded with three solid blows to the face, knocking him unconscious.
The other thug began getting up from atop the boxes and was met with a solid uppercut. His body rose into the air and fell back into the boxes crushing them, as well as possibly a few bones.
"OI! OI! WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS?!"
The main thug had dropped Linnea and looked over with enraged expression. Then he reached out his left hand and concentrated. A sudden burst of flames hovered over his hand as he smiled manically.
"Ready to die you bastard? Ready to burn? Ready to suffer? READY TO DIE?!"
Batman merely observed this and took up a fighting stance.
"And pyrokinesis is supposed to scare me?"
Of course he was not scared by this, why would he be? He has sparred and fought against other more powerful fire based super humans. Why would he be worried about some scrub and a small ball of fire?
The thug looked unnerved by his unflinching nature, but went back to frustration.
"Eat this! GOA!" He screamed as he launched a fire blast from his left palm at Batman. Batman dove around the blast and charged the thug in a mad dash. The thug attempted to aim his palm at him…only for Batman to completely dislocate his wrist in one swoop. The Thug screamed in agony and had made a move to use his other free palm to fire another blast. Batman unleashed an unrelenting fury on his stomach; punching and hitting at such a high speed, that thug lost his breath and began to fall backwards.
Batman turned himself slightly and released a massive falling punch so hard, that when it connected, the impact made the ground underneath the thug's head crack. When he removed his fist, the thugs face was covered in blood, his teeth were shattered, his nose was bent in two different ways and his eyes were so swollen they looked inhuman.
Batman pulled out a wire from his utility belt and began tying up the thugs to each other. After he completed that, he walked over to Linnea, who was now sitting upright on a wall, to check on her condition. She flinched as he made his way toward her. He knelled down to reach her eye level. He could tell she was frightened of her.
"Are you aright?"
Linnea looked confused by this question.
"Huh?"
"Do you need some medical attention?"
"I…I'm fine."
She nodded several times before Batman pulled out a small liquid bottle, napkins and some bandage tape from a pocket on his belt.
"Here, this will help. It may sting a bit."
He sprayed a bit of the bottle on the napkins and started to lightly tap it on her face. She started to voice her pain but Batman reassured her.
"It'll only hurt for a bit."
He then placed the bandage tape around her head and tied it nicely. He nodded as he got up and pulled out his grappling gun.
"Get the authorities. Tell them what happened and take care of yourself."
Linnea could not stop staring in awe of the dark clothed man who saved her. But as his hook fired away, she stumbled to her feet.
"WAIT! I have to thank you! I will be forever grateful to you sir, I owe you a debt that can never-!"
"Don't."
"Huh?"
"As long are you're okay and these guys are imprisoned, that's fine with me. "
He said this with a slight nod and began positioning himself to take off.
"My name is Linnea! Linnea Helena! At least-!"
She looked down a bit at her own hand clasped hands before looking up again, this time with small tears running down her right eye.
"Tell me your name!"
Batman turned his head slightly as he heard this.
"My name…?"
Later, when the sun began to set, several knights had arrived to the alley to find the thugs tied and bloodied. One of the knights held out a poster with the main thug's face on it.
"The Black Claw Gang? Looks like we picked up some of their most valuable members."
The main thug now awake sneered at them as blood flowed from his nose. The knights picked them up and led them away to custody. One knight had stayed behind to get a statement from the young lady.
"Can you tell me exactly what happened?"
Linnea observed at the knight timidly before straightening her face.
"Those men had been e-extorting money from my clothes shop. They said if I didn't pay up they'd burn it down or even k-kill me."
The knight gave a stern look behind himself at the thugs were carried away in a dragon carriage.
"I owed them money, but I didn't make enough to pay back their demands. I-I think they were really going to kill me."
She began to shake at thought of her life being snuffed away. However she stopped, and looked up with a face of clarity.
"But then, HE showed up. He saved me and took down all those men. He was amazing, strong, fast and kind of scary to look at."
"Scary?"
She clasped her hands together; she then smiled and touched the bandage on face.
"Yes. But he was very kind. He helped me without even the slightest intention of getting something in return. Yes."
The knight gave a concerned look as he asked her a valuable question.
"What did he look like?"
"I couldn't see his entire face. He wore a black mask-."
"DID HE HAVE HORNS ON HIS HEAD AND A BLACK CAPE?"
She flinched a bit as he yelled this, but relaxed again as she replied.
"Yes. Have you met him too?"
He gave a conflicted aura as he heard this. Earlier, he encountered the costumed figure after being asked a few questions. Afterwards he disappeared from sight and he went around the streets looking for him. He was then called over by other knights to the alley for assistance, thus having to postpone his search. He could not figure out why the man saved this girl or how he took on four armed men by himself.
He got closer to her and pleaded with her.
"Did-did he tell you anything?"
"Just his name."
After realizing how close he was to her, he took a step back and cleared his throat.
"What was his name?"
Linnea paused for a second. A small breeze blew by her as she put a hand on her long hair. It flowed with the wind, as she gave a tender smile. She looked up at the orange hue sky and with an affectionate look in her bright blue eyes.
"He said his name was BATMAN."
The knight could only stand there, as the wind continued to blow around them.
Batman glided through the air in the bare slums of the city, looking around for anything that could help his situation. The local residents could only stare at the human flying through the air in absolute astonishment. Some thought it was a magic user, while others became frightened and thought it was some sort of rogue monster. Batman scanned the area as he began to lose altitude; he pulled out his grappling gun and fired it to one of the rooftops of a housing complex. Latched on to the edge, he pressed the trigger again and was pulled to the top with incredible speed. He landed on the roof and began surveying the rest of the sunset laden city.
"Where do I go now?"
He began walking to the other side, and then heard a commotion.
Crashing and shattering sounds could be heard in the distance along with two voices. Batman used his binocular vision to zoom in on the disturbance. He saw a young girl and boy fighting near a small shack a few yards away. He dove down to investigate, but as he did the shack collapsed, as it fell on top of the boy. The young girl yelled at the sight before her.
"Hey kid! Couldn't you at least do me the favor of NOT breaking down my place!"
Batman landed right behind her and stood tall, looking down at the young girl. She turned around and began looking up at the massive figure ahead of her. She didn't seem too frightened at first, that is, until she saw his face. The sharp horn-like ears, the white sharp in-human eyes and the very gruff chin, made this man look VERY frightening.
But she still tried to put on a brave face.
"W-what do ya w-w-want with me, huh?! Want to attack a defenseless little girl?! Well too bad! I'm a lot tougher than I look ya know."
Batman nodded and put up a hand.
"No, I'm just here to see what all that commotion was."
"Really? Well-Um…do you have any business with me?!"
"Business?"
As he questioned her statement, the rubble ahead of them began to move.
"Ouch. Ouch. Hang on a second Felt! I actually have some real business with you!"
"HUH?! Why didn't you just say so in the first place?"
"I kinda tried, but then you swung that blade at me! Seriously, don't just jump to conclusions!"
The boy was struggling a bit to get up from the rubble, so Batman moved to the shack and lent out his hand.
"Here, I'll lend you hand."
"Ahaha. Thanks mister. I really-."
As Batman pulled him out, both of them stared at each other in utter shock.
The young boy was dressed in a modern tracksuit and appeared Japanese to Batman's knowledge.
But the young boy began shaking and pointed at him nervously.
"Y-Y-Y-YOU CAN'T BE SERIOUS."
Batman looked just as perplexed by the sight before him.
"B-!"
The boy grabbed his head and shook it roughly.
"No way! First I get sent to a Fantasy World and now this?! This can't be real at all?!"
The boy looked at him again and blurted out the first thing that came to mind.
"Are you Batman?"
Batman could not believe it. He had encountered someone who knew who he actually was, maybe even someone from his own world. He had to ask.
"How do you know who I am?"
The boy was perplexed and uncomfortable for the moment, but took a few breaths and spoke.
"Where I'm from you're legendary! I'm pretty sure everyone on Earth knows who you are!"
Finally a break! Batman may have found his salvation. This boy may be the key to his questions.
"How did you end up here?"
"I walked back from a convenience store and just wandered here."
"And do you know why?"
"Nah, not a clue."
"Do you know what happened to the rest of the Justice League?"
"Justice…League? Is that like the Avengers?"
Batman's questioning halted. He never heard of that name before.
"Who are the Avengers? A new team that formed?"
"Um…OH! That's right that's uh, MARVEL! It's owned by a different company, I think!"
"Company? What are you talking about?!"
The boy then gave off a feeling that he had an epiphany!
"So you're real right?"
"Yes. Why wouldn't I be?"
He looked at Batman with a somber expression as he said something that rattled Batman to his core.
"Where I'm from. You're not real. You're a fictional character."
Batman had a tinge of unease as he heard those words. Not real. Fictional. It seemed as though everything stopped for him. Trapped in a world he didn't know, unable to get home and now learning that he may very well be a made up construct. It was not an easy day for him.
"How much do you know about me?"
"Well just the bare minimum. What happened to you and your parents, your city, your crazy gadgets, let's see, the Batcave. Oh and your real name is BRUCE WAYNE."
Batman could not believe it. Things he desperately tried to keep secret, known to only a select few, was possibly known to an entire world. He wondered if this other world had seen his torment, his losses and his most private intimate moments, and merely viewed it as entertainment?
"Um excuse me."
Batman faced forward as he heard this and saw the boy raise his hand.
"Can you prove to me that you're the REAL Batman? I just kinda can't really wrap my head around thi-."
Before he could finish his sentence, three objects flew by his head and hit a wall that was behind him. He turned around to see what it was and realized exactly what it was.
They were Batarangs.
"HOLY CRAP! YOU REALLY ARE BATMAN!"
The boy almost leapt in applause of the spectacle before him, even the young girl who was mostly ignoring their conversation, was clearly impressed by his skills.
"Wow mister! That was some impressive stuff! Are you a Knight or something?"
The boy waved his finger with a tut-tut of disapproval.
"Oh he's not just any Knight. He's the Dark Knight! Hero of Gotham City! The one, the only! BATMAN!"
The boy struck a dramatic pose and pointed at Batman, who was simply staring at the boy.
The boy stopped the pose and pulled out an object from his pocket.
'Look Felt, I came here because I wanted to buy back that pendant you stole with this!"
He then pulled out a cell phone and took a few snaps with its camera at Batman and Felt. The flashes of the camera clearly spooked Felt.
"Whoa! What's the big idea?!"
He showed her the screen, which had her photo displayed.
"This is a Metia, one that can freeze and record time. It is really rare and at least worth 20 Holy Gold Coins!"
"It is really impressive. Although I think I'm much prettier than that. But first let's ask the old man and see what he says."
"I guess we don't really have a choice, huh? Alright lets go, RIGHT NOW."
"Alright slow down, you got live long and take care of yourself, jeez."
The boy began walking with Felt, when he turned around and looked up at Batman.
"I really hate to ask this of you…but."
He quickly bowed before him and bellowed out a request.
"Please come with us! I feel that we may need someone like you. And if you really are Batman, I know you can do something about this. So-So-PLEASE!"
Batman had no idea why he wanted him to come with him so badly. However, he could feel the desperation and fear in his voice, he knew this boy was heading into trouble.
"-"
Batman slowly walked away from him. The boy began to whimper and hold back some tears…until he heard a noise behind him.
It was Batman, removing his Batarangs from the wall. He turned around as he placed them back in his Utility Belt.
"I can see this a serious matter. And I'm not one who walks away from something like that, especially not when kids are involved."
The boy wiped away the small droplet of tears and let out a hopeful smile.
"Thank you."
"Lead the way then you two."
Batman, Felt and the boy headed deeper into the slums as a group of three. They began to converse about Felt and her dreams, which Batman found commendable. Though he told her something very important.
"Never forget where you come from. It's the place that shapes your future and was the first place you called home."
Felt couldn't help but feel some admiration for what he said, but didn't want to admit it.
"Yeah, sure…I guess."
The boy gave a wry smile as she said this and got close to Batman in order to speak with him more quietly.
"I really am sorry to ask for your help like this."
"No worries, I go where I'm needed. And in your case it seemed as though you really needed my help."
"Yeah. Don't mention anything to Felt, but someone dangerous may be waiting for us there."
"-"
"She is a dangerous psycho that likes to cut open bellies and in the past has done it to lots of people…people I care about."
The boy clenched his fist and gave an expression of unbridled rage. Batman noticed this and put a hand on his shoulder, snapping him back to reality.
"Do you know why she would be where we're going?"
"She wants the pendant Felt has in her possession. And probably to kill us for fun."
"I see."
"I don't want Felt or her Old Man to get killed and I want to take the pendant back to its rightful owner."
"Rightful owner?"
"Oh….yeah, Felt sort of stole it you see. But, you can see she's not a heartless person or anything. So don't throw her in jail yet. Please."
The boy quickly fumbled his words while trying to defend Felt. The boy knew that Felt was actually a nice person, but figured Batman didn't. And his reputation with criminals was not a positive one.
Batman only sighed at this.
"I'll decide when this is all over."
"Yeah, hehehe."
The boy merely scratched his chin as he gave a good chuckle. Felt turned to yell at the both of them.
"Hey you two, keep up! What are you guys laughing at?! Making jokes about me or something?!"
"If we did, we wouldn't say them next to the person we were making fun of. Do we look like we were born yesterday?"
"HMPH!"
Felt pouted as she continued walking forward, the boy only scratched his head out of annoyance.
"Man, talk about stress stacking up."
Batman looked down at the boy and realized something.
"Oh right. I never asked your name. Obviously you know mine, both public and secret."
"Ah! Right, right! No secret identity for me or anything."
The boy gave a wide genuine smile as he spoke.
"My name is Natsuki Subaru. It's nice to meet Batman-san!"
Batman's mind went blank. He heard something that changed everything.
Subaru. The message that he last heard:
[SUBARU, PROTECT HIM.]
"Subaru, right?"
"Yeah?"
"…nice name."
"Hehe, thanks!"
Batman continued to follow Subaru and Felt. Subaru continued on explaining the origins of his name to Felt who seemed somewhat interested. Batman wondered if this encounter meant something. Could Subaru be the key to returning home? Did he know something? He had to find out.
And so the group of three headed ever so closer to their final destination.Vandoorne was withdrawn after Honda found a problem with the Belgian’s engine on the reconnaissance lap to the grid.
Honda has not revealed the cause but initially believed it is the same MGU-H problem that caused multiple failures across practice and qualifying.
“Amazing,” Alonso replied when Vandoorne’s failure to take the start was put to him. “Amazing, you know, because we’ve been working very hard, and Stoffel is working very hard.
“This weekend he had so much bad luck with power unit changes, and then not even to participate...
“You can be fast, slow, at times, in different races, in different circumstances. When you cannot even start the race, it's amazing.”
Alonso retired for the third consecutive grand prix, having run just outside of the points for the duration of the race at the Sakhir circuit, as McLaren's troubled start to the 2017 season continued.
He complained to his team during the race he had “never raced with less power in my life” and later described Honda’s performance deficit as “impressive”.
Alonso said the Bahrain event featured “too many reliability problems”.
“And even for Stoffel not even able to start the race, it's an unacceptable situation,” he added. “We'll see what we can do from now to Russia, because we need to really do better than here.”
Vandoorne wouldn't wish situation on "anyone"
F1 rookie Vandoorne attempted to play down any personal frustration with Honda’s ongoing problems after the race.
When asked if his patience was running thin, the Belgian admitted: “It’s definitely not an ideal situation.
“I don’t wish anyone to be in it like this. But we knew at the start of the season that it was going to be a tough time.
“This weekend really showed what it’s like. It’s a shame to not start the race.
“It’s frustrating when you do all the preparation work – us drivers train a lot, keep fit, to be able to go racing - then not being able to start is a bit frustrating.”Although there’s still $5 million up for grabs with Season Two of Riot Games’ League of the Legends Championship Series Tournament, the company has already mapped out a very different Season Three. Brandon Beck, CEO and co-founder of Riot Games, is leading the charge with a completely separate, dedicated series of tournaments that will occur on a much more frequent, scheduled basis with even more money up for grabs.
In addition, the top eight teams from both North America and Europe from Season Two, as well as top teams from Asia, will be offered salaries by Riot Games as they compete for regional and global dominance. While some leagues charge gamers to watch their favorite pros compete for big prizes, Riot Games is upping the ante with a professional sports-style arena and free HD broadcasts of all the action. That’s helped attract between 2 and 4 million gamers for live tournament events.
Beck talks about the most-played PC game in the world, the growing importance of gaming houses in North America and Europe, and where he expects League of Legends to be five years from now in this exclusive interview.
Some pro gamers out there have told me they can make more money streaming at home than showing up at a Major League Gaming event. Will Season Three help alleviate that problem?
Yes, that’s the goal. In fact, there will actually be salaried players and teams. All of the teams in the Champion League will be salaried. That’s meant to cover cost of living. They’ll have stipends that cover travel, housing, and things like that. They’ll have fantastic opportunities for sponsorships, and certainly a very large prize pool.
What role do you see these new gaming houses that are being established playing in this new format that you guys are doing?
The gaming houses are really important for the pros to hone their game. There has been a long tradition of gaming houses in Korea, for example. I just came back from visiting a bunch of them. In a gaming house, players are practicing 12 to 14 hours a day with their teammates. They’re living with their teammates. With the rest of their time, they’re basically eating, sleeping, going to the gym to stay physically fit, and bonding with their team. I think it actually is an imperative for pro teams to really hone their skill and be able to work together with a type of fluidity. In the US, gaming houses are more of an emerging trend, but it’s exciting to see players organizing and rallying around the gaming houses, because it will help make sure those teams stay sharp, at their peak, and stay competitive globally.
What role do you see TV broadcasts playing in this whole picture?
We don’t have any immediate plan for television. It really depends on how the sport evolves and what makes the most sense for players. In Korea, as you probably know, there are long-standing TV networks that are dedicated to eSports. League of Legends is a prime time television event twice a week in Korea and generates some great ratings. I think that concept has potential throughout the world. We’ll have to see how it evolves.
Do you see Season Three and this new format opening up more opportunities for sponsors?
Absolutely. I think as the audience continues to grow for League of Legends, tons of sponsors have expressed an interest and have continued watching this sport evolve. You are going to start to see brand new sponsors and very mainstream sponsors getting into the mix. I think that’s a fantastic benefit for the sport and the players.
How have you seen the awareness of marketers and brands grow from an awareness perspective of what’s going on with League of Legends and eSports?
The vast majority of viable sponsors are still largely unaware of eSports and the magnitude of it, but I think there’s a definite trend toward more and more mainstream sponsor adoption.
What do you think needs to be done to get past that breaking point for awareness? Is Season 3 in a way designed to help that whole thing happen?
Our focus isn’t really on that. That’s been sort of an incidental consequence of the growth of the sport. Our focus for Season 3 is way more on three dimensions: (1) higher quality broadcasts, (2) higher quality live events with both of those approaching sports quality, and (3) the players. Where we get excited about sponsors is their ability to help make the players lives easier and more comfortable as they can dedicate all their time to playing the sport.
Have you seen any growth in the audience for League of Legends expand beyond the core gamers to the mainstream gamers?
The vast majority of the fans of the sport are certainly hardcore gamers. The game is nuanced and highly competitive, and there’s a significant amount of game expertise and knowledge that’s required to deeply understand the sport. That being said, it’s not just the hardcore fans of the game that are interested. Virtually all League of Legends players have shown an interest in watching the sport being played at the highest level.
Where would you like to see League of Legends and eSports five years from now?
Five years from now we would love to see League of Legends events and broadcasts matching the production quality and excitement level of any other awesome sport. We would love to see pro players that have a storied history of excellence in the game and rivalries with others of well-known sports. We’d love to see all of the elements that generate an emotional response that we’re used to in pro sport. I think, as a whole, in five years the mainstream appreciation and understanding of eSports is going to become far more evolved. The idea of going to a sold-out sports arena to watch gamers duke it out is not going to be such a novel idea or experience.
FOLLOW ME ON FORBES BY CLICKING FOLLOW ABOVE OR ON TWITTER @JohnGaudiosiShe was given a life sentence, and is currently in the Tennessee Prison for Women in Nashville. She will not be eligible for parole until she is at least 67, Mr. Bone said.
Life in Prison
Ms. Brown’s supporters have described her as a model inmate. After getting her G.E.D., she got an associate degree from Lipscomb University, a private Christian college in Nashville that teaches classes at the prison. She hopes to earn a bachelor of arts degree by next year, Mr. Bone said.
State Representative Jeremy Faison, a Republican from Nashville, visited Ms. Brown in 2015 on a friend’s recommendation, and has since been pushing for her early release. They speak about four times per year on the phone, he said.
“I was amazed at the person I met,” he said. “She was kind, intelligent, she had a disposition or presence about her that was just amazing.”
He described Ms. Brown as “extremely remorseful,” but said she also thinks “it was unjust what had happened in her life, and what a 40-year-old man was doing to her.”
Mr. Bone said his client hopes to focus her energy on combating sex trafficking.
“Seldom do you have someone as articulate as she is, with the ability to say: ‘I’ve been there, I’ve done that, and I want to speak out, to let the world know that this is indeed an awful problem,’ ” he said.
But Jeff Burks, who prosecuted Ms. Brown and is now an assistant district attorney in Madison, Ga., told Fox 17 in Nashville on Tuesday that she shouldn’t be considered a victim.While in Pittsburgh, a sense of seemliness should prevent President Obama from again exhorting the Group of 20, as he did April 2 in London, to be strong in resisting domestic pressures for protectionism. This month, invertebrate as he invariably is when organized labor barks, he imposed a 35 percent tariff on imports of tires that China makes for the low-price end of the market. This antic nonsense matters not only because of trade disruptions it may cause but also because it is evidence of his willowy weakness under pressure from his political patrons.
In 2000, as a price of China's admission to the World Trade Organization, Congress enacted a provision for "relief from market disruption" to American industries from surges of Chinese imports. Actually, American consumers cause "disruption" in American markets when their preferences change in response to progress -- better products and bargains. Never mind. Congress said disruption exists whenever imports of a product "like or directly competitive with" a U.S. product increase "rapidly" and threaten "significant" injury to a U.S. industry. Examples of disruption include the volume of imports of a particular product, the effect of imports on the prices of competing U.S. goods and the effect on the U.S. industry.
Notice that China need not be guilty of wrongdoing: It can be punished even if it is not "dumping" -- not selling goods below the cost of manufacturing and distributing them. (That we consider it wrongdoing for a nation to sell us things we want at very low prices is a superstition to be marveled at another day.) And China need not be punished: Presidential action is entirely discretionary. So Barack Obama was using the sort of slippery language that increasingly defines his loquacity when he said he was simply "enforcing" a trade agreement.
None of the 10 manufacturers that comprise the domestic tire industry sought this protectionism. Seven of the 10 also make tires in other countries. Most U.S. manufacturers have stopped making low-end tires, preferring the higher profit from more expensive models. (Four U.S. companies make low-end tires in China.)
The president smote China because a single union, the United Steelworkers, asked him to. It represents rubber workers, but only those responsible for 47 percent of U.S. tiremaking. The president's action will not create more than a negligible number of jobs, if any. It will not restore a significant number, if any, of the almost 5,200 jobs that were lost in the tire industry from 2004 to 2008. Rather, the president will create jobs in other nations (e.g., Mexico, Indonesia) that make low-end tires. They make them partly because some U.S. firms have outsourced the manufacturing of such tires to low-wage countries so the U.S. firms can make a small profit, while making high-end and higher-profit tires here in high-wage America.
The 215 percent increase in tire imports from China is largely the fault, so to speak, of lower-income Americans, many of whom will respond to the presidential increase in the cost of low-end tires by driving longer on their worn tires. How many injuries and deaths will this cause? How many jobs will it cost in tire replacement businesses or among longshoremen who handle imports? We will find out. The costs of the president's sacrifice of the national interest to the economic illiteracy of a single labor union may also include injuries China might inflict by imposing retaliatory protectionism or reducing its purchases of U.S. government debt, purchases that enable Americans to consume more government services than they are willing to pay for.
Obama was silent when Congress, pleasing the Teamsters union, violated the North American Free Trade Agreement by stopping Mexican trucks from delivering goods north of the border. And although he is almost never silent about anything, he did not significantly resist "Buy American" provisions in the stimulus legislation. And he has not denounced the idea many Democratic climate tinkerers have of imposing "border adjustment mechanisms" -- tariffs -- on imports from countries that choose not to burden their manufacturers, as the Obama administration proposes burdening American manufacturers, with restrictions on carbon emissions. And he allows unratified trade agreements with Colombia, South Korea and Panama to languish. Nevertheless, he says he favors free trade.
He must -- or so he thinks -- say so much about so many things; perhaps he cannot keep track of the multiplying contradictions in his endless utterances. But they -- and the tire tariffs -- are related to the sagging support for his health-care program.
[email protected] Guardiola lost his first league game as a manager, 1-0 to Numancia. It did not become a habit. In his next 256 league games, Guardiola has lost a mere 19 times – and five of those defeats came after the Barcelona or Bayern Munich sides he managed had won the championship. As Manchester City go for their 10th straight win at Swansea, the question the Premier League will be asking is: how do you beat Pep? Tim Rich looks at three teams that did.
BARCELONA 0-2 HERCULES: September 2010: Tactic? Suffocating the full-backs
Despite their name, Hercules were a little, newly-promoted club from Alicante who were facing a Barcelona side that had not lost at home for 16 months – and that was when they had already won La Liga. It was also Catalonia’s National Day. Logically, they had no chance.
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However, having spent 10 years as a player at the Nou Camp and several seasons coaching Barcelona C, Hercules’ manager, Esteban Vigo, had a pretty fair idea of how Guardiola would play. He also invited ridicule by telling his players they would win 2-0.
One of Guardiola’s signature moves is to push his full-backs up to flood the midfield. Vigo countered that by employing a diamond formation and ordering Royston Drenthe and one of his other midfielders to crowd the Barcelona full-backs whenever they had the ball.
It meant the other Barca full-back would be unmarked but the unusually poor state of the Nou Camp pitch and Vigo’s instructions to man-mark Andres Iniesta meant Barcelona could not switch flanks with their usual speed.
Vigo acknowledged he got the idea from watching Jose Mourinho’s Internazionale side beat Barcelona in the Champions League semi-finals a few months before. Curiously, when Mourinho attempted to replicate precisely those tactics in the Manchester derby, they came horribly unstuck as neither Jesse Lingard nor Henrikh Mkhitaryan were able to contain City’s full-backs in the way Drenthe did for Hercules.
Guardiola had rested a host of players – but not Lionel Messi - as Barcelona were opening their Champions League campaign against Panathinaikos in midweek. There was perhaps a lack of focus and reports talked of Barcelona ‘playing on autopilot’.
Reaching the interval a goal down from a set piece, Guardiola brought on Xavi and after an hour introduced Danny Alves at left back. Vigo countered by removing Drenthe, who was by then exhausted, for Sendoa Agirre, who at the age of 34 and in his first game at the Nou Camp, continued to push Alves back.
The defeat emphasised another of Guardiola’s problems – the absence of a Plan B. The breakdown of his relationship with Zlatan Ibrahimovic meant he no longer possessed a target man and in the final, desperate minutes that job fell to a centre-half, Gerard Pique.
When Bobby Robson ran the Nou Camp, Guardiola had been part of a Barcelona side whose defeats, home and away to Hercules had cost them the title. This time it did not. Hercules were relegated and, two months before, Esteban Vigo was sacked.
WOLFSBURG 4 BAYERN MUNICH 1: January 2015: Tactic? Fast counter-attacks
This was the first meaningful defeat Pep Guardiola suffered in the Bundesliga – and he had been manager of Bayern Munich for 18 months. In his first season at the Allianz, Bayern had only lost when they had already won the title.
This was Bayern’s first game back after the Bundesliga’s winter break and they were caught very cold by a Wolfsburg side that exploited the great weakness of Guardiola’s game plan – its vulnerability to fast counter-attacks. However, for those Premier League managers wanting to exploit that, the man who destroyed Bayern Munich in the Volkswagen Arena now plays for Manchester City.
Kevin de Bruyne was already well on his way to becoming the Bundesliga’s player of the year. This display would have persuaded Manchester City he was worth £54m. On this Friday night, De Bruyne was especially motivated. It was Wolfsburg’s first game since his close friend and team-mate, Junior Malanda, was killed in a car crash.
Having fallen behind as early as the fourth minute, Bayern simply pressed harder and higher up the pitch. This, however, merely exposed them to De Bruyne’s pace. Bayern’s two centre-halves, Dante and Jerome Boateng, trying to cover for |
a long time. Like most Canadian players, Sidney Crosby’s golden goal in Vancouver in 2010 is Barzal’s best U.S.-Canada hockey memory.
Canada has a similar rare opening tonight, the opportunity of a lifetime to deliver on home soil.
“We’re playing for gold. Our guys want it,” Ducharme said. “You don’t get too many chances like this. When you have one, you have to make the most of it.”White House Delays Another Workplace Rule That Could Save Lives
WASHINGTON, D.C.—For the second time in a year, workplace health and safety advocates are saying the White House is unnecessarily holding up a key workplace safety regulation that could have already saved workers’ lives if it had been implemented. For the past 11 months, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has been reviewing a rule that would limit workers’ exposure to silica dust, which is commonly found in materials used for constructions and mining. Exposure to silica can lead to silicosis, a disease that causes lung cancer and respiratory failure.
An OMB review period is supposed to be only 90 days, although some cases allow for an additional 45 day review followed by a public comment period before a regulation is published in the Federal Register. The White House, however, has held nine closed door meetings between industry groups such as the National Association of Home Builders, the American Chemistry Council and the National Industrial Sand Association. In the 11 months that the rule has been held up by the White House, a report by Public Citizen estimates that 60 people could have been saved if it were already implemented.
Last week, 300 workplace safety advocates sent a letter to the White House protesting the delay. They wrote:
Nearly a year ago, on February 14, 2011, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) submitted the draft proposed health standard on respirable crystalline silica to OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), pursuant to Executive Order 12866 (EO). Although the EO directs OIRA to complete its review within 90 days (with the allowance for one 30 day extension) the draft OSHA silica standard has been with OIRA for more than 345 days. Moreover, OMB staff has hosted at least nine private meetings with individuals about the proposed OSHA action, most of whom represent companies with a direct financial interest in the matter. These closed door meetings with special interests are wholly inconsistent with your promise of openness and public participation.
In a separate statement, the Union of Concerned Scientists questioned the OMB delay saying, “This year, industry representatives have met nine times with OMB staff, raising questions about whether the White House will interfere in the development of this science-based standard.” In its statement, the UCS reminded the White House that “The Bush administration’s OMB was caught several times weakening, delaying, or outright stopping science-based rules on many topics, including exposure to asbestos, ground-level ozone pollution, endangered species, formaldehyde emissions during plywood production, particulate matter, and the impact of climate change on public health.”
Likewise, the 10,000 member strong American Industrial Hygiene Association (AHIA) has questioned whether the delay in reviewing the rule is technical or political. Writing in a November letter to the White House Department of Labor, AHIA President Elizabeth L. Pullen wrote:
Regardless of the technical merits of any comment made to OMB, we feel that extending review of the silica standard is an unacceptable attempt to “short circuit” the existing process and may make it unusually vulnerable to political influence. OMB does not have readily available access to professional safety and health expertise in order to make significant technical changes to the underlying proposal, and OMB’s review process does not maintain meaningful transparency for all affected parties…..
Pullen went on to add:
Stakeholders are not privy to the proposed rule or OSHA’s findings until it is published in the Federal Register. We are asking the OMB to release the rule for publication in the Federal Registers so the public, including industry groups and all other with interest in silica can comment on and debate in an open public forum
The OMB did not return a request for comment.
The unusually long implementation of the silica rule is the second time in the last year that the Obama administration has delayed a workplace safety rule that could save lives. Earlier this year, I covered how the OMB held up a proposed rule that would prohibit minors from working in dangerous farm occupations for nearly nine months, instead of the mandated 90 days. While OMB was waiting to publish the rule, two fourteen-year-old girls were electrocuted on a farm in Illinois performing a job they would have been prohibited from doing.
According to Public Citizen’s worker health and safety advocate Justin Feldman, OSHA has only published two workplace safety rules during the Obama administration. “I would say there are a number of pro-industry groups within the administration wary of passing anything that may upset industry, especially in an election year,” Feldman says.On Thursday night, the four remaining Republican presidential candidates clashed in the final GOP debate prior to the South Carolina Primary. Earlier in the day, Texas Governor Rick Perry dropped out of the race and endorsed Newt Gingrich. It was a bitter-sweet day for the former Speaker as one of his ex-wives publicly accused him of asking her to agree to an open marriage so that he could continue his affair with congressional aide, Callista Bisek.
Gingrich was given the first question of the debate, asked by John King if he would like to respond to the allegation. Newt offered a blistering rebuke of John King and CNN, suggesting that opening the debate on this topic was “as close to despicable as anything [he] could imagine.” Some would suggest that a far more despicable thing might be a politician guilty of nearly half a century of serial adultery who markets himself as a “family values” Christian.
Eventually the debate moved forward with Congressman Ron Paul hammering away with his signature message of smaller government. On one point, even Paul’s detractors can agree. Ron Paul does not change his positions to suit the preferences of the audiences to which he is speaking. His is a message of consistency. Before a crowd that strongly favored privileges for military veterans, Paul was asked if returning veterans should be given special tax breaks. Congressman Paul didn’t pull any punches. He explained why specific groups should not be singled out for special treatment. Paul also pointed out the need to reform the government-run health care system to address the needs of military personnel returning home from deployments.
Unfortunately, the debate quickly devolved again into a dog-eat-dog circus. For the next 45 minutes, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum took shots at each other – hurling mud and fighting among themselves to rewrite their various histories of support for big government programs and unconstitutional legislation. Congressman Paul was again largely ignored by the debate moderator – a repeat of his experience in the previous Fox News GOP debate in Myrtle Beach.
The problem facing Ron Paul is that the mainstream media (MSM) cares more about providing opportunities for inter-candidate mud-slinging than in providing an atmosphere conducive to a substantive exchange of ideas. Paul has consistently come out ahead in forums that have favored intellectual debate on real issues, such as in his excellent debate performances in Iowa and New Hampshire.
In the closing minutes of the CNN debate, after continued refusal to extend an opportunity for Paul to speak (this time of the subject of abortion), the South Carolina crowd became angry and vocally protested with boos and jeers. Under pressure, John King reluctantly ceded time to Paul. For the second time during the debate, Paul pointed out to King that, as the only medical doctor on the stage, it should be natural to think to include him in the debate questions on health care. Paul said:
“John, once again, it’s a medical subject. I’m a doctor,” drawing cheers from the crowd. “I do want to make a couple comments because I can remember the very early years studying obstetrics and I was told — it was before the age of abortion – I was told that in taking care of a woman who is pregnant, you have two patients. I think that solves a lot of the problem about when life begins.”
Dr. Paul continued:
“I also experienced a time later on in my training in the 1960s when the culture was changing. The Vietnam war was going on. The drugs were there. Pornography came in and abortion became prevalent even though it was illegal. The morality of the country changed. The law followed up. When morality changed, it reflects on the laws. The law is very important. We should have these laws. Law will not correct the basic problem. That’s the morality of the people.”
With such honest and masterful answers, it is no wonder that the audience demanded more time for Congressman Paul to speak.
Following the debate, Congressman Paul sent an email to his supporters touting his performance. He wrote:
“My debate performance tonight is already turning heads. What the crowd saw tonight was my opponents savaging each other over and over in a desperate attempt to defend their Big Government records. Me? I wasn’t touched once. Because quite frankly, I can’t be. I’ve spent 30 years fighting against establishment politicians – like my opponents – to finally put an END to politics as usual.”
The brazen efforts by the MSM to silence Paul cannot be denied. And yet political pundits still pontificate in their spin rooms as to why Paul supporters behave like angry hornets. Tonight, the audience in South Carolina sent a message to the media elite. Ignore Ron Paul, and you’re going to get stung.
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Jake Morphonios has worked as a political consultant and campaign strategist for over two decades and is the author of “Organizing a Grassroots Political Machine”, used in the Steve Forbes 2000 Presidential campaign.
The Author with Ron Paul in South Carolina, 2009
Other Articles by Jake Morphonios:
The Serial Adultery of Newt Gingrich
The Nuclear Option: False Child Sexual Abuse Allegations in Custody Disputes
Ron Paul Shines in SC Debate, Despite Fox News Antics
The Real Dirt on Slick Rick SantorumTake the extraordinary case of Collins [1973] QB 100, still a leading authority on what constitutes an “entry” for the purposes of a burglary. Mr Collins climbed naked, apart from his socks, onto a girl's bedroom window-sill; that alone would send shivers down the spine of burglary and rape victims alike. Lord Justice Edmund-Davies described what happened next:
“The young lady then realised several things: first of all that the form in the window was that of a male; secondly that he was a naked male; and thirdly that he was a naked male with an erect penis. She also saw in the moonlight that his hair was blond. She thereupon leapt to the conclusion that her boyfriend with whom for some time she had been on terms of regular and frequent sexual intimacy, was paying her an ardent nocturnal visit.”
Mr Collins was invited into the room and indeed into the girl's bed before she realised he wasn't her boyfriend. In fact the case turned on the dry issue of which side of the window-sill he was on when the invitation was issued, but it would be absurd to warn students that they might prefer not to know about such a seminal case, although a trigger warning is among other things an invitation to students to leave the lecture hall.
Nor is it just in the criminal law where nasty facts will need to be considered. Victims of road accidents may be traumatised by negligence cases, students from unhappy families may find cases on family law horribly close to the bone, and so on. Vast areas of law are riddled with horrible cases, any of which are likely to be potentially upsetting, or “triggering” to someone.
And if real facts can trigger, so too can the often deliberately florid problems set in law exams. Criminal law exams invariably have questions involving Hogarthian scanarios of debauchery:
“Albert gets drunk and has intercourse with a sleeping Bertha who is aged 15 under the impression that she was actually his girl-friend Charlotte, whereupon the temporarily insane Charlotte appears on the scene and shoots Albert dead whilst aiming at Bertha. Advise.”
Examiners will soon have to offer strictly bowdlerised questions in order not to disadvantage those who would prefer not to think about the seamier side of life and death.
Will lecturers be expected to anticipate every case in which a trigger warning must be issued? Are law lecturers to become amateur psychologists and predict in advance the topics that may conceivably cause trauma to their students?
This is why the call for ever more trigger warnings is so chilling to academic freedom. Who is to say what facts may be deemed triggering? The answer is that only the “traumatised” student can say, but woe betide a teacher who fails to anticipate it. Who will want to be the lecturer who strays into a “triggering” area without first issuing a warning, thereby risking the wrath of his or her students, and perhaps of the university too? This is not just speculation.Masahiro Tanaka stands on the mound, rubbing the ball vigorously between his hands. It's a crisp, cool night in the Bronx. Stepping back, he digs his right foot into the rubber, winds up and, with a seven-foot stretch, steps towards the catcher, unleashing a blistering four-seam, 95 mph fastball. Less than half a second later, it explodes into the catcher's mitt with a loud pop. The batter can only stand and watch as it flies by. Strike one!
It's a common scene when Tanaka takes the mound for the New York Yankees. With the focus and discipline of a Samurai warrior, their star rookie pitcher has taken Major League Baseball (MLB) by storm in 2014. His stats[1] (as of August 15, 2014) are gaudy: 2.51 ERA (Earned Run Average), 12-4 record and a 1.01 WHIP (Walks and Hits per Inning Pitched). Further, the guy's a strikeout machine, fanning 135 hitters vs only 19 walks. Tanaka is the latest Japanese ace to infiltrate MLB. Twenty years ago, you'd have to look long and hard to find a Japanese pitcher in this league (in fact, you'd find only one: Hideo Nomo, aka the "Tornado"), but today, it is an increasingly common site. What's going on?
Baseball in Japan
Baseball has been a part of Japanese culture for nearly 150 years, having been first introduced to the sport in the early 1870s[2] by an American expat teacher named Horace Wilson. By the early 1900s, the sport had taken root in Japanese high schools and universities. Some of these university teams traveled to the United States to compete against their American counterparts to improve their skills.
The baseball rivalry between Waseda University and Keio University has lasted well over 100 years and continues to this very day[3].
Throughout these early years, the United States would occasionally send major league teams (or assembled teams of pro players) on promotional tours. They would often visit Japan which usually resulted in the Japanese being pounded by the Americans. However, the Japanese players continued to evolve, honing their skills and occasionally playing the US to a close game. Frustrated by their lack of success against professional players, the Japanese formed a pro league in 1936 (the Japanese Baseball League) to spur further development. That league would eventually become the Nippon Professional League (NPB) in 1950, which is the highest level of baseball in Japan today.
Over the years, the NPB has enjoyed immense popularity in Japan[4]. Until 1993, it was the country's only professional team sport (at which time an association football league was added). On the world stage, Japan has faired well at baseball's equivalent to association football's World Cup - the World Baseball Classic - winning the event in 2006 and 2009, and placing third in the most recent edition (2013). The league has continued to improve and is now widely regarded as a "AAAA" league (better than the triple-A players in the US, but a step below MLB players).
However, some of these "AAAA" players have become extraordinarily adept - especially their pitchers…
Japanese Players Infiltrate America
In 1964, the first Japanese pitcher debuted for MLB[5]. Masanori Murakami had been sent to the United States at the age of twenty as a baseball "exchange student". Originally, he played for the single-A Fresno team, but was so good that he was quickly promoted to the San Francisco Giants as a relief pitcher. During his two years in the "bigs", he posted a 5-1 record with a 3.64 ERA and 100 strikeouts. Not bad for an "exchange student"! Although the Giants didn't want to send him back, he left to fulfill his contractual obligations in Japan where he went on to have a long and storied career.
Thirty-one years would pass until MLB would see its next Japanese pitcher.
In 1990, Hideo Nomo was an immediate success in Japan. His unorthodox wind.up and delivery earned him the nickname of the "tornado", confusing batters (and catchers) to the tune of 287 strikeouts in his first season. Obtaining immense popularity, he found himself in a contract dispute by 1994 with the Kintetsu Buffaloes. Realizing that he could play for any team he wished if he retired, he did just that, which allowed him to pack his bags for MLB in 1995.
Thus, the wave of Japanese pitchers had begun.
Nippon Professional Baseball and Major League Baseball use a posting system to handle player transfers between leagues.
At once, Nomo began to dominate big league players in Major League Baseball. He became so popular that he garnered commercial endorsements while also retaining a huge fan base back in Japan, where his MLB games were televised. Other players in Japan began to wonder if they, too, could make it in MLB where the money was much better. Executives in Major League Baseball were also intrigued after witnessing Nomo's success. With both sides favorable to the situation, some of the best Japanese players began to make their way to America[6] (Figure 1):
Figure 1
While there is an increasing trend suggested here (not plotted), there really aren't enough data points to justify it. Suffice to say that if Japanese pitchers continue to debut in MLB in future years, nobody would be surprised. In fact, given the amount of money these players make, I'd say it's likely.
How Good Are They?
Clearly, MLB would not continue to pay expensive posting fees for Japanese players if they weren't any good. The question is, how good are they in relation to the rest of the league? Looking back to 1995 when the "wave" of players began, we can see that the Japanese pitchers are rather good. In fact, when compared against their peers in MLB, they boast a better ERA as well as WHIP[7] (Figure 2). It should be noted that their yearly averages vary more than the league averages due to a small sample size (which can be seen at the bottom of the chart). That being said, there is no denying that the Japanese pitchers selected by MLB are very good, which lends credit to both the players as well as the MLB scouts.
Indeed, we are witnessing the rise of the samurai pitcher.
Figure 2
There are other stats which can be used to determine success as a pitcher in any league. However, I chose to work with ERA and WHIP, since these are two of most popularly cited stats. Obviously, both are dependent on a team's defense (it is a team sport, after all), but the best pitchers influence these stats to a large degree.
What isn't shown on the graph above (Figure 2) is which players contributed most to those stats. For that, you'd have to analyze each player individually which is beyond the scope of this article. Rest assured that these stats were calculated using the number of innings pitched as the weighted measure. In other words, if a pitcher threw for 200 innings, his contribution to the overall ERA average for that year would be twice that of a pitcher who threw for only 100 innings. Thus, the stats above provide an accurate comparison of the ERA and WHIP of Japanese and non-Japanese pitchers in MLB.
Another interesting tidbit from the graph above (Figure 2) is the flattening trend of active Japanese pitchers. After the initial surge, that number hasn't risen above 11 in any year, suggesting that we've reached something of a saturation point. Note that, in many years, there were more Japanese pitchers in MLB than are shown above. However, they were not included due to injuries or other various reasons, such as that they had pitched no innings.
Predicting Future MLBers
I've often wondered how these same pitchers performed in Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) before (and after) they arrived in the States (and Canada). In other words, how good were they over there when compared to their peers who didn't play in MLB? As the graph below shows (Figure 3), they are indeed better - consistently better[8]. Not at any time were the "future MLBers" posting higher ERAs than their counterparts and only twice was the WHIP higher (and just barely higher at that). In fact, the chart clearly shows that future/past MLB pitchers boasted an ERA over half a run better than their peers. Those who know baseball will understand that this represents a significant difference.
Figure 3
You may be confused at the bottom section of the graph depicting the number of pitchers that played in MLB. If at any time there were no more than 11 pitchers in MLB, why does this chart (Figure 3) show upwards of 25? That is because many of these pitchers came back to NPB to pitch out their careers for various reasons (e.g. washed out of MLB, didn't like it, contract issues, etc.). In fact, most of the pitchers returned to the NPB at some point after their MLB experience. Furthermore, many Japanese players only pitched for a season or two in the US, returning to Japan for the majority of their careers. Lastly, these pitchers usually pitched in NPB for a few years before heading over to the States. Thus, as the years went by, this number grew quite large.
In recent years, fewer players from Japan are being selected to play in MLB. This can be seen in all of the graphs. After twenty years of experimentation, MLB seems to have become more selective in its choice of players from Japan. This could explain why there are fewer Japanese pitchers in MLB as well as why those pitchers compare so well. For proof of the latter, check the recent ERA and WHIP numbers. These ace pitchers are extraordinarily good; better than their predecessors in most cases. Let's not forget that many Japanese players don't want to leave Japan for personal financial reasons. Their salaries have risen in recent years, making the prospect of staying home more attractive[9].
The first Japanese baseball union was established in 1985, the first player agents in 2001[10].
So, can we predict which pitchers will be likely to play in MLB? Well, there may be too many human variables in play here. For example, even if the pitcher was "lights out", he still might not want to leave Japan. Or a player could be subject to a long term contract. That being said, using just the two variables above (ERA and WHIP), we could probably narrow down the list of potential players. If a pitcher's ERA was above 3.2 for a couple of years, that might be a red flag. Their WHIP being too high may also rule them out of the reckoning. At best, we could only use the data as a tool to weed out players that clearly aren't ready for MLB. For those that are "on the fence" or those that have outstanding numbers, well, that's what the scouts are for. They go to games to observe, taking copious amounts of notes. If those scouts are impressed and a plethora of other pieces of information fall into place, that player could end up playing for the Yankees.
Baseball - A Growing Global Sport
Japan is not the only country to enjoy professional baseball and certainly not the only country producing MLB-caliber players. Baseball is extremely popular in places such as Puerto Rico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, South Korea, Italy, the Netherlands and Australia. While those leagues as a whole are not competing at the level of MLB, the world is slowly catching up. To be sure, those countries are producing some of the world's finest players. In fact, countries other than the US dominate international baseball competitions such as the World Baseball Classic (WBC). As mentioned earlier, Japan won that competition in 2006 and 2009 while the Dominican Republic took the trophy in 2013.
This brings up an interesting side note: while Major League Baseball is certainly the premier professional baseball league of the world, that doesn't mean that the United States (or Canada) produces the best national team. It mirrors the situation I wrote about concerning England and the World Cup: while England boasts the best professional association football league (the English Premier League), their national team isn't usually among the best teams at the World Cup. With regards to the United States and the WBC, they've only managed 4th place (in 2009) out of the three competitions played thus far.
Conclusion
Japan has shown the world that they are serious contenders in the sport of baseball. While this article is focused on their pitchers, Japan has also produced some amazing hitters (e.g. Ichiro Suzuki, Hideki Matsui (aka "Godzilla")). The fact is that before 1995, few spectators outside of Japan were aware of Nippon Professional Baseball and their players. Fast-forward to 2014 and some of those players are now household names, worldwide. This article has shown that Japanese pitchers, in particular, are becoming much sought-after commodities due to their outstanding performances in both Japan and the United States. What does the future hold? More of the same, I suspect. While the variables are too numerous to consider (and sample size too small) in a light statistical treatment such as this, it seems logical - perhaps even likely - that we will continue to see Japanese pitchers migrate to Major League Baseball. If the story presented here holds true, we can expect them to slice up the competition in the same way that their Samurai forefathers disposed of their enemies.
References Pro-Baseball-Reference.com, Masahiro Tanaka (last accessed Aug 15, 2014); available from http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/t/tanakma01.shtml?redir Pro-Baseball-Reference.com, History of baseball in Japan (last accessed August 15, 2014);
available from http://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/History_of_baseball_in_Japan Levinson, David and Christensen, Karen. (1999). Encyclopedia of World Sport: From
Ancient Times to Present. Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press. APG Sports, Japanese Professional Baseball's Twenty Year Long Slump (last accessed
August 23, 2014); available from http://apgsports.com/2014/03/27/japanese-professional.
baseballs-twenty-year-long-slump/ Major League Baseball, 49 years ago today, Masanori Murakami became the first Japanese
Major Leaguer (accessed August 16, 2014); available from http://wapc.mlb.com/cutfour/2013/09/01/59242586/49-years-ago-today-the-first-japanese-mlb-player-made-his-debut Pro-Baseball-Reference.com (2014). Japanese and Nippon Pro Baseball [Data File];
available from http://www.baseball-reference.com/japan/ Pro-Baseball-Reference.com (2014). League Year-By-Year Pitching—Averages [Data File];
available from http://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/MLB/pitch.shtml Pro-Baseball-Reference.com (2014). Japanese and Nippon Pro Baseball [Data File];
available from http://www.baseball-reference.com/japan/ Snyder, David L. (2009). Automatic Outs: Salary Arbitration in Nippon Professional
Baseball. Marquette Sports Law Review, (Vol. 20, Issue 1, Fall); available from http://
scholarship.law.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1009&context=sportslaw Ibid
Bio: For more information on the author of this article, please visit: http://rhodestales.com/The Kōkaku no Pandora theatrical anime special based on Masamune Shirow and Koushi Rikudou's science-fiction manga Pandora of the Crimson Shell: Ghost Urn ( Kōkaku no Pandora - Ghost Urn ) will also air as a TV series starting on January 8 on Tokyo MX.
The theatrical anime opened in a two-week limited engagement in three theaters in Japan on Saturday.
The TV anime version will feature ZAQ's opening theme song "hopeness." Sanae Fuku and Manami Numakura are singing the ending theme song "LoSe±CoNtRoL" as their characters. ZAQ is writing, composing, arranging, and singing the opening theme song, and is also writing and composing the ending theme song. TECHNOBOYS PULCRAFT GREEN-FUND is arranging the ending theme song.
Seven Seas Entertainment is publishing the manga in English, and it describes the manga's story:
When Nanakorobi Nene, a cybernetically-enhanced girl-next-door, heads to the island metropolis of Cenancle to live with her aunt, she has no way of knowing what's in store for her. A chance meeting intertwines her fate with that of the super-rich inventor, Uzal Delilah, and her adorable and grumpy companion, Clarion, who happens to be a cyborg just like Nene. Nene is thrilled to make a friend, but there's more to Uzal and Clarion - and the island of Cenancle itself - than meets the eye. When a super-powered terrorist threatens Cenancle, Uzal claims that the only way to avert disaster is for Nene to team up with Clarion and use their combined powers - abilities Nene never even knew she had!
The anime's cast is as follows:
Sanae Fuku as Nene Nanakorobi Manami Numakura as Clarion
Atsuko Tanaka as Uzal Delilah
Junpei Morita as Buer
Satsumi Matsuda as Buri
Other cast members include:
Rie Murakawa as Bunny
Marie Miyake as Takumi Korobase
Tetsu Inada as Robert Altman
Junichi Suwabe as Ian Krutz
Maria Naganawa as Amy Gilliam
Munenori Nawa ( D.C.S.S. ~Da Capo Second Season~, Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu, Kiss×sis ) is directing the anime at Studio Gokumi and AXsiZ, and Tatsuya Takahashi ( THE [email protected] MOVIE: Kagayaki no Mukōgawa e!, The Fruit of Grisaia ) is writing the script. Takuya Tani ( Strike Witches, Persona 3 The Movie #1 Spring of Birth animation director) is designing the characters, and TECHNOBOYS PULCRAFT GREEN-FUND is composing the music.
Shirow (Ghost in the Shell) and Rukudo (Excel Saga) launched the manga in Kadokawa Shoten's Newtype Ace magazine in 2012. Shirow is responsible for the story, while Rikudou is drawing the art. After Newtype Ace ceased publication in 2013, the manga then moved to Kadokawa's Niconico Ace website. Kadokawa will publish the seventh volume in Japan on December 24. Seven Seas Entertainment will publish the third English volume on January 12.
Source: Presepe via Ota-SukeDaylight Bulb inside Light-Box
'Sunlight' LED Lighting
Happy Monday guys! Normally I wouldn't be this excited, but I'm bringing in the positive vibes. Now that I'm back to work, it's back to my normal schedule and playing catch up. It's not as bad as it sounds and it's helping take my mind off my car getting fixed. Pops took it in to get fixed finally and I'll know the outcome tomorrow, hopefully. All I'm really worried about is the expense, cause a girl needs her polish haha. The new year is bringing a ton of new collections and LEs from indies across the board. Indies like CDB Lacquer! That's right guys, it's time for the first swatch from CDB Lacquer for the new year. Woohoo! It's time for the newest monthly holo, say hello to January's Crystal Glacier.Crystal Glacier by CDB Lacquer is available for purchase while supplies last. As with all monthly holos, this is limited edition and will not be restocked once it's sold out.Crystal Glacier can be described as an icy baby blue linear polish. It's more of a subtle holo finish than I'm used to with the monthly holos from CDB Lacquer. But it still has that sparkle that captures your eye... and subsequently makes you drool. The shade in particular is very stunning and a pleasant surprise. I've been searching for months for a new perfect 'icy' blue with little success until now. It's one of my favorite colors for nail art bases and the original one I loved was discontinued, so getting this gem was straight out of heaven for me.For these swatches, I used two thin coats and sealed it off with a glossy topcoat. The first coat is definitely sheer, while the second fully does the job and leaves an opaque finish. Excellent formula and consistency, each brush stroke was neither too thick or too thin. Since it only needs two thin coats, you're looking at a quick dry-time as well.I wanted to show what Crystal Glacier looks like under different lighting and wanted to capture the beautiful holo finish as well. The more color accurate representation is the one under the'sunlight' LED lighting. And, of course, I have some stunning macro shots to share as well.Overall I'm absolutely in love with this shade and finally have a true 'icy' blue holo in my collection. My initial fear was that it was going to turn out to be too similar to last month's Winter Chill. Once I had it on, you could see the massive difference in the shades. Last month's Winter Chill was in the teal range, while this month's Crystal Glacier is all about that blue. As always, I'm a huge fan of the monthly holo releases from CDB Lacquer and this month that holds true even more so. Crystal Glacier by CDB Lacquer is already available for purchase while supplies last. Don't' miss out on possible owning your perfect icy blue!A FORMER MI6 chief has accused Donald Trump of secretly borrowing from Russia to keep his property empire afloat during the financial crisis.
The bombshell accusation from ex-spymaster Sir Richard Dearlove comes as rumours continue to swirl about the president’s past business dealings with Moscow.
Getty Images 3 Sir Richard Dearlove accused Trump of borrowing from Russia
Well connected Sir Richard also warned any shady deals could still come back to haunt the billionaire in the White House.
The MI6 chief between 1999 and 2004 told Prospect magazine: “What lingers for Trump may be what deals—on what terms—he did after the financial crisis of 2008 to borrow Russian money when others in the west apparently would not lend to him”.
His intervention deepens the already raging feud between Trump and the intelligence community on both sides of the Atlantic.
AP 3 It comes as rumours continue to swirl about the president’s past business dealings with Moscow
The ex-spy boss also branded the new president’s wild allegations last month that Cheltenham-based eavesdroppers GCHQ bugged his offices on predecessor Barack Obama’s orders as “deeply embarrassing”
He added: “For Trump and the administration, that is.
“The only possible explanation is that Trump started tweeting without understanding how the NSA-GCHQ relationship actually works”.
MOST READ IN POLITICS CREDIT CRISIS 250k Brits to LOSE cash after 'accidentally' going onto Universal Credit SO BRAZEN Migrants sneaking into UK call 999 THEMSELVES as they don't fear being sent home HEZ BAN IRE Jeremy Corbyn sparks fury by saying there's no 'evidence' to back Hezbollah ban Exclusive WHERE CREDIT'S DUE 4m set for £3k Universal Credit boost - but others plunged into poverty RED RAGE Corbyn under pressure to sack hard-left ally for saying Labour is 'too apologetic' WAGE WAR Get the lowdown on the National Living Wage and the amount you are entitled to
The president has repeatedly denied having any business dealings with Russia.
Ex-MI6 officer Christopher Steele claimed the Russian government holds compromising material on Trump in a secret dossier drawn up to discredit him.
In the rare interview, Sir Richard also criticised Europe’s leaders for ignoring a CIA warning about an impending migration crisis made as far back as 16 years ago.
He described the effect of uncontrolled migration and free movement across the EU as “catastrophic”.
Sir Richard said: “The CIA published these predictive papers around 2001.
“At that point they were indicating that mass migration, particularly from the south to the north - particularly out of Africa - was going to be a huge problem for the European continent.
Reuters 3 Former Mi6 chief made the bombshell accusation in a rare interview
“If you look at the figures for population growth and unemployed youth and that sort of phenomenon, leaving aside the instability in the Middle East, we shouldn’t really be particularly surprised by what’s happened.
“We just didn’t prepare for it.”
The rise of the far right across Europe also poses more of a threat to the UK than Islamic terrorism, the spymaster claimed.
He added: “It is not in the UK’s national interest to see continental Europe being split apart by the revival of nationalist movements”.Despite Batman's untimely "demise" last year in "Final Crisis" -- a loss that led former sidekick Dick Grayson to take up the mantle of the Bat with Bruce Wayne's son Damian as his Robin -- readers have known for some time that Batman isn't really gone, just missing in time, thanks to the machinations of Darkseid. DC superwriter Grant Morrison has started to slowly unravel what that means in the ongoing |
he recognizes routes, allows him to play this far off a receiver and still make plays, even when he gets slightly beat.
This was seen against the Patriots multiple times in the Texans’ playoff loss. New England is doing their New England thing and running rub route combinations. Chris Hogan is running an out and Malcom Floyd is running a slant. By crossing, they can pick the defender and create separation for each other. Having one defender play off-man coverage is a great way to counteract this. It removes the ability for the receiver to get in the way and eliminates the possibility of both defenders running into each other.
Bouye has Floyd in off-man coverage, and Houston is again playing Cover One. Bouye is seven yards off Floyd.
Floyd lumbers out of his stance. There’s no subtlety to his route. He runs four yards and cuts inside. For this to be even a four yard completion, Tom Brady needs to release the ball before Floyd makes his break. Bouye takes a couple of small rapid steps backwards and breaks once Floyd takes a single step inside.
He’s inside and in front of Floyd. The ball hits him in the belly and ends up wiggling around on the ground. This is an interception. Bouye flat out drops it.
Like Johnathan Joseph, Bouye excels at playing off his man, reading the route, and breaking when he recognizes what the receiver is doing. He reads body movement well, explodes, and soothsays his way in front of the football.
Bouye's athleticism is off the charts
In man coverage, Bouye is great too. He is a good backwards runner. Even on an island, he’s in control of the route. He fluidly transforms from a backpedal, to a shuffle, to a sprint to the football.
Against Green Bay, the Packers are running a play-action pass with only two routes. Jordy Nelson running a deep in and Davante Adams is on the go. Aaron Rodgers is reading Quintin Demps. If Demps sits in the center, Rodgers will sling it to the sideline. If he chases the fade, Rodgers will throw the dig. With Demps’ lack of speed and inability to affect downfield routes, Rodgers has the fade in single coverage no matter what Demps does.
Running backwards, Bouye matches Adams step-for-step. When Adams slightly cuts inside and commits to the downfield route, Bouye turns at that same instant. Out of the break, Adams is able to get a slight lead on him. Bouye commits to his outside shoulder and wears him down. Once Adams starts running with his head to the sky, he loses his speed. Bouye overtakes him and impedes him even more by running in front of his outside arm.
Bouye is again in front of the receiver. When the ball lands, it falls feet from his outstretched left arm. Adams ends up becoming the defensive back on this play.
Rodgers spent the majority of the game looking away from Bouye. Instead, he attacked slot corners and players in over their head like Charles James. This play was one of the rare times Bouye was tested in that snowy affair. This time, Bouye swallowed up the fade route in man coverage with faux safety help.
In the previous examples, Bouye won the route with recognition, burst, and fluidity. Underneath it all is the way he mirrors route runners. He matches them step for step and stays in front of them. This isn’t seen as clearly in those coverages, but in press-man, it’s crucial for Bouye. As a smaller player, Bouye can’t toss receivers off the line of scrimmage and win routes with strength. When he lines up directly in front of the receiver to start the route, he has to be a cobra, perfectly swaying in matching movement.
Here, Emmanuel Sanders takes a slight step outside before cutting in for the slant. Bouye reenacts his steps exactly. Then he uses his right arm to pull Sanders into him, making it easier for him to get around the receiver to the ball. It’s a hold, but it’s so sneaky and quickly done that the ref isn’t able to pick it up in real time.
In coverage against Golden Tate here, we see something similar. Tate is covered by Bouye. The Texans’ cornerback is all over him and his back. The only thing different is the result. Tate is running a comeback route so he can use his body to shield the corner, unlike the slant that leaves the receiver exposed. Bouye can’t get around this boulder. Detroit picks up a difficult seven yards. But again, you see Bouye mirroring the receiver and sticking all over him.
In that same game, Marvin Jones tried to take Bouye for a ride down field. At the snap, he is able to get an outside release and create space right away. Again, Bouye doesn’t have the size to use his hands at the line. He has to resort to expert mimicry to play press-man. This allows Jones to get a free release and create space at the beginning of the route.
But what Bouye does well is turn and chase. With Bouye on Jones’s back, Jones tries to shove him off with an extended arm. Bouye slaps and laughs away at this attempt. After he removes his arm, he looks into Jones’s eyes. Awww. When Jones looks to the sideline, Bouye reaches his arm out and slaps the ball away without looking.
In addition to playing great coverage, Bouye is great at attacking the ball. Once it’s in the air, he knows how to read the receiver’s eyes and where to attack the football. He incessantly high points the football, turning receptions into incompletions by using his arms to make catches complicated, or simply batting passes to the ground like Manu Ginobli.
These stills sometimes lead to tipped passes fluttering through the air for Quintin Demps to cash into AFC Defensive Player of the Month Awards. In this instance, Bouye turns quarter coverage and a break on the ball into a flip that lands in Demps’ mitt.
Here, the Texans are running Cover Six. The wide side is playing quarters coverage, or Cover Four, and the short side is playing Cover Two. It’s a great way to run coverages that better match that side of the field and can trick the quarterback into assuming the same coverage on both sides, leading to mistakes and interceptions. Bouye is on the wide side of the field covering a deep quarter of it. Pre-snap, it looks just like he’s playing off-man coverage against Tyrell Williams, who is running a deep dig, right to Demps’ corner.
Bouye backpedals and stays in front of the receiver. H is in control of the route. He bounces off his outside foot when Williams cuts inside and takes the same sharp angle to the receiver. When the ball arrives, he swats at it with his right arm, popping it back to Demps, who mistakenly overruns the route. Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good, and in Demps’s case, that was the majority of his season.
In every type of man coverage, Bouye is awesome. In zone coverage, Bouye is as well. He’s fluid. He scans the field well and finds things to do even when routes aren’t in his area. When there are multiple routes around him, he knows which one to give priority to so he can continue to be a nuisance to the opposing passing game.
In Cover Two here, Bouye has the flat. Two routes are run into his sector. The first is an out route by the receiver. The second is the running back shooting into the flat.
Bouye expands to the sideline by playing the out. He has his hands on the receiver and is watching the quarterback’s eyes—essentially covering two players at once. Trevor Siemian goes through his progressions. He comes to the left and dumps it to the back. Without hesitating, Bouye scampers to the ball and pounces into the back’s legs, stopping him for an inconsequential gain.
Because of plays like this, and all the plays before, the Texans were able to play a variety of different coverages last year. No matter what they asked Bouye to do, he was able to do it. On a similar play, with the same technique, Bouye breaks down in man coverage and torpedoes into Demaryius Thomas on a quick throw.
Bouye is also a great tackler
Bouye is a great tackler even though he’s less than 200 pounds. In 2016, he missed only four tackles while making 49 solo tackles. He hits low, wraps up, and hangs on well. For him to knock runners backwards, he needs to be moving at full speed. But even when he is dodging around blocks or having to be a passive shuffler in the open field, he still usually brings down the ball carrier. He accepts his fate as a smaller player, takes the bashing, and pulls the player over the top of him to the ground.
Bouye was almost perfect in 2016. Almost. He had issues on post routes when he was in off-man coverage. On these routes, it was difficult for him to get across the receiver’s body and make plays on throws with higher catch points.
I still don’t know that I would entirely trust him against the physical freaks around the league like Julio Jones, A.J. Green, or Odell Beckham Jr. Bouye has great body control, skill, burst, and understands the game, but he isn’t a freak talent. He didn’t take too many snaps against these players, and in limited snaps against Amari Cooper, he was beaten up a little bit. He may be fine against these players. There’s just not any evidence pointing to that.
The real problem Bouye has is against fakes and double moves. Because of his ability to read, react, and break on the ball, coupled with his aggression, he can overcommit to routes. Not always does he comeback as smoothly as he did against Moncrief. He can, and was, toasted against these routes at times last year.
Here Crabtree gets Bouye on a stop and go.
Here Thomas fakes the out and gets open on the dig.
Here Kelce leaves him splaying, but it doesn’t matter because Alex Smith.
These are chips, dings, and scratches in a great 2016 season. A.J. Bouye was one of the best cornerbacks in the NFL last year. Now he’s about to hit the open market and will be the belle of many teams’ balls. Houston or some other team is going to get to see this finger wag on Sundays.
All praise aside, I wouldn’t sign A.J. Bouye to a long-term contract. Nope. Not at all. Not yet. This was one great year. A sample size of one. You don’t want to overpay and be stuck with a worthless glob, or a fat sunk cost on your roster. There is no way to know if this was a record year, or whether there ismore of the same to come in the future. Despite Bouye being incredible in 2016, it’s uncertain if 2017 is going to be the same.
The other problem with signing Bouye to a long-term deal is that with him as an unrestricted free agent, you are competing with everyone else on the market. At 25, and being an undrafted sea turtle that made the perilous voyage across the ocean, I’m sure there will be no warm and fuzzy discount. It’s likely Bouye is going to want to maximize what he makes when he signs this contract to make up for lost dollars.
Cleveland ($106.5 million), Jacksonville ($74.9 million), Tennessee ($62.3 million), Washington ($58.8 million), Indianapolis ($54.2 million), Chicago ($51.4 million), Carolina ($47.4 million), Miami ($42.4 million), Green Bay ($40.9 million), and New Orleans ($29.5 million) are all teams with money to spend and have a "HELP WANTED" sign hanging up in their secondary. Bouye is a scheme neutral player. It doesn’t matter what type of defense a prospective teams runs. He has already shown he can run it. He would be an upgrade for any of these teams.
For Houston, why would you want to get in a bidding war with teams that can outspend you for a player who had one great year?
You don’t.
Moving forward, I would pay the $14 million and put Bouye on the franchise tag. The Texans have indicated they probably won’t do that, but that’s what I would do.
Houston wouldn’t be stuck with Bouye if he is a one-hit wonder, and the tag would remove him from unrestricted free agency and the competition of the open market. If Bouye is just as good all over again, Brock Osweiler’s malodorous corpse becomes cremains next year, and Houston will have the cap space to sign him without having to cajole the books.
Bouye was the best player on Houston’s defense last year. He was a vital cog in their successful amphibious defensive scheme. He played every type of coverage and did nearly everything well. With him, Kevin Johnson, and J.J. Watt back, it’s possible for the Texans to field an all-time great defense in 2017. They could have the type of defense a team can contend with no matter what the offense does, no matter who is at quarterback. If we have learned anything these last two years, that is exactly what Houston needs to get over the Divisional Round hump.INTJs are strategic visionaries with a dominant focus on the theoretical aspects of the world. They are arguably the most strategic out of all the 16 MBTI types. With assumed potential like that, it’s no wonder that so many people are quick to call themselves INTJs. You yourself may be calling yourself an INTJ.
However, there are actually very few INTJs out there in the world. According to the statistics, nearly one in every 50 people you meet will be INTJs (2.1% of population). From my personal experience, it is even less.
The three types that often have the most trouble discerning whether they are INTJ or not, are usually one letter away, namely being the ISTJ, INTP, and the INFJ. Below are listed the key differences between those types.
INTJ vs ISTJ
INTJ is future-focused vs the ISTJ who is past-focused.
INTJ focuses on big picture impressions (they look at the top first, then bottom) vs the ISTJ who prefers to focus on details (they look at bottom first, then work their way up).
INTJ can get swept up by need for new experiences vs the ISTJ who can become overly focused on seeming funny.
INTJ often seeks to create new changes (non-traditionalist/non-conformist) vs the ISTJ who values past values and history (traditionalist/conformist).
When looking for directions, ISTJs would prefer the titles of the streets while the INTJ would prefer general directions such as “keep going right for a few blocks till you see it”.
INTJ vs INTP
INTJs are often more focused on worldly success compared to INTPs who focus on personal understanding and interests more.
INTPs are usually better people’s persons than INTJs since INTPs are more friendly-seeming overall, while the INTJ is ironically likely to be more caring on the inside.
INTPs are likely to ramble at times without being aware of the audience compared to the INTJ who is much less likely to do that.
INTPs look at things from a bottom-up perspective building a database of facts to the top helping them to understand the big picture, while the INTJ looks at things from a top-bottom approach trying to understand the big picture first and then the details.
INTPs generate many random ideas in quick succession that may not all be good while the INTJ is more likely to come up with a few ideas that are often on point.
INTPs think more like inventors while INTJs think like solution-builders.
INTJ vs INFJQuestion: What can you sit on, sleep on, and brush your teeth with?
The answer to the riddle is at the end of the post. Think about it while you read on or scroll down if you are really curious.
Some people are always looking for great ideas.
Original ideas.
‘Never done before’ ideas.
Revolutionary ideas.
Ideas that can change the world!
But the ideas that change the world seldom appear that way when they first develop. They just seem like obvious and cute little ideas. The ‘world changing’ comes later. If you are looking for inspiration you might want to focus on the obvious.
So what is obvious? Usually it is the stuff happening right in front of you. It is so close and obvious you overlook it at first.
Here is the dilemma: it takes an outsider to break and ignore the rules but it takes an insider to know what rules to break and see an opportunity for change.
You need to dive in, absorb the medium, then take a step back to see the opportunity. You do this by breaking the pattern.
Buy a magazine about a topic that doesn’t interest you.
Travel to a city you’ve never been before.
Take a walk in the woods, or a long shower.
Read a random page on Wikipedia.
Read a book, visit a museum or talk to a stranger.
When you have an idea, and you think ‘but that is just so obvious’ please pursue it. You can’t rush a revolution.
The answer to the riddle: A chair, a bed, and a toothbrush.
Read next: Apple signs deal to boost workforce by over 10% in IrelandFacebook plans to provide free WiFi connection in 35 locations across Greece, as well as to continue working with the UN to give people in refugee camps free access to the internet. Plus, the company will use its website to raise funds for them and to donate funds to NGOs catering to their needs. As for Microsoft, it plans to help NGOs provide wider access to education and training. The company also wants to build an Innovation Hub, where refugees can develop their technical and entrepreneurial skills.
HP has a similar plan, with the aim to build six Learning Studios in Lebanon and Jordan for kids and adults. The same goes for Coursera, which will team up with NGOs to give refugees access to over 1,000 courses offered by universities. Since some refugees still need to learn English or to brush up on their vocabulary before they can jump into learning skills, Zynga is making an educational version of Words with Friends. The social video game-maker will also provide experts to mentor the finalists of a competition that aims to create an app that can teach Syrian children to read in Arabic.
Uber's and LinkedIn's projects, on the other hand, will benefit those looking to start working ASAP the most. The former will team up with resettlement agencies in the US to offer refugees work opportunities, while the latter is expanding its refugee initiative called Welcoming Talent to countries outside of Sweden. The other familiar companies in the list are IBM, Twitter and TripAdvisor. IBM promises to continue supporting European refugees and migrants any way it can, while TripAdvisor has already earmarked $5 million for humanitarian organizations. Finally, Twitter is giving NGOs in the US and Europe a $50,000 "Ads for Good" advertising grant.
In the White House's Call to Action months ago, the administration stressed refugees' potential to contribute to the countries they fled to if given the opportunity. The companies that decided to pitch in could open those windows of opportunity that might remain close otherwise.Get the biggest daily stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
Graham Taylor has passed away at the age of 72.
Taylor had a reputation as one of football’s gentlemen, as well as one of the most successful managers of his generation. Forget what ultimately turned out to be a frustrating spell in charge of England, he had huge success at Watford (twice) and Aston Villa.
But what is probably not as well known is that he was a huge fan of North East football, turning down the Newcastle job and also – in a memorable admission to the Sunday Sun a few years ago – stood in the Gallowgate incognito to scout players.
“It seems like a long, long time ago, but it was when I went to Villa. I had been there a year and there was an offer, through a third party, asking whether I would be interested in considering the Newcastle job,” he told us in 2010.
“I couldn’t because I had signed a contract at Aston Villa, but there was a tinge of regret there.
(Image: Getty Images Europe)
“It would have been a fantastic opportunity and Newcastle has always had a place in my heart, ever since I made my debut for Grimsby against them in the old Second Division.
“I knew all about Newcastle and what a big club it is – I had actually spent a lot of time at St James’ Park when I was at Watford.
“In fact, it was on the Gallowgate that I learned never to under-estimate the knowledge of the average football fan.
“When I was a young manager at Watford and we didn’t have a midweek game I used to go to Newcastle a lot if they were playing.
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“I would park my car up at Kings Cross after training, catch the 2 o’clock to Newcastle and walk up to the stadium and pay to get in.
“It probably sounds crazy now because you wouldn’t be able to do it these days, but I loved standing on the terraces and I didn’t get noticed once, I don’t think.
“It was a fantastic trip and one that I used to love to make. I would stand on the Gallowgate and watch whoever it was that I wanted to watch, then afterwards have a tot of whiskey in the station and catch the sleeper train back to London in time for training at 9am the following day.
“One that sticks in my memory is a derby game between Newcastle and Sunderland that ended 2-2.
“I spotted Wilf Rostron, a Sunderland defender, that day and actually ended up signing him for Watford.
“I used to love listening to the supporters talking about the players and it amazed me how knowledgeable they were.”
Taylor was a true football man and his death has prompted an outpouring of tributes to a man who touched the lives of many. There will be emotional tributes from the clubs that he managed.
He told me in 2014: “It is really a magnificent football club and walking around the stadium last month brought back some excellent memories. I actually made my debut for Grimsby Town against Newcastle on 14 September 1963. They were in the second division as well and we won, so you can imagine the feeling of playing my first game and beating the mighty Newcastle United.
“I will always have a soft spot for the club so I wish them all the best.
“There is that expectancy in the city which is only right. It’s a magnificent club and city.”Germany has signed a multimillion dollar arms deal with Israel, Germany’s Bild newspaper reported Saturday.
Within the framework of the deal, Germany will reportedly supply Israel with two guided missile destroyers, each valued at one billion euros.
The destroyers will be used to protect Israel’s gas pipelines.
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In April, Der Spiegel reported that Israel may sell technologically advanced attack drones to the German military.
According to the German weekly, the German defense ministry proposed the purchase several months ago, and German representatives have already held two meetings with IDF officials to discuss the matter.
Germany has in the past expressed interest in developing drone technology along with France, in order to avoid dependency on American or Israeli technology.
Adiv Sterman contributed to this report.How do the experts think the Baltimore Ravens 2017 season is going to turn out?
At this point of the offseason, things can be a bit dry. The NFL Draft is officially over and training camp has not officially started. Free agency has died down and mostly veterans are getting signed. All of the rookies are beginning to get acclimated to their respective teams.
This makes it a great time to look a predictions for the upcoming season. Most major sports outlets give their record predictions for each NFL team. They have their football experts predict how the season will turn out based on their performance last year, pieces added/lost, and other factors. Obviously these are predictions, but these guys usually have a good feel for what they are talking about.
Let’s take a look at what they have to say about the Ravens upcoming record in 2017.the Pondering OWL
Thoughts and Musings from an Old White Lady
When I was a child many of the women in my life collected owls. It made it easy to give a gift for Mothers Day, birthdays or Christmas. An owl necklace, statue or kitchen towel was always received with gratitude and a smile.
Now that I have over a half of a century of life experience under my belt I am beginning to understand the significance of this icon as I find myself looking at life through the eyes of someone who has seen much and become wiser for having done so.
I have created this blog as a place to share the "things that make me go hmmm...." from the perspective of an Old White Lady in the hope that doing so will be helpful to others. My goal is not to offend or condemn. These were just my thoughts in the moment based on my experiences prior to that moment in time.
If your opinions are different, please share them! Let's discuss and learn from each other! You have seen the world through different eyes and I would be honored if you were willing to share your experience with me. I believe that we must keep our hearts and minds open to continue to grow as individuals and as a species. After all, at the end of the day, we're all in this together.Drowned out among the cries of Ohioans while Ben Roethlisberger was busy tearing apart the Bengals in Cincinnati for what seems like the 100th time, was a small celebration. Not the celebration of beating the Bengals, those are loud and proud in Steeler Nation. But a smaller celebration took place inside the mind of Antonio Brown.
Brown is a quiet and soft-spoken man off the field. He doesn't bring attention to himself the way a Dez Bryant or a certain former Bengal receiver does. He wouldn't celebrate this out loud... not while the season is still ongoing. But his play on the field speaks volumes. With his seventh and final reception of the day in an upset win on Sunday, Brown reached the 100-catch plateau for the third time in his career.
The fact that he's done that in consecutive seasons is even more impressive. Only five other receivers in NFL history have caught 100 passes in three consecutive seasons: Jerry Rice (1994-1996), Herman Moore (1995-1997), Marvin Harrison (2000-2002), Wes Welker (2007-2009) and Brandon Marshall (2007-2009). Harrison stands alone as the only receiver to reach that mark in four consecutive years (1999-2002).
Brown's 339 receptions are the fifth-most over a three-year span, and he has three games left to play. With just four catches vs the Broncos, he would pass Cris Carter(340) and Jerry Rice(342) to move into third place. With eight receptions, he would pass Wes Welker(346) as well. For the season, Brown's magic number is 16. With 16 more receptions on the year, he'll pass Marvin Harrison's 354 catch stretch from 2000-2002.
Considering that five catches per game is just minimal output for Brown (as long as Roethlisberger is under center), he should be able to make history by the time the regular season ends. So, Steelers fans, when you're watching the game on Sunday, or if you're lucky enough to be at Heinz Field, don't forget to stop and appreciate that you might be watching the most dominant three-year span from a receiver in league history.
Most receptions over three-year period, league history:
Marvin Harrison 2000-2002: 354 (102, 109, 143)
Wes Welker 2007-2009: 346 (112, 111, 123)
Jerry Rice 1994-1996: 342 (112, 122, 108)
Cris Carter 1994-1996: 340 (122, 122, 96)
*Antonio Brown 2013-2015: 339 (110, 129, 100+)*
Herman Moore 1995-1997: 333 (123, 106, 104)
Jimmy Smith 1999-2001: 319 (116, 91, 112)
Sterling Sharpe 1992-1994: 314 (108, 112, 94)
Torry Holt 2003-2005: 313 (117, 94, 102)
Brandon Marshall 2007-2009: 307 (102, 104, 101)
Andre Johnson 2012-2014: 306 (112, 109, 85)
Rod Smith 2000-2002: 302 (100, 113, 89)
Andre Johnson 2008-2010: 302 (115, 101, 86)
Hines Ward 2001-2003: 301 (94, 112, 95)NJ trout season opens this Saturday!
Resident anglers between the ages of 16 and 70 are reminded that a valid fishing license is required to fish the freshwaters of New Jersey. Fishing for trout also requires the purchase of a separate Trout Stamp. (Photo: Ken Marsh)
All trout-stocked waters have been stocked for this Saturday's 8:00 a.m. opening of trout season. The 2015 season is expected to provide superb trout fishing opportunities New Jersey anglers have grown to expect and appreciate.
More than 180,000 trout have been stocked in 88 streams and 90 ponds and lakes throughout the state.
By the time stocking concludes in May nearly 600,000 trout will have been stocked. The vast majority of the fish will be 18 months old, average 10.5 inches and weigh about a half pound.
However, some of the stocked trout will trump their brethren. In addition to the young fish, most of the waters receiving trout will also become home to broodstock trout, fish between 2.5 and 3.5 years old and weigh between 3 to 7 pounds.
CLOSE Author and seasoned angler Ruck Kustich discusses the art and intimate knowledge of nature required to be a successful fly fisherman.
These large, mature fish were used to obtain and fertilize eggs for the breeding program at the Pequest Trout Hatchery. Now there's a chance they will become some angler's dream come true.
And some anglers will have a better chance than others depending on where they fish. As part of the Broodstock Bonus Program, the division stocks a higher number of these fish in none or 10 selected ponds or lakes every year.
These bodies of water receive three to five times more broodstock fish than they would normally get. The division calculates a few anglers will experience the catch of a lifetime with these unusually large fish.
The Division of Fish and Wildlife has jaw tagged more than 1,000 trout as part of the spring trout stocking program in New Jersey waters every spring since 1998. (Photo: Christian Nafzger)
Ten waters were picked for 2015 and three of the selected sites are in South Jersey.
• Oak Pond in Camden County
• Sylvan Lake in Burlington County
• Ponderlodge Pond in Cape May County
If you're going to go after one of these big rainbows, remember to get a license. All anglers between 16 and 70 must have a license, plus a trout stamp if they're fishing for trout.
For more on New Jersey's trout stocking locations, visit 2015 Spring Trout Allocations.
To purchase a fishing license, visit NJ Fishing and Hunting License.
Fishing licenses purchased using the state's site are issued as a PDF document to be printed on your own computer system; they are not mailed.
Those wanting a license on durable, waterproof paper can obtain them at any license agent, visit NJ License Agents.
The Division of Fish and Wildlife has jaw tagged more than 1,000 trout as part of the spring trout stocking program in New Jersey waters every spring since 1998.
The fish are distributed throughout the state and in 2014, rainbow trout have been tagged for both pre-season and in-season release.If you are a lucky angler who lands one of these fish, send your name, address, fish tag number and location of catch to:
Hook a Winner Program
Pequest Trout Hatchery
605 Pequest Road
Oxford, NJ 07863
In recognition of your catch you will be mailed a certificate and award patch.
Reach Adam Monacelli at [email protected] or follow @CP_AdamM on Twitter.
Read or Share this story: http://on.cpsj.com/1CesCdeBY: Follow @@Cam_Cawthorne
Former Florida governor and current congressional candidate Charlie Crist (D.) received laughter on Monday evening when he said that Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton is "honest."
Crist was debating against Rep. David Jolly (R., Fla.), the incumbent congressman in the Florida's 13th congressional district.
"Are you voting for your party's nominee, governor?" the moderator asked.
Crist responded by saying that he was going to vote for Clinton as the next president of the United States and that he was proud of her.
"I think she's been a very good secretary of state, a very good senator from the state of New York. The thing I like most about her is she is steady. I believe she is strong. I believe she is honest," Crist said.
The crowd erupted into laughter and booed Crist after he said that Clinton was "honest."
Crist added that he looks forward to voting for her.One thing Indian citizens can always count on their government for is for it to be a hunkering, inefficient mess. While this leads us to complain about things like potholes, terrorism and the IRCTC website, at other times the system ends up helping the citizen. In July this year, the Supreme Court directed the centre to block pornographic websites. It is now mid-November and not much has been done because I presume half our politicians are engaging in state-sponsored and subsidised porn watching on their free iPads (you could call it research. Or masturbation) while the others discover the existence of a computer.
What I find fascinating are reports that describe the current Indian user’s pornographic preferences. According to one survey, over 90 lakh Indians watch porn on their smartphones every day. This makes me sad because a decade ago, watching porn was a community experience that brought people together. Groups of young boys were forced to sit awkwardly in a cabin inside a nondescript cyber café, just like families watching saas-bahu serials in the living room.
Hours were spent logged into Yahoo chat rooms, trying to convince a man pretending to be a woman at the other end of the world to start up a webcam so that breasts would magically appear on the other end. Dial-up connections were braved and we waited for 15 minutes just to load a badly Photoshopped picture of Mamta Kulkarni’s head on a generic white woman’s body.
I can’t help but feel that my generation valued porn a lot more. My father’s generation had to make due with smuggled magazines, which passed various hands and whose crisp texture one was never supposed to question. My generation had stashes of CDs that had to be mixed in with regular VCDs like Dil Chahta Hai, in the hope your family would never feel like watching it.
When Moser Baer started selling cheap blank CDs, it became an even bigger problem to differentiate the music collection from the porn stash because all the discs looked the same. Special codes had to be written with a permanent marker, so that only a select few would understand what was inside the discs. My personal favourites remain “Beethoven” and “Mozart” to make elders believed we were into classical music and thus on the right spiritual path.
Regardless, porn was limited and the collections had to be nurtured in the same way that collectors do stamps. Over time, we built a relationship with it and throwing away a scratched CD was as traumatic as burying a dead puppy.
Unlike the youth of today, who can stream pornography at will, we did not take it for granted. The pornography consumption exercise taught us negotiation skills, patience, espionage and helped us live up to the phrase “unity in diversity”. It’s sad that with the coming of the smartphone, even porn has become a selfish and individual experience.
Another statistic I found telling was that Indian users spend five minutes watching porn on their smartphones every day. While I for one don’t see the point of watching something for longer than I last personally, I can see why people would want to shift. Unlike computers, smartphones prevent accidental damage to equipment such as keyboards.
Smartphones also come loaded with a camera, which Indian users love using to harass people without permission. If that fails, one can also crank up the volume on the phone’s radio and play it in public. One look at the Android Play Store and you will notice that the trending apps are “Blue Film Videos”, “Taaza Sexy Kahaaniya” and “Sunny Leone Videos”. Clearly, the smartphone is also being used as a tool to freely learn about something that is traditionally kept under wraps. With greater smartphones, this penetration can only go deeper (pun unintended, of course). The rapidly growing telecom infrastructure that we love boasting about at Davos might just be fuelled by our desire for porn.
My hope is that our government and judiciary will realise the value of pornography and also that we as a society will hold on to porn’s ability to promote social cohesion among all hormonal Indians as it negotiates its shift from an analogue to a more digital environment. I for one cannot wait to watch some on Google Glass.
Firstpost is now on WhatsApp. For the latest analysis, commentary and news updates, sign up for our WhatsApp services. Just go to Firstpost.com/Whatsapp and hit the Subscribe button.Memorial at the border transit and release camp Moschendorf (1945–1957). The inscription states it was the door to freedom for hundreds of thousands of prisoners of war, civilian prisoners, and expellees.
In the years following World War II, large numbers of German civilians and captured soldiers were forced into labour by the Allied forces. The topic of using Germans as forced labour for reparations was first broached at the Tehran conference in 1943, where Soviet premier Joseph Stalin demanded 4 |
460A-9659-58C34CCC663F', '25EA09EF-E24E-494B-911F-F63CE9ED8458', N 'Chang', 16.0000, 3, 12, 13, 0 ) GO INSERT dbo. Product ( ProductID, TenantId, ProductName, UnitPrice, UnitsInStock, UnitsOnOrder, ReorderLevel, Discontinued ) VALUES ( 'CED038B1-DF1C-4111-9E48-E386A1A7063A', '25EA09EF-E24E-494B-911F-F63CE9ED8458', N 'Pavlova', 17.4500, 29, 0, 10, 0 ) GO
Before we move on to RLS, let’s create a “super user” that will have access to data in all the tenants (this is useful for debugging). While we are at it, we’ll create a “normal user” that our web API will use to access data:
CREATE LOGIN superuserlogin WITH PASSWORD = 'p@ssw0rd' GO CREATE USER superuser FOR LOGIN [superuserlogin] GO EXEC sp_addrolemember N'db_owner', N'superuser' GO CREATE LOGIN [normaluserlogin] WITH PASSWORD = 'p@ssw0rd' GO CREATE USER [normaluser] FOR LOGIN [normaluserlogin] GO EXEC sp_addrolemember N'db_datareader', N'normaluser' EXEC sp_addrolemember N'db_datawriter', N'normaluser' GO 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 CREATE LOGIN superuserlogin WITH PASSWORD = 'p@ssw0rd' GO CREATE USER superuser FOR LOGIN [ superuserlogin ] GO EXEC sp _ addrolemember N 'db_owner', N'superuser' GO CREATE LOGIN [ normaluserlogin ] WITH PASSWORD = 'p@ssw0rd' GO CREATE USER [ normaluser ] FOR LOGIN [ normaluserlogin ] GO EXEC sp _ addrolemember N 'db_datareader', N 'normaluser' EXEC sp _ addrolemember N 'db_datawriter', N 'normaluser' GO
Now on to the RLS. First we need to create a predicate function that is going to apply a filter when the product table is accessed for the given tenant. The tenant for a given row is passed into the function. The tenant that the API is operatoring for is stored in SESSION_CONTEXT('TenantId') – we’ll come on to how this is set in the web API soon. We also need to make sure our super user has access to all the rows in the table
CREATE FUNCTION dbo.TenantAccessPredicate (@TenantId uniqueidentifier) RETURNS TABLE WITH SCHEMABINDING AS RETURN SELECT 1 AS TenantAccessPredicateResult WHERE (@TenantId = CAST(SESSION_CONTEXT(N'TenantId') AS uniqueidentifier)) OR (DATABASE_PRINCIPAL_ID() = DATABASE_PRINCIPAL_ID('superuser')) GO 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 CREATE FUNCTION dbo. TenantAccessPredicate ( @ TenantId uniqueidentifier ) RETURNS TABLE WITH SCHEMABINDING AS RETURN SELECT 1 AS TenantAccessPredicateResult WHERE ( @ TenantId = CAST ( SESSION_CONTEXT ( N 'TenantId' ) AS uniqueidentifier ) ) OR ( DATABASE_PRINCIPAL_ID ( ) = DATABASE_PRINCIPAL_ID ('superuser' ) ) GO
Now we can bind our predicate function to our product table. The FILTER predicate ensures we only read data for a given tenant and the BLOCK predicate ensures we only write data for a given tenant:
CREATE SECURITY POLICY dbo.TenantAccessPolicy ADD FILTER PREDICATE dbo.TenantAccessPredicate(TenantId) ON dbo.Product, ADD BLOCK PREDICATE dbo.TenantAccessPredicate(TenantId) ON dbo.Product GO 1 2 3 4 CREATE SECURITY POLICY dbo. TenantAccessPolicy ADD FILTER PREDICATE dbo. TenantAccessPredicate ( TenantId ) ON dbo. Product, ADD BLOCK PREDICATE dbo. TenantAccessPredicate ( TenantId ) ON dbo. Product GO
So, let’s give this a quick test, connecting as normaluser :
-- connect as tenant 1 EXEC sp_set_session_context @key=N'TenantId', @value='6CB8DE43-2043-4415-B267-7FFFA2EB5AC0' GO SELECT * FROM dbo.Product GO -- connect as tenant 2 EXEC sp_set_session_context @key=N'TenantId', @value='25EA09EF-E24E-494B-911F-F63CE9ED8458' GO SELECT * FROM dbo.Product GO 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 -- connect as tenant 1 EXEC sp_set_session _ context @ key = N 'TenantId', @ value = '6CB8DE43-2043-4415-B267-7FFFA2EB5AC0' GO SELECT * FROM dbo. Product GO -- connect as tenant 2 EXEC sp_set_session _ context @ key = N 'TenantId', @ value = '25EA09EF-E24E-494B-911F-F63CE9ED8458' GO SELECT * FROM dbo. Product GO
We should get following results back (3 rows for the first query and 2 for the 2nd query):
If you connect as superuser, SELECT * FROM dbo.Product, you should get all 5 rows.
Cool, we’re done with our database. Let’s move on to our web API …
Let’s create a new ASP.NET Core Web Application in Visual Studio, choosing the Web API project template.
First let’s create our model classes to hold our tenants and products …
public class Tenant { public Guid TenantId { get; set; } public Guid APIKey { get; set; } public string TenantName { get; set; } } public class Product { public Guid ProductId { get; set; } public string ProductName { get; set; } public Decimal UnitPrice { get; set; } public Int16 UnitsInStock { get; set; } public Int16 UnitsOnOrder { get; set; } public Int16 ReorderLevel { get; set; } public bool Discontinued { get; set; } } 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 public class Tenant { public Guid TenantId { get ; set ; } public Guid APIKey { get ; set ; } public string TenantName { get ; set ; } } public class Product { public Guid ProductId { get ; set ; } public string ProductName { get ; set ; } public Decimal UnitPrice { get ; set ; } public Int16 UnitsInStock { get ; set ; } public Int16 UnitsOnOrder { get ; set ; } public Int16 ReorderLevel { get ; set ; } public bool Discontinued { get ; set ; } }
Now, we’ll bring in EF core using nuget (I’m using the stable 1.1.2 packages). We’ll need Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore and Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.SqlServer.
Time to create our EF core data context. Here’s a basic class that maps our tenants and products:
public class DataContext : DbContext { public DbSet<Tenant> Tenants { get; set; } public DbSet<Product> Products { get; set; } private SqlConnection connection; public DataContext(DbContextOptions<DataContext> options) : base(options) { } protected override void OnModelCreating(ModelBuilder modelBuilder) { base.OnModelCreating(modelBuilder); modelBuilder.Entity<Tenant>().ToTable("Tenant"); modelBuilder.Entity<Product>().ToTable("Product"); } protected override void OnConfiguring(DbContextOptionsBuilder optionsBuilder) { var connectionString = "<your connection string>"; connection = new SqlConnection(connectionString); optionsBuilder.UseSqlServer(connection); base.OnConfiguring(optionsBuilder); } } 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 public class DataContext : DbContext { public DbSet < Tenant > Tenants { get ; set ; } public DbSet < Product > Products { get ; set ; } private SqlConnection connection ; public DataContext ( DbContextOptions < DataContext > options ) : base ( options ) { } protected override void OnModelCreating ( ModelBuilder modelBuilder ) { base. OnModelCreating ( modelBuilder ) ; modelBuilder. Entity < Tenant > ( ). ToTable ( "Tenant" ) ; modelBuilder. Entity < Product > ( ). ToTable ( "Product" ) ; } protected override void OnConfiguring ( DbContextOptionsBuilder optionsBuilder ) { var connectionString = "<your connection string>" ; connection = new SqlConnection ( connectionString ) ; optionsBuilder. UseSqlServer ( connection ) ; base. OnConfiguring ( optionsBuilder ) ; } }
We’re not done with DataContext yet – we need to set SESSION_CONTEXT('TenantId') for every query that EF core does … we’ll come back to this after we’ve got the tenant from the API.
So, let’s create some middleware that will inspect the API key from the request to determine the tenant:
public class TenantFinder { private readonly RequestDelegate next; private DataContext dataContext; public TenantFinder(RequestDelegate next, DataContext dataContext) { this.next = next; this.dataContext = dataContext; } public async Task Invoke(HttpContext context) { var apiKey = context.Request.Headers["X-API-Key"].FirstOrDefault(); if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(apiKey)) { context.Response.StatusCode = 400; await context.Response.WriteAsync("Invalid API key"); return; } Guid apiKeyGuid; if (!Guid.TryParse(apiKey, out apiKeyGuid)) { context.Response.StatusCode = 400; await context.Response.WriteAsync("Invalid API key"); return; } var tenant = dataContext.Tenants.Where(t => t.APIKey == apiKeyGuid).FirstOrDefault(); if (tenant == null) { context.Response.StatusCode = 401; await context.Response.WriteAsync("Invalid API key"); return; } else { // add tenant to http context for use when the conection to the data is opened context.Items["TENANT"] = tenant; } await next.Invoke(context); } } public static class TenantFinderExtension { public static IApplicationBuilder UseTenantFinder(this IApplicationBuilder app) { app.UseMiddleware<TenantFinder>(); return app; } } 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 public class TenantFinder { private readonly RequestDelegate next ; private DataContext dataContext ; public TenantFinder ( RequestDelegate next, DataContext dataContext ) { this. next = next ; this. dataContext = dataContext ; } public async Task Invoke ( HttpContext context ) { var apiKey = context. Request. Headers [ "X-API-Key" ]. FirstOrDefault ( ) ; if ( string. IsNullOrEmpty ( apiKey ) ) { context. Response. StatusCode = 400 ; await context. Response. WriteAsync ( "Invalid API key" ) ; return ; } Guid apiKeyGuid ; if (! Guid. TryParse ( apiKey, out apiKeyGuid ) ) { context. Response. StatusCode = 400 ; await context. Response. WriteAsync ( "Invalid API key" ) ; return ; } var tenant = dataContext. Tenants. Where ( t = > t. APIKey == apiKeyGuid ). FirstOrDefault ( ) ; if ( tenant == null ) { context. Response. StatusCode = 401 ; await context. Response. WriteAsync ( "Invalid API key" ) ; return ; } else { // add tenant to http context for use when the conection to the data is opened context. Items [ "TENANT" ] = tenant ; } await next. Invoke ( context ) ; } } public static class TenantFinderExtension { public static IApplicationBuilder UseTenantFinder ( this IApplicationBuilder app ) { app. UseMiddleware < TenantFinder > ( ) ; return app ; } }
Please note the highlighted line in the above code where we place the tenant in a dictionary in the HttpContext. This is how we are going to get the tenant in DataContext.
Before we go back to DataContext, let’s go and do all our registrations in Startup :
public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services) { services.AddSingleton<IHttpContextAccessor, HttpContextAccessor>(); // we need this to access HttpContext in DataContext services.AddDbContext<DataContext>(ServiceLifetime.Scoped); services.AddMvc(); } public void Configure(IApplicationBuilder app, IHostingEnvironment env, ILoggerFactory loggerFactory) { loggerFactory.AddConsole(Configuration.GetSection("Logging")); loggerFactory.AddDebug(); app.UseTenantFinder(); app.UseMvc(); } 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 public void ConfigureServices ( IServiceCollection services ) { services. AddSingleton < IHttpContextAccessor, HttpContextAccessor > ( ) ; // we need this to access HttpContext in DataContext services. AddDbContext < DataContext > ( ServiceLifetime. Scoped ) ; services. AddMvc ( ) ; } public void Configure ( IApplicationBuilder app, IHostingEnvironment env, ILoggerFactory loggerFactory ) { loggerFactory. AddConsole ( Configuration. GetSection ( "Logging" ) ) ; loggerFactory. AddDebug ( ) ; app. UseTenantFinder ( ) ; app. UseMvc ( ) ; }
Time now to go back to DataContext.
We can set the tenant in our constructor:
private Guid tenantId; public DataContext(DbContextOptions<DataContext> options, IHttpContextAccessor httpContextAccessor) : base(options) { if (httpContextAccessor.HttpContext!= null) { var tenant = (Tenant)httpContextAccessor.HttpContext.Items["TENANT"]; tenantId = tenant.TenantId; } } 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 private Guid tenantId ; public DataContext ( DbContextOptions < DataContext > options, IHttpContextAccessor httpContextAccessor ) : base ( options ) { if ( httpContextAccessor. HttpContext!= null ) { var tenant = ( Tenant ) httpContextAccessor. HttpContext. Items [ "TENANT" ] ; tenantId = tenant. TenantId ; } }
We can then set SESSION_CONTEXT(‘TenantId’) every time a connection is opened before any queries are run by EF core.
protected override void OnConfiguring(DbContextOptionsBuilder optionsBuilder) { var connectionString = "<your connection string>"; connection = new SqlConnection(connectionString); connection.StateChange += Connection_StateChange; optionsBuilder.UseSqlServer(connection); base.OnConfiguring(optionsBuilder); } private void Connection_StateChange(object sender, System.Data.StateChangeEventArgs e) { if (e.CurrentState == ConnectionState.Open) { var cmd = connection.CreateCommand(); cmd.CommandText = @"exec sp_set_session_context @key=N'TenantId', @value=@TenantId"; cmd.Parameters.AddWithValue("@TenantId", tenantId); cmd.ExecuteNonQuery(); } } 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 protected override void OnConfiguring ( DbContextOptionsBuilder optionsBuilder ) { var connectionString = "<your connection string>" ; connection = new SqlConnection ( connectionString ) ; connection. StateChange += Connection_StateChange ; optionsBuilder. UseSqlServer ( connection ) ; base. OnConfiguring ( optionsBuilder ) ; } private void Connection_StateChange ( object sender, System. Data. StateChangeEventArgs e ) { if ( e. CurrentState == ConnectionState. Open ) { var cmd = connection. CreateCommand ( ) ; cmd. CommandText = @ "exec sp_set_session_context @key=N'TenantId', @value=@TenantId" ; cmd. Parameters. AddWithValue ( "@TenantId", tenantId ) ; cmd. ExecuteNonQuery ( ) ; } }
Ok, we’re done with DataContext now. Let’s create a simple API now to get some products:
[Route("api/[controller]")] public class ProductsController : Controller { private DataContext dataContext; public ProductsController(DataContext dataContext) { this.dataContext = dataContext; } [HttpGet] public IActionResult Get() { return Ok(dataContext.Products.ToList()); } } 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 [ Route ( "api/[controller]" ) ] public class ProductsController : Controller { private DataContext dataContext ; public ProductsController ( DataContext dataContext ) { this. dataContext = dataContext ; } [ HttpGet ] public IActionResult Get ( ) { return Ok ( dataContext. Products. ToList ( ) ) ; } }
Let’s check this is working in Postman with our 2 API keys. We should get 3 products for the 1st key and 2 products for the 2nd key:
Cool, we are good. Let’s quickly add an action method to get a product by its id:
[HttpGet("{productId}", Name = "ProductGet")] public IActionResult Get(Guid productId) { var product = dataContext.Products.Where(p => p.ProductId == productId).FirstOrDefault(); if (product == null) return NotFound(); return Ok(product); } 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 [ HttpGet ( "{productId}", Name = "ProductGet" ) ] public IActionResult Get ( Guid productId ) { var product = dataContext. Products. Where ( p = > p. ProductId == productId ). FirstOrDefault ( ) ; if ( product == null ) return NotFound ( ) ; return Ok ( product ) ; }
Now let’s create the action method in our API to post new products:
[HttpPost] public IActionResult Post([FromBody]Product product) { product.ProductId = Guid.NewGuid(); dataContext.Products.Add(product); dataContext.SaveChanges(); var url = Url.Link("ProductGet", new { productId = product.ProductId }); return Created(url, product); } 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 [ HttpPost ] public IActionResult Post ( [ FromBody ] Product product ) { product. ProductId = Guid. NewGuid ( ) ; dataContext. Products. Add ( product ) ; dataContext. SaveChanges ( ) ; var url = Url. Link ( "ProductGet", new { productId = product. ProductId } ) ; return Created ( url, product ) ; }
… and let’s give it a try:
… it blows up!
We obviously have a problem because we are not submitting the tenant id in the product.
I lied when I said we were done with our database! Let’s add a default value for the tenant id that picks up SESSION_CONTEXT(‘TenantId’):
ALTER TABLE dbo.Product ADD CONSTRAINT DF_Product_TenantId DEFAULT CAST(SESSION_CONTEXT(N'TenantId') AS uniqueidentifier) FOR TenantId GO 1 2 3 ALTER TABLE dbo. Product ADD CONSTRAINT DF_Product_TenantId DEFAULT CAST ( SESSION_CONTEXT ( N 'TenantId' ) AS uniqueidentifier ) FOR TenantId GO
Now, when you post a product in Postman, we should be ok:
To finish off our controller we’ll quickly implement a PUT and DELETE:
[HttpPut("{productId}")] public IActionResult Put(Guid productId, [FromBody]Product product) { var existingProduct = dataContext.Products.Where(p => p.ProductId == productId).FirstOrDefault(); if (existingProduct == null) return NotFound(); existingProduct.ProductName = product.ProductName; existingProduct.UnitPrice = product.UnitPrice; existingProduct.UnitsInStock = product.UnitsInStock; existingProduct.UnitsOnOrder = product.UnitsOnOrder; existingProduct.ReorderLevel = product.ReorderLevel; existingProduct.Discontinued = product.Discontinued; dataContext.SaveChanges(); return Ok(existingProduct); } [HttpDelete("{productId}")] public IActionResult Delete(Guid productId, [FromBody]Product product) { var existingProduct = dataContext.Products.Where(p => p.ProductId == productId).FirstOrDefault(); if (existingProduct == null) return NotFound(); dataContext.Products.Remove(existingProduct); dataContext.SaveChanges(); return NoContent(); } 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 [ HttpPut ( "{productId}" ) ] public IActionResult Put ( Guid productId, [ FromBody ] Product product ) { var existingProduct = dataContext. Products. Where ( p = > p. ProductId == productId ). FirstOrDefault ( ) ; if ( existingProduct == null ) return NotFound ( ) ; existingProduct. ProductName = product. ProductName ; existingProduct. UnitPrice = product. UnitPrice ; existingProduct. UnitsInStock = product. UnitsInStock ; existingProduct. UnitsOnOrder = product. UnitsOnOrder ; existingProduct. ReorderLevel = product. ReorderLevel ; existingProduct. Discontinued = product. Discontinued ; dataContext. SaveChanges ( ) ; return Ok ( existingProduct ) ; } [ HttpDelete ( "{productId}" ) ] public IActionResult Delete ( Guid productId, [ FromBody ] Product product ) { var existingProduct = dataContext. Products. Where ( p = > p. ProductId == productId ). FirstOrDefault ( ) ; if ( existingProduct == null ) return NotFound ( ) ; dataContext. Products. Remove ( existingProduct ) ; dataContext. SaveChanges ( ) ; return NoContent ( ) ; }
Pretty straightforward and they both work. If you try to PUT and DELETE products that belong to a tenant that your API key is not for then you get a 404 – just as we want.
The great thing about this approach is that there is no reference to the tenant in our controller code – the multi-tenancy is taken care for us lower down in the stack which reduces our development costs and risk of leaking data.
Recommended reading for building great ASP.NET core web APIs:Now playing: Watch this: Use a toothpick to clean out your iPhone
A simple search on Apple's forums shows a common trend: a lot of iPhone and iPad owners are having problems charging their device. Two of my colleagues have also run into this problem. There's a simple solution to this. Before blaming the cable or phone, check your device's Lightning port.
Lint and other debris from our pockets or purses gets stuck in this port and can build up over time. To be safe, back up your iPhone or iPad to your computer or the cloud. Power it off, and with a normal toothpick, gently remove the lint. You will be amazed how much can get stuck in the port.
Connect the charger and see if it works. Still having problems? Try cleaning the port out again, but this time use a can of compressed air. Alternative options for toothpicks include using a SIM-card tool, a bobby pin, or a small needle.
You can also use this method if your iPhone or iPad is stuck in "headphone mode" even though no headphones are plugged in. The same method can also be used for cleaning out the charging port and headphone jacks on Android, Windows Phone, and BlackBerry devices.One year ago, an early press release arrived in my inbox from a company called WayTools. It was poised to announce a revolutionary keyboard called the TextBlade. There was scant additional information on the keyboard, and it wasn’t until one month later on January 13, 2015, that the company unveiled its product website. The TextBlade is a multitouch keyboard that collapses into a pocketable form factor. The keyboard looked to be a great accessory for those that travel frequently who want the feel of a full-size keyboard in a tiny package.
In both the original press releases, WayTools said that TextBlades were entering mass production and would be available in February. Nearly a year later, however, no production TextBlades have reached customers’ hands. Every month, I went to look for a status update at the end of the month, only to see the date for shipping pushed back another month. February became March, which became April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, and now December. As of today, the company has not provided a status update on its blog or on its forum in weeks.
What’s the cause for the delays? There’s a litany of hardware and firmware problems on WayTool’s self-described punch list, ranging from the molds for the keycaps being too stiff, over-the-air firmware update bugs, and the occasional (and hard to reproduce) key repeating phenomenon. On WayTool’s forum, two camps have formed, one continuing to encourage WayTools to release a (near) perfect product, and another that just wants the company to ship the d*mn keyboard already. The latter group is also disappointed that WayTools charged their credit cards on order, even though no product has shipped for months. There are examples of people who complained loudly, only to have WayTools cancel their orders for them. In my opinion, customer service at WayTools — at least on the forum — has been especially lacking in tact and manners.
I’ve taken my Logitech K760 Solar Powered Keyboard with me on trips before and wished for something more portable. The TextBlade looked like an intriguing solution, and I was happy to give them $100 for the keyboard. As the year anniversary of the product’s announcement comes up in less than a month, I find my fingers hovering over the cancellation/refund button. What has kept me from cancelling thus far is that I was one of the first people to pony up money for the TextBlade. WayTools has said the earliest orders would get a “substantial” gift. But, I have to draw a line in the sand at some point. So, if WayTools doesn’t ship the TextBlade by the middle of January, I’m out.
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In the meantime, I drew the following illustrations using my new iPad Pro and Apple Pencil. This 2016 Calendar take a sometimes humorous, sometimes sad look at the tardiness of the TextBlade product. Which one is your favorite? Tell me by leaving a comment below!Image copyright Getty Images Image caption The lack of skilled teachers is the biggest problem, the report found
More than half of England's secondary schools, 54%, did not offer GCSE computer science in 2015-16, a report from the Royal Society has found.
It urged the government to increase spending on computer education tenfold over the next five years to ensure youngsters can "unlock the full potential of new technologies".
The biggest issue was the lack of skilled teachers, the report found.
The Department for Education said more pupils were choosing the subject.
"We want to ensure our future workforce has the skills we need to drive the future productivity and economy of this country and that is why the government made computing a compulsory part of the national curriculum," said a spokesperson.
"Computer science GCSE entries continue to rise more quickly than any other subject.
"We recently saw an increase in entries to Stem subjects [science, technology, engineering and maths] for the English Baccalaureate (EBacc) and the number of girls taking Stem subjects at A-levels has increased by over 17% since 2010.
"Since 2012, the department has pledged £5m to the Network of Teaching Excellence in Computer Science programme, which has built a national network of nearly 400 computer science specialists (who) schools can commission to provide bespoke training for their teachers."
Computer science in numbers
The number of schools not offering the subject at GCSE represented 30% of the total number of pupils in England
Across the UK, the report found that that only 11% of students in England took GCSE computer science
In 2017 only 20% of GCSE candidates in the subject were female and the figure fell to 10% at A-level
Bournemouth had the highest percentage of pupils (23%) opting to take computer science
Hartlepool, Harrow and Bracknell Forest had the highest proportion of school offering the subject at GCSE level, not including the Isles of Scilly which has a 100% rate as it teaches it at its only school
Two in three schools near the UK's technology hub in East London, did not offer it to pupils as a GSCE option
Other London boroughs, including Islington, Kensington & Chelsea, Tower Hamlets and the City of London also had a low proportion of schools offering the subject
The Royal Society, the UK's independent scientific academy, is concerned about how the lack of computing expertise will affect the future workforce.
Prof Steve Furber, who worked on the report, said: "Computing teachers have told us that they feel the government rushed in a new curriculum without giving them the support or money to deliver it.
"The report paints a bleak picture in England, which meets only 68% of its computing teacher recruitment targets and where, as a result, one in two schools don't offer computer science at GCSE, a crucial stage of young people's education."
He added that, "overhauling the fragile state of our computing education" would require an ambitious, multipronged approach.
The Royal Society called for:
A £60m investment in computer education over the next five years
The training of 8,000 secondary school computing teachers
Analysis
by Rory Cellan-Jones, BBC News technology correspondent
This report highlights what some teachers have been telling me for a while - that the revolution in computing education in the UK has stalled.
Five years ago a head of steam built up behind the idea that children needed to be taught coding and that the ICT GCSE was not fit for purpose, teaching little more than how to use Microsoft Office.
The government responded by taking ICT off the National Curriculum and replacing it with computer science.
But this course is proving far more demanding of both pupils and teachers, and many schools have decided that it is just not worth the bother at a time when resources are tight.
Some ICT teachers who had always argued that it was a practical course, attractive to a far wider range of children, are now saying "I told you so".
But across the world of computing education there's agreement on one thing - more money needs to be spent on training teachers in this vital subject.
Prof Furber's views were echoed by technology firms Microsoft and Google, who are both working to increase computer skills among schoolchildren.
Google's UK managing director Ronan Harris said: "There is still much more to do to ensure young people across the UK have access to computer science education.
"Whatever school they attend or whatever field they plan to go into, every student should have the opportunity to understand the principles and practices of computing."
And Microsoft's UK chief executive Cindy Rose said: "The risk, if we don't make these investments now, is that too many young people struggle to access new opportunities and the UK loses its advantage in a world being transformed by technology."Orangutans are known for their intelligence and sometimes for using an assortment of tools during their daily life. Opposable thumbs help the primates pick up items and build sleeping nests while living in the wild. This sort of human-like behaviour may not be overly surprising to some because after all, we share 96.4 percent of our DNA with orangutans.
Take a look at the three amazing examples of such behaviour below.
1) Using A Spear Tool To Fish
Gerd Schuster, co-author of Thinkers of the Jungle: The Orangutan Report describes the below photo he captured as:
“A male orangutan, clinging precariously to overhanging branches, flails the water with a pole, trying desperately to spear a passing fish…
The extraordinary image, a world exclusive, was taken in Borneo on the island of Kaja…
This individual had seen locals fishing with spears on the Gohong River.
Although the method required too much skill for him to master, he was later able to improvise by using the pole to catch fish already trapped in the locals’ fishing lines.”
2) Using Washcloth To Cleanse It’s Face
The intelligent primate was watched by stunned visitors at the Tama Zoological Park in Tokyo as used it used a washcloth to wipe its forehead. It’s shown dipping a cloth in water, ringing it out and wiping its face and upper body. The primate even mops up spilt water droplets afterwards.
3) Using A Boat And Washing Clothes
This video, from the YouTube channel ‘Fantastic Animal’ was filmed at Camp Leakey, located in the Tanjung Puting National Park of central Borneo. It shows fascinating footage of one particularly clever orangutan who has learnt how to wash clothes from observing humans living at the camp.Get the biggest Liverpool FC stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
Anthony Ralston last night insisted he wasn't scared of Neymar and he won’t lose any sleep after his snub from the stroppy superstar.
The Celtic kid clashed with Paris St-Germain’s £198m man as the French big guns dished out a Champions League pummelling at Parkhead.
Brendan Rodgers’s side crashed to their worst ever European defeat on home soil - and shipped five for the first time at home since 1895 as Ralston got involved in a running battle with the super club’s star man.
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The 18-year-old was a surprise starter but became a Hoops fans hero are he refused to be overawed against the most expensive player on the plant.
Ralston riled up the Brazilian all evening as the former Barcelona ace eventually got booked for diving and then refused to shake the teenager’s hand at the final whistle.
(Image: Action Images via Reuters)
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The Lennoxtown product insisted he wasn’t bothered about Neymar’s lack of class and he still relished the occasion despite the painful scoreline.
Ralston said: “It wasn’t a big deal. I won’t dwell on that too much.
“If that is the case, and that is the way he wants to be, then fine. I don’t care.
“Like I said, everybody is different, so I won’t lose any sleep over it.”
Ralston admitted the defeat was sore as Neymar, Kylian Mbappe and Cavani put Celts to the sword.
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(Image: Getty Images Europe)
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But it was still a fairytale having gone from the trackside to a being on the end of a roar of approval from the Parkhead stands.
He said: “I was ball boy through the years, including the 2-1 win against Barcelona a few years ago. So it was surreal to go from there to being at this end of it.
“It goes back to being the best fans in the world. Going forward it is the crowd which gives you that extra wee bit, to get you to keep going.
“That run in the second half and the crowd’s reaction was one of the moments I’ll never forget but there were lots of moments like that. There is lots to learn from.
(Image: AFP)
(Image: AFP)
“It was a dream to be out there. I’ve been a fan all my life and been a ball boy on these kind of nights.
“It was just incredible to be out there in front of those amazing fans. To experience that at the start was the best feeling in the world. Just hearing the Champions League music and the fans roaring is something I’ll never forget. I still enjoyed it.
“It was a bit surreal. It’s a moment you just need to take in. Moments like that you never forget.
“They are the reasons you play football for. You always hope to get to this level.”
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Ralston was a shock name on the teamsheet as he made just his fifth start for the senior side.
But the youngster revealed he’s had more than seven days to get his head around the news he was set to take on PSG’s £414m frontline.
He said: “The manager let me know a week ago that I’d be playing. It allowed me to get it inside my head and prepare right.
“I didn’t feel fazed by it. This is where I want to play and at this level.
(Image: Action Images via Reuters)
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“I didn’t fear the likes of Neymar. I didn’t dwell on it too much. I just knew I had to play my normal game.
“I prepared for Neymar the way I’d prepare for any normal game.
“I did exactly the same routine. It’s just another man on the pitch you are playing against. I don’t put him on a pedestal. You just deal with it.
“These games test you mentally and I felt all the boys bounced back in the second half and we went for it. No heads went down. We dealt with it well in the second half and kept going.”(CBS)
today, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice said that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, not Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is in charge of Iran's foreign policy.
"Ahmadinejad is, in fact, as we well know, not the principal decision-maker when it comes to foreign policy and national security," Ambassador Rice said. "It is the Supreme Leader. That was the case before the election; it is the case now. And we will proceed in pursuit of our national interests, using all elements at our disposal, to try to achieve the goals that are most important to us, which are obviously to prevent Iran from pursuing its nuclear weapons capability, preventing a regional arms race, ensuring that our partners and allies in the region and indeed the United States remain safe."
Ayatollah Khamenei may be in charge, but his apparent proxy, President Ahmadinejad, continues to escalate the rhetoric with President Obama. This week Mr. Obama highlighted the "bravery in the face of brutality" by those protesting the re-election of Ahmadinejad, and noted that opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi has "captured the imagination" of the Iranian people hoping for change.
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Ahmadinejad accuses the U.S. of "meddling in Iran's internal affairs." In televised remarks Saturday he said, referring to President Obama, "Why did he interfere and comment in a way that disregards convention and courtesy?" He further accused Western leaders of making "insulting and irrelevant comments."
"It is enough," Ahmadinejad concluded. "Do not disgrace yourself further by such language and behavior." The newly re-elected president also |
, the more money this gets, the better the editor and the better the end result will be.
In the long run, I ideally intend to have the edited text published with photographs (my own and historical) as a proper book in time for the accident's 30th anniversary in 2016 at the latest, however, to avoid confusion, THAT IS NOT WHAT THIS KICKSTARTER IS FUNDING. This is purely to help me pay for an editor. Some reward tiers do contain physical copies of the text printed as Kickstarter-only edition books, but they will be paid for, designed and distributed by you/me and not a publishing company. Realistically, the chances of this ever getting properly published are quite low, so these might be the only copies ever made.
Because this Kickstarter is purely to fund an editor and isn't being put towards creating a physical end product, I've been forced to make the goal very high and some of the rewards a little pricey in order for me to be able to afford to get them made. It isn't ideal, but I have no choice.
The e-book will be available in more or less any file format you want. I'll probably email out 4 or 5 different formats to each backer of the e-book tier, and if anyone has a specific file format in mind I'll do my best to make one for them.
I'll be offering 5 different physical versions of the book as rewards, to try and cover the typical price spectrum. Confusing? Very, but there's little else I can offer, so I'll do my best to explain. First, the paperback:
And hardback:
Both of these 6" x 9" books will contain the complete text, with no photographs. I'm not exactly sure how long these will be, and won't know until the book has been edited. The final version will probably be in the region of around 160 pages, assuming nothing significant is added to it. I'm hoping to reproduce certain diagrams, maps and technical drawings within each book to explain how the reactor works etc. The paperback version has a regular paperback style cover, while the hardback has a slipcover.
Next, the 8" x 10" and 10" x 8" books. These pictures are of the cheaper version.
Both versions will be about the same length as the paperback, but will also include a few of pages of photographs taken by me during my own trip to Chernobyl between each chapter. These photographs are intended as an accompaniment to the chapters about my own journey through the Zone.
The paper on the cheaper 8" x 10" version isn't photo-paper, but it's still a nice package overall, while the more expensive 10" x 8" book is printed on proper photographic paper and will be of higher overall quality. Each will have the same content, the only difference is the paper and aspect ratio.
The hardback 13" x 11" version is the ideal edition of the book. I would love to be able to show you a copy, but it's so expensive to produce that I can't afford to make one. This book will be printed on beautiful, 190gsm ProLine Pearl Photo paper for the best possible finish, and will contain the most photographs of the three colour books.
To be clear, every version of the book will contain the exact same text.
I'm not doing this to make money. The entire book, as it is now, is available to read for free with photographs at https://leatherbarrowa.exposure.co/chernobyl if you would like to take a look for yourself. I hope that you'll be interested in it enough to consider backing this project.How can we best combat the anti-immigrant populists who are now making the political running in many European countries? Later this month, the verdict is due in the trial of the Dutch politician Geert Wilders for anti-Islamic statements he has made – such as that the Qur'an is a "fascist book" which should be banned. At the same time, the country's minority centre-right government depends for its survival on the "tolerance" of Wilders' Party for Freedom (PVV), which won more than 15% of the vote in the last general election. Wilders' price included a commitment to a burqa ban.
Illustration by Matt Kenyon
In the Netherlands, as elsewhere in Europe, centre-right parties have been trying to win back voters who have turned to such anti-foreigner populists by adopting slightly toned-down versions of their rhetoric and policies.
So the courts are being asked to do what the politicians won't. This is the wrong way round. For reasons both of free speech principle and political prudence, Wilders should not be on trial for what he says about Islam. Instead, mainstream democratic politicians, and other opinion-leaders, should be more brave and outspoken in combating his inflammatory rhetoric.
That is what the Dutch prosecutors seem to have thought too. "No doubt his words are hurtful and offensive for a large number of Muslims," they said, when a prosecution was first suggested, but "freedom of expression fulfils an essential role in a democratic society." However, a group of prominent lawyers, NGOs and interest groups got an appeal court to reverse this decision and oblige the reluctant prosecutors to prosecute. The court argued that "by attacking the symbols of the Muslim religion, he also insulted Muslim believers".
That sentence perfectly exposes the problem of principle: a blurring of the line between attacking the believers and criticising the belief. For we must remain free to criticise any belief, even in extreme terms. Religion is not like skin colour. There is no rational argument against the colour of someone's skin. There are important, rational arguments to be made against Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Scientology or any other belief system. Such prosecutions, even if their purpose is to defend the human beings, will have a chilling effect on discussion of the beliefs.
There is also a wider context here. Members of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference have long been arguing for an international outlawing of the "defamation of religion". In the country where the director Theo van Gogh was murdered for offending Islam, Wilders himself has to live under round-the-clock security because of death threats from violent Islamist extremists.
If Wilders were himself inciting people to violence, then he should be prosecuted. But so far as I can see, he has steered just the right side of that line. So long as that is true, I defend his right to say deeply offensive things, on the same grounds that I recently defended a woman's right to choose to wear the burqa. The blonde-maned Wilders is, so to speak, the burqa of the other side.
Beyond the argument of principle, there is a strong practical one. As happened when David Irving was put on trial in Austria, this prosecution enables the defendant to present himself as a martyr for free speech. Wilders ended his final statement to the court with a heroic quotation from George Washington: "If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter."
This from the man who calls for the holy book of some 1.5 billion people to be banned! Double standards are the bane of many free speech claims, but Wilders takes the gold medal for hypocrisy. Not only does he want the burqa and the Qur'an to be banned. At a speech delivered in the House of Lords last year – after the idiotic entry ban imposed on him by Labour home secretary Jacqui Smith had been reversed – he said that, throughout the west, we should forbid the construction of any new mosques.
It's not just Muslims he wants to gag. It's also his own critics. Under pressure from Wilders' Freedom party, a distinguished cultural historian and commentator, Thomas von der Dunk, was recently disinvited from giving a lecture in honour of a Dutch anti-Nazi resistance hero, after it became known he proposed to compare the Freedom party's portrayal of Muslims to "the way in which Jews were smeared in the 1930s". A punk song referring to Wilders as the "Mussolini of the Low Countries" was banned from a festival celebrating the liberation of the Netherlands from Nazism. A leftwing broadcaster took down a cartoon showing Wilders as a concentration camp guard from its website after what it described as threats to its staff.
In short, the Freedom party's idea of freedom is that Wilders must be free to call the Qur'an fascist but no one should be free to call Wilders a fascist.
Yet the parties of the centre-right, depending on Wilders' "tolerance" for their survival in power, go along with and appease this intolerance. Yes, the preface to the coalition agreement has one sentence saying that the governing People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) and Christian Democratic Alliance (CDA) "see Islam as a religion and will treat it accordingly – unlike the PVV". But, as in many other European countries, the mainstream centre-right parties hurry to appease and follow the illiberal, anti-immigrant and specifically anti-Muslim populists, just as mainstream centre-left parties have too often bent to appease illiberal, self-appointed "Muslim community" voices.
This week, a Council of Europe working group of which I am a member suggests a different approach. Our report, entitled Living Together: Combining Diversity and Freedom in 21st century Europe, argues that European societies should be rigorous in demanding and enforcing equal liberty under a single law. There should be, so to speak, a muscular liberalism of the broad democratic centre.
But we should not demand that people of migrant origin abandon their faith, culture or multiple identities. Messages of intolerance and xenophobia, such as those purveyed by Wilders, should be combated in the court of public opinion, not the court of law. Our motto is "minimise compulsion, maximise persuasion". Mainstream politicians, intellectuals, journalists, businesspeople, sporting heroes, all should mobilise to persuade anxious European publics that, so long as people abide by the ground rules of a free society, they have as much right to be full and equal citizens as anyone else – whether they be Muslim, Christian, atheist or Zoroastrian. And that we Europeans can make this work.
I don't wish to implicate other members of the group in my application of this principle to the Wilders case, on which they may disagree, but it seems to me that we liberals – that is, those who give the highest priority to individual liberty – should have the courage of our convictions, especially when they lead us to uncomfortable places. So Wilders should be free to call the Qur'an fascist, von der Dunk should be free to compare Wilders to the Nazis – and politicians should stop hiding behind the robes of judges. Instead, they must get out there and fight the good fight themselves.IS 'high' command ordered Paris, Brussels attacks: prosecutor
The jihadist cell that launched deadly attacks on Paris and Brussels received its orders from "very high" in the Islamic State group command, Belgium's federal prosecutor said Wednesday.
"We know that the orders came from the Islamic State zone.... We know that it went very high in the command," Frederic Van Leeuw said in an interview with AFP in Brussels.
He could not say exactly who gave the orders or whether they sent them from a base in Syria or Iraq, the territory run by IS leader and self-declared caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
France has been under a state of emergency after 130 people were killed in the Paris terror attacks in November 2015 ©Joel Saget (AFP/File)
He said the command moved around to dodge US-backed strikes. "Baghdadi was for a while in Mosul (Iraq), sometimes in Raqa (Syria)," he added.
"We don't know at all who are the people who really gave the orders," he said.
IS claimed responsibility for the attacks across Paris on November 13 last year that killed 130 people as well as for the suicide bombings at Brussels airport and a metro station on March 22 that killed 32 people.
Van Leeuw said the attacks were carried out by the same Franco-Belgian cell in which "the logisticians in one case became the operational ones in the following case".
With authorities still looking for suspects, he added: "The investigation is far from having ended, as much at the Belgian as at the French level."
French sources told AFP on Tuesday that French investigators had identified Oussama Atar, a Moroccan-Belgian jihadist based in Syria, as a "coordinator" of attacks in Paris and Brussels.
- 'Working theories' -
Van Leeuw said Atar's suspected role "is one of the working theories among others. There are a whole series of checks to be done".
Atar, believed to go by the pseudonym "Abou Ahmad" in Syria, has been on the radar of European security forces for more than a decade.
Abou Ahmad is suspected of having sent two suicide bombers to the national stadium in Paris as well as another pair of potential assailants, who were delayed on their way to Paris and arrested in Austria in December.
After being arrested in Iraq in 2004 following the US-led invasion of the country, Atar spent time in various jails including the notorious Abu Ghraib prison used by American forces.
After being released, in 2012 he returned to Belgium before apparently making his way back to the Middle East but intelligence services lost track of him months ago.
Asked why Atar had not been under surveillance, the prosecutor said even the French, who had more manpower, could not monitor someone round the clock.
"We must abandon this idea that is possible to follow people 24 hours a day... even when a legal case is opened," he said.
Van Leuw said Belgium had made "enormous progress" in the investigation into the attacks.
"The goal is effectively to understand and retrace everything that happened before, to retrace the entire chain of command," he said, adding that much police work lay ahead.Posted on July 08 2016
Ukrainian embroidery artisan of “Femmebroidery” brand, a habitant of Canada Maria Arseniuk speaks on things that matter. Feminism, sexism, political issues and art as a reflection of creator’s personality, opinion and lifestyle.
Maria Arseniuk
You are a Ukrainian girl living and working in Canada. How did you move there?
I moved to Canada when I was very young. It was still the Soviet Union. My mother worked for Foreign Affairs and got a pass to Cuba. We lived in Havana and waited out the collapse of the USSR. Once it finally happened, we moved to Canada in 1992.
You are very young and talented. Where did you get your skills in embroidery? Was the idea of making embroidered hoops a hobby or a purpose for business?
https://www.etsy.com/ca/shop/Femmebroidery
I got into embroidery completely accidentally. When I was just a child, maybe 9 or 10, a friend of the family gave me a book of stitches. At the time, I was in art classes but I primarily focused on pencil drawings. This was a new form of art that I found really captivating, because of all the combinations you could create with the colours and stitches. That is how it all began, but it didn’t truly bloom until much later, when I was working on a PhD. I was so tired of academia that I turned back to embroidery both as a form of relaxation and distraction. My degree was in Women’s, Gender and Feminist Studies and I began embroidering feminist sayings like “keep your rosaries off my ovaries” in protest of the strict abortion laws. I posted a photo on Facebook and a friend suggested I open an Etsy shop. And that is how Femmebroidery (feminist embroidery) was born.
You embody bright and modern embroidery designs with a help of traditional techniques. What techniques do you use?
I rarely think about techniques. I just stitch what comes to mind and what feels natural. I’m rarely disappointed (smiling).
We really like the fact that you use a hoop. It returns to childhood, a flashback to warm memories! How did the idea to create such greeting home furnishings appeared?
I like the hoop because it’s a way to show off the work without hiding the tactile details behind glass. It invites the viewer to touch it and become more familiar with how the stitches work together. This process would be lost in a traditional glass frame.
Most of the signatures on your hoops has strong character, which displays strong opinion, social position of a person, profanity, motivating phrases or lines of well-known songs. You make a signature only on custom’s requests or on your own?
The sayings are almost exclusively my own. Personally, I think art must make people uncomfortable in order to be effective. If someone is uncomfortable with “fuck your gender norms” - why? Perhaps they can look at it and question their belief system, even if only fleetingly.
Are those phrases that you have stated yourself reflect your personality in some way? If yes, then how?
Always! The hoops, like my personality, are bold and crass. I never shy away from politics, or controversy for that matter.
Are you a feminist? Do you think that feministic ideology can be perceived in the Ukraine adequately with time? Women often face with sexism in Ukraine. Have you ever faced with sexism in Canada?
Yes, I am a feminist and a very proud one. Feminist ideology has already made its appearance in Ukraine and once a cultural revolution starts, it can’t be undone. The seeds have already been planted. I always think of feminism as a toolbox: it gives you the tools and language to address and call out the social and cultural issues you may not have been able to articulate before. I think in Ukraine there is a lot of resistance to feminism; for those who are privileged (in this case straight, white men) equality can feel a lot like oppression. That’s not to say that we aren’t moving forward. I was in Kiev for the first Pride Parade (Equality March). This was historic. To have 4000-5000 participants was monumental. There are pockets of feminist activism everywhere - just look at the Facebook group FemSolution. Just recently there was a flash mob with #яНеБоюсьСказати. If to say about Canada, I’ve definitely dealt with sexism here. For example, women still only earn 70 cents on the dollar to men in the same profession, with the same education and the same credentials. It’s unacceptable. Having lived in both countries, it’s my personal experience that there are more opportunities for women in Canada, however we still have a long way to go, too.
My favorite among the embroidery hoop is the one that I saw on Instagram. It is “What would Beyoncé do”. I would hung it in my bedroom for inspiration. Which one are your favorite? Which ones are very popular among customers?
I like that one a lot too! My personal favourite…that’s tough. I like doing the ‘fuck’ one, and ‘fuck your gender norms’ - I basically like anything with the two F’s: feminist and fuck. Coincidentally, those are the two most popular ones among buyers.
You are a young girl, but you already have a successful store on Etsy and more than 20,000 subscribers on Instagram. You have a great experience of running your own business. Can you say that your hobby is your dream job?
My dream job is to work 50/50: running my own business and also working for a non-profit that focuses on women and/or queer communities. I’m still working towards that aspect, but the business is exactly where I want it to be. I get to do what I love, I work from home, create my own schedule and have a relatively steady income. In addition to the Etsy shop, I also offer workshops, sell at markets and have collaborations with local businesses. I think as most artists and freelancers know all too well there is a constant struggle between doing what you love and living affordably and working a 9-to-5 with significantly more income and benefits. I think we can often fall into the trap of thinking about what we “should” be doing, how much we “should” be earning and what a “real” job is. I can say with confidence that I love what I do now, but the intellectual warrior part of me also craves a part-time position with a local community organization that can co-exist with running “Femmebroidery”.
What advice would you give to beginners, who want to lead their accounts on Instagram and get subscribers? Share your experience.
Hashtags are your best friends. There are broad and specific hashtags. The broad ones apply to all creatives; the specific ones to your exact craft. For example, as an embroider
I often tag ones specific to embroidery like #modernembroiderymovement #DMCthreads and #embroideryinstaguild. If someone is a knitter for example, the hashtags they would want to use are #knittersgonnaknit #knittersofinstagram and #knittinginspiration. Then you want to include the broad ones that appeal to people outside of your genre - you don’t want to only target to embroiders or only to knitters, but to the larger market. So things like, #craftsposure, #psimadethis, #cylcollective. A lot of these hashtags also belong to larger blogs with 100,000+ followers and if they feature your work it gives you an opportunity to connect with new followers. Another strategy I use is to host a giveaway with 3-4 other popular makers. So for example, you reach out to some other artists that you follow. You each contribute one item to the giveaway. The giveaway generally lasts the weekend and people have to follow each of the artists and tag 2 friends to be entered in the giveaway. By doing this your account is exposed to the followers of 3-4 other artists plus the people that are tagged in your post. After the most recent giveaway Femmebroidery attracted 1,000 new followers.
Where do you create your works? Do you have your own workroom or your favorite place where you won’t be bothered?
My workspace is very simple. I have a table beside a large window in my home for lots of natural light and of course, a beautiful view of the fields and trees, and on a clear day the mountains.
You have incredibly beautiful and stylish embroidered pendants! They can be combined with any clothes. Can any special patterns, the value of which will be known only to the owner, be ordered? Did you get such orders?
I’ve never had someone ask to use their own pattern, but I certainly wouldn’t say “No” to such a request!
Do you have plans to develop a range of other products with embroidery? Personally, I would wear a T-shirt with the phrase “What would Beyoncé do?” :)
This one is tricky! There is a limit to what you can embroider on. Most T-shirts are not 100% cotton and often include materials such as lycra and spandex, which can distort. But perhaps one day I will branch out to banners and badges - after all, where is the fun in owning your own business, if you don’t grow it to encompass new ideas?President Obama has come right out and said it: "You have to tend to this garden of democracy, otherwise things can fall apart fairly quickly. And we've seen societies where that happens.”
Yes, he invoked Nazi Germany, adding, “Now, presumably, there was a ballroom in Vienna in the late 1920s or ’30s that looked and seemed as if it ― filled with the music and art and literature and the science that was emerging ― would continue into perpetuity. And then 60 million people died. And the entire world was plunged into chaos.”
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It was a shocking reminder of Milton Mayer and his seminal work, They Thought They Were Free, first published back in 1955 by the University of Chicago Press.
Shortly after World War II, Mayer, an American journalist and college instructor, went to Germany and befriended a small group of 10 “ordinary Germans” who had lived and worked through the war, and interviewed them in depth.
Mayer’s burning question was, “How does something like Nazi Germany happen?”
What he learned was every bit as shocking as President Obama drawing the same parallels. He wrote, presciently, “Now I see a little better how Nazism overcame Germany - not by attack from without or by subversion from within, but with a whoop and a holler. It was what most Germans wanted – or, under pressure of combined reality and illusion, came to want. They wanted it; they got it; and they liked it.
“I came home a little bit afraid for my country, afraid of what it might want, and get, and like, under combined pressure of reality and illusion. I felt – and feel – that it was not German Man that I met, but Man. He happened to be in Germany under certain conditions. He might be here under certain conditions. He might, under certain conditions, be I.
“If I - and my countrymen - ever succumbed to that concatenation of conditions, no Constitution, no laws, no police, and certainly no army would be able to protect us from harm.”
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Mayer tells the story largely through the words of the Germans he got to know during his year in Germany after the war. One, a college professor, told him:
“What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security...
“This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter....
“To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it – please try to believe me – unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop.
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“Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted,’ that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these ‘little measures’ that no ‘patriotic German’ could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.”
In this conversation, Mayer’s friend suggests that he wasn’t making an excuse for not resisting the rise of the fascists, but simply pointing out an undisputable reality.
This, he suggests, is how fascism will always take over a nation. And it seems that even President Obama is now realizing the gravity of the moment that Trump, Pence, and their enablers have brought us to.
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Another one of Mayer’s Nazi friends told him:
“Pastor Niemoller spoke for the thousands and thousands of men like me when he spoke (too modestly of himself) and said that, when the Nazis attacked the Communists, he was a little uneasy, but, after all, he was not a Communist, and so he did nothing: and then they attacked the Socialists, and he was a little uneasier, but, still, he was not a Socialist, and he did nothing; and then the schools, the press, the Jews, and so on, and he was always uneasier, but still he did nothing. And then they attacked the Church, and he was a Churchman, and he did something – but then it was too late.” … “You see, one doesn’t see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. “You wait for the one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even to talk, alone; you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ Why not? – Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty. “Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. “Outside, in the streets, in the general community, everyone is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You know, in France or Italy there will be slogans against the government painted on walls and fences; in Germany, outside the great cities, perhaps, there is not even this. “In the university community, in your own community, you speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, ‘It's not so bad’ or ‘You’re seeing things’ or ‘You’re an alarmist.’ “And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? “On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic.... "But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. “That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and the smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked – if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ‘43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ‘33. “But of course this isn't the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D. “And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jew swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. “The world you live in – your nation, your people – is not the world you were in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. “But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. “Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God.”
Mayer's friend pointed out that this was the terrible challenge faced then by average Germans, and today is faced by people across the world, as formerly democratic governments from Turkey to the Philippines are taken over by authoritarian, corporatist – fascist – regimes.
And here, too, in the United States, this grand alliance of bigots, billionaires, and authoritarians have seized control of much of our media and virtually total control of the Republican Party.
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As Trump uses Goebbel’s Big Lie techniques to draw in frightened and Fox-brainwashed white people (while vilifying Democrats, liberals, gays, women, Hispanics, Blacks, Native Americans, and pretty much anybody else who’s not a right-wing white Christian male) thoughtful people are asking if we’re really on this road to fascism or not.
A few years ago on my radio show, President Jimmy Carter came right out and said that we’re no longer a functioning democracy but, because of Citizens United, instead we’re “an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery.”
“How is this to be avoided, among ordinary men, even highly educated ordinary men?” Mayer's friend asked, perhaps rhetorically.
And, without the benefit of a previous and recent and well-remembered fascistic regime to refer to, Mayer’s German friend had to candidly answer his own question with: “Frankly, I do not know.”
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This was the great problem that Mayer's Nazis and so many others in their day faced.
As another of Mayer's Nazi friends noted:
“I do not see, even now [how we could have stopped it]. Many, many times since it all happened I have pondered that pair of great maxims, Principiis obsta and Finem respice – ‘Resist the beginnings’ and ‘consider the end.’ But one must foresee the end in order to resist, or even see, the beginnings. One must foresee the end clearly and certainly, and how is this to be done, by ordinary men or even by extraordinary men?”
And here we are.
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Nazi leaders and propagandists of the 1930s used the phrase Lügenpresse(“lying press”) at every opportunity to describe the media of their day; today Trump and his supporters are both undermining our faith in our press, and preparing us for a crackdown on press outlets like this one.
And once net neutrality is done away with, they merely have to work with their friends in the multibillion-dollar ISP corporations who, like with the 2006 AT&T scandal and others, are more than happy to help “intelligence” agencies and the administration out.
The phrase “Fake news” is simply the Trump version of Lügenpresse, and the goal and trajectory are the same.
Even Mike Godwin, the inventor of Godwin’s Law (basically, that “whoever first mentions Hitler automatically loses the argument”), is now writing in the Washington Post that, “If you’re thoughtful about it and show some real awareness of history, go ahead and refer to Hitler or Nazis when you talk about Trump.”
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Fritz Thyssen was a very wealthy and politically active German industrialist in the 1930s — arguably the Murdoch/Koch/Adelson/Mercer/etc. of his day in Germany — helped fund the rise of Hitler because he thought it would be good for his business and that Hitler would cut his taxes.
When I read his book "I Paid Hitler," part apologia and part rationalization, I couldn’t help but wonder how the heirs of today’s GOP/Trump-financing billionaires will look back on this era. That’s assuming, of course, that any sort of real history of the events of this time survives Trump and Pence’s dual assault on our news organizations and net neutrality.
As Hitler’s propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels famously said, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
Big lies are in full form now in America, from seemingly trivial things like crowd sizes to country- and world-changing lies about taxes and Iran.
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At the same time, we’re facing the classic fascist technique of discrediting the press and suppressing voices of dissent with draconian threats of jail time or surveillance for simply participating in protests or even visiting a protest website.
This reckoning was brought on us by a small group of authoritarian/libertarian billionaires and their minions, with the help of a compliant Supreme Court that has declared, without the authority of the Constitution, that corporations are persons and that money used to buy politicians and legislation is First Amendment-protected “free speech.”
Given that the only force that can defeat organized money is organized people, whether our republic will withstand this assault is now in our hands.
Democracy is not a spectator sport; we must get involved before “the corn is over our heads.”
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Tag, you’re it.
# # #BEIRUT/AMMAN (Reuters) - The Syrian Kurdish militia YPG on Tuesday accused Islamist and other rebel groups fighting President Bashar al-Assad’s forces of shelling a mainly Kurdish residential district in the northern city of Aleppo with chemical agents.
YPG fighters have been battling the insurgents for weeks on a heavily contested frontline that includes the district and countryside near Aleppo. Many insurgents view the YPG as allies of Assad, a charge the Kurds deny. The YPG is a key ally of both the United States and Russia in the fight against Islamic State.
A statement from the command of the People’s Protection Units (YPG) said rebels operating from opposition-held parts of Aleppo had hit Sheikh Maqsoud with “chemical material believed to be phosphorus with a yellow coloring” at 1500 local time.
In a letter the YPG said it had sent to a task force monitoring Syria’s current cessation of hostilities, the Kurdish group said the shelling had come from a broad array of Syrian opposition brigades, including the Islamist group Ahrar al Sham and more mainstream rebels such as the Levant Group, Liwa 13 and Nour al Din al-Zinki.
An Ahrar al Sham spokesman was not immediately available to comment on the allegations.
Around 16 people were killed, mostly women and children, after insurgents fired dozens of rockets on the mainly Kurdish residential district on Sunday, according to Kurdish sources. [L5N16G2SY]
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the civil war, said the Syrian al-Qaeda offshoot Nusra Front and hardline Islamist insurgent groups had showered the district with dozens of rockets in recent days.
Since Russia’s intervention in the Syrian conflict, government forces and their allies have been recapturing territory lost last year in many parts of western Syria, including Aleppo province.
Diplomats and analysts say the YPG fighters are taking advantage of the insurgents’ current focus on trying to fend off the government forces’ ground offensive to disrupt traffic on the main highway overlooked by the Sheikh Maqsoud district that is used by rebels to get into opposition-held areas of Aleppo.
Rebels say Kurdish snipers on the high ground in Sheikh Maqsoud |
, he said African elephant population is at risk.
Flickr: Diana Robinson
Swindle said he consulted forensic experts who said it was impossible tell the age of an ivory item without destroying it — and the difference between mammoths and elephants cannot always be discerned either.
“Improved economic conditions in traditional wildlife markets such as China and other parts of East and Southeast Asia are fueling an increased demand for products derived from endangered species,” he wrote.
Suzanne Case, director of the Department of Land and Natural Resources, also wrote in support of the bill and said the state’s position between the U.S. mainland and Asian countries could encourage the trafficking of wildlife species not found on the islands.
Tony Huntsiger, secretary and treasurer of the NSEFU Wildlife Conservation Foundation said at the hearing that although some people wrote in testimony about the “financial loss” the bill would cause, he felt people ought to consider the money spent on fighting poaching or given to families of people killed by poachers.
“These are the costs of not having an ivory ban. It’s impossible to tell the difference between legal and illegal ivory,” he said.
While animal activist groups and government agencies supported the bill, some private citizens and groups – including the local National Rifle Association division – submitted testimony in opposition.
“This bill would do nothing to promote its purported goal of addressing poaching and the illegal wildlife trade, while it would impose a heavy burden on law-abiding citizens,” wrote Daniel Reid, Hawaii state liaison for the NRA.
He said the bill would impact gun owners who have purchased firearms, art or knives that already have ivory features.
SB 2647 only prohibits the sale of products composed of more than 20 percent ivory, not possession.
Other testimony said the bill would make it difficult for crafts people, jewelers and small business owners to make a living.
Hawaii’s Black Market
On March 3, wildlife conservationists gathered at the Capitol to support the bill and release a report by the International Fund for Animal Welfare, Wildlife Conservation Society, Natural Resources Defense Council and Humane Society International that studied Hawaii’s online black market ivory trade.
Of the 47 online sellers investigated, the report found their total inventory was worth at least $1.2 million. The majority of retailers were on Oahu or Maui.
Hawaii was found to be the nation’s third-most-prominent ivory market in the U.S. behind New York and California. Both of those states have passed laws banning ivory sales, according to the report.
The report also pointed to a 2008 study that found 89 percent of ivory items for sale in Hawaii were of unknown or likely illegal origin.
An undercover study conducted by activists found that Hawaii’s ivory market was not only flourishing online, but in stores and at swap meets too.
In that investigation, shop owners even told the undercover researchers how to circumvent airport security and transport ivory into other countries.The 2016 race to occupy the White House is expected to unleash record amounts of political spending. (Photo: Ron Edmonds, AP)
WASHINGTON — Two Democratic members of the Federal Election Commission, who say they are frustrated by the agency's failure to rein in campaign-finance abuses ahead of the 2016 presidential race, are making what amounts to a drastic move Monday in the staid world of federal election law.
Commissioners Ann Ravel, who is the agency's chairwoman, and Ellen Weintraub are filing a formal petition, urging their own agency to write rules to clamp down on unfettered political spending and unmask the anonymous money flooding U.S. elections.
FEC petitions of this kind typically are made by outside supplicants — organizations or individuals trying to spur the nation's top election regulators take up some matter. No sitting commissioner has ever filed such a petition in the agency's 40-year history, Ravel said.
The six-member commission is locked in partisan gridlock, however, often deadlocking 3-3 on major cases, ranging from whether foreign interests improperly influenced a California Ballot initiative to whether some tax-exempt groups spending heavily in elections should register as political committees and disclose their donors.
"Desperate times call for desperate measures," Weintraub told USA TODAY. "The normal routes are not working, so we are willing to take unusual paths to fight the inaction."
Their action will not force the commission to start writing rules, but such petitions typically trigger an opportunity for public comment. The commissioners hope their move will cast a spotlight on the unrestricted and often-secret money increasingly flowing into congressional and presidential elections.
"While it's extremely difficult for the FEC to actually accomplish some of the tasks entrusted with us," Ravel said, "the public will have an opportunity to raise their concerns about the campaign-finance system and disclosure."
The commissioners' unorthodox tactic comes as some presidential candidates and their allies test the limits of campaign-finance rules in an election that is expected to shatter fundraising records. Former Florida governor Jeb Bush, for instance, has headlined fundraisers for an aligned super PAC, Right to Rise, prompting two campaign-finance watchdogs to request a Department of Justice inquiry into his activity.
Bush and his allies insist he's not subject to rules barring coordination with outside groups because he's not a presidential candidate. He now is scheduled to declare his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination June 15.
Outside spending has soared in the wake of recent court decisions, including the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision, which sanctioned unlimited corporate and union spending to influence candidate elections. Outside groups spent more than $1 billion in the last presidential election in 2012, three times the amount spent in 2008, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. Nearly a third of the 2012 outside spending came from groups that do not disclose their donors' identities, Ravel and Weintraub said.
The spread of anonymous spending in federal elections will "continue to diminish public faith in the political process unless the commission acts," they argued in their petition.
Among other things, the petition calls on the FEC to:
Ensure more disclosure of contributors to outside groups active in elections
Bar federal candidates from appearing at fundraisers for a super PAC. Currently, under the commission's rules, candidates can appear at the events but are prohibited from seeking more than $5,000. Even so, critics argue, a politician's presence at the event sends a clear signal that he or she is endorsing the super PAC's fundraising and will benefit from it.
Make it clear that U.S. subsidiaries of foreign companies cannot spend money to influence U.S. elections.
Prohibit candidates from using outside groups as arms of their campaigns. Under current rules, candidates cannot raise more than $2,700 from an individual for the primary election. Super PACs and other outside groups can raise and spend unlimited amounts as long as they operate independently of the candidates they support. If an outside group operates as a candidate's "alter ego," it should be subject to the same fundraising limits a candidate faces, the two commissioners argue.
The Democrats' novel strategy reflects the approach that Ravel, a former California election regulator, has brought to her tenure as chairwoman, a position she assumed last December. She increasingly has taken her crusade for greater transparency to the public, citing the agency's paralysis on key issues.
It doesn't seem likely that the commission will reach any agreement.
In a statement issued Monday afternoon, the agency's three Republican commissioners — Matthew Petersen, Lee Goodman and Caroline Hunter — said the FEC already has considered many of the recommendations outlined by Ravel and Weintraub.
They said it would be "more constructive" to focus on "issues that promise bi-partisan progress," such as revising rules for state and local parties, expanding administrative fines and updating "disclosure forms to enhance reporting compliance."
Weintraub, the commission's longest serving member, notes that a recent New York Times /CBS poll found widespread support for changes to the system.
Eighty-four percent of those surveyed said money has too much influence in elections, and 85% said the campaign-finance system should be either completely rebuilt or fundamentally changed. However, groups that oppose further restrictions on campaign spending also point out that the same poll shows that less 1% of those surveyed view political fundraising as the top issue facing the country.
"American realize there are many more important issues than having politicians pass new laws to protect incumbents and stifle dissent," David Keating, president of the Center for Competitive Politics, said in a recent statement.
Pointing to the crowded field of Republican candidates — many of whom are backed by super PACs and other outside groups, Keating said the "ability of people to speak out in politics is giving voters more choices and encouraging more candidates to run … That's good for our democracy."
The deadlock at the FEC has seeped into the popular culture. Comedian Seth Meyers recently made it the focus of a segment of his late-night talk show on NBC.
Fred Wertheimer, president of the campaign-finance watchdog group Democracy 21, said Monday that he backed the move by Ravel and Weintraub. Their decision to file the petition, he noted, gives them standing to go further and sue the agency if their fellow commissioners don't draft rules.
Richard Hasen, an expert on election law at the University of California-Irvine, said it's "quite ironic" to have commissioners petition their "own agency to try to get action on these pressing problems." He said he doubts, however, that it will do anything but "generate continued partisan and ideological gridlock."
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1IycZ4pFacebook announced some intended changes to its data use policy to "enhance transparency", according to a Friday post on its Facebook and Privacy page. The updates include better explanations, examples, and "tips" denoted in the text with a lightbulb, as well as some revelations about how third parties deal with users' data.
In the revised data use policy, Facebook makes explicit that any time one of your Facebook friends starts using an app, game, or partner website (that is, a site where you can log in using Facebook credentials), Facebook hands that service all of the "publicly available" information on that user. Information that is always publicly available only includes basic stuff like your name or cover photo, but users can have their entire profile publicly available, and thus handed to a service.
However, Facebook also clarifies that "if you’ve removed an application and want them to delete the information you’ve already shared with them, you should contact the application and ask them to delete it." This implies that, even if you change Facebook's privacy settings since beginning to use a third-party service, or no longer user the service at all, the service may keep your data on hand unless directly asked to delete it. That is, Facebook won't be your middle man in data cleanup; however, Facebook does note in the policy that apps are contractually obligated to delete data if asked.
Not only does this data dance apply to direct users, it seems to apply to users' friends as well. Applications are also able to access the publicly available information of friends of users, and can ask their users to share non-public information from their friends. Facebook provides this example:
Your friend might also want to share the music you “like” on Facebook. If you have made that information public, then the application can access it just like anyone else. But if you’ve shared your likes with just your friends, the application could ask your friend for permission to share them.
There are no special provisions for the storage of this information, either, that separate this, policy-wise, from direct sharing. To our reading, this means unless you contact the app directly for removal, it could hold onto that data forever. Facebook does point out that users can blanket-command Facebook not to share its information on a friends-of-friends basis by turning off all Platform (third-party) applications. But this means you don't get to use any applications of your own choosing, either.
When Facebook was dinged by the FTC and privacy groups in 2009 and 2010 for sharing more information than its privacy policy said it would, the company said it would make changes so information-sharing with third-parties would be "opt-in." The framework described above is, at its base, compliant with opt-in, but saying "I want to play FarmVille, so that app is allowed to have my data" and "I want to play FarmVille, so all the third-party apps my friends use are allowed to have, and retain, my public data, unless I explicitly ask for its removal" are virtually the same thing. It's a subtle relationship, but important for users to grasp.
Facebook also addresses the issue of data retention once users have deleted their or other information—something we've noticed the site has had trouble with in the past, particularly when it comes to photos. Facebook says that while deleted accounts should be gone within 90 days, any content that is external to your account, like posts to a Facebook group or private messages to another person, will be retained in the service.
Further reading
Enhancing Transparency In Our Data Use Policy (Facebook)
Over 3 years later, "deleted" Facebook photos are still online (Ars Technica)
Facebook settles with FTC, under privacy watch for 20 years (Ars Technica)This touching statement from Soyeon came to light once more following news that she will not be participating in T-ARA’s final album.
Recently, fans were sad when they found out that Soyeon and Boram will not be able to join in the group’s last comeback. This was due to their contracts expiring on May 15. According to their agency, MBK Entertainment, there were unable to reach a final agreement during their negotiations.
A clip from one of their fan meetings, however, resurfaced, as it featured a meaningful statement from Soyeon. The short clip featured a tearful Soyeon trying to console their upset fans.
“Please trust us. Wait for a little bit.” -T-ARA’s Soyeon
Plz Trust us and wait for a little bit.
– Park Soyeon 2017 #TrustIn티아라 pic.twitter.com/kle3Q8WXZu — NNNNNN. (@mcmxcnnnayyy) May 8, 2017
Soyeon and Boram had initially planned to join the rest of the members for one last set of promotions. However, the plan did not work out, leaving Hyomin, Eunjung, Jiyeon and Qri as the only T-ARA members in the company until December 2017.Introducing: Monochrome By The Senate on 2015-09-11 20:07:00 The newest Star Wars: The Force Awakens insert set is here: Monochrome! The set consists of 8 cards along with a 9th award card for completing the set. There are 4 versions of the card. The odds and card counts are as follows:
Green – 3000, 1:15
Red – 1000, 1:35
Yellow – 500, 1:50
Grey – 2000, 1:1
The Green variant will be available in the Force Awakens: Monochrome Pack, while the Green, Yellow, and Red variants will all be available in the Force Awakens: Monochrome Master Pack.
The Grey variant will be available for FREE in the Cantina to those with Master Access for 3 hours starting now. At 7 PM ET, any remaining copies of the card will be made available to everyone.
Remember, purchasing any Credit Bundle from the Credits Store will give you 1-day Master Access.By Cindy Chan, Epoch Times
As we prepare for and take part in holiday festivities this time of year, celebration and merriment may come with increased demands that can add stress to our lives. But we can prevent that from getting the better of us. Reflecting on the true spirit of the season and the wisdom of kindness is one way that can help us boost our mood and dissolve the blues.
In this context, traditional Chinese culture, through its long-established emphasis on benevolence toward others, offers inspiration that speaks to this wisdom and spirit of giving and charity.
An ancient Chinese saying from over 2,000 years ago declares, “To have virtuous citizens who are kind to their neighbours, this is precious treasure for a country.”
These words not only express the ancient Chinese people’s aspirations for good relationships with one another in their own country. They also reflect people’s wish for a peaceful world where similar close-knit and harmonious relations are cultivated among all nations.
Another saying from the same period tells us: “To help those who are suffering difficulties and to have sympathy for our neighbours, this is following the Dao. Those who follow the Dao will be blessed.”
Many stories can be found from classical China about people of noble character whose kindness made all the difference for those less fortunate. Their hearts were focused not on themselves but on the welfare of others. Their compassion compelled them to help their neighbours, including giving them the means by which they could help themselves. In turn, the benefactors found blessings and good fortune in their own lives.
Here are three such stories that convey the wisdom of kindness.
Dumplings of Kindness and Healing
The classic Chinese dumpling, called jiaozi, has been a much-loved Chinese food for nearly 2,000 years. According to folklore, jiaozi was invented by Zhang Zhongjing, an eminent doctor and county governor known for his kindness who lived during the Eastern Han Dynasty (A.D. 25–220).
When Zhang retired from his post and returned to his hometown, he was saddened to see many poor people living very hard lives. In the winter, many suffered from severely frostbitten ears, and Zhang resolved to help.
According to folklore, the Chinese jiaozi dumpling was invented by Zhang Zhongjing, an eminent doctor and county governor known for his kindness who lived during the Eastern Han Dynasty (A.D. 25–220). (John / Flickr)
He did so by creating a remedy called “drive away cold from the delicate ears” soup. The recipe starts with making a filling of minced mutton, hot chili pepper, and medicinal herbs effective in strengthening the body to resist cold. The fillings were wrapped in thin dough in the shape of a human ear and then cooked in boiling water.
This type of dumpling became known as “jiao’er,” literally “delicate ear.” By eating jiao’er in a bowl of hot soup for a period of time, everyone’s ears eventually healed.
Zhang provided this remedy to the people throughout the winter until the Chinese New Year, when the weather began warming up and it was time to prepare for spring planting in the fields.
People later began to make a similar dumpling called jiaozi, which became a popular food eaten year-round but especially during the winter solstice and on Chinese New Year’s Eve.
Charity Toward Neighbours
Zi Rudao, who lived during the Yuan Dynasty (A.D. 1279–1368), was another historical figure known for his charitable deeds.
When some fellow villagers fell on hard times and became impoverished, Zi gave them each a piece of farmland as property that they could in turn lease to farmers. This gave them the means to earn a livelihood for themselves. Zi did not claim back the land until his fellow villagers passed away from old age.
One year, a plague spread through Zi’s village and it was said that the only cure was to eat a type of melon that induced sweating as a way of cleansing the body and repelling the disease.
Learning of this, Zi purchased many of these melons along with other food to be distributed to his neighbours. Despite the risk of contracting the plague, Zi did not worry about himself but personally delivered the food to every household in the area, thus saving many lives.
Zi was also known for lending grain to those in need in the springtime without wanting any interest in return and only accepting payment after the harvest. If there was a poor harvest one year and the borrowers did not have enough crops to repay their debt, Zi would simply burn the loan notes and tell them not to worry about repayment.
Zi often told his family: “The reason we store up grain in the first place is to safeguard against famine. Therefore, if we meet with a year of poor harvest, we certainly must help our neighbours who are less fortunate.”
Heaven Protects Generous ‘Two Gourd Halves’
Another story about kindness and generosity tells of a wealthy man surnamed Yang who was always happy to help others.
Yang was very willing to lend grain to fellow villagers in need without asking for repayment. His wish was to enable them to improve their lives through their own efforts. However, he also understood the fundamental principle when the villagers asserted that it was the right thing to do to repay a debt owed.
So he came up with an idea. Yang cut a gourd in two in order to make two containers for measuring out grain. He made one large and the other small. When lending out grain, he used the large cup. Then when accepting repayment of grain, he used the small cup to measure the amount to take back.
It was a long time before the villagers realized that Yang had been giving much more than he took back in return. He thus became known respectfully as the “Two Gourd Halves.”
Yang became known as ‘Two Gourd Halves’ after cutting a gourd in two to make two containers for measuring out grain. ( public domain )
One autumn day at harvest time, when Yang was already elderly and frail at 80 years of age, he decided to take a slow walk with his cane to the wheat fields to check on his crop. Suddenly, thunder roared and lighting flashed, signalling that a big storm was coming.
Yang felt that it was unlikely he would be able to find his way home in time. He believed he had reached the last day of his life, so he peacefully lay down in the wheat fields and prepared to meet his end.
At that moment, he heard a majestic voice from the heavens. It commanded: “God of Thunder, Goddess of Lightning, Water Dragon, hear this: Not a single drop of rain is permitted to land on Two Gourd Halves and his fields.”
The storm then arrived, battering the countryside with forceful gales and torrential rain. It went on for a long time. When it was over, Yang slowly got up to take a look. Indeed, not a single drop of rain had fallen on him or his fields, but the wheat plants in the surrounding fields were all lying flattened in the mud.
Yang’s family had been anxiously looking for him and they were astonished when they finally found him safe and sound and perfectly dry.
Yang told them what had happened, and their whole family knelt down together to express sincere gratitude for Heaven’s blessing.
True Spirit of the Season
Humanity’s kind nature shines brightly not only in stories such as these. Many of us will be able to think of caring people that we know in our own lives.
Perhaps through acts of kindness and charity that reflect the true spirit of the season, we can help to bring about more goodness in the world and let the warm glow of this special time of year light up even stronger and last a great deal longer.
True to the wisdom of kindness, we may then find ourselves, our communities, and our nation blessed with health and happiness on the path to the brightest of futures.
Featured image: Tang court ladies carrying precious treasures, from the tomb of Princess Yongtai in the Qianling Mausoleum, near Xi'an in Shaanxi, China. 706 AD. ( public domain )
The article ‘ The Spirit of Giving and Charity in Ancient China’ was originally published on The Epoch Times and has been republished with permission.Interest in Disney’s “Frozen” isn’t showing any sign of unthawing.
The animated hit sold 3.2 million Blu-ray and DVD discs in its first day of release, the studio said Wednesday. That figure includes pre-sales, and puts it on track to become one of the biggest sellers on homevideo in a decade.
Walt Disney Animation’s Oscar-winning film already had become the fastest-selling digital release of all time when it bowed on Digital HD and Digital 3D on Feb. 25.
That includes on Amazon where the retailer said the film was the bestselling kids movie of all time on disc, besting Universal’s “Despicable Me.”
“Frozen” was released on traditional homevideo formats on March 18.
The strong sales on homevideo come as the “Frozen” soundtrack topped the Billboard 200 chart for a sixth consecutive week. It’s sold over 1.4 million units in the U.S, with Idina Menzel’s “Let It Go,” moving more than 1.7 million copies.
“Frozen” has now earned $1.032 billion at the global box office and is the 13th highest grossing film ever released. It has remained in the top 10 at the domestic box office for all 16 weekends of its wide release, the longest run by any film since 2002.
Last weekend, “Frozen” debuted at #1 in Japan with $9.6 million, the biggest opening ever for a Walt Disney Animation Studios film in the territory.Capital One Bank will pay $140 million to refund two million customers who were misled, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- In its first public enforcement action, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced it is fining Capital One Bank for pressuring and misleading two million customers into buying additional products when they opened their credit card accounts.
The bank will refund roughly $140 million to customers and pay an additional $25 million penalty to the CFPB for using deceptive marketing tactics, the government's consumer watchdog said Wednesday.
Capital One (COF, Fortune 500) will also pay the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency a $35 million penalty and refund an additional $10 million to customers for failing to put progams in place that would prevent unfair and deceptive practices in place and for unfair billing practices. The two actions combined bring the bank's total payout to $210 million.
The CFPB said that Capital One, one of the nation's largest credit card lenders, pressured and misled consumers into paying for "add-on products" like payment protection and credit monitoring when they activated their credit cards.
The CFPB said that consumers with low credit scores or low credit limits were sometimes led to believe that the product would improve their credit scores, were misinformed about the cost and were told that purchasing the product was required. Some were even enrolled without their consent.
Cardholders who enrolled in a payment protection or credit monitoring product -- or who tried to cancel one of these products but were persuaded by a call center representative to keep it -- on or after August 1, 2010, will be refunded the money they paid for the product, as well as any finance charges, over-the-limit fees or interest paid, the CFPB said.
Capital One will also stop marketing all of these products until it submits a compliance plan that is approved by the CFPB.
Capital One leads the pack on the CFPB's new online database devoted to cataloging consumer complaints against credit card companies, which was launched last month.
Of the 1,749 complaints registered on the website, 393 were lodged about Capital One. Citibank (C, Fortune 500) and JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500) came in second and third, with 301 and 279 complaints, respectively.
The latest action marks the first enforcement for the bureau since it began regulating credit cards, mortgages and consumer reporting agencies as part of the Dodd-Frank regulatory reform last year.
"Today's action puts $140 million back in the pockets of two million Capital One customers who were pressured or misled into buying credit card products they didn't understand, didn't want, or in some cases, couldn't even use," said CFPB director Richard Cordray."We are putting companies on notice that these deceptive practices are against the law and will not be tolerated."TL;DR: Parallels Desktop 13 only supports OpenGL 3.2 on an extremely limited subset of mostly games. VMWare Fusion 10 has full OpenGL 3.3 support. In my case, this made the difference between being able to work on a VTK-based client project (VMWare Fusion 👍👍) or NOT being able to work the project (Parallels 👎👎).
I bought a Parallels Desktop Pro 13 subscription to be able to do Linux and Windows development on my MacBook Pro.
Although PD is extremely well done otherwise, they seem to have been dragging their feet with rolling out full OpenGL 3.2 support, as can be seen in a number of threads on their forums, e.g. here, here and here.
For a client project, we are currently working on a cross-platform VTK-based app which targets Windows as its main platform. I was looking forward to using my Parallels Windows 10 guest to test the prototype out. Unfortunately, when trying to run a simple VTK sample I was greeted with this error message:
Warning: In..\Rendering\OpenGL2\vtkOpenGLRenderWindow.cxx, line 647 vtkWin32OpenGLRenderWindow (0000018AAABA44B0): VTK is designed to work with OpenGL version 3.2 but it appears it has been given a context that does not support 3.2. VTK will run in a compatibility mode designed to work with earlier versions of OpenGL but some features may not work.
The app then reproducibly crashes hard.
Further investigation with the OpenGL Extension Viewer showed that there were three different OpenGL renderers: Two of them are OpenGL 2.1 capable, and one is 3.2 capable. However, as a user, you can’t decide which app gets which renderer.
Further digging, also with the glewinfo app, reveals that Parallels only very selectively supports certain games and apps. See the list at the end of this knowledge base article.
I logged a support issue re the VTK 7 and later OpenGL 3.2+ requirement. The bug was acknowledged, and Parallels confirmed that it was now on their backlog, but that they could give no indication of when this would be available.
Client projects really can’t wait for this, so based on good reviews of the OpenGL support in VMWare Fusion 10, I made use of their Cyber Monday special to purchase a license for the Pro version.
After installation, I imported the VM from Parallels Desktop:
… after which I was greeted with the VM configuration screen where I could configure the 3D support:
After which I could boot up the same Windows VM and run the VTK sample app without any issues whatsoever:
So there you go: If you need good OpenGL support in your VMs, prefer VMWare Fusion over Parallels Desktop.
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Like this: Like Loading...Minneapolis, MN — In the Land of the Free, it is against the law to get paid to have sex, unless that sex is filmed, distributed on DVD, and taxed. One of the least talked about systems of oppression in the US is that of persecuting prostitutes.
By: Matt Agorist
This article first appeared at FreeThoughtProject.
When referencing prostitution, we are talking about the mutually beneficial exchange of sexual favors for money by two or more consenting partners; not forced human trafficking.
It’s called the “oldest profession in the world” for a reason. Sex is a basic human need. One need only observe the explosive population growth of humans in the last 10,000 years to see that desire to mate is inherent in each and everyone one of us.
When one takes this into consideration, the notion of outlawing consensual sex is seen for what it is, sheer insanity.
Just like the war on drugs creates crime by pushing the unending demand for illicit substances into the black market, the war on the sex trade creates crime in the same manner.
Because the demand for sex is pushed into dark alleys and late night street corners, a woman working in the sex trade becomes far more vulnerable than if they were legally allowed to operate out of brick and mortar setups. This danger of working on the street drives the need for protection from pimps who are often more abusive than any customer would be.
Despite the tens of thousands of arrests each year, the market has found a way to provide the service of sex using safer solutions. In spite of the laws, sellers of sex have found ways to safely conduct business by setting up “massage” parlors, using phone books, and, of course, the internet.
Besides being an immoral gang of thieves, the state is also relentless. They have deep pockets of extorted tax dollars of which to dig in to enforce their will on the people.
Despite prostitution arrests dropping from 2001 to 2010, the cost of arresting people for sex remains staggeringly high. Individual cities continue to spend up to $23 million a year stopping people from having voluntary sex.
The kicker her is that the act of stopping people from having voluntary sex is so futile that the Minneapolis police department has been forced to bring its own prostitution sting operation to a halt.
When it comes to the natural human tendency to procreate, police officers are not immune. In just the last month, multiple prostitution stings all had the charges dismissed after it was found that the male officers had sexual contact with the suspects during the sting.
According to MRP News,
The department is discontinuing the stings until the review is complete, according to city spokesperson Matt Lindstrom. He said the department is considering alternatives to using undercover cops in prostitution investigations, which could include civil enforcement through the city’s new massage ordinance.
The hypocrisy within the department is not only apparent due to the fact that the officers couldn’t keep their hands off the pros, but none of the officers involved are being investigated for it either.
The idea of police officers legally having sexual contact with prostitutes is not a new one. Last year, Honolulu cops urged lawmakers to keep an exemption in state law that allows undercover officers to have sex with prostitutes during investigations, setting off a heated debate over the provision.
In the end, lawmakers and police settled on a resolution that appeased both parties. Police could still receive handjobs and fellatio in their efforts to combat prostitution. These officers will now have to sacrifice their bodies in a selfless manner and be forced to receive blowjobs so they can then arrest these women for giving them pleasure.
And so continues to turn, the rusty, bloody gears of the state; kidnapping and caging people for having consensual sex while failing to pursue actual criminals.
This article first appeared at FreeThoughtProject.China's first aircraft carrier started sea trials Wednesday, a step that will likely boost concerns about the country's naval ambitions amid sea territorial disputes.
The carrier left Dalian port in northeast Liaoning province early Wednesday, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. The test run had been expected.
Xinhua said the first sea trial was in line with the schedule to rebuild the carrier, which China bought from Ukraine more than a decade ago. The report cited unnamed military sources.
China officially acknowledged only two weeks ago that it is rebuilding the carrier and said the refurbished ship would be used for research and training _ a strong indication it plans to build carriers of its own.
China's carrier ambitions have sparked concern among neighbors amid heightened tensions over territorial disputes around Taiwan and in the South China Sea.
Over the past year, China has seen a flare-up in territorial spats with Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam and seen its relations strained with South Korea _ all of which have turned to Washington, long the pre-eminent naval power in Asia, for support.
Xinhua said refitting and test work would continue on the carrier when it returns from its short sea trial.
The Varyag, yet to be officially renamed, was towed from Ukraine as an empty shell without engines, weapons systems or other crucial equipment. It has been under construction for the better part of a decade.
Defense experts say China plans up to four carriers in all, with preparations under way at a Shanghai shipyard.
No time period for the trial was given by Xinhua, but a statement posted on the website of the Liaoning Maritime Safety Authority said "all vessels will be barred from entering" a small section of the sea off Dalian until 6 p.m. (1000 GMT) on Aug. 14.
There had been earlier online reports in China that the test was set to start last weekend, but it may have been delayed by a tropical storm that swept through the area.There's no heartbreak like the heartbreak of first love, and when it comes to politics, no disappointment more bitter than that of a young person who grows up to realize her one-time idol is all too human. That's the explanation offered by Harvard Institute of Politics pollster John Della Volpe and IOP Director Trey Grayson for the precipitous drop in Millennial generation support for President Obama in this year's annual Survey of Young Americans’ Attitudes toward Politics and Public Service. "We are now seeing a sea change among this critical demographic," Grayson said. "The president has experienced a double-digit drop among Millennials over the past seven months and that rating is now the lowest we've seen during his presidency." The poll, conducted between October 30 and November 11, found that the president's approval among 18- to 29-year-olds had dropped from 52 to 41 percent over the course of the year, and that younger Millennials—those between 18 and 24—were trending less Democratic. The poll, conducted between October 30 and November 11, found that the president's approval among 18- to 29-year-olds had dropped from 52 to 41 percent over the course of the year, and that younger Millennials—those between 18 and 24—were trending less Democratic.
"For the better part of four or five years, young people have been the outliers. They've been the folks who have been the most optimistic and most trusting of the president and Congress to actually solve the problems they most care about," Della Volpe said, explaining what happened.
"You have a combination of two things. One is: Expectations [were] incredibly high—not just for the president but for Washington and adults in general—that have been unmet," he said. "And then the second part of it is, you can see that there are very few aspects of the healthcare initiative that they approve of. They think quality will decrease, prices will increase. So it's not surprising that that is taking a significant hit to the president's approval ratings."Your favorite spiced tea transformed into a soft, frosted, date-sweet slice–this healthy Chai Spiced Quick Bread is the perfect cozy sweet treat! Vegan, gluten-free, oil-free.
A quick bread without frosting I can handle. Some quick breads are possibly even better that way. But a frosting without a quick bread or a cake or some sort of soft, baked spot to call home…we can’t let that happen! So with all that creamy vanilla frosting from yesterday’s post on hand, I really had no choice but to do a bit of fall-flavored bread-baking.
While I do like coffee, I don’t drink it regularly. It’s not a habit I want to start, so I only have it if I am at |
on the specific details in this story, Microsoft declined, only re-sending the statement they sent when we first broke news that the two companies had Phantom Dust,’ but our working relationship has now ended.”) When asked to comment on the specific details in this story, Microsoft declined, only re-sending the statement they sent when we first broke news that the two companies had parted ways. (“Microsoft partnered with Darkside Game Studios in the development of ‘Phantom Dust,’ but our working relationship has now ended.”)
Way back in 2002, a group of Florida-based artists started a production company that they called Shadows of Darkness. After several years doing outsourced art-work for game series such as Call of Duty and Medal of Honor, the developers decided to branch into design, forming a new studio called Darkside in 2008. Using the connections they’d gained over the years, the newly-formed Darkside picked up some high-profile contracts, doing tech work for games such as BioShock 2 and even designing entire chunks of AAA games, like the Borderlands downloadable content “Claptrap’s New Robot Revolution” and the multiplayer portion of the 2012 shooter Spec Ops: The Line.
Few game developers want to spend their lives in outsourcing, however, and the people at Darkside had grander ambitions. They wanted to do something on their own. After years of serving as secondary studio on other peoples’ projects—and after a number of unsuccessful game pitches that included potential projects involving Transformers and The Walking Dead, according to a studio source—Darkside’s developers were hungry for their own big thing.
“The ultimate goal was to create our own game,” said one person who worked for the company. “That’s where Phantom Dust came in.”
Above: concept rendering of Darkside’s Phantom Dust reboot.
In early 2014, Darkside’s leadership began serious conversations with Microsoft about making something new. Microsoft was looking to revive some of their old franchises on Xbox One without spending too much money, and Darkside was a small yet experienced studio that Microsoft’s producers already knew thanks to their work on the Xbox-exclusive Sunset Overdrive. It seemed like a good fit.
“Microsoft had a list of [intellectual properties] that we might be interested in,” said one person familiar with Darkside’s pitching process, adding that the list included the sci-fi shooting series Perfect Dark, the action-card game hybrid Phantom Dust, and a handful of other Microsoft-owned properties. At one point Darkside pushed for Battletoads, according to that source, but Microsoft told them it was off the table.
“ Phantom Dust was the one that really stood out to us,” the person said. “It was a really obvious choice.”
Obvious to them, maybe, but to an observer it seems odd— Phantom Dust was never a commercial hit, nor were many people begging for the series to come back. On top of that, the old Xbox action game was developed by a Japanese team, led by now-independent designer Yukio Futatsugi. Why would Microsoft task this small studio in Florida with rebooting it? It was a cult classic, sure, but how many people would really care?
Still, Darkside employees say they were excited at the prospect, and Microsoft really wanted to make it happen. (In late 2013, Xbox boss Phil Spencer had Phantom Dust, so this had been on Microsoft’s wishlist for a while.) Still, Darkside employees say they were excited at the prospect, and Microsoft really wanted to make it happen. (In late 2013, Xbox boss Phil Spencer had talked to Kotaku about rebootingPhantom Dust, so this had been on Microsoft’s wishlist for a while.)
After some heavy-duty conversations in the spring of 2014, the two companies walked away with a deal: Darkside would get a $5 million budget to build a multiplayer-only reboot of Phantom Dust, complete with a spectator mode, tournaments, and a complicated replay system allowing players to share files, according to one person familiar with the original pitch. The initial plan was to make it a competitive online sport, along the lines of Hearthstone and League of Legends. They gave it the codename Babel.
2 s As an indie game developer who recently had to explain the aesthetics of our game to a new contractor, I find this slide and graphic incredibly insightful and am now considering putting something like this together for our next revision of design documents. Total bummer about Darkside though :( tkshredder View discussion >>
Above: a slide from the art bible Darkside created for the reboot of Phantom Dust, which was code-named Babel.
Though some Darkside staff say they were hesitant about this decision to rebrand Phantom Dust as an eSport, given how much fans loved the original game’s single-player mode, the developers were high on the project. “We were very passionate about it,” said one person familiar with the deal. “It was a huge break for us as a company.”
Like the original Phantom Dust, Darkside’s reboot would be an action game where players’ abilities were determined by pre-constructed decks of cards. Each player would control a character on an arena-style battlefield, using skills and taking advantage of destructible environments in an attempt to defeat their opponents. As in the original, the goal was to give players as many different card options as possible. The initial plan was to release the game in August of 2015.
No more than a week after they’d signed the contract, according to several ex-Darkside employees, Microsoft’s team came back to the studio with a new request: they wanted a single-player campaign. “They decided that fans were gonna want a single-player game,” said a person who worked on the project. “But they weren’t going to change the budget or the timeframe.”
Suddenly, what was once a $5 million multiplayer reboot of Phantom Dust had become a $5 million multiplayer reboot of Phantom Dust with a six-hour single-player story mode attached. That meant Darkside would need more designers, more artists, and more programmers, all of which equated to extra time and money that they didn’t have. Still, employees say they were committed to pulling it off. This was their first solo project. They wanted to prove they were good enough to do it. According to one Darkside source, their tentative plan was to build a fun vertical slice—a playable and demonstrable chunk of the game—and use it to persuade Microsoft into giving them more money.
Darkside was in the very early stages of development when E3 came around in June of last year, and some at the studio say they were shocked to see Microsoft announce Phantom Dust there. They were even more shocked to see the game announced through a pre-rendered trailer that nobody at Darkside had worked on, according to studio sources. Perhaps most frustratingly for people at the studio, Microsoft wouldn’t tell anyone that Darkside was developing the game. Darkside was put on a gag order; though the game had been announced, they still couldn’t tell people they were making it. “It was very sad,” said one person on the project. “It showed a lack of confidence in us.”
One former Darkside employee says some at the studio were caught off-guard by the announcement. “We didn’t even know if they were going to show it,” the employee said. “We were basically told, ‘Hey check out the E3 presentation.’ The whole studio’s in the living room, we have a TV going with an Xbox watching the presentation, and then all of a sudden there’s that two-minute CG trailer. And we were like, ‘That’s amazing.’ But at the same time, they didn’t use any of our assets, they didn’t use any of our card packs, nothing. Basically what they showed had nothing to do with the game whatsoever. We had no idea that was even happening… It was like, ‘Holy crap, now fans are expecting characters to look like that, and that’s not what we’re making.’”
Darkside soldiered on, and full development started around August of last year. As the months went on, things got shakier. Microsoft’s demands for the game increased, and the pressure got worse and worse as Redmond kept asking for new things, Darkside sources say. Microsoft wanted a longer single-player campaign; they wanted various features added and changed; they wanted Darkside to help contribute card art to the accompanying mobile game Microsoft had planned. “This kind of focus change happened on a nearly monthly basis,” said a person who worked on the game.
“They asked for things pretty quickly,” said a second person close to the studio. “We kept telling them, ‘We cannot make this game for the budget you want.’”
In the fall of last year, another obstacle popped up: one of Microsoft’s creative directors, who Darkside sources described as integral to Phantom Dust ’s success, left the company. His role was never re-filled, which hurt Darkside a lot—producers at the studio had to communicate with Microsoft’s creative team on a daily basis, and he had been one of their most important connections in Redmond. “He was a huge fan who really understood the game,” one source said, “so when some of the producers would make some really stupid requests, he would be able to say, ‘This was a really stupid request.’”
Development was rocky—when is game development ever not?—but Darkside was all-in. By the end of 2014, they were no longer taking other contracts; the studio had around 50 employees, all of whom were working on P hantom Dust. It was a calculated gamble, but Darkside staffers say they didn’t see it as much of a risk based on their conversations with Microsoft about the game.
The original plan was for Darkside to finish the vertical slice by December, but after some struggles, they convinced Microsoft to extend the deadline to January. One particularly strange moment for Darkside happened around then, when Microsoft’s Ken Lobb said on a podcast that Phantom Dust would be “ The original plan was for Darkside to finish the vertical slice by December, but after some struggles, they convinced Microsoft to extend the deadline to January. One particularly strange moment for Darkside happened around then, when Microsoft’s Ken Lobb said on a podcast thatPhantom Dustwould be “ about a 30-hour JRPG.” The developers were baffled. That was never part of their plan. “Nobody knew he was gonna say that,” said one Darkside staffer. “We were told by people at Microsoft that Ken just does things like that.”
By the end of January, they had a vertical slice. Darkside sources say they loved the way it turned out, as did Microsoft. The art, characters, and levels were all approved. “Everybody was very happy with it,” said one person who worked on the game. “The execs had fun playing it, I was surprised to hear. They were actually having fun with it in their office, in meetings.”
You can see footage of the vertical slice (which You can see footage of the vertical slice (which we published last month ) here:
Even as Darkside’s developers celebrated the successful prototype, leadership couldn’t ignore the looming money problem. By February, it had become a huge concern—they just didn’t have the resources to deliver what they knew Microsoft expected. There were no signs that Microsoft would be willing to give them more money, even after all the work Darkside had put into the game already.
“[Microsoft] loved us; they said we were one of the best devs they’d ever worked with,” said one person who worked on the game. “They wanted to go forward with us—the issue was the budget.”
So in mid-February, Darkside’s top leadership flew out to the corporation’s Redmond campuses for a meeting that they hoped would get them more money. Darkside made the pitch: to properly reboot Phantom Dus t with both multiplayer arena battles and a sizable single-player campaign, they’d need more resources. It just wasn’t doable at $5 million.
Microsoft said no.
“When it came down to it, the game they wanted could not be done,” said a person familiar with the studio. “We could not make them the game they wanted for the budget they had.”
On Tuesday, February 17, Darkside got the phone call: it was over. Microsoft would no longer be moving forward with them on Phantom Dust. Darkside’s owners immediately told the staff that the project was cancelled and that they’d have to lay everyone off—they’d put everything into this game, and without it, they had no other options.
Two months later, the former employees of Darkside have mostly moved on, taking jobs at other Florida development companies like the enigmatic augmented reality outfit Phantom Dust failed, Darkside did too. Two months later, the former employees of Darkside have mostly moved on, taking jobs at other Florida development companies like the enigmatic augmented reality outfit Magic Leap. One anonymous employee told me in late February that some of them had started a new company, and a handful of others are still working with Darkside’s ownership as contractors. But whenPhantom Dustfailed, Darkside did too.
So will the Phantom Dust reboot still happen? Publicly, Microsoft is saying yes, but some people who worked on the game say they don’t believe it—after all, if Microsoft was willing to allocate more money to make the game they want, why wouldn’t they have just done it with Darkside? People who worked with Microsoft say the publisher’s creative team worked very hard to try to salvage the project, and one source said they’d be “shocked” if the publisher had alternate plans in the works.
Game studios Game studios shut down a lot. Sometimes it’s because they’re part of bigger companies that just don’t see their value anymore. Sometimes it’s because they’re a group of artists unable to recapture past glory. Sometimes it’s because things just don’t work out. For Darkside, a studio that helped make games you may have loved and came oh-so-close to finally striking out on its own, this ending stings the most.As Reddit trips over itself trying to contain its stolen nude photo problem, CEO Yishan Wong finally addressed the controversy on Saturday by releasing a remarkably clueless manifesto. Reddit, he wrote, is "not just a company running a website where one can post links and discuss them, but the government of a new type of community." So, then, what type of government is Reddit? It's the kind any reasonable person would want to overthrow.
Imagine you live in a nice little community. You have barbecues with the folks next door and discuss your mutual interests. You feel safe walking the streets at night. You trust the local police, who are selected from your neighbors. Everything is going well. Then, one day, someone breaks into your house and steals private photos from your safe. They're naked photos you took with your partner in a safe environment. The burglar crosses the tracks into the bad part of town and sells your photos to the highest bidder. There, a gang of men wearing masks print your photos out and post them all over town. You find out the identity of one of the men peddling your stolen photos, and tell your neighbors about him as a warning. He walks free, but because you unmasked him, you are sent to jail. The government does nothing to protect you, because the men sharing your photos are simply exercising their right to "free speech." When your neighbors appeal to the government to get you out of jail, making light of this injustice, they're rounded up in black vans and disappeared, with no explanation, never to be seen again.
Reddit's government is more interested in protecting "John" than the women he harassed
Reddit wants to be a techno-libertarian's wet dream, but in practice its a weak feudal system that's actually run by a small group of angry warlords who use "free speech" as a weapon. Reddit is mostly a nice place filled with nice people who run nice little communities, but there's virtually nothing keeping them safe from bullies like "John," a 33-year-old man who brazenly dispersed stolen private photos and then cried foul when Reddit wants to be a techno-libertarian's wet dream, but in practice its a weak feudal system that's actually run by a small group of angry warlords who use "free speech" as a weapon. Reddit isa nice place filled with nice people who run nice little communities, but there's virtually nothing keeping them safe from bullies like "John," a 33-year-old man who brazenly dispersed stolen private photos and then cried foul when The Washington Post published information about him. Reddit's government is more interested in protecting John than the women he harassed.
Wong wrote that "the role and responsibility of a government differs from that of a private corporation, in that it exercises restraint in the usage of its powers." Forgiving for a moment the fact that this statement is completely wrong, Reddit's justification for this special type of behavior is incoherent since it does exercise its powers to censor content and protect people, Wong wrote that "the role and responsibility of a government differs from that of a private corporation, in that it exercises restraint in the usage of its powers." Forgiving for a moment the fact that this statement is completely wrong, Reddit's justification for this special type of behavior is incoherent since itexercise its powers to censor content and protect people, unless they are victims
Try to reconcile the following statements from its CEO:
We deplore the theft of these images and do not condone their widespread distribution
We understand the harm that misusing our site does to the victims of this theft, and we deeply sympathize
But...
We are unlikely to make changes to our existing site content policies
We believe that you, the user, has the right to choose between right and wrong
Virtuous behavior is only virtuous if not arrived at by compulsion
So it's not Reddit's problem if you're being harassed on the internet because it's not the government's job to enforce morality. Only copyright:
In accordance with our legal obligations, we expeditiously removed content hosted on our servers as soon as we received DMCA requests from the lawful owners of that content
In other words, Reddit feels really bad that your stolen nude photos are being shared all over its website, but won't do anything about it unless you're privileged enough to understand the copyright system or able to afford a lawyer who does. And unlike (many) governments, Reddit has profit motives — it makes money when people share nude photos because men are pervs and there's a huge audience out there for naked women, perhaps especially for naked women who haven't given us consent to share their bodies. In a bizarre follow up post, Wong explained his use of gendered language, pointing out that "the perpetrators were almost certainly men, the people spreading and viewing the images were overwhelmingly men, and the people being victimized were exclusively women."
Reddit is the kind of government that gets 99.9% of the vote
It may be no surprise that Reddit finds itself here again — it's the kind of government that gets 99.9% of the vote and never learns from its mistakes. Last time the company found itself here it was dealing with negative press over a couple of seedy communities that were distributing "creepshots:" sexualized photos taken of women, often in awkward or compromising positions, without their knowledge. Reddit allowed this to go on for some time, but Gawker revealed the creepshot ring leader was a 49-year-old man named Michael Brutsch, because Reddit believes in free speech as long as it protects the unsavory men who keep exploitative content flowing. Even charities It may be no surprise that Reddit finds itself here again — it's the kind of government that gets 99.9% of the vote and never learns from its mistakes. Last time the company found itself here it was dealing with negative press over a couple of seedy communities that were distributing "creepshots:" sexualized photos taken of women, often in awkward or compromising positions, without their knowledge. Reddit allowed this to go on for some time, but only brought out the big guns whenrevealed the creepshot ring leader was a 49-year-old man named Michael Brutsch, because Reddit believes in free speech as long as it protects the unsavory men who keep exploitative content flowing. Even charities won't accept money from these men, but Reddit will.
According to According to a report from Recode, Reddit's free speech zone, where men run wild over women's privacy and dignity, may be worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $500 million.Play 04:33 Play 04:33 Agarkar: Bizarre timing for support staff changes
India's cricket bosses have reacted to the embarrassing Test series defeat to England by ringing in changes among the coaching staff, including appointing former captain Ravi Shastri as the director of cricket for the one-day series coming up. Duncan Fletcher remains the head coach but Shastri has been given the reins of the team.
Team captain MS Dhoni is safe, with officials saying he had the full backing of the board for the entire series.
Shastri's column on Tuesday: 'glam boys' and penance Ravi Shastri's column in the Times of India on Tuesday was full of strong stuff. He called India's showing in the Test series "wretched" and said it remained to be seen if the team was ready to do "penance". "Five sessions and not five days have been enough to nail them," he wrote. "But move on we must. Sit back and watch if these glam boys are ready for penance. If they are prepared to plunge their bare hands into the coal of fire and start from scratch. "England have made runs, but anyone would if the other side makes 100 or so."
Further clipping Fletcher's wings, his two assistants, fielding coach Trevor Penney and bowling coach Joe Dawes, have been "given a break" for the one-day series in England. In their place come former India allrounder Sanjay Bangar and former India fast bowler B Arun as assistant coaches. R Sridhar, the former Hyderabad left-arm spinner, will join the support team as the fielding coach for the one day series.
While the BCCI's official press release soft-pedalled the news, saying Shastri would "oversee and guide the Indian cricket team", board secretary Sanjay Patel was more emphatic while talking to ESPNcricinfo. "The team is with Ravi Shastri," he said. "Now it is his baby. He will handle everything."
This is not the first time the BCCI is turning to Shastri during a crisis - he was named the Indian team's cricket manager after an embarrassing first-round exit from the 2007 World Cup.
A BCCI release said: "In their continuing efforts to re-energise the support to the team, the BCCI has given a break to the bowling coach Mr Joe Dawes and the fielding coach, Mr Trevor Penny for the one day series and appointed Mr Sanjay Bangar, former Indian all rounder and former India fast bowler Mr Bharat Arun as the Asst. coaches of the team. Mr R.Sridhar will join the support team as the fielding coach for the one day series."
Dawes, a former Queensland fast bowler, has been India's bowling coach since the 2011-12 Test debacle in Australia, while Penney has been in charge of the fielding after India's victorious 2011 World Cup.
Bangar retired from first-class cricket in 2013 and has since coached India A, and been part of the support staff of various IPL franchises, with his reputation getting it biggest boost after he coached an unfancied Kings XI Punjab to their first IPL final earlier this year.
Sridhar, who began his coaching career in 2001, has been part of the National Cricket Academy in Bangalore and was the India Under-19's assistant coach during the World Cup in February in the UAE. He has also worked with Kings XI Punjab in IPL 2014 as the franchise's fielding coach.
Arun, a former Tamil Nadu fast bowler, has overseen India's two previous Under-19s campaigns, including Unmukt Chand's title-winning side in 2012. He was also among the senior coaching staff at the National Cricket Academy in Bangalore till he resigned last year.
The developments come a day after BCCI joint-secretary Anurag Thakur had suggested that a former India player should work with Fletcher to guide the team. He had also told PTI: "I would ideally like an Indian support staff to work in tandem with Fletcher, which might help him to prepare better for the future tour."
© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.Twin brothers, Jonathan and Jarrett Logan, are the owners of Castle Black Construction in Memphis, Tennessee. One of few Black-owned construction companies in the country, they launched their company back in 2005, and after re-branding themselves, they have tripled in size.This successful family-owned business has worked on many projects, and they have a database of over 100 subcontractors and it's still growing. They can manage any project from concept to end, and their construction includes retail, religious, medical, residential, and pre-engineered building construction.They are on track to record about $4.5 million in revenue this year.Castle Black Construction is licensed in Tennessee, Mississippi and Arkansas - and there are tons of development going on in all three states. So, the Logan brothers have decided to grow their business so that they can take on bigger contracts.They project that they will soon be the largest minority contractor in the city, and the only one able to make competitive bids on multi-million dollar projects. And their mission, as stated on their web site, is to "provide clients with the highest quality construction services within the marketplace, and to create customer relationships founded on mutual respect."During a recent interview with, Jarrett commented, "Being a minority contractor, let’s just be honest, we’re at a disadvantage... Financially, we have to be bankable to bankroll projects... And it’s harder for minority companies to prove ourselves with clients and financial institutions."For more information about the Logan brothers or their company, Castle Black Construction, visit www.castleblackinc.comNicolas Dorier the developer of NBitcoin and consultant to the Stratis project has announced the NTumbleBit project, a server and client implementation of the TumbleBit payment scheme in C#.
TumbleBit, is a new anonymous payment protocol that aims to solve two of the major challenges faced by Bitcoin, scaling Bitcoin to keep up with the increasing demand, and protecting the privacy of payments made via Bitcoin.
TumbleBit is implemented as a layer built on top of Bitcoin and is compatible without requiring changes to the existing Bitcoin protocol. TumbleBit payments are processed off the blockchain, this is how it helps Bitcoin scale. These off chain transactions are unlinkable, as volume increases we expect TumbleBit to offer a new level in anonymous payments. The TumbleBit payment scheme does not require the user to trust the TumbleBit server, at no time can the TumbleBit server link the users transactions or steal their bitcoin.
The TumbleBit whitepaper states,
“To deliver on this promise, anonymity must also be provided in the face of the anonymity-enhancing service itself—if the service knows exactly which payer is paying which payee, then a compromise of the service leads to a total loss of anonymity. Compromise of anonymity-enhancing technologies is not unknown. In 2016, for example, researchers found more than 100 Tor nodes snooping on their user.”
TumbleBits payments aim to address the Bitcoin scalability issue by processing all transactions off the bitcoin blockchain. By utilizing off chain transactions the service removes the 10-minute delay associated with waiting for traditional Bitcoin confirmation times. By utilizing the TumbleBit payment scheme all transactions will be completed in mere seconds.
NTumbleBit
In order for TumbleBit to function the Tumbler Hub has to put many bitcoins into escrow. If it cannot, some people will not be able to use it. Therefore the growing of TumbleBit is actually a direct Bitcoin buying pressure.
A quote from Nicolas Dorier:
“NTumbleBit will be a cross-platform framework, server and client for the TumblerBit payment scheme. TumbleBit is separated into two modes, tumbler mode and payment hub mode. The tumbler mode improves transaction fungibility and offers risk free unlinkable transactions. Payment hub mode is a way of making offchain payments possible without requiring implementations like Segwit or the lightning network.
I decided to work urgently on NTumbleBit, as I don’t see any exit to the situation we are in regarding Bitcoin scaling.
TumbleBit will be, I think, the first off chain payment system reaching mainstream”
NTumbleBit will be forked by Stratis development for the Stratis blockchain and will also be available on Stratis Private Chains. The NTumbleBit implemention on Private chains will be utilized to provide greater scalability for corporations that require higher transaction volumes. The Stratis parent chain will be utilized for the anonymity functionality available from NTumbleBit.
The Stratis project is exploring the possibility of offering a centralized NTumbleBit service for Bitcoin, but a service of this nature represents several legal hurdles. Its certainly on our roadmap and we will update the community accordingly.
Because NTumbleBit is developed in C# utilizing NBitcoin (the base framework that was utilized in our SDF) our in house team and also our community of developers will be able to implement and make changes to the NTumbleBit payment scheme. We expect to see some innovative use cases conceptualized for this technology.The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) bill has passed its first reading at Parliament by three votes.
Photo: MFAT
Trade Minister Todd McClay told Parliament the TPP would not prevent the government from making good decisions.
Mr McClay said the trade deal would maximise opportunities for exporters and create a stronger economy.
"TPP is our largest free trade agreement to date and places us centrally in a region encompassing nearly 40 percent of global GDP - TPP will deliver benefits to New Zealand and ultimately to all New Zealanders."
However, Labour MP David Clark said the government had taken a wilfully arrogant approach to the TPP which had destroyed the traditional bipartisan political approach to free trade in the country.
He said the government had failed to protect New Zealand's sovereignty.
The bill passed 62 votes to 59.
National, Act, United Future and Labour's Phil Goff voted in favour while the rest of the Labour Party, the Greens, New Zealand First and the Maori Party opposed the bill.Potion brewing chart (most efficient recipes, excludes splash potions).
Brewing is the process of creating potions, splash potions and lingering potions by adding various ingredients to water bottles in a brewing stand.
Brewing potions [ edit ]
Brewing recipe
By placing one or more bottles in the lower three slots of the brewing interface, an ingredient in the upper slot, and blaze powder in the fuel slot, you can distill the ingredient into each bottle and brew potions which may be consumed to grant an effect to the player.
Every potion starts with a water bottle, made by filling a glass bottle at a water source or filled cauldron. Using blaze powder, the next step is to add a base ingredient to create a base potion, usually nether wart to create an awkward potion. By brewing an effect ingredient into the awkward potion in the same manner, you can create a potion with a working effect. A modifier ingredient may be added to make the effect more intense or last longer, or change the effect entirely. Gunpowder can be added to a potion at any stage to convert it to a splash potion, which can be thrown (or fired using a dispenser to disperse its effect in a radius. Finally, dragon's breath can be added to a splash potion to convert it to a lingering potion, which can be used to emit clouds that can renew the effect (ex. Healing lingering potions will heal you more the longer you stand in the cloud). Each brewing step takes 20 seconds.
Each piece of blaze powder used provides fuel for brewing 20 batches of potions. Fuel is consumed when a brewing operation starts; it is not recovered if the operation is halted prematurely by removing the ingredient or potion bottles.
Brewing equipment [ edit ]
Ingredients [ edit ]
Base ingredients and modifiers [ edit ]
Base ingredients are ingredients which can be added directly to a water bottle, and are the starting point of all potions. Nether Wart is the most fundamental of the base ingredients, as it is required to make the vast majority of potions.
Modifiers are ingredients used to alter the properties of a potion, or to change a potion effect into a different one. The fermented spider eye is unique in that it is the only modifier which can be brewed directly into an effective potion.
Corrupting Effect: Fermented Spider Eyes will change a potion's base effect, often reversing it or producing a negative potion.
A corrupted potion usually does the opposite of the original potion.
Corrupting an enhanced or extended potion into an effect which supports the modifier will result in a potion with the same modifier applied.
Corrupting an extended potion of Poison will simply result in a basic potion of Harming. Enhanced potions of Leaping or Swiftness cannot be corrupted.
Potions of Invisibility are considered a "corrupted" version of the Potions of Night Vision. Instead of seeing at maximum brightness, you turn invisible.
Splash and Lingering potions: Any potion can be turned into a splash potion, and subsequently, a lingering potion.
Splash potions and lingering potions can be modified in exactly the same manner as their normal counterparts. For instance, a splash water bottle can be brewed with any of the base ingredients, though the result will remain a splash potion.
In Bedrock Edition, splash potions have only three-fourths of the duration of the drinkable form. In Java Edition, splash and drinkable forms have the same duration.
Lingering potions have only one-fourth of the duration of the drinkable form. For instance, a drinkable potion effect of 8:00 will be reduced to 2:00 as a lingering potion.
Effect ingredients [ edit ]
Effect ingredients imbue an awkward potion with a particular effect, but do not alter potion duration or intensity. When added directly to a water bottle, most of these ingredients will produce a mundane potion. The exceptions to this are golden carrot, pufferfish, turtle shell and phantom membrane, which cannot be added directly to a water bottle. You must add netherwart in order to work.
Elements [ edit ]
In the Education Edition, or Bedrock Edition with Education features enabled, certain elements can be used as ingredients to brew medicine which remove specific negative status effects.
Element Icon Effect Cured Bismuth Nausea Calcium Blindness Cobalt Weakness Silver Poison
Brewing recipes [ edit ]
Base potions [ edit ]
Base potions are potions without effects, brewed by adding a single base ingredient to a water bottle. Of these, only the awkward potion can be imbued with an effect ingredient to produce a potion effect.
Potion Reagent, Base Precursor to
Awkward Potion
Effect potions
Mundane Potion
None
Thick Potion
None
Effect potions [ edit ]
Effect potions are primarily created by adding an effect ingredient to an awkward potion, however, certain effects require a potion to be corrupted by a fermented spider eye. The potion of weakness can additionally be created by simply adding a fermented spider eye to a water bottle.
Positive effects [ edit ]
Negative effects [ edit ]
Mixed effects [ edit ]
Potion Reagent, Base Extended Enhanced Effects
Potion of the Turtle Master
( 0:20)
Potion of the Turtle Master
( 0:40)
Potion of the Turtle Master
( 0:20) Slowness IV, Resistance III
Slows the player to 40% speed, incoming damage reduced to 40%. Enhanced:
Slowness VI, Resistance IV
Slows the player to 10% speed, incoming damage reduced to 20%.
Cures [ edit ]
Cures are brewed from Awkward Potions using different elements[Bedrock, and Education editions only]. These drinks will remove the specified effect when drunk, and cannot be modified into splash, lingering, extended or enhanced versions.
Potion Reagent, Base Effect
Antidote
Cures Poison
Elixir
Cures Weakness
Eye Drops
Cures Blindness
Tonic
Cures Nausea
Unbrewable potions [ edit ]
The Potion of Luck[Java, and Legacy Console editions only] and the Potion of Decay[Bedrock Edition only] cannot be brewed, and can only be obtained by commands such as /give @p minecraft:potion 1 0 {Potion:luck}, or through the creative inventory. A Potion of Slowness V is also available in the creative menu in Java Edition. You can get potions of decay in survival mode from the Cauldron in a Witch Hut.
Video [ edit ]
History [ edit ]
Potions brewing in cauldrons (1.9 pre2).
Potion type history [ edit ]
[needs testing]
Based on information found in minecraft.jar/lang/en_US.lang, the current potion types are listed below:
Potion of Swiftness
Potion of Slowness
Potion of Strength
Potion of Weakness
Potion of Healing
Potion of Harming
Potion of Regeneration
Potion of Fire Resistance
Potion of Water Breathing
Potion of Poison
Potion of Night Vision
Potion of Invisibility
Potion of Leaping
Potion of the Turtle Master
Potion of Slow Falling
Due to changes in the brewing system, the following potions are currently not accessible:
Potion of Haste
Potion of Dullness
Potion of Nausea
Potion of Blindness
Potion of Hunger
Potion of Decay
Potion of Resistance
Some potions also do not have a real name in minecraft (i.e. Potion of potion.healthBoost.postFix) and are currently not accessible
Potion of potion.healthBoost.postFix
Potion of potion.absorption.postFix
Potion of potion.saturation.postFix
Trivia [ edit ]
Splash potion brewed using gunpowder.
As long as at least one of the three bottom spaces is filled, the brewing will continue, and additional bottles of water or potion can be added. However, if the ingredient is removed, or the bottom 3 slots are emptied at any time during the process, the process will stop and nothing will have been brewed.
The three potions do not necessarily have to be the same.
Upgrading the effect of a potion that has no time parameter (i.e. Instant Health, Harming) with glowstone dust has no downsides.
Upgrading the time of a potion that has no level II effect (i.e. Fire Resistance, Slowness, Weakness) with redstone has no downsides.
Although Jeb said that in the 1.9 pre-release 3 there were 161 possible different potion combinations with 2,653 in the future, in the actual third pre-release only 22 different potions could be made without the use of external programs. Of those, 19 potions had one of 8 different effects.
There are many Potions that were left behind from 1.9 pre-releases that fill up different metadatas that otherwise cannot be brewed or obtained without a multiplayer server command or inventory editor. These potions include but are not |
recipe playlists, articles by rock journalists, and some pretty interesting interviews with chefs. (Emily Savage)
CARY GRANT: DARK ANGEL
By Geoffrey Wansell
Arcade Publishing
192 pp., hardcover, $24.95
Back in print (it was originally released in 1996), this paen to the dapper star of North By Northwest (1959), An Affair to Remember (1957), Notorious (1946), His Girl Friday (1940), and approximately 10 zillion other classic films is somewhere between a biography and a coffee-table book. It’s worth picking up for the lavish black-and-white photos alone, illustrating the span of Cary Grant’s career with film stills, behind-the-scenes shots, and the occasional almost-candid image (did he ever take a bad picture)? The accompanying text is straightforward, but — as its title suggests — doesn’t shy away from Grant’s well-documented countercultural experiments. (“Grant became so enthusiastic about the value of LSD that he extolled its virtues during the shooting of his next picture.”) Nor does it gloss over Grant’s vices (he smoked 30 to 40 cigarettes a day) and sometimes troubled personal life (he was married five times). But the book’s chief focus is Grant’s brilliant career. As Stanley Donen, who directed him three times, remarks to author Geoffrey Wansell, “He’s thought of as a man who achieved a certain elegance and savoir faire. But in truth he was a fantastic actor.” (Cheryl Eddy)
NATURAL HISTORY OF SAN FRANCISCO BAY
By Ariel Rubissow Okamoto and Kathleen M. Wong
University of California Press
352 pp., paperback, $24.95
Drag queens, beat poets, burlesque dancers, hyphy rappers, dot com techies — the human species of the Bay Area have been well-documented, but information on the non-human dwellers of the bay itself has been left to scattered guidebooks, obscure blogs, and academic sources. Authors Rubissow Okamoto and Wong have collected a wealth of biological and environmental information in their book, published this November. The cross-country saga of the striped bass, the hidden beauty of eelgrass, the varied contentions of the California water wars are presented in highly readable, easily digestible sections. The emphasis here is on environmental impact and recent conservation developments — I did not know that it’s officially dangerous to eat more than one pound a month of fish from the bay! — and the history of decades of restoration triumphs and setbacks is related sleekly and straightforwardly. Absorbing all the information in this illuminating primer helped me appreciate the seething loveliness and churning forces that make up the place I call home. (Marke B.)Donald Trump Donald John TrumpHouse committee believes it has evidence Trump requested putting ally in charge of Cohen probe: report Vietnamese airline takes steps to open flights to US on sidelines of Trump-Kim summit Manafort's attorneys say he should get less than 10 years in prison MORE in an interview that aired Thursday defended the insults he's made on Twitter throughout his presidential campaign.
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"It's OK, most of them deserved it," Trump said on ABC's "Good Morning America."
"I believe in fighting back when people are against me, when they tell lies, you know, I have the power of this instrument and, frankly, sometimes I'll use that. And I agree sometimes it will revert back or sometimes maybe it doesn't come out — you have to be careful with it."
The GOP nominee often uses Twitter to take shots at his political rivals or those who have offended him.
The New York Times earlier this week published a two-page list of all of the insults the GOP nominee has made on Twitter. The list included all the "people, places and things Donald Trump has insulted on Twitter since declaring his candidacy for president," according to the Times.
During "Good Morning America," Melania Trump said she would focus on social media as first lady.
"What's going on is very hurtful to children, to some adults as well," Melania Trump said.
"We need to teach [children] how to use it, what is right to say, what is not right to say, because it is very bad out there, and children get hurt."
The GOP nominee agreed that so many people are "hurt" by social media.
"She feels very strongly about. She understands it very well," Donald Trump said.Apple's iPad is three years old today, providing a good opportunity to look back in hindsight on one of the most successful technology products to ever debut, and also one of the more poorly received by industry critics.
Flawgic ad absurdum
As noted by Asymco blogger Horace Dediu, a history of incessant iPad naysaying has been chronicled by Terry Gregory's iPad Death Watch The list starts with critical comments by Microsoft's Steve Ballmer and Google's Eric Schmidt ("You might want to tell me the difference between a large phone and a tablet" he said in January 2010).Their predictable negativity about Apple's then new iPad was joined by columnists of all stripes, who compiled lists like the one by About.com titled "5 Reasons Why Apple's iPad Tablet Will Fail."Dan Lyons wrote at its launch, "The press werent cheering and whooping. I didnt see anybody pee their pants. Not one! [ ] I wanted to see more. Its a big iPod. What is there to do there? Play a video game on a bigger screen? I thought it was paving the cow path. I really thought it was underwhelming."Lyons was essentially right about one thing: the entire tech media at the iPad's unveiling simply didn't get it. As an attendee to the event, AppleInsider couldn't find one journalist there who found the new device promising.Hours after the iPad's unveiling, the phrase "iPad a disappointment" became a "spicy" trending topic as ranked by Google.One of the most vocal critics of the iPad was, unsurprisingly, Windows Enthusiast Paul Thurrott. After initially stating at its launch, "It seems like a high priced, unnecessary trinket to me," his tone turned a bit more hostile a few months later when he wrote, "Anyone who believes this thing is a game changer is a tool."The next month his tune changed to, "flaws and all, the iPad is indeed in a class all by itself. Its a new kind of computing device."At the launch of iPad 2, Thurrott stated, "In reality, Apple sold tens of millions of iPads last year and is on track to sell tens of millions more next year. In reality, people are buying iPads. In reality, theyre not buying Windows 7-based tablets. And in reality, they never will. Furthermore, businesses are buying iPads, too, and piloting them in ever faster numbers."Like many other columnists in the tech industry, Thurrott quickly changed from a defensive doubter of the entire idea of the iPad to begrudging accepting its success, followed by a quick assumption that the rest of the industry could immediately duplicate Apple's work and take its market share.Two years ago, in April 2011, he wrote, "Although the expected iPad competition never really heated up last year, 2011 is going to be a different story, with a slate (ahem) full of Android-based tablets, the HP TouchPad, the Research in Motion (RIM) PlayBook, and others."One year later, all of those experiments had flopped. Thurrott was much more impressed with Microsoft's own new Surface in 2012, which has since collapsed in failure
The iPad Death Watch provides three years of caustic, bitter criticism that Apple must find a bit delicious today, having sold more than 100 million since it went on sale in early 2010.The predictions and criticisms reflect those captured in the parallel iPhone Death Watch, which offers an equally entertaining look at the lack of imagination and foresight of Apple's fiercest critics.We have been playing our asses off the last few months, and a lot of that playing time went into playing 2 player co-op games on the Sega MD/Genesis for the purpose of making this list. We have played a bunch of Sega MD in the past but never really delved into the co-op library, so after a lot of research and playing, we are finally ready to present you with what we think are the top 10 co-op experiences for the system.
To meet the criteria the game has to have simultaneous multi-player where the 2 or more players are teammates. Games like Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat are not eligible, and same with games like the Sonic games where even though one player can play Tails, that player isn’t really contributing enough since the game always follows Sonic and Tails cannot die.
This list is also just our opinion, so don’t freak out too much if you disagree with it 🙂
Let’s Go!!!
10. Zombies Ate My Neighbors/Zombies!
Zombies Ate My Neighbors is a fun shooting game where you and your pal have to got through a buttload of stages and rescue all your neighbours from a zombie apocalypse to advance. You run around searching and have to be careful of enemies of multiple variety (zombies mainly). You get power ups, better weapons and health packs that are all essential for survival in the game. This game barely missed the SNES top 10 co-op list but barely makes it this time on the Mega Drive/Genesis list because maybe the SNES is the slightly better system for co-op play….maybe….
Still, Zombies Ate My Neighbors is a fun, long, challenging game that is definitely worth your time.
9. NBA Jam
RAZZLE DAZZLE!!!! NBA Jam is a game that is always fun to pick up, basketball fan or not, but being a basketball fan surely makes it more important to me. It has a simple, fun gameplay and an option of versus or co-op mode that you can always pick up and play even if you are short on time. The cartoony, over the top style of this game is what makes it so accessible to everyone. It is just a 2-on-2 basketball game but with insane 5 meter high dunks, high field goal percentages and almost no rules so it’s a game not just for sports fans.
I have to admit I love seeing the old superstars from 1995, it makes the game more fun for me to be honest but I play this game plenty with non-basketball fans and they also have a lot of fun. The simple, carefree gameplay is what makes this game great and puts it at number 9. I have to mention the announcers who help to solidify its fun, cartoony identity with great phrases like “Razzle Dazzle!”, “Boomshackalacka!” and more. Overall fun game.
It is available on the SNES and Sega Mega Drive and more. All versions are worth checking out
8. Toejam and Earl: Panic in Funkotron
Toejam and Earl made their second appearance on the Mega Drive and totally reinvented the play style from the original. In the first game they crashed on Earth and had to assemble their ship to be able to get to their home planet Funkotron but it seems that some annoying earthlings became stowaways on their ship because Funkotron is now infested with pesky humans!
Everyone not being so happy about that, it is up to Toejam and Earl to gather them and send them back to Earth in a side-scrolling, platforming environment where you jump, throw projectiles and explore Funkotron for pesky humans. A very fun and funky co-op experience that shows a funny misanthropic view towards humans and Earth. (More about the series below)
7. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Hyperstone Heist
The Hyperstone Heist is the Sega MD/Genesis’ version of Turtles in Time, and while Turtles in Time is probably the better game, The Hyperstone Heist is still a fun beat’em up in its own right. The only thing we thought The Hyperstone Heist did better than Turtles in Time was the controls since they make use of the 3rd button instead of going with the 2 button arcade control scheme. If you like the other Turtles beat’em ups or just need more co-op beat’ em ups in your life then The Hyperstone Heist is a solid choice.
6. Blades of Vengeance
A hidden gem somewhat, Blades of Vengeance offers a great co-op action platforming experience in an interesting fantasy setting similar to Cadash (but with no rpg elements). Here you pick your character, battle beasts, jump over lava and avoid traps in a game that truly tests your skill and patience. You collect silver to buy health potions and other items like equipment with visual upgrades. You meet with gruesome bosses and have a big incentive to explore because the game is packed with secrets which is awesome. It controls well in general, has ranged and melee attacks based on your character and all characters have a block that you must master to be able to finish the game.
Overall a great game but WARNING! This game is really challenging! Wether that is good or bad depends on what kind of player you are.
5.Contra: Hard Corps
Yet another Contra game. It should be noted that we played the Japanese version of the game which features more hit points and unlimited continues. The American version of Hard Corps is probably the most difficult Contra game ever made, which is saying a lot. The Japanese version has more fair and fun gameplay, but if you end up really really loving the game you might want to take on the insane challenge of the American version. All that stuff aside, Contra: Hard Corps is awesome. Great bosses, an insanely cool new wolfman character, multiple endings and a split level path which makes for a great replay value. This game is not necessarily the lesser game when compared with Alien Wars on the SNES. A solid Contra game that is easy to recommend.
4. Golden Axe
Golden Axe for the Mega Drive/Genesis was a godsend when it was finally ported from the arcades to the comfort of your own home in 1989. An early pioneer of the beat’ em up genre, Golden Axe has indeed aged graphically but its gameplay is still plenty solid. It provided a fun challenge and a great experience with great music and cool Conan-esque setting. You may think Golden Axe is dated, you may think it does not deserve the 4th place spot but it is the honest truth that we loved playing the game to the level of giving it the 4th spot.
3. Gunstar Heroes
Apparently made by former developers from Konami that were tired of making Contra sequels, Gunstar Heroes is sarcastically a Contra clone with a cartoony spin. Yes, Gunstar Heroes is an action packed run and gun game with dynamic bosses and a mix and match weapon system where you can have 2 types of guns at one time and mix them together for different type of shooting bad guys. The setting is charming and the gameplay is fluid and solid. Great game with a unique atmosphere. Highly recommended!
2. Toejam and Earl
Toejam and Earl is a funky little game that involves two aliens searching for their crashed ship and its many scattered parts on earth. The game is famous for its funk soundtrack and easy going vibe. There is no fighting in this game, these two chill dudes just want to get home but earthlings prove to be annoying hazards that need to be avoided while you explore the stages. Toejam & Earl is a welcome change in a co-op environment dominated by beat’em ups and run and gun games. I guess you can call the game a dungeon crawler, where you can find fun items that help you distract and/or avoid the annoying earthlings. You might want to research the game yourself further to understand fully what the game is about, but strangely enough Toejam and Earl is fun enough to take the 2nd spot.
1.Streets of Rage 2
Streets of Rage 2 takes the top spot because of its great gameplay, great original setting and original music. This series became the new standard for the beat’ em up genre and the second title stands out of the three as the best one. For a Sega Mega game, Streets of Rage II looks outstanding. The Swayze/Kurt Russell-ish theme of the game is a nice classic touch which is coupled with a tight variety in gameplay that equals or surpasses the best beat’ em ups games of the era.
A really great game, so if you like it check out the other titles in the series. They might have made the list too but I don’t want a series to hog up spots on the list unless the gameplay is fundamentally different like with the Toejam and Earl games.
Thats it!!!
Probably some of your favorites are missing. We also played games like Batman and Robin: The Animated Series, Power Rangers: The Movie, World of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, Sunset Riders and many more but they just didn’t make the cut. Sad about Sunset Riders but we just like the SNES version a lot better.
Anyway let us know what you think! Comment and do not forget to like us on Facebook
Thanks for reading 😀An artist's impression of the University of Canterbury's river area to be created by 2023.
Long-term redevelopment plans for the University of Canterbury will create a "little city inside a larger city".
The university's campus master plan, released on Monday, outlines a 30-year plan to create an "inspirational" environment for students and help the institution keep pace with global trends in tertiary education.
Fifty building and landscape projects are proposed over three stages of development by 2045, the total cost of which could exceed $2 billion.
SUPPLIED An artist's impression of the University of Canterbury's new campus entrance.
The Government has already committed $260m to on-campus building, but the University of Canterbury (UC) would fund the remainder itself.
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* New University of Canterbury student president to oversee $25 million rebuild
* Canterbury universities begin bounce back after earthquakes
* University makes $550m quake settlement
Vice-chancellor Dr Rod Carr said the master plan was "tangible proof" the university was moving beyond the displacement and falling enrolments that shaped its post-earthquake experience.
SUPPLIED An artist's impression of University Street in about six years' time.
"It's the university being able to look forward and consider the future rather than looking back to fix up the broken things of the past."
An earlier master plan was revised after buildings damaged in the 2011 Canterbury earthquakes proved too costly to repair.
This version – the result of years of research, analysis and stakeholder consultation – took a staged approach to development, aiming to complete its first set of works by the university's 150th jubilee in 2023.
SUPPLIED A map of planned changes to the University of Canterbury campuses by 2045.
A central hub, hall and students' association building, among other projects, would be built at a cost of $1.2b.
Student bar The Foundry would relocate to Ilam fields, while Dovedale and Kirkwood fields – home to temporary buildings used by the university – would be repurposed as an early childhood centre and sports field respectively.
Post-jubilee plans included a new recreation centre, redeveloped river and plaza areas, and student accommodation on Montana Drive.
Projects after 2045 were less certain and considered "a bigger picture visionary thing that we don't have to slavishly stick to", Carr said. A performing arts centre on Clyde Rd and student dwellings in the former Dovedale campus have been proposed though.
Three capital projects worth $400m were already due for completion this year, including a refurbished engineering precinct opening next month, the new Regional Science and Innovation Centre mid-year, and the commerce building would be renovated to house the College of Education by 2018.
Significantly, courses under the College of Education, Health and Human Development would be delivered on UC's Ilam campus by year's end, providing better opportunities to integrate with other faculties, Carr said.
He said the university's buildings had to accommodate a resurgence in international enrolments post-quake while reflecting long-term trends in tertiary education.
"More and more these students are going to have online learning so the environment will be more flexible and support smaller group peer-to-peer learning, rather than monolithic lecture theatres."
It was also important to preserve and enhance the "unique" residential character of the Ilam campus, he said.
UC learning resources executive director Alex Hanlon said consultation showed people wanted a "connected campus, one that encouraged interaction and inspiration around a strong and vibrant central hub".
"From student events to high-end research facilities, UC is a little city inside a larger city.
"We started with the physical estate but then it was very much about how our spaces enable all the fantastic work our university community does."
Students' association president James Addington said efforts to create student-centric spaces were exciting – particularly plans for a recreation centre.
"What they are trying to create is exactly in line with what we want, this home away from home.
"It's a real community campus and it's quite unique."News reports have been covering a fascinating study on the moral reasoning of ‘terrorists’ published in Nature Human Behaviour but it’s worth being aware of the wider context to understand what it means.
Firstly, it’s important to highlight how impressive this study is. The researchers, led by Sandra Baez, managed to complete the remarkably difficult task of getting access to, and recruiting, 66 jailed paramilitary fighters from the Colombian armed conflict to participate in the study.
They compared this group to 66 matched ‘civilians’ with no criminal background and 13 jailed murderers with no paramilitary connections, on a moral reasoning task.
The task involved 24 scenarios that varied in two important ways: harm and no harm, and intended and unintended actions. Meaning the researchers could compare across four situations – no harm, accidental harm, unsuccessfully attempted harm, and successfully attempted harm.
A consistent finding was that paramilitary participants consistently judged accidental harm as less acceptable than other groups, and intentional harm as more acceptable than others groups, indicating a distortion in moral reasoning.
They also measured cognitive function, emotion recognition and aggressive tendencies and found that when these measures were included in the analysis, they couldn’t account for the results.
One slightly curious thing in the paper though, and something the media has run with, is that the authors describe the background of the paramilitary participants and then discuss the implications for understanding ‘terrorists’ throughout.
But some context on the Colombian armed conflict is needed here.
The participants were right-wing paramilitaries who took part in the demobilisation agreement of 2003. This makes them members of the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia or AUC – a now defunct organisation who were initially formed by drug traffickers and land owners to combat the extortion and kidnapping of the left-wing Marxist paramilitary organisations – mostly notably the FARC.
The organisation was paramilitary in the traditional sense – with uniforms, a command structure, local and regional divisions, national commanders, and written statutes. It involved itself in drug trafficking, extortion, torture, massacres, targeted killings, and ‘social cleansing’ of civilians assumed to be undesirable (homeless people, people with HIV, drug users etc) and killings of people thought to support left-wing causes. Fighters were paid and most signed up for economic reasons.
It was indeed designated a terrorist organisation by the US and EU, although within Colombia they enjoyed significant support from mainstream politicians (the reverberations of which are still being felt) and there is widespread evidence of collusion with the Colombian security forces of the time.
Also, considering that a great deal of military and paramilitary training is about re-aligning moral judgements, it’s not clear how well you can generalise these results to terrorists in general.
It is probably unlikely that the moral reasoning of people who participated in this study is akin to, for example, the jihadi terrorists who have mounted semi-regular attacks in Europe over the last few years. Or alternatively, it is not clear how ‘acceptable harm’ moral reasoning applies across different contexts in different groups.
Even within Colombia you can see how the terrorist label is not a reliable classification of a particular group’s actions and culture. Los Urabeños are the biggest drug trafficking organisation in Colombia at the moment. They are essentially the Centauros Bloc of the AUC, who didn’t demobilise and just changed their name. They are involved in very similar activities.
Importantly, they are not classified as a terrorist organisation, despite being virtually same organisation from which members were recruited into this study.
I would guess these results are probably more directly relevant in understanding paramilitary criminal organisations, like the Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico, than more ideologically-oriented groups that claim political or religious motivations, although it would be fascinating if they did generalise.
So what this study provides is a massively useful step forward in understanding moral reasoning in this particular paramilitary group, and the extent to which this applies to other terrorist, paramilitary or criminal groups is an open question.
Link to open access study in Nature Human Behaviour.On Tuesday, I wondered aloud who was ready to make some money if medical marijuana becomes legal in Florida after November's vote. There was only one corporation with "marijuana" in its name listed in the state so far.
Since, then I heard from a few others who said they're waiting to see what happens with the vote or that they are purposely registering under names that don't have "marijuana" in the title because in other states that have legalized weed, it's been hard for pot businesses to get bank accounts. (While "drowning in cash" sounds like a great problem to have, there are crazy security concerns.) Don't worry, though -- pot entrepreneurs are out there salivating.
One man, Jeremy Bufford, proprietor of Medical Marijuana Tampa, has already pounced. He is preparing to open a chain of 15 dispensaries with a quality-control lab and next week will launch his school for medical marijuana workers and entrepreneurs. He has already hired five people and expects to hire 350 more, plus trigger a mini-real estate boom assuming the initiative passes and he signs leases on the properties he's already scoped out. His website is already advertising for 15 positions from "lead botanist" to "delivery driver" to "executive chef" to "professor of cannabis."
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I spoke to Bufford at length about his preparations and predictions for the medical marijuana industry in Florida:
See also: Florida Supreme Court Approves Medical Marijuana Initiative
New Times: I was surprised that there was only one corporation with the word "marijuana" in the name registered in Florida so far. Jeremy Bufford: I'm equally surprised that there hasn't been more announcement, that there has not been any other company that is standing up and saying they're going to have competitive offerings in the medical marijuana space.
There's one company in Tampa -- they're in the neutraceutical space -- moving to produce some sort of pill or product that is derived from cannabinoids. They're going more towards the medicinal pharmacology route. We plan on opening the actual treatment centers -- we have 15 in Tampa Bay area from Bradenton to Lakeland to New Port Richey. We will also have a lab testing facility -- for quality control of the product -- in early 2015. We're already in operation with our classroom environment -- to educate caregivers, and the general public. Our first class is next Tuesday. It will cover the historical, legal, botanical aspects of medicinal marijuana, plus what's going to happen in the marketplace in Florida in 2015 based on our analysis of the ballot language. We can make educated guesses and prepare our students for careers or opportunity that's going to develop in that space.
Are you going to franchise? That's a really good question. We feel comfortable with the opportunities in the Tampa Bay area, but we do have development partners [in other regions of the state] who are consulting with us on how they can roll this out.
Are you worried about chains from Colorado or California coming in and dominating the market? You don't see that type of market consolidation -- some businesses have multiple locations in California and Colorado, but the landscape is dominated by the mom-and-pop model... Though I do anticipate that development in the future.
Like Home Depot wiping out small hardware stores... Yeah, one day Marijuana Depot will own it all! [Differing state laws make it difficult for one national corporation to dominate in the U.S., but] look up Tweed in Canada -- they have aspirations to go with the Costco model -- they bought a former Hershey chocolate manufacturing facility.
Have you already signed leases and will you be ready to go the day after this passes, or are you holding back and waiting to see how the vote goes? We are absolutely all in... [The classroom is ready and we've identified locations for dispensaries but] won't execute leases until November/December. [The ballot initiative specifies that the state Department of Health has six months to set up the regulatory framework.]
Did you do a lot of research? I personally have traveled extensively through Colorado, California, Massachusetts, and D.C. talking to people in both the legitimate and black markets about best practices. Twenty states have some degree of medicalization or legalization.
Tell me about these classes you offer. We advertised, and within 24 hours, the February slots sold out -- we're taking preregistration for March. The syllabus is on our website. Classes start every four weeks -- they're an intensive deep dive. You meet two times per week for four weeks -- 16 hours of instruction. You come in the classroom, led by the professors of cannabis, and there's outside work in grow spaces to learn to grow your own crops. Of course, we're very, very sensitive that's it's not a legal environment [for growing marijuana], so we have peppers and tomatoes, so people can get comfortable using hydroponic and aeroponic systems. We're preparing for medical-grade product -- it's far more difficult than putting a seed in the ground.
How much is the class? $499.
Where is all this medical weed going to come from? Won't it take a while for crops to grow after legalization? Is there enough to import from Colorado at first? We won't be able to buy from other states -- that would fall under interstate commerce, which is regulated by the federal government. We're relying on our growers, and each of our retail shops will be able to cultivate.
So you're saying that there are people in the shadows already growing weed who will be ready to sell on Day One? Anecdotally, pot is being grown everywhere around the world. We won't be working with the black-market growers. Everything we want to do is professional and transparent. I feel very strongly that product will be available. [Growers will do what they need to do to meet the law], patients will follow steps to becoming registered, caregivers will have to go through that step of licensing concerns -- [and part of what my company does is] prepare people [for all of this].
What about concerns that medical marijuana will be abused? Are there standards developed in other states that Florida is likely to follow? [This was addressed in] the controversy the Supreme Court just settled. One of the major oppositions to the ballot language was that it was very lenient -- doctors can prescribe it for patients with debilitating conditions for whom the benefits outweigh the risks. Certainly, this covers a lot of different people -- elderly, people in palliative care conditions. [There are different standards in different states and] a lot of gray area. A lot of this is being written as we go.
Can I get some for my insomnia? That's not up to me. You'll have to talk to a physician. A doctor can prescribe anything -- he has morphine to give you, if that is [appropriate], in the doctor's opinion.
Did you smoke a lot of pot to prepare for this? Is there a "best" strain? I'm not a smoker -- this is purely an entrepreneurial play for me. It's professional -- there's not going to be a Willie Nelson vibe, no Bob Marley posters on the wall.
How much will medical marijuana cost? [There are a lot of variables with] pricing in medical care. The insurance system is a big one. Prices in other states tend to be slightly above black-market rates -- but this is the highest-quality product. If you purchase on the black market, you have to consider, has the grower used pesticides, what percent of this is beneficial compounds? We bring that type of testing or quality assurance -- at a premium but [worth it].
Can you give me a ballpark dollar amount? Low quality costs about $250 an ounce, high quality about $400 an ounce; that's approximately what you see on the street. Part of what drives up the cost on the black market is [sellers factoring in associated risks of doing business]. We'll do everything in a well-regulated and brightly lit environment.
Do you feel bad for all the pot dealers who might get put out of business? No. That's one of the best things, is if we can bring this product out of the dark and into the light, it will impact the money the cartels are making, that's funding their operations. I will feel very good about myself knowing that I'm helping to eliminate that element.
What's your background? How did you come to the medicinal marijuana business? My story reads like the John Morgan story you hear on the radio. My father went through a serious abdominal surgery to repair a hernia -- it was beset with a series of problems. I've seen personally how it relieved pain, improved his quality of life, improved his appetite.
Then I started traveling and learning. I come from an IT background. What I bring to table is the ability to solve some of these problems and come up with some interesting tech solutions. [On our site, you will be able to] log in as a patient, see our online dispensaries, look at ratings and feedback from other patients... It will be the Yelp of pot --- the best growers will rise to the top. We also have a seed-to-sale tracking method; the product is accounted for at all times.
Do you have investors? Is John Morgan providing all your capital? Haha -- hey, can you send him a message for me? No, we have four or five investors. Most of the seed funding has come from me. [There is a link on the website for investors, who must meet SEC qualifications for accredited investors.]
Do you have advice for people looking to capitalize and move into this sector? Honestly, my best advice is to take the class. You and I have been talking for a while and just scratched the surface... Spend the time, read the curricula... This is a next-generation industry for those wanting to have the skills to operate in it. There's opportunity there for anyone who wants to give [the time to learn].
Do you accept bitcoin? We certainly do. We accept bitcoin for payment for the classes and as investor capital. We will also accept bitcoin for our medicine when it becomes available.
Can I interview your Professor of Cannabis? [Carlos Hermidas bio says he "is a distinguished alumni of Oaksterdam University [a "cannabis college": in Califonia] (Cert.), Nova Southeastern (MBA) and USF (BA: Business Mgmt, Religious Studies, Philosophy) and was recruited to Tampa to join the Medical Marijuana Team as the first Professor of Cannabis in Florida."]
I'm sure Professor Hermida would be happy to speak with you, but I might recommend waiting until after the first day of class next Tuesday as he is in a mad scramble right now preparing for our students. I'll pass your info along.
Send story tips to [email protected] musician, member of the Beach Boys
For other people named Dennis Wilson, see Dennis Wilson (disambiguation)
Dennis Carl Wilson (December 4, 1944 – December 28, 1983) was an American musician, singer, and songwriter who co-founded the Beach Boys. He is best remembered as their drummer and as the middle brother of bandmates Brian and Carl Wilson. Dennis was the only true surfer in the Beach Boys, and his personal life exemplified the "California Myth" that the band's early songs often celebrated. He was also known for his brief association with Charles Manson, a songwriter and cult leader who was later convicted of several murders.
Wilson served mainly on drums and backing vocals for the Beach Boys, and contrary to popular belief, his playing can be heard on many of the group's hits.[1] He originally had few lead vocals on the band's songs, but starting with their 1968 album Friends, his prominence as a singer-songwriter increased. Unlike Brian's music, Dennis' is characterized for reflecting his "edginess" and "little of his happy charm".[2] His original songs for the group included "Little Bird" (1968), "Forever" (1970), and "Slip On Through" (1970). Friends and biographers also credit Wilson as a ghost co-writer on "You Are So Beautiful", a hit for Joe Cocker in 1974.
During his final years, Wilson struggled with substance addictions that contributed to tensions with his bandmates. His only solo album, Pacific Ocean Blue (1977), was released to warm reviews, but moderate sales. One writer retrospectively described it as "Kurt Cobain produced by Phil Spector."[3] Sessions for a follow-up, Bambu, disintegrated before his death. In 1988, Wilson was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Beach Boys. He died from drowning at the age of 39 in 1983.[4]
Early years [ edit ]
Wilson was born in Inglewood, California, the son of Audree Neva (née Korthof) and Murry Gage Wilson. He spent his family years with his brothers and parents in Hawthorne, California.[5] Dennis' role in the family dynamic, which he himself acknowledged, was that of the black sheep. Out of the three Wilson brothers, he was the most likely to get beaten by their strong-willed father Murry. Possessed with an abundance of physical energy and a combative nature, Dennis often refused to participate in family singalongs, and likewise avoided vocalizing on the early recordings that Brian made on a portable tape recorder. However, Dennis would sing with his brothers late at night in their shared bedroom, a song Brian later recalled as "our special one we'd sing," titled "Come Down, Come Down from the Ivory Tower." Brian noted of the late night brotherly three-part harmonies: "We developed a little blend which aided us when we started to get into the Beach Boys stuff."
1961–1968: Career beginnings [ edit ]
Dennis performing on drums, 1964
Dennis' mother, Audree, forced Brian to include Dennis in the original lineup of the Beach Boys. Urged by older cousin Mike Love, Dennis had approached Brian to form a group and compose a song about surfing. The Beach Boys formed in August 1961, with Mur |
to this popular legislation was starting to make them look like monsters, so they didn’t have much of a choice.
Since VAWA expired, House Republicans have been resisting the version of the bill that passed the Senate with a vote of 78-22. They objected mainly to expanded protections for LGBT victims, immigrants, and Native Americans. The last group became a particular sticking point, with House Majority Leader Eric Cantor taking the lead in objecting to a provision that would allow tribal authorities jurisdiction in some cases where non-Native Americans rape or assault a Native American on tribal lands. House Republicans offered an alternative bill that didn’t have these expanded protections, which was voted down this morning before the more expansive Senate version passed.
While Republicans argued that they were only opposed to the expansions, but not to the core of the bill, holding up its passage just fed into the narrative that the party is increasingly anti-woman—a narrative that hurt Republicans in the November election. (Not that it’s really slowed down the flux of Republican-penned bills nationwide that restrict reproductive rights and threaten women who want abortions with the transvaginal probe.)
Of course, Republicans have only themselves to blame if people believe that ending VAWA is more of the same sexist malarkey. For one thing, all the Republicans who voted against VAWA in the Senate were men—all the female Republican senators voted for it. Then you have the nine Republican congressmen who declared that there was no version of VAWA they would support. Rep. Tom McClintock of California justified his resistance in 2012 by calling VAWA “a feel-good measure” and objecting to how the bill supposedly hamstrings “judges who are attempting to resolve and reconcile highly volatile relationships.” It is true, as I reported at the American Prospect, that VAWA puts an emphasis on separating victims from their abusers instead of trying to patch things up, but that’s because the evidence overwhelmingly suggests that this strategy works better at keeping victims safe. Which is the point.Tom Herman isn’t interested in lunch — or fake media-friendly conversations. Instead, University of Houston’s football coach is taking the fight to 610 AM in ways that the Houston sports radio behemoth is unaccustomed to and clearly unready to handle.
Just months after infamously turning down ex-610 AM host Nick Wright’s on-air lunch request cold, Herman pulled his regular weekly spot from another show on the station. This means that 610 could go through what’s arguably the most-anticipated University of Houston football season ever without any direct access to the hottest football coach in America. One who happens to reside in their own backyard. But hey, no one will break down possible fourth-string Texans defensive lineman rotations better!
It’s no surprise that Herman’s found 610 AM so offensive. The station is full of consistently anti-UH voices. This is a group that collectively derided UH product Case Keenum during his run with the Texans, disparaging and dismissing one of Houston’s greatest players ever without waiting for any actual evidence. In fact, Keenum had to leave Houston to get a fair media shot in the NFL. The largely positive press Keenum is now receiving from Los Angeles’ mega media outlets paints the anti-Keenum 610 AM campaigning in an even harsher light in retrospect.
But Keenum was just one example of the type of “Cougar High” demeaning that long ran rampant on 610. It’s something an outsider can quickly pick up on. I didn’t grow up in Houston. I have no ties to UH whatsoever. And yet, within six months of listening to sports talk radio in Houston, 610’s treatment of the city’s largest university jumped out at me.
The station tried to change its ways toward the end of Herman’s wholly-unexpected 13-1 debut season last fall, but to anyone who listened to 610 in years past it came across like sycophants desperately leaping for a bandwagon. Still, Herman likely would have been fine with that — his whole H-Town Takeover is geared around getting more people in the city onboard with UH football — if 610 hadn’t turned its sudden interest into a platform for radio bozos to claim insider knowledge.
Greg Ward and the University of Houston have to hear about their coach leaving in late August?
First, 610 AM morning host John Lopez — an interesting former Houston Chronicle sports columnist who should know better — clearly falsely claimed that Herman and Texas A&M transfer quarterback Kyle Allen met in Houston. Herman took great umbrage (on the air and in a press release issued by the school) to this, noting that if the two had met in person the coach would have committed an NCAA rules violation. This is when Wright — Lopez’s co-host at the time — got rebuked by Herman when he rather fawningly asked to go to lunch with the coach after spending 20 minutes telling Herman he was wrong on air.
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Then, 610 AM outdid itself over the weekend, posting an online story headlined “Tom Herman Should Leave Houston For These Nine Programs.” You know how “think pieces” are all the rage in journalism these days? This is the complete opposite of that. It starts out by stating that Herman will definitely leave Houston someday.
Is this true? Likely, but the timing of the story makes no sense. Herman definitely isn’t leaving UH this fall. He has the Cougars in the Top 15 of all the college football polls and Houston plays No. 3 Oklahoma in its biggest game of the season in this Saturday’s nationally-televised season opener at NRG Stadium. Why focus on the idea of Herman leaving now? There’s no reason unless you’re trolling someone — and doing it about as well as Taylor Swift takes the high ground. To add a little extra fuel to the fire, 610 AM’s digital crew even mentioned Herman in its tweet on the story, ensuring that the coach, who is very active on social media, would see it.
Herman saw it — and promptly ended his arrangement to make regular weekly appearances on 610 AM’s afternoon drive show with Sean Pendergast, Rich Lord and Ted Johnson throughout the season. That’s one of the reasons University of Houston fans adore Herman so.
It’s not just the winning. It’s the fact he won’t take any guff from anyone on UH. Disrespect the program and he has no use for you. Even if you happen to be a host at the biggest sports radio station in town.
Herman seems to understand criticism comes with the job. He excelled in the cauldron of Ohio State sports after all. It’s the innuendo and largely dirty dealing that seems to enrage him. So he’s stands up to a sports media bully. Again.
A prominent UH backer has told me that he thinks Herman is making a mistake with these mini media feuds. That voice believes the University of Houston cannot afford to alienate any outlet. But I’d argue that’s missing how much these stands are building Herman’s brand. Much like that diamond grill Herman got from rapper Paul Wall, it’s more priceless publicity.
And, in this case, it’s clearly getting to 610.
Pendergast tried to dismiss Tom Herman’s 610 ban on Monday’s show by saying on that Herman’s appearances on the station never spiked the ratings, anyway. The host claimed that 610 can get the same ratings from debating the Texans’ third-string running back as it can from talking to the coach who’s shaking up college football.
Who cares what’s clearly much better radio? Pendergast sounded like a guy insisting he’s much better off that his wife left him —even as he sits in his mom’s basement eating a TV dinner.
A station that’s often already held back by its management edict to talk Texans 365 days a year (listening to the talented Paul Gallant struggle to comply in the early summer months is particularly painful) now loses access to the other big sports story of fall. If this ban sticks, rival station 790 AM will certainly benefit at 610’s expense.
Herman … he just looks like a hero to the UH supporters he must regularly mobilize, again. This coach certainly isn’t afraid of the fight.For Indiana Jones, his various allies and his rivals, the keys to the past lie in a variety of repositories, some more mundane than others. Some are as commonplace as a compilation of clues kept in a handwritten diary that eventually lead to the resting place of the Holy Grail. Others are as exotic as the headpiece of a staff inscribed with instructions for building a decoder that, when used in just the right place at just the right time, allows you to find just the right place to dig for a lost treasure (provided, of course, you have the whole inscription). Sometimes even a tiled floor is where "X", literally, marks the spot. But never in the course of three—and soon to be four—feature films did scraping a tooth lead Jones to riches and rewards or even to solve scientific mysteries literally millions of years old. While likely he couldn't vouch for the riches, Matt Sponheimer, an NSF-funded bioarchaeologist at the University of Colorado at Boulder, argues that the intellectual effort of analyzing the chemical make-up of the teeth of early human ancestors has struck scientific pay dirt.
Matt Sponheimer, an NSF-funded bioarchaeologist at the University of Colorado at Boulder, argues that the intellectual effort of analyzing the chemical make-up of the teeth of early human ancestors has struck scientific pay dirt. "What is truly surprising is that we may be able to discover how creatures moved across African landscapes 1.8 million years ago using this technique," he said. Of course Sponheimer, who seems quite familiar with the Indiana Jones saga, would be the first to concede that Jones would have been greatly hampered, even if he'd wanted to try this kind of thing because the laser, which is central to Sponheimer's work, was not yet even so much as a ruby-red gleam in scientists' eyes early in the 20th century, when the films are set. "That, to me, is the story," he says. "It's not so much about the early results, but what they reveal about the potential of the technique. Indie would have been in this classroom saying that speculations about such ancient behaviors are not part of archaeology, because they're not based on fact." Sponheimer, on the other hand, may help to change dramatically, science's view of how early humans spent their lives with information stored in fossilized teeth from the dawn of time. It is both a technological and archaeological challenge. "Essentially what you're doing is analyzing the isotopic composition of these teeth," he says. Upon reflection, he pauses and simplifies, "What we're doing is shooting the teeth with a laser beam that removes the tiniest bit of material, material that is more or less invisible to naked eye." And that's what he studies. Contained in the material that the laser pares away are strontium isotopes, or different forms of the element strontium, a chemical found in plants. The particular isotopes present in plants match up to the particular geographic location where the plants thrived and, most important, were also absorbed into the developing teeth of a young animal that ate the plants. Because tooth formation takes place early in an animal's life, it is possible to compare where animals ranged when they were young to where the teeth were recovered when they died. And because the new technique causes minimal damage to teeth and early hominin teeth are so rare ("They're a hell of a lot rarer than diamonds," Sponheimer notes), the laser sampling is an important advance over prior methods that caused significant damage to the fossilized rarities. Comparing isotopic maps made in the field in Africa with the isotopic compositions of fossilized teeth in South Africa's Transvaal Museum has allowed Sponheimer and colleagues to investigate migration patterns and other behaviors of these important human evolutionary relatives for the first time. Except for modern-day Homo sapiens, the hominins are extinct. But, scientists believe that understanding hominin behavior is essential to understanding the path of human evolution. Land-use and movement patterns are essential to such studies, but have historically been almost impossible for anthropologists to track, millions of years after the fact. The findings from the strontium isotope analysis suggest that most of the hominins spent their early lives in the same geological area on which they died, and probably did not move great distances. They may also shed light on the long-debated question of whether or not these hominins followed a pattern similar to that of today's chimpanzees, where males stay with their social groups and females find homes elsewhere. The initial results are intriguing, he says, but he's not ready to reveal them quite yet. "We'll be publishing these results soon, and we're all entitled to a bit of mystery, however short-lived," he says. What makes this so important to the field, Sponheimer adds, is that it may ultimately provide physical evidence to support a previous conjecture, one way or another. "In the past, there was no window into this kind of behavior," he notes. The new technique "opens that window to behaviors that we simply could not investigate in the past." Such great leaps forward in technology and in scientific techniques have changed the archaeological landscape forever so that we can now answer questions that early archaeologists, including the fictional Indiana Jones, would have considered insoluble, he says. "Unlike Indiana, we don't have whips and guns," Sponheimer points out. "But we have an archaeological record out there. It's got a story, we have to learn to make it speak and we have this tool, which is science, to do that. We can now answer questions that would have been relegated to the fantasy bin years ago."Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Iowa Rep. Steve King have reintroduced Kate’s Law, an immigration bill conceived two years ago by Fox News host Bill O’Reilly in response to the murder of San Francisco native Kathryn Steinle by a five-time deported illegal immigrant.
If passed, the bill would impose a minimum five-year federal prison sentence on any illegal immigrant who returns to the states after his or her first deportation.
Originally introduced in the summer of 2015 by former Arizona Rep. Matt Salmon, the bill failed to gain traction. But with a stalwart GOP leader on his way to the White House, both Cruz and King hoped things might be different this time around.
“I look forward to working with my colleagues and President-elect Trump to once and for all prevent cities from harboring illegal aliens, enforce federal immigration laws, and ensure the safety and security of the American people,” Cruz wrote in a statement published to his Senate webpage.
“I know that President-elect Trump will fight for the safety and security of the American people by actually enforcing our federal immigration laws,” King added in his own statement.
Speaking Monday night on his Fox News program, Bill O’Reilly offered his own take on the reintroduction of this long-sought-after law, saying, “No American family should suffer at the hands of convicted foreign felons who defy deportation.”
“‘Talking Points’ believes one of the main reasons Donald Trump won the presidency is that he felt outrage over Kate Steinle, while many other politicians, including the entire Democratic Party and President Obama, did not,” he continued. “Even if you are not politically involved, failing to harshly punish foreigners who defy deportation after committing heinous crimes in this country is inexcusable.”
You can watch his comments here:
The truth is that this bill should have been signed into law a long time ago, but because of the intransigence of the president and Democrats in Congress who apparently care more about the concerns of illegal immigrants than they do about the American people, the bill has been stalled for two years.
Thanks to President-elect Donald Trump, however, it appears things are finally about to change. Like us on Facebook – USA Liberty News Please share this story on Facebook and Twitter and let us know what you think about the reintroduction of Kate’s Law and whether or not you think this immigration bill will finally get passed this time around.
What do you think about this bill? Scroll down to comment below!
Source: conservativetribune.com
H/T Fox NewsSummary
Claim your rightful place on the iron throne as the lord of the Seven Kingdoms and protector of the Realm! This is a House Baratheon inspired crown from game of thrones. It can complete your perfect Game of thrones cosplay, or, you could use it as a standard crown in any other royalty costume. In my opinion This was one of the best looking crowns from GoT which is why I modeled it. Maybe later I will try to do some of the other ones. Thanks for stopping by and checking out my work. IMPORTANT NOTE!!!!!!
Those of you with keen eyes will have noticed there are two STL files. Crown3HornsSmooth.stl
Crown4HornsSmooth.stl When I modeled this I accidentally made a mistake and made it with only 3 sets of horns. That is the version that you see printed in the pictures. I have gone back and added a version with 4 sets of horns that matches the reference picture better.
When downloading please be aware of this and download the one you prefer to print. Full disclosure I was quite happy with the printed result of the 3 horn version. If you have any issues, concerns or questions let me know.
Print Settings
Printer Brand:
RepRap
Printer:
Prusa I3
Rafts:
No
Supports:
Yes
Resolution:
0.1 mm Layer Height
Infill:
20%
Notes:
Print Time Approximately 32 hours. I was very happy with the results, this is a very solid print that should give you no issues if you're printer is properly configured and leveled.
Post-Printing
Finishing Touches
The great thing about this print is that is only one piece. After printing it all you have to do once it is printed is remove the supports, clean it up and paint it. Acrylic water based paint is great on PLA prints
Get all your tools ready
I started with a black foundation
Then painted it bronze letting some black through to make it look worn out.
Finally just let it Dry
How I Designed This
Winter is Coming!!
This design posed several interesting challenges to me. The first one was the fact that I did not have a physical model to work from which meant I would have to make due with the reference Image. The other one was that SolidWorks does not really lend itself to organic shapes such as the hones so I had to get creative to get them done.
Image A.
Step 1: Getting the dimensions down! (Image A.)
I started by throwing the reference image into Photoshop, along with an image of a ruler.
I decided what the diameter of the actual physical crown should be, and scaled the ruler down to match. After that I had a "Virtual Ruler" with which I could take fairly accurate measurements relative to each other. I took grabbed some of the key dimensions. mostly heights and widths. Finally I threw the reference image into SolidWorks, and scaled it down to match the dimensions I took.
Image B.
Step 2: Creating the Features
After I had all my references in place it was a pretty straight forward process. I Started with a couple revolves following the contours of the crown.(Part 1 and 2) Next I made a new sketch, traced over the horns in the reference picture and extruded it. (part 3) Then I used the combine bodies features with the "common" operation, combining the revolve from part 2 and the extrude on part 3. Getting the result Part 4. Part 5 was just a simple mirror. Part 6 a circular pattern. I repeated the same steps for the gem holders.
Image C.
Final Step: Cleaning Up the model (Image C)
As mentioned before Solidworks does not handle organic shapes all that well. So to finalize the model I decided to go into 3ds max. I used the optimize modifier to simplify the model in order for the Turbo Smooth modifier to work properly. You can see the results above although is not that clear the turbo smooth modifier gave it a very nice organic feel to it.
Thanks For ReadingImage copyright EPA Image caption Police officers were seen removing boxes of confiscated material
The coach of the women's 1,500m world record holder and reigning world champion has been arrested in Spain as part of an anti-doping operation.
Jama Aden, who is Somali, was held after police raided his hotel room in Sabadell, north of Barcelona.
The coach and an unnamed Moroccan physiotherapist who worked with him have been charged with administering banned substances to athletes.
Mr Aden coaches Ethiopian star Genzebe Dibaba. Neither has commented yet.
Dibaba, 25, is female world athlete of the year and a hot favourite to win gold at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics later this year.
Other athletes who have been coached by Mr Aden include two-time world indoor 800m champion Abubaker Kaki Khamis and 2008 Beijing Olympics 800m silver medallist Ismael Ahmed Ismael, both from Sudan, and 2012 London Olympics 1,500m champion Taoufik Makhloufi of Algeria.
The Spanish anti-doping agency, AEPSAD, said Spanish reports that blood-boosting drug EPO had been found in the physio's hotel room were correct.
It also said it had drug-tested more than 20 athletes at the hotel, in conjunction with governing body the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF).
The athletes have not been named and none has yet commented on the raid.The 2014-15 NBA season is finally (almost) upon us. And what NBA blogger or sportswriter starts the season without some bold predictions? This isn't going to be like
The 2014-15 NBA season is(almost) upon us. And what NBA blogger or sportswriter starts the season without some bold predictions? This isn't going to be like Zach Lowe's predictions column for Grantland where Cleveland leading the league in points per possession counted and Indiana missing the playoffs counted as bold. Enough with the introduction, let's get straight into the meat of some predictions that will make you raise your eyebrows more than once BUT will be supported with more than a desire to jump on or off a team/player bandwagon...
San Antonio will not be a top-three seed
against the Spurs with this prediction…but I’m not. Popovich is the master of the regular season and the post-season. He’s like the Mamba of coaches (who took home almost every coaching award in the annual I pulled a Gregg Popovich and may have outsmarted not just him, but also you, with this pick. After all, when you’re dealing with Gregg Popovich, you have to think at least ten steps ahead. You thought that I’m pickingthe Spurs with this prediction…but I’m not. Popovich is the master of the regular season and the post-season. He’s like the Mamba of coaches (who took home almost every coaching award in the annual NBA GM survey ). He waits and waits and pounces just when the time is right. As his team ages, he doles out fewer and fewer regular season minutes to his starters. I foresee that trend continuing to the point where he doesn’t mind losing out to the Thunder, Clippers, and Warriors in seeding.
Dallas, the 8 seed, gave them the hardest battle in the 2014 playoffs, so seeding only matters so much. Pop knows a healthy squad is more valuable than home-court through the Western conference playoffs if the two are mutually exclusive.
Terrence Ross will average 18-6-4
For a guy to make the jump from 11-3-1 to get to 18-6-4, we’re talking about a most improved player-worth leap. But for T Dot who can leap out of the building on any given dunk, I think it’s possible considering he has a maniacal fan base and great team around him. His point guard, Kyle Lowry, just got $48 million guaranteed so he’s ready to throw out some dimes. 2014 Terrence Ross can put up 2013 Klay Thompson-type numbers. Ross is quietly a 40 percent three-point shooter who goes crazy on left corner threes (47 percent), a vital shot as determined by NBA efficiency gurus.
I’m going to throw in a bonus prediction: Toronto will be a No. 2 seed over Chicago and Washington. The dynamic between Paul Pierce and the Wiz young backcourt will be interesting. I’m not sold on Derrick Rose until I see him thrashing through the Leastern conference defenses. Bagels in FIBA competition is not reason for optimism with the former NBA MVP.
TNT will suspend Charles Barkley once
It’s too easy to make this just a bold playoff predictions article. Plus, the side stories are often nearly as entertaining as the games themselves. In fact, some off-season talk on the BS Report landed in this realm and suggested that the NBA free agency period receives more attention than the NBA games. The celebrity appeal crosses into the sports realm more frequently than just when a Kardashian hops from dating one NBA player to another (yes, Lamar Odom and Kris Humphries, I’m looking at you).
Inside the NBA was and is must-see TV. More than once, I wouldn’t re-watch a TNT game if I had missed it live… but I would scroll back to the halftime shows. Those short segments with Chuck, Kenny, Shaq, and Ernie were always exciting because you never knew when someone would drop what Jalen Rose calls a “don’t-get-fired” moment. If you didn’t see Barkley's antics describing San Antonio women, go to YouTube right now and watch them. Charles Barkley onwas and is must-see TV. More than once, I wouldn’t re-watch a TNT game if I had missed it live… but I would scroll back to the halftime shows. Those short segments with Chuck, Kenny, Shaq, and Ernie were always exciting because you never knew when someone would drop what Jalen Rose calls a “don’t-get-fired” moment. If you didn’t see Barkley's antics describing San Antonio women, go to YouTube right now and watch them.
He was one step away from getting suspended. If ESPN can put Bill Simmons on vacation for calling the NFL commissioner a liar with some cuss words sprinkled in, then TNT could suspend Chuck for some inevitably outrageous comment this year.
LeBron James will continue his year-over-year increase in FG% that began in 06-07
LeBron has been raving about new head coach, David Blatt. I almost wanted to throw out a prediction that would only turn out to be outrageous…LeBron will average a triple-double. Two main reasons I decided against it: 1) LeBron slimmed down. I’m expecting him to play less at the power forward spot and more at the 3 (hence lower rebounding numbers). 2) Blatt and LeBron may come to the agreement that the best player in the game needs to rest more. This won't stop the best player in the game from an efficiency level that you can’t reach in NBA 2K15. He’s climbed from a "paltry" 47.6% to an unfathomable 56.7%. LeBron James doesn’t have much more room to improve but he’ll figure out a way to do it. Kevin Love will be spotting up and working P&Rs, Kyrie will finally learn how to play within a team concept, and Dion Waiters chip on his shoulder is still Goliath-sized.LeBron has been raving about new head coach, David Blatt. I almost wanted to throw out a prediction that would only turn out to be outrageous…LeBron will average a triple-double. Two main reasons I decided against it: 1) LeBron slimmed down. I’m expecting him to play less at the power forward spot and more at the 3 (hence lower rebounding numbers). 2) Blatt and LeBron may come to the agreement that the best player in the game needs to rest more. This won't stop the best player in the game from an efficiency level that you can’t reach in NBA 2K15.
The Lakers will have the fewest wins in their 54-year Los Angeles history
26 wins or less. And if I’m setting the over-under at games Steve Nash plays at that same number, I’m taking the under there, as well. Unless Linsanity 2.0 erupts in Los Angeles, the combination of Lin, Kobe, and the self-anointed Swaggy P could be a scoring backcourt gone oh-so-very-wrong. Iso-ball + jacking up contested shots = losses.
As if a team of defensive sieves wasn’t enough, Byron Scott decided to take down any chance at improved offensive efficiency. The new Lakers coach wants his team to take 10-15 threes a game. A Twitter account has been born out of Scott’s desire to essentially eliminate the most efficient shot in the game (the corner three). @HaveTheLakers MadeACorner3? is a real thing. At least Kobe will be able to shoot 9-28 and put up big scoring numbers…right?
Chris Bosh will come surprisingly close to 50-40-90
And the award for 2014-15 Biggest Chip on His Shoulder goes to…. Chris Bosh! The ramifications of the LeBron move ripple throughout the NBA, but nowhere moreso than King James’ former team. One thing that LeBron did do for Bosh was help create the necessity for a three-point shot, something that became a weapon for the stretch-5. With LeBron gone, Bosh can go back to working in the paint in addition to spreading the floor with his three-point shot. What does this mean? A lot of mismatches and increased efficiency. His career peaks in FG% and FT% are 54 and 84, respectively. Last year, he was 34 percent from 3. Coming within a total of 5-7 percentage points of the 50-40-90 club would be a career year, but for a rejuvenated former All-Star who’s still only 30, it’s not too outrageous.
(For good measure, the second place finisher in the Biggest Chip on His Shoulder was another casualty of the LeBron trade: 2014 no. 1 overall pick, Andrew Wiggins.)
Carmelo Anthony will hit the 30 points per game mark for the first time in his career
The East has significantly improved from last year to this year. However, the Knicks have almost been part of that upward trend. The pick-up of Jose Calderon at point guard will prove to be a significant upgrade to the ever-ballooning Raymond Felton…and I don’t mean ballooning in skill. Newly-minted head coach, Derek Fisher, and the Zen Master, Phil Jackson, should be able to maximize the ability of their roster, unlike Mike Woodson.
The relationship between Iman Shumpert, a player that I believe has a solid upside despite a career FG% south of 40, and former coach Mike Woodson was tumultuous (as Phil Jackson recently pointed out). Put all of this together, and Carmelo Anthony is right in position for a career year. I’m not expecting his assist numbers to skyrocket, but the 30ppg mark is well within reach for one of the NBA’s top-2 scorers.
The 76ers will not have the worst record in the NBA
This is probably the least likely prediction out of all of them. Most pundits consider the 76ers falling to the bottom inevitable. I'm going to go the other way because unlike the Sixers, the Jazz are in the West. Dante Exum still has to prove he can compete with the best basketball players in the world. I think eventually he’ll be a serviceable starter/borderline All-Star, but I’m taking a flier on this year’s Nerlens Noel before I take one on Exum. The Celtics are cellar contenders when they eventually trade a malcontent Rajon Rondo. It’s a tough call, but I’ll take the field in the competition for the NBA’s 2014-15 Least Likely to Agree to Lottery Reform.
Klay Thompson will be a 2015 All Star and get his max contract
…and he’ll be considered underpaid a few years down the line when the new TV contract leads to the eventual gradual or rapid salary cap spike. The younger Splash Bro has already said that he prefers the contract extension now instead of waiting for a long-term deal once the new cap hits. Dan Feldman of NBC Sports has pegged this extension to be worth $89 million and last through the 2020 NBA season.
For comparison, if he sought a Parsons like deal, he could make nearly $100 million in that same time-span. If Klay does accept an extension by October 31, it’ll put him in the pay grade of the top-five shooting guards in the league, something he is well-worth. I’m betting on Klay to have a big year under new coach, Steve Kerr. Former Warriors coach, Mark Jackson, was a great friend to (most) players in his locker room but left much to be desired in terms of on-court strategy. The lack of ball movement is one of Jackson’s main failures as an HC, and Kerr is already turning that around.
Better (and more) motion will lead to open shots, and open shots for one of the game’s best shooters will be lethal. Klay will be in the 20-5-4 range when the All-Star break rolls around and find himself playing alongside Steph Curry in the game. Hype matters when it comes to All-Star voting, so Klay’s FIBA success and the ever-increasing spotlight on the Warriors will push him into All-Star glory.
Now, I’m going on record saying that the Warriors can support two All-Stars with two defensive stoppers, potentially the best defense in the league, and a bright coach. So I’m ready to make my boldest prediction and become the first person to predict that…
The Golden State Warriors will win the 2015 NBA Finals
The squad that the Warriors will put on the floor is as good as any teams. Superstar? Check. Shooting? The best. Perimeter and interior defense? Third-best defense in the league last year. Bright, young coach surrounded by a great staff? Finally. What about the bench? With Brandon Rush, Harrison Barnes, Festus Ezeli, Mo Speights, and Draymond Green coming off the bench, this squad has all the pieces. And the thing that will always go underrated…chemistry? SB Nation called them the Weird Warriors for a reason. They are a little weak in the Veteran Leadership Dept., though. Only David Lee and Leandro Barbosa are the sole players older than 30…and they’re both only 31 years old.
They showed in 2013 that they can beat the Spurs. That Game 1 collapse in Round 1 emotionally throttled the team but they still made the Spurs fight to win a series I still feel the Warriors should have won (and would have under a better coach). In 2014, they took a Sternly-motivated Clippers team to seven games with their second-best player sidelined. Twice in a row, it’s been so close you could taste it. Both times against two top teams, you felt they had it within reach. All they’ve needed is a #FullSquad and good coach.From the'membership has its privileges' files:
If you've ever wanted your very own Linux.com email address (and didn't work for SourceForge/OSDN) - you too can now get one. All you need to do is join the Linux Foundation.
The Linux Foundation is set to formally announce a new individual membership program tomorrow that costs $99 that will include an @Linux.com email address. The Linux.com domain was acquired by the Linux Foundation in March and was re-launched in May.
Having an individual membership class is a far cry from how things were in the OSDL days (prior to the creation of the Linux Foundation). Then membership was a pricey affair often tipping $1 million or more.
The idea is that membership fees support the development of Linux since the Linux Foundation is the organization that employs Linus Torvalds. Membership also gives individuals a voice in the structure of the foundation.Looking for news you can trust?
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Everybody knows that most local TV newscasts kind of suck. On television, if it bleeds it leads, and if it’s cheesy and trite it wins the night. Local news is a reliable source for late-night comedians—and The Simpsons has been lampooning it forever. Yet despite all of the genre’s shortcomings, local TV news still manages to reach 9 in 10 American adults, 46 percent of whom watch it “often.” It may come as a surprise to you internet junkies, but broadcast television still serves as Americans’ main source of news and information. Which is why it matters that hundreds of local TV news stations have been swept up in a massive new wave of media consolidation: It means that you, the viewer, are being fed an even more repetitive diet of dreck.
In terms of dollar value, more than 75 percent of the nearly 300 full-power local TV stations purchased last year were acquired by just three media giants. The largest, Sinclair Broadcasting, will reach almost 40 percent of the population if its latest purchases are approved by federal regulators. Sinclair’s CEO has said he wants to keep snapping up stations until the company’s market saturation hits 90 percent. (And that’s not a typo.)
Now here’s where things really get sketchy: Media conglomerates such as Sinclair have bought up multiple news stations in the same regions—in nearly half of America’s 210 television markets, one company owns or manages at least two local stations, and a lot of these stations now run very similar or even completely identical newscasts, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center. One in four local stations relies entirely on shared content. (See chart at right.)
On Monday, the Federal Communications Commission finally took steps to curb the practice. The commission’s rules have long prohibited companies from owning more than one of the four top-rated stations in a given market. But there was no rule preventing a single company from managing more than one station per market. Companies exploited this loophole by controlling stations through “joint sales agreements”—essentially shell companies formed just to hold the broadcast license. “Removal of the loophole helps ensure competition, localism, and diversity in local broadcast markets by preventing a practice that previously resulted in consolidation in excess of what is permitted under the Commission’s rules,” the FCC said in a press release.
You can bet on plenty of pushback from the industry. (More on that below.) As it stands, some local stations simply share office space or vans or helicopters, but others take the overlap much further. To offer one example, CBS and NBC affiliates in Syracuse, New York, use separate anchor teams but run nearly identical stories produced by a shared group of reporters. In some markets, partner stations run virtually identical newscasts, albeit at different times. And then there are stations like the CBS and |
has to be thrilled with the line, and second-year man Damon Harrison has also been outstanding.Chelsea have opened talks with the representatives of Roma midfielder Miralem Pjanic over the possibility of launching a move that would trigger a £31m release clause in his contract, according to reports.
The Times is reporting that Chelsea director and lead negotiator, Marina Granovskaia, has already made contact with Pjanic’s advisers ahead of a possible summer move for the 25-year-old Bosnia-Herzegovina midfielder.
It’s added that the Blues have begun the initial stages of trying to lure Pjanic to Stamford Bridge after his name was handed to officials at the club by incoming manager Antonio Conte, with the current Italy head coach expected to be named as Guus Hiddink’s successor later this month.
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Roma currently sit third in the Serie A table, eight points off leaders and defending champions Juventus, and Pjanic appears to be facing up to yet another season of missing out on the Italian league title since joining the club from French side Lyon in 2011.
Pjanic’s wages would not pose a problem for Chelsea given he is expected to demand around £60,000-a-week, and even though the club look set to miss out on qualification for next season’s Champions League – providing they don’t win the competition this time around – they will have no problems with meeting the £31m buyout clause.
Shape Created with Sketch. Norwich City vs Chelsea - player ratings Show all 24 left Created with Sketch. right Created with Sketch. Shape Created with Sketch. Norwich City vs Chelsea - player ratings 1/24 NORWICH CITY: John Ruddy - 6 out of 10 Couldn't do much with either goal but didn't make another save in the game. Looked assured overall, however. 2016 Getty Images 2/24 Ryan Bennett - 6 out of 10 With Robbie Brady often bombing up the left-wing, Bennett did a good job covering as a left-back and as the third centre-back. 2016 Getty Images 3/24 Russell Martin - 7 out of 10 Organised his defence well and will be disappointed that the assistant referee let his side down - the Diego Costa, ultimately the difference, was definitely offside. Unlucky not to score a late equaliser. 2016 Getty Images 4/24 Timm Klose - 6 out of 10 The 6ft 4in centre-back dealt with the physical threat of Costa well, standing up to him and rarely being beaten, but made a couple of missteps. 2016 Getty Images 5/24 Ivo Pinto - 4 out of 10 Offered little going forward, despite Kenedy being a weak link in defence, and seemed to operate more as a traditional right-back than a wing-back. Allowed Kenedy to glide past him for the opener after 41 seconds - a goal that sucked the life out of Carrow Road. 2016 Getty Images 6/24 Alex Tettey - 4 out of 10 Did his very best to put pressure on Chelsea's midfield but was partly to blame for Chelsea's early goal, barely offering a challenge as Kenedy steamed forward. 2016 Getty Images 7/24 Jonny Howson - 4 out of 10 Booked for a poor tackle in the first-half, Howson wasn't able to get close to Nemanja Matic or Cesc Fabregas, the Spaniard again setting the tempo for the Blues. 2016 Getty Images 8/24 Robbie Brady - 6 out of 10 Always a very hard worker, Brady got up and down the pitch and was one of Norwich's few consistent attacking threats. Involved in a nasty clash with team-mate Gary O'Neil. 2016 Getty Images 9/24 Nathan Redmond - 7 out of 10 Playing centrally seems to be a bit of waste for a telented player who can beat a man one-on-one. With greater numbers in the middle of the pitch the Blues were able to snuff out his threat quickly, although he took his goal extremely well with a good run and finish. Went wide later and looked much more dangerous. 2016 Getty Images 10/24 Wes Hoolahan - 7 out of 10 Has quality but way too inconsistent - even within the course of 90 minutes. Will have spells where he is Norwich's best player and then periods where he doesn't touch the ball for 10 minutes. Then he'll produce the kind of pass from which Redmond scored. 2015 Getty Images 11/24 Cameron Jerome - 4 out of 10 His pace, athleticism and strength will always cause problems for opposing defenders, but strikers must score goals. Only three goals all season, and none since before Christmas, tells its own story, but Jerome missed a couple of half-chances and one glaring opportunity. 2016 Getty Images 12/24 From the bench: Dieudonne Mbokani - 6 out of 10 Norwich looked much more threatening with the big striker as the focal point. The move also allowed Redmond to move out to the right where he caused many more problems. 13/24 CHELSEA: Thibaut Courtois - out of 10 Fortunate not to give away an indirect free-kick in the area after handling Cahill's backpass before being beaten at his near post by Redmond's shot. But he superbly made a last-gasp save to deny Martin. 14/24 Cesar Azpilicueta - 6 out of 10 Was generally good going forward and tracking back and defending, but could have done more to stop Norwich from sending the ball into the box from his flank. 15/24 Gary Cahill - 5 out of 10 Delivered a backpass that Courtois handled but, other than that moment, the defender was solid and stood firm as Norwich pushed for a late equaliser. 2016 Getty Images 16/24 Branislav Ivanovic - 6 out of 10 On his 350th Chelsea appearance, the Serbia international performed well on the whole but disappointingly lost Redmond in build-up to Norwich's goal. 17/24 Kenedy - 7 out of 10 Replaced Baba Rahman at left-back and scored his first Premier League goal - and the fastest in the top flight this season - in fine fashion after 41 seconds. However, he was defensively poor, allowing too many Norwich attacks to get past him. Replaced by Rahman. 18/24 Nemanja Matic - 5 out of 10 The midfielder did well considering he was making his first start in four games, but was off the pace at times. 2016 Getty Images 19/24 Cesc Fabregas - 5 out of 10 Began the move that led to Kenedy's goal, but needed to press more when not in possession and slowly drifted out of the game as it progressed. 2016 Getty Images 20/24 Bertrand Traore - 7 out of 10 Was handed a starting berth on the right wing and did not disappoint. He was a constant menace for Norwich's defence and did not give away possession, getting an assist for Costa's goal. Getty Images 21/24 Oscar - 5 out of 10 Linked up well, at times, with his team-mates but failed to have an impact on the game. Was replaced by John Obi Mikel after 60 minutes. 22/24 Eden Hazard - 5 out of 10 Created Kenedy's goal, and was superb in winning the ball back and driving Chelsea's attack forward, but saw his impact wane greatly in the second period. 2016 Getty Images 23/24 Diego Costa - 6 out of 10 Scored his 14th goal of the season with a lovely chip over Ruddy, although he was definitely in an offside position when the ball was played. 2016 Getty Images 24/24 From the bench: Willian 6 out of 10 Replaced Traore with 30 minutes to go and, again, his work rate urgency in attack showed through as many of his team-mates eased off as the game progressed. Getty Images 1/24 NORWICH CITY: John Ruddy - 6 out of 10 Couldn't do much with either goal but didn't make another save in the game. Looked assured overall, however. 2016 Getty Images 2/24 Ryan Bennett - 6 out of 10 With Robbie Brady often bombing up the left-wing, Bennett did a good job covering as a left-back and as the third centre-back. 2016 Getty Images 3/24 Russell Martin - 7 out of 10 Organised his defence well and will be disappointed that the assistant referee let his side down - the Diego Costa, ultimately the difference, was definitely offside. Unlucky not to score a late equaliser. 2016 Getty Images 4/24 Timm Klose - 6 out of 10 The 6ft 4in centre-back dealt with the physical threat of Costa well, standing up to him and rarely being beaten, but made a couple of missteps. 2016 Getty Images 5/24 Ivo Pinto - 4 out of 10 Offered little going forward, despite Kenedy being a weak link in defence, and seemed to operate more as a traditional right-back than a wing-back. Allowed Kenedy to glide past him for the opener after 41 seconds - a goal that sucked the life out of Carrow Road. 2016 Getty Images 6/24 Alex Tettey - 4 out of 10 Did his very best to put pressure on Chelsea's midfield but was partly to blame for Chelsea's early goal, barely offering a challenge as Kenedy steamed forward. 2016 Getty Images 7/24 Jonny Howson - 4 out of 10 Booked for a poor tackle in the first-half, Howson wasn't able to get close to Nemanja Matic or Cesc Fabregas, the Spaniard again setting the tempo for the Blues. 2016 Getty Images 8/24 Robbie Brady - 6 out of 10 Always a very hard worker, Brady got up and down the pitch and was one of Norwich's few consistent attacking threats. Involved in a nasty clash with team-mate Gary O'Neil. 2016 Getty Images 9/24 Nathan Redmond - 7 out of 10 Playing centrally seems to be a bit of waste for a telented player who can beat a man one-on-one. With greater numbers in the middle of the pitch the Blues were able to snuff out his threat quickly, although he took his goal extremely well with a good run and finish. Went wide later and looked much more dangerous. 2016 Getty Images 10/24 Wes Hoolahan - 7 out of 10 Has quality but way too inconsistent - even within the course of 90 minutes. Will have spells where he is Norwich's best player and then periods where he doesn't touch the ball for 10 minutes. Then he'll produce the kind of pass from which Redmond scored. 2015 Getty Images 11/24 Cameron Jerome - 4 out of 10 His pace, athleticism and strength will always cause problems for opposing defenders, but strikers must score goals. Only three goals all season, and none since before Christmas, tells its own story, but Jerome missed a couple of half-chances and one glaring opportunity. 2016 Getty Images 12/24 From the bench: Dieudonne Mbokani - 6 out of 10 Norwich looked much more threatening with the big striker as the focal point. The move also allowed Redmond to move out to the right where he caused many more problems. 13/24 CHELSEA: Thibaut Courtois - out of 10 Fortunate not to give away an indirect free-kick in the area after handling Cahill's backpass before being beaten at his near post by Redmond's shot. But he superbly made a last-gasp save to deny Martin. 14/24 Cesar Azpilicueta - 6 out of 10 Was generally good going forward and tracking back and defending, but could have done more to stop Norwich from sending the ball into the box from his flank. 15/24 Gary Cahill - 5 out of 10 Delivered a backpass that Courtois handled but, other than that moment, the defender was solid and stood firm as Norwich pushed for a late equaliser. 2016 Getty Images 16/24 Branislav Ivanovic - 6 out of 10 On his 350th Chelsea appearance, the Serbia international performed well on the whole but disappointingly lost Redmond in build-up to Norwich's goal. 17/24 Kenedy - 7 out of 10 Replaced Baba Rahman at left-back and scored his first Premier League goal - and the fastest in the top flight this season - in fine fashion after 41 seconds. However, he was defensively poor, allowing too many Norwich attacks to get past him. Replaced by Rahman. 18/24 Nemanja Matic - 5 out of 10 The midfielder did well considering he was making his first start in four games, but was off the pace at times. 2016 Getty Images 19/24 Cesc Fabregas - 5 out of 10 Began the move that led to Kenedy's goal, but needed to press more when not in possession and slowly drifted out of the game as it progressed. 2016 Getty Images 20/24 Bertrand Traore - 7 out of 10 Was handed a starting berth on the right wing and did not disappoint. He was a constant menace for Norwich's defence and did not give away possession, getting an assist for Costa's goal. Getty Images 21/24 Oscar - 5 out of 10 Linked up well, at times, with his team-mates but failed to have an impact on the game. Was replaced by John Obi Mikel after 60 minutes. 22/24 Eden Hazard - 5 out of 10 Created Kenedy's goal, and was superb in winning the ball back and driving Chelsea's attack forward, but saw his impact wane greatly in the second period. 2016 Getty Images 23/24 Diego Costa - 6 out of 10 Scored his 14th goal of the season with a lovely chip over Ruddy, although he was definitely in an offside position when the ball was played. 2016 Getty Images 24/24 From the bench: Willian 6 out of 10 Replaced Traore with 30 minutes to go and, again, his work rate urgency in attack showed through as many of his team-mates eased off as the game progressed. Getty Images
Conte is believed to have also told the club that he would like them to press on with interest in Pjanic’s Roma team-mate Radja Nainggolan, with the midfielder also expected to be subject of an official bid from the Blues in the summer.
Keep up to date with all the latest news with expert comment and analysis from our award-winning writersFellow journalists and colleagues know my (sometimes almost comical) enthusiasm towards the R project. In fact, for me, 2015 was the year of R: In April, I created Rddj.info, a collection of learning resources for R. During the last months it has grown gradually and I hope that I will grow even faster in the course of 2016 (contributors are still welcome).
Also in 2015, I’ve held quite a few talks explaining the reasoning behind and the advantages of transparent and reproducible data journalism (#rddj), e.g. at the German Netzwerk Recherche yearly conference in Hamburg. And just last week I was informed that I’ve been accepted to talk about it at #NICAR16. Yay!
At SRF Data – the data journalism unit of Swiss public broadcast, the place where I work – almost all of our larger projects in 2015 used R in some form or another. On election day, for example, we published countless fast infographics and charts on Twitter that found great acclaim. With R, we were able to prepare the charts in advance and just had to fetch new results from our SRF-wide API as soon as they were available. Even tweeting the charts directly from within R would have been possible (we’ll do that during the next elections in 2019).
Last but not least we set new standards in (European) data journalism by publishing most of our data and analyses on GitHub pages, with the help of RMarkdown. Others have already started adopting our principles.
So, what advantages does R have? And why should (data) journalists finally start using it in 2016? 2015 (or probably already 2014 or 2013) was the year of listicles, so…
6 reasons why you should start using R in 2016 if you haven’t:
R is good at almost everything. But certainly at 90% of the task we as (data) journalists encounter on a daily basis: Getting data from a website, transposing a spreadsheet, combining multiple tables, converting JSON to CSV and vice versa, filtering and sorting data, drawing some exploratory plots, preparing data for further use in an interactive data visualization, creating GIFs, you name it. For all these tasks, there are separate, freely available tools: Think of Excel, Google Refine, Datawrapper, Outwit Hub, ScraperWiki, etc. But R can do everything within one script. There are thousands of R packages for every imaginable tasks and it is very unlikely somebody has not done before what you’re trying to do. The second advantage of R being a software that supports the complete workflow is that you won’t have problems converting data from one tool to another. I mean, how would I get JSON into Excel? I don’t even know, I’d probably have to use an obscure online converter or something. And after I finally had managed to save my spreadsheet as CSV, all the special characters in it would look like hieroglyphs in my web visualization. And in between I would probably have to export and re-import my data from Excel to Refine and back and start all over again and then I would have forgotten to transform an important column and and… R is free and open source. And it is available for all major platforms. And so is its most popular IDE, RStudio. R is easy to learn and let’s you get started in 5 minutes. Not all people will agree with me, but in order to complete simple analyses and data wrangling tasks, the only coding concept you need to know are function invocations. In R, a lot of functions are vectorized, meaning they take vectors (sequences of numbers, for example) and return vectors – which liberates you from the hassle of applying or even understanding constructs like for-loops. The hardest thing for me was to get my head around the various data types R uses, and it still bugs me today. But I’d say in 90% of the typical data journalism tasks, everything can be done with simple to understand data frames and manipulations à la dplyr. And by the way: Every software needs to be taught – the question is whether you spend your time getting to know countless tools or just one programming language. R is a language, not a tool. When talking to former fellow students or colleagues in journalism, this is the most often heard argument against using R. In fact, it’s R’s biggest asset, especially in an environment where methods, and not just results, matter. Which leads to the next point: R supports a transparent and reproducible workflow. With R, lying is difficult. Once you’re ready to publish your script, and not just your results, everyone will know what you did – and people will hopefully point out your methodological flaws or even errors (I recommend reading this blog post, sorry, notebook, if still not convinced). And that’s something that’s clearly missing in contemporary data journalism: Still too often, data wrangling tasks or analyses are done by a single person, sitting at a computer with a thirty or more Excel tabs open, hardly having a clue which cells were transformed with which function, and which exact steps were applied after each other. Firstly, no one, neither internally nor externally, can double check and understand what actually happened with the data, and secondly, working like this is extremely error prone. Thirdly, what happens if there is a new dataset, or the old one has been updated? Even if you are able to figure out what you did in the first place, applying all the steps again is tedious and, even more, prone to error. R has answers to all these problems. Because everything is scripted, everything can be reconstructed and – most importantly – criticized. Of course this brings with it that everything can be reproduced. Got new data? Start all over with just one command. There’s nothing more rewarding than getting a cup of coffee while your computer does the work somebody else would have spent hours on. R has an ever-growing community. According to http://githut.info/ R repos have the most new forks on average. A lot of those repos are probably created by people like Hadley Wickham – “a giant among data nerds” – who turn the cumbersome, weird language that R once was into something more accessible and more fun. Platforms like R-Bloggers host a myriad of helpful resources. And of course there’s Rddj.info (okay, enough of the shameless self promotion).
So, get out and start using R in 2016. And follow me on Twitter for #rddj-related stuff.
Side note: In case you somehow doubt my enthusiasm… Yes, I have to admit there are things I am not really happy with, such as:
RStudio seems to get successively slower each time I run R code (Ctrl+Alt+R), even when I consequently rm() my objects. In order for it to be “fast” again, I have to restart R or even better, restart RStudio. Has somebody observed that problem too? I’m running it on a Ubuntu 64bit Virtual Box with 8 GB virtual RAM. Generally speaking, I think there’s still a lot of room for improvement in terms of performance and management of larger datasets (>1GB). Hadley has a whole chapter on that, though. And is working on it, too. JSON. In my experience, parsing JSON and especially transforming R structures into JSON can be a pain, although there exist quite a few packages for it. I still too often end up using complicated, “old-school” R stuff such as lapply(). Grasping the difference between vectorized and “atomized” function calls – sometimes I don’t really know whether there exists a vectorized version of an action I want to perform on a dataset and end up implementing loops (which always leaves me with some sort of guilty feeling). While I try to do as much as possible with dplyr (in my words some kind of SQL for R), it can get really gnarly and difficult whenever some kind of non-standard, row-wise data manipulation such as Regex-enabled search-and-replace has to be performed in a vectorized form. Look at this snippet, where I spent hours to get something of the like done with dplyr:
An R script I feel guilty for direct_matches %<>% mutate_(.dots = setNames( list( interp(~ ifelse(!is.na(b), paste(a, b), a), a = as.name(combined), b = as.name(new_orga_id)) ), combined) ) direct_matches %<>% select(-match(new_orga_id, names(.))) direct_matches %<>% mutate_(.dots = setNames( list( interp(~ as.numeric(sub("\D*(\d+).*", "\1", a)), a = as.name(combined))), combined ) ) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 direct_matches % <> % mutate_ (. dots = setNames ( list ( interp ( ~ ifelse (! is. na ( b ), paste ( a, b ), a ), a = as. name ( combined ), b = as. name ( new_orga_id ) ) ), combined ) ) direct_matches % <> % select ( - match ( new_orga_id, names (. ) ) ) direct_matches % <> % mutate_ (. dots = setNames ( list ( interp ( ~ as. numeric ( sub ( "\D*(\d+).*", "\1", a ) ), a = as. name ( combined ) ) ), combined ) )
I won’t even bother trying to explain what that does (apart from that I can’t remember). It is a toxic mix between something called “non-standard evaluation”, “standard evaluation”, absolutely bizarre functions such as paste() and random R weirdness. But it apparently does the job.The art of defending has undergone a rapid transformation over the last twenty years or so. Generally speaking, the quality of individual defenders has declined in the global game. In the 1990s, the likes of Paolo Maldini, Franco Baresi, Alessandro Nesta, Tony Adams, Jaap Stam and Marcel Desailly roamed footballing contours. In the early 2000s, Sol Campbell, Rio Ferdinand, Fabio Cannavaro, Lucio and Carles Puyol were in their prime.
I don’t think it is just misty eyed nostalgia on my part to suggest that there are few centre halves of this calibre in the world game today. Even Thiago Silva, considered by many as the finest centre back in the world, was dropped from his national side for being flakier than dandruff in decisive moments. I think this to be a result of a few separate, but distinct factors.
Coverage of the game has never been more besotted with the individual, yet the sport has evolved towards increasingly collective tactical structures. The move away from the traditional strike pairing has seen defenders engaged less in one on one duels with strikers. Many sides have a totally fluid attacking apparatus, which means the days of Alan Shearer and Tony Adams smashing up against one another like waves on a rock are gone for now.
In response to fluid attacking formations, defensive solutions have become less individualistic. More often than not, a team with two centre halves has one identifiable striker to deal with together with a college of onrushing runners and riders. The threat is more diverse and therefore, defensive approaches need to be more flexible to try to deal with them. In short, intelligent defensive systems and players canny or obedient enough to operate within them are more important than quality individual defenders.
In conjunction with this, the rules have changed to the benefit of attackers. Tackling from behind, tackling abrasively or raising a boot or an arm in anger are pulled up far more keenly in this day and age. The defender’s toolbox has been raided over the years, offering them fewer individual solutions to foil attackers. Time has been called on ‘the reducer’ as a valid tactic for foiling opponents. Successful teams have arrived at creative solutions to offset this handicap.
Portugal found success at the Euros this summer with a conservative unit, based on a deep block, discipline and hard work. Atletico Madrid adopt a similar approach in Champions League ties against Europe’s elite sides. Pep Guardiola used possession as the ultimate defensive weapon. Keeping the ball away from your opponents disarms their ability to pressurise the back line. Many coaches favour a high octane pressing game, energetically coaxing opponents into errors.
While I fully agree that Arsenal need a centre half, I think their defending requires just as much attention on the training ground as the transfer market. Arsenal simply do not defend collectively and I think that any individual centre half that they sign will almost certainly not be able to play to their full potential at Arsenal. The club’s recent record at developing young centre halves is indicative in this respect.
Philippe Senderos, Johan Djourou and Matthew Upson simply did not develop as expected. Once shorn of the reassuring presence of Sol Campbell, you could possibly argue that Kolo Toure did not either. The manager’s actions suggest that Calum Chambers might be heading into this graveyard of defensive promise. (#WelcomeRobHolding). It’s no secret that defending is not Arsene’s strength as a coach and that he does not consider it a huge priority. That might explain why, traditionally, his coaching staff has been constructed largely of ex-defenders.
Wenger’s teams are capable of defending well when he devises his team in a more disciplined manner. This is true of most teams; Tony Pulis has created many stubborn defences using modest materials because midfield and attacking colleagues are instructed not to isolate the defenders. The ragtag Arsenal back four that kept ten consecutive clean sheets in the 2005-06 Champions League did so because the rest of the team was set up to protect them.
Arsenal define themselves as an attacking team, which always means they will be a little open. That is fine to an extent; they have certainly been successful in this manner before. Ferguson’s United sides were constructed in much the same manner. Those United and Arsenal teams largely relied on great individual defenders; Adams, Stam, Campbell, Ferdinand. For the first half of his reign, Wenger was able to call upon the likes of Adams and Campbell to stitch his back four together.
He probably envisaged a similar sort of role for William Gallas, who proved to be a good centre half but a poor leader. Per Mertesacker is the latest appointment to the ‘professor of defence’ title that the manager bestowed upon Adams. Per is an excellent centre-half, but not quite in the same vintage as Adams and Campbell. But Per is also a victim of outmoded thinking in this crucial area. Collectively, Arsenal do not value defending enough. It is still seen as something that the centre halves do, with the defensive midfielder on standby with an additional hose in case the fire rages.
The level of defender that Arsene once relied on to fasten his back four together is no longer available because defending does not work this way anymore. I watched Philippe Coutinho’s second goal unfold on Sunday with a familiar sense of rancour. Liverpool strung 19 passes together in the build up to that move. They did not move the ball especially quickly or even precisely. This wasn’t a peak Xavi and Iniesta pushing the ball around the pitch like a hockey puck. This was Jordan fucking Henderson and chums putting together a fairly loose succession of passes and touches without challenge.
This move did not take place in the 88th minute with the team’s energy reserves sapped. This was the 56th minute, fatigue was not a factor. It was pure idleness off the ball and it is an all too common occurrence. Without the ball, Arsenal’s attack and most of Arsenal’s midfield either breaks into a light jog back towards their own goal, or else they stand with their hands on their hips watching their defensive colleagues attempt to hold off a firing squad with kitchen utensils.
Like Albert Camus’ Meursault, they consider themselves detached observers to this dark menagerie. A shift in this attitude is far more important to me than a new centre back. Were I an available centre half on the market; I would not relish the opportunity to join Arsenal. The level of exposure you will experience will prevent you from reaching your full potential and most observers will probably figure that it’s your fault. If you’re a central defender, joining Arsenal is a bit like being a chicken and joining KFC.
Follow me on Twitter @StillbertoLike me, I am sure many of you need no reason to have a muffin, a piece of cake or any other sweet. After a long day at work I surely look for something comforting to eat. And if my day ends on a sweet note, it’s a day well spent.
Being on Keto does not imply that you have to give up eating all the things you love. I have been a big foodie all my life and continue to be so, even after being on Keto.
I have for you today the recipe of a muffin that is ready in five minutes and tastes super comforting. And since it is made with flax seeds it is super healthy, and full of nutrition. In my last shopping trip I got hold of dried unsweetened cranberries and blue berries. I have used the cranberries in this recipe. But you can make it without them too.
Prep time: 5 mins
Cook time: 1 min
Makes: 1 Mug Muffin
Ingredients-
2tbsp Flax seeds grounded about 30gms
1/2tsp Cinnamon powder
1 medium Egg
1tsp Ghee
1tbsp about 15gms Dried Cranberries Unsweetened
10g Baking Powder
1tbsp Sweetener of your choice
Procedure:
1. I have used 24 Mantra Organic Flax Seeds for this recipe, and grinder them fresh. You can use any flax seed powder of your choice.
24 Mantra Organic Flax Seeds, 200g
2. In your favorite mug add the melted ghee.
3. Next add the flax seeds powder.
4. Add the baking powder and sweetener of your choice and mix well.
5. Beat an egg and add to the mug. Mix some more.
6. Add the cinnamon powder and mix well, till you get a fine batter.
7. Drop the cranberries on top of the batter. Do not mix.
8. Place the mug in the micro, and cook on high for 1 minute only.
9. If you are using frozen berries then micro for 1min and 30 seconds.
10. Spread some butter on top, and have it hot.
Tip: Next time when I make this muffin, I am going to make it with butter instead of ghee and I will probably add some cream and cocoa to it. But I totally loved this simple and delicious version too.
This is my version with cocoa and cream-
Nutrition break up-
Cals- 314
Net carbs- 4
Protein- 12
Fats- 24
Sunday Special- Priya’s #Keto Flax and Cranberry Mug Muffin Posted by KETO for INDIA on Sunday, 3 January 2016The new issue of Rolling Stone features comedian John Belushi on the cover as part of a tribute to 40 years of Saturday Night Live. Within the issue is a brief article about Phish front man Trey Anastasio, which reveals a bit of news about the Vermonters’ touring plans.
The pertinent part of the Rolling Stone piece reads, “the week after the Chicago shows Anastasio will be back on the road with Phish.” The Chicago shows mentioned are Fare Thee Well -a celebration of 50 years of Grateful Dead, which take place over Fourth of July Weekend at Soldier Field. There’s no further word on what to expect when Phish finally announces their summer touring plans, but there is mention that Anastasio has a “now daily regimen of practicing Dead songs.”
Trey told The Boston Globe that 2015 will be a “quieter year for the band with fewer concerts” back in November. Does that mean a shorter Summer Tour? Looks like we’ll soon find out.
[Hat Tip -BobbyWeirdoShorts]WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Evangelical Christian leader Jerry Falwell Jr. will head an education reform task force under U.S. President Donald Trump and is keen to cut university regulations, including rules on dealing with campus sexual assault, the school he heads said.
File Photo: U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump (L) shakes hands with Jerry Falwell Jr. at a campaign rally in Council Bluffs, Iowa, January 31, 2016. REUTERS/Scott Morgan/File Photo
Falwell, the son of the late televangelist Jerry Falwell Sr., was described by Trump as “one of the most respected religious leaders in our nation” last year after Falwell endorsed him during the Republican party primary race.
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Falwell is president of Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, which bills itself as the world’s biggest Christian university. A school spokesman, Len Stevens, said on Wednesday it was not clear yet when the task force would start its work.
Stevens said Falwell was interested in eliminating numerous regulations the U.S. Department of Education has placed on colleges and universities, adding that many college presidents felt the same, regardless of their political orientation.
“It’s an autonomy issue for universities to be able to not be micromanaged by the Department of Education,” Stevens said in an email.
Falwell also wants to cut federal rules on investigating and reporting sexual assault under Title IX, the federal law that bars sexual discrimination in education, according to Stevens.
The Liberty University head believes on-campus sexual assault investigations are best left to police and prosecutors, Stevens said.
Falwell told the Associated Press he turned down an offer from Trump to become education secretary, in part because Falwell did not want to move his family to Washington.
When Falwell introduced Trump before a speech he gave at Liberty University early last year, Falwell said he saw similarities between Trump and his father, the founder of the Moral Majority organization, including a penchant to “speak his mind.”
The Senate Education Committee sent Trump’s nomination of Betsy DeVos, a charter school advocate, to be education secretary to the full Senate on Tuesday for a confirmation vote.It's International Cephalopod Awareness Days, a five-day celebration of more than 700 sea creatures that make up this class of animals. The festivities kicked off Oct. 8, a date "chosen as an auspicious occasion for appreciating animals with a combination of 8 or 10 appendages," explained the Cephalopod Days Tumblr. "Octopus have eight arms while squid and cuttlefish have eight arms and two tentacles. So the eighth day of the tenth month seemed like the best choice. But cephalopods are so awesome, four more days were added to the celebration." We couldn't agree more. Here are 13 reasons these crafty creatures rock. Above: Thermo Dynamics Octopuses living in freezing waters can customize proteins called potassium channels that open when nerve cells fire, allowing ions through and helping transmit electrical signals across the nervous system. As it gets colder, the channels should shut more slowly, preventing nerve cells from firing again and ultimately bringing movement to a halt. Amino acid changes in the potassium channels of polar octopuses keep their nervous systems working at temperatures that would shut temperate-d |
the death of Bradley, the plaintiffs have suffered damages and will continue to suffer damages in the future," reads the claim. "Full particulars of which will be provided at or prior to the trial of the within action."
The claim also alleges that Greene has previously been held in custody in the remand centre, suffered a seizure and had to be hospitalized — meaning the staff "ought to have been aware" of Greene's condition.
Greene's death is one of five that occurred in the remand centre in 2016, a sharp increase from previous years where only two deaths occurred between 2010 and 2015. The remand centre houses roughly 300 people.NEWS
I hope you had a good winter break! Things are starting to really pick up speed here at City Hall.
People are already calling me about participatory budgeting! Dates are not yet firm but we will announce them in my fall newsletter and online sometime in February. Once again $94,000 for capital projects will be available to groups that meet the criteria. To get ahead of the curve, you can go and look at last year’s application info and start thinking and dreaming about what you would like to see happen in our community.
There are many major projects coming along that will change the municipality dramatically. I wanted to briefly touch on some of them. Later this month we will get an updated timeline regarding completing the Centre Plan. We are also expecting to hear back soon on the other proposed developments that were presented in the open house at the Atlantica. As soon as I have clarity on what the timeline and path is I will post that information.
Sometime midyear Council will have the information we need to decide whether to go ahead on Cogswell demolition. I know residents are very excited to see the removal of this eyesore, it is something I’ve been going to meetings about since Kate Carmichael started the conversation over 20 years ago. While this will mean a couple years of significant disruption, staff and consultants are working hard to minimise the pain while moving us toward this goal.
Finally, there are several other big plans coming back this year, the Integrated Mobility plan and the Green Network plan, that are huge pieces of work that will help make our city greener, more pedestrian, cycle, and transit friendly, and improve all of our quality of life. I’ll be posting updates as I get them.
If you have any questions, concerns, or ideas about what you’ed like to see in our district, please let me know! I love to hear from residents about issues big and small.
PUBLIC MEETINGS
(Unfortunately the Coburg public hearing was left of my Friday update. I apologize for the oversight.)
Case 19858 Amendments to the Halifax Municipal Planning Strategy and Peninsula Land Use By-Law for 6345 Coburg Road, Halifax
Tuesday January 24, 6pm | Halifax City Hall
That Halifax Regional Council approve the proposed amendments to the Halifax Municipal Planning Strategy (MPS) and Halifax Peninsula Land Use By-Law (LUB), as set out in attachments A and B of the staff report dated November 1, 2016, to enable a multi-unit residential building at 6345 Coburg Road, Halifax. http://www.halifax.ca/council/agendasc/documents/170124ca111.pdf
Halifax Regional Council Meeting
Tuesday, January 24, 2017 10am | City Hall, Halifax Council Chambers
The next meeting of Halifax Regional Council will take place on Tuesday, January 24th at 10am in Halifax Council Chambers at City Hall. Council agenda and reports are available by noon on the Friday prior to the council meeting, and can be found by visiting http://www.halifax.ca/council/agendasc/cagenda.php
South Park Bike Lane Engagement
Tuesday, January 31, 2017, 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm | RBC Room, Halifax Central Library
Planning is underway to improve the comfort, safety and continuity of the South Park Street bike lanes. This planning process includes studying how to extend the bike lanes southward on South Park Street to Inglis Street and is also now considering parking-protected bike lanes following strong support for this type of facility during the first round of public engagement in April 2016. This meeting is to provide an update on the project and gather feedback on the latest design options. There will also be information and a survey posted on the Shape Your City website.
COMMUNITY EVENTS
Peace Forum – Celebrating Black Nova Scotian Youth Leadership in Building Peace
Saturday, January 21, 2017 2-4pm | Halifax Central Library
The Michaëlle Jean Foundation will be hosting their first major Peace Forum in Halifax focusing on the issues of gun violence and the over representation of African Nova Scotians incarcerated in the Province. The Peace Forum will also pay tribute to young Black Nova Scotian changemakers striving to bring peace to Nova Scotia and beyond. The Peace Forum is part of the Justice, Arts and Youth in Action Initiative, which is canvassing the province to gather suggestions for an action plan that will support young artists seeking to promote peace and justice in their communities. Please RSVP at [email protected] before 6pm on January 18, 2017 or register via the link below:
http://app.simplycast.ca/?q=lp%2Fshow&lp=wPCKVydOfXEoovSd. For more information, visit https://www.facebook.com/events/369388966758166/
Public Lecture: Beyond Colonialism? Libraries for a Canada We Don’t Yet Know
Monday, January 23, 2017 4-6pm | Halifax Central Library
All are welcome to attend the 2017 Dalhousie-Horrocks National Leadership Lecture, co-sponsored by Halifax Public Libraries. The event will feature a lecture by Monique Woroniak (Winnipeg Public library), presentation of the Dalhousie-Horrocks award, and a reception with light refreshments taking place in Paul O’Reagan Hall. This is a free event and is open to the public. For more information, visit https://www.facebook.com/events/388737764804645/
Screenagers Screening
Wednesday, January 25th, 2017 7pm | Sacred Heart Little Theatre
Screenagers is a film about the impact of the digital age on children and how to help families to feel more confident and better equipped to minimize harmful effects and find balance around screen time. This is a community service event designed to promote awareness and family discussion about digital use issues. Tickets are $10 and can be purchased in the office at Gorsebrook Junior High or at [email protected] and will be available at the door. All are welcome to attend.
Immigration options for International Students Workshop
Monday, January 30, 2017 5-6pm | International Centre at Dalhousie University
This monthly immigration workshop focuses on immigration pathway programs for international students such as the federal Express Entry Program and the Nova Scotia Nominee Program. The Q&A session will address issues in the temporary resident programs such as visitor visas, and study and work permits in Canada. For more information, visit https://www.dal.ca/campus_life/international-centre.html
HELP AND MORE INFO:
Call my office
Call our office for assistance with your municipal issues. Contact my Constituency Coordinator Melody Campbell by phone 902-490-2012 or email [email protected] or contact me directly. The best way to reach me is via email at my city email – [email protected] or you can call my direct line at 902-490-8462.
311 – HRM’s Call Centre
HRM’s call centre is open 7 days/week from 7 am to 11 pm to respond to routine inquiries and complaints from HRM residents. Please use this service since it helps HRM keep track of issues that are of concern for residents (missed solid waste pickup, sidewalks not cleared, transit info or complaints, etc.) For more information please visit http://www.halifax.ca/311/
Regional Council Reports and Agendas
If you want to read reports coming to Regional Council (posted mid-day Friday prior to the Tuesday meeting) or to check the agenda please go to: http://www.halifax.ca/council/agendasc/cagenda.php
Halifax and West Community Council Reports and Agendas
Community Council has now decided to meet on Tuesday evenings that alternate with Regional Council. Please check the webpage here for agendas (usually available a week before the meeting), locations and times. http://www.halifax.ca/commcoun/west/index.php
District 7&8 Planning Advisory Council Reports and Agendas
The District 7&8 Planning Advisory Committee meets once a month to discuss and provide feedback to council on planning proposals for the two districts. Please check the webpage for agendas (usually available a week before the meeting), locations and times: http://www.halifax.ca/boardscom/D78PAC/index.phpThe Atlanta skyline AP Photo/David Goldman Atlanta, Ga.'s underground commercial sex economy is unusually large, with a lucrative market for street prostitution, according to a new study on sex trafficking and sex work in U.S. cities.
Of 7 major cities profiled by The Urban Institute, only Atlanta and Seattle saw their illegal sex trade grow between 2003 and 2007. The study estimated Atlanta's market was $290 million by 2007, compared to just $103 million for Washington, D.C.
Since 2005, Atlanta's pimps have been pulling in an average of $33,000 a week, compared to about $12,000 a week in Dallas and about $11,000 in San Diego.
Here's a breakdown of income for various cities from the report:
Urban Institute
Even though more people are posting online prostitution ads these days, the report found Atlanta still has a "very high and extremely profitable" demand for street prostitution. This demand could come from out of town or the suburbs, as Atlanta has major highways running through it, including I-75, I-85, and I-285.
The problem seems to be particularly bad along "densely urban areas" like Fulton Industrial Boulevard, the study found.
"You've got your major rappers from Atlanta come down to Fulton Industrial and shoot videos in the neighborhoods, on the streets, with the girls, and with the pimps and then pay $1,000 for the girls to come in and have sex with them," one unnamed law enforcement was quoted in the study as saying.
Not everybody pays as much as "rappers from Atlanta," though. Here's more information from the study on pricing structures for street-level and online prostitution:
The typical pricing structure on the street is $50 to $100 for oral sex and $75 to $150 for "full service." However, drug-addicted sex workers charge as little as $10 for oral sex and $50 for "full service." Online, sex workers charge from $60 to $100 for 15 minutes and from $250 to $300 per hour for dates.
One law enforcement officer noted, "The younger the girl, the higher the price—so you could have a girl at 18 that's going to charge $450 an hour or $350 an hour and that's kind of funny, as you see them get older into their 30s, unless they have a specialty, you're going to see them at maybe $150 an hour or something like that."
In Dallas, by contrast, prostitutes start at roughly $60 for oral sex, even though their pimps don't bring in nearly as much money as Atlanta pimps do. This raises the possibility that Atlanta pimps have more prostitutes working for them so they can make a high weekly wage.The Banff Mountain Photography Competition was recently judged. Or not. I’m not entirely sure.
You see, the judges decided that no entries, from the five hundred or so submitted, were worthy of an award.
None.
And all entries were apparently so dire that not even a runner-up award could be made.
What’s more, two of the judges Conrad Habing and Craig Richards have defended their decision to not award a winner in an article in The Globe and Mail rather provocatively titled ‘Humanity takes millions of photos every day. Why are most so forgettable?’ written by another of their Banff competition judging colleagues, adjudicator Ian Brown, who comments:
This spring, I was an adjudicator of the 2013 Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival photography competition. This week, my three fellow judges – all professional photographers and curators – and I announced that we couldn’t find a winner, and won’t be awarding a prize for the first time in 18 years. There isn’t even a runner-up…. We saw more than 500 entries. Not one of them did the job. The interesting question is why. Human beings have taken an estimated 3.5 trillion photographs since the first snapshot, of a Paris street, appeared in 1838. As many as 20 per cent were uploaded in the past two years. Why are most of them so forgettable? Even the entries that were remotely in the neighbourhood of telling a story – and most were hopelessly lost – were edited incomprehensibly. (Not experimentally. Incomprehensibly.) In other words, the best photographic sequences taken by amateur and professional wilderness photographers alike had no perceptible story, and therefore no significance.
I’ve not seen any of the entrants work so I cant possibly comment on the standard, and I have never heard of the judges before so can’t comment on their ability to judge, nor their ability as actual artists or photographers to practice their craft.
However what I can do is read the competition rules of entry (which I assume is in fact a contract) where it states that ‘Grand Prize – C$3,000 will be awarded to the winner of the best overall photographic essay.’ Note the use of the words ‘will‘ and ‘best overall‘ in a document that has some form of ‘contractual’ status.
Now maybe I’m stupid, but even assuming they were ALL bad, which I doubt, there MUST have been one entry that was better than the others. Surely? And upon which the accolade of winner could have been bestowed?
So, having decided to not award a prize, as the rules of entry (the contract) states they will do, and for which they accepted a $10 entry fee (x around 500 entries is…well work it out) will they now refund the entrants $10 entry fee as they have in fact failed to meet their contractual obligation to entrants? And if they are not offering a refund, why not?
Well known UK mountain photographer Henry Iddon is scathing in his comments about Ian Brown’s article:
HenryIddon 4:56 AM on June 25, 2013 This is one of the most offensive articles I have ever read by a judge of any creative competition, it is disrespectful to both the event organisers and the participants. And shows an arrogance beyond belief on the part of the judges. It would have been perfectly reasonable to select one winner from 500 entries – the best of a bad bunch – shall we say and then make a reasoned comment on the standard of this years entries. As I have seen happen at other photography and film / doco festival awards. While such competitions undoubtedly invite a broad range of entries across a range of abilities I think it safe to assume that there was a percentage of entries submitted by those with significant track records in photography, both commercially and within arts practice. There is no doubt in my mind that there would have been submissions made by those who have lectured at university level and with post graduate ‘arts’ based qualifications. And that have exhibited widely in major galleries. The judges seemed to have approached the whole process as though doing a critique of undergraduate photography students work. He also appears to suggest that all entries were taken using digital capture. How can he be certain that entries were not scanned versions of colour hand prints taken on large format – 5×4 or 108? The award was for a photo essay and I quote the entry guidelines: *”A photo essay (or photographic essay) is a set or series of photographs that are intended to tell a story or evoke emotions in the viewer. Photo essays can be sequential in nature, intended to be viewed in a particular order, or they may consist of non ordered photographs which may be viewed all at once or in an order chosen by the viewer to reveal their character and dynamics.” Mr Brown wants a story – the guidelines (terms of reference for entrants and judges) suggest the images can either tell a story OR evoke emotions in the viewer. The guidelines also state the images may be sequential in nature OR consist of non ordered photographs which may be viewed all at once or in an order chosen by the viewer to reveal their character and dynamics. I appreciate judges bring their own personal histories and opinions when viewing images ( judging by its nature is subjective) but is the most important thing not to always refer back to the competitions rules and intentions, guidelines (terms of reference) and above all celebrate the efforts of the entrants whatever the standard in a given years.
Henry did also make his feelings clear to the organizers and received a reply from Christine Thél
Dear Henry,
This announcement of the results of the 2013 Banff Mountain Photography Competition is a very difficult one for us. Our desire to showcase the best in mountain-themed photographic essays means just that – we aim to recognize the best stories told through still images.
This year our jury members all agreed that although this year’s competition was studded with brilliant images, they were unable to choose a photo essay which met their expectations of an award-winning photo essay, so they have chosen not to award a winner.
The jurors were seeking a sequence of images that convey a compelling story or message – with each image strong enough to stand on its own while conveying a greater narrative when viewed in sequence. They believe a story told in pictures needs to have something at stake emotionally, and is more than simply a series of pictures that are brought together by a theme or idea.
The jury saw many groups of photographs that conveyed wilderness and wildlife themes, but fell short of conveying a larger vision or story. The jury believed that key elements of emotion or narrative arc were missing in the editing process, including critical consideration of how one photograph links to the next. Like any well-written story, photo essays require planning, structure, and editing.
Please don’t be disheartened, the jury emphasized how many stunning images they viewed and feel if photographers are allowed ample time to plan, the competition in its current format will succeed in the future. In fact, we’ll be posting the 2014 guidelines shortly.
Our independent jury was unanimous in its decision. Of the four jury members, three are professional photographers and educators, and the fourth is a well-respected journalist.
With kind regards,
Christine
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Christine Thél
Festival Coordinator
Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival, Film & Media
The Banff Centre
tel: 403 762 6347
The entry form helpfully states for the guidance of entrants:
Not adhering to the guidelines may disqualify your entry
I wonder does this apply also to the judges? They appear to have strayed from their contractual remit to actually make an award. They were there to reward the best ‘overall’, whatever form that took, and they have failed to do so.
Did the judges receive any financial reward, or ‘expenses’ for carrying out their duties? Or did they refuse any payment as they could not fulfill their contractual obligation to make an award?
Me? Putting aside for a moment the merit of the work submitted and the ability of the judges, I’m curious about the dangerous precedent this sets. Does the Banff Festival really think that it’s acceptable to set up a photographic competition with a significant cash prize (C$3,000), state that an award WILL be made to the best ‘overall’ entrant, attract a considerable number of paying participants, then decide they are all rubbish, make no award, and keep the $3k and the entry fees?
I don’t think that’s morally acceptable, and I’m pretty certain it’s not legally acceptable either. But take that opinion at face value because I’m no lawyer. However if I had entered this competition and the organizers refused to refund my entry fee I’d certainly be consulting a lawyer for a considered opinion, and advice on a way to retrieve my $10.
Maybe the organizers will confirm if they are, or are not refunding all entry fees? Or perhaps offer other comments to justify their actions? I’ll gladly publish their response.
Update June 25th: Banff respond. Press release here.
Update June 26th: various of the judges say they may be willing to comment on/discuss their decisions. Ian Brown is on vacation but says he will respond when he returns.
Here’s a few questions they might like to respond to, but I’ll put my interest in all of this in context. I was born in a mountain town, earned a proportion of my living through working in and around mountain areas (and continue to do so) and have a long personal and family connection with mountains and photography going back over 150 years. I’ve seen the Banff Festival work in traveling exhibitions in my home town in Scotland, and it is aspirational stuff. I’ve considered entering the photography competition (but have not so far) but am always interested in the results as this is a very prestigious event attracting a very very high calibre of entries, and it would be fair to say this comes from some of the best practitioners in this field in the world.
I’m also interested in the profile of ‘competitions’ in this industry and the ways they can shape and influence the profession. As a teacher of photography I’m aware of the (hugely positive) role competitions such as this can play in attracting and enthusing young and aspiring photographers, and finally, I’m interested in fairness and transparency in such events because I see too much of the opposite in many of them.
But my bottom line is, you cannot offer a to run a competition, promise a major cash award, then announce in effect that ‘nah you’re all rubbish, we’re keeping your entry fees and the award, oh and we’ll also publicly humiliate you all in print in a national newspaper and generate advertising revenue off the back of the ‘controversy’. That sets a new low in the outdoor and mountain photographic industry, and if it went unchallenged would set a unacceptable precedent. In my humble opinion.
So:
1) The competition rules clearly state: “Entries will be judged….and ….C$3,000 will be awarded to the winner of the best overall photographic essay.” It clearly states you “will” make an award and that that award will be to the “best overall” essay. There are no other rules I can find which state that there is some arbitrary external standard against which the submitted work will be compared, and if found to have failed to meet that standard, will be rejected The rules place a clear moral (and I consider legal) obligation upon the judges to consider the entries against each other and determine one as being better than the others. Why did you not do this?
2) As you can see from Henry Iddon’s letter reproduced above (re ‘ordered’ and ‘non-ordered sequences’), your interpretation of the rules seems to differ dramatically from the printed competition rules (the contract). Can you explain why you felt this divergence from your contractual obligation was appropriate?
3) Did you or your colleagues receive any form of financial reward or expenses for being a judge?
4) If yes to point 3, having been ‘contracted’ to be a judge, and in accepting the role tacitly (or in writing?) agreeing to follow the rules of the competition and ‘make an award’, but then not doing so (see point 1 above) will you return any expenses you have claimed from the competition organizers as you have failed to meet your obligations?
5) How do you justify using your confidential access to the judging process to write an exceptionally pejorative and critical article for a newspaper, in which you publicly castigate entrants in what is a very controversial piece, and which no doubt drove many readers to the page thus generating revenue for your paper through advertizing?
6) The Banff Festival has managed to make an award in this particular event every year for 18 years, according to the press reports, and yet this year four judges could not determine that one single entry amidst several hundred others, had more merit and deserved an award. In fact the judges deemed the work so dire that not even a runner-up award could be made. Does this not say more about the limited vision of the current judges than the quality of the entrants? (Or would you have us believe that the previous year’s judges were so limited in their vision that anything that appeared to be in focus was in with a chance?)
7) Did you consider the (legal and moral) implications of adjudicating over an awarding process which demanded payment to enter (generating a significant amount of revenue for the organizer) and which placed a clear contractual obligation upon you to make an award, and then you refuse to award the C$3000 prize?
8) This might come across as semantics but whether you like it or not provision of written guidelines & obligations (the rules) in return for the acceptance of money (the entry fee) constitutes a contract. Entrants are bound by this, and it is clearly stated in the competition entry in the phrase “Not adhering to the guidelines may disqualify your entry”. The judges are also bound by this contract. As far as I can see the only people here who have clearly NOT met their contractual obligation are the judges. Do you not think it would be fair to declare your role untenable, step down and have someone else come in, judge the work and actually fulfil the organizer’s contractual obligation to declare a winner?Blog
Announcing NYC3 With IPv6 Support
NYC3 is live! To keep up with the high demand for capacity on the East Coast, we've opened a new datacenter location in New York: NYC3. This will be the first US location with IPv6 support, which can be enabled during Droplet creation or added to existing Droplets. Private networking is also available in NYC3.
Ever since the launch of our new API, power users have been spinning up a rainstorm of Droplets. Like a NY apartment, space was getting tight on our servers, so we've expanded our East Coast presence to ensure server capacity for all users in the region.
Below are DO articles that will help you get started with IPv6 on your Droplets:
You can also navigate the IPv6 tag for more IPv6 articles and questions in our communityImage: Rainforest Action Network/Flickr
One of the more complex and depressing legal sagas of the last several decades was dealt a severe blow Monday: A US appeals court ruled that Chevron will not have to pay a group of indigenous Ecuadorians $9.5 billion for environmental destruction related to oil drilling in the Lago Agrio area of the Amazon rainforest.
The reasons for this ruling are myriad: Texaco (now owned by Chevron) was originally released from litigation by the Ecuadorian government after the company paid $40 million in the 1990s to clean oil waste pits in the area. Nonetheless, in 2011, an Ecuadorian court ordered the company to pay $9.5 billion in damages. Because Chevron has no assets in Ecuador, the company refused to pay. The original plaintiffs sued in the US, lost, and appealed. The company just prevailed after the US Court of Appeals in New York ruled that the plaintiffs won their case in Ecuador using bribery and fraud.
Though the Ecuadorians will take their case to Canada, the appeals court decision is damning; Bloomberg Businessweek noted that "Chevron couldn't have won a more emphatic victory."
Oil communities made by clearcutting the jungle have sprung up all over the Ecuadorian Amazon. Image: Jason Koebler
Over the course of these 20 years of environmental litigation, Steven Donziger, the attorney for the plaintiffs, was found by the court to have fabricated certain aspects of an environmental report presented to an Ecuadorian judge, bribed that judge, and also ghostwrote part of his ruling.
Without denying environmental destruction occurred, the appeals court judges noted in their decision that "even innocent clients may not benefit from the fraud of their attorney."
The Wall Street Journal's editorial board wrote that "one of the most egregious legal frauds in history may finally be over" and "Chevron's vindication looks to be final." Legal scholars are spiking the football on Donziger, who is accused of trying to extract money from a wealthy American company.
Bad and corrupt lawyering, however, doesn't change the truth of the matter: Lago Agrio and the people who live there are still fucked. Corporate and government interests have yet again prevailed at the expense of the most important environmental region in the world. There's still blood on the hands of the companies that extracted oil in the region and the oil state of Ecuador. The Lago Agrio region of the Ecuadorian Amazon is still an unmitigated environmental disaster.
Companies and governments win, the environment and the native people lose.
In areas damaged by oil, indigenous people have set up artificial ponds and stocked them with fish, because ones living in the river are too toxic to eat. Image: Jason Koebler
The people living in Lago Agrio still wash their clothes and their bodies in rivers that run black with oil. Populations of people who once lived off the land now fish from artificial ponds built because the fish still living in the river are unsafe to eat. They drink bottled water because the river water will give them cancer. There is an increased rate of various types of cancer and birth defects in the Lago Agrio region.
Large swaths of the Amazon rainforest have been clearcut, roads have been built to move machinery and truck out oil. I spent a week in the region in 2013—five days on a nature preserve set up by the Universidad San Francisco de Quito, and a few days at a settlement set up for indigenous people by Ecuadorian oil interests. Pictures don't do the environmental devastation justice. These words don't do it justice.
No sum of money will fix what's been done to Lago Agrio
On the preserve, the sounds of the rainforest keep you up at night—monkeys and frogs and insects. World renowned botanists and entomologists wander the jungle and find plants and insects unknown to science at an alarming rate. You look when you walk, because you don't want to step on a poisonous spider or a venomous snake or an gigantic insect that looks unlike anything you've ever seen before. Seeing a jaguar isn't out of the question, because more jaguars live there than anywhere else.
Where there is oil exploitation, there are no animals. There are few trees. You walk on grass like you're in a suburban park. Instead of looking down at your feet, you look off into the distance for hundreds of feet because there's nothing blocking your way, no danger or majesty below. The sounds you hear are machinery.
The full story is more complex than "Chevron ruined the Amazon." Much of the environmental devastation was caused by Ecuadorian government-owned oil companies after Texaco had already left. There is quite literally an established set of steps international corporations and governments take to exploit the lands of indigenous peoples around the world. What happened in Lago Agrio is a function of a developing nation being forced to choose between environmental and indigenous community protection and stimulating its economy. It's a function of globalization and fossil fuel reliance around the world.
What's clear, if you go to the damaged region, is that $9.5 billion dollars won't fix this. No sum of money will fix what's been done to Lago Agrio. All we can do is hope to learn from it. In April, the first of 200 new oil wells went into operation in nearby Yasuni, which had previously been the most pristine part of the Amazon in the most biodiverse part of the world.Martin Scorsese has revealed that he is developing a TV series based on his 10 times Oscar-nominated film Gangs of New York.
The 70-year-old director is working with entertainment company Miramax on the project, which will be based on the activities of organised gangs in America at the turn of the century.
Gangs of New York was released in 2002 and starred Leonardo Di Caprio and Daniel Day-Lewis, who was nominated for an Oscar for best actor for his performance as Bill 'The Butcher' Cutting, a gangster. The film was praised for its accurate depiction of gang rivalries in mid-19th century Manhattan and was also put out by Miramax.
Scorsese said that there were characters and stories from the era which the film "could not fully explore" and that a television series would allow "the time and creative freedom to bring this colourful world to life."
The TV series will look at organised crime in Chicago and New Orleans as well as New York. Scorsese is no stranger to period TV drama: he was the executive producer of Boardwalk Empire, the American series which follows the life of a gangster and politician in Atlantic City during the prohibition.
The film Gangs of New York
Follow Telegraph TV & Radio on TwitterAbusive soldiers evade justice under the aegis of the slow procedures, as well as some creative excuses.
By Yossi Gurvitz for Yesh Din
Several weeks ago, Yesh Din attorney Emily Schaeffer received responses from the Military Advocate for Operational Affairs Unit (MAOA) regarding two appeals she submitted years ago on behalf of a Palestinian complainant, Ayman Abd al-Maqtsur Tabieh. In both cases, surprise surprise, the appeals were rejected. Both cases merit discussion, as they shed light on the way abusive soldiers evade punishment.
The first incident took place on November 3, 2008, when Tabieh reached the Azoun Atma checkpoint, where he was attacked by a group of soldiers, led – according to him by a sergeant first class, Shay. The soldiers handcuffed him, blindfolded him with a gun cloth, and kept beating him. Tabieh’s testimony about the assault was corroborated by surprising supporting testimony, from a soldier named Sivan, who also testified about the soldiers attacking a Palestinian.
Despite that, the MAOA decided not to prosecute Shay. The Military Police Criminal Investigations Division’s (MPCID) investigation was completed on August 17, 2009; the prosecution closed the case on April 19, 2010. We asked for the investigative material in order to appeal the decision, which we did not receive until May 24, 2011. In other words, from the date the case was closed by the prosecution to the time we received the case file, more than a year had passed – a year in which the clock kept ticking. Studying the investigative material took some time, and we appealed in July 2011, i.e. almost three years after the incident. Three weeks ago, that is two years and nine months after the appeal, we received a response from the prosecution.
So why wasn’t Shay prosecuted? First, there was the somewhat audacious claim that Tabieh failed to identify his attackers – even though he did not even receive a proper lineup, but only a photo lineup, and also despite the prosecution itself logically noting that since the soldiers blindfolded him, he may have found it somewhat difficult to identify them. The prosecution found, however, that Shay probably broke the law, first by unnecessarily blindfolding Tabieh and secondly by holding him in custody far longer than permitted. It should be further noted that even though Shay was the checkpoint commander, and therefore responsible for the soldiers under him, and even though the prosecution agreed someone in the checkpoint assaulted Tabieh, it refused to prosecute Shay due to his command responsibility. We note that the Turkel Commission Report, as well as Yesh Din’s own Lacuna report, call upon the IDF to impose command responsibility on its troops.
So why wasn’t Shay prosecuted? Well, said the prosecution, he is already out of the reach of the Military Justice Act. The Act applies for one year after the soldier is discharged. The incident took place in November 2008; the prosecution needed 18 months to initially close it and another four years to finally close it. This behavior was enough to ensure that Shay would not face trial.
The second incident took place six months later. On April 26, 2009, Tabieh arrived with his wife and baby boy to a checkpoint near Qalqiliya. There he was physically assaulted by a soldier named Netanel, and detained for several hours. Tabieh later made a formal complaint to the MPCID against both Netanel and the checkpoint commander, an officer named Kfir. Suspiciously, the detainment was missing from the checkpoint’s operational log. Another officer, also named Kfir, a DCL (District Coordination and Liaison) officer, arrived shortly after the incident at the checkpoint; at first the soldiers told him it was the police who decided to detain Tabieh, but later he was told by the soldiers that Tabieh was detained for “talking back and threatening to make complaints about them.” Surprisingly, the military prosecution agreed that that sounded like sufficient cause for detention.
The case against Netanel was closed because, according to the prosecution, even though the soldiers at the checkpoint claimed they didn’t remember the incident at all, they were adamant that it would have been inconceivable for Netanel to beat up Tabieh. The presence of two Palestinian witnesses – the complainant and his wife – is of no consequence, since they were the victims; and MPCID also thought their testimonies contained inconsistencies. Even without such a claim, our experience shows that MPCID grants excessive importance to the testimonies of soldiers when they contradict the testimonies of Palestinians. Be that as it may, the prosecution summed contentedly, Netanel and Kfir both were no longer under the jurisdiction of the Military Justice Law.
Tabieh’s complaint was made immediately after the incident. The prosecution closed the case on June 20, 2011, more than two years after the incident. Here, too, MPCID took its sweet time allowing us to photocopy the investigative material; the appeal was submitted in July 2012, and was rejected three weeks ago. The Military Justice Act is enforced on a soldier for only one year after his discharge; when the prosecution drags its feet this way, it allows soldiers, time after time, to avoid justice.
The checkpoints, as noted by author David Grossman in as early as 1987, are a flashpoint between the army and the Palestinians. During the Second Intifada and since, the army has spoken of the “strategic corporal,” the soldier standing at a checkpoint whose careless decision could ignite the region. One might have expected, then, that the prosecution and MPCID would act speedily and with resolve when a complaint is made about an incident at a checkpoint; but as we see time after time, this isn’t the case. Time after time, investigative negligence and compulsive procrastination allow soldiers to avoid facing trial – most Palestinians don’t even bother filing formal complaints.
When you add to that the fact that MPCID is not |
anything high level. With an immutable ledger, that’s impossible to fake. You’re either in the system for 12 months, or you’re not.
Administrators can also create immutable log files of activity, so they can actually see what happened in their systems. In a blockchain word, it would be a lot more difficult to cover your tracks.
With the recent backlogs and slow transaction times on the bitcoin blockchain is it not a problem to add more applications on it?
Factom places one 32 byte anchor into Bitcoin every 10 minutes. So it has a very very very small footprint in Bitcoin. Factom allows application data to move OFF bitcoin and help increase the viability of the network.
Would Ethereum smart contracts not be a fitting solution to many of these industries?
Factom will also be placing these anchors into Ethereum so developers will be able to build solutions with a combination of audit trails and smart contracts. Smart contracts need a data source to execute against – so it’s a natural fit.
Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin’s fund Fenbushi was an early investor in Factom.Tony Abbott has been confronted over gay marriage with MPs defying his wishes and bringing on a debate in the party room on Tuesday morning.
The weekly meeting, which was supposed to focus on the government's climate change policy, has discussed whether Liberal MPs should be allowed a conscience vote on the issue.
Gay marriage proponent Warren Entsch instigated the discussion. There was no resolution. Sky News reported however there would be further debate at a later date.
Warren Entsch places a flower at the seat of the late Don Randall member for Canning at Parliament House in Canberra on Monday. Andrew Meares
Mr Entsch plans to introduce a private members bill next week, which will be co-sponsored by Labor. Presently, Liberal MPs are bound to vote against gay marriage.
Mr Entsch, who met Mr Abbott on Monday, intends to lodge notice of the bill later Tuesday. A Liberal-dominated committee which selects private members bill for debate in the House of Representatives must still give it approval.Police are investigating the deaths of two teenagers at the T in the Park music festival in Perthshire.
Scotland’s biggest music event got under way on Friday with the news that a male and female had died.
The deaths are being treated separately and are at this stage unexplained, Police Scotland said.
Reports suggest the deaths are drug-related, but this has not been confirmed by police.
The festival’s official Twitter account has issued a warning to festival goers regarding drugs.
It read:
Festival director Geoff Ellis said: “We are shocked and saddened by today’s news and our thoughts are with the families and friends at this time.
“We are offering our full support and assistance.”
T in the Park
Campers began arriving on Thursday for the three-day event at Strathallan Castle, which will see The Stone Roses headline on Friday evening.
More than 80,000 revellers are expected over the weekend with a line-up which also includes Calvin Harris and Red Hot Chili Peppers.
T in the Park is being staged at Strathallan for the second time after moving from Balado in Kinross-shire in 2015.
Last year, a 36-year-old man from the north of England was found dead at the campsite. There were no suspicious circumstances.
Drugs amnesty bins at #TITP entrances – dispose of any illegal substances without risk of prosecution or exclusion #FestivalSafety — Police Scotland (@policescotland) July 8, 2016
A police statement said: “Police Scotland can confirm we are investigating reports of the death of a female and the separate death of a male at T in the Park.
“The deaths are unexplained at this time and work is ongoing to establish the exact circumstances surrounding both.”
Liz Smith, Scottish Conservative MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, said: “This is tragic news and I am sure I echo the sentiments of everyone when we send condolences to the families involved and, indeed, to the organisers of T in the Park who have worked hard this year to overcome last year’s concerns about public safety.
“Clearly, an investigation now has to take place and I hope this will be undertaken as quickly as possible. It is essential that police establish exactly what happened and why.”A Baltimore City Public Schools teacher faces second-degree rape and other related charges after allegedly having sex with a 15-year-old student who was sent by her mother to his home in Parkville for help with a school assignment, according to Baltimore County Police.
Police said Friday that Taki Kentae Lewis, 39, of the 9500 block of Orbitan Court — a teacher at National Academy Foundation in East Baltimore — supplied the girl with alcohol and then had sex with her multiple times at his home on Monday while she was "incapacitated and unable to fend off" his actions.
About 3 p.m. Tuesday, police responded to an area hospital, where the victim — who is not a student at National Academy Foundation, according to school officials — was being examined. She was later interviewed about the incident.
Lewis is charged with second-degree rape, sexual abuse of a minor and other related charges. He is being held on $400,000 bail, police said.
In a statement Friday, Baltimore City Public Schools said Lewis was placed on administrative leave immediately after the system learned of the charges on Tuesday.
"City Schools will closely monitor this matter and will take further prompt action as appropriate," the system said.
According to city school salary records, Lewis makes $59,904 a year as a secondary teacher.
Police said they have not identified any other victims, but the incident remains under investigation by the Baltimore County Crimes Against Children Unit. Anyone with information to share with police is asked to call 410-307-2020.
[email protected]
twitter.com/rectorsunIran Offers A Rare Peek At An Underground 'Missile City'
Enlarge this image toggle caption Iranian Defense Ministry via AP Iranian Defense Ministry via AP
At a time when regional tensions are running hot, Iran has taken the unusual step of displaying its missiles that are stored in a vast underground complex.
The footage on Iranian television this week shows the speaker of Iran's Parliament, Ali Larijani, visiting the subterranean compound. There appear to be long-range ballistic missiles, which United Nations experts say are capable of carrying nuclear warheads. The location of the site was not disclosed.
Iran's nuclear deal with six world powers, reached last July, is still in its early stages, but appears to be on track so far. Iran could soon meet a number of key obligations and sanctions could be lifted soon, a milestone known as "implementation day."
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Thursday that there have been "very significant results," citing Iran's shipment of its enriched uranium to Russia, among other moves. "We are days away from implementation if all goes well," Kerry said.
However, Iran has also conducted two ballistic missile tests in recent months, saying this is outside the scope of the nuclear deal.
The U.N. announced that this violated a separate U.N. Security Council resolution and Washington said it was preparing new sanctions.
Iran has responded with defiance.
President Hassan Rouhani, a supporter of the nuclear deal, ordered the military to accelerate planning for more missile production. And Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) invited the Iranian media to see one of its underground "missile cities."
Iranian television on Tuesday broadcast footage of an underground missile complex that appeared to show long-range ballistic missiles. The site's location was not disclosed. YouTube
Western and regional concerns over Iran's missile program were raised frequently by critics of last summer's nuclear agreement between Iran and world powers that included the U.S., Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China.
One recurring question is whether the U.N. or the world powers might hesitate to sanction Iran for missile violations out of fear of endangering the nuclear deal?
According to a U.N. panel of experts, a violation took place in October, and while Washington says new sanctions are under review, it's not clear when or if they will be announced.
Iran's defiant stance on the missile program comes as it races to implement the nuclear deal in order to gain the lifting of financial and banking sanctions and to receive billions of dollars in frozen assets from overseas accounts.
In another development, Iran and Saudi Arabia have cut diplomatic relations and have been trading recriminations in recent days. Saudi Arabia executed a prominent Shiite cleric on Saturday on terrorism charges. In Iran, which regards itself as the defender of Shiites everywhere, a mob ransacked and set alight the Saudi embassy and a consulate.
However, Iran's Rouhani, seen as a pragmatist, has condemned the ransacking of diplomatic missions. Senior military and police officials in Iran have also distanced themselves from such behavior.
Vali Nasr, dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, told NPR that Shiite Iran likes to push its influence in the region but is wary of out-and-out sectarian conflict with Sunni Muslim powers such as Saudi Arabia.
"Iran doesn't benefit, necessarily, from a sectarian confrontation in the region because its sect of Islam is the minority sect," Nasr says.
"(Iran) likes to gain influence on the back of secular issues like opposition to Israel or opposition to the U.S. It is the Saudis who see emphasizing Sunni identity as a way of limiting Iran's ability to sway the Arab population in the region," he adds.SARATOGA — His sentence two years ago for a notorious 2009 hit-and run, which left a bicyclist permanently disabled and involved a cover-up, took away his driver’s license permanently.
But soon after Robert Schiro got out of prison in January, the documented alcoholic and repeat DUI offender was reportedly seen at local watering holes and driving around town. It stirred confusion and frustration among residents and business owners alike as he carried on and avoided police attention.
That was until one evening last month, when authorities say Schiro drank to the point of falling over at a downtown Saratoga bar, ignored pleas for him to take a cab and got into his SUV. He smashed into a parked vehicle on his way out, then rammed through the wrought-iron gate at his own house, leaving the license plate entangled in the remnants of the felled barrier.
Deputies found his white Cadillac Escalade a few yards away, tires flattened. When Schiro came out front to meet them, he blamed his girlfriend for the wreck, according to a police report. When he was confronted with witness accounts that it was him, he changed his attitude.
“Dammit, you got me,” he said, according to the report.
On Tuesday, the 74-year-old businessman was back in court then to answer for the June 25 episode that resulted in misdemeanor charges of DUI, hit-and-run and driving without a license. After the brief hearing in front of Judge David A. Cena, Schiro was sent back to the Santa Clara County jail, where he is expected to stay at least until a bail hearing at the end of the month.
He also faces legal consequences because his arrest violates the probation he agreed to when he was released halfway through a three-year prison term.
It’s been a long, frustrating road for the law enforcement system and Schiro: At the time of the 2009 hit-and-run, he was already on probation for an earlier DUI conviction. At the end of his trial in 2012, the judge denounced him for his lack of remorse and denial of responsibility.
On Tuesday, the victim in the hit-and-run case, 29-year-old Ashley Nelson, was stunned at the idea that Schiro had returned to form.
“I thought prison would help him, but he’s back out and doing it again,” Nelson said after Schiro’s court appearance Tuesday. “He’s been laughing at the court system. Something needs to happen, and hopefully it starts to change with this.”
Neither Schiro’s attorney nor the handful of people who showed up to court on his behalf Tuesday would offer comment.
Nelson, a former competitive cyclist, is raising two young children while enduring the effects of the April 19, 2009, crash near Highway 9 and Fruitvale Avenue, which inflicted permanent brain damage, palsy to the left side of her body and significant damage to her vision. Schiro was not immediately suspected because he covered up the crash by hiding his silver BMW for a year, then asking a mechanic to secretly repair the damage from the collision. But that mechanic ended up testifying against him.
She hopes the latest instance with Schiro shines light on the deficiencies that allowed him to get behind the wheel again.
“His weapon of choice is a car, but they can’t take that away from him. They can take away his driving, but he can still access vehicles,” she said. “It’s not about me anymore, it’s about drunk drivers and what our system needs to do. What’s next, a little boy on the street?”
On the evening of June 25, witnesses and the police report contend that he drank heavily in one bar before entering a restaurant where staff recognized him, refused to serve him and started to call for a taxi. But before that call could be made, Schiro reportedly walked out, “stumbling and falling over another car” that wasn’t his before he got into his SUV.
A witness followed after him and yelled at him to stop driving, but he instead literally smashed his way home.
That led to the encounter with deputies out front. As in the 2009 case, he tried to convince deputies that his girlfriend had been driving.
When they reminded him that he was no longer allowed to drive, Schiro reportedly answered, “I’m stupid.”
The report also says Schiro tested their credulity by claiming he had never been arrested before. The deputies then told him about his previous DUI and hit-and-run convictions, which, deputies attest, prompted a response of, “Oh yeah.”
Contact Robert Salonga at 408-920-5002. Follow him at Twitter.com/robertsalonga.Share On more Share On more
Every good desi remembers Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham as an iconic 3.5-hour-long sob-sesh, but you've probably forgotten the details. Now, over a decade later, we figured we'd remind you. Dharma Productions
If you're expecting some hot and sexy action in this film, here's a Karan Johar quote to shatter your expectations: Dharma Productions
K3G opens with a shot of Mr. Yash (Amitabh Bachchan), who is kind of a stuck-up father, and his wife Nandini (Jaya Bachchan). Via Imaan Sheikh / Dharma Productions
This is the story of the Raichand family: Imaan Sheikh / Dharma Productions
We are taken to a boarding school, where the younger Raichand son, Rohan (Hrithik Roshan), is seen winning cricket matches, writing douchebaggy emails to his family in which all he talks about is how good he looks, and missing his brother.
Imaan Sheikh / Dharma Productions
Rohan is planning to go home for Diwali. But before that he decides to meet his "girlfriends", as he calls them. They're his grandmas (weird fam alert). Rohan's Naani is a well-intentioned, albeit sarcastic woman who loves throwing snark at the nice older Daadi.
Imaan Sheikh / Dharma Productions
Naani and Daadi are having a super-secret conversation. They're talking about things that Rohan should never find out. Of course, Rohan is standing right there and now knows everything.
Bollywood rule: When you talk about secrets, you lose your eyesight temporarily. Imaan Sheikh / Dharma Productions
Now that Rohan has found out, the grannies have to tell him everything... We are taken back 10 years to "Raichand House", which is the understatement of the year because this is clearly Hogwarts for desi kids. Look at this fucking palace.
Imaan Sheikh / Dharma Productions Gulshan Grover is probably Snape up in this bitch.
It is Diwali and friends and family have gathered together at Hogwarts House.
Imaan Sheikh / Dharma Productions
That woman stuffing the kid is Dai Jaan AKA "DJ". She takes care of everyone and can hardly wait for Rohan's little heart to succumb to obesity. You heard me correctly: That is Rohan. The green-eyed tall handsome boy with the chiseled jaw and dimpled chin you saw earlier? Yup. Are we being shit with or are we being shit with? Is this an Ekta Kapoor serial? Hell, people have to go through reincarnation or cosmetic surgery to look different in Ekta Kapoor serials too. This one just GREW (or ungrew?) into a fucking gorgeous man. Damn, Bollywood, you trippin'.
Imaan Sheikh / Dharma Productions
Can this happen? If you know someone who performs this miracle, please email me and tell me what I have to do to go from boom-boom-chubby-choom-choom to slender sexy in a matter of years at boarding school. Anyway, at the Diwali, Daddy jee (Yashvardhan) is eyeing his friend's daughter Naina in the most appropriate fashion.
Imaan Sheikh / Dharma Productions Well done, beta, strut it!
Naina is also rich as fuxxx. While celebrations are going on, Rahul returns from London. He shows up in a fucking helicopter because, let's face it, if you had the money you'd also chill in your own fucking copter.
Imaan Sheikh / Dharma Productions LOL C U L8R.
Naina, who we obviously expected to hit on Rahul, is quite straightforward. Unfortunate for her, Rahul is one clever mofo.
Imaan Sheikh / Dharma Productions Dumping People 101 brought to you by Rahul.
The family is very close and they love partaking in normal desi fam banter.
Imaan Sheikh / Dharma Productions
Papa Raichand (who also goes to work in a copter for fuck's sake) tells Rahul that from this day on, Raichand Empire is his…along with a few other things.
Imaan Sheikh / Dharma Productions
Oops! Meet Anjali. She's a humble confectioner's daughter. She lives with her dad and annoying sister in Chandni Chowk. There are other characters in Chandni Chowk too. Everyone is friends with one another.
Imaan Sheikh / Dharma Productions
That is Rukhsar — Anjali's friend and Dai Jaan's daughter. She's getting married soon and these guys are filling in the Muslim void in K3G. Can you guess who Anjali's dad is? What do we want? KANYADAAN! When do we want it? ON A SHUBH MAHOORAT! He cannot wait to marry off his loud-ass girls, but they're not fond of the idea. What if they want to go to school or become doctors? Fuck that, kanyadaan comes first.
Imaan Sheikh / Dharma Productions
Bros before hoes? More like bidaai before bhaai, AMIRITE GUISE? There's a party at the Raichand house for Yashvardhan's sweet 50th, and Bharat Halwai (Anjali's shop) is making mithaai for it. Rukhsar tells Anjali that her fiancé will visit and Anjali's looking forward to meeting him. Meanwhile, Rahul and Pillsbury dough boy show up to check on the order they placed for daddy's 50th birthday bash. Obviously, when they arrive, Anjali is dancing in the street. Please don't be surprised, this is normal for Chandni Chowk — just not real life.
Imaan Sheikh / Dharma Productions
Rahul sees Anjali shakin' what her Baou Ji gave her and he falls in love at first sight. You see, he's from London. This kind of shit is, like, toootally exotic to most people who don't live in the third world. Meanwhile Rohan is busy getting bullied by Anjali's sis Pooja (future Kareena) and her goons.
Imaan Sheikh / Dharma Productions
Raichand Dad's birthday bash is happens and Anjali makes a rather stupid impression by breaking vases and just being loud in general at the party.
Say shawa shawa, mahiya. Tap to play GIF Tap to play GIF Imaan Sheikh / Dharma Productions
Rahul is eyeing Anjali at the party but says nothing. However, after one meeting at a carnival the next day, they open up to each other. Literally.
Imaan Sheikh / Dharma Productions
But the whole thing is actually just a mutual dream.
Imaan Sheikh / Dharma Productions
While Rahul and Anjali are falling in love, Rahul's fate has already been decided by Yashvardhan Raichu.
Imaan Sheikh / Dharma Productions
Not only this, he's also sending Laddoo to boarding school! :( This is part of the strict and crazy Raichand tradition.
Imaan Sheikh / Dharma Productions
Rahul and Anjali bond some more over Rukhsar's wedding.
Imaan Sheikh / Dharma Productions
But right afterwards, Anjali's dad dies. #KanyaDONE Rahul marries her and is therefore kicked out of the house.
Imaan Sheikh / Dharma Productions kbye
Daadi is done telling the story, leaving grown-up Rohan feeling sad. He wants to fix things ASAP.
Imaan Sheikh / Dharma Productions
Rohan finds out through Rukhsar that Rahul and Anjali are in London. So he packs up his bags and goes to find them, telling his family he wants to pursue an MBA. And this is how people found people when we didn't have Facebook, apparently.
Imaan Sheikh / Dharma Productions
Rohan succeeds in finding Rahul and has a plan up his sleeve. What is Rahul's life like, you ask? He's only totally fucking pimpin'. His house game is unstoppable and he lives a luxurious life with his London-born son, his patriotic wife and Dai Jaan.
Imaan Sheikh / Dharma Productions
And with them lives this queen: Anjali's younger sister, ex-chief bully at Chandni Chowk, current chief diva at college, and all-year-round goddess — Pooja! I mean "Poo."
Imaan Sheikh / Dharma Productions 2girls1Poo
Rohan joins Poo's college and ignores her. Poo is a special living organism that lives off attention, which is why the lack thereof bothers her so much that she sings an entire song following him around until he talks to her.
Imaan Sheikh / Dharma Productions
Poo takes Rohan home and he pretends to be her friend's brother "who has arrived from India and is looking for a place to stay". This is when shit gets stupid.
Imaan Sheikh / Dharma Productions
Aaaaand Rahul lets him stay. OK, hold up, Mr Rahul. I have a few questions at this point. You don't recognise your own brother, which is nauseatingly ridiculous, but I'll forgive you because the dude literally had a personality transplant. But then he drops this colossal hint by telling you his name's Yash (your dad's name) and your thick ass still doesn't get it? Without asking where he's from, or even his last name, you let a stranger with bloodshot eyes and a questionably deep gaze just stay at your house? What if this dude shoots heroin? You have a kid. What if he twists your kid's arm? What if he's sleeping with Poo? (ew lol) But anyway, Rohan tries to interact with Rahul and though Rahul sometimes acts suspicious, it isn't entirely hitting him.
Imaan Sheikh / Dharma Productions
Meanwhile, Rohan is also gittin' down with our nasty gurl Poo at the college prom.
Imaan Sheikh / Dharma Productions
Daaaaamn, Laddoo. Your tatti game is on point! Yashvardhan Raichand's birthday arrives and things are no longer fun at the lonely Raichand Hogwarts for Desis. Yash and Nandini are drifting apart.
Imaan Sheikh / Dharma Productions
Dai Jaan and Anjali discover their guest's true identity because they have a brain.
Imaan Sheikh / Dharma Productions
Rahul's son Krish sings the Indian national anthem at his school with a bunch of white kids, for which is he gains mad street cred. Guess who helped him prepare the performance? Rahul finds out now...
Imaan Sheikh / Dharma Productions
Rahul and Rohan finally meet as brothers, however, Rahul still isn't chill with the idea of the family reuniting.
Imaan Sheikh / Dharma Productions
Rahul isn't interested in reunion and even tells Laddoo to leave. Dude invested so much time and money into this, WTF. He even went for a fake MBA and is now in a relationship with Promiscuous Poo, ALL because he wanted a reunion. He isn't going to give up. Pooja suggests that he make the parents and son meet once somehow, somewhere. And Pooja ain't even mad LOL she got a total babe of a boyfriend out of this shit.
Imaan Sheikh / Dharma Productions
When the parents arrive, Rohan tells them to hit the mall, where he has also invited Rahul's family. Of course, all thanks to mum's spidey senses, she finds her way to her forsaken son at the mall.
Imaan Sheikh / Dharma Productions
OBVIOUSLY dad's pissed, what the fuck kind of a beast lures someone in with dreams of gaming nights and then pulls this shit?! He still doesn't want anything to do with Rahul. Plan B has failed too, with a free palm-shaped tattoo on Rohan's face.
Imaan Sheikh / Dharma Productions
Tap to play GIF Tap to play GIF Imaan Sheikh / Dharma Productions Suck on it, dad.
Now I don't know if I'm not sensitive enough to understand this part, but after getting his jaw dislocated by dad's thunderslap, he starts telling him that this was the answer he needed, that this meant he did, in fact, loved Rahul. Please do the math and explain how he got to this conclusion; I don't get it. This entire thing is followed by the death of Daadi, whose last wishes are for the family to be united and for Rahul to be present at her funeral. So Rahul comes to India.
Imaan Sheikh / Dharma Productions
And Nandini finally tell Yashvardhan that he's a massive egotesticle. Spelling error intended.
Imaan Sheikh / Dharma Productions
And Rohan clutches at one last straw to reunite the family.
Imaan Sheikh / Dharma Productions
Plan C works! Hoorah! Guess who is inside the room? Mom's PlayStation (hahaaaa get it?)
Imaan Sheikh / Dharma Productions
And just like that, the Raichands are back together to live happily ever after!
Imaan Sheikh / Dharma Productions
~ Moral of the story ~: To be successful at everything in life, lose weight and get as cute as Rohan.Curiosity bordering on alarm is the only way to describe how people receive this information. “In-teresting,” one acquaintance said. “Did you make this up yourself?” Another friend was more direct: “Is this a mainstream-science thing or more of a fringe treatment?” We are not surprised by these reactions. What we are doing to Sam just seems wrong. The bad eating habits of Americans, especially those of children, are a national health crisis. Yet we are intentionally feeding our son fatty food and little else.
But what we are doing is mainstream science. Elizabeth Thiele, the doctor who prescribed and oversees Sam’s diet, is the head of the pediatric epilepsy program at Massachusetts General Hospital for Children, which is affiliated with Harvard Medical School. In fact, the regimen, known as the ketogenic diet, is now offered at more than 100 hospitals in the United States, Canada and other countries. We’re not opposed to drugs; we tried many. But Sam’s seizures were drug-resistant, and keto, the universal shorthand, often provides seizure control when drugs do not.
The idea of food as medicine has been a controversial topic in this country in recent years. For decades the fight that Robert Atkins and his low-carb acolytes had with mainstream medicine has been as vitriolic as a religious war. There are food cures for everything from cancer and heart disease to cataracts. Doctors talk about diet as a part of basic good health all the time. But talk to them about a diet instead of drugs to stop an infection or treat a tumor and most would be visibly alarmed, and in many cases, they would have good reason to be. A decade ago most doctors held the same contempt for keto. An Atkins-like diet that worked as well — and often better — than antiepileptic drugs? Common sense suggests that’s crazy.
But when it comes to keto’s impact on pediatric seizures, there is wide acceptance. There are about two dozen backward-looking analyses of patient data suggesting keto works, and, more significant, two randomized, controlled studies published in 2008. One of the trials, by researchers at University College London, found that 38 percent of patients on the diet had their seizure frequency reduced more than 50 percent and that 7 percent had their seizure frequency reduced more than 90 percent.
Those numbers may look low, but they’re not. These were patients for whom antiepileptic drugs had already failed. For children with certain kinds of drug-resistant seizures, Thiele’s clinical data show an even better response: 7 out of 10 were able to reduce their count more than 90 percent with the diet. Those statistics are as good as those for any antiepileptic drug ever made. Other pediatric neurologists get similar results. The diet has cut Sam’s seizures by 75 percent.
That is a big deal. There are dozens of antiepileptic drugs on the market, many approved in the last 15 years. The newer ones work with fewer side effects, and that’s important. But the percentage of patients who take drugs and still have seizures hasn’t changed meaningfully in decades. About a third of the nearly 3 million epileptics in the United States have drug-resistant seizures, and doctors estimate that at least 250,000 of those drug-resistant patients are children. Since keto often works when drugs do not, neurologists finally see a way to fix that problem.
There has been so much buzz around keto that neurologists and scientists have begun wondering what else it can do. Could it be used to treat seizures in adults? What about Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, A.L.S. and certain cancers? Tumors typically need glucose to grow. There is very little of this simple sugar in a keto diet, and there have been interesting results with mice that suggest the diet might slow tumor growth. These scientific explorations are in their early stages and may not amount to much. Nonetheless, researchers are taking them seriously.
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Food as part of disease treatment is slowly being accepted by more doctors. Many think it is new. But it is not. During the first half of the 20th century, the impact of food on our bodies was one of the hottest scientific fields. Insulin was discovered in 1921, and its commercial production meant survival for diabetics. In the 1930s, three scientists won a Nobel Prize for discovering that a substance in raw liver cured pernicious anemia, a disease that was almost always fatal. Eight Nobels were awarded just for work related to vitamins. And, it turns out, the ketogenic diet was developed back in the early part of the last century, too, only to disappear from medical literature for two generations.
Our family’s introduction to keto came in February 2009, when we flew to Boston to see Thiele and Heidi Pfeifer, a dietitian who works with her, at Mass General. Joseph Sullivan, our neurologist at the University of California, San Francisco, told us that Thiele and Pfeifer were doing cutting-edge work. And we needed cutting-edge help. We tried 11 seizure drugs, and Sam was hospitalized twice during the previous year. Yet we were still struggling to keep Sam’s seizure count below 10 per hour. Every day, seven days a week, during the 13 hours he was awake, he would have between 100 and 130 seizures.
Nothing did any good. Some drugs, because of the side effects, actually did him harm. One drug gave him hand tremors, another made him a zombie and a third made him hallucinate, thinking that bugs and worms were crawling out of his skin.
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I hit my low point the night we took Sam home from his second hospitalization in six months. He had been seizing almost nonstop for more than a week despite being on four medications. So after keeping him home from school for a week and having daily conversations with Sullivan, we decided to admit him for what Sullivan called a “reset.” The thinking is that, like a computer, doctors can reboot a person’s brain to reduce or stop seizures. They knocked Sam out with Ativan for 15 hours and monitored his brain waves. The following day he was discharged, seizing just as frequently, and, for his bravery, sporting a head-to-toe body rash from a reaction to a medication.
The best way to think about a seizure is to imagine an electrical storm. Our brains and bodies are normally full of electricity. The brain generates biochemical electrical charges, allowing brain cells, nerves and muscles to communicate. A seizure happens when this electricity surges out of control and overloads parts of the brain’s circuitry.
Sam doesn’t have grand mal seizures — the kind you see in movies — but a form of what’s known as petit mal, or absence seizures. Instead of falling down and twitching for minutes, Sam loses consciousness for short 5-to-20-second bursts. Grand mal and many other seizure types — there are dozens — often leave the sufferer exhausted. Sam’s seizures are more like hitting the pause button on a DVD. He stops and stares vacantly. His jaw slackens. And his head and torso lean forward slightly, bobbing rhythmically. Then it’s over, as if it had never happened. He is not disoriented, tired or in pain. If he was in the middle of a sentence, he would finish it. If he was going hand-over-hand on the monkey bars, he would pause without falling. It is not like a faint, when you go limp. Part of his brain has momentarily shut down. Though Sam says that he is sometimes aware when he is having a seizure, typically his only clue is that when he comes to, everything around him has shifted slightly. A lot more happens in 10 seconds than we think.
His seizures didn’t start this way. Epilepsy was first diagnosed in 2005, when Sam was just shy of 5. The diagnosis then was myoclonic epilepsy. Each day he would have about half a dozen spells that looked as if he had been touched by a cattle prod. Each was a strong, 45-degree snap forward at the waist. After a few tries, we found a medication that controlled them.
The absence seizures started at the end of 2007. We tried first to treat them by increasing the dose of the seizure drug he was already on. But by the end of March 2008 he was having more, not fewer, seizures, and by early fall he was having trouble finishing a sentence. His teachers watched out for him and told the class about what was going on. But it’s hard to learn math or reading when you’re receiving life on the other end of a bad cell-phone connection.
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Swimming? Bike riding? Soccer team? Forget it. Sam couldn’t even cry without interruption: he would stub a toe or skin a knee; cry for 15 seconds; have a 15-second seizure; and then continue sobbing. Sam had trouble even watching a movie. Once after seeing “Speed Racer” at home, he said: “Dad, I think the DVD is scratched. When I was watching, it kept leaving words out.”
We were desperate, and frankly, despite advances, the ketogenic diet is still only for the desperate. For Sam’s diet to be effective, he must eat a certain number of calories every day with specific ratios of fat, protein and carbohydrates. These are not back-of-the-envelope calculations, but ratios that have to be hit exactly at every meal. If Sam wants a snack after school, he gets 18 grams of bacon (about two slices), 14 grams of macadamia nuts (about seven nuts) and 18 grams of apple (less than an eighth). In keto-speak that’s 3.04 grams of fat to every gram of protein and carbs combined. A snack using the ratios of the typical American diet — about 30 percent fat, 15 percent protein, 55 percent carbs — would have twice the protein, a third the fat and eight times the carbs.
To jump through these arithmetic hoops, Evelyn, who gave up her career to take on the now full-time job of feeding Sam, plans meals on the kitchen computer using a Web-based program called KetoCalculator. It is hard to imagine how to administer keto without it. A meal for Sam might have eight ingredients. Mathematically, there are potentially millions of combinations — a bit more of this; a bit less of that — that gets you to a 400-calorie meal and a 3-to-1 ratio. KetoCalculator does the math. Every ingredient — butter, cream, bacon, oil, eggs, nuts and fruit — is weighed to the 10th of a gram on an electronic jeweler’s scale. When Evelyn comes up with a recipe that works, she hits “print” and files it in a black loose-leaf binder. We now have more than 200 recipes.
Doing all this once is fascinating. Who knew that a cup of milk had more carbs than half a slice of toast or that macadamia nuts have more than twice the fat of pork rinds? But administering the diet for three meals and two snacks a day, seven days a week for two years is relentless. There is no “Let’s just order pizza” in our house, no matter how crazy the week has been. A barbecue at a friend’s house takes Evelyn 30 minutes of prep time. A sleepover takes two hours, because she labels all the food and writes out heating and serving instructions for the parents. Evelyn spent six hours preparing food for a three-day camping trip in August. Unexpected events that barely register in most families — like the fact that I recently ate the applesauce that was to be part of Sam’s breakfast — create mad scrambles to recalculate and reweigh meals so Sam gets out the door on time.
The diet is administered like medicine, and parents need to work with their neurologist and a keto dietitian to come up with an appropriate caloric intake for the child. |
Wizards' exhibition games, he ran into Tommy Sheppard, the Wizards' senior vice president of basketball operations.
"Tommy was surprised I wasn’t playing anywhere because I’m so big. I told him I am still looking and hopefully I would be able to get on a team somewhere. He basically told me that if I helped them for the whole year in player development, that he would put me on the summer league team. That’s how it came around," Hannibal said.
So, Hannibal did just that. For the entire 2016-17 season, he served as a player development intern on the Wizards' staff. He rebounded and passed to set up John Wall, Bradley Beal and others during pregame shooting drills. He played in pickup games in practice. At 6-10, he could help simulate opposing big men by defending the rim.
Player development and coaching is something Hannibal enjoys and hopes to do once his playing days are over. But they aren't over. This past year he never considered his career as a professional basketball as finished. The Summer League remained a goal he worked on tirelessly in his spare time.
At night, hours after Wizards practice was over, he would return to the gym to work on his conditioning on an exercise bike. He played in pickup games with Wizards players and staff members whenever he could. He battled video coordinator Jimmy Bradshaw and other staff assistants in full court games of 1-on-1.
[RELATED: Oubre cleared to practice again after right knee procedure]
Over the summer, Hannibal trains at a gym called FITS in Toronto. After the Wizards' season ended, he returned there to get ready for Summer League. Once the trainers found out what was next, their directives were simple.
"They were like ‘get on the track. Get on the track, get in the stairwell.’ And that’s it. Running up the stairs, jumping up the stairs, shuttles, all kinds of stuff," he said.
Hannibal is also now driven by a new motivation.
"Unfortunately, my father is not still here. But now I feel like I have a different why for what I do. Every time I’m on the court, even if I’m a little tired, I think ‘I’ve gotta do this for dad.’ Just sprint a little harder or go a little harder," he said.
Hannibal has the height of an NBA big man and, as a member of the team staff, was often wearing Wizards gear this past season. That would cause confusion at home games where just about every night fans would ask him for autographs or mistake him for Ian Mahinmi or Daniel Ochefu. Sometimes he would oblige at the urge of a kid's parents. Once he signed one, the autograph requests would come in droves.
He is 6-10 and goes by the imposing name of 'Hannibal,' yet Jasonn has the demeanor of a gentle giant. His response to those asking for autographs or pictures would sometimes be: "I'm just a rebounder."
He wasn't actually on the team. Now, with the Wizards' Summer League squad, he can't say that anymore.
[RELATED: Bradley Beal on his summer and the Wizards' offseason]BERLIN (Reuters) - German politicians accused Chancellor Angela Merkel at the weekend of making Europe overly dependent on Turkey in the migrant crisis, leaving the bloc vulnerable to blackmail by President Tayyip Erdogan.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel (C), EU Council President Donald Tusk and Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu (R) pose with flowers during a welcoming ceremony at Nizip refugee camp near Gaziantep, Turkey, April 23, 2016. REUTERS/Umit Bektas
Turkey, refusing to bow to European Union demands to rein in its broad anti-terror laws, said on Friday talks on a deal to provide visa-free travel in return for stopping illegal migrants reaching the EU had reached an impasse and the bloc must find a “new formula” to salvage the agreement.
Merkel, whose popularity has suffered due to her liberal migrant policy that saw Germany take in more than one million migrants last year, had spearheaded EU efforts to secure the deal, signed in March.
While the numbers of migrants have dropped sharply this year, Merkel continues to attract criticism from her conservative allies in Bavaria as well as the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD).
“I’m not against talks with Turkey but I think it’s dangerous to become so dependent on Ankara,” said Horst Seehofer, leader of the Christian Social Union (CSU), the Bavarian sister party to Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU).
Seehofer told Welt am Sonntag (WamS) that the deal with Turkey had helped boost support for AfD, which is currently polling at up to 15 percent.
Sahra Wagenknecht of the opposition far-left Linke party told the same newspaper Merkel had essentially negotiated the deal without involving her European partners.
“The chancellor is therefore responsible for Europe having become vulnerable to being blackmailed by the authoritarian Turkish regime and for Erdogan feeling noticeably strengthened to crush human rights underfoot,” she said.
Cem Oezdemir, co-leader of the Greens party and the son of Turkish immigrants, also told WamS the deal had put Europe at risk of being blackmailed and said Merkel was largely to blame.
While the EU is desperate for the deal to succeed, it also insists that Turkey meet 72 criteria, including anti-terror laws which it says Turkey uses to stifle dissent. Ankara says it needs sweeping legislation to fight Kurdish insurgents and Islamic State.
Merkel is due to attend the World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul on May 23 and there are plans for bilateral talks with other leaders in attendance, her spokesman said on Friday.
Members of the Social Democrats (SPD), Merkel’s junior coalition partner, also expressed concern.
Carsten Schneider told WamS Merkel had made Erdogan the key to her refugee policy and if he stopped cooperating, “the extent of Germany’s isolation in Europe will become clear again”, while Thorsten Schaefer-Guembel said Merkel should not “kowtow” to Erdogan.
But SPD Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told Tagesspiegel newspaper Turkey was still the key country for migration to Europe, adding: “We need to cooperate to some extent if we want to avoid the circumstances we had last year.”
Merkel has drawn heavy criticism for allowing German prosecutors to pursue a case against a German comedian at the Turkish leader’s behest. The comic had recited a sexually crude poem about Erdogan.Ahead of the first Formula E season, British racing driver Mike Conway was lining up to drive for Dragon Racing, the team that started out as something of an underdog but which ended the season behind only Renault. This interview first appeared at Current E on 22 July 2014.
Mike Conway is something of a street circuit specialist. He’s the British driver who has forged a career on the other side of the pond in IndyCar; his 2014 contract sees him called in to deal with the twists and turns of road tracks (the series also races on ovals). But his varied career also includes the British F3 championship, test roles for Honda in F1 and, more recently, bagging a third-place season finish in WEC.
Conway has been signed up by Jay Penske’s Dragon Racing team to contest the inaugural Formula E season, and drove on all four days of the public tests at Donington Park earlier this month. Oh, and he won his fifth IndyCar race on Sunday, for Ed Carpenter Racing. It was a good time for a chat.
“There were a few beers last night,” Conway admits to Current E, the day after the triumph in Toronto. “But it was an early start this morning – straight back into it.”
It’s lunchtime in Arizona, US, where he’s just arrived, fresh from Sunday’s success. “The conditions were tricky all day, and there was a downpour in the middle of the race. I made the right call on tyres, and it turned the day around.”
Conway’s decision to change tyres while in third place meant he was well placed to take advantage as the track dried out, and he easily passed the two frontrunners to take victory. But will that winning mentality translate to electric racing?
Thinking about tyres
Though the cars look similar from the outside (and both are designed by Dallara), Formula E is, of course, a rather different proposition to IndyCar: there are no tyres to change, for a start. “In IndyCar, you have 550bhp and big rear tyres,” Conway explains. “In the Spark-Renault, the tyres are very different – you can over-drive them. They’re a little bit like slicks when they’re new, but you can heat up the block quickly. You slide around a lot more. You can’t charge into corners too hard, so you have to maximise your exit speed. There’s a fine line between getting it right and carrying too much speed into a corner and sliding. You have to be really smooth. You get the best performance out of the tyres on lap one and two, then you lose a little bit as they heat up, but they degrade consistently. You also have to look after the battery life. It’s a constant thinking game.”
Five seconds and 10km/h
The four days of public testing were illuminating. It was the first time many of the drivers had experienced the electric racing car, and Conway says there is a lot to learn. “We have to figure out how to drive these things, and how to get them quick,” he says. “There can be as much as five seconds per lap difference between one power map and another. That’s a big speed difference. You’re not relying on downforce either. The wings are small and we’ve been running them with minimum downforce to maximise straight line speed and mechanical grip – it’s worth about an extra eight to 10km/h.”
Dragon had a mixed time of it at testing, managing 16 laps on day one (when many teams struggled too), but just 15 laps on day two between two cars. Things picked up after that, with the team completing 59 laps on day three and 77 laps on day four, between Conway and Oriol Servia, who was testing but who has not been confirmed as a race driver. “There were teething issues, and we’re learning the systems and procedures,” says Conway. “But we focused on maximising track time and got the second car out.”
Testing has already provided useful data regarding set-up changes, and Conway explains that having both cars running at the tests was invaluable. “There’s a lot to adjust, like any race car,” he says. “Spring and damper settings, geometries, wing settings. We’ve been playing with pressures in the tyres, cambers and toes. And we’ve been looking at the regenerative braking – there are different ways of doing it, so we have to work out which is best. Donington has fast corners and long straights compared to where we’ll be racing, so it’s more aggressive on the tyres. From what we’ve seen so far I think the tyre life will be very good.”
There is more testing scheduled for 24 July, which Conway won’t make as there is an IndyCar race this weekend, and 6 Aug, which he will, although these both appear to be private sessions. The next public test day is 19 August, and Conway is looking forward to it.
Simulation work and fast drivers
Because Formula E will run a compressed schedule – with practice, qualification and the race itself all taking place on the same day – finding the right set-up fast at each location is going to hold the key to success. However, with no telemetry being streamed to teams and circuits so new that there is no existing data to work from, teams will have to rely on the drivers more than ever for crucial information.
“Long Beach and Monaco, I’ve been on – but the others, no one has been on,” says Conway. “Any little advantage you can get before the day will be so important, so there will be lots of simulation work beforehand so we know what to expect. We’ll be as prepared as we can be.”
With its street circuit format and carefully chosen calendar that avoids conflict with IndyCar and WEC schedules, Formula E is tailor made for Conway. But he’s not underestimating the competition: “The series looks like a lot of fun. I do love street circuits, which is hopefully going to play into our hands, and we’ll bring our IndyCar experience to the table. At the same time, there are a lot of drivers signed up who will be bloody quick.”
There’s a cautionary note from Conway regarding the lack of live telemetry and temptation to overcook the power: “The teams will see as much as the fans do – probably just an indication of battery life left. It will be down to the driver to manage kilowatt usage; if you go over it you’ll get disqualified. And if you get tempted to use too much power at the start, you won’t make it to the end.”
Fans first – and drivers too
Conway is excited by what he sees as pioneering steps by Formula E series organiser FEH to involve spectators.
“Drivers have got to get on the good side of the fans,” he says, referring to the Fanboost feature, where drivers can receive additional powers boosts through an online voting system. “It’s interesting to give a driver an extra bit of power, and it’s an extra element for fans to be able to take part in the race. It’ll be enough power to probably pass at least one person. But you’ll have to use it wisely. I think we’ll see drivers use the boost early on. I also think we’ll see a lot of drivers being very nice to everyone!”
The focus of FEH on attracting a new generation is already paying off, from what Conway has seen. “There were lots more fans at the Donington tests than you would normally see at a test day,” he says, “and a much younger crowd. It’s good to see younger people embracing it as the way forward.”
And the way forward Formula E certainly is, the Brit believes. “Formula E is a brand new series and a brand new way of doing things,” he says. “It’s pushing the green barrier. There are more hybrid race cars and supercars, and lots of fully electric road cars – it was going to come, and it’s very cool to be part of the first such series.”I think it’s safe to say that just about everyone has a fascination with robots. They range from the incredibly creepy – like the Hugvie robot from Japan – to the flat out awesome, like this giant badass robot we wrote about way back when.
Talbotics fits into the latter category, or though the robots Tal creates aren’t functional in the “walking, talking” sense of the word, they do make really awesome sculptures and night lights. What you’re about to see are high-resolution images of some of his favorite creations, graciously provided by Tal himself.
Talbotics Robots by Tal
Born to a college professor and research metallurgist, Tal Avitzur became interested in creating retro junk sculptures after having scrounged around the junk-yard for a particular bout of home remodeling he was doing. What he was looking for, I haven’t the foggiest, but I’m pleased that he was recycling. That he was able to create wonderful sculptures, like this very sad looking robot pictures above, is awesome.
This sculpture really, really reminds me of The Hummungus from The Road Warrior. I mean, this fellow looks a lot friendlier, but perhaps you’ll see the similarities.
I don’t know what’s going on here, but this guy has quite the hair style. Reminds me of my own hair style the morning after a late night of drinking.
Before training with artists like George Rickey, Beatrice Wood, Irma Cavat and Tim Cotterill – and eventually becoming an artist himself, Tal worked for the US Navy in Washington, DC. Perhaps there’s a little bit of naval inspiration here? I wouldn’t exactly call this robot menacing, but perhaps that’s just the angle the navy would use to lull their enemies into a false sense of security.
Now this… is just creepy. A doll with glowing evil eyes inside of a robots head? Truly the stuff of nightmares if you ask me.
Then we have the robotic armadillo, feasting on whatever robotic armadillos feast on. Eyes like rubies, and a mouth like a vacuum cleaner.
I would like to thank those of you that pointed me towards Tal’s work, and of course Tal himself for providing these great photographs. I’m a big fan of robots, and it’s nice to see ones that aren’t giant vibrating butts for a change. Believe it or not, I see a lot of that stuff on my everyday journeys around the internet.
If you’re interested in seeing more of Tal’s work, and perhaps even buying one of his sculptures for your very own, you can do so by visiting the official Talbotics website. He’s done a shit ton of different sculptures, and all of them are either awesome, creepy, or both.An awesome timeline by reddit user RulerOfSlides:
I think I’ve got some of this worked out. The pieces are really starting to come together. First, what we learned recently:
My timeline, approximately:
EDIT XXII: The December 21, 2015 email exchange between Bret Budowsky and John Podesta occurs, touching upon ISIS and the continuation of Obama-era foreign policy surrounding Syria, in which Budowsky advises Podesta to make a departure from then-current policy for fear of it becoming political baggage. A notable quote: “But at the least she should not be branding and infecting herself with Obama’s policy towards Syria and ISIS by offering such high and direct praise for it.” I suspect this is the genesis of the Russia narrative, and the reason why the Clinton campaign went so far down the anti-Russia path.
The Obama administration most likely had been gathering intelligence on every GOP candidate – either as part of their expanded intel operations or as an intentional, focused sabotage plan. This information would likely have been contained in the President’s Daily Briefings, which Nunes is rumored to have investigated on March 22 – just before making the announcement that Trump’s wiretapping claims were correct. EDIT IV: Though Nunes may have viewed the President’s Daily Briefings at some point in his investigation, or intends to, it seems that the linchpin for Nunes was viewing the logs of Rice’s unmasking attempts.
Clinton got wind of this investigation through her ability to access intelligence files and other means (i.e., direct ties to people in DC who were active in intelligence-gathering). This is where the “Russian hacker” narrative began, possibly bolstered by her relationship with Alperovitch – who is a Russian expat and absolutely loathes Vladimir Putin. She may have built a narrative out of CrowdStrike’s report, hopeful that the intel-gathering by the Obama administration would uncover further information about Russian interference. EDIT: Evelyn Farkas, who had been involved in Russia/Ukraine affairs, may also have been involved with this, again through the Atlantic Council. EDIT V: Upon digging through the Podesta files, it would seem that the Trump/Russia connection narrative was constructed just before March 16, 2016. The Atlantic Council had a meeting about “combating far-right extremism in Europe” on March 22 – less than a week later. I think it’s possible that the Atlantic Council meeting on the 22nd was when the Clinton campaign, represented by John Podesta (who was in DC the day before the meeting, according to this – Clinton herself was in Washington state) exchanged information with CrowdStrike. EDIT VII: Since we can now establish that Clinton was aware of a covert spying system as far back as 2009, it’s possible that she counted on that same system to uncover some kind of Trump/Russia connection. EDIT XI: Now we also know that there’s a strong possibility that six of Clinton’s staffers also had access to classified intelligence – I wouldn’t be surprised if they were involved in dissemination, either.
On June 12, 2016, Julian Assange teases the release of the DNC’s emails, some three weeks after the latest possible date they could have been collected.
June 14, 2016 is the earliest date that has been connected to the official release of CrowdStrike’s report on the DNC “hack.” It may have been released the day after, too.
EDIT XIII: Guccifer 2.0 emerges onto the scene on June 15, 2016, and claims responsibility for the DNC hacks that were teased by Julian Assange barely three days earlier. Signs indicate that this may have been some kind of damage control by the DNC, coming off of the Podesta-Atlantic Council-CrowdStrike exchange that likely happened the previous month – basically, releasing “additional” information while lazily incorporating Russian “fingerprints” (i.e., writing the metadata in Cyrillic) into those releases as a means of shifting the blame to Russian influence. This is the second-earliest point at which “Russian ties” had been discussed publicly, and I have a feeling that the DNC took marching orders from the Clinton campaign (who had a discussion about Trump/Putin/Assange ties two months before, likely because they sensed a threat) in trying to sabotage Trump. Based off of some things that Guccifer 2.0 misinterpreted, it seems that he had zero connection to CrowdStrike’s report aside from reading it, so some insulation existed between the DNC and Clinton campaign.
EDIT XX: On July 10, 2016, Seth Conrad Rich, a DNC staffer, is murdered in Washington D.C.
On July 22, 2016, Wikileaks begins the release of 44,000 emails from the DNC spanning a period from January 2015 to May 25, 2016.
EDIT III: Oh boy. This – roughly July or August – is about the point at which, should the possibility laid out by Jonathan Langdale be correct (which Flynn’s apparent “thumb’s-up” lends extra credence to), Russia was responsible for approaching the Trump campaign and making them aware of the surveillance that was going on. Basically, Trump and Flynn laid out a trap for the “Council of Evil” (which I’ve come to call the Lynch/Rice/McCabe/Brennan/Clapper circle that seems to have been the main people involved with the Russia narrative) and the deep state, in which Flynn would be made to seem untrustworthy in order to draw out and embolden leakers. They couldn’t do anything about it, like go public with it, because it would jeopardize their chances of winning the election and thus prevent the campaign from investigating it further. Additionally, the FBI’s actions with Clinton made them seem untrustworthy; it was readily obvious as well that the DoJ was compromised after Bill’s infamous meeting with Lynch on the tarmac – meaning they had nowhere to turn but inwards.
CrowdStrike’s report, which formed the backbone of Russian hacking allegations, found its way through the three-letter agencies and eventually indirectly caused the last FISA request over a Trump-controlled server to go through. [EDIT III: This may have been motivated by Russia’s detection of Trump’s surveillance as hypothesized by Langdale] Several previous requests had been made, probably because the former (above EDIT III) bullet point happened in around June or July. The FBI found nothing while investigating it. EDIT II: Loretta Lynch’s ability to view unmasked intelligence documents may have played a role in allowing the FISA request to go through – likely as a way of building evidence for the brewing Russian hackers narrative.
EDIT XXI: On August 9, 2016, Wikileaks officially offers $20,000 for information about Seth Rich’s murder.
EDIT VI: At around this point, the funding for Fusion GPS to create the Trump dossier dries up, shifting away from the unknown Democrat. Clinton, fearing that the Russian hacking narrative is on shaky grounds, indirectly pays off Andrew McCabe to come up with some kind of dirt on Trump. McCabe then begins negotiating hiring Fusion GPS, who has brought Christopher Steele, a former MI6 agent, into their investigation. The money never makes it to Fusion GPS, and Steele spends several months “working” on it, sends it off to the mainstream media, and it floats around for several months until Buzzfeed publishes it as a means of undermining the Trump administration. Bear in mind that, by this point, the dossier had been in development for over a year.
McCabe believes Steele’s then-incomplete dossier, as well as CrowdStrike’s claims, and then begins to plan a soft overthrow of the Trump administration starting with the weakest link – Mike Flynn. Flynn is later forced out due to his own faults, [EDIT III: My original assumption here may be untrue, and this may have been part of a grander plan] but the assault doesn’t stop there. Comey may have been aware of McCabe’s actions, but ignored them. [EDIT XVII: This has been basically confirmed – the FBI knew of the dossier.]
EDIT XIX: Yevgeniy Nikulin, a Russian national, is arrested on October 5, 2016 by the Russian government over unrelated hacking charges (on the order of the US government). Two days later (October 7), the DNI (Clapper) and DHS (Jeh Johnson) jointly stated that Russia was behind the DNC server hack, as well as the Podesta leaks.
On October 7, 2016, Wikileaks begins releasing the Podesta emails, covering a period from approximately 2006 to March 21, 2016.
In the third Presidential debate on October 19, 2016 Clinton makes the first public accusation that “Russian hackers” interfered with the election.
This is about the point where the media begins to go crazy over the “Russian ties” allegations, bolstered in some form or another by the CrowdStrike claims, Steele’s dossier, and quite possibly leaks from McCabe’s anti-Trump crusade in a kind of Deep Throat Jr. situation. I have a suspicion that McCabe and his FBI-based allies (the “McCabe 16” mentioned in the True Pundit article) were the source of the narrative. EDIT II: The CIA under Brennan – because of his access to unmasked intelligence reports – may also have been involved with leaks to the media, especially via the Washington Post, which some have deemed the “mouthpiece of the CIA.”
On October 22, 2016, Gavin MacFayden – Seth Rich’s rumored contact at Wikileaks – dies of lung cancer in London. He had apparently been ill for quite some time (I personally don’t consider his death suspicious – only that it makes it harder to piece together the truth).
EDIT IX: This is approximately Election Day. If the anonymous sources are indeed correct, then this is the point at which CIA director John Brennan orders enhanced surveillance on people in Trump’s inner circle – like Mike Flynn (already targeted by the FBI under McCabe), Erik Prince, and Sean Hannity. He may have also provided Rice with the specific documents or directions to find them that were later disseminated at the Obama administration’s behest starting sometime in December. Flynn was chosen due to the ease at which he could be leveraged; Hannity was chosen due to his apparent close ties to both Trump and Julian Assange, and Prince may have been focused on due to a long-standing personal feud with Brennan. The enhanced surveillance continues from November 8 to January 20. Note as well that this failed to turn up anything of note, as Director Clapper left office on January 20 and reported on March 6, 2017 that no evidence of Trump-Russia ties existed. In other words, the enhanced surveillance failed.
EDIT XIX: Nikulin receives his first visit from the FBI in “mid-November,” mere days before John McCain learns of Steele’s dossier.
EDIT VI: Thanks to the Daily Caller, we now know that John McCain learned about the dossier at the Halifax International Security Forum, which took place between November 18 and November 20, 2016. The person involved in bringing it to his attention was Sir Andrew Wood. Wood was a former ambassador for the UK to Russia, and knew Steele from his time at MI6. I have a suspicion that the exact date the discussion about the dossier happened was November 19, because Wood was involved in a panel on “Maidan, Crimea and the Obstacles to Democracy in Ukraine” on that date according to the agenda. Wood flew back to the UK, met with Steele, and handed the dossier off to McCain between November 19 (the last date I can confirm with reasonable certainty Wood was present in Halifax) and December 9, when McCain gave the dossier to James Comey during a meeting. Comey then briefed Trump on the existence of the dossier – which suggests to me that he was unaware of McCabe’s actions in trying to hire Fusion GPS – and once that meeting became known to the press, BuzzFeed published the complete dossier. EDIT XVI: Now we know that Steele’s dossier, likely the complete version handed to Comey, was used to bolster the FBI’s FISA request. Highly suspicious, and indicates the document was laundered.
EDIT X: Early December 2016. The Obama administration announces the beginning of an investigation into the DNC hacks, and the requests for unmasked intelligence reports relating to this begin at around this point. I think it’s likely that someone higher-up than Susan Rice ordered the unmasking, as the aforementioned paper trail through the NSA would have been immediately suspicious to the incoming Trump administration. This may also explain Rogers’ visit to Trump Tower, as unmasking in a less official manner had been going on for many months up to this point – this would merely be the latest effort to direct it at the Trump administration. I suspect the higher-up who ordered Rice to do this was most likely John Brennan; he intended Rice to be his fall guy when Trump caught up to what was going on.
The real unmasking begins once Obama amends EO 12333 to encourage free sharing of information between the three-letter agencies, on January 12. The new rules were signed by Clapper on December 15, so it’s reasonable to assume they had been floating around for a decently long time before that. Less than a month before Clapper agrees to them, NSA head Admiral Rogers visits Trump in an infamous “unscheduled meeting,” which draws ire from the rest of the intelligence community. It’s obvious at this point that this was in order to warn the new administration of what was going on behind closed doors, likely including the information sharing.
Susan Rice orders the unmasking of all Trump-related intelligence at some point after the information sharing rules go into effect. This allowed intelligence previously collected on Trump and his family to be widely disseminated between the FBI, CIA, and NSA, and thus exponentially increased the chances of leakers spreading that information to the press – which can (and did) happen. McCabe was involved in this due to his desire to force Flynn and then Trump out of office. Jeh Johnson may also have been involved in the unmasking process as well, but it’s unclear as to what his position was.
EDIT III: The trap from before the election was set; Flynn volunteered to be the fall guy as already a kind of black sheep in the administration (by being the sole Democrat), and he baited the intelligence community into going after him just before the new inter-agency intelligence sharing rules took effect. It worked like a charm – the media latched on to it, and Flynn handed Trump his resignation letter as the whole intelligence community fell for it hook, line, and sinker. It was now obvious who the leakers were and where they were coming from.
EDIT XIX: Nikulin receives his second visit from the FBI on February 7, 2017. Note that this happened after the unmasking scandal began falling apart in the waining days of the Obama administration.
EDIT II: Cernovich revealed tonight that H. R. McMaster was responsible for discovering Rice’s actions, and he was responsible for sending an aide to Nunes in order to blow the lid open on what was going on. This happened between February 20 (when he assumed office) and March 22 (when Nunes held his press conference). EDIT III: Flynn, it should be noted, resigned seven days before McMaster took office; I don’t think it’s a coincidence that he uncovered what Rice was doing in just over a month – Flynn’s dismissal drew all the termites out of the woodwork, and emboldened them in attempting to leak new, “damaging” information. The only effect this had was to highlight the leakers.
The White House figures out all of this, or some key portions of this, between January 20 and March 4. Thus follows Trump’s series of tweets discussing “wiretapping,” and the rest is history. EDIT IV: It wasn’t until early March that Rice was pinned down as the unmasker by lawyers at the White House, so I tend to think that Trump reported on “wiretapping” almost as soon as the smoking gun was found.
Source…Another victory for Drake: Amateur treasure hunter's coin find proves English hero discovered Canada before the Spanish
Retired security systems installer Bruce Campbell started hunting for treasure with a hand-held metal detector because he was sick of TV and 'getting fat'
In December he found a rare Edward VI shilling - minted in London between 1551 and 1553 - in clay on the shores of Vancouver Island
The find has reignited a theory that the British were the first Europeans to set foot in Canada and not the Spanish
The coin is believed to have been placed by English explorer Sir Francis Drake during his circumnavigation of the world between 1577 and 1580
Drake is documented to have visited California in 1579, but was rumored to have traveled further north
Official records show the Spanish were the first to reach Canada two centuries later, in 1774
An amateur treasure hunter with a hand-held metal detector has turned Canadian history on its head after finding a 16th century shilling buried in clay on the shores of Vancouver Island.
The 435-year-old coin discovered in western-most Canada has rekindled a theory that a British explorer made a secret voyage here two centuries before it was discovered by Spanish sailors.
Official historical records show the Spanish were the first Europeans to set foot in what is now Canada's British Columbia province in 1774, followed four years later by British Royal Navy Captain James Cook.
Retired security systems installer Bruce Campbell found the coin in mid-December, along with a rare 1891 Canadian nickel, a 1960s dime and penny from 1900.
Retired security system specialist Bruce Campbell has found a coin that has revived a theory the Canadian pacific coast was not discovered in 1774 by the Spaniards, as officially thought, but in 1579 by British sailor Sir Francis Drake
This rare Edward VI shilling, minted in London between 1551 and 1553, was found Victoria, British Columbia, in mid-December
'I was getting fat and tired of watching TV,' he said about what got him into his hobby, surrounded in his Victoria, British Columbia home by a trove of adventure novels and a few dug up treasures.
He never imagined, he said, stirring up controversy with his latest find.
According to conspiracy theorists and some historians, the silver coin (produced between 1551 and 1553) is evidence that English explorer Sir Francis Drake traveled as far north as Canada's Pacific Coast during an expedition to California in 1579, in search of the famed Northwest Passage.
But he covered it up at the behest of Queen Elizabeth I, who supposedly wished to avoid confrontation over the new territory with Spain.
At the time, Spanish explorers had kept to more southern parts of the continent after disappointment (seeing few apparent resources and natural ports) in California.
Samuel Bawlf, a leading proponent of the so-called Drake theory and author of a 2003 book on the subject, says the coin is proof the English arrived here first.
He noted two other finds that support the theory: a 1571 sixpence dug up in 1930 in the backyard of a Victoria home and another Tudor-era coin unearthed on nearby Quadra Island.
History rewritten: The British are known to have visited California in 1579, while the Spanish are believed to be the first Europeans to arrive in Canada in 1774. However the discovery of the coin suggests the British also went to what is now British Colombia during Sir Fancis Drake's voyage
Drake would have given the coins to aboriginals he met 'to show to later comers that England had already found (and staked a claim to) these lands,' Bawlf told AFP.
Royal British Columbia Museum curator Grant Keddie, tasked with examining the evidence, is skeptical.
He said his analysis typically looks at 'what was written at the time, and archeological artifacts'.
And there is currently not enough evidence to support this theory, he said, noting that Drake's logs were burned in a London fire a century later.
If it is ever corroborated, it could have implications for Canada and the United States, whose shared border was drawn based partly on past European colonial land holdings.
The 49th parallel was chosen in 1818 as the western boundary between the United States and the British colony, but disputes over interpretations of the treaty erupted on several occasions since then.
The last row was settled in 1903 by a joint British, Canadian and US tribunal establishing Canada's boundary with Alaska.
For Campbell, the coin is nothing more than a lucky find that will be hard to match.D K Ravi committed suicide, no foul play: CBI in closure report
India
oi-Vicky
New Delhi, Oct 3: The Central Bureau of Investigation in its closure report of the D K Ravi has stated that it was a case of suicide and has not recommended for anybody's prosecution. The CBI team which has prepared the closure report is awaiting an approval from its Delhi office before it could be submitted to the Magistrate as is mandated under the law.
The CBI has concluded that it is a case of suicide and would file a closure report before the magistrate in the next couple of days.
The CBI which had prepared its report on the investigations into the case a week back has submitted the same to its headquarters in New Delhi. Once the report is approved, the same will be submitted before the magistrate. The CBI has already concluded its investigations into the case. In its final report, the agency has said that it was a case of suicide.
D K Ravi an IAS officer from Karnataka was found hanging at his apartment on March 16th 2015. An upright officer he was credited for taking on the mighty sand mafia when he was the Deputy Commissioner of Kolar. He was later transferred to Bengaluru. He was working as an additional commissioner in the Commercial Taxes Department.
Also read: DK Ravi probe: CBI says no criminal conspiracy
Following his death, various theories were floated and many suspected that he may have lost his life as he had taken on the mighty real estate and sand mafia. While the government of Karnataka continued to maintain that the death was due to suicide as a result of |
But the owners stopped the clock when they contested the violations to the state Board of Industrial Insurance Appeals, as is their right. Meanwhile, the range stayed open to the public.
Finally, in October 2007, Champion Arms agreed to the state’s violations and penalties. The range was placed on a six-month payment plan for the fines and promised to fix any outstanding violations in 15 days.
L&I allows businesses to essentially police themselves by submitting an “Employer Certification of Hazards Corrected” form.
Several months after the settlement, Geiss declared in writing that all violations had been fixed. By then, the range already had missed payments.
But L&I didn’t immediately check on whether the range had corrected its problems. In May 2008, inspectors received a report that another Champion Arms employee’s blood had tested high for lead. Only then did L&I follow up to see if the range really had fixed the hazards.
Inspectors were afraid to return to Champion Arms. “I have a concern about entering this location,” a supervisor said by email. “There is no evidence that the ventilation system has been fixed.”
Later that month, inspectors again found rampant violations, including problems uncorrected since the 2006 inspection. Lead dust still contaminated the range’s air; table and counter tops still remained coated in lead; and employees still lacked the required protective gear.
In cases in which an employer knowingly files false information about correcting workplace violations, L&I can pursue criminal penalties. Despite finding that seven of the violations Geiss claimed to have fixed were still uncorrected, L&I issued only more civil penalties.
L&I cited Champion Arms for 15 violations in November 2008, including six “Failure to Abate Serious” citations, and fined it $42,400.
Once again, Champion filed an appeal in December 2008, halting the state’s orders to fix the problems and pay the fines.
During the year it took to resolve the appeal, the business kept operating. On Dec. 31, 2009, an industrial appeals judge affirmed all 15 violations and the original $42,400 fine against the shooting range.
Again, a gun-range manager guaranteed in November 2010 that Champion Arms had finally corrected all outstanding violations. But a few weeks later, after that same manager had been fired, he complained to L&I that Champion still was exposing its employees to lead at unsafe levels. L&I later issued $10,600 in fines and 10 more violations.
After its fourth inspection of Champion Arms in October 2013, L&I cited it for four more violations, including failing to fully institute a lead-training program for employees — one of the most basic precautions on the books.
Through a manager, Geiss declined to comment. Wangsness died earlier this year.
In 2012, Washington became only the second state to require employers to correct serious workplace hazards during an appeal. L&I pointed to Champion Arms as an example when it asked lawmakers for the change.
Washington’s shooting ranges The vast majority of ranges have never been inspected, because their non-commercial status puts them outside of L&I jurisdiction. Of the 10 commercial ranges inspected by the state between 2004 and June 2014, nine had at least one lead-related violation. Click on the dots to learn about the state’s gun ranges, and range inspections between 2004 and June 2014. Inspected by L&I
Inspected by L&I Subject to inspection by L&I
Subject to inspection by L&I Clubs, nonprofits and other ranges that might not be subject to inspection Sources: Occupational Health and Safety Administration; state Department of Labor and Industries; state Department of Fish and Wildlife; Seattle Times research Thomas Wilburn / The Seattle Times
Lack of scrutiny
From 2004 through May 2013, Washington state’s lead-monitoring system received notice of 59 workers with high lead levels working at nine gun ranges. Of the nine, the state inspected four.
Six years ago, federal OSHA set a new bar for workplace regulators to inspect a business if an employee had elevated blood-lead levels of 25 micrograms or higher. The national emphasis program specifically included shooting ranges.
Several states, including North Carolina, Kentucky and Alaska, adopted the program. But Alaska workplace-safety officials didn’t implement it.
At least four range workers in that state tested above 25 micrograms. But public-health officials didn’t share those test results with regulators because they weren’t aware of the program.
“But now that you mention it,” public-health manager Ali Hamade told The Times, “it’s not a bad idea.”
Some states, like Washington, didn’t know about OSHA’s lead-emphasis program.
In an interview last month, Anne Soiza, L&I’s top official for the agency’s compliance division, expressed ignorance when asked about OSHA’s ongoing program.
“I don’t know what the directive says,” said Soiza, adding she “wasn’t here” when OSHA sent it out.
L&I has collected thousands of blood test results for lead through its Washington State Adult Blood Lead Epidemiology and Surveillance program.
It received notice of 59 employees at nine gun ranges who had lead levels of 25 micrograms or higher in their blood from 2004 through May 2013, according to a Times analysis of a previously unreleased L&I blood-test database. The tally is likely an undercount because workers weren’t required to identify their employer.
Of those nine ranges, L&I inspected four over that time.
L&I has no requirement to alert inspectors of high blood-lead tests, regardless of the level.
The effects of lead poisoning
The officials said referrals to inspect were made case by case, based on various guidelines.
But blood-lead monitoring officials failed at least once to follow agency guidelines about when to refer “critical situations” to inspectors. In a 2008 case, two employees at a Bellevue gun range had lead levels so high they were removed from work, as required.
Todd Schoonover, L&I’s manager of the blood-monitoring system, declined to comment on his group’s referral decisions.
The state’s lack of scrutiny helped set the stage for what public-health officials now say is the country’s largest reported occupational lead exposure at an indoor gun range.
During the 2008 lead-exposure case, six employees at Wade’s Eastside Guns and Bellevue Indoor Range showed lead poisoning in tests sent to the blood-monitoring program, but results weren’t passed on to L&I inspectors. The agency didn’t inspect Wade’s until 2010, after another cluster of workers tested high for lead.
In 2012, 46 construction and range workers were overexposed to lead during a project to add a second floor to the gun range. As a result of this case, L&I for the first time has started to compile a list of gun ranges in the state and to inspect more of them.
Officials also said the agency will review workers’ blood-lead levels at 25 micrograms, to determine if L&I will investigate.
Kentucky Labor Cabinet
Lead-free bullets offer solution, but face industry pushback Health experts say there’s one surefire way to prevent lead poisoning at shooting ranges: Get the lead out. “As long as they’re still using lead bullets, they’re creating a hazard,” said Dr. James Dahlgren, a Los Angeles-based physician who has treated and studied toxic chemical exposures since 1971. In recent years, manufacturers have marketed lead-free ammunition made with copper or copper alloys for hunting and target shooting. But ammo made of lead — a dense, malleable and relatively cheap metal — remains commonly used. And the leading shooting organization persistently fights proposals to ban it, contending efforts to do so amount to backdoor gun control. Health officials in several states have alerted the public and workers about the risks of lead at shooting ranges, but an official for the National Rifle Association recently told The Seattle Times such contamination cases are isolated. “In terms of lead being some kind of significant problem or a problem affecting a good majority of ranges, I’m not aware of it,” said Susan Recce, the NRA’s director of conservation, wildlife and natural resources. The toxic hazards of lead have been known and debated for centuries, though reducing widespread use of the remarkably practical but deadly metal historically has been slow to occur. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency began phasing lead out of gasoline in the 1970s, and it banned the manufacture and use of lead in paint in 1978. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s ban on using lead shot for hunting waterfowl took effect nationwide in 1991. Last year, after decades of controversy, California became the first state to pass a law prohibiting lead in hunting ammunition, after studies concluded endangered condors were dying from lead poisoning after consuming bullet fragments in carrion felled by hunters. The NRA has remained a vocal opponent to California’s restrictions on hunting ammo. It has also challenged suggestions that lead should be eliminated from ammunition used in recreational shooting, contending that’s unnecessary. But for decades, the NRA has invested heavily in protecting and expanding gun ranges by seeking to improve their overall operations and combating lead problems. The group has drafted its “Range Source Book,” a 627-page document that details proper construction and maintenance for safe gun ranges, including lead management. The NRA also holds annual conferences for range owners and provides a national network of technical advisers to assist them, and it offers grants to help fund shooting ranges. Recce noted lead ammunition consistently provides better affordability, shooting accuracy and stopping power than its lead-free alternatives. She added that good housekeeping and proper ventilation offer “a simple solution” for dealing with lead exposure issues in ranges. About 350 range operators attended the National Shooting Sports Foundation’s lead-management and OSHA-compliance workshops in the past year. The trade group for the firearm industry also started a program in 2013 that conducts mock audits similar to OSHA’s at shooting ranges and recommends changes. About 40 ranges have paid $2,500 for the program. David Dorman, a professor of toxicology at North Carolina State University who studied lead exposures, said more public awareness is the key to changing shooters’ perceptions. They will start to protect themselves much like wearing earplugs to prevent hearing loss in firing ranges. “It took a while, now you don’t go to a range without seeing people wearing ear protection,” he said. Read more ▾
Lax regulation
Federal OSHA officials can’t say how many gun ranges have been inspected nationwide, because they can’t track them. Ranges have registered themselves under such business categories as “all other amusement and recreational industries,” which include bowling alleys and soccer clubs, and “sporting goods stores.” One range claimed to be a shoe store, another a locksmith.
OSHA handles workplace oversight for most states, but 21 states enforce their own occupational safety and health programs that typically mirror federal regulations. Yet whether under OSHA’s or state jurisdiction, regulation of gun ranges is lax.
Alaska, Iowa and Louisiana are among 14 states that have not inspected a commercial gun range in the past 10 years.
Even when OSHA, the nation’s largest workplace-safety enforcer, does take strong action, it sometimes has few consequences.
In 2012, OSHA touted a crackdown at Illinois Gun Works, a firing range in Elmwood Park, a Chicago suburb. After federal inspectors found air inside the range contaminated with lead at 12 times allowable levels, the agency cited the range with 27 serious violations and hit it with $111,000 in fines. OSHA then hyped its enforcement in a widely distributed news release.
But since then, Illinois Gun Works has neither paid a dime nor fixed a single violation. Range owner Don Mastrianni, 59, a retired Chicago garbage collector, said he opted against making costly corrections after he learned his landlord was planning to demolish the building that housed his range.
Instead, Mastrianni kept the range operating for months before it was torn down in 2013 to make way for a new McDonald’s restaurant. Salvagers took no special precautions when hauling off the lead-caked debris.
OSHA has since sent the case to collections, but Mastrianni told The Times in March he had no plans to pay. He had kept active the defunct range’s business registration, believing that protected him from personal liability.
“They can’t come after me, they have to go after Illinois Gun Works,” he said. “But if Illinois Gun Works don’t exist, what are they going to do, go after McDonald’s? I wish them luck.” He died from a heart attack in April.
Another problem is many government agencies collect data from blood tests for lead, but don’t share it with occupational regulators.
Until recently, Iowa Department of Public Health wasn’t allowed to notify state occupational inspectors of gun ranges suspected of overexposing workers. That meant no inspection and no corrective action.
“It bothered me,” said Kathy Leinenkugel, the coordinator for the Occupational Health and Safety Surveillance Program in Iowa. She also faced political pressure over gun ranges.
“If we say to private clubs and retail [gun ranges] you need to make sure you follow OSHA, the pushback is the government is trying to take our guns away,” she said. “I’m not anti-gun. I want them to do it safely.”
California’s lead problems
California is viewed as a leader in fighting lead exposure. Even so, reported contaminations at its gun ranges have increased, though severe poisonings have dropped.
In 1986, California lawmakers passed a bill that created one of the nation’s first statewide blood-lead registries to track exposures at gun ranges and other workplaces.
Five years later, they established a lead-poisoning prevention program within the state’s Department of Public Health. The program educates problem shooting-range owners and managers about lead safety. But case workers have no enforcement authority and typically don’t conduct on-site investigations, working instead by phone and email.
They rarely refer range owners to California-OSHA for enforcement. When they do, it’s for particularly egregious cases. Cal-OSHA inspected 19 commercial indoor shooting ranges from 2004 to 2013, and fined them nearly $70,000.
But enforcement doesn’t always mean compliance. Repeat violators remain a problem, records show. And most California ranges have never been inspected.
“Overexposure to lead continues to be a serious occupational-health problem in California” gun ranges, Dr. Barbara Materna, occupational-health chief of the California Department of Public Health, said in an email.
When The Times asked the health department for public records of gun ranges with lead problems, it refused to provide company names, or even the city where they did business, citing privacy concerns.
Vulnerable volunteers
Thousands of other gun ranges — those run by volunteers or that are members-only clubs — simply aren’t monitored for lead problems. With no employees, these ranges are not subject to OSHA inspections and operators often are unaware of the dangers of lead contamination.
Bob Godlove and his wife traveled the Midwest, shooting in gun competitions. It was a bond that made their marriage stronger. But their passion for shooting turned toxic.
As president of the Linn County Izaak Walton League in Iowa for more than 15 years, Godlove volunteered 20 hours a week, cleaning the gun range and managing the facility. The conservation organization, with chapters across the United States, has as its motto “defenders of soil, air, woods, waters and wildlife.”
For years, Godlove knew he had chronic lead exposure, with blood-lead levels around 40 micrograms per deciliter. His wife never got above 20. But he thought nothing of test results because they were below 60, the OSHA standard that requires removal from work. The CDC says any lead level over 10 is a health risk.
In 2008, Godlove said, he felt tingling in his hands and feet, often lost his balance, and developed a temper. His lead level had shot up to 67 and lead attacked other parts of his body.
Former worker James Maddox, 46 Louisville, Ky. The former shooting-range manager at Bluegrass Indoor Range says his lead poisoning in 2007 nearly destroyed his life and family. Lead effects: Fatigue, weight loss, tingling fingers and toes, no sex drive Volunteer Bob Godlove, 65 Cedar Rapids, Iowa As president of Linn County Izaak Walton League, he got lead poisoning from volunteering at the shooting range. He took costly chelation pills for two years to remove the heavy metal from his system. Lead effects: Numbness in hands and feet, angry outbursts, loss of balance Gun-range owner Don Mastrianni, 59 Elmwood Park, Ill. The owner of the since-defunct Illinois Gun Works refused to fix lead problems in his gun range after OSHA cited him for violations and fined him $111,000 in 2012. He vowed to never pay the fine, and died in April 2014. Lead effects: Several workers were exposed to 12 times the permissible level of lead in the air. Gun-range owner Maria Geiss, 67 Kent, Wash. The owner of Champion Arms, an indoor shooting range in Kent that had ventilation problems, kept the doors open during appeals. A state lead expert called it the worst firing range ever inspected in Washington. Lead effects: Range workers and the public repeatedly have been overexposed to unsafe lead levels over the years.
When he told fellow league members he’d suffered lead poisoning, the culture he’d been a part of for decades smacked him right across the face.
Fellow competitive shooters were adamant lead wasn’t a problem. Many volunteers at the league didn’t feel any urgency despite at least one other person having elevated lead. They didn’t feel sick and no one had died, they told Godlove.
“I was unwilling to put it under the rug, and lots of people wanted me to,” Godlove said.
Others feared the range would close if people knew it was possibly contaminated.
“It’s a pervasive problem across the country — the lack of awareness and a belief that people and governments are trying to infringe on a gun owner’s rights and ability to shoot,” he said.
He upgraded the range ventilation system and posted lead-warning signs. He talks about personal hygiene with new members and in the basic firearms classes he teaches.
For more than two years, Godlove had to take chelation pills costing as much as $3,800 a month to rid his body of lead. But it was too late. It already had attacked his nervous system.
“It’s insidious,” he said.
With up to half of the feeling lost in his hands, Godlove has trouble picking up coins and paperwork.
He also can’t pull a trigger and fire accurately anymore. So he quit competitive shooting.
Christine Willmsen: [email protected] or 206-464-3261. On Twitter @christinesea.
Lewis Kamb: [email protected] or 206-464-2932. On Twitter @LewisKamb.Denmark's 'Fix Rooms' Give Drug Users A Safe Haven
toggle caption Sidsel Overgaard for NPR
Martin Jensen smokes heroin.
In the past, when this gaunt-faced Dane had to hide in elevators and stairwells to feed his addiction, he probably wouldn't have been so willing to advertise that fact. Back then, his days were spent scouring Copenhagen — mostly the notorious Vesterbro neighborhood — for places to smoke, out of sight of the police and children. He says he never felt safe, understandably, given what happened to one of his friends.
"My friend, he [was trying to] get some sleep, when he had smoked," Jensen recalls.
That's when an arsonist stopped by.
"They put gasoline here, on top of his head. And put on fire and just let him..." Jensen trails off, though he notes the friend survived.
All this is by way of explaining why, for Jensen, this year has meant the difference between "hell" and "heaven." It's not that he's quit — though he is taking methadone, which has helped him cut back. It's that now he has a place to come and take his drugs in peace.
In June 2012, the Danish Parliament passed legislation making it possible for municipalities to open so-called drug consumption rooms (known in Denmark as "fix rooms" and elsewhere, more specifically, as supervised injection sites) — facilities where adults with serious addictions can bring their illegal drugs and take them, legally, under the watchful eye of a nurse. Within four months, Copenhagen had opened the first. Two other cities have since followed suit.
Denmark is not the first country to try out the DCR concept — though it is the first in almost a decade and the Danish launch rate has been exceptional. The initial wave of DCRs opened in the 1990s in Switzerland, Germany and the Netherlands. In 2003, Vancouver became the first (and still only) North American city to have one, and a handful of other countries came onboard around the same time. Since then, there has been a bit of a lull.
But a growing body of evidence suggests that DCRs can save lives and reduce the public nuisance of open drug use without increasing crime. The DCR strategy seems to be, once again, getting attention — even in the U.S., where places like Seattle, San Francisco and New Mexico are starting to consider the idea more seriously.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Sidsel Overgaard for NPR Sidsel Overgaard for NPR
"It's very similar to the early days of needle exchange in the U.S., where there was a lot of opposition," explains Laura Thomas with the New York-based Drug Policy Alliance. "Pretty much all of that opposition has now faded away and a lot of people acknowledge they were wrong to oppose it: that it didn't increase drug use, that it didn't do a lot of things that people feared. But at the same time, there's a very human cost to a slow learning curve."
So far, Copenhagen's two DCRs (a second one opened in August) have hosted 1,800 unique users, including people who smoke and inject heroin and cocaine.
Rasmus Christansen, manager at one of the Copenhagen DCRs, explains how the process works. On their first visit, drug users register anonymously, using a nickname and the year of birth.
"But it's not like East German border control to get in," he says. "We want people to get [into the rooms] pretty fast... so we can get drug consumption out of the streets."
Inside, to the left, behind a huge window, is cluster of smokers with improvised pipes, enveloped in haze. To the right is a long, stainless steel table where several people sit, injecting themselves with heroin, cocaine or both. Some finish and leave quietly. A few slump over the table, asleep. One man gets up and paces frantically back and forth, swearing and shouting. In the middle of it all, sits a nurse in street clothes, calmly taking in the scene.
toggle caption Sidsel Overgaard for NPR
Every day, these nurses witness up to 800 injections. During this first year, 135 people have overdosed; none of them have died.
That is probably the largest measure of success, Christansen says, given Denmark's record-high 285 drug-related deaths just two years ago (part of a larger global trend).
Christansen cites another achievement: In one year, the DCR has helped these hard-to-reach users make more than 1,000 contacts with the broader welfare system to get help with things like housing and medical care.
"We are getting to know them; we are building up relations with them," he says. "And when we are building up relations, they will also come to us when they have problems."
The program is changing the mind of former skeptics, like Deputy Police Inspector Kaj Lykke Majlund.
"We used to think police could solve all these problems alone. But that doesn't work," he says. "We have to understand that drug users — the severely addicted — they need help. They need treatment, not punishment."
To that end, Majlund has established a 2-square-mile "free zone" in the Vesterbro neighborhood where officers don't arrest adults for possession — though dealing is a different story.
Of course not all Danes support DCRs. Critics, like Conservative People's Party member Tom Behnke, say the "fix rooms" condone criminal activity. But even he says the bigger problem is that DCRs give Denmark an excuse not to do more to fix a broken treatment system.
"I have met people who have struggled for years to come into treatment," he says, adding that "it's a lot easier to live on the streets as a drug-addicted person."
And it's true, while staff members are friendly and chatty, they do not actively push treatment or even ask very many questions. So it may seem counterintuitive that at least one case study suggests DCRs actually increase the rate of admission into detoxification programs.
But one heroin addict who gives his name as Jimmy says that doesn't surprise him at all.
"I reckon this helps people because... [users] can see normal people around and how things work, and that normal people have fun too, at work, and that life is not just drugs," he says. "If they see a little bit of that close to them... I don't think that encourages them to continue using drugs."Your browser does not support HTML5 video tag.Click here to view original GIF
South by Southwest, the Austin-based tech and entertainment expo, is known for hosting some experimental TV promos. This year, American Gods has a giant buffalo, The Man in the High Castle is opening a Resistance Radio station, Better Call Saul and Twin Peaks opened restaurants for Los Pollos Hermanos and Double R Diner. But none of those compare to the uncanny valley insanity that is whatever’s going on for The Handmaid’s Tale.
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Attendees have been pointing out on Twitter that a large group of women dressed as Handmaids from Hulu’s upcoming show The Handmaid’s Tale have been popping up randomly around Austin. They don’t say or do anything, most likely because their character counterparts wouldn’t be allowed to, but according to the official Twitter account... you can ask them, “Should we walk by the river?” If someone there asks them, please, let me know what they said. I haven’t read the book yet and I’m dying with curiosity.
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People have already pointed out how Margaret Atwood’s novel, despite being over 30 years old at this point, is especially relevant in 2017's sociopolitical climate, but this definitely makes it seem a little too real. Either that makes it insanely clever marketing, or it’s yet another sign that we’re way behind on our women-only bunkers. The Handmaid’s Tale comes out April 26.
[Twitter]MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — Two of Minnesota’s men’s college hockey teams will soon be playing conference games in the desert.
But it won’t be the Gophers.
Arizona State, which played its inaugural season of Division I men’s hockey this past season and is in the process of choosing a conference, is getting closer to that decision. Two sources told WCCO that the Big Ten is no longer in the running to add the Sun Devils, and that the choice is now between the Western Collegiate Hockey Association or the National Collegiate Hockey Conference.
A decision from Arizona State is expected within the next two months, a source said, with the Sun Devils officially joining a conference in either 2017-18 or 2018-19 – most likely the latter.
The WCHA currently has 10 teams, including two from Minnesota – Bemidji State and Minnesota State-Mankato. The NCHC currently has eight, and likewise has two Minnesota teams: Minnesota-Duluth and St. Cloud State.
Representatives from Arizona State met with representatives from the conferences earlier this month at the Frozen Four, sources said.
The Big Ten welcomed its first affiliate conference member for men’s hockey earlier this month, when it announced that Notre Dame would join the conference for hockey only, starting in 2017-18. It comes on the heels of Johns Hopkins joining the conference as an affiliate member in men’s lacrosse last season, and the Johns Hopkins women’s team set to join the conference as an affiliate member this fall.
The Big Ten, which for more than a hundred years did not have any affiliate members, thought it would be prudent to see how those three new affiliate memberships go before adding any more of them, a source said, and for now at least, is content with seven men’s hockey teams.Looking for news you can trust?
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Last week, a shocking GQ investigative report, “None Dare Call it Conspiracy,” hit the newsstands. Not that most people would know about it. Oddly, the magazine’s parent company, Conde Nast, seems bent on squelching the explosive article.
The report links Russia’s intelligence service to a series of bombings in 1999—blamed on Chechen terrorists—that killed over 300 Russian citizens, led to the Second Chechen War, and propelled Vladimir Putin to the presidency. At the center of the story is a Mikhail Trepashkin, a former KGB-turned-FSB agent, whose detailed allegations draw into question Putin’s role in the bombings. Similar inquiries have led to the mysterious deaths of both journalist Anna Politkovskaya and Trepashkin’s former colleague Alexander Litvinenko.
Perhaps fearing that the story would impact the advertising revenues of the four titles Conde Nast publishes in the Russian market, the media company has attempted to bury the piece. In an internal email on July 23, obtained by NPR’s David Folkenflik, one of the media company’s top lawyers informed GQ editors that “Conde Nast management has decided that the September issue of US GQ magazine containing Scott Anderson’s article…should not be distributed in Russia.” The report was not teased on the magazine’s cover and, as of now, is not available on the magazine’s website. Gawker has attempted to rectify the situation by posting a scanned copy of the article on its website and asking readers to help them translate the article into Russian.
While Conde Nast has thus far been silent on the NPR report (they did not respond to my request for comment), this appears to be a clear-cut case of commercial interests trumping journalistic integrity. As Scott Anderson, the author of the piece said to Folkenflik
I think it’s really kind of sad. Here now is finally an outlet for this story to be told, and you do everything possible to throw a tarp over it.
By attempting to stifle the report, Conde Nast may end up succeeding in bringing more attention to the piece. That, and inadvertently making one of the strongest arguments yet for supporting independent nonprofit media like NPR (and Mother Jones).Episode 1 "Okay, I'll just need your username and password to verify this," the customer rep tells me.
"You know my username." I respond "I just told you."
"Yes, but we need to verify that you have access to your account."
"I told you the answer to my secret phrase question."
"The secret phrase is only used to verify your identity, not access your account."
"You just confirmed all the details of my account – so you're already accessing my account."
"We're looking AT your account but we're not IN your account. We can't operate on your account unless we're logged into your account."
"So what would happen if I forgot my password?"
"If you forgot your password you'd go to the forgot-my-password link and it'd email you a new one."
"What if my email address has changed and I couldn't get the new password?"
"Then we would need to create you a new account, close out your old one, and transfer all your records over to your new account."
"So there's no administrative way of accessing my account?"
"No."
"So how would you get the records from my old account if you need my password to get into it?"
"Uh...... We just need your password... to access your account."
I'm now at the broken-record part of the customer support cycle, where all roads lead back to the same question. I know it's not this poor guy's fault that their system doesn't have an administrative interface but my sympathy only goes so far.
"Your system told me that I should keep my password private."
"Not from us, though."
"It told me that you would never ask for my password."
"On emails. We would never ask for it on emails – but YOU rang US."
"But I clicked on a checkbox in the sign-on form saying that I would never disclose my password to anyone."
"But not customer support."
This could be a trap. In his shoes, with a particularly annoying caller I'd probably hold out for their password then void their account for a breach of the security contract.
"Banana47" I lie. "Capital B"
I hear a clicking sound and then:
"No, that password doesn't seem to work."
So at least it's not a ploy to shut me out permanently...
"Hmm. I'll need to look at my password book."
"You... have a password book?" he asks.
"Of course I do! Encrypted, obviously – because I'm an IT professional. What, do you think I just have one password which I use for everything?"
"No, I'm not suggesting that."
"A good thing too, because I have three passwords I use for everything – Low, Medium and High Security."
"And I'm assuming that this is low security?"
"No, work is low security, this is medium and all the personal stuff I care about is high."
"Work is LOW?!" he gasps.
"Of course it is. It used to be Medium High, but then I realised that there was no point so I just went to low. One capital, some lowercase, 2 numbers."
"Like Banana47."
"Yeah, that was our admin password for about two years."
"TWO YEARS!!!"
"Yeah, you'd think it'd be an issue but we have people using their surname with an incrementing two digit number – kept on a bit of paper under their keyboards in case they forget their name."
"Don't you enforce password security?"
"Here? No, we implemented it and a bunch of other security measures but then we got told to turn them all off because it's hard for people to remember their password when it changes every six months. So there's no complexity and a two-year lifetime. The only time one of the execs on the top floor changes their password outside of this process is when they start up extramarital relationship in the building and don't want their PA to find out."
"So the PA doesn't have access to their email?"
"Sure they do. But that's the level of technical acumen we have on the sixth floor."
"So what is your password?" he asks.
"Hang on, I'll login and change it. Okay, it's Banana48." I lie, again.
"I thought you said this wasn't low?"
"Yeah, but after a while the futility of security just gets to you and the struggling stops. It's a bit like drowning – quite satisfying."
"How can drowning be satisfying?"
"It depends on whom you're drowning and how long the struggling goes on for."
"Are you saying you drown people?!"
"I don't know. Are you monitoring this call for customer service purposes?"
"Uh.......... no."
"Then no, of course I don't."
"What if I'd said we DID monitor calls?"
"Oh, in that case I definitely don't."
"Ah. So, your password?" he asks.
"I'll need your home address to tell you that."
"Why would you need my home address?"
"So I can verify it's really you."
"But you don't know me."
"I will if I have your home address. Do you have a pool, or a bath or something?"
>Click<
There are easier ways to get your name removed from a mailing list, but nowhere near as satisfying... ®James Franco’s sexuality has been the subject of much speculation, including by James Franco; the actor/artist/author once conducted an interview between his straight and gay selves. In a New York Magazine interview published in the April 18 issue, the actor once again elaborated on the subject, describing himself as “a little gay.”
Noting that Franco has said he’s “gay in my art and straight in my life,” the interviewer asks Franco to explain whether he’s not also gay in his life, pointing out that some gay men have called him “kind of a gay c—k tease.” Franco acknowledged the assessment:
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There is a bit of overfocusing on my sexuality, both by the straight press and the gay press, and so the first question is why do they care? Well, because I’m a celebrity, so I guess they care who I’m having sex with. But if your definition of gay and straight is who I sleep with, then I guess you could say I’m a gay c—k tease. It’s where my allegiance lies, where my sensibilities lie, how I define myself. Yeah, I’m a little gay, and there’s a gay James.
[NY Mag]
Contact us at [email protected] 15, 1919. North End of Boston. A large tank holding 2,300,000 gallons of molasses bursts, flooding the streets at 35 mph. The sticky wave plows through men, women, children, and horses. The molasses flow is strong and swift enough to knock down buildings and even buckle an elevated railroad, knocking a train off its tracks. The great Boston Molasses Disaster claims 21 lives, not including horses and dogs, and injures 150.
And yet, when rum was dubbed kill-devil, I don't think this is what its critics had in mind.
Rum: A Definition
Rum is a spirit distilled from the fermented juice of sugarcane, sugarcane syrup, sugarcane molasses, or other sugarcane by-products. It's distilled at less than 95% alcohol by volume (190 proof) and bottled at not less than 40% alcohol by volume (80 proof). Note: There are flavored rums bottled at less than 40% alcohol by volume, but I won't be talking much about those.
The legal definition of rum tends to vary from country to country, so establishing a strict definition that applies to all rum from everywhere is impossible. What's consistent, though, is that rum is always based on molasses, sugarcane juice, or other cane by-products.
Most countries that produce rum require the spirit to be aged, so for our purposes, we will define rum as an aged spirit. This means we will not consider Brazilian cachaça to be a form of rum, since it is unaged.
Finally, if instead of the word rum, you see ron or rhum on a label, don't worry. You're merely seeing either the Spanish (ron) or French (rhum) variant of the same word. It's all rum.
Sugarcane and Molasses—Definitions
Normally, when you think of drinking a glass |
City could all use him at the moment, or at the very least someone like him.
Perhaps Evans has a future in midfield at Old Trafford, even Ferguson admitted, “We were never quite sure if he was going to be a midfield player or a centre-back.” The move has worked wonders for David Luiz, who shares a similar composure and awareness on the ball. With Michael Carrick creeping into his mid-thirties and question marks still hovering over the future of Darren Fletcher, there could well be a suitable vacancy waiting to be filled.
Jonny Evans celebrates his 25th birthday today and has recently been basking in the glow of a freshly signed contract extension. “I would love to play here throughout the rest of my career,” insists Evans, but considering he’s yet to reach 100 league games for United, has his career even begun yet?
[cat_link cat=”manchester-united” type=”grid”]Combined revenues from the four major mobile application stores run by Apple, Nokia, Google and Research in Motion will leap 77.7% in 2011 to $3.8 billion, with the Apple App Store projected to eat up a gargantuan three-quarters share of the total market, according to new IHS Screen Digest research.
To no one’s surprise, the Apple App Store continues to head off all competition. Projected figures for the Apple App Store this year call for revenue of $2.91 billion, up 63.4% from $1.78 billion in 2010. Given that Apple devices such as the iPhone, iPod and iPad are the market leaders in their field, the company’s App Store is expected to take in 76% of revenue this year and retain 60% market share by 2014, despite efforts by the other stores to match Apple’s ability to monetize its users, IHS believes.
Apple also will lead the way with revenue gained from in-app purchases — or additional purchases made within a paid application, such as bonus game levels — which will serve as a key growth driver for revenue up to 2014.
“With consumers continuing to show robust, unflagging interest in downloading games and other applications to devices like smart phones and tablets, collective revenues from the four stores will climb sharply this year,” said Jack Kent, analyst, mobile media, for IHS.
Combined revenue for the four stores in 2011 will rise from US$2.1 billion in 2010 and from $830.6 million in 2009. Application store revenues were first tracked in 2008 in a market worth just $206.01 million, with the Apple App Store the only viable presence at that time.
Total download revenue from games and other applications are projected to continue rising in the next few years, jumping to $5.6 billion in 2012, $6.9 billion in 2013 and $8.3 billion in 2014. The four app stores are the major players at present in the field, but other sites, such as Microsoft’s Windows Marketplace, conceivably could gain enough size and presence in the future to shake up the market.
Making a serious bid for consumer dollars is Google’s Android Market, which will see the fastest growth in 2011. Android Market revenue will soar 295.4% this year to $425.36 million, on its way to become the second-largest application store.
The ascension of Google Market to runner-up position means a fall in ranking for last year’s second-place finisher, Research In Motion (RIM). This year, the BlackBerry App World will finish third with expected revenue of $279.11 million. Despite 69.2% growth in 2011 that will rival Apple’s App Store revenue expansion, BlackBerry App World will have the fewest downloads, numbering about 772.2 million, compared to a staggering 10.3 billion downloads for the Apple App Store and 5.8 billion downloads for Android Market.
In last place this year will be the Nokia Ovi Store, with $201.48 million in anticipated revenue and 1.1 billion downloads from Nokia’s Symbian smart phone users. Both the RIM and Nokia app stores will continue over the next few years to be relegated to the two lower positions as Apple and Google remain the dominant players, IHS Screen Digest figures show.
The total number of downloaded applications in 2011 is expected to reach 18.1 billion by year-end, compared to 9.5 billion last year, 3.1 billion in 2009 and 419.2 million in 2008. By 2014, downloaded applications will top some 33 billion.
Like this: Like Loading...President Donald Trump’s lawyer, John Dowd, asserted that the “President cannot obstruct justice because he is the chief law enforcement officer under [the Constitution's Article II] and has every right to express his view of any case.” In a follow-up interview, Dowd added that the president “has more power and discretion on that matter tha[n] DOJ and FBI put together. He cannot obstruct himself!” This position is ultimately incorrect, but buried within it are three important statements about the separation of powers. First, Dowd unambiguously embraced the unitary executive theory: the Department of Justice (DOJ) and FBI do not have any executive power, but for the president’s own delegations. Second, because the president is the executive branch personified, and is ultimately responsible for all criminal investigations, the president cannot obstruct that process. Third, because the president is legally unable to obstruct justice, he cannot be held liable for such actions.
I agree with the first argument, concur-in-part with the second, and dissent from the third. Although the president is unitary, certain structural limits exist over his control of federal law enforcement. The president can obstruct justice. However, the president cannot obstruct justice when he exercises his lawful authority that is vested by Article II of the Constitution. Thus, the question of whether the president obstructs justice will turn on whether his actions are supported by Article II itself.
As a constitutional matter, the Justice Department does not exist, but for the president. It’s true that Congress establishes the agency, creates its offices, appropriates funds, and confirms the president’s nominees. But there is one attribute of DOJ that Congress does not—and indeed cannot—delegate: the executive power. “Governmental investigation and prosecution of crimes is a quintessentially executive function,” Justice Scalia explained in his Morrison v. Olson dissent—a point with which the majority did not disagree. This authority exists in the president, and the president alone. Article II, Section I explains “[t]he executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America,” and no one else. Once the attorney general or FBI director is confirmed, the president can then delegate his executive power to those officers, and maintain that delegation so long as doing so satisfies his duty to take care that the laws are faithfully executed. In turn, those principal officers can then delegate that executive power—concerning law enforcement and other matters—to their subordinates as provided by law. However, the president maintains the absolute power to withdraw that authority for any reason, or no reason at all. Here, I table the constitutional status of independent agencies, and even the independent counsel statute addressed in Morrison, precisely because under current law, Robert Mueller is under the authority of the Justice Department.
In this sense, Dowd is correct that the president “is the chief law enforcement officer.” Further, at least with respect to the breadth of executive powers, the president indeed does “ha[ve] more power and discretion on that matter tha[n] DOJ and FBI put together.” The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. But this does not mean that the president has unfettered authority over the administration of justice. Starting from first principles, the Constitution enumerates “bribery” and “treason” as explicit grounds for impeachment. If the president accepted a bribe in exchange for signing an executive agreement that gave aid and comfort to foreign belligerents—even though these are actions in his official capacity—the president could be removed from office by Congress. This otherwise lawful act amounts to both bribery and treason. However, the lawful exercise of an Article II power—whether signing an executive agreement or vetoing a bill—does not give rise to an impeachable offense.
By similar logic, the House of Representatives could include another article of impeachment if the president subsequently removed an attorney general because he was investigating such an offense. Whether or not Congress codified “obstruction of justice” as a crime—it did so fairly early on in 1831—this termination could be subsumed within the broader category of “high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” Practice bears out this construction, as the articles of impeachment for both Presidents Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton included counts for obstruction of justice. Here, Dowd is incorrect: The president can obstruct justice. Regardless of whether a sitting president can be indicted in federal court for such acts, he can be removed from office for doing so. None of this should be controversial.
Yet, none of these niceties resolve the controversy of the day: whether Trump’s actions violate federal law, or amount to “high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” The analysis for the former category is easier than the latter, but both ultimately wind up in the same place.
Congress cannot, by statute, take away a power that the Constitution vests in the president. Myers v. United States held that Congress cannot strip the president’s absolute authority to fire officers who are subject to his control. Morrison v. Olson upheld the independent counsel statute precisely because it did not “impermissibly interfere with the President's authority under Article II.” In contrast, Zivotofsky v. Kerry did impermissibly interfere with the president’s authority because Congress required the president to recognize foreign nations. In Myers and Zivotofsky, statutes that deprived the president of his constitutional authority were invalidated.
A prosecution brought under the federal obstruction of justice statute that impermissibly interfered with the president’s constitutional authority would be, as applied to such a case, unconstitutional. (I offered a similar analysis concerning regulations that purport to limit the president’s power to remove the special counsel.) The difficult question, though, is on which side of the Morrison v. Olson line such a prosecution would fall. Chief Justice William Rehnquist’s majority opinion affirmed the Ethics in Government Act because it gave “the Executive Branch sufficient control over the independent counsel to ensure that the President is able to perform his constitutionally assigned duties.” This line—which may or may not be supported by five justices on the current Court—is the clearest line we have. If such a criminal prosecution disabled the president from “perform[ing] his constitutionally assigned duties,” the obstruction statute, as applied, would be unconstitutional.
A different analysis would pertain if the Senate, sitting as a court, alleged that the president’s interference with an investigation amounted to a “high Crime[] and Misdemeanor[].” This charge would not present the problem of a statute conflicting with the Constitution; in every such case, the Constitution prevails. Rather, it would present a clash within Article II, between the president’s assertion of authority under Sections 1 through 3, and the impeachment clause in Section 4. What happens when one provision of the Constitution conflicts with another? Specific grants of powers must prevail over less specific restrictions on power. That is, the president’s enumerated authority to take care that laws are faithfully executed—which embraces the unenumerated removal power—takes precedence over the undefined genre of “high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” I tender this rule with some trepidation because, admittedly, there is scant guidance to be had. My guiding principle is Hamilton’s warning in Federalist 65 about the potential political abuses that are inherent in the impeachment process. The Framers, cognizant of this risk, deliberately imposed a super-duper two-thirds majority for removal (the same standard to propose amendments to the Constitution itself) and required the chief justice to preside. The presumption should support leaving the president in office if there are any constitutional doubts, and not removing him.
Either as a matter of statutory or constitutional law, the president cannot obstruct justice when he exercises his lawful authority that is vested by Article II of the Constitution. Part II of this series will consider whether Trump’s actions concerning the firing of FBI Director James Comey comport, or fall outside, this principle.The following article is copyright ©1997 by the Skeptics Society, P.O. Box 338, Altadena, CA 91001, (626) 794-3119. Permission has been granted for noncommercial electronic circulation of this article in its entirety, including this notice.
Einstein's God
Just What Did Einstein Believe About God?
Presented here for the first time are the complete texts of two letters that Einstein wrote regarding his lack of belief in a personal god.
By Michael R. Gilmore Just over a century ago, near the beginning of his intellectual life, the young Albert Einstein became a skeptic. He states so on the first page of his Autobiographical Notes (1949, pp. 3-5): "Thus I came--despite the fact I was the son of entirely irreligious (Jewish) parents--to a deep religiosity, which, however, found an abrupt ending at the age of 12. Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true. The consequence was a positively fanatic [orgy of] freethinking coupled with the impression that youth is intentionally being deceived...Suspicion against every kind of authority grew out of this experience, a skeptical attitude...hich has never left me..."
We all know Albert Einstein as the most famous scientist of the 20th century, and many know him as a great humanist. Some have also viewed him as religious. Indeed, in Einstein'a writings there is well-known reference to God and discussion of religion (1949, 1954). Although Einstein stated he was religious and that he believed in God, it was in his own specialized sense that he used these terms. Many are aware that Einstein was not religious in the conventional sense, but it will come as a surprise to some to learn that Einstein clearly identified himself as an atheist and as an agnostic. If one understands how Einstein used the terms religion, God, atheism, and agnosticism, it is clear that he was consistent in his beliefs.
Part of the popular picture of Einstein's God and religion comes from his well-known statements, such as: "God is cunning but He is not malicious."(Also: "God is subtle but he is not bloody-minded." Or: "God is slick, but he ain't mean." (1946)
"God does not play dice."(On many occasions.)
"I want to know how God created the world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts, the rest are details."(Unknown date.)
It is easy to see how some got the idea that Einstein was expressing a close relationship with a personal god, but it is more accurate to say he was simply expressing his ideas and beliefs about the universe.
Einstein's "belief" in Spinoza's God is one of his most widely quoted statements. But quoted out of context, like so many of these statements, it is misleading at best. It all started when Boston's Cardinal O'Connel attacked Einstein and the General Theory of Relativity and warned the youth that the theory "cloaked the ghastly apparition of atheism" and "befogged speculation, producing universal doubt about God and His creation"(Clark, 1971, 413-414). Einstein had already experienced heavier duty attacks against his theory in the form of anti-Semitic mass meetings in Germany, and he initially ignored the Cardinal's attack. Shortly thereafter though, on April 24, 1929, Rabbi Herbert Goldstein of New York cabled Einstein to ask: "Do you believe in God?"(Sommerfeld, 1949, 103). Einstein's return message is the famous statement: "I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings"( 103). The Rabbi, who was intent on defending Einstein against the Cardinal, interpreted Einstein's statement in his own way when writing: "Spinoza, who is called the God-intoxicated man, and who saw God manifest in all nature, certainly could not be called an atheist. Furthermore, Einstein points to a unity. Einstein's theory if carried out to its logical conclusion would bring to mankind a scientific formula for monotheism. He does away with all thought of dualism or pluralism. There can be no room for any aspect of polytheism. This latter thought may have caused the Cardinal to speak out. Let us call a spade a spade"(Clark, 1971, 414). Both the Rabbi and the Cardinal would have done well to note Einstein's remark, of 1921, to Archbishop Davidson in a similar context about science: "It makes no difference. It is purely abstract science"(413).
The American physicist Steven Weinberg (1992), in critiquing Einstein's "Spinoza's God" statement, noted: "But what possible difference does it make to anyone if we use the word 'God' in place of 'order' or 'harmony,' except perhaps to avoid the accusation of having no God?" Weinberg certainly has a valid point, but we should also forgive Einstein for being a product of his times, for his poetic sense, and for his cosmic religious view regarding such things as the order and harmony of the universe.
But what, at bottom, was Einstein's belief? The long answer exists in Einstein's essays on religion and science as given in his Ideas and Opinions (1954), his Autobiographical Notes (1949), and other works. What about a short answer?
In the Summer of 1945, just before the bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Einstein wrote a short letter stating his position as an atheist (Figure 1). Ensign Guy H. Raner had written Einstein from mid-Pacific requesting a clarification on the beliefs of the world famous scientist (Figure 2). Four years later Raner again wrote Einstein for further clarification and asked "Some people might interpret (your letter) to mean that to a Jesuit priest, anyone not a Roman Catholic is an atheist, and that you are in fact an orthodox Jew, or a Deist, or something else. Did you mean to leave room for such an interpretation, or are you from the viewpoint of the dictionary an atheist; i.e., 'one who disbelieves in the existence of a God, or a Supreme Being'?" Einstein's response is shown in Figure 3.
Combining key elements from the first and second response from Einstein there is little doubt as to his position: "From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist.... I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our being."
I was fortunate to meet Guy Raner, by chance, at a humanist dinner in late 1994, at which time he told me of the Einstein letters. Raner lives in Chatsworth, California and has retired after a long teaching career. The Einstein letters, a treasured possession for most of his life, were sold in December, 1994, to a firm that deals in historical documents (Profiles in History, Beverly Hills, CA). Five years ago a very brief letter (Raner & Lerner, 1992) describing the correspondence was published in Nature. But the two Einstein letters have remained largely unknown.
Curiously enough, the wonderful and well-known biography Albert Einstein, Creator and Rebel, by Banesh Hoffmann (1972) does quote from Einstein's 1945 letter to Raner. But maddeningly, although Hoffmann quotes most of the letter (194-195), he leaves out Einstein's statement: "From the viewpoint of a Jesuit Priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist." Hoffmann's biography was written with the collaboration of Einstein's secretary, Helen Dukas. Could she have played a part in eliminating this important sentence, or was it Hoffmann's wish? I do not know. However, Freeman Dyson (1996) notes "that Helen wanted the world to see, the Einstein of legend, the friend of school children and impoverished students, the gently ironic philosopher, the Einstein without violent feelings and tragic mistakes." Dyson also notes that he thought Dukas "profoundly wrong in trying to hide the true Einstein from the world." Perhaps her well-intentioned protectionism included the elimination of Einstein as atheist.
Although not a favorite of physicists, Einstein, The Life and Times, by the professional biographer Ronald W. Clark (1971), contains one of the best summaries on Einstein's God: "However, Einstein's God was not the God of most men. When he wrote of religion, as he often did in middle and later life, he tended to...clothe with different names what to many ordinary mortals--and to most Jewsa--looked like a variant of simple agnosticism...This was belief enough. It grew early and rooted deep. Only later was it dignified by the title of cosmic religion, a phrase which gave plausible respectability to the views of a man who did not believe in a life after death and who felt that if virtue paid off in the earthly one, then this was the result of cause and effect rather than celestial reward. Einstein's God thus stood for an orderly system obeying rules which could be discovered by those who had the courage, the imagination, and the persistence to go on searching for them"(19).
Einstein continued to search, even to the last days of his 76 years, but his search was not for the God of Abraham or Moses. His search was for the order and harmony of the world.
BibliographyThe National Energy Board says it won't be holding any hearings into the Energy East pipeline project this week in Montreal following Monday's protest and calls for two commissioners to step down.
The announcement comes as the federal review board faces a flurry of criticism over a meeting between two of its commissioners and former Quebec premier Jean Charest while he was working for TransCanada, the company heading the Energy East project.
"The decision has been made as a result of a violent disruption on the first day of the proceedings and ongoing security concerns," the federal review board said in a statement Tuesday afternoon after three protesters were arrested at Monday's hearings.
The NEB wrote that "disruptions like this one compromise the board's ability to conduct the session in a secure manner and also prevent interveners from having an opportunity to be heard, sharing their views and asking questions. All participants in this hearing have a right to be heard and with respect."
Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr said Tuesday he was hopeful that the process would resume as soon as possible, but in the wake of the revelations about the NEB meeting with Charest, he also reiterated that the NEB is an independent body and separate from the federal government.
"Our interest is in making sure that the process continues and that the Canadians who have an opinion have the right and freedom to say it," he said.
A demonstrator confronts Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre at Monday's public hearing. (Paul Chiasson/Canadian Press)
But hearings will not resume until it has made a decision regarding two motions to recuse two of its panel members from the hearings, the NEB said.
The motions were filed by environmental groups that took issue with revelations about Charest's meeting with the NEB.
The NEB is accepting written comments on these motions until Sept. 7 and "will not proceed with further panel sessions until it reaches a decision."
In a statement of its own, TransCanada said it "will wait for the NEB to provide guidance on how it plans to proceed."
'Pull the plug'
Environmental groups, meanwhile, again pressed the NEB to remove the commissioners who met with Charest.
"We maintain that the commissioners have to recuse themselves immediately, for an independent investigation to be called, and for the NEB to completely [be] overhauled before the hearings into Energy East can continue," Patrick Bonin, a spokesman for Greenpeace Canada, said in a statement.
The proposed pipeline would carry 1.1 million barrels of crude oil per day from the Alberta oilsands to the East Coast. (CBC)
Environmental Defence's Patrick Derochie said the NEB's decision to suspend proceedings showed the review process for major energy projects is "completely broken."
"There were serious doubts about the Energy East review from the get-go," he said in a statement.
"Now is the time for the federal government to pull the plug."
'Major perception problem'
Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre called last week for the NEB hearings to be halted, saying the reports involving Charest created a "major perception problem" for the review board.
"I'm not sure of the impartiality of the process," he said last Thursday.
Former Quebec premier Jean Charest has been working as a consultant for TransCanada. (Graham Hughes/Canadian Press)
NEB officials declined an interview request on Tuesday.
Marc-Andre Plouffe, an NEB director at its Montreal office, has said the meeting was part of efforts to learn how to engage with the province.
He said the federal regulator met with Quebec representatives from a wide range of groups. These included representatives from environmental groups as well as Coderre and Charest.
Plouffe said the board wasn't aware of any ties Charest had with any particular company when the meeting took place.
The federal review board must decide whether to approve TransCanada's bid to build the 4,500-kilometre pipeline that would transport crude oil from Alberta to Eastern Canada.
The Montreal hearings were slated to run until Friday.
Hearings are also scheduled to be held in several other cities, including Quebec City, before concluding in Kingston, Ont., in December.
The NEB must submit its report by March 2018 after which the federal cabinet will have the final say on the project.Green Bay Packers Proof of Concept Uniforms
Every once in a while I stumble upon something great on the internets. Most of the time it is by accident and quite honestly, nine times out of ten, I’m not even sure how I ended up to my final destination. Today was one of these instances. A few days ago our carpool was discussing all the important things in life: tv shows, women, politics, movies and of course sports. One topic that came up was an idea for a website that would aggregate all the fines the NFL had handed out each week and present that information in a clean format for fans to consume. Long story short, I checked to see if NFLfines.com was registered, and of course it was not. So I got to work. During my research I thought it would be a great idea to develop a logo for this digital endeavor. That led me to a google search of NFL logos which led me to a very obscure website that contain the following images of a proof of concept for new Green Bay Packers uniforms. The blog post was from Feb 25, 2012. That post led me to the original posting by a website of what looks to be a design firm in Minneapolis (http://www.bkrdsn.com/).
Original designs by Steve Wåhlin @SteveWahlin via http://www.bkrdsn.com/
Original designs by Steve Wåhlin @SteveWahlin via http://www.bkrdsn.com/
Original designs by Steve Wåhlin @SteveWahlin via http://www.bkrdsn.com/
I was not satisfied. I wanted the backstory on this. Why the hell would a Minneapolis design firm be making a proof of concept for a new Green Bay Packers jersey? So I dug deeper. At this point I’d like to share a little tool that is quite helpful in the age of the internet. It’s called The Way Back Machine. It’s kind of like an ongoing archive of websites. They take snapshots in time of most websites. The more traffic a site gets the more likely it will be indexed there (I think - I really don’t know how that witch craft works…).So I took my search there and low and behold I discovered the original posting (B Inspired: NFL Teams Feb. 6th 2012). Since then that post has been taken down, but I couldn’t help but revive it. I think these concepts are great and before people get there pitchforks out and claim there is nothing wrong with Green Bay’s current uniforms I want to say that I totally agree. But I also think that sometimes enhancements can be made. For instance, the idea of making the “G” within the helmet more football shaped may rub people the wrong way. Personally I think it is witty design - it ties it together with the sport. Also, for years I’ve always wondered what the Green and Gold could look like with a truer gold color - both in their helmets and pants.
Ok, I’m going to get off my soap box for now. Please check out the other two blog posts that I’ve linked above. They deserve all the credit on this one. I am going to post a few of my own tweaks below to these already wonderful proof of concept designs. Like, what the away uniforms could look like, as well as tweaking the helmet design and shifting the gold colors around a bit.
Our tweaks to helmet, and colors(CNN) -- Two pirates in Somalia vowed revenge Monday, after the U.S. military killed three pirates and freed a U.S. ship captain who had been held hostage for several days.
Crew members of the Maersk Alabama celebrate after hearing the Navy had rescued their captain from pirates.
The pirates told a Somali journalist that they were angered by the U.S. action, as well as a French raid Friday that killed two pirates and one hostage and freed four hostages.
"We have decided to kill U.S. and French sailors if they happen to be among our future hostages," said Abdullahi Ahmed, a member of a pirate group based at Harardhere, a coastal town in central Somalia.
President Obama said Monday the United States will confront pirates and hold them "accountable for their crimes."
Obama added that he is proud of the military's actions in rescuing Capt. Richard Phillips from his pirate captors.
Members of the U.S. Navy shot and killed three pirates who had been holding Phillips hostage in a lifeboat on Sunday evening, a military official said. The pirates seized Phillips after a failed attempt to hijack his ship, the Maersk Alabama.
For five days the pirates held Phillips in the lifeboat as U.S. Navy ships closed in and lingered nearby.
On Sunday, U.S. Navy snipers opened fire on the lifeboat after seeing one pirate point an AK-47 at the captain's back, the U.S. military said. The shootings occurred as one pirate was aboard the USS Bainbridge negotiating over Phillips' fate. Watch how SEALs shot three pirates »
Three pirates in the lifeboat were killed. Phillips was not hurt. He was taken to another U.S. Navy vessel, the U.S. military said, where he received a medical checkup and spoke by phone with his wife in the United States. Watch admiral tell how rescue went down »
Pirates in Somalia identified the slain men as Mohamed Ahmed Adawe, Nur Dalabey and Khalif Guled. Two of them -- Dalabey and Guled -- were among the "most experienced men" in a group that has hijacked seagoing vessels for money, Ahmed said.
They were killed two days after the French military freed four hostages, including a child, who had been held by pirates for nearly a week on the yacht, Tanit, off Somalia's coast. In that operation, a hostage and two pirates were killed, the French Defense Ministry said, while three pirates were captured. Watch how pirates roam a vast area of ocean »
The military actions angered Ali Nur, a pirate who is based in Gara'ad, a coastal village in the semi-autonomous region of Puntland, in northern Somalia.
"From now on, after the killings by the U.S. and France, we will add some harsher steps in our dealings with hostages, particularly American and French hostages," Nur told a journalist.
The U.S. military acknowledged Sunday that its actions to rescue Phillips could increase the risk of violence.
"This could escalate violence in this part of the world. No question about it," U.S. Navy Vice Adm. Bill Gortney told reporters.
Nur issued a warning to the United States.
"The killing of our boys was aggression, and the U.S. will see what they get from their operation," he said.
All About Pirates • SomaliaThe agent from U.S. Immigration and Enforcement called human resources director Debra Kabalkin out of the blue with a novel pitch: Will you let us audit your employee records if we teach you how to detect false identification cards and phony paperwork?
It was an unusual offer, but Interstate Worldwide Relocation Services of Springfield was willing to give it a try. Under a new partnership with ICE, known as the IMAGE program, federal agents would help educate employers on how to reduce the chance of hiring illegal workers. The businesses had to agree to undergo a voluntary audit and use an electronic database to verify records.
Inviting the government to look at company records didn't scare off Interstate's president, Bud Morrissette. With more than 200 employees and a roughly 50 percent vacancy rate among the movers, drivers, packers and other service positions in the company, Morrissette said he welcomed the chance to learn directly from federal officials how to screen and hire for legal employees.
"We want to get it right the first time," Morrissette said. The company, a third-generation family business, has corporate officers in Springfield and facilities in Ashburn and Landover. It handles storage and shipping for corporate and government clients, including AOL, Hewlett Packard and the military.
After months of training with ICE officials and a complete audit, Interstate plans to formally sign an agreement with ICE on Wednesday, making it the fifth company in the Washington region to be certified as a member of IMAGE (ICE Mutual Agreement Between Government and Employers).
More than 100 companies nationwide are members.
Working directly with businesses to help them follow federal law is a collaborative approach more commonly seen among local law enforcement agencies using community policing. But in a time of shrinking resources and an ever-expanding mission to protect the homeland, federal law enforcement is working with additional groups for their help in fighting crime.
John P. Torres, special agent in charge of ICE's Washington field office, wanted to expand the IMAGE program when he arrived more than a year ago and pushed to have ICE agents reach out to businesses to lead the training.
"We're looking for compliance," he said. "And the benefit to ICE is that it allows us to use our limited resources to focus on the most egregious violators."REUTERS / Samantha Sais US banks may have embarked upon a hacking campaign of their own, allegedly disabling servers used by Iran in a series of cyberattacks from 2012 into 2013.
Bloomberg is reporting that the FBI is investigating whether US financial institutions have started fighting back against hackers.
US Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) has described the state of cyberattacks as "kind of a Wild West right now," remarking that US companies have been launching cyberattacks without government permission.
It's reported that JPMorgan Chase proposed to the FBI that the bank work from offshore locations to disable the servers used to launch denial of service attacks against its website. But attendees of the meeting dismissed the idea over concerns of its legality.
Despite ruling out the proposed hack, Bloomberg reports that US investigators found that a third party had carried out the attack after all. Now the FBI is investigating whether US companies broke the law in ordering the hack against the Iranian servers.
Sony Pictures, the movie studio targeted by hackers, allegedly used Amazon Web Services to try to disrupt people downloading the files leaked as part of the hack.Federal Politics: Two-in-three Canadians approve of PM Justin Trudeau
Canadian satisfaction with government rising, though confidence in the economy lags
September 15, 2016 – As Prime Minister Justin Trudeau rounds the bases on the first anniversary of the election that gave him and his Liberal caucus a majority mandate, public opinion data analyzed by the Angus Reid Institute finds his approval at a new high, with nearly two-in-three Canadians saying they approve of Trudeau’s performance.
The positive numbers for the PM are accompanied by a small but notable lessening of economic anxieties that continue to plague the country, with a growing number of Canadians more likely to say their standard of living has improved over the last 12 months than at any point in the last four years. These majority approval numbers for Trudeau are accompanied by a small but notable lessening of economic anxieties, with a growing number of Canadians more likely to say their standard of living has improved over the last 12 months than at any point in the last four years.
That said, they’re still twice as likely to say their standard of living has worsened in the last year as to say it has improved, and significant regional differences exist, particularly in parts of the country dependent on the oil and energy economies.
Key Findings:
Justin Trudeau’s approval rating is the highest it has been in this survey since he took office last November, rising to 65 per cent, more than double the number who disapprove (30%)
Canadians report increasing satisfaction with a number of aspects of life in their country today, including their health care system, relations between the federal and provincial governments, and foreign policy
The economy is still the top issue for Canadians, and on this front the outlook remains gloomy, especially in Alberta and Newfoundland and Labrador, where flagging oil and gas sectors dominate the provincial economies
Two-in-three approve of Trudeau
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spent his summer nabbing human interest headlines at home and abroad. He became the first sitting PM to march in pride parades in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal, he set social media abuzz when photographed shirtless on vacation in Tofino, and embraced Gord Downie backstage before the Tragically Hip’s final show.
This was followed by an equally high-profile state visit to China at the beginning of September, where he was bestowed with the nickname “Little Potato”, which is, according to media reports, a term of endearment, and a name his father had received (minus the “Little”) in previous visits.
While critics have questioned whether that trip achieved any substantial economic or diplomatic success, the summer months appear to have left a favourable view of Trudeau. As previously mentioned, some two-thirds (65%) approve of him, more than twice as many as those who disagree (30%).
For comparison, Trudeau’s predecessor Stephen Harper never enjoyed the approval of more than two-fifths of Canadians at any point in his majority mandate. His peak approval rating – 42 per cent – came in December 2014:
The Opposition:
Rona Ambrose and |
Methodius. It is the basis of alphabets used in various languages, past and present, in parts of Southeastern Europe and Northern Eurasia, especially those of Slavic origin, and non-Slavic languages influenced by Russian. As of 2011, around 252 million people in Eurasia use it as the official alphabet for their national languages. About half of them are in Russia. Cyrillic is one of the most-used writing systems in the world.
Some of these are illustrated below; for others, and for more detail, see the links. Sounds are transcribed in the IPA. While these languages by and large have phonemic orthographies, there are occasional exceptions—for example, Russian ⟨г⟩ is pronounced /v/ in a number of words, an orthographic relic from when they were pronounced /ɡ/ (e.g. его yego 'him/his', is pronounced [jɪˈvo] rather than [jɪˈɡo]).
Spellings of names transliterated into the Roman alphabet may vary, especially й (y/j/i), but also (gh/g/h) and ж (zh/j).
Non-Slavic alphabets are generally modelled after Russian, but often bear striking differences, particularly when adapted for Caucasian languages. The first few of these alphabets were developed by Orthodox missionaries for the Finnic and Turkic peoples of Idel-Ural (Mari, Udmurt, Mordva, Chuvash, and Kerashen Tatars) in the 1870s. Later, such alphabets were created for some of the Siberian and Caucasus peoples who had recently converted to Christianity. In the 1930s, some of those languages were switched to the Uniform Turkic Alphabet. All of the peoples of the former Soviet Union who had been using an Arabic or other Asian script (Mongolian script etc.) also adopted Cyrillic alphabets, and during the Great Purge in the late 1930s, all of the Latin alphabets of the peoples of the Soviet Union were switched to Cyrillic as well (the Baltic Republics were annexed later, and were not affected by this change). The Abkhazian and Ossetian languages were switched to Georgian script, but after the death of Joseph Stalin, both also adopted Cyrillic. The last language to adopt Cyrillic was the Gagauz language, which had used Greek script before.
In Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan, the use of Cyrillic to write local languages has often been a politically controversial issue since the collapse of the Soviet Union, as it evokes the era of Soviet rule and Russification. Some of Russia's peoples such as the Tatars have also tried to drop Cyrillic, but the move was halted under Russian law. A number of languages have switched from Cyrillic to other orthographies—either Roman‐based or returning to a former script.
Unlike the Latin script, which is usually adapted to different languages by adding diacritical marks/supplementary glyphs (such as accents, umlauts, fadas, tildes and cedillas) to standard Roman letters, the Cyrillic script is usually adapted by the creation of entirely new letter shapes. However, in some alphabets invented in the 19th century, such as Mari, Udmurt and Chuvash, umlauts and breves also were used.
Bulgarian and Bosnian Sephardim without Hebrew typefaces occasionally printed Judeo-Spanish in Cyrillic.[1]
Common letters [ edit ]
The following table lists the Cyrillic letters which are used in the alphabets of most of the national languages which use a Cyrillic alphabet. Exceptions and additions for particular languages are noted below.
^ Russian: и краткое, i kratkoye; Bulgarian: и кратко, i kratko. Both mean "Short i".. Both mean "Short i". ^ See the notes for each language for details ^ Russian: мягкий знак, myagkiy znak ^ Bulgarian: ер малък, er malâk ^ туш, tush [tuʂ] 'flourish after a toast'; тушь, tushʹ [tuʂ]'[bʲa], бья [bʲja], бъя = б’я [bja] ). The soft sign ⟨ь⟩ usually does not represent a sound, but modifies the sound of the preceding letter, indicating palatalization ("softening"), also separates the consonant and the following vowel. Sometimes it does not have phonetic meaning, just orthographic; e.g. Russian'flourish after a toast'; India ink '. In some languages, a hard sign ⟨ъ⟩ or apostrophe ⟨’⟩ just separates the consonant and the following vowel (бя, бья, бъя = б’я).
Slavic languages [ edit ]
Cyrillic alphabets used by Slavic languages can be divided into two categories:
East Slavic languages, such as Russian, share common features such as Й, ь, and я.
South Slavic languages, such as Serbian, share common features such as Ј and љ.
East Slavic [ edit ]
Russian [ edit ]
Yo (Ё ё) /jo/
The Hard Sign¹ (Ъ ъ) indicates no palatalization²
Yery (Ы ы) indicates [ɨ] (an allophone of /i/ )
(an allophone of ) E (Э э) /e/
Ж and Ш indicate sounds that are retroflex
Notes:
In the pre-reform Russian orthography, in Old East Slavic and in Old Church Slavonic the letter is called yer. Historically, the "hard sign" takes the place of a now-absent vowel, which is still preserved as a distinct vowel in Bulgarian (which represents it with ъ) and Slovene (which is written in the Latin alphabet and writes it as e), but only in some places in the word. When an iotated vowel (vowel whose sound begins with [j] ) follows a consonant, the consonant is palatalized. The Hard Sign indicates that this does not happen, and the [j] sound will appear only in front of the vowel. The Soft Sign indicates that the consonant should be palatalized in addition to a [j] preceding the vowel. The Soft Sign also indicates that a consonant before another consonant or at the end of a word is palatalized. Examples: та ( [ta] ); тя ( [tʲa] ); тья ( [tʲja] ); тъя ( [tja] ); т ( /t/ ); ть ( [tʲ] ).
Before 1918, there were four extra letters in use: Іі (replaced by Ии), Ѳѳ (Фита "Fita", replaced by Фф), Ѣѣ (Ять "Yat", replaced by Ее), and Ѵѵ (ижица "Izhitsa", replaced by Ии); these were eliminated by reforms of Russian orthography.
Belarusian [ edit ]
А а Б б В в Г г Д д Е е Ё ё Ж ж З з І і Й й К к Л л М м Н н О о П п Р р С с Т т У у Ў ў Ф ф Х х Ц ц Ч ч Ш ш Ы ы Ь ь Э э Ю ю Я я ’
The Belarusian alphabet displays the following features:
Ge (Г г) represents a voiced velar fricative /ɣ/.
Yo (Ё ё) /jo/
I (І і), also known as the dotted I or decimal I, resembles the Latin letter I. Unlike Russian and Ukrainian, "И" is not used. Short I (Й й), however, uses the base И glyph.
or, resembles the Latin letter I. Unlike Russian and Ukrainian, "И" is not used. Short U (Ў ў) is the letter У with a breve and represents /w/, or like the u part of the diphthong in loud. The use of the breve to indicate a semivowel is analogous to the Short I (Й).
, or like the part of the diphthong in. The use of the breve to indicate a semivowel is analogous to the Short I (Й). A combination of Sh and Ch (ШЧ шч) is used where those familiar only with Russian and or Ukrainian would expect Shcha (Щ щ).
Yery (Ы ы) /ɨ/
E (Э э) /ɛ/
An apostrophe (’) is used to indicate depalatalization [ clarification needed ] of the preceding consonant. This orthographical symbol used instead of the traditional Cyrillic letter Yer (Ъ), also known as the hard sign.
of the preceding consonant. This orthographical symbol used instead of the traditional Cyrillic letter Yer (Ъ), also known as the hard sign. The letter combinations Dzh (Дж дж) and Dz (Дз дз) appear after D (Д д) in the Belarusian alphabet in some publications. These digraphs represent consonant clusters Дж /dʒ/ and Дз /dz/ correspondingly.
and Дз correspondingly. before 1933 the letter Ґ ґ was used.
Ukrainian [ edit ]
The Ukrainian alphabet А а Б б В в Г г Ґ ґ Д д Е е Є є Ж ж З з И и І і Ї ї Й й К к Л л М м Н н О о П п Р р С с Т т У у Ф ф Х х Ц ц Ч ч Ш ш Щ щ Ь ь Ю ю Я я
The Ukrainian alphabet displays the following features:
Ve (В) represents /ʋ/ (which may be pronounced [w] in a word final position and before consonants).
(which may be pronounced in a word final position and before consonants). He (Г, г) represents a voiced glottal fricative, ( /ɦ/ ).
). Ge (Ґ, ґ) appears after He, represents /ɡ/. It looks like He with an "upturn" pointing up from the right side of the top bar. (This letter was not officially used in Soviet Ukraine in 1933—1990, so it may be missing from older Cyrillic fonts.)
. It looks like He with an "upturn" pointing up from the right side of the top bar. (This letter was not officially used in Soviet Ukraine in 1933—1990, so it may be missing from older Cyrillic fonts.) E (Е, е) represents /ɛ/.
. Ye (Є, є) appears after E, represents /jɛ/.
. E, И (И, и) represent /ɪ/ if unstressed.
if unstressed. I (І, і) appears after Y, represents /i/.
. Yi (Ї, ї) appears after I, represents /ji/.
. Yy (Й, й) represents /j/.
. Shchy (Щ, щ) represents ʃtʃ.
. An apostrophe (’) is used to mark nonpalatalization of the preceding consonant before Ya (Я, я), Yu (Ю, ю), Ye (Є, є), Yi (Ї, ї).
Like in Belarusian Cyrillic, the sounds /dʒ/, /dz/ are represented by digraphs Дж and Дз respectively.
, are represented by digraphs Дж and Дз respectively. Until reforms in 1990, soft sign (Ь, ь) appeared at the end of the alphabet, after Yu (Ю, ю) and Ya (Я, я), rather than before them, as in Russian.
Rusyn [ edit ]
The Rusyn language is spoken by the Lemko Rusyns in Carpathian Ruthenia, Slovakia, and Poland, and the Pannonian Rusyns in Croatia and Serbia.
The Rusyn alphabet А а Б б В в Г г Ґ ґ Д д Е е Є є Ё ё* Ж ж З з И и І і* Ы ы* Ї ї Й й К к Л л М м Н н О о П п Р р С с Т т У у Ф ф Х х Ц ц Ч ч Ш ш Щ щ Ѣ ѣ* Ю ю Я я Ь ь Ъ ъ*
*Letters absent from Pannonian Rusyn alphabet.
South Slavic [ edit ]
Bulgarian [ edit ]
The Bulgarian alphabet А а Б б В в Г г Д д Е е Ж ж З з И и Й й К к Л л М м Н н О о П п Р р С с Т т У у Ф ф Х х Ц ц Ч ч Ш ш Щ щ Ъ ъ Ь ь Ю ю Я я
The Bulgarian alphabet features:
The Bulgarian names for the consonants are [bɤ], [kɤ], [ɫɤ] etc. instead of [bɛ], [ka], [ɛl] etc.
,, etc. instead of,, etc. Е represents /ɛ/ and is called "е" [ɛ].
and is called "е". The sounds /dʒ/ ( /d͡ʒ/ ) and /dz/ ( /d͡z/ ) are represented by дж and дз respectively.
( ) and ( ) are represented by дж and дз respectively. Yot (Й, й) represents /j/.
. Щ represents /ʃt/ ( /ʃ͡t/ ) and is called "щъ" [ʃtɤ] ( [ʃ͡tɤ] ).
( ) and is called "щъ" ( ). Ъ represents the vowel /ɤ/, and is called "ер голям" [ˈɛr ɡoˈljam] ('big er'). In spelling however, Ъ is referred to as /ɤ/ where its official label "ер голям" (used only to refer to Ъ in the alphabet) may cause some confusion. The vowel Ъ /ɤ/ is sometimes approximated to the /ə/ (schwa) sound found in many languages for easier comprehension of its Bulgarian pronunciation for foreigners, but it is actually a back vowel, not a central vowel. [ citation needed ]
, and is called "ер голям" ('big er'). In spelling however, Ъ is referred to as where its official label "ер голям" (used only to refer to Ъ in the alphabet) may cause some confusion. The vowel Ъ is sometimes approximated to the (schwa) sound found in many languages for easier comprehension of its Bulgarian pronunciation for foreigners, but it is actually a back vowel, not a central vowel. Ь is used on rare occasions (only after a consonant [and] before the vowel "о"), such as in the words 'каньон' (canyon), 'шофьор' (driver), etc. It is called "ер малък" ('small er').
The Cyrillic alphabet was developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 10th century AD at the Preslav Literary School.[2][3] The Cyrillic script was originally developed in Bulgaria and has been used there (with modifications and exclusion of certain archaic letters via spelling reforms) continuously since then, superseding the previously used Glagolitic alphabet, which was also invented and used there before the Cyrillic alphabet overtook its use as a written script for Bulgarian. The Cyrillic alphabet was then borrowed by neighboring countries (e.g. Serbia and later Romania) and their peoples by the spread of Orthodox Christianity, who later modified it and added/excluded letters from it to better suit the needs of their own language. It was later adapted to write Russian and evolved into the Russian alphabet and the alphabets of many other Slavic (and later non-Slavic) languages.
Serbian [ edit ]
Allowed italic variants of some letters in different languages.
South Slavic Cyrillic alphabets (with the exception of Bulgarian) are generally derived from Serbian Cyrillic. It, and by extension its descendants, differs from the East Slavic ones in that the alphabet has generally been simplified: Letters such as Я, Ю, and Ё, representing /ja/, /ju/, and /jo/ in Russian, respectively, have been removed. Instead, these are represented by the digraphs ⟨ја⟩, ⟨ју⟩, and ⟨јо⟩, respectively. Additionally, the letter Е, representing /je/ in Russian, is instead pronounced /e/ or /ɛ/, with /je/ being represented by ⟨јe⟩. Alphabets based on the Serbian that add new letters often do so by adding an acute accent ⟨´⟩ over an existing letter.
The Serbian alphabet А а Б б В в Г г Д д Ђ ђ Е е Ж ж З з И и Ј ј К к Л л Љ љ М м Н н Њ њ О о П п Р р С с Т т Ћ ћ У у Ф ф Х х Ц ц Ч ч Џ џ Ш ш
The Serbian alphabet shows the following features:
E represents /ɛ/.
. Between Д and E is the letter Dje (Ђ, ђ), which represents /dʑ/, and looks like Tshe, except that the loop of the h curls farther and dips downwards.
, and looks like Tshe, except that the loop of the h curls farther and dips downwards. Between И and К is the letter Je (Ј, ј), represents /j/, which looks like the Latin letter J.
, which looks like the Latin letter J. Between Л and М is the letter Lje (Љ, љ), representing /ʎ/, which looks like a ligature of Л and the Soft Sign.
, which looks like a ligature of Л and the Soft Sign. Between Н and О is the letter Nje (Њ, њ), representing /ɲ/, which looks like a ligature of Н and the Soft Sign.
, which looks like a ligature of Н and the Soft Sign. Between Т and У is the letter Tshe (Ћ, ћ), representing /tɕ/ and looks like a lowercase Latin letter h with a bar. On the uppercase letter, the bar appears at the top; on the lowercase letter, the bar crosses the top at half of the vertical line.
and looks like a lowercase Latin letter h with a bar. On the uppercase letter, the bar appears at the top; on the lowercase letter, the bar crosses the top at half of the vertical line. Between Ч and Ш is the letter Dzhe (Џ, џ), representing /dʒ/, which looks like Tse but with the descender moved from the right side of the bottom bar to the middle of the bottom bar.
, which looks like Tse but with the descender moved from the right side of the bottom bar to the middle of the bottom bar. Ш is the last letter.
Certain letters are handwritten differently [4], as seen in the adjacent image.
Macedonian [ edit ]
Macedonian cursive
The Macedonian alphabet А а Б б В в Г г Д д Ѓ ѓ Е е Ж ж З з Ѕ ѕ И и Ј ј К к Л л Љ љ М м Н н Њ њ О о П п Р р С с Т т Ќ ќ У у Ф ф Х х Ц ц Ч ч Џ џ Ш ш
The Macedonian alphabet differs from Serbian in the following ways:
Between Ze (З з) and I (И и) is the letter Dze (Ѕ ѕ), which looks like the Latin letter S and represents /d͡z/.
. Dje (Ђ ђ) is replaced by Gje (Ѓ ѓ), which represents /ɟ/ (voiced palatal stop). In some dialects, it represents /d͡ʑ/ instead, like Dje. It is written ⟨Ǵ ǵ⟩ in the corresponding Macedonian Latin alphabet.
(voiced palatal stop). In some dialects, it represents instead, like Dje. It is written ⟨Ǵ ǵ⟩ in the corresponding Macedonian Latin alphabet. Tshe (Ћ ћ) is replaced by Kje (Ќ ќ), which represents /c/ (voiceless palatal stop). In some dialects, it represents /t͡ɕ/ instead, like Tshe. It is written ⟨Ḱ ḱ⟩ in the corresponding Macedonian Latin alphabet.
(voiceless palatal stop). In some dialects, it represents instead, like Tshe. It is written ⟨Ḱ ḱ⟩ in the corresponding Macedonian Latin alphabet. Lje (Љ љ) often represents the consonant cluster /lj/ instead of /ʎ/.
instead of. Certain letters are handwritten differently, as seen in the adjacent image [5].
Montenegrin [ edit ]
The Montenegrin alphabet А а Б б В в Г г Д д Ђ ђ Е е Ж ж З з З́ з́ И и Ј ј К к Л л Љ љ М м Н н Њ њ О о П п Р р С с С́ с́ Т т Ћ ћ У у Ф ф Х х Ц ц Ч ч Џ џ Ш ш
The Montenegrin alphabet differs from Serbian in the following ways:
Between Ze (З з) and I (И и) is the letter З́, which represents /ʑ/ (voiced alveolo-palatal fricative). It is written ⟨Ź ź⟩ in the corresponding Montenegrin Latin alphabet, previously written ⟨Zj zj⟩ or ⟨Žj žj⟩.
(voiced alveolo-palatal fricative). It is written ⟨Ź ź⟩ in the corresponding Montenegrin Latin alphabet, previously written ⟨Zj zj⟩ or ⟨Žj žj⟩. Between Es (С с) and Te (Т т) is the letter С́, which represents /ɕ/ (voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative). It is written ⟨Ś ś⟩ in the corresponding Montenegrin Latin alphabet, previously written ⟨Sj sj⟩ or ⟨Šj šj⟩.
(voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative). It is written ⟨Ś ś⟩ in the corresponding Montenegrin Latin alphabet, previously written ⟨Sj sj⟩ or ⟨Šj šj⟩. The letter Dze (Ѕ ѕ), from Macedonian, is used in scientific literature when representing the /d͡z/ phoneme, although it is not officially part of the alphabet. A Latin equivalent was proposed that looks identical to Ze (З з).
Bosnian [ edit ]
The Bosnian language uses Latin and Cyrillic alphabets, although the Latin is more common.[6] A Bosnian Cyrillic script (Bosančica) was used in the Middle Ages, along with other scripts, but has no connection to the modern Bosnian language.
Croatian [ edit ]
Cyrillic alphabet is used in present-day Croatia among the Serb minority. In Croatian schools the Cyrillic alphabet was taught during the time Croatia was part of Yugoslavia.
Uralic languages [ edit ]
Uralic languages using the Cyrillic script (currently or in the past) include:
Karelian [ edit ]
The first lines of the Book of Matthew in Karelian using the Cyrillic script, 1820
The Karelian language was written in the Cyrillic script in various forms until 1940 when publication in Karelian ceased in favor of Finnish, except for Tver Karelian, written in a Latin alphabet. In 1989 publication began again in the other Karelian dialects and Latin alphabets were used, in some cases with the addition of Cyrillic letters such as ь.
Kildin Sámi [ edit ]
Over the last century, the alphabet used to write Kildin Sami has changed three times: from Cyrillic to Latin and back again to Cyrillic. Work on the latest version of the official orthography commenced in 1979. It was officially approved in 1982 and started to be widely used by 1987.
The Komi-Permyak alphabet:
А а Б б В в Г г Д д Е е Ё ё Ж ж З з И и І і Й й К к Л л М м Н н О о Ӧ ӧ П п Р р С с Т т У у Ф ф Х х Ц ц Ч ч Ш ш Щ щ Ъ ъ Ы ы Ь ь Э э Ю ю Я я
Mari alphabets [ edit ]
Meadow Mari alphabet:
А а Б б В в Г г Д д Е е Ё ё Ж ж З з И и Й й К к Л л М м Н н Ҥ ҥ О о Ö ö П п Р р С с Т т У у Ӱ ӱ Ф ф Х х Ц ц Ч ч Ш ш Щ щ Ъ ъ Ы ы Ь ь Э э Ю ю Я я
Hill Mari alphabet
А а Ä ä Б б В в Г г Д д Е е Ё ё Ж ж З з И и Й й К к Л л М м Н н О о Ö ö П п Р р С с Т т У у Ӱ ӱ Ф ф Х х Ц ц Ч ч Ш ш Щ щ Ъ ъ Ы ы Ӹ ӹ Ь ь Э э Ю ю Я я
Indo-European languages [ edit ]
Iranian languages [ edit ]
Kurdish [ edit ]
Kurds in the former Soviet Union use a Cyrillic alphabet:
Kurdish Cyrillic script А а Б б В в Г г Г' г' Д д Е е Ә ә Ә' ә' Ж ж З з И и Й й К к К' к' Л л М м Н н О о Ö ö П п П' п' Р р Р' р' С с Т т Т' т' У у Ф ф Х х Һ һ Һ' һ' Ч ч Ч' ч' Ш ш Щ щ Ь ь Э э Ԛ ԛ Ԝ ԝ
Ossetian [ edit ]
The Ossetic language has officially used the Cyrillic script since 1937.
Ossetian Cyrillic script А а Ӕ ӕ Б б В в Г г Гъ гъ Д д Дж дж Дз дз Е е Ё ё Ж ж З з И и Й й К к Къ къ Л л М м Н н О о П п Пъ пъ Р р С с Т т Тъ тъ У у Ф ф Х х Хъ хъ Ц ц Цъ цъ Ч ч Чъ чъ Ш ш Щ щ Ъ ъ Ы ы Ь ь Э э Ю ю Я я
Tajik [ edit ]
The Tajik language is written using a Cyrillic-based alphabet.
Tajik Cyrillic script А а Б б В в Г г Ғ ғ Д д Е е Ё ё Ж ж З з И и Ӣ ӣ Й й К к Қ қ Л л М м Н н О о П п Р р С с Т т У у Ӯ ӯ Ф ф Х х Ҳ ҳ Ч ч Ҷ ҷ Ш ш Ъ ъ Э э Ю ю Я я
Other [ edit ]
Romance languages [ edit ]
The Moldovan language used the Cyrillic script until 1918 and again between 1946 and 1989. Nowadays, this alphabet is still official in the unrecognized republic of Transnistria. See Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet.
Romanian (up to the 19th century, and a different form of Cyrillic in Moldova from 1940–89 exclusively; now Cyrillic is used in Transnistria officially and in the rest of the country in everyday communication by some groups of people; see Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet and Romanian Cyrillic alphabet.)
Ladino in occasional Bulgarian Sephardic publications.
Romani [ edit ]
Romani is written in Cyrillic in Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria and the former USSR.
Mongolian [ edit ]
The Mongolic languages include Khalkha (in Mongolia), Buryat (around Lake Baikal) and Kalmyk (northwest of the Caspian Sea). Khalkha Mongolian is also written with the Mongol vertical alphabet.
Overview [ edit ]
This table contains all the characters used.
Һһ is shown twice as it appears at two different location in Buryat and Kalmyk
Khalkha Аа Бб Вв Гг Дд Ее Ёё Жж Зз Ии Йй Кк Лл Мм Нн Оо Buryat Аа Бб Вв Гг Һһ Дд Ее Ёё Жж Зз Ии Йй Лл Мм Нн Оо Kalmyk Аа Әә Бб Вв Гг Һһ Дд Ее Жж Җҗ Зз Ии Йй Кк Лл Мм Нн Ңң Оо Khalkha Өө Пп Рр Сс Тт Уу Үү Фф Хх Цц Чч Шш Щщ Ъъ Ыы Ьь Ээ Юю Яя Buryat Өө Пп Рр Сс Тт Уу Үү Хх Цц Чч Шш Ыы Ьь Ээ Юю Яя Kalmyk Өө Пп Рр Сс Тт Уу Үү Хх Цц Чч Шш Ьь Ээ Юю Яя
Khalkha [ edit ]
The Khalkha Mongolian alphabet А а Б б В в Г г Д д Е е Ё ё Ж ж З з И и Й й К к Л л М м Н н О о Ө ө П п Р р С с Т т У у Ү ү Ф ф Х х Ц ц Ч ч Ш ш Щ щ Ъ ъ Ы ы Ь ь Э э Ю ю Я я
В в = /w/
Е е = /jɛ/, /jœ/
, Ё ё = /jo/
Ж ж = /dʒ/
З з = /dz/
Н н = /n-/, /-ŋ/
, Ө ө = /œ/
Ү ү = /y/
Ы ы = /iː/ (after a hard consonant)
(after a hard consonant) Ь ь = /ĭ/ (extra short)
(extra short) Ю ю = /ju/, /jy/
, D d = /ji/
The Cyrillic letters Кк, Пп, Фф and Щщ are not used in native Mongolian words, but only for Russian loans.
Buryat [ edit ]
The Buryat (буряад) Cyrillic script is similar to the Khalkha above, but Ьь indicates palatalization as in Russian. Buryat does not use Вв, Кк, Фф, Цц, Чч, Щщ or Ъъ in its native words.
The Buryat Mongolian alphabet А а Б б В в Г г Д д Е е Ё ё Ж ж З з И и Й й Л л М м Н н О о Ө ө П п Р р С с Т т У у Ү ү Х х Һ һ Ц ц Ч ч Ш ш Ы ы Ь ь Э э Ю ю Я я
Е е = /jɛ/, /jœ/
, Ё ё = /jo/
Ж ж = /dʒ/
Н н = /n-/, /-ŋ/
, Ө ө = /œ/
Ү ү = /y/
Һ һ = /h/
Ы ы = /ei/, /iː/
, Ю ю = /ju/, /jy/
Kalmyk [ edit ]
The Kalmyk (хальмг) Cyrillic script is similar to the Khalkha, but the letters Ээ, Юю and Яя appear only word-initially. In Kalmyk, long vowels are written double in the first syllable (нөөрин), but single in syllables after the first. Short vowels are omitted altogether in syllables after the first syllable (хальмг = /xaʎmaɡ/).
The Kalmyk Mongolian alphabet А а Ә ә Б б В в Г г Һ һ Д д Е е Ж ж Җ җ З з И и Й й К к Л л М м Н н Ң ң О о Ө ө П п Р р С с Т т У у Ү ү Х х Ц ц Ч ч Ш ш Ь ь Э э Ю ю Я я
Ә ә = /æ/
В в = /w/
Һ һ = /ɣ/
Е е = /ɛ/, /jɛ-/
, Җ җ = /dʒ/
Ң ң = /ŋ/
Ө ө = /œ/
Ү ү = /y/
Northwest Caucasian languages [ edit ]
Living Northwest Caucasian languages are generally written using Cyrillic alphabets.
Abkhaz [ edit ]
Abkhaz is a Caucasian language, spoken in the Autonomous Republic of Abkhazia, Georgia.
The Abkhaz alphabet А а Б б В в Г г Гь гь Ҕ ҕ Ҕь ҕь Д д Дә дә Е е Ж ж Жь жь Жә жә З з Ӡ ӡ Ӡә ӡә И и Й й К к Кь кь Қ қ Қь қь Ҟ ҟ Ҟь ҟь Л л М м Н н О о П п Ҧ ҧ Р р С с Т т Тә тә Ҭ ҭ Ҭә ҭә У у Ф ф Х х Хь хь Ҳ ҳ Ҳә ҳә Ц ц Цә цә Ҵ ҵ Ҵә ҵә Ч ч Ҷ ҷ Ҽ ҽ Ҿ ҿ Ш ш Шь шь Шә шә Щ щ Ы ы Ҩ ҩ Џ џ Џь џь Ь ь Ә ә
Other [ edit ]
Northeast Caucasian languages [ edit ]
Northeast Caucasian languages are generally written using Cyrillic alphabets.
Avar [ edit ]
Avar is a Caucasian language, spoken in the Republic of Dagestan, of the Russian Federation, where it is co-official together with other Caucasian languages like Dargwa, Lak, Lezgian and Tabassaran. All these alphabets, and other ones (Abaza, Adyghe, Chechen, Ingush, Kabardian) have an extra sign: palochka (Ӏ), which gives voiceless occlusive consonants its particular ejective sound.
The Avar alphabet А а Б б В в Г г Гъ гъ Гь гь ГӀ гӀ Д д Е е Ё ё Ж ж З з И и Й й К к Къ къ Кь кь КӀ кӀ КӀкӀ кӀкӀ Кк кк Л л М м Н н О о П п Р р С с Т т ТӀ тӀ У у Ф ф Х х Хх хх Хъ хъ Хь хь ХӀ хӀ Ц ц Цц цц ЦӀ цӀ ЦӀцӀ цӀцӀ Ч ч ЧӀ чӀ ЧӀчӀ чӀчӀ Ш ш Щ щ Ъ ъ Ы ы Ь ь Э э Ю ю Я я
В = /w/
гъ = /ʁ/
гь = /h/
гӀ = /ʕ/
къ = /qːʼ/
кӀ = /kʼ/
кь = /t͡ɬːʼ/
кӀкӀ = /t͡ɬː/, is also written ЛӀ лӀ.
, is also written ЛӀ лӀ. кк = /ɬ/, is also written Лъ лъ.
, is also written Лъ лъ. тӀ = /tʼ/
х = /χ/
хъ = /qː/
хь = /x/
хӀ = /ħ/
цӀ = /t͡sʼ/
чӀ = /t͡ʃʼ/
Double consonants, called "fortis", are pronounced longer than single consonants (called "lenis").
Lezgian [ edit ]
Lezgian is spoken by the Lezgins, who live in southern Dagestan and northern Azerbaijan. Lezgian is a literary language and an official language of Dagestan.
Other [ edit ]
Chechen (since 1938, also with Roman 1991–2000)
Dargwa
Kumyk
Lak
Tabassaran
Turkic languages [ edit ]
Azerbaijani [ edit ]
Cyrillic alphabet (first version 1939-1958) Аа, Бб, Вв, Гг, Ғғ, Дд, Ее, Әә, Жж, Зз, Ии, Йй, Кк, Ҝҝ, Лл, Мм, Нн, Оо, Өө, Пп, Рр, Сс, Тт, Уу, Үү, Фф, Хх, Һһ, Цц, Чч, Ҹҹ, Шш, Ыы, Ээ, Юю, Яя, |
IFC
Profit Confidential
2017-11-13T10:41:03Z
2017-11-16 09:07:40
ripple news
ripple price prediction
ripple price forecast
ripple to usd
ripple to bitcoin
xrp/krw
ripple prices
xrp prices
bithumb
FOMO
Ripple price prediction: ere are 3 factors that are underappreciated and could spark a huge rally in XRP to our $2.00 Ripple price forecast.
Ripple
https://www.profitconfidential.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/XRP-3-300x240.jpg
Ripple may trail just behind Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Bitcoin Cash in terms of market cap, but the world’s fourth-largest cryptocurrency is much less understood than the leading three. That said, investors don’t need to understand Ripple in order to feel the fear of missing out (otherwise known as “FOMO”) on XRP gains. That part comes naturally as XRP begins to surge. At those moments, investors are willing to shove elderly women and orphans aside to get on board. No one wants to hear another investor say, “I made $100,000 on XRP last month,” while knowing they could have done the same thing. It’s worse than missing a three-foot putt. In any case, here are three recent signals that Ripple might be on the edge of a bullish rally:
1. Explosive Trading Volumes: On Sunday, trading activity jumped 86.7% from the day before, from $134.5 million to $251.2 million. By itself, this data is meaningless, but Ripple had two similar spikes in volume last week. The takeaway is that higher trading demand for XRP usually leads to a price increase.
2. China Job Postings: Ripple is expanding its Asian footprint by hiring more staff. It is looking for someone to head up the China operation, and for someone to be a Solutions Director (whatever that means). This means that China is allowing Ripple to continue its foray into the Middle Kingdom, which could drive enormous demand for XRP.
3. The Lockup: The “lockup” is a term referring to Ripple’s commitment that most of the company’s own XRP tokens (they own a huge portion of XRP) will be placed in escrow. This should reassure everyone that Ripple is not dumping its coins and riding off into the sunset, but rather fixing supply in place to ensure its own growth. This lockup could singlehandedly kickstart a monster-sized rally in XRP prices.
Daily Ripple (XRP) Chart
Analyst Take:
These three pieces of Ripple news don’t get nearly enough attention, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there, working beneath the surface of Ripple prices. Once the three factors come to fruition, XRP prices may start to accumulate significant gains. And, at that point, FOMO kicks in.I believe that investors underweigh Ripple because its end goal is different from that of Bitcoin and Ethereum. I continue to believe there’s phenomenal potential in this cryptocurrency, which is why I maintain my $2.00 Ripple price prediction for 2018.TAMPA — A lot went into Tampa's trouble-free protests during the 2012 Republican National Convention: Intense planning. Lessons of past conventions. Big spending on extra officers, training and equipment. Even a tropical storm.
And then there's this: An undercover police operation in which officers infiltrated and took leadership roles in the protest groups they were surveilling.
"They were aware of plans that were afoot to do mischief," Tampa police Maj. Marc Hamlin said of the undercover officers, who came from a variety of agencies.
The undercover intelligence, he said, was "at the highest level of importance" for an RNC that had no violent clashes, little property damage and fewer arrests than are typically made in the fourth quarter of a Tampa Bay Buccaneers home game.
Normally, police wouldn't acknowledge, let alone discuss, such an undercover operation. But Hamlin talked a little about the 2012 RNC efforts Monday because the secret was already out. Last month, a reporter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, attending a maritime security conference in Cleveland (which is hosting the 2016 RNC), heard him describe how police managed to join and "take over" protest groups.
"They became, like, the leaders of the group," Hamlin confirmed Monday.
Using undercover officers for protests or big public gatherings is not unusual, either in Tampa or anywhere else, he said. Plainclothes officers work Tampa's annual Gasparilla pirate parade. Organizing for the undercover operations began as soon as police began planning for the Republican convention, which took place the last week of August 2012.
"You're only as good as your intelligence," Hamlin said. "Everything else is reactive."
During the convention itself, plainclothes officers joined protest marches and used smart phones to send live video to commanders. The National Journal reported in 2012 that RNC authorities could use facial-recognition software to help identify demonstrators, if necessary, but Hamlin said, "we didn't use it in Tampa. I don't know about St. Pete."
News of the undercover operations came as no surprise to one protest leader.
"They did it in the 2008 RNC. Why wouldn't they keep doing that?" said Jared Hamil, 27, an activist who helped coordinate plans for the Coalition to March on the RNC. "I'll say about 2012, there were lots of people who came to help organize for the protests that I had never met before and that shortly after the protests I never saw again."
Intelligence operations were just one piece of a larger effort that made for peaceful demonstrations and only two arrests, compared to 10 to 15 for a Bucs game.
Tropical Storm Isaac appeared to keep many protesters home. The National Lawyers Guild reported at least 16 busloads of protesters from other cities were canceled as a result of the storm.
The city also used a $50 million federal security grant to bring in, train, equip, house and feed a couple of thousand additional officers from around Florida. Police bought some heavy-duty vehicles and made a wide range of communications and computer upgrades. The Secret Service ringed convention sites with concrete and steel.
Before the convention, officials scoured downtown for suspicious items, turning up pipes and sticks, plus 300 tiles stacked on a parking garage roof, bricks stashed in an electric box and a parked Mercury Cougar loaded with medical supplies and riot gear.
As important, police worked to de-escalate confrontations. When demonstrators baited and taunted officers, majors reminded them over their radios, "Remember your training. Stay calm."
Then-police Chief Jane Castor has said police tried to learn what protesters were trying to accomplish and, when possible, to work with them. If marchers wanted to close a street so photographers could document the action, police generally let them do it. At one point, assistant police Chief John Bennett kneeled down to ask a group of protesters lying in a downtown street to clear out because the road was a route to Tampa General Hospital. They did.
The undercover officers were key in these efforts because some of the most loosely organized groups had no identifiable leaders who would take responsibility for the group's agenda, Hamlin said. City officials could prepare to work with protesters because they had good intelligence on what they wanted to accomplish.
The cat-and-mouse went both ways.
"Anyone that was real, they didn't go out of their way to meet me," said activist Amos Miers, 38, who said every effort he was involved was for peaceful and lawful demonstrations. "The ones that did, they were suspect. It was odd that certain types of people would seek me out to be my friend."
At one point, Miers said he organized a separate meeting of about six or eight people, all of whom he suspected of being informants or more.
"What does that mean when law enforcement are taking leadership roles in protest movements?" he asked. He said it means a government crackdown on dissent, thwarting grass-roots efforts to bring about democratic change. "It's saying that the tools that we supposedly have under the Constitution to create change and to address problems are broken."The International Criminal Court (ICC) may exercise its jurisdiction over the spate of drug-related killings in the country if the Philippine government fails to prosecute alleged vigilante perpetrators, according to the Commission on Human Rights (CHR).
During the Senate hearing on the administration’s war against drugs on Tuesday, CHR Chair Jose Luis “Chito” Gascon said the government should be able to show that it was doing everything in its capacity to prevent extrajudicial killings from being the new norm.
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“Extrajudicial killing is any killing by government forces as well as killing by any other group which the government failed to investigate, prosecute or punish when it is in a position to do so,” Gascon said.
“Failure of the government to address this situation currently prevailing of unexplained extrajudicial killings could result in the possibility of ICC exercising jurisdiction over these matters,” he told Sen. Leila de Lima, chair of the Senate committee on justice and human rights.
Gascon noted that the Philippines, an “active participant” in the ICC, was a party to the Rome Statute from 2011 when the government ratified the treaty that established the international tribunal.
But before the ICC steps in, it should be established that the state is “unable and unwilling” to prosecute the cases, according to Gascon.
“Meron pong kapasidad ang ICC to exercise its jurisdiction … In fact, the United Nations has mechanisms of monitoring, and the ICC as well,” he said.
The ICC has limited jurisdiction over four crimes, namely war crimes, genocide, aggression, and crimes against humanity, where Sen. Leila de Lima said vigilante killings could fall into.
Gascon said crimes against humanity should be able to establish “widespread” and “systematic” attacks against the civilian population.
He said the “widespread” element was not dependent on the number of victims but on the totality of the condition without prosecution and accountability, while “systematic” constituted a policy-oriented approach.
De Lima, however, admitted that it would be difficult to establish that the state had a hand on systematic killings.
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“No state will ever admit that there is such a policy of killing. Kaya nga po sana maintindihan n’yo kung bakit ko ginagawa ko ito, I’m reminding the government, I’m reminding the administration,” she said.
As of Aug. 22, the Inquirer’s “Kill List” notes 729 drug-related deaths since June 30 or after President Duterte took office.
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LATEST STORIES
MOST READWhen I was a kid, I loved fairy tales. I loved the idea of talking animals and brave girls and boys who overcame cruel care takers. I also really loved Disney movies. They all had happy endings; what's not to love about that? I could watch "Beauty and the Beast" or "Aladdin" every single day.
When I got a little older, I graduated from watching Disney movies to reading the Brothers Grimm. In the fourth grade, I checked out the "Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers' Grimm" from my school library and never returned it (a belated "sorry!" to my grade school library!)
I was horrified to find that the origins of many of my favorite Disney movies had much more gruesome details that Disney completely left out.
Below is a collection of horrifying details that Disney chose to leave out of all of these book/fairy tale/play adaptations. Read on only if you want to completely ruin your childhood.
"Cinderella": In the Brothers Grimm version, one of Cinderella's evil stepsisters cuts off her toes, and the other her heel so they can both fit into the tiny glass slipper. The prince is notified by little doves that there is blood on the shoe, and finally discovers that the true owner is Cinderella. Once the stepsisters realize that they should try to win favor with Cinderella (after all, she will be queen), they attend her wedding, only to have their eyes pecked out by birds. Did they deserve it? I'll let you decide, reader.
SOME OTHER SIDENOTES ON THIS STORY: Cinderella doesn't have a fairy godmother. Rather, she plants a tree by her mother's grave and prays under it every day. She finds her dresses to wear to each ball under the tree (there are three in the story, not one like in the movie). She is still helped by animals, though specifically birds, not mice. Also, she doesn't just lose her shoe because she is in a rush. The clever prince covers the steps in pitch to make her stick to them, but she only loses a shoe in the process.
"The Little Mermaid": Hans Christian Andersen's classic tale is a 180 from the Disney film. Some parts align. She does see the prince from afar in his ship, and she does rescue him from drowning and fall in love with him. He doesn't see her. She does visit the sea witch who takes her tongue in exchange for legs (and she does do it because the little mermaid has an amazing voice).
The deal is the same: The mermaid can only remain a human if she finds true love's kiss and the prince falls in love with and marries her. However, the penalty in the movie is only that Ariel will turn back into a mermaid if she fails. In the story, she will DIE if she fails. Also, while the prince remains a main motivator, the mermaid in the story is also motivated because humans have eternal souls, and mermaids don't. The Disney movie leaves out that the penalty the mermaid pays for having legs: every single step she takes will feel like she is walking on sharp shards of glass. At first, it seems like the plan is working, but then the prince ends up marrying another, a woman he THINKS is the person who saved him (the mermaid can't exactly tell him the truth, since she can't talk). She is told that if she KILLS the prince, then she can simply turn back into a mermaid and doesn't have to die. She just can't do it, though. She throws herself into the sea, and turns into sea foam (though it should be mentioned that she then becomes a 'daughter of the air,' entering a kind of purgatory where she has to do good deeds until she MAYBE earns a soul, which will take about 300 years to happen). How's that for a happy ending?
"The Fox and the Hound": The Fox and the Hound is based on a 1967 novel written by Daniel P. Mannix. In the book, the fox is raised by the dog owner's/hunter's family, but eventually returns to the wild. He occasionally returns to taunt the dogs, and flash his cunning fox skills. One of the dogs breaks his chain, and chases him. That dog ends up getting hit by a train. The hunter is devastated, and vows revenge on the fox. He becomes obsessed, but can never catch him (although he does kill the fox's first mate, second mate, and children). Eventually, Tod the fox DOES die, but of exhaustion from being chased so much. Copper (the dog from "The Fox and the Hound") is so old that he needs to be shot, and that is the end of the book. Pretty different from the movie, where a puppy and a baby fox become BFFL.
"Beauty and the Beast": Beauty and the Beast is actually pretty accurate, except for some uninteresting details (like how Belle's father used to be rich, but got himself into major debt). There is ONE unfortunate detail that the story DOES leave out. In the first believed version of the tale (by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve), Belle has two wicked sisters (lots of wicked family members in fairy tales, unfortunately). The Beast allows Belle to travel home, as long as she is only gone for a week. Her sisters are extremely jealous to hear about her luxurious life, and try to persuade Belle to stay with them longer than a week, in the hopes that the Beast will be infuriated with Belle and eat her alive upon her return. Yikes.
"Pinocchio": Disney's "Pinocchio" came from Carlo Collodi's 1883 Italian classic "The Adventures of Pinocchio." You might think Pinocchio was mischievous in the movie, but he is far more so in the book. In the book, he runs away as soon as he learns to walk. He is found by the police, who imprison Geppetto because they believe Pinocchio was abused. Pinocchio returns home, where he kills a talking cricket (sorry, Jiminy) who warns him of the dangers of hedonistic pleasures and obedience. Geppetto is released, and insists that Pinocchio goes to school. Pinocchio sells his school books for a ticket to the Great Marionette Theatre. He encounters a fox and a cat, who steal his money and unsuccessfully try to hang him. Luckily, after saving Geppetto from the terrible dogfish (you might know it better as the gigantic, angry whale from the film), Pinocchio shapes up and eventually becomes a real boy (and, you know, all that stuff about boys getting turned into donkeys and then sold to evil circuses did end up making it into the movie, surprisingly).
"Sleeping Beauty": In Giambattista Basile's tale (which is the actual origin of the Sleeping Beauty story), a king happens to walk by Sleeping Beauty's castle and knock on the door. When no one answers, he climbs up a ladder through a window. He finds the princess, and calls to her, but as she is unconscious, she does not wake up. Well, dear reader, he carries her to the bed and rapes her. Then he just leaves. She awakens after she gives birth because one of her twins sucks the flax (from the spindle) out of her finger. The king comes back, and despite him having raped her, they end up falling in love? However, another big problem: the king is still married to someone else. His wife finds out and not only tries to have the twins killed, cooked, and fed to the king, but also tries to burn the princess at the stake. Luckily, she is unsuccessful. The king and the princess get married and live happily ever after (despite the fact that he raped her). Perrault's adaptation of Basile's updated adaptation of the story (a much tamer version) is probably what was used for the Disney adaptation, as they are much more similar.
"Tangled": I know, this is a pretty loose adaptation. But still, I think it's worth mentioning. In the Brothers Grimm version, Rapunzel gets knocked up by the prince before they escape, and the evil sorceress figures it out. The sorceress cuts off Rapunzel's hair and throws her out into the wilderness. When the prince shows up to see her, the sorceress dangles Rapunzel's cut-off hair to lure him, and tells him he will never see Rapunzel again. He jumps out the window in despair and is blinded from the thorns below. He wanders around aimlessly (he is blind). Rapunzel gives birth to twins. He is eventually guided back to her when he hears her voice. Her tears restore his sight. They return to the prince's kingdom and live happily ever after. (See? Some of these fairy tales actually DO have real happy endings, even when women have babies out of wedlock!)
"The Lion King": Oh, you didn't know that "The Lion King" was a loose adaptation of Shakespeare's "Hamlet"? Well, fancy that. A jealous brother kills the king, the son finds out about it and wants revenge. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, I mean, Timon and Pumba, distract him. But finally, the son kills the evil jealous brother. Well, actually, in Shakespeare's version everyone dies, not just the evil, jealous brother (formerly known as "Claudius").
"Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs": In the Brothers Grimm version, the evil queen stepmother asks a hunter to take Snow White into the forest and kill her (this also happens in the Disney movie). However, in the story, she asks him to also bring her back Snow White's lungs and liver. He can't kill Snow White, so brings back a boar's lungs and liver instead. The queen eats the lungs and liver, believing them to be Snow White's. Yuck. In the book, the queen tries twice (unsuccessfully) to kill Snow White. The third time, when the queen gives her the apple (just like in the movie), Snow White faints and can't be revived. She is placed in a glass coffin. A prince comes and wants to take her away (even though she is still asleep, which is pretty weird). The dwarves hesitantly allow it, and while she is being carried, the carriers trip, causing the poisoned apple to become dislodged from Snow White's throat. She and the prince, of course, get married. The evil queen is invited. As a punishment, she is forced to wear burning-hot iron shoes and dance until she drops dead.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this article stated that in "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," the evil queen asks the huntsman to bring back Snow White's "heart and liver." It has now been updated to the correct "lungs and liver."Video: New 3D printing technique creates stronger stainless steel
Researchers have developed a way to 3D print stainless steel that triples the strength of the material.
3D printing has been used in everything from printing meat substitutes to vehicle components and has also prompted entirely new business models based on blueprint sharing and outsourced printing services.
Companies including GE, Siemens, and HP are all placing their bets on the future of this manufacturing process, and while 3D printing is currently reserved most often for weaker materials such as paper or plastic, metal is also of interest.
HP recently hinted at the 2018 release of a platform designed to "transform [3D metal printing] into more mainstream, high-volume production," and as a research team from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California have now demonstrated, the future of our metal products can be improved no end by 3D printing methods.
In collaboration with engineers from Ames National Laboratory, Georgia Tech, and Oregon State, the team was able to print a low-carbon kind of steel dubbed 316L, which is strong enough to be used for military and marine applications.
While describing their methods in the journal Nature Materials, the team said that the techniques used to print the steel resulted in improved strength and ductility in comparison to the traditional material.
Laser sintering is usually used in 3D printing to craft solid objects and this process -- which relies on metal powder, melting, and fusing -- may be able to create intricate pieces, but will often lack strength.
As noted by Science, this method does not create the microstructure needed for objects required to undergo stress.
However, the team's new method allows 316L to be created through a regular printer, but it also controls the heat and fusing to prevent material becoming porous and weak, lowering the risk of fracturing.
"This microstructure we developed breaks the traditional strength-ductility tradeoff barrier," said LLNL materials scientist and lead author Morris Wang. "For steel, you want to make it stronger, but you lose ductility essentially; you can't have both. But with 3D printing, we're able to move this boundary beyond the current tradeoff."
The engineers experimented with printing steel through different laser powders and thin plates of metal. As a result, the strength of the stainless steel tripled under certain conditions -- but this was a surprise to the scientists.
Read also: 10 strange uses for 3D printing (photos) | Modding the Ultimaker 3 with 3D printed accessories | 3D printing hands-on: Modding the Ultimaker 3 with 3D printed accessories | Innovative 3D prints from the 2017 Simplify 3D contest
"When you additively manufacture 316L it creates an interesting grain structure, sort of like a stained-glass window," LLNL scientist Alex Hamza commented. "The grains are not very small, but the cellular structures and other defects inside the grains that are commonly seen in welding seem to be controlling the properties."
"This was the discovery. We didn't set out to make something better than traditional manufacturing; it just worked out that way," Hamza added.
The applications of the research are vast. In the future, printing stainless steel components and objects could enhance the strength of materials used in everything from space to the military and aviation.
The next step for the team is to use high-performance computing to predict the performance of future stainless steel and create models that can be used to modifying underlying infrastructures with the potential of exploring other metal alloys.
Related storiesLiverpool FC, one of the most famous soccer clubs in the world, announced today that it has appointed Peter Moore as its new Chief Executive Officer. And yes, it's that Peter Moore, formerly of Sega, Microsoft, and nearly a decade at Electronic Arts, most recently as the chief competition officer of its competitive gaming division.
Peter Moore appointed as #LFC's chief executive officer. Full statement: https://t.co/cXj29GwRS4 pic.twitter.com/pKgiULrgGBFebruary 27, 2017
In a message of congratulations, EA CEO Andrew Wilson said Moore will "leave an incredible legacy" at the company. "Peter led our sports business to some of its biggest moments as President of EA Sports. As our Chief Operating Officer, he helped us navigate the transformation of our company and the evolution of our business in a digital world. In the past year as Chief Competition Officer, he has driven EA’s rapid expansion in competitive gaming. Above all, through his time at EA, Microsoft and Sega, Peter has been a statesman and advocate for our industry," Wilson wrote.
"I believe deeply in following our passions and dreams in life. Spend every moment doing something that you love. We’ve been fortunate to have Peter doing that with us here for almost a decade. We could not be happier to see him take the helm at Liverpool, and I personally could not be more honored to call Peter a dear friend for life."
In its somewhat less verbose announcement of the move, Liverpool FC said Moore will assume the role in June, and report directly to the team's owner, Fenway Sports Group.
Moore, who was actually born in Liverpool and is known for his long-standing support of the club, takes over from Ian Ayre, who is departing at the end of this month to assume the managing director role at German club 1860 Munich. Moore will work alongside the still-newish manager Jurgen Klopp, who once likened his own preferred style of soccer to "heavy metal". Should be a fun gig.Not only was it overstated, but it wasn't even a genocide!There were many genocides throughout history. In fact, a genocide is being commited by Israel against the Palestinians as we speak. Ironicly, the one genocide everyone keeps talking about really isn't a genocide.It's an established fact that Nazi Germany was antisemitic and had racial laws that significantly reduced Jewish civil rights.It's an established fact that Nazi Germany isolated Jews based on their ethnicity and culture in ghettoes and concentration camps during WW2, just likeIt's an established fact that death tolls were high inandbecause of starvation and disease and thatIt's an established fact that starvation was a common problem by the end of WW2, with theandas some of the more extreme examples.It's an establised fact that thewere ruthless in their elimination of civilian resistance groups behind the Polish front lines and that a significant number of these civilians were Jewish.Official historiography and revisionist history disagree only whether or not there were gas chambers in concentration camps that were used to murder people, whether or not there was a plan to exterminate the Jews and whether Hitler truely was an "evil" psychopath or whether that's a false image based on disinformation and cherrypicking.Herebelow is a number of sources that support the revisionist position in one or more of these aspects :To conclude, let's take a brief look into illustrated history!. The British Empire was actively engaged in the clandestine trade of Opium with China to destabilize Chinese society. This lead to the, which took place in 1839–42 and 1856–1860.to demoralize the Boer men. The sole purpose the Boer wars was the acquisition of South-African gold and diamond mines for theand associated firms., 1897. Here, prominent Jewish figures agreed to collaborate for the creation of the state of Israel. It was mostly the vast wealth of the Rothschild family and other elite banking families of Jewish descent that lead to the rise of Anti-Semitism in Europe.was a letter from the United Kingdom's Foreign Secretaryto(2nd Baron Rothschild), for transmission to thewas one of the most horrific events during WW2, killing an unknown number of civilians anywhere between 25,000 and 300,000 people. It's largely forgotten by history because the Nazis being "evil" supposedly justified the means.of British India during. It resulted from extraction of resources from the erea to support the British war effort. Approximately 3 million people died due the famine. The "Bengal Famine Mixture" was a special food mixture to reduce the death toll in Bengal, which was later used in Bergen-Belsen in a desperate attempt of the British liberators to achieve the same results., which was the Norwegian Nazi party. It was but one of many Fascist movements rising at the timewas used at the time.Pre-made images for the Raspberry Pi
The latest pre-made image of RetroPie is v4.4 – released April 14, 2018.
Contributions to the project are appreciated, so if you would like to support us with a donation you can do so here.
Donate
If you are installing RetroPie for the first time please follow the OFFICIAL Installation Guide
Click button to download
BerryBoot
We also offer up images for use with BerryBoot, although we are afraid we cannot offer support for them as we don’t use them ourselves – but feel free to post on the forum if you have trouble. They can be downloaded directly from GitHub – https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/releases
Installing on top of an existing OS
Raspbian on a Raspberry Pi
For installing on top of Raspbian Jessie please see https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Manual-Installation/
Debian / Ubuntu on a PC
For installation on a PC running Ubuntu please follow these instructions – https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Debian/
Ubuntu on an ODroid-C1/C2
For installation on an ODroid-C1/C2 running the Hardkernel Ubuntu Minimal image please follow these instructions – https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Odroid-C1-C2/
Ubuntu on an ODroid-XU3/XU4
For installation on an ODroid XU3/XU4 running the Hardkernel Ubuntu Minimal image please follow these instructions – https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Odroid-XU3-XU4/
PetRockBlock Downloads
If you are looking for the case design files for the PetRockBlock cases or the GPIO schematics – they can be found at http://blog.petrockblock.com/supplementary-downloads/The White-Guilt Adoption Industry
Why are American white women so anxious to adopt a “dusky little heathen” child from the Third World?
Angelina Jolie among the Wretched of the Earth (photo: angelinajolie.com)
It’s the latest fad of the White Woman Saviour, and it carries high status. A white American women must adopt a Third World child (preferably a non-white) to really keep up with the savior image. It’s a grand American tradition, dating back to the early 19th century Christian missions. Only today, you don’t have to be Christian at all. You just have to be white, female, (and preferably single). Look at Laura Ingraham, famous “conservative” radio talk show host. One child (Maria, a Guatamalan girl) wasn’t enough. She had to adopt a Russian boy, Dmitri.
So what are the real issues involved is this social phenomenon?
White women are obviously still operating on the grand old Christian missionary template. But what about the “single mom” bit? Is that an extra, thrown in to aggrandize the nobility of motherhood? Is that about self or about the child? What happened to the father figure? Is that not important any more? Ingraham is quite forthright about her Christianity (Catholic). Is the father figure not in that picture?
And why the craze for foreign babies? America has plenty of “home grown” infants and children available. Shouldn’t an American patriot mother’s first concern be for American babies? Why the rush to bring alien children here? Are Third World (or even European) countries anxiously adopting American children? Of course not. Let’s be honest: America is the dream country. America is where everyone wants to come. America is the place they want their children to come.
Angelina Jolie really dramatized the role of the American white woman savior grabbing up the darkest, blackest babies, from deepest, darkest, most miserable Africa (as well as Cambodian, Vietnamese, and possibly Syrian). She and Madonna. That’s the extreme, of course. That is the zenith of the white woman savior image. Shall we not ask, however, why she didn’t adopt an American Negro child, if race was the issue? Or why not simply adopt an American white child? Is there something wrong with that? Or, is it not dramatic enough to suit the heroic vision of self-importanc? Do these white women have any knowledge, or even concern, about the foreign child’s present and future feelings, or the adopted child’s psychological development?
It is difficult to avoid the immediate conclusion that these American white woman saviors are acting out their own sense of superiority and advantage. (Some might say, guilt, but, that’s not too likely.) They are romatically reaching out to the farthest corners of the globe to save a desperately lost and innocent child. What could be more noble, more heroic, more American? (Key focus here is on “noble”, and “heroic,” that is to say, on the woman’s feelings.)
Alas, it doesn’t always work out so well. One white woman savior family in Shelbyville, Tennessee figured they got a bad deal, and sent their little alien angel back to Siberia. Russia threatens to suspend all American adoptions? Please! A great blessing it would be. What do we need 61,600 Russian kids over here for? What about the American kids that need adoption? May all foreign countries quickly follow Russia’s suit. No more non-American babies adopted by Americans!
This whole international adoption routine is all a social status scheme. It insults all countries, who love to hate America anyway– while obviously trying to take every possible advantage of America. Americans disgrace America when they fall into this flesh fad of adopting foreigners. Sure, there are some wonderful stories. Fairy tale stories. It truly is a splendorous dream, and it has worked out beautifully in some cases, or certainly as well as anyone could ever expect when a child is taken from its home and put in another, foreign home, and of a dramatically different race.
But that’s not really the point. This is about nationalism, or, we should say, patriotism versus individualism. The individual fantasy can, unfortunately, often override the good of the community, or the country. It is as if a white woman savior sees America as the best nest of the world, and she wants to bring up the worst of the worst here. This makes her feel, in fact, patriotic. What more noble thing could an American white woman do? Yet, objectively, in terms of the America, this “customary” call for the world’s most unfortunate needs to be reevaluated–especially when there are American-born children in dire straights. Is it less patriotic for an American woman to reach out to Americans?
I think we can dispense with the foreign vision at this point. Our Kenyan President has certainly reduced the American image to one disdained, having offended just about every important country in the world, and having done little or nothing for those in greatest need. Barry “Obama” Soetoro, as the great Black Father has done everything he can to denigrate America (and glorify himself), so that foreign countries see America only as a free ticket to a home, a Cadillac, and a college education–while these things must be denied white Americans.
America has had enough of foreigners. Take it from an Indian. It is time to close the doors. Nationhood demands it. No one would ever expect a Kenyan to become tribal chairman of the Arapaho, or a Nigerian to become chief of the Cheyenne. No one would expect a Saudi Arabian to become Prime Minister of Israel. Yes, an alien, lying black African became president of the United States–but that’s only because of the white liberal Communist traitors manipulating their way into power. It isn’t because it was the right, moral thing to do. It was an Oedipal thing to do. It was, collectively, a Freudian thing to do, perverted, self-destructive, and uneducated.
I say American white woman should adopt American white children. This business of bringing in the “dusky little heathen” is racism. It is an incredibly careless, selfish move, actually. It is bad for the child, and for the country. Yes, it is a noble instinct in the American white woman. It truly is. But, it is gone awry at this point, and needs advice and guidance.
Perhaps the white race needs some humility at this point. The white woman should honor her own white race. Does she feel above race? Does she really feel so suprior to other races as to save them? I say her white “racial” capital has used up. She needs to love her own race. If she doesn’t, she is a curse to the country. Beware.
Source: Alternative Right.Image: JohnnY/Steam Community
The global arms trade is one of the most lucrative markets in the world, but two young gamers have discovered the virtual weapons market isn't too shabby either.
Artur Minacov, 21 and John Brechisci, 28, founded a site called OPSkins in January, and say they've since made a fortune buying and selling virtual video game gun skins online.
Based in Montreal, OPSkins is an in escrow system for the sale of virtual gun designs, also known as skins, earned from playing the first person shooter video game Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Users come to the |
to 1 quart per 2000 to 3000. Plus, GM used to have customers come back multiple times to confirm the problem, this has since been removed.
It is rather bizarre that GM considers 30-40k miles “high.” Yet, it would explain why the current “fix” only goes through 2011 products. It will be interesting to see if it gets expanded down the road.
Does the Fix Work?
The shield fix for many owners seems to help somewhat. We hear they go from losing 1+ quarts to less than that. Yet, we hear that dealers are still going through the process of replacing parts as part of their diagnosis. They will replace the the valve covers, oil deflector, new lifters, pistons and rings. Then, the shield. If none of this fixes the problem, then the dealer swaps in a new engine as a last resort.
We have heard that their are some owners who are on their second engine.
Why Cylinder Deactivation?
For GM, the AFM is their way to meet the 2016 CAFE regulations for fuel consumption. Their new pickups claim much better fuel economy by using this system. The range we hear is about 2 mpg on highway and 1 mpg on city. If they didn’t have it? They would not be able to meet the CAFE regulations and GM might have to pay fines.
And yet, if consumers are constantly monitoring/adding oil – aren’t the customers losing the fuel savings?
What about other makers?
It is worth noting, Honda owners are having similar issues with their Variable Cylinder Management (otherwise known as cylinder deactivation). Here is a great article detailing the issue.
Chrysler uses it as well, yet we haven’t heard of many complaints.
As of this time, there are no Toyota products in the U.S. that we know of with cylinder deactivation.
Are you still a fan of cylinder deactivation systems? Is it a bad technology or a simple fix?
Related Posts:For other people named James Dyson, see James Dyson (disambiguation)
Sir James Dyson OM CBE FRS FREng[2] (born 2 May 1947) is a British inventor, industrial design engineer and founder and chief executive of Dyson Ltd.[3][4] Traditionally, he was best known as the inventor of the Dual Cyclone bagless vacuum cleaner, which works on the principle of cyclonic separation. According to the Sunday Times Rich List 2017, his net worth is £7.8 billion.[5] He served as the Provost of the Royal College of Art from August 2011 to July 2017,[6][7] and opened a new University on Dyson's Wiltshire Campus in September 2017.[8]
Early life and education [ edit ]
James Dyson was born 2 May 1947 in Cromer, Norfolk, one of three children. He was educated at Gresham's School,[1] an independent boarding school in Holt, Norfolk, from 1956 to 1965, when his father died of cancer.[9] He excelled at long distance running: "I was quite good at it, not because I was physically good, but because I had more determination. I learnt determination from it."[10] He spent one year (1965–1966) at the Byam Shaw School of Art, and then studied furniture and interior design at the Royal College of Art (1966–1970) before moving into engineering.
Early inventions [ edit ]
Dyson helped design the Sea Truck in 1970 while studying at the Royal College of Art. His first original invention, the Ballbarrow, was a modified version of a wheelbarrow using a ball instead of a wheel. This was featured on the BBC's Tomorrow's World television programme. Dyson stuck with the idea of a ball, inventing the Trolleyball, a trolley that launched boats. He then designed the Wheelboat,[11] which could travel at speeds of 64 kilometres per hour (40 mph) on both land and water.
Vacuum cleaners [ edit ]
In the late 1970s, Dyson had the idea of using cyclonic separation to create a vacuum cleaner that would not lose suction as it picked up dirt. He became frustrated with his Hoover Junior's diminishing performance: the dust bag pores kept becoming clogged with dust thus reducing suction.[12] The cyclone idea came from a sawmill that used cyclone technology (qv. History of Dyson Ltd).[13]
Partly supported by his wife's salary as an art teacher, and after five years and about 5,127 prototypes, Dyson launched the "G-Force" cleaner in 1983.[14] However, no manufacturer or distributor would handle his product in the UK, as it would have disturbed the valuable market for replacement dust bags, so Dyson launched it in Japan through catalogue sales.[15] Manufactured in bright pink, the G-Force sold for the equivalent of £2,000. It won the 1991 International Design Fair Prize in Japan. He filed a series of patents for his dual cyclone vacuum cleaner EP0037674 in 1980.
After his invention was rejected by the major manufacturers, Dyson set up his own manufacturing company, Dyson Ltd. In June 1993, he opened a research centre and factory in Malmesbury, Wiltshire.
Dyson's breakthrough in the UK market came more than ten years after the initial idea, through a TV advertising campaign in which it was emphasised that, unlike most of its rivals, the Dyson vacuum did not require the continuing purchase of replacement bags. At that time, the UK market for disposable cleaner bags was £100 million. The slogan "say goodbye to the bag" proved more attractive to the buying public than a previous emphasis on the suction efficiency that its technology delivers. Ironically, the previous step change in domestic vacuum cleaner design had been the introduction of the disposable bag – users being prepared to pay extra for the convenience. The Dyson Dual Cyclone became the fastest-selling vacuum cleaner ever made in the UK, and outsold those of some of the companies that rejected his idea, becoming one of the most popular brands in the UK.[16] In early 2005, it was reported that Dyson cleaners had become the market leaders in the United States by value (though not by number of units sold).
Dyson licensed the technology in North America from 1986 to 2001 to Fantom Technologies, after which Dyson entered the market directly.
Following his success, other major manufacturers began to market their own cyclonic vacuum cleaners. In 1999, Dyson sued Hoover (UK) for patent infringement. The High Court ruled that Hoover had deliberately copied a fundamental part of his patented designs in making its Triple Vortex bagless vacuum cleaner range.[17] Hoover agreed to pay damages of £4 million.
In 2005, Dyson incorporated the wheel ball from his Ballbarrow concept into a vacuum cleaner, creating the Dyson Ball. This ball, rather than the static wheels on existing vacuums, enabled it to become more steerable, which was more useful for navigating around obstacles and corners.
In mid-2014, Dyson personally appeared in Tokyo to introduce his "360 Eye" robotic vacuum cleaner. Dyson's initial entry into this market segment features 360° scanning and mapping for navigation, cyclonic dust separation, a custom-designed digital motor for high suction, tank treads for traction, a full-width brushroll bar, and user interface via a free iOS or Android app.[18]
James Dyson, Fast Company magazine (May 2007), in an interview, asserted the importance of failure in ones life, "I made 5,127 prototypes of my vacuum before I got it right. There were 5,126 failures. But I learned from each one. That's how I came up with a solution. So I don't mind failure. I’ve always thought that schoolchildren should be marked by the number of failures they’ve had. The child who tries strange things and experiences lots of failures to get there is probably more creative."[14]
Other inventions [ edit ]
In 2000, Dyson expanded his appliance range to include a washing machine called the ContraRotator, which had two rotating drums moving in opposite directions. The range was decorated in the usual bright Dyson colours, rather than the traditional white, grey or black of most other machines. It was not a commercial success, and is no longer available.[19]
In 2002, Dyson created a realisation of the optical illusions depicted in the lithographs of Dutch artist M. C. Escher. Engineer Derek Phillips was able to accomplish the task after a year of work, creating a water sculpture in which the water appears to flow up to the tops of four ramps arranged in a square, before cascading to the bottom of the next ramp. The creation titled Wrong Garden,[20] was displayed at the Chelsea Flower Show in 2003.[21] The illusion is accomplished with water containing air bubbles pumped through a chamber underneath the transparent glass ramps to a slit at the top from which the bulk of the water cascades down. This makes it appear that the water is flowing up, when really, a small amount of water diverted from the slit at the top flows back down the ramps in a thin layer.
In October 2006 Dyson launched the Dyson Airblade, a fast hand dryer that uses a thin sheet of moving air as a squeegee to remove water, rather than attempting to evaporate it with heat. This allows faster drying, while using much less energy than traditional electrical hand dryers.
Another product, launched on 18 October 2009, is a fan without external blades, which he calls the Air Multiplier.[22] In addition to a cooling fan, a model which distributes electrically produced heat and an ultrasonic humidifier model are also available.
In April 2016, Dyson launched the Dyson Supersonic, a hair dryer with a smaller motor located in the handle so as to provide better balance and smaller size, as well as quieter operation.[23] Commenting on the launch, Vogue magazine said "as the first product to launch from Dyson's new UK state-of-the-art hair laboratory, we have high hopes for the future of our blow-dries."[24]
Research and development [ edit ]
In 2017 Dyson spent £7m a week on research and development of new products.[25] The company is the UK's biggest investor in robotics and artificial intelligence research, employing over 3,500 engineers and scientists, and engaging in more than 40 university research programmes. Speaking to the Daily Telegraph, Dyson said, “We’re looking at more non-domestic products but we are not rushing to do lots of different things,” he said. “We are a private company so we can do it when we are ready.”
In November 2014, Dyson announced plans to invest a further £1.5bn into the research and development of new technology, including funding for an expanded campus at the Dyson UK headquarters in Malmesbury which will create up to 3,000 jobs.[26]
The then Prime Minister David Cameron, said: “Dyson is a great British success story and the expansion of the Malmesbury campus will create thousands of new jobs, providing a real boost to the local economy and financial security for more hardworking families. Investment on this scale shows confidence in our long-term economic plan to back business, create more jobs and secure a brighter future for Britain.”.[27]
On 1 March 2016 James Dyson announced a second new multimillion-pound research and development centre on a 517-acre former Ministry of Defence (MoD) site at Hullavington, Wiltshire. The technology and electronics company said it aimed to double its UK based workforce in the next five or six years. Dyson said: "After 25 years of UK growth, and continuing expansion globally, we are fast outgrowing our Malmesbury Campus. To win in the world stage you have to develop new technology and develop great products and that's what we're doing here.".[28]
In September 2017, Dyson announced plans to produce an electric vehicle, aiming to be launched in 2020, investing £2bn of his own money.[29] He has assembled a team of more than 400 people for the project while still seeking more recruits.[29] The vehicle will reportedly be powered by a solid-state battery, possibly provided by Sakti3.[30]
In 2017, Dyson launched the Dyson Institute of Engineering and Technology.[31]
Allegations of Chinese industrial espionage and copyright infringement [ edit ]
James Dyson has several times accused Chinese spies and students of stealing technological and scientific secrets from the UK through the planting of software bugs and by infiltrating British industries, institutions, and universities after they left. He also complained that China benefits from stealing foreign designs, flouting of product copyrights and a two-speed patent system that discriminates against foreign firms with unreasonably longer times.[32][33][34][35]
Europe [ edit ]
In 1998, Dyson was one of the chairmen and chief executives of 20 FTSE 100 companies who signed a statement published in The Financial Times calling on the government for early British membership of the Eurozone.[36] He claimed that failure to join the euro would lead to the destruction of the British manufacturing base and said: "It does not mean that the jobs will go tomorrow but will drift abroad over a period and the longer-term future of Britain as a manufacturing nation will be blighted. Ministers had better understand that if we delay entry too long there may be nothing left to save."[37]
Claiming that the strength of the pound was affecting his company's profits on exports to France and Germany, in February 2000 Dyson threatened to shift focus from his Malmesbury plant to a new plant set up in Malaysia because the government would not join the euro. He said: "We would expect to double in size in the next two years. We are talking about a £100 million investment and up to 2,000 jobs. I would like to make that investment in the UK. But it seems that is not going to be possible. The value of sterling means we are struggling to compete at home with cheap imports from Europe and the Far East. We do around £40 million worth of export business with France and Germany each year but we aren't making any money. If we joined the euro we would be on an even footing with our biggest trading partners."[38] An editorial published in The Times responded: "Mr Dyson, a manufacturing version of Sir Richard Branson, likes complaining. Yesterday he was complaining that Britain's failure to join the euro and the resultant strong pound will force him to move abroad. Last week he blamed the price of land and planning delays in Wiltshire, but never mind. So where will he go? To Portugal, Italy or to an EU candidate such as Poland? No, Mr Dyson threatens to go to the Far East. Like so many entrepreneurs, he wants a cheap currency and low interest rates, but also low inflation, low wages, a flexible labour market and low regulation. He will not find them in the eurozone."[39] Norman Tebbit, a former Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, also questioned Dyson's motives and said: "[W]hat still puzzles me is why such a euro-enthusiast as Mr Dyson does not intend to establish his new factory in Europe if he can't have it in Britain."[40]
Dyson again threatened to shift production abroad in November 2000, saying: "It's suicidal for the UK not to join the euro. Why should we go on exporting at a loss? We're facing unfair competition."[41][42] In February 2002, Dyson announced that production was finally being shifted to the Far East and admitted that "the driving force was hard cash. Wages in the Far East are less than half those expected in Britain, while it is 30 per cent cheaper to make a vacuum cleaner." Roger Lyons, general secretary of the manufacturing union Amicus, said: "Dyson has betrayed the 800 people whose jobs are being shipped out and hundreds more from supply companies. He has betrayed British manufacturing and British consumers who have put him and his product where it is today."[43] In August 2003, assembly of washing machines was also switched from Malmesbury to Malaysia.[44]
Dyson was one of the most prominent UK business leaders to publicly support Brexit before the referendum in June 2016.[45] Since the EU referendum, Dyson has stated that Britain should leave the EU Single Market and that this would "liberate" the economy and allow Britain to strike its own trade deals around the world.[46] During 2016, 19% of Dyson Ltd exports went to EU countries (at WTO tariffs), compared with 81% to non-EU countries.[47] In 2017, Dyson suggested that the UK should leave the EU without an interim deal and that "uncertainty is an opportunity".[48] Previously, in 2014, Dyson had said he would be voting to leave the European Union to avoid being "dominated and bullied by the Germans".[49] In November 2017, Dyson was critical of the UK government Brexit negotiations and said "we should just walk away and they will come to us".[50] After it became public in January 2019, that Dyson's company was to move its headquarter from Malmesbury to Singapore, he was accused of hypocrisy, regarding his campaign for Brexit.[51]
European Court of Justice [ edit ]
In November 2015, Dyson lost his case against EU energy labelling laws in the European General Court,[52] however a subsequent appeal in the European Court of Justice said that the previous ruling had “distorted the facts” and “erred in law”.[53]
James Dyson Foundation [ edit ]
Dyson in 2013 at Sydney, Australia
Dyson set up the James Dyson Foundation in 2002 to support design and engineering education; it now operates in UK, US and Japan. The foundation's aim is to inspire young people to study engineering and become engineers by encouraging students to think differently and to make mistakes. The foundation supports engineering education in schools and universities, as well as medical and scientific research in partnership with charities. It achieves this by funding different resources such as the "Engineering Box", a box filled with activities for a school to use as a teaching aid. The foundation loans the boxes to schools for four weeks free of charge, they are suitable for Key Stage 4 and above. The Engineering Box enables students to take apart and examine a Dyson DC22 Telescope vacuum cleaner. In addition, a school is allowed to retain a James Dyson Foundation teacher pack, and a copy of Genius of Britain, a Channel 4 TV series featuring Dyson, and design engineering posters. Other resources are also available.
In May 2014, the foundation announced an £8m donation to create a technology hub at the University of Cambridge. A new four-storey building will house 1,200 postgraduate engineers and support world-leading research. The donation will also allow for a design and making lab to be developed for undergraduate engineering students.[54]
In March 2015, the James Dyson Foundation pledged a £12m donation to Imperial College London to allow the purchase of an iconic Post Office building in Exhibition Road from the Science Museum. Imperial College will open the Dyson School of Design Engineering in this building, and teach a new four-year Masters course in design engineering, developing a new cohort of creative and theoretical engineers.[55]
The foundation also supports the work of young designers through the James Dyson Award. This is an international design award that "celebrates, encourages and inspires the next generation of design engineers".[56] It is run in 20 countries and is open to recent graduates in product design, industrial design and engineering.
Honours and awards [ edit ]
In 1997, Dyson was awarded The Prince Philip Designers Prize.[57] Dyson was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1998 New Year Honours. In 2000, he received the Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran Award. He received an Honorary DEng degree from the University of Bath in 2000.[58] In 2005, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng).[59] He was knighted in the 2007 New Year Honours. Dyson was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2015.[2] In the 2016 New Year Honours, Dyson's appointment to the Order of Merit (OM) was announced for "contributions and achievements in industrial design".[60][61] 2017: IEEE Honorary Membership. In March 2017 Dyson was voted the most reputable company in the UK followed by Aston Martin.[62]
Dyson was provost of the Royal College of Art in London until 1 July 2017, having succeeded Sir Terence Conran in August 2011,[63] and is patron of the Design & Technology Association.[64] He was chair of the board of trustees of the Design Museum, "the first in the world to showcase design of the manufactured object", until suddenly resigning in September 2004,[65] saying the museum had "become a style showcase" instead of "upholding its mission to encourage serious design of the manufactured object".
Personal life [ edit ]
Dyson married Deirdre Dyson (née Hindmarsh) in 1968.[1] The couple have three children.[1][66] In 2003, Dyson paid £15 million[citation needed] for Dodington Park,[67] a 300-acre (1.2 km2) Georgian estate in South Gloucestershire close to Chipping Sodbury. He and his wife also own Domaine des Rabelles, near Tourtour, France, and a townhouse in Chelsea, London.[68] His vessel Nahlin is the largest British-flagged and owned super yacht with an LOA of 91 metres (299 ft), and was ranked 36th in a 2013 survey of the world's 100 biggest yachts.[69][70]Longtime Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) welterweight veteran Diego Sanchez returned to the cage last Friday night (Dec. 1, 2017) for an exhibition fight against Isaac Marquez inside Isleta Resort & Casino in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
It was another rough outing for “The Nightmare.”
Despite his sizable height and reach advantage, Sanchez was no match for “The Shermanator,” getting submitted in the first-round at the Jackson-Wink “Fight Night 2” mixed martial arts (MMA) event, headlined by Damacio Page vs. Jesus Urbina.
Marquez was born with Down syndrome and was hoping to fulfill his dream of competing in MMA. As you might expect, getting a sanctioned bout against a combatant with his disability is a daunting task, which is why Sanchez felt the need to intervene.
“Most down syndrome adults don’t live past 45,” Sanchez said. ”Isaac is 32, and I just wanted to see this young man be healthy. Exercise and martial arts are one of the most healthy things you can do.”
Sanchez last competed at UFC Fight Night 120, losing to Matt Brown by way of knockout.Tyler, The Creator was arrested for inciting riots at SXSW in 2014, and he’s been banned from England, New Zealand, and Australia for “posing a threat to public order.” His clothes are not immune from controversy either.
One design from Golf Wang’s Fall/Winter 2013 lookbook caused tension within Odd Future. The Internet’s Syd and Matt Martians took to Twitter to condemn T-shirts and hats featuring an image of a person in blackface. They stressed that many of the people wearing them would be white, and producing a T-shirt like that with no historical context — regardless of who designed it — was irresponsible.
In Golf Wang’s Spring/Summer collection last year, Tyler repurposed a Neo-Nazi symbol to make an anti-racism, anti-homophobia graphic, though this time he explained his intentions in detail on his Tumblr post. The original ‘White Pride WorldWide’ symbol became ‘Golf Wang WorldWide’ with the addition of a rainbow flag. This was coupled with a promotional picture of Tyler and a model holding hands that Tyler felt “HAS to piss off the guys who takes this logo serious.” Accusations of homophobia have plagued Tyler since the beginning of his career because of his prolific use of homophobic slurs in his songs, but, Tyler explained, his re-appropriation of hateful words imagery are attempting to “take the power out of something.”
Most recently, Tyler has been showing how he feels about the upcoming presidential election, releasing two election themed T-shirts — one pro-Bernie and the other anti-Trump. With the latter, Tyler slammed the Republican candidate, showing him grinning, with a Hitler mustache, above the dates of the next presidential term and the inscription “we fucked up.” Let’s just hope Tyler’s wrong on that one.The GT-R, which has proven to be a crowd favorite, will be driven by former GT Academy winner Ricardo Sanchez and 2015 GTA-class PWC champion Frankie Montecalvo when the SprintX series begins at Virginia International Raceway on April 29.
The GT-R NISMO GT3 last year scored two wins at Utah Motorsports Campus – formerly Miller Motorsports Park – in the hands of Bryan Heitkotter.
Sanchez, who spent the past two seasons racing a Nissan in the Blancpain GT Series in Europe, said: “It’s a completely new chapter for me. I’ve got a whole new set of tracks to learn but the GT-R has been really strong in the U.S. and I’m looking forward to continuing my career in a new country.
“I have been training on most of the tracks in the simulator and I’ve been looking at on-board videos from VIR,” Sanchez said. “I think the GT-R could be really strong there because of the fast corners and the track is really quick.
“I really can’t wait. I know the car well and Frankie knows the tracks – I think we’ll make a great combination.”
Montecalvo won PWC’s GTA class in 2015 with seven victories in DragonSpeed’s Mercedes-Benz AMG SLS, and drove a similar car to a runner-up finish at last year’s Dubai 24 Hours.
He said: “I’ve always been a fan of the GT-R, both as a racecar and the streetcar version, and I’m very, very excited to be working together this year."
PWC’s SprintX Championship began last season with a limited number of races. For 2017, there will be 10 races over the course of five events.Minnesotans have breathed a sigh of relief after the state’s Republican-led legislature signed off on a budget deal negotiated with Democratic Governor Mark Dayton, ending a three-week state government shutdown.
While almost inconceivable in Australian politics, government shutdowns happen occasionally in the United States. They occur when a state legislature and governor are unable to agree on a budget to finance the next fiscal year’s spending, and result in the closure of all but the most essential state government services.
It’s a situation not unlike the current impasse in Washington, where President Barack Obama and Republican congressional members have been unable to reach a compromise on a way to raise the country’s debt ceiling.
In Minnesota’s case, more than 22,000 state employees were furloughed when the state’s politicians were unable to agree on how to plug a US$5bn debt hole before the start of the next financial year.
So while Minnesotans were relieved that the deal was struck, we were also disappointed that the solution was to shift the problem forward by delaying school aid payments and borrowing from the future revenue of a state levy on the tobacco industry.
Nonetheless, our services will be restored – state camp grounds and rest stops can reopen, people will be able to buy fishing and hunting licenses again, and beer will continue to be available to our residents and visitors.
How did Minnesota get to this point, and what does it mean for the future? Minnesota is trapped as the rest of the nation in a red-blue split, where Republicans (red) refuse to raise taxes of any kind and Democrats (blue) are left with the job of defending government services and the social safety net.
We have somehow arrived at an Orwellian world where the public, instead of being fed 1984-style messages by a Big-Brother state, have a choice of red messages via Fox News or blue message on the MSNBC news network – all designed to keep the masses in line.
Even those media outlets that have tried to be more balanced have been forced to reference the pablum the red and blue media are feeding us. And the political leaders who know better are trapped by the stories that are being propagated and the need to pay attention to a purposely misinformed electorate.
The problem goes back to 9/11, when US citizens were profoundly traumatised and the country made the decision to go to war in Iraq, leaving much of the rest of the world doubtful, if not totally opposed, to the wisdom of this course of action.
The decision to go to war has meant significant sacrifices by those in the US military and their families. It would seem that the rest of the country should have shared in this sacrifice by paying higher taxes to pay for the war, but we were not asked to do so.
Now we have a large war debt and continue to have costs of fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the costs and loss of revenue due to the Great Recession. The US economy is now recovering but at a slower pace than necessary to get us back to full employment and much slower than necessary to pay for a continuation of federal, state and local government services at current levels.
Those running for elected office have tried to simplify the problem and avoid the short term pain by suggesting that we can solve our troubles by getting rid of a few wasteful government programs or by raising taxes on the rich.
Unfortunately, to solve this problem we have to cut virtually all government programs as well as raise taxes on everybody – a very unpopular position for a politician to take if he or she wants to get re-elected.
So the easiest solution is to postpone the problem, as we have done in Minnesota. This is the way the US federal government will continue to go as well until the public stops listening to the red and blue messages of Fox News and MSNBC and starts to get real about our situation.NEW YORK, NY, December 19, 2017 - ACM's Special Interest Group on Ada (SIGAda) today announced that Peter Chapin of Vermont Technical College is the recipient of the 2017 Robert Dewar Award for Outstanding Ada Community Contributions.
Chapin is credited with making a number of significant contributions to the Ada community including writing and supervising software for the Vermont Tech Lunar CubeSat. CubeSats are miniature satellites used for space research and employed in a variety of applications, including earth observation and amateur radio. The Vermont Tech Lunar CubeSat is the only CubeSat programmed in the SPARK/Ada language. Launched in 2013 with 11 other university CubeSats, the Vermont Tech Lunar CubeSat is the only CubeSat of the group that fully worked. Many credit the Vermont Tech Lunar CubeSat's effectiveness to Chapin's oversight and the high integrity of the SPARK/Ada technology.
Continuing his work in this area, Chapin is now coordinating the development of CubedOS, a SPARK/Ada implementation of a software framework for small spacecraft. Chapin, along with his students and colleagues, intend for CubedOS to be an open source project to allow other groups to have a high integrity software base for their CubeSats, which currently have a very high failure rate. Chapin is the co-author, with John McCormick, of the book Building High Integrity Applications with SPARK.
Earlier in his career, Chapin served on X3J16, the ANSI technical committee charged with creating and maintaining the C++ standard (that work is currently being managed by ISO's WG21). More recently he has conducted research on programming language-based security in wireless sensor networks (SpartanRPC and Scalaness).
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About The Robert Dewar Award for Outstanding Ada Community Contributions
Formerly known as SIGAda's Ada Community Contributions Award, the Award is named in honor of the late Robert Dewar. A Professor of Computer Science at New York University, Dewar was one of the architects of the Ada/Ed compiler, which served as an operational definition of the Ada 83 language, and he later led the team that designed and implemented the GNAT compiler technology for Ada 95. Together with several colleagues from NYU, Dewar founded AdaCore (then Ada Core Technologies) to productize GNAT for commercial users of Ada 95 and also to make GNAT binaries available free of charge to academic institutions and others developing non-proprietary software. Other past recipients of this award include Jean Ichbiah, the head of the design team for the original Ada language; and Tucker Taft, the head of the Ada 95 revision team.
About ACM SIGAda
ACM SIGAda is a professional society focused on the Ada language and its many aspects including standardization, development environments, usage/experience, implementation, and education. SIGAda holds an annual conference or workshop on High Integrity Language Technology and publishes Ada Letters, twice a year.For a long time, there was only one destination for your old electronics: the dump.
In the last few years, environmentally conscious recyclers like Green Citizen have sprung up in a few major cities. They ask you to pay a few dollars, depending on the item, and then promise to take care of your old gear in a responsible manner. If you wanted to forgo that expense and even recoup some of your original investment, your best choice was selling the device on a site like eBay.
Now 25-year-old Brett Mosley of Denver has an even more appealing model. About a year ago, Mr. Mosley started BuyMyBrokeniPod.com and began purchasing, refurbishing and reselling used or broken iPods. Mr. Mosley, who is apparently comfortable around a soldering iron, started the company by posting an iPods-wanted ad on Craigslist. He has since launched a Web site, hired two employees and fixed over a thousand iPods. He recently renamed his company BuyMyTronics.com as he expanded into iPhones and video game consoles.
Mr. Mosley pays anywhere from a few dollars to a few hundred dollars, depending on the item and its health, and then either fixes and resells it online or scraps it for parts. He says his company is profitable but that the venture is not solely about that kind of green. “There’s definitely a market here, but I am keeping leads and toxic wastes out of the ground. They work hand in hand,” he said. “I figure I’ve probably kept thousands of pounds of waste out of landfills.”
The iPod is often thought of as the perfect consumer device, but after fixing thousands of iPods, Mr. Mosley has rare insight into its flaws. He says the hard drive, the most expensive component, breaks most often, which is why Apple is moving toward solid state storage like flash memory. Batteries and the screen are the next most likely components to go.
Mr. Mosley has also purchased and fixed over a dozen iPhones, and says the screens are especially susceptible to cracking. “I’ve also gotten ones that have been dropped, and it’s like an atomic bomb exploded inside them,” he said.
He has not heard from Apple about his fledgling business, but notes that the company appears to be generally hostile to this kind of repair aftermarket, since they are making their devices increasingly difficult to open. “I don’t think they want people opening them up and repairing them,” he said. “That would be awesome if they would be a little cooler about that, but obviously they are a company and their motivation is profit, unfortunately.”
With the name change to BuyMyTronics under his belt, Mr. Mosley said he would be expanding further into cell phones and laptops in a few months.Vic Bishop, Staff Writer
Waking Times
A wise man once told me that the American people have two speeds: graze and stampede.
As a wave of extremely cold temperatures and isolated winter storms hits the South and Southeastern parts of the United States, Americans are once again proving their tendency to panic buy food and basic provisions in the event of even the most predictable and short-term emergencies.
In the age of terrorism, ongoing wars, social unrest, economic instability, cyber-warfare, ecological disasters like oil and gas spills, flooding, and changing weather patterns, basic preparedness is the responsibility of all people, and with a little bit of forethought and planning, anyone on any budget can beat the herd by storing at least a few days worth of food and water. Yet, somehow, Americans en masse still wait to disaster is on their doorstep before carrying out this fundamental civic duty.
The following images were sent to Waking Times on January 6th, 2017, by a Wal-Mart employee of the Cambridge Court store in Charlotte, North Carolina, who photographed empty food shelves as a severe winter storm descended upon the region. Along with the photos, this employee commented that the store had been a madhouse all afternoon and that lines were incredibly long.
“It’s been a mess since Monday, the lines on the register look like people going to vote.” ~Wal-Mart employee, Ras Vosty
Emergency food sales as well as sales of other preparedness items, including livable fallout bunkers, have been on the rise in recent years in the U.S., yet there remains a vast majority of the population who tend to ridicule the idea of basic emergency preparedness. If the majority of Americans were in the habit of keeping a stocked pantry and rotating foods out as they are consumed, our dependency on the federal government in times of crisis would not be an issue, and social catastrophes like the aftermath of hurricane Katrina in 2005 would be
Even for those who are too busy with day-to-day life to manage a rotation of basic foods, there are infinite options in emergency foods available, many of which can be stored for 10 years or more and forgotten about until such need arises. Stores like Offgrid Outpost offer high quality non-GMO freeze-dried foods at an exceptional value, and for just a few hundred dollars anyone can tuck away a months supply of food for two people.
Typically, bread, eggs and water are the first items to fly off the shelves during an emergency.
Meats and other non-processed foods are almost completely gone as people prepare to cook food at home instead of eating out at restaurants as they ordinarily would do over a weekend.
Final Thoughts
If this type of panic buying, which can empty the shelves of a major box retailer like Wal-Mart in just a few hours, is so common place even in the event of a minor, predictable weather event, then what will happen when a serious crisis like a severe economic crash or an escalation |
32
Entry Fee: $12 USD
Pairing Structure: Multiple Swiss Rounds
Prize Structure*:
Top Half: Random 2016 Marvel, DC Comics. or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles HeroClix Convention Exclusive Figure
Bottom Half: Random 2016 DC Comics HeroClix Justice League ID Card Convention Exclusive or 2015 Marvel HeroClix Avengers ID Card Convention Exclusive
HEROCLIX TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES SCENARIO
Description: Players build a 300-point Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Constructed team using only standard objects and game elements from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sets.
Player Cap: 32
Entry Fee: $12 USD
Pairing Structure: Multiple Swiss Rounds
Prize Structure*:
Top Half: Random 2016 Marvel, DC Comics. or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles HeroClix Convention Exclusive Figure
Bottom Half: Random 2016 DC Comics HeroClix Justice League ID Card Convention Exclusive or 2015 Marvel HeroClix Avengers ID Card Convention Exclusive
HEROCLIX MODERN AGE LIL’ CLIX SCENARIO
Description: Players build five different 100-point teams that share none of the same game elements. Each team may not include any non-character game elements except standard objects and all starting force game elements (not including Sideline) must be able to begin the game on the map.
Players play as many individual games as they can against their opponent during each tournament round. Players get two actions in their action total for each game. During each tournament round, players may not play the same team again until they have played all of their teams once. Whichever player wins the most games between the two players wins the tournament round.
Player Cap: 32
Entry Fee: $12 USD
Pairing Structure: Multiple Swiss Rounds
Prize Structure*:
Top Half: Random 2016 Marvel, DC Comics. or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles HeroClix Convention Exclusive Figure
Bottom Half: Random 2016 DC Comics HeroClix Justice League ID Card Convention Exclusive or 2015 Marvel HeroClix Avengers ID Card Convention Exclusive
HEROCLIX GOLDEN AGE ESCALATION SCENARIO
Description: Players build a 100-point, 200-point, & 300-point team that share none of the same game elements. Each player gets 3 actions in their action total regardless of which team they are playing. Players start the game with their 100-point team. When the 100-point team is defeated, that player immediately places their 200-point team in their starting area, as if beginning the game with them, to continue the fight. When the 200-point team is defeated, that player immediately places their 300-point team in their starting area, as if beginning the game with them, to finish the fight.
Player Cap: 32
Entry Fee: $12 USD
Pairing Structure: Multiple Swiss Rounds
Prize Structure*:
Top Half: Random 2016 Marvel, DC Comics. or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles HeroClix Convention Exclusive Figure
Bottom Half: Random 2016 DC Comics HeroClix Justice League ID Card Convention Exclusive or 2015 Marvel HeroClix Avengers ID Card Convention Exclusive
HEROCLIX MODERN AGE POWER OUTAGE SCENARIO
Description: Build a 500 point Modern Age team. You may not include any non-character game elements except standard objects on your force and all starting force game elements you use (not including Sideline) must be able to begin the game on the map. During each tournament round of this event, random powers will be disabled and can’t be used for that tournament round.
Player Cap: 32
Entry Fee: $12 USD
Pairing Structure: Multiple Swiss Rounds
Prize Structure*:
Top Half: Random 2016 Marvel, DC Comics. or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles HeroClix Convention Exclusive Figure
Bottom Half: Random 2016 DC Comics HeroClix Justice League ID Card Convention Exclusive or 2015 Marvel HeroClix Avengers ID Card Convention Exclusive
HEROCLIX GOLDEN AGE PROTECT THE BOSS SCENARIO
Description: Build a 600 point Golden Age team containing a minimum of five characters with at least one character being less than 100 points. You may not include any non-character game elements except standard objects on your force and all starting force game elements you use (not including Sideline) must be able to begin the game on the map. During force construction you will declare one character less than 100 points as your boss. If your boss is KO’d, replaced, or removed from the map for any reason, you immediately lose the game.
Player Cap: 32
Entry Fee: $12 USD
Pairing Structure: Multiple Swiss Rounds
Prize Structure*:
Top Half: Random 2016 Marvel, DC Comics. or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles HeroClix Convention Exclusive Figure
Bottom Half: Random 2016 DC Comics HeroClix Justice League ID Card Convention Exclusive or 2015 Marvel HeroClix Avengers ID Card Convention Exclusive
DICE MASTERS QUICK PLAY Player Cap: 8 Entry Fee: $10 USD Format: Unlimited Constructed Pairing Structure: Players are paired against each other randomly. Then, players play a single one-game match. The winner of the each of the matches receives a prize. Prize Structure*: Winner Random Prize From The Following Group: Marvel Dice Masters Phoenix: Redd Foil Promo Card Marvel Dice Masters Professor X: Trainer Foil Promo Card DC Comics Dice Masters Bane: Venom Enhanced Foil Promo Card DC Comics Dice Masters Miri Riam: Beacon in the Dark Foil Promo Card
DICE MASTERS RAINBOW DRAFT Player Cap: 8 Entry Fee: $12 USD (Includes 12 Dice Masters Foil Packs) Format: Rainbow Draft Pairing Structure: Players are paired against each other randomly. Then, players play a single one-game match. The winner of the each of the matches receives a prize. Prize Structure*: Winner Random Prize From The Following Group: Marvel Dice Masters Phoenix: Redd Foil Promo Card Marvel Dice Masters Professor X: Trainer Foil Promo Card DC Comics Dice Masters Bane: Venom Enhanced Foil Promo Card DC Comics Dice Masters Miri Riam: Beacon in the Dark Foil Promo Card
STAR TREK: ATTACK WING QUICK PLAY Player Cap: 8 Entry Fee: $10 USD Format: Quick Play Pairing Structure: Players are paired against each other randomly. Then, players play a single one-game match. The winner of the each of the matches receives a prize. Prize Structure*: Winner Random Prize From The Following Group: Star Trek: Attack Wing Enterprise-A Prize Pack Star Trek: Attack Wing H.M.S. Bounty Prize Pack Star Trek: Attack Wing Kruge’s Bird-of-Prey Prize Pack Star Trek: Attack Wing U.S.S. Reliant Prize Pack
D&D ATTACK WING QUICK PLAY Player Cap: 8 Entry Fee: $10 USD Format: Quick Play Pairing Structure: Players are paired against each other randomly. Then, players play a single one-game match. The winner of the each of the matches receives a prize. Prize Structure*: Winner Random Prize From The Following Group: D&D Attack Wing Beholder Prize Pack D&D Attack Wing Drider Prize Pack D&D Attack Wing Nalfeshnee Demon Prize Pack D&D Attack Wing Vrock Demon Prize PackHillary Rodham was photographed by Life magazine in Park Ridge, Ill., shortly after her graduation from Wellesley College. She was one of five graduating seniors — from five universities — featured in a Life article titled “The Class of ’69.” This picture was not published at the time and was released by Life.com in March 2014.
June 1969 Hillary Rodham was photographed by Life magazine in Park Ridge, Ill., shortly after her graduation from Wellesley College. She was one of five graduating seniors — from five universities — featured in a Life article titled “The Class of ’69.” This picture was not published at the time and was released by Life.com in March 2014. Lee Balterman/Life Picture Collection via Getty Images
Looking at the career of the former secretary of state, senator and first lady.
Looking back at the career of the former secretary of state, senator and first lady.
Looking back at the career of the former secretary of state, senator and first lady.
When Hillary Rodham Clinton said this month that she was once “dead broke,” it was during an interview in which she led ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer through her $5 million Washington home, appointed like an ambassador’s mansion. Mahogany antiques, vibrant paintings and Oriental rugs fill the rooms. French doors open onto an expertly manicured garden and a turquoise swimming pool, where Clinton recently posed for the cover of People magazine.
On her current book tour, the former secretary of state has traveled the country by private jet as she has for many of her speaking engagements since stepping down as secretary of state last year. Her fee is said to be upwards of $200,000 per speech; the exceptions tend to be black-tie charity galas, where she collects awards and catches up with friends such as designer Oscar de la Renta and Vogue editor Anna Wintour.
Such scenes reveal a potentially serious political problem for Clinton as she considers a 2016 presidential run: She and her husband are established members of the 1 percent, leading lives far removed from the millions of middle-class voters who swing elections.
Clinton has underscored the contrast with a series of stumbles in discussing her finances — the latest in an interview with Britain’s Guardian newspaper published Sunday, in which she compared herself with other multimillionaires. Unlike the “truly well off,” Clinton said, she and former president Bill Clinton “pay ordinary income tax” and have amassed their fortune “through dint of hard work.”
Some influential Democrats — including former advisers to President Obama — said in interviews last week they fear that Clinton’s personal wealth and rarefied, cloistered lifestyle could jeopardize the Democratic Party’s historic edge with the middle class that powered Obama’s wins.
What Hillary Clinton line made one of The Post's reporters say, "Oh, snap?" Diplomatic correspondent Anne Gearan and The Fix's Chris Cillizza add their context and commentary to Clinton's interview with ABC News's Diane Sawyer. (Julie Percha/The Washington Post)
“I don’t know whether it’s just that she’s been ‘Madam Secretary’ for so long, but she’s generating an imperial image,” said Dick Harpootlian, who recently stepped down as Democratic Party chairman in South Carolina, which hosts an early presidential primary.
Harpootlian, who backed Obama over Clinton in 2008 and is a longtime ally of Vice President Biden, added: “She’s been living 30, going on 40 years with somebody bringing your coffee to you every morning. Is it more ‘Downton Abbey’ than it is America?”
Multiple Obama campaign advisers — who spoke only on the condition of anonymity to avoid alienating the Clintons — said they fear Clinton’s financial status could hurt her as it did Republican nominee Mitt Romney, whom Obama portrayed in 2012 as an out-of-touch plutocrat at a time of economic uncertainty.
“It’s going to be a massive issue for her,” one Obama adviser said. “When you’re somebody like the secretary of state or president of the United States or first lady, you’re totally cut off [from normal activity], so your perception of the middle-class reality gets frozen in a time warp.”
Asked what Democrats should do, the adviser said: “Panic.”
Clinton’s allies, however, strongly dispute suggestions that she is disconnected from the concerns and values of middle-class Americans. They note she grew up in a middle-class suburb of Chicago and said she has committed her adult life to lifting up the downtrodden — from her early work at the Children’s Defense Fund to initiatives at her family’s charitable foundation.
“Whoever thinks she has lost touch is clearly not in touch with her or her long-held beliefs,” said Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill. “If they were, they’d know that reducing inequality and increasing upward mobility has been an uninterrupted pursuit of hers through every job she’s held and continues to this day in her work at the Clinton Foundation.”
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton discusses the capture of the Benghazi suspect Ahmed Abu Khattala. Diplomatic correspondent Anne Gearan adds her context and commentary to Clinton's interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour during a town hall event. (Divya Jeswani Verma/The Washington Post)
Other backers noted that the Clintons gave up more lucrative careers in business or finance, making their money giving speeches and writing books.
“Our nation has always applauded success, but politically, the focus is on how successful people can help us achieve,” said Robert Zimmerman, a longtime Clinton supporter and a member of the Democratic National Committee from New York. “The Clinton history has always been how to bring more people into the middle class.”
Bill Clinton rose from poor beginnings in rural Arkansas to the presidency. In 1992, it was Clinton’s everyman connection that helped him defeat then-president George H.W. Bush, a patrician who was ridiculed for not knowing the price of a gallon of milk and for expressing amazement at supermarket scanners.
Now Hillary Clinton risks a similar caricature. On tour this month for her new book, “Hard Choices,” Clinton mingled with regular people at signings, but only under strict rules: no photographs and no personalized autographs. There are Secret Service agents to keep the crowds in order and aides to hand her books, count how many she signs and ferry her to the next stop. The former first lady recently said she hasn’t driven a car since 1996.
“Every time that she tries to talk in some populist voice, it’s completely inauthentic,” said Matthew Dowd, a former campaign strategist for George W. Bush. “At a time when the country is anti-Washington and anti-Wall Street, she represents both.”
Following a lifetime with limited means, both Clintons became wildly successful financially after leaving the White House. In 2000, the couple had as much as $10 million in debt, according to financial disclosure documents that Hillary Clinton later filed as a senator. Much of it was unpaid legal fees from investigations into the couple’s Whitewater investments and the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
In 2001, Bill Clinton made $13 million in speaking fees and Hillary began earning an advance for her first memoir, “Living History,” that totaled $8 million. By 2004, their debts were erased.
During the 2008 campaign, the Clintons released tax returns showing they had earned $109 million over eight years. And their earnings kept growing. In 2012, Bill Clinton reported collecting $16.4 million in speaking fees — including a $700,000 honorarium for a single appearance in Nigeria, according to Hillary Clinton’s latest federal financial disclosure.
Merrill declined to disclose the advance for Clinton’s new memoir or her speaking fee. But an executive who arranges speaking tours told The Washington Post last year that Hillary Clinton commands $200,000 or more per appearance.
Strategist Donna Brazile, a Clinton supporter, said scrutiny of Clinton’s speaking fees smacks of sexism.
“I hope Hillary never apologizes for trying to earn a living,” Brazile said. “She’s no different than [former secretary of state] Colin Powell, no different than [former Florida governor] Jeb Bush, no different than anybody else who’s left public office and looked for ways to make an income.... What is wrong with a woman having the same earning potential as any man?”
The Clintons’ daughter, Chelsea, 34, also does well financially. She makes $600,000 a year from NBC News as a special correspondent, taping occasional reports, according to Politico. Last year, Chelsea and her husband, Marc Mezvinsky, who helps run a hedge fund, bought a $10.5 million apartment in Manhattan.
Bill and Hillary Clinton own two houses: A brick Georgian in Washington near the Naval Observatory that they purchased in 2001 for $2.85 million is now assessed at $5.05 million, according to D.C. property records. They also own a white Dutch farmhouse in Chappaqua, N.Y., that they purchased in 1999 for $1.7 million and was last assessed at $1.8 million.
The Clintons had so much legal debt at the time of the New York home purchase that friend Terry McAuliffe, who is now the governor of Virginia, put up $1.35 million as collateral. He was repaid once the Clintons obtained a conventional mortgage.
In 1999, the Clintons vacationed in rustic Wyoming, with Bill photographed in jeans and cowboy hat riding a horse. These days, the Clintons summer in the Hamptons with New York and Hollywood glitterati.
In 2011 and 2012, for example, the Clintons rented a 9,000-square-foot, lush beachfront manse that owner Elie Hirschfeld described as “an opulent house, but in a relaxed way.” In 2013, they rented a sprawling mansion that the New York Times called a “virtual Shangri-La,” where Bill Clinton celebrated his 67th birthday by inviting over Paul McCartney, among other celebrities.
“We used to talk about the ‘hang test’ — could you hang out in a bar? At a county fair? At a union hall?” said Andy Stern, former president of the Service Employees International Union. “I think that will be a challenge for her.”
In the Sawyer interview, Clinton said: “We came out of the White House not only dead broke, but in debt. We had no money when we got there, and we struggled to piece together the resources for mortgages for houses, for Chelsea’s education. You know, it was not easy.”
Two days later, she tried to backtrack in an appearance with Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D), saying: “That may not have been the most artful way of saying that Bill and I had gone through a lot of different phases in our lives.” Clinton also spoke movingly about her mother’s “miserable existence” growing up poor in an abusive family.
Still, a second Obama adviser said Clinton is falling into the same traps as Romney.
“She seems completely out of touch and elitist,” the adviser said. “You can draw direct parallels between her comments on mortgages on multiple houses to Romney talking about all the cars he owned... between her talking about having to struggle with Romney’s comments about being worried about ‘pink slips.’ ”
As a third Obama adviser put it: “It’s less that she’s out of touch with middle-class kitchen-table issues, it’s that most people can’t fix their problems by giving $200,000 speeches. That is a vulnerability.”
Anita Dunn, who advised Obama through the 2008 primaries, recalled that Clinton was “very effective” relating to working-class Democrats in states like Ohio and Pennsylvania. Historically, she noted, a candidate’s wealth has not always been a detriment.
“Franklin Roosevelt, who came from one of the most patrician backgrounds that you can come from, could speak to people about their personal economic circumstances in a way that immediately connected,” Dunn said.
Clinton supporters said it’s foolish to think that the Clintons could ever lose their middle-class appeal.
John Morgan, a Democratic donor, hosted Bill Clinton at his Florida home last year for a fundraiser. Morgan recalled that when his son complimented Clinton on his black dress shoes, the former president showed him the label: Allen Edmonds. (They cost about $250 at Macy’s.) Of Hillary Clinton, Morgan said: “I don’t see jewels. She may get some nice pantsuits, but they’re not flashy people.”
“Once you taste desperation, it’s very hard to get that out of your mouth,” Morgan said. “And I don’t think compassion will ever be out of her bones. That is the way their DNA is stranded.”Stroke victims and those felled by head injuries on the sports pitch or battlefield could benefit from a new wearable scanner currently being tested
A transportable brain-scanning helmet that could be used for rapid brain injury assessments of stroke victims and those felled on the sports pitch or battlefield is being tested by US scientists.
The wearable device, known as the PET helmet, is a miniaturised version of the hospital positron emission tomography (PET) scanner, a doughnut-shaped machine which occupies the volume of a small room.
Portable ultrasound for brain injuries could save soldiers and civilians Read more
Julie Brefczynski-Lewis, the neuroscientist leading the project at West Virginia University, said that the new helmet could dramatically speed up diagnosis and make the difference between a positive outcome and devastating brain damage or death for some patients.
“You could roll it right to their bedside and put it on their head,” she said ahead of a presentation at the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s (AAAS) annual meeting in Boston. “Time is brain for stroke.”
Despite being only the size of a motorbike helmet, the new device produces remarkably detailed images that could be used to identify regions of trauma to the brain in the ambulance on the way to hospital or at a person’s bedside. The device is currently being tested on healthy volunteers, but could be used clinically within two years, the team predicted.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Despite being only the size of a motorbike helmet, the new device produces detailed images that could be used to identify regions of trauma to the brain in the ambulance on the way to hospital or at a person’s bedside. Photograph: Stan Majewski
Rapidly diagnosing stroke patients, who often wake up unaware of what has happened, is crucial as every passing minute without treatment can result in more extensive and permanent brain damage.
In the hours after a stroke, the brain tissue surrounding the main injury hangs in the balance as it is starved of oxygen due to blockages in the brain’s blood vessels. A rapid surgical intervention, within two to four hours of a stroke, can salvage neurons in the so-called “penumbra” area. After that the risks of brain surgery tend to outweigh any potential benefits to the patient.
“The more you wait, the more that penumbra area gasps and dies,” said Brefczynski-Lewis. “If you can see there’s a bit of activity you might say let’s do an intervention.”
Depending on the brain region affected by stroke, a patient’s speech and language abilities could be saved or paralysis prevented.
In the future, the team said it may be possible to diagnose sports concussion “within minutes”.
“If one can determine quickly whether a head injury is a concussion, then one might be better able to assess if the player, or the soldier, should continue or take time to heal,” said Brefczynski-Lewis.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The device, which can be worn while walking around could also enable scientists to study people’s mental patterns as they move about, socialise and respond to threats in their day-to-day environment. Photograph: Stan Majewski
The helmet was developed in the lab and Brefczynski-Lewis describes it as the equivalent of “going from a big computer to a smartphone”.
The wearable scanner works on the same basic principle as a conventional PET scan. The patient is injected with glucose that has been tagged with a radioactive tracer. Radiation emitted by the tracer is captured by sensors on the helmet, allowing scientists to pinpoint which brain regions are metabolising glucose most rapidly, providing a heatmap of brain activity.
The team were able to miniaturise the scanner by using much smaller detectors fitted with crystal arrays designed to turn PET radiation into measurable electrical signals with a high degree of efficiency.
The device, which can be worn while walking around could also enable scientists to study people’s mental patterns as they move about, socialise and respond to threats in their day-to-day environment. Brefczynski-Lewis said it could also be useful for understanding addiction, where people can respond very differently in a lab setting to in their day-to-day lives where environmental triggers suddenly set off cravings.
“You could put [addicts] in a room similar to where they’ve used drugs before and ask what allows you to have the willpower to walk away,” she said.
A potential limitation is that the helmet is cumbersome, weighing nearly 3kg (6.6lbs) in its current form and up to 9kg (20lb) in an upgraded version designed to give full-brain coverage. The scientists have developed a counterweight system that is pushed along on a stand or carried in a rucksack to avoid the patient being crushed, but Brefczynski-Lewis acknowledges: “you’re probably not walking down the street in Manhattan wearing it”.A father allegedly punched a manager at a Kosher supermarket in Brooklyn in a wild confrontation apparently sparked by a manager hurling a peach at the man's daughter over a hoverboard at the store. Michael George reports. (Published Friday, June 17, 2016)
A father punched a manager at a Kosher supermarket in Brooklyn in a wild confrontation that was allegedly sparked when one of the managers chucked a peach at the man's daughter when she wouldn't get off a hoverboard at the store.
Three people were arrested after the brawl broke out at Central Market on Division Avenue in Williamsburg on June 9, police said.
The store erupted in chaos shortly after a 24-year-old woman came into the store on a hoverboard and got into an argument with store managers, according to police. Witnesses told NBC 4 New York a nephew of the woman had been riding the hoverboard inside the store and employees asked him to stop.
Police said that one of the managers allegedly chucked a peach at the woman while another tackled her to the ground. The woman's family told NBC 4 New York the manager actually threw a soda can at her, leaving her with a cut under her eye.
Weird News Photos: Man Shoves Snake in Pants
“I believe it was a can, a can of Coke,” the woman’s 41-year-old father, Mark Soto, said. “My daughter tells me after the fact, when she felt something hit her in the face, she looked down and saw a can of Coke. There was no peach.”
After the can or peach was allegedly thrown, Soto showed up and confronted the men.
Video from the interaction that was posted to Facebook shows Soto punching one of the managers in the face near a checkout line as several people yell. Soto tells the manager "I'll kill you" several times as other workers in the store yell.
Soto then walks around the checkout lines as several employees hold up cardboard boxes as shields. Soto again threatens to kill the man before leaving.
Soto denies he yelled racial threats during the brawl and says the video only shows him as the aggressor. He says he said things in the heat of the moment that he would not have followed through with.
“I might have said a couple of words out of anger, but nothing that I would actually, physically do to anyone. I would never harm anyone,” he said.
The two managers and Soto were all charged with assault after the incident, police said. Only one of them — the man accused of throwing the peach — is being charged with a felony. Because of the injuries the victim reportedly sustained, the peach is being considered a weapon. Soto and the other manager are facing misdemeanors.
The grocery store declined to comment Thursday, but the man who posted the video to Facebook said in a post that the manager was falsely accused of throwing a peach at the girl.
Top News Photos: R. Kelly Leaves Jail After Paying Bond
Community leaders said the workers never threw anything and that they are the victims.
“Two innocent people were arrested, both of them being managers,” community activist Isaac Abraham said.
Community activist Gary Schlesinger says the managers were wrongfully arrested and had “nothing to do with the altercation that was outside of the store.”
Gothamist first reported the grocery store fight.Looking for news you can trust?
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The Nebraska Public Service Commission removed a major regulatory roadblock to the construction of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline on Monday. Though that might seem like the final judgement in the nine-year battle waged by the US environmental movement against it, nothing about the fate of the once-dead, then-revived pipeline has ever been certain. Even though the commission approved the pipeline in a 3-2 vote, a number of hurdles for TransCanada, the parent company, still remain, and environmentalists vowed to exploit every single one of them. “This has always been a fight against the odds,” 350.org founder Bill McKibben, a leading anti-Keystone activist, reminded reporters in a call Monday.
The Nebraska commission gave TransCanada a green-light for a route through the state, one that does not cross Nebraska’s sensitive sand dunes but is further east from where TransCanada hoped to build. That could change or delay the company’s agreements with local landowners.
“As a result of today’s decision, we will conduct a careful review of the Public Service Commission’s ruling while assessing how the decision would impact the cost and schedule of the project,” TransCanada president Russ Girling said in a short press release.
Anti-Keystone activists noted that the caution in this statement reveals that activists aren’t defeated yet. TransCanada may need to go through another round of the approval process from state and federal regulators for the alternative route. Then there are ongoing lawsuits from indigenous communities and landowners affected by the pipeline. Activists cite remaining concerns that the state’s large Ogallala aquifer is not safe from future spills, and lawsuits continue against the Trump administration for approving TransCanada’s cross-border permit. President Trump issued an executive order earlier this year urging the Army Corps of Engineers and the State Department to approve TransCanada’s applications; not long after, they did.
Last week, the pipeline that TransCanada once billed “the safest pipeline ever constructed on American soil” spilled 210,000 gallons of oil in South Dakota.
It’s been nine years since the parent company TransCanada first requested a federal permit for the tar sands pipeline—which, they said, would be able to transport up to 830,000 barrels of crude oil a day at peak capacity from Canada to refineries in the Gulf. Last week, the pipeline that TransCanada once billed “the safest pipeline ever constructed on American soil” spilled 210,000 gallons of oil in South Dakota.
Yet the biggest challenges ahead for TransCanada may be economic. When TransCanada originally proposed the route, the energy economy was different. As gas has flooded the market and oil prices have come down, TransCanada has had trouble attracting buyers interested in the heavy viscous oil that is more expensive and energy intensive to extract and refine. The company wants enough customers to fill 90 percent of its capacity before it proceeds. In June, the Wall Street Journal reported the “oil producers and refiners the pipeline was originally meant to serve aren’t interested in it anymore.”
According to the Omaha World-Herald, TransCanada said it won’t decide until December whether the project is still financially feasible.
“Keystone XL will never be built,” Jane Kleeb, Bold Nebraska founder and leading anti-Keystone activist, vowed on Monday. “We must protect the Sandhills and Ogallala Aquifer from a risky export pipeline and eminent domain abuse.” She noted that “TransCanada was already on thin margins to get their pipeline in the ground,” and that they should be forced to comply with the reconfigured route to protect both the Sandhills and the water.
Compared to other sources of oil that American refineries might use, the State Department estimated in 2014 that tar sands would be about 17 percent more polluting on average. More recent estimates from the deparment of tar sands pipelines suggest that the greenhouse impact would be even worse than that.
The pipeline has become synonymous with environmental activism in the past decade and was considered a way for politicians to demonstrate their seriousness about combatting the effects of climate change. Keystone was seen as an all-or-nothing prospect that would singlehandedly drive up greenhouse gas emissions by speeding up the development of the Canadian tar sands. Oil prices are too cheap in the foreseeable future to make other types of transport for the crude oil profitable.
“There’s no doubt that today’s decision is a big setback for common-sense environmental protection and rational climate stewardship,” the executive director of Food and Water Watch, Wenonah Hauter, said in a statement. “But we’re not quitting. We will support any and all legal avenues to ensure this pipeline never carries a single barrel of tar sands oil through it.”Out-of-the-Body, Explained Away, But It Was So Real.....
Susan Blackmore Sunday November 8th, 1970: Causes
I had been taking part in a séance, or rather a ouija board group, and as a consequence was very tired. Three of us, Kevin, Vicki and myself, decided that we'd go up to her room two floors up and smoke some hash. This we did and at first it just seemed like normal. However after a few minutes, I began to get even more cut off from the others than usual and to experience very strange sensations. These I thought were still just part of the drug experience. The music appeared in some sense most akin to sight, but although having colours it was not a normal sight at all. I had my eyes closed. I moved from the chair I was sitting on to the floor and sat there cross-legged for the rest of the time.
1. I began to move through tunnels in my mind, very brightly coloured and getting more and more real. There began to be places, which appeared very, very clearly. In more detail than if I had seen them real. This kind of thing went on for about half an hour - 12:00 to 12:30 - and then the transition came.
2. I was thinking how high I was, in the sense that on looking down my feet seemed a very long way away. This I had experienced before but this time it was much more vivid. Also the feeling of there being a white wall behind me and through the centre of me was much more pronounced than usual. As I kept looking down, with my eyes shut most of the time but occasionally opening, I suddenly realized that I really was high up and looking down on my own body. I think had it not been for the drug, I would have been worried at this, however it didn't worry me at all and I continued to look at myself with interest but still just enjoying the sensations.
I think at this point I was at about ceiling level and gently drifting about. My eyes were shut and remained shut for most of the time. If I had opened them the conflict would have been too great. I seem to remember that I did open them at times, but that nothing I saw made any sense, so I shut them again. I wanted to tell the others about what I was doing, but I was a little embarrassed about what they would think of me interrupting their conversation, which I could hear if I listened. So I kept silent, or more or less so. I kept looking around me and making slight exclamations and looking terribly excited. I could see only the room and then the outside and the roofs, but I preferred to stay inside the room.
3. At this point Vicki went out to make some coffee and Kevin said to me "Where are you?" I still didn't think it at all odd that I could be in one place and yet still in control of the body below and able to speak through it. It was almost like watching a cinema screen and relating the picture to someone who couldn't see it. I told him where I was and from that time I kept on talking, almost continuously, for the next three hours. The fact that I was talking to Kevin and that I was not alone gave me much more confidence and I was able to go on from there and see more. At all times I was fully aware of what my body was doing, I was somehow quite able to conceive of being in the two places at once, or rather to be in one place but to still have the knowledge and perception of the body in another.
4. Soon after I had begun talking I saw the cord. I looked down from where I was and saw, apparently coming from where my tummy should be, a cord. It was not really any colour, but closest to a slightly shiny grayish-white and it was bendy and slowly moving. I had great fun with it because I decided to try and move it. I reached out my hand but found two things. Firstly, if I wanted a hand I could have one, or as many as I liked. Secondly, it wasn't necessary to have a hand, I could move the cord at will, and had great fun doing it too. I was quite consciously talking all this time but very fast, as I wanted to say so much and tell them every thing I was doing.
I looked harder at the cord and the body and saw that the cord entered my physical body at the neck and there appeared to be no head on the body. I seem to remember that it didn't look very much like a normal body but then I wasn't really interested in it so I didn't look very carefully. I was more conscious of what I was actually like. At this time I was still more or less the shape of my body, or hadn't yet discovered that I could be anything else. I was made of the same kind of whitish moving stuff that the cord was made of, but a little more dense than the cord and, at this stage, more solid and constant in shape.
5. I then found that I was moving, not really conscious of whether I was in control or not. I moved up and out and saw below me all the roofs of Oxford. I think I knew even then that they weren't the roofs that I should have seen were I really there, it seems now that they were merely a symbolic representation of how roofs in general should look, but to me they represented the roofs of St. Hilda's. On looking down, I could, if I wanted, look through the roof and intervening floors to the room from which I had started, but as I gained confidence I became less reluctant to let go of that sight and move away.
6. I became aware that I was moving away fairly fast but it wasn't really clear where I was going, nor did I have any conscious control over it. I didn't even take much notice of where I was going until I was suddenly aware that I was somewhere in the vicinity of the Mediterranean. I am not sure how I knew this but it seemed quite obvious at the time. I saw below me an island and I thought that it would be good to go and have a look at it. As a consequence of this thought, I found myself closing in on it. All this time I was aware of the music that my body could hear, and again it didn't at all seem odd to me that I could listen to it, nor did it seem at all difficult to concentrate on so much at once. This could have been a result of the drug as it does seem to make it possible to see and hear so much more at one time than is usual.
As I approached the island I could see its shape, which was almost star shaped with very sharp points, but the shape seemed to be changing all the time and pulsating with the music. I became even more excited and tried to tell the others what I was seeing as I got closer and closer. It was at |
whether he got the shot during the same February 2015 trip. But a spokeswoman told the Chronicle that Miller is now reimbursing the state for the cost "out of an abundance of caution.”
The official originally had billed taxpayers at least $1,120 for the trip, according to the report.
He even posted a picture on Facebook of him with lawmakers in an office in the Oklahoma state Capitol. The Houston Chronicle reported, though, that Miller’s visit at the Capitol was very brief. Lawmakers said the meeting was more of a casual conversation in the hallway.
While Miller won’t say when exactly he got the injection in question, he insists he used his own private money.
The shot, which is legal, is administered by Dr. John Michael Lonergan, and reportedly contains a combination of drugs used to treat inflammation.MUMBAI: Tainted Pakistani umpire Asad Rauf was on Friday banned for five years by the BCCI after its disciplinary committee found him guilty of corrupt practices and bringing the game into disrepute.The 59-year-old Rauf, who was part of the ICC's elite panel and officiated in Test matches, was accused of accepting expensive gifts from bookies besides placing bets on IPL matches in the 2013 edition.After a decision on his fate was deferred for several weeks, the committee, headed by BCCI president Shashank Manohar and comprising Jyotiraditya Scindia and Niranjan Shah, finally announced the ban on him today.Rauf had been withdrawn by Pakistan from the ICC's elite panel after the allegations against him broke out."Mr. Asad Rauf has been banned for a period of five years from umpiring or playing or representing cricket in any form or anyway being associated with the activities of the Board and its Affiliates," the BCCI said in a statement after the meeting."Mr. Asad Rauf did not appear before the Committee but had sent his preliminary submissions on 15th January 2016 and written statement on 8th February 2016," it added.The committee, after considering the report of the Commissioner of Enquiry and the written statement of Rauf has found the Pakistani guilty of "misconduct and corruption within the meaning of Article 2.2.2, 2.3.2, 2.3.3 and 2.4.1 of the BCCI Anti Corruption Code".The articles under which he has been found guilty deal with "soliciting, inducing, enticing, instructing, persuading, encouraging, facilitating or authorising any other party to enter into a bet for the direct or indirect benefit of the Participant in relation to the result, progress, conduct or any other aspect of any match or event".Rauf was also found guilty of "disclosing Inside Information to any person (with or without Reward) before or during any Match or Event where the Participant might reasonably be expected to know that disclosure of such information in such circumstances could be used in relation to Betting".Rauf's ban ends the Board's disciplinary proceedings pertaining to the 2013 scandal and subsequent allegations of corruption.Last month, Haryana off-spinner Ajit Chandila was slapped with a life ban for his involvement in the 2013 IPL spot- fixing scandal, while Mumbai batsman Hiken Shah was handed a five-year suspension for making a corrupt approach to a fellow player.The 32-year-old Chandila, an off-spinner who was found guilty of spot-fixing during his stint with Rajasthan Royals, was handed a tougher punishment for violating the codes pertaining to accepting bribes, fixing, underperforming, trying to induce a fellow player and betting.UPDATED April 2, 2015: This was an April Fools Joke. Read. Laugh. Learn. If you’re building web services, you should most definitely be using HTTPS.
As a security company, we frequently get questions here at Stormpath from developers regarding security best practices. One of the most common questions we get is:
Should I run my site over HTTPS?
Unfortunately, regardless of where you go on the internet, you’ll mostly ready the same advice: encrypt everything!, use SSL for all sites!, etc. The reality, of course, is that this is not usually good advice.
There are many circumstances where HTTP is better than HTTPS. HTTP is, in fact, a much better and more useful protocol than HTTPS, which is why we often recommend it to our customers. Here’s why…
The Problems with HTTPS
HTTPS as a protocol is riddled with problems. Numerous, well-known issues with the protocol and popular implementations make it unsuitable for a wide variety of web services.
HTTPS is Painfully Slow
One of the primary blockers for HTTPS adoption is the fact that the HTTPS protocol is painfully slow.
By its very nature, HTTPS is meant to securely encrypt communications between two parties. This requires both parties continuously spend valuable CPU cycles:
Initially saying “hello” and determining what sorts of encryption to use
(cypher suites).
(cypher suites). Validating SSL certificates.
Running crypto code for each request to validate / verify the request / response.
While this doesn’t sound like much, crypto code is very CPU intensive. It makes heavy usage of the floating point CPU registers, which taxes your CPU and slows down request processing.
Here’s a very informative ServerFault thread showing just how big of a slowdown you can expect using a simple Ubuntu sever with Apache2:
http://serverfault.com/questions/43692/how-much-of-a-performance-hit-for-https-vs-http-for-apache
Here are the results:
Even in a very simple example like the one shown above, HTTPS can reduce the speed of your web server by more than 40 times! That’s a HUGE drag to web performance.
In environments today, where it’s common to build your application as a composition of REST APIs — using HTTPS is a sure way to slow down your site, reduce your application’s performance, unnecessarily hammer your server CPUs, and generally annoy your users.
For many speed sensitive applications it’s often much better to just use plain HTTP.
HTTPS Isn’t a One-Size-Fits All Safeguard
A lot of people are under the impression that HTTPS will make their site secure. This isn’t true.
HTTPS only encrypts traffic between you and a server — once the HTTPS information transit has terminated, everything is fair game.
This means that if your computer is already infected with malware, or you’ve been tricked into running some malicious software — all the HTTPS in the world won’t do anything for you.
Furthermore, if any exploits exist on the HTTPS server, an attacker can simply wait until the HTTPS transaction has finished, then grab whatever data necessary at another layer (the web service layer, for example).
SSL certificates themselves are also frequently abused. The way they work in web browsers, for instance, is quite error prone:
Each browser vendor (Mozilla, Google, etc.) independently audits and approves root certificate providers to ensure they are securely handling SSL certs.
Once approved, these root SSL certs are put into the browser’s “trusted” cert list, which means that any SSL certs signed by these providers is implicitly
trusted.
trusted. These providers are then free to screw things up and cause all sorts of security issues — like what happened with DigiNotar in 2011.
In the above case, a popular certificate authority mistakenly signed numerous fake and fraudulent certificates, directly compromising the security of (millions?) of Mozilla users.
While HTTP doesn’t offer encryption of any type, at least you know what you’redealing with.
HTTPS Traffic Can be Intercepted Easily
If you’re building a web service that is meant to be consumed through insecure devices (like mobile apps), you might be under the impression that since your service is running over HTTPS, users are unable to intercept and read your private messages.
If that’s what you thought, you’d be wrong.
Users can easily setup a proxy on their computer to intercept and inspect all HTTPS traffic, thereby bypassing your very own SSL certificate checks, and allowing your private information to be directly leaked.
This blog post walks you through intercepting and reading private HTTPS messages on mobile devices.
Think you’re doing it right? Don’t count on it! Even large companies like Uber have had their mobile apps reverse engineered, despite their HTTPS usage. If you’re in the mood, I can’t recommend reading this article enough.
It’s time to accept the fact that no matter what you do, attackers will be able to read your traffic in one way or another. Instead of wasting engineering time trying to fix and patch common SSL issues, spend your time working on your core product or service and just use HTTP wisely.
HTTPS Exploits Exist
It’s well known that HTTPS isn’t invulnerable. There have been numerous HTTPS exploits over the years:
It’s inevitable that there will be more attacks in the future. If you pair this with the fact that the NSA is spending insane amounts of money to capture and store SSL traffic for future decryption — it seems pointless to use HTTPS considering that your private traffic will almost certainly be made public at some point in the future.
HTTPS is Expensive
The last main point I want to cover is that HTTPS is expensive. To purchase a certificate that browsers and web clients will recognize, you have to purchase an SSL certificate from a root certificate authority.
This isn’t cheap.
SSL Certificates can range from a few dollars per year to thousands — and if you’re building a distributed application that relies on multiple microservices, you’ll need more than just one.
This can quickly add up to a lot of money, which is particularly expensive for people building smaller projects, or looking to launch a new service on a tight budget.
Why HTTP is a Good Choice
On the flip side, let’s stop being negative for a moment, and instead focus on the positive: what makes HTTP great. Most developers don’t appreciate its’ benefits.
Secure in the Right Conditions
While HTTP itself doesn’t offer any security whatsoever, by properly setting up your infrastructure and network, you can avoid almost all security issues.
Firstly, for all internal HTTP services you might be using, ensure that your network is private and can’t be publicly sniffed for packets. This means you’ll probably want to deploy your HTTP services inside of a very secure network like Amazon’s EC2.
By deploying public cloud servers on EC2, you’re guaranteed to have top-notch network security, to prevent any other AWS customers from sniffing your network traffic.
Use HTTP’s Insecurity for Scaling
Something not many people think about, when obsessing over HTTP’s lack of security and encryption is how well it scales.
Most modern web applications scale via queueing.
You have a web server which accepts incoming requests, then farms individual jobs out to a cluster of servers on the same network which perform more CPU and memory intensive tasks.
To handle queueing, people typically use a system like RabbitMQ or Redis. Both are excellent choices — but what if you could get all the benefits of queueing without using any infrastructure except your network?
With HTTP, you can!
Here’s how it works:
Setup a network where both your web server and all worker servers share a
subnet.
subnet. Make your worker servers listen for ALL packets on the network, and passively sniff network traffic.
When you receive incoming HTTP traffic to your web server, your worker servers can simply read those incoming requests (in plain text, since HTTP isn’t encrypted), and start the processing work IMMEDIATELY!
The above system works exactly like a distributed queue, is fast, efficient, and simple.
Using HTTPS, the above scenario would be impossible, but, by using HTTP, you can dramatically speed up your applications while removing your need for infrastructure services — a big win.
Insecure and Proud
The last point I’d like to mention in favor of using HTTP instead of HTTPS for your next project is: insecurity.
Yes, HTTP provides no security for your users — but is security even really necessary?
Not only do most ISPs monitor network traffic, but it’s become quite apparent over the past couple of years that the government has been storing and decrypting network traffic for a long time.
Worrying about using HTTPS is like putting a padlock on a fence that is 1 foot high: it’s basically impossible to secure your applications — so why bother?
By developing services that rely on HTTP alone, you’re not giving your users a false sense of security, tricking them into thinking they are secure when, in fact, they most likely aren’t.
By building your apps on HTTP, you’re simplifying your life, and increasing transparency with your users. Consider it!
JUST KIDDING!! >:)
Happy April Fools’ Day!
I hope you didn’t really think I would recommend against using HTTPS! I want to be perfectly clear: if you’re building any sort of web application, use HTTPS!
It doesn’t matter what sort of application or service you’re building, if it’s not using HTTPS, you are doing it wrong.
Now, let’s talk about why HTTPS is awesome.
HTTPS is Secure
HTTPS is a great protocol with an excellent track record. While there have been several exploits over the years, they’ve all been relatively minor, and furthermore, they’ve been patched quickly.
And yes, while the NSA is most certainly storing SSL traffic somewhere, the odds that they’re able to decrypt even a small amount of SSL traffic is infinitely small — this would require fast, fully functional quantum computers and would cost an insane amount of money. Odds are, nothing like this exists, so you can sleep easily at night knowing that the SSL on your site is actually protecting user data in transit.
HTTPS is Fast
I mentioned above that “painfully slow” HTTPS was, but the truth is almost completely the opposite.
While HTTPS certainly requires more CPU for terminating SSL connections — this processing power is negligible at best on modern computers. The odds that you’ll ever hit an SSL bottleneck are effectively 0.
You’re far more likely to have a bottleneck with your application or web server performance.
HTTPS is an Important Safeguard
While HTTPS isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution to web security, without it you’re guaranteed to be insecure.
All web security relies on you having HTTPS. If you don’t have it, then no matter how strongly you hash your passwords or how much data encryption you do, an attacker can simply monitor a client’s network connection, read their credentials — then BAM — game over.
So — while you can’t rely on HTTPS to solve all of your security problems, you absolutely, 100% need to use it for all services you build — otherwise there’s absolutely no way to secure your application.
Furthermore, while certificate signing is most definitely not a perfect practice, each browser vendor has pretty strict and rigorous rules for certificate authorities. It’s VERY hard to become a trusted certificate authority, and keeping yourself in good standing is equally tough.
Mozilla (and the other vendors) do an excellent job of pruning bad root authorities, and are generally awesome stewards of internet security.
HTTPS Traffic Interception Is Avoidable
Earlier, I mentioned that it’s quite easy to man-in-the-middle SSL traffic by creating your own SSL certificates, trusting them, and then intercepting traffic.
While this is most definitely possible, it’s fairly easy to prevent via SSL Certificate Pinning.
Essentially, by following the guidelines in the article linked to above, you can force your clients to trust only a true and valid SSL certificate, effectively preventing all sorts of SSL MITM attacks before they can even start =)
If you’re deploying an SSL service to an untrusted location (like a mobile or desktop app), you should most definitely look into using SSL Certificate Pinning.
HTTPS Isn’t Expensive (anymore)
While it’s true that historically, HTTPS has been expensive — this is no longer the case. You can currently purchase very cheap SSL certificates from a number of web hosts.
Furthermore, the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) is just about to launch a completely free SSL certificate provider: https://letsencrypt.org/
It’s launching in 2015, and will invariably change the game for all web developers. Once Let’s Encrypt goes live, you’ll be able to encrypt 100% of your sites and services for no cost at all.
Be sure to check out their site and subscribe for updates!
HTTP Isn’t Secure on Private Networks
Earlier, when I talked about how HTTP security doesn’t matter, especially if your network is locked down — I was lying to you.
While network security matters, so does transit encryption!
If an attacker is able to gain access to any of your internal services all HTTP traffic will be intercepted and read, regardless of how ‘secure’ your network may be. This is a very bad thing.
This is why HTTPS is critically important on both public AND private networks.
BONUS: If you’re deploying services on AWS, DON’T COUNT ON YOUR NETWORK TRAFFIC BEING PRIVATE! AWS networks are PUBLIC, meaning that other AWS customers can potentially sniff your private network traffic — be very careful.
HTTP and Queueing
When I mentioned earlier how you could replace queuing infrastructure with HTTP — I wasn’t really wrong, but OH MAN. What a horrible idea!
Relying on poor security practices to “scale” your service is a bad, horrible, awful, VERY BAD idea.
Please don’t do it (unless it’s a proof-of-concept, in which case it’d make for a very cool demo to say the least)!
Summary
If you’re building web services, you should most definitely be using HTTPS.
It’s easy, cheap and builds user trust, so there’s no excuse not to. As developers, it’s our job to help protect user security — and one of the best ways to do that is to force HTTPS side-wide.
I hope you enjoyed this article, and got a good laugh or two.
If you liked this article, you might also like last year’s Apil Fools’ post as well: Why You Might Want to Store Your Passwords in Plain Text.No more zones. That’s what a survey of Metro Vancouver transit users told TransLink during the second phase of its public review process.
Fifty-six per cent of the 11,587 people surveyed said they preferred SkyTrain fares based on distance or the number of stops or stations passed to the current system where prices are determined by zone boundaries.
A majority of participants in a smaller, more in-depth market research panel also preferred distance pricing, even though it could mean that some riders will pay more to use transit.
READ MORE: Should TransLink fares be based on distance travelled?
“An important thing to note is that people in every part of the region are making short trips,” Andrew McCurran, TransLink’s director of strategy and policy planning, said.
“Also, people in all parts of the region are occasionally making those longer trips as well. The length of trips isn’t determined just by the part of the region that you live in.”
READ MORE: 1 year in, how are TransLink’s fare gates working out?
More than 70 per cent of people who took part in the survey and research panel said they approve of reducing fares during off-peak hours to encourage riders to avoid travelling during rush hour. Currently, evenings, weekends and holidays have lower fare prices.
The current three-zone system for SkyTrain fares hasn’t changed much since it was introduced in 1984. TransLink buses have been operating as a single-fare zone since late 2015.
— With files from Jill BennettChael Sonnen’s problems with PEDs are nowhere near finished.
After the NSAC revealed that Chael Sonnen for banned substances on May 24th, he announced his retirement from professional mixed martial arts. Today it was revealed that he was also tested randomly on June 5th, where he also tested positive for four banned substances.
Yesterday it was announced that Chael Sonnen was released from his broadcast contracts with both FOX and the UFC. Today Dana White spoked about the issue on FOX Sports 1
Chael Sonnen is set to face Andre Galvao in a submission only match at Metamoris 4, on August 9th in Los Angeles.
Metamoris doesn’t test for PEDs.
As a response to this, here is the official statement from Metamoris Founder Ralek Gracie on Chael Sonnen participating at Metamoris 4, made today (wednesday):Crisis averted: Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in Sydney on Wednesday. Credit:Mick Tsikas "One of the big problems in the gas industry is that it has been very opaque...there has been very little transparency, and we're going to bring that to an end by putting the ACCC on the case," Mr Turnbull said. Mr Turnbull said the reporting measures would "shine a light on what has been a very opaque industry and that sunlight will ensure more gas at better prices for Australians". Shell Australia chairwoman Zoe Yujnovich said the company was committed to understanding demand in the market and securing gas supply. "Shell understands that if it is to maintain public support for a gas export industry, Australian customers must have access to a reliable and affordable supply of gas," Ms Yujnovich said.
Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce said there had been no need for the government to restrict gas exports. Credit:AAP Coal seam gas producer Australia Pacific LNG welcomed the discussions, which chief executive Warwick King said achieved strong progress towards a joint industry-government solution to resolve the east coast gas market shortfall in 2018. "We are very pleased to contribute to a solution which will provide certainty for Australian customers to have access to available gas," Mr King said. Labor's energy spokesman, Mark Butler, said the government should have introduced the export limits.
"It appears that Malcolm Turnbull thinks that the way you get results is, instead of speaking softly and carrying a big stick, you talk a lot and you throw away the stick," Mr Butler said. Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce – who is also Resources Minister and has responsibility for the gas trigger – said the mechanism had worked as a deterrent. "I see policemen every day and they have a car, a siren and they have flashing lights and they have a holster on their hip. We don't expect them to use it every day," Mr Joyce said. An Australian Energy Market Operator report released earlier this week forecast a shortfall of up to 107 petajoules in 2018, and outlined the damage this would have on Australian manufacturers and households. "They have given us a guarantee that they will offer to the domestic market the gas that was identified as the expected shortfall by AEMO in 2018," Mr Turnbull said today.
"They will offer, as a first priority, domestic customers any uncontracted gas in the future," he said. Qenos, one of Australia's largest industrial gas users said pricing still needs to be addressed. "Whilst having secure gas supply is critical to both Australia and Qenos, it is also essential that this is at a competitive price," Qenos CEO stephen Bell said. "The prices being quoted for contract supply in recent times are not sustainable for large industrial users such as Qenos." Ai Group chief executive Innes Willox said export restrictions should still be considered to ensure commitments were kept.
"The Australian Domestic Gas Security Mechanism remains an important tool to compel cooperation by gas exporters, the Government must not hesitate to invoke its powers at the first sign of non-compliance or fudging," Mr Willox said. Mr Turnbull also launched a fresh attack on the NSW and Victorian state governments over their bans on onshore gas development. He claimed Victorian customers paid an 11 per cent premium on the cost of their gas bills and NSW customers pay an extra 5 per cent, because of the cost of shipping it south from Queensland to the southern states. The Prime Minister reserved his strongest words for the Victorian Labor government. "Victoria has got plenty of gas.There is plenty of gas in Victoria, onshore gas in Victoria," Mr Turnbull said.
Mr Turnbull lashed the proposal from AGL that an import facility in Victoria might help solve the problem. "The only obstacle to getting it out is the Labor government," he said. "The idea that Victorians are going to have to pay the cost of shipping gas from the Middle East or from Louisiana or from north-west Australia because they have a government that is not prepared to access the gas resources in Victoria is extraordinary. "It is a shocking indictment of [Premier] Daniel Andrews and his government. He seems to be an enthusiast for it. He wants Victorians to pay more for gas." An Andrews government spokesman said Mr Turnbull should stop blaming others and act immediately to cap gas exports.
"Malcolm Turnbull is crowing about a short-term fix that he himself admits will increase gas prices for Australians." Victoria's ban on fracking has bipartisan support. Neither Labor nor the Coalition supports fracking, a controversial drilling technique used to extract gas by injecting high-pressure liquid underground, in Victoria. The Greens also oppose it. But the political agreement does not extend to the Andrews government's moratorium on conventional onshore gas exploration. LoadingKarl Rove said this morning that John McCain's attacks against Barack Obama have stretched the truth.
Appearing on "Fox News Sunday," Rove said McCain had "gone one step too far, and sort of attributing to Obama things that are, you know, beyond the 100 percent truth test.”
McCain has come in for scathing criticism from many in the media and independent fact-check organizations for his recent hard-edged campaign tactics. But few Republicans, and none as prominent as Rove, have criticized McCain.
The former political adviser to President Bush didn't confine his critique to McCain, though.
"Both campaigns are making a mistake, and that is they are taking whatever their attacks are and going one step too far," he said. "They don't need to attack each other in this way."
On a new Obama ad released late last week, Rove said it was a fair point to call McCain "a longtime Washington insider.”
“But they then say he doesn't … send e-mail. Well, this is because his war injuries keep him from being able to use a keyboard. He can't type. You know, it's like saying he can't do jumping jacks."
comments closed
permalinkAnd Democrats believe the public school system is fine?
A teacher’s representative was captured on an undercover video bragging that he had struck students more than once during his teaching career.
“I can see grabbing a kid, I can see throwing a kid up against a locker. Not that I’ve ever done that,” former San Francisco Bay area math, science and technology teacher Antonio Mankini said before correcting himself. “Okay once, maybe twice.”
The video was captured by Project Veritas, a conservative political activist group spearheaded by James O’Keefe.
Anne Frank Center demands apology from Tim Allen, but countless Trump-Hitler-Nazi digs from the left OK
Mankini took a leave from his James Lick Middle School teaching post in order to serve as Staff Organizer and Treasurer of United Educators, San Francisco — the union that represents all of San Francisco’s educators.
After his comments were disclosed, he now finds himself the target of an investigation.
“I can only speak to the comments on the video,” teachers’ union member Matthew Hardy told local station KPIX when asked how someone like Mancini can rise to the union’s upper echelon. “When we do our investigation, if we determine it’s accurate we will take action as necessary.”
Mancini eventually got more descriptive in his methods.
“I clotheslined a kid in a class one time, you know and of course I was pretending, I was pointing at the kids and the kids saw… the kid went down.”
He also told the undercover journalist who identified himself to Mankini as a fellow teacher that “elbows are awesome weapons, too.” He explains the threats that he made to kids when he was in the classroom.
“I mean teachers have smacked kids before,” Mankini said. “And sometimes they’re still working.”
Immediately after Project Veritas published the video Tuesday, the union placed Mankini on administrative leave pending its own investigation.
“We are going to get to the bottom of it. We are deeply committed to students’ safety. And we will act as swiftly as we can once we have the full information,” said Hardy.
Recently a 14-year-old female student was dragged into Maryland high school bathroom and brutally raped by two male students, aged 17 and 18. At least one of the alleged rapists was an illegal immigrant.
Attorney Joseph Malouf told Univision’s Pablo Gato that President Donald Trump’s immigration policy would have likely prevented the teen’s entry into the United States. But the Obama administration let him pass.
In a mind-blowing move, Maryland Democrats voted to enact “sanctuary state” status, despite the horrendous rape of one of its young citizens.
Trump appointed Betsy DeVos to serve as his secretary of education, with the goal of making vouchers available so that students can have a choice in their education.
“It’s time to make education great again in this country,” she promised at a pre-inaugural really.
Clip via KPIX-TV
Wait, did Judge Gorsuch just eye roll Al Franken? Check out ‘favorite response of the day’
Wake up right! Receive our free morning news blast HEREWhen Star Trek: Discovery‘s third episode debuts this Sunday, the hour will make history for the 51-year-old franchise: Revealing Trek‘s first openly gay TV series character — Lt. Stamets, played by Anthony Rapp (Rent). Above is an exclusive preview of his debut scene.
The setup: Disgraced Starfleet officer Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green), en route to prison after having been convicted of mutiny, is picked up by the U.S.S. Discovery and tasked by its captain (Jason Isaacs) to assist with a secretive project.
While there’s no indication of Stamets’ sexuality in Sunday’s episode, titled “Context Is King,” his relationship with another member of Starfleet becomes a story point in the show beginning next week. “I’m really excited and happy when a gay character is a part of a story — especially when a gay character is created in a complex and human and non-stereotypical, interesting way, and that has certainly been the case with Stamets,” Rapp told EW. “And you get to see his relationship. There was a little glimpse [of a relationship with] Sulu in Beyond, and it was a nice nod. But in this case, we actually get to see me with my partner in conversation, in our living quarters, you get to see our relationship over time, treated as any other relationship would be treated.”
Stamets’ research involves fungus spores and it will be key to Starfleet’s war with the Klingons, though he isn’t exactly the easiest character to get along with. “He’s a really, really smart guy and as smart guys go, he sometimes can be a little difficult to deal with because not everybody’s as smart as he is,” Rapp says. “So he’s got a little bit of an edge sometimes, which is fun to play.”
According to EW’s critic Darren Franich, Sunday’s hour ranks as the best of the first three episodes that were screened for reporters and is probably the closest to showing what the series will be like week to week now that Burnham has reached the U.S.S. Discovery of the show’s title.
Here’s a preview of the next episode and beyond:
Discovery airs Sunday nights on the CBS All Access streaming service.So when your husband says he is ready to support you but he won’t take you abroad does it mean his support is restricted to finances only? Does support also mean he will give his name to the child you are pregnant with?
It is heartening to know that you find happiness in your partner and your son loves him too. How old is your partner? Is he ready to shoulder your responsibility? And is he ready for a commitment of this nature where you already have a son who will be a teenager soon?
What’s your financial standing now and will getting married to your partner improve your financial status or bring it down? If it brings it down and you are used to a certain standard of living, are you willing to support your partner to aid the finances? And will you be prepared to do it even with a toddler to take care of?
If you decide to marry your partner, do you have the support of his family? What about your family, will they accept it and be there for you?
In the beginning, you say, your husband says he understands your sexual affair. Does your husband think it is a sexual affair or do you term it as a sexual affair? If you did, do you think a sexual affair can transcend into a long-term, fulfilling, and meaningful relationship?
Please ask yourself these questions and based on the responses you get, you can arrive at a conclusion. I hope this helps you in making a decision that considers all the aspects and the well-being of everyone concerned.
I am a 38-year-old woman, married for 15 years and have a 12-year-old son. My husband stays abroad and visits us once in a couple of months. During this phase, I got intimate with a tailor and we got into a sexual relationship. I am now 5 months pregnant and I don’t want to get an abortion, as I feel it’s unfair. I have also informed my husband about my affair and the pregnancy through calls and texts. He has been positive about the same and is also ready to support me and my child. My husband understands my sexual affair and accepts that he has been away for the greed of money.I like my sexual partner, this pregnancy and I’ve started disliking my husband. Now, I wish to stay with my partner, who is unmarried and is ready to marry me. My son likes him and is very close to him.On the other hand, my husband refuses to come back to India and is not ready to take us there. My biggest question is how long do I stay alone? I feel like I need to move out, be happy with this man who has given me a child and immense satisfaction. What would be the consequences? I am still in a big dilemma.This is a huge predicament and I understand arriving at a decision must be harrowing for you. There is a lot to contemplate and that's why you are worried about the consequences. This is a complex situation and there are various aspects you need to think about before you make a final decision.About
Hello. My name is Paul Robaia, and I am the creator and designer of Casual Playing Cards. I am a Junior Magician at the famous Magic Castle in Hollywood, and I am a card flourisher. Evidently, playing cards are an important part of my life, and I have amassed a relatively large collection of playing cards. Noticing the different styles of artwork seen within each deck in my collection, I particularly favored the modern and abstract genre of playing cards; my favorite deck in my collection is Magic Con's V2 deck because it embodies this genre. I have always enjoyed creating artwork and graphic design, and within the past year, I desired to create my own deck of cards, inspired from the Magic Con V2 deck. After months of experimentation in Adobe Illustrator, I created Casuals. It was more difficult than I initially thought because it was like a puzzle trying to make a two way, triangular shaped, back design; I had to make each triangle in a specific size and color in order to collectively group them all together and make the back design look strikingly pleasant and clean to ones' eye. I am content, though, with the result, and I hope you like it too.
This is the vector image of the back design:
This is the tuck case. It features embossing on the face of the box as well as blended in blind-debossing (same colors used for both the tuck as well as the part on the flap embossed) on the flap. In this photo, the colors are different only so that you can see what is going to be blindly embossed with an identical color to the rest of the tuck.
Here is an even closer look at the simplified court cards as well as the Ace of Spades and Jokers:
For every court card, I greatly reduced the detail of the standard Expert court cards as well as altered the colors to compliment the Casual back design.
The Jokers are inspired from artist's wooden mannequins as well as marionette puppets. I drew them by hand and then imported them into Adobe Illustrator. The Ace of Spades is simply, sleek and modern.
This is the prototype deck of Casual Playing Cards.
A minimal, custom t-shirt is also available to purchase.
1,000 decks is the amount I am going to produce. Legends Playing Card Company is the printing company, and I am going to have the Casuals printed on their Classic Finish. This finish resembles the classic bicycle stock from The USPCC. However, unlike the USPCC, Legend's edges of their decks are as smooth as glass due to their precision cutting. Here is a picture comparing their edges:
The Seaport Village Magic Shop, located in San Diego, is going to be the fulfillment source in order to ship out all of the decks; the owner, James Kellogg, is a personal friend of mine, and his reputation within the magic community is strong. James and I both live in San Diego, and the decks will be shipped from there. Therefore, it is really convenient because if any problem arose, I would be there to resolve it with him.
Backerkit: I will be using Backerkit, a third party website to aid crowdfunding websites, to simplify the shipping costs and send out surveys directly following the completion of the Kickstarter campaign. Using Backerkit, I will send out surveys to collect shipping money from each backer (Know that I will provide the cheapest shipping rates The US Postal Service has to offer) as well as send out surveys to gather important information (such as if a backer has any add-ons).
Add-On Guide:
Since Kickstarter does not allow one to select more than one pledge option, here is a simple remedy in the case that one wants to purchase more items. First, select the pledge you want. Then, if you want to add anything extra to that pledge, look at the table I designed below (Under Add-On Table headline, find the cost of the item(s) you want, and in your pledge amount, add that amount to your initial pledge. Here is a general example: Current Pledge: $72 - 12 Decks of Casual Playing Cards. An individual wants to add a t-shirt and an uncut sheet to their order. Add to the current pledge total: $15 (an uncut sheet) + $15 (a t-shirt) + $72 (current pledge) for a total of $102. Finally, presuming the campaign is successfully funded, I will send out a Backerkit survey asking some specific questions. Among those questions, I will include one asking if you have any add-ons and if so, what they are. It is the backers' responsibility post myself sending out the Backerkit surveys to inform me if you indeed have any add-ons and to specify what they are.
Add-On Table:Trump Tower was designed to be a 45-story skyscraper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Its footprint is located at 709-717 North Penn Street on an existing peninsula extending 700 feet (210 m) into the Delaware River, at Columbus Boulevard and Fairmount Avenue, between Festival Pier and Waterfront Square. The $300 million tower was cancelled due to the crash of 2007–2008. It was designed by William Ales |
puted clades and another two more basal genera with more ambiguous relationships.[23] The origin of the Spheniscinae lies probably in the latest Paleogene, and geographically it must have been much the same as the general area in which the order evolved: the oceans between the Australia-New Zealand region and the Antarctic.[20] Presumably diverging from other penguins around 40 mya,[20] it seems that the Spheniscinae were for quite some time limited to their ancestral area, as the well-researched deposits of the Antarctic Peninsula and Patagonia have not yielded Paleogene fossils of the subfamily. Also, the earliest spheniscine lineages are those with the most southern distribution.
The genus Aptenodytes appears to be the basalmost divergence among living penguins[15][29] they have bright yellow-orange neck, breast, and bill patches; incubate by placing their eggs on their feet, and when they hatch the chicks are almost naked. This genus has a distribution centered on the Antarctic coasts and barely extends to some Subantarctic islands today.
Pygoscelis contains species with a fairly simple black-and-white head pattern; their distribution is intermediate, centered on Antarctic coasts but extending somewhat northwards from there. In external morphology, these apparently still resemble the common ancestor of the Spheniscinae, as Aptenodytes' autapomorphies are in most cases fairly pronounced adaptations related to that genus' extreme habitat conditions. As the former genus, Pygoscelis seems to have diverged during the Bartonian,[30] but the range expansion and radiation that led to the present-day diversity probably did not occur until much later; around the Burdigalian stage of the Early Miocene, roughly 20–15 mya.[20]
The genera Spheniscus and Eudyptula contain species with a mostly Subantarctic distribution centered on South America; some, however, range quite far northwards. They all lack carotenoid coloration, and the former genus has a conspicuous banded head pattern; they are unique among living penguins by nesting in burrows. This group probably radiated eastwards with the Antarctic Circumpolar Current out of the ancestral range of modern penguins throughout the Chattian (Late Oligocene), starting approximately 28 mya.[20] While the two genera separated during this time, the present-day diversity is the result of a Pliocene radiation, taking place some 4–2 mya.[20]
The Megadyptes–Eudyptes clade occurs at similar latitudes (though not as far north as the Galapagos penguin), has its highest diversity in the New Zealand region, and represents a westward dispersal. They are characterized by hairy yellow ornamental head feathers; their bills are at least partly red. These two genera diverged apparently in the Middle Miocene (Langhian, roughly 15–14 mya), but again, the living species of Eudyptes are the product of a later radiation, stretching from about the late Tortonian (Late Miocene, 8 mya) to the end of the Pliocene.[20]
Geography
The geographical and temporal pattern or spheniscine evolution corresponds closely to two episodes of global cooling documented in the paleoclimatic record.[20] The emergence of the Subantarctic lineage at the end of the Bartonian corresponds with the onset of the slow period of cooling that eventually led to the ice ages some 35 million years later. With habitat on the Antarctic coasts declining, by the Priabonian more hospitable conditions for most penguins existed in the Subantarctic regions rather than in Antarctica itself.[31] Notably, the cold Antarctic Circumpolar Current also started as a continuous circumpolar flow only around 30 mya, on the one hand forcing the Antarctic cooling, and on the other facilitating the eastward expansion of Spheniscus to South America and eventually beyond.[20] Despite this, there is no fossil evidence to support the idea of a crown radiation from the Antarctic continent in the Paleogene, although DNA study favors such a radiation.[31]
Later, an interspersed period of slight warming was ended by the Middle Miocene Climate Transition, a sharp drop in global average temperature from 14–12 mya, and similar abrupt cooling events followed at 8 mya and 4 mya; by the end of the Tortonian, the Antarctic ice sheet was already much like today in volume and extent. The emergence of most of today's Subantarctic penguin species almost certainly was caused by this sequence of Neogene climate shifts.
Relationship to other bird orders
Penguin ancestry beyond Waimanu remains unknown and not well-resolved by molecular or morphological analyses. The latter tend to be confounded by the strong adaptive autapomorphies of the Sphenisciformes; a sometimes perceived fairly close relationship between penguins and grebes is almost certainly an error based on both groups' strong diving adaptations, which are homoplasies. On the other hand, different DNA sequence datasets do not agree in detail with each other either.
Humboldt penguins in an aquarium. The penguin is an accomplished swimmer, having flippers instead of wings.
What seems clear is that penguins belong to a clade of Neoaves (living birds except paleognaths and fowl) that comprises what is sometimes called "higher waterbirds" to distinguish them from the more ancient waterfowl. This group contains such birds as storks, rails, and the seabirds, with the possible exception of the Charadriiformes.[32]
Inside this group, penguin relationships are far less clear. Depending on the analysis and dataset, a close relationship to Ciconiiformes[24] or to Procellariiformes[20] has been suggested. Some think the penguin-like plotopterids (usually considered relatives of anhingas and cormorants) may actually be a sister group of the penguins, and that penguins may have ultimately shared a common ancestor with the Pelecaniformes and consequently would have to be included in that order, or that the plotopterids were not as close to other pelecaniforms as generally assumed, which would necessitate splitting the traditional Pelecaniformes in three.[33]
A 2014 analysis of whole genomes of 48 representative bird species has concluded that penguins are the sister group of Procellariiformes,[34] from which they diverged about 60 million years ago (95% CI, 56.8-62.7).[35]
The distantly related puffins, which live in the North Pacific and North Atlantic, developed similar characteristics to survive in the Arctic and sub-Arctic environments. Like the penguins, puffins have a white chest, black back and short stubby wings providing excellent swimming ability in icy water. But, unlike penguins, puffins can fly, as flightless birds would not survive alongside land-based predators such as polar bears and foxes; there are no such predators in the Antarctic. Their similarities indicate that similar environments, although at great distances, can result in similar evolutionary developments, i.e. convergent evolution.[36]
Anatomy and physiology
Taxidermized penguin skin
Penguins are superbly adapted to aquatic life. Their vestigial wings have become flippers, useless for flight in the air. In the water, however, penguins are astonishingly agile. Penguins' swimming looks very similar to bird's flight in the air.[37] Within the smooth plumage a layer of air is preserved, ensuring buoyancy. The air layer also helps insulate the birds in cold waters. On land, penguins use their tails and wings to maintain balance for their upright stance.
All penguins are countershaded for camouflage – that is, they have black backs and wings with white fronts.[38] A predator looking up from below (such as an orca or a leopard seal) has difficulty distinguishing between a white penguin belly and the reflective water surface. The dark plumage on their backs camouflages them from above.
Diving penguins reach 6 to 12 km/h (3.7 to 7.5 mph), though there are reports of velocities of 27 km/h (17 mph) (which are more realistic in the case of startled flight).[citation needed] The small penguins do not usually dive deep; they catch their prey near the surface in dives that normally last only one or two minutes. Larger penguins can dive deep in case of need. Dives of the large emperor penguin have been recorded reaching a depth of 565 m (1,854 ft) for up to 22 minutes.
Penguins either waddle on their feet or slide on their bellies across the snow while using their feet to propel and steer themselves, a movement called "tobogganing", which conserves energy while moving quickly. They also jump with both feet together if they want to move more quickly or cross steep or rocky terrain.
Penguins have an average sense of hearing for birds;[39] this is used by parents and chicks to locate one another in crowded colonies.[40] Their eyes are adapted for underwater vision, and are their primary means of locating prey and avoiding predators; in air it has been suggested that they are nearsighted, although research has not supported this hypothesis.[41]
Penguins have a thick layer of insulating feathers that keeps them warm in water (heat loss in water is much greater than in air). The emperor penguin has a maximum feather density of about nine feathers per square centimeter which is actually much lower than other birds that live in antarctic environments. However, they have been identified as having at least four different types of feather: in addition to the traditional feather, the emperor has afterfeathers, plumules, and filoplumes. The afterfeathers are downy plumes that attach directly to the main feathers and were once believed to account for the bird's ability to conserve heat when under water; the plumules are small down feathers that attach directly to the skin, and are much more dense in penguins than other birds; lastly the filoplumes are small (less than 1 cm long) naked shafts that end in a splay of fibers— filoplumes were believed to give flying birds a sense of where their plumage was and whether or not it needed preening, so their presence in penguins may seem inconsistent, but penguins also preen extensively.[42]
The emperor penguin has the largest body mass of all penguins, which further reduces relative surface area and heat loss. They also are able to control blood flow to their extremities, reducing the amount of blood that gets cold, but still keeping the extremities from freezing. In the extreme cold of the Antarctic winter, the females are at sea fishing for food leaving the males to brave the weather by themselves. They often huddle together to keep warm and rotate positions to make sure that each penguin gets a turn in the center of the heat pack.
Calculations of the heat loss and retention ability of marine endotherms [43] suggest that most extant penguins are too small to survive in such cold environments.[44] In 2007, Thomas and Fordyce wrote about the "heterothermic loophole" that penguins utilize in order to survive in Antarctica.[45] All extant penguins, even those that live in warmer climates, have a counter-current heat exchanger called the humeral plexus. The flippers of penguins have at least three branches of the axillary artery, which allows cold blood to be heated by blood that has already been warmed and limits heat loss from the flippers. This system allows penguins to efficiently use their body heat and explains why such small animals can survive in the extreme cold.[46]
They can drink salt water because their supraorbital gland filters excess salt from the bloodstream.[47][48][49] The salt is excreted in a concentrated fluid from the nasal passages.
The great auk of the Northern Hemisphere, now extinct, was superficially similar to penguins, and the word penguin was originally used for that bird, centuries ago. They are only distantly related to the penguins, but are an example of convergent evolution.[50]
Isabelline penguins
Perhaps one in 50,000 penguins (of most species) are born with brown rather than black plumage. These are called isabelline penguins. Isabellinism is different from albinism. Isabelline penguins tend to live shorter lives than normal penguins, as they are not well-camouflaged against the deep, and are often passed over as mates.
Distribution and habitat
Although almost all penguin species are native to the Southern Hemisphere, they are not found only in cold climates, such as Antarctica. In fact, only a few species of penguin actually live so far south. Several species live in the temperate zone;[51] one, the Galápagos penguin, lives as far north as the Galápagos Islands, but this is only made possible by the cold, rich waters of the Antarctic Humboldt Current that flows around these islands.[52]
Several authors have suggested that penguins are a good example of Bergmann's Rule[53][54] where larger bodied populations live at higher latitudes than smaller bodied populations. There is some disagreement about this, and several other authors have noted that there are fossil penguin species that contradict this hypothesis and that ocean currents and upwellings are likely to have had a greater effect on species diversity than latitude alone.[55][56]
Major populations of penguins are found in Angola, Antarctica, Argentina, Australia, Chile, Namibia, New Zealand, and South Africa.[57][58] Satellite images and photos released in 2018 show the population of two million in France's remote Ile aux Cochons has collapsed, with barely 200,000 remaining, according to a study published in Antarctic Science.[59]
Behaviour
Breeding
Gentoo watching over a sleeping chick at Brown Bluff
Penguins for the most part breed in large colonies, the exceptions being the yellow-eyed and Fiordland species; these colonies may range in size from as few as a 100 pairs for gentoo penguins, to several hundred thousand in the case of king, macaroni and chinstrap penguins.[60] Living in colonies results in a high level of social interaction between birds, which has led to a large repertoire of visual as well as vocal displays in all penguin species.[61] Agonistic displays are those intended to confront or drive off, or alternately appease and avoid conflict with, other individuals.[61]
Penguins form monogamous pairs for a breeding season, though the rate the same pair recouples varies drastically. Most penguins lay two eggs in a clutch, although the two largest species, the emperor and the king penguins, lay only one.[62] With the exception of the emperor penguin, where the male does it all, all penguins share the incubation duties.[63] These incubation shifts can last days and even weeks as one member of the pair feeds at sea.
Penguins generally only lay one brood; the exception is the little penguin, which can raise two or three broods in a season.[64]
Penguin eggs are smaller than any other bird species when compared proportionally to the weight of the parent birds; at 52 g (2 oz), the little penguin egg is 4.7% of its mothers' weight, and the 450 g (1 lb) emperor penguin egg is 2.3%.[62] The relatively thick shell forms between 10 and 16% of the weight of a penguin egg, presumably to reduce the effects of dehydration and to minimize the risk of breakage in an adverse nesting environment.[65] The yolk, too, is large, and comprises 22–31% of the egg. Some yolk often remains when a chick is born, and is thought to help sustain the chick if the parents are delayed in returning with food.[66]
When emperor penguin mothers lose a chick, they sometimes attempt to "steal" another mother's chick, usually unsuccessfully as other females in the vicinity assist the defending mother in keeping her chick.[citation needed] In some species, such as king and emperor penguins, the chicks assemble in large groups called crèches.
Penguins and humans
Penguins appear to have no special fear of humans, and will approach groups of people without hesitation. This is probably because penguins have no land predators in Antarctica or the nearby offshore islands. Dogs preyed upon penguins while they were allowed in Antarctica during the age of early human exploration as sled dogs, but dogs have long since been banned from Antarctica.[67] Instead, adult penguins are at risk at sea from predators such as sharks, the orca, and the leopard seal. Typically, penguins do not approach closer than around 9 feet (3 meters) at which point they appear to become nervous. This is also the distance that Antarctic tourists are instructed to maintain between themselves and penguins: tourists are instructed not to approach closer than 9 feet, but need not withdraw if the penguins come closer.
In June 2011, a penguin came ashore on New Zealand's Peka Peka Beach, 3200 km off course on its journey to Antarctica.[68] Nicknamed Happy Feet, after the movie of the same name, it was suffering from heat exhaustion and had to undergo a number of operations to remove objects like driftwood and sand from its stomach.[69] Happy Feet was a media sensation, with extensive coverage on TV and the web, including a live stream that had thousands of views[70] and a visit from English actor Stephen Fry.[71]
Once he had recovered, Happy Feet was released back into the water south of New Zealand.[72]
In popular culture
Penguins are popularly loved around the world, primarily for their unusually upright, waddling gait, impressive swimming ability and (compared to other birds) lack of fear of humans. Their striking black-and-white plumage is often likened to a white tie suit. Mistakenly, some artists and writers have penguins based at the North Pole. This is incorrect, as there are no wild penguins in the Arctic. The cartoon series Chilly Willy helped perpetuate this myth, as the title penguin would interact with Arctic or subarctic species, such as polar bears and walruses.
Penguins have been the subject of many books and films, such as Happy Feet, Surf's Up and The Penguins of Madagascar, all CGI films; March of the Penguins, a documentary based on the migration process of the emperor penguin; and a parody titled Farce of the Penguins. Mr. Popper's Penguins is a children's book written by Richard and Florence Atwater; it was named a Newbery Honor Book in 1939. Penguins have also found their way into a number of cartoons and television dramas; perhaps the most notable of these is Pingu, created by Silvio Mazzola in 1986 and covering more than 100 short episodes. At the end of 2009, Entertainment Weekly put it on its end-of-the-decade, "best-of" list, saying, "Whether they were walking (March of the Penguins), dancing (Happy Feet), or hanging ten (Surf's Up), these oddly adorable birds took flight at the box office all decade long."[73]
A video game called Pengo was released by Sega in 1982. Set in Antarctica, the player controls a penguin character who must navigate mazes of ice-cubes. The player is rewarded with cut-scenes of animated penguins marching, dancing, saluting and playing peekaboo. Several remakes and enhanced editions have followed, most recently in 2012.
In 1941, DC Comics introduced the avian-themed character of The Penguin as a supervillain adversary of the superhero Batman (Detective Comics #58). He became one of the most enduring enemies in Batman's rogue's gallery. In the 60s Batman TV series, as played by Burgess Meredith, he was one of the most popular characters, and in Tim Burton's reimagining of the character in the 1992 film Batman Returns, he employed an actual army of penguins (mostly African penguins).
Several pro, minor, college and high school sport teams have named themselves after the species, with the Pittsburgh Penguins team in the National Hockey League and the Youngstown State Penguins being the most recognizable.
The tendency of penguins to form large groups feeds the stereotype that they all look exactly alike, a popular notion exploited by cartoonists such as Gary Larson.
Penguins featured regularly in the cartoons of UK cartoonist Steve Bell in his strip in The Guardian newspaper, particularly during and following the Falklands War, and the well-known Opus the Penguin, from the cartoons of Berkeley Breathed, is also described as hailing from the Falklands. Opus was a comical, "existentialist" penguin character in the cartoons Bloom County, Outland and Opus. He was also the star in the Christmas show A Wish for Wings That Work.
In the mid-2000s, penguins became one of the most publicized species of animals that form lasting homosexual couples. A children's book, And Tango Makes Three, was written about one such penguin family in the New York Zoo.
ReferencesTaking inspiration from Daniel Burnham’s 1909 Plan for Chicago, an effort to completely redefine Lake Shore Drive between Ohio Street and North Avenue is still being pushed by a number of Chicagoans. The long-term idea has been previously championed by 2nd Ward Alderman Brian Hopkins, who spoke again on the proposal this week at a town hall meeting hosted by the Streeterville Organization of Active Residents (SOAR). The city councilman presented renderings of the project drawn last summer by local architecture firm VOA Associates, now part of Canadian-based Stantec.
At its heart, the plan would straighten out and bury Lake Shore Drive’s tight and dangerous Oak Street S-bend and would provide unfettered pedestrian access to 70 acres of newly created lakefront parkland, beaches, trails, and a breakwater island. The improvements would buffer the roadway from the routine abuse dealt by crashing winter waves as well as fix the dysfunctional Chicago Avenue bottleneck by removing traffic signals and adding new interchange ramps.
With a price tag reaching as high as $500 million, the project would be hugely expensive and would require the cooperation of multiple local, state, and federal entities like the various Departments of Transportation and the United States Army Corps of Engineers. Provided the massive undertaking is approved and funding can be secured, construction wouldn’t begin until at least the year 2020 and will likely take many years to complete.
These challenges notwithstanding, proponents of the scheme remain bullish on the plan given all the positive feedback received. "This is one of the best things we can do to improve not just our neighborhood, but the entire city," Alderman Hopkins told Streeterville residents, reported David Matthews of DNAinfo. "I think Daniel Burnham would be proud."Update: This article was updated on June 13 to correct information about the number of Marugame restaurants. We originally said there were 120 restaurants in 12 countries. The restaurant, through its publicist, said it is not ready to discuss the details of its Berkeley location at this time.
MADE-TO-ORDER UDON TO DOWNTOWN BERKELEY Well, at least it’s not more ramen… A sign for a proposed project at 48 Shattuck Sq. announces that “Muragame[sic] Udon USA LLC” is hoping to open a restaurant in the now closed Copy Central space in downtown Berkeley. Marugame Seimen is a chain udon and tempura restaurant run by parent company, Toridoll. Marugame originated in Japan, but now has 186 restaurants in 13 countries, including two locations in Honolulu, Hawaii (as Marukame Udon & Tempura with a “k”) and a pending restaurant in West Los Angeles, set to open this spring. Marugame is known for its made-to-order Sanuki udon, which is a style that originates in the Kagawa Prefecture and is probably the most popular type of udon in Japan. Featuring thick, handmade wheat-flour noodles, Sanuki udon at Japan’s Marugame locations can be enjoyed in five different ways: kake, or served in a hot broth; bukkake, or in a hot, thick broth; kamatama, or served hot with an egg on top and a dashi-shoyu to pour over and mix in; or cold with a dipping sauce. The offerings at Muragame Berkeley, however, will be different, but will retains the “cafeteria-style,” with diners moving down a line and telling staff behind a counter how they want their udon. When we called the phone number on the project proposal (the same number for its soon-to-open West LA location) we were told that if all goes well, Berkeley will enjoying Marugame udon by the end of this year. Marugame Udon & Tempura will be at 48 Shattuck Sq. (between Addison and University), Berkeley.
BERKELEY GETS TIMELESS Last week, Piedmont Avenue café Timeless Coffee posted an intriguing photo on Instagram. The image of “Coming Soon” signage on a storefront in Berkeley with the message, “Something is brewing. 😉” Timeless serves its own small-batch, sustainably grown coffees that it roasts in Oakland. Aside from its coffee, it’s a favorite among vegans (and non-vegans alike) for its 100% dairy-free baked goods, chocolates and soft serve. And now Berkeley will be getting its very own Timeless. Although the café is being a bit coy on its social media about its second location, several Berkeleyside readers have spotted it, including reader Michael Berne who eyed it while driving on College Avenue. The Berkeley Timeless Café will be at 2965 College Ave. in the former La PanotiQ Bakery Café space. Owner RJ Leimpeter told us that the café is “waiting on some info from the city of Berkeley,” and hope to open in the next few months. Timeless Coffee will be at 2965 College Ave. (near Ashby), Berkeley.
HAPPY BOY FARMS BENEFIT DINNER The torrential winter rains did a real number on Happy Boy Farms. The organic farm, based near Watsonville, lost almost half of its fields to flooding, which, according to the Chronicle, is equal to about $150,000 to $200,000 in crop sales. Happy Boy sells its produce at several Bay Area markets and farmers markets, as well as to local restaurants. When two executive chefs in Oakland heard about Happy Boy fundraising, they decided to step in to help. Craig DiFonzo of Lungomare and Lev Delany of Chop Bar are hosting a benefit dinner for Happy Boy Farms next Wednesday. The four-course, wine-paired dinner will be held at Lungomare, and will feature a bounty of Happy Boy produce. Tickets are $65 a person, and include a $10 gift certificate to Chop Bar. All proceeds will benefit Happy Boy Farms. The Happy Boy Farms Benefit Dinner takes place at Lungomare, 1 Broadway (at Water), Oakland on Wednesday, June 14, 6-9:30 p.m.
A LITTLE BIT OF “SOUEL” An update on a new restaurant that we left off of May’s restaurant openings/closings: Korean Souel BBQ. Found on the border of Berkeley and Oakland at 6400 Shattuck Ave., where the former BBQ Hut once stood, this casual Korean spot serves dishes that most K-food fans will recognize, such as bulgogi (beef and spicy pork) and kalbi plates, bibimbap, Korean fried chicken, kimchi pancakes and mandoo (dumplings). Entrees come with a simple iceberg lettuce salad (with your choice of ranch or thousand island dressing in squeeze bottles), rice and simple side dishes (We were given chapchae, or glass noodles, seasoned zucchini and sauteed fishcakes; we also asked for a side of kimchi, which is not on the menu.) Prices range from $7.99 to $16.99 for entrees; $8.99 to $11.99 for appetizers. We recommend the mandoo, which come eight to a plate and are perfectly pan-fried. Korean Souel BBQ is at 6400 Shattuck Ave. (at Alcatraz), Oakland.
THE WELL GRAND OPENING ON JUNE 10 Meanwhile in Temescal, The Well, a holistically minded café found within the East Bay Community Space is opening this weekend with a party. The free, family-friendly grand opening celebration takes place on Saturday, June 10 from 2-8 p.m. From 2-5 p.m., there will be herbal medicine workshops and tastings with local vendors like Feral Heart Farm, Phat Beets Youth Program, Living Vision Kitchen, Firefly Chocolates, Broth Baby and others. From 5-8 p.m., the festivities continue with live music by Ben Zappin Herbal Songs, FariShields and DJ Consuelo. The Well is at 5443 Telegraph St. (near 55th), Oakland.
JAMES BEARD BLENDED BURGER AT DRIP LINE This is the third year for the James Beard Foundation’s Blended Burger Project, a contest challenging chefs across the country to make their own signature “blended burger,” by mixing ground meat with chopped mushrooms. The point is for chefs to consider offering a healthier (fewer calories, less sodium) and more sustainable burger option on their menus. This year, the East Bay has only one participating restaurant: Drip Line in West Oakland, where chef Nora Dunning has created a Singapore-inspired burger, made with 60% grass-fed chuck and 40% roasted shiitake mushrooms. Dunning’s blended burger is then topped with arugula, cheddar and gruyere, pickles and a sambal aioli and served on a house-baked koji-brioche bun. If that sounds good to you, get thee to Drip Line before July 31 and vote for Dunning’s burger. Drip Line is at 1940 Union St. (at 21st), Oakland
NEGRONI WEEK Hey Campari lovers, we’re in the midst of Negroni Week (June 5-11). This boozy celebration of the cocktail made with Campari, gin and vermouth is technically a marketing campaign for Campari (of course) and “Imbibe Magazine,” but it also raises money for good causes, and is an excuse (as if you need one) for Negroni fans to get out and try different versions of the scarlet-hued cocktail at many local bars and restaurants. In Berkeley, six bars are participating: Tupper & Reed, Revival Bar & Kitchen, East Bay Spice Company, Café Venezuela, Doc’s Refresher and Acme Bar and Company. And there are 28 participaing bars in Oakland. Each bar that signs up offers one or more variations of the Negroni during the week, and chooses to make a donation to one of these recommended charities. Find out more about Negroni Week, including what bars are participating, what they’re offering and to which charity they’re donating.It's generally a good time of year to be taking a holiday on the Surf Coast if you're a Melbourne Victory supporter. A day at the beach, and a balmy evening at Simonds Stadium. Monday night will be the fifth time Geelong will have hosted a Victory match, and the expectations are of a 15,000-plus crowd. Everyone wins. Or do they?
Taking games to the regions – on both sides of the Tasman – has long been a feature of the A-League's existence. Sometimes it's about spreading the message, sometimes clubs are forced out of their homes by other events. Either way, taking the league to the regions has been a worthy exercise on one proviso. It's done with honest intent.
Geelong game: Leigh Broxham of Melbourne Victory heads the ball during a match against Central Coast Mariners at Simonds Stadium in 2016. Credit:Robert Prezioso
My feeling is that after eight years of empty rhetoric about using these games to test the merits of expansion, the novelty is beginning to wear off. Kevin Muscat hasn't twigged, rolling out the same old, tired, party line ahead of the game against the Jets: "It gives Geelong an opportunity to come out and support us, and show the decision-makers in relation to expansion that they're worthy of a spot." No it doesn't Kev. It won't make a whit of difference how many people show up.
And there's the rub. For Geelong, think Wollongong, or Canberra, or Launceston, or Townsville, or Cairns, or Auckland, or Christchurch. Maybe a few years ago, the football communities in these cities might have believed hosting an A-League match was a dress rehearsal for the real thing. Getting a team of their own.After going down in burning flames on the Steve Deace Show earlier this month, Libertarian Party presidential candidate Austin Petersen has, like a phoenix, risen from the ashes on the "Glenn Beck Program."
On the show, Beck asked several serious and difficult questions. Petersen answered every single one of them in style, with charisma, and -- more importantly -- in a constitutionally sound way.
Sidekicks Stu and Pat jumped in every now and then, with especially the latter demanding an explanation from Petersen on his immigration policies. Petersen had in the past said that, in a perfect world, he'd be for open borders. Many libertarians share that view -- the great economist Milton Friedman was one of them when he was still alive.
Petersen explained, correctly so, that you can't have a welfare state and open borders at the same time. This means that if his views would ever become mainstream and accepted, the welfare state first would have to be dismantled. Conservatives can surely agree with him on that point. That'll take us 20 or 30 years, at which point America can have a debate about the advantages and disadvantages of a no-borders immigration policy.
What's more, Petersen said, as commander-in-chief he has to obey the law, even laws he wouldn't support in a perfect world (which it obviously isn't). There are immigration laws on the books; they've been written by Congress. As president, Petersen will implement them. This is unlike Barack Obama, who's routinely ignoring them, and Hillary Clinton, who's set to do the same. Although Donald Trump is thought of as an immigration hawk, nobody can be sure about his views on the matter -- or any matter at all.Despite tweets to the contrary, banks are no more greedy or evil than other businesses. But maybe we trust them too much.
The current revelations from bank employees exposed by CBC's Go Public are a useful reminder to Canadians that despite all those happy ads showing how banks can make your dreams come true, banks are not primarily interested in your welfare.
They are not your mom.
Different standards
One of the reasons Canadians are so horrified when they hear of employees pressured to upsell, trick and even lie to customers is that, rightly or wrongly, Canadians trust their banks more than other businesses.
When billionaire Jim Pattison was 24, he motivated his car salesmen by, each month, firing the one with the lowest sales. (Belle Puri/CBC) Imagine a Go Public exposé of an appliance salesperson persuading you to buy more dishwasher than you need. It just wouldn't have the same impact.
Many of us remember stories about famed Canadian entrepreneur Jim Pattison firing the lowest-selling car salesman every month to keep the team motivated. Talk about pressure.
So why should banks be any different?
For one thing, banks have been in the trust business from the beginning. In the world of banking, trust is everything.
This is true. <a href="https://twitter.com/TD_Canada">@TD_Canada</a> has offered me several products that make no sense for me. Takes advantage of seniors and dumb people. Evil. <a href="https://t.co/BUPiqD81Om">https://t.co/BUPiqD81Om</a> —@Schtaunkhauser Look around the older part of any Canadian city and you will see big, square solid-looking buildings with ornate scrolling and classical pillars. "Trust us," those buildings say. "With a palace as impressive as this, are we going to go broke and lose your money?"
That campaign to keep your trust remains imperative. Trust is a bank's fundamental asset.
Heck, you take your money and just give it to them. In a country where people don't talk about how much money they earn or how rich they are, the lowliest bank employee knows your deepest financial secrets.
But as it's been revealed this week, trust is just a means to an end.
According to the rules of business and even according to Canadian law, banks, like other businesses, are compelled to work in the interests of the people who own them.
You are the profit source
A look at the long string of profits from Canada's biggest banks shows they have done a spectacular job for their owners.
You? You are one of the places banks earn those profits.
Canadian banks used to sell TRUST now its buyer beware<a href="https://t.co/6NjnkGoylL">https://t.co/6NjnkGoylL</a><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/cdnpoli?src=hash">#cdnpoli</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/onpoli?src=hash">#onpoli</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/qcpoli?src=hash">#qcpoli</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/abpoli?src=hash">#abpoli</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/seniors?src=hash">#seniors</a> <a href="https://t.co/8F6Rr924tS">pic.twitter.com/8F6Rr924tS</a> —@Bergg69 Perhaps you'll consider that analysis horribly cynical. But in the face of a barrage of advertising by Canadian banks trying to convince you their only goal is to make you happy and rich, a large dose of cynicism may be the only way of protecting yourself.
This does not take away from the fact that Canadian banks are wonderful things.
They are a cornerstone of Canadian wealth and stability. Despite the complaints we have heard from bank employees, they are huge employers. They are a tool for sharing pools of capital.
From the day your parents took you to open your first account, the banks have been a stable part of a changing world. They now prove their reliability with ubiquity, the same five or six brand names on street corners in towns and cities across the country.
Shattering |
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And here's one I missed last week:
1700 Broadway - The hotel that Deadshot was staying at shares an address with the office building that DC's New York publishing office is housed at.
So that’s all the comic book references for this week, or at least the ones I caught. Join us next week as we break down Arrow’s ties to the comics! It should be a doozy, as Deathstroke is making an appearance!A woman who says she parked her car on a downtown Portland street -- then fell and broke her foot in a large pothole -- filed a $49,999 lawsuit Friday against the city.
Emily Allgood faults the city for failing to patch up the pothole -- something that might resonate with many Portlanders who have decried the condition of the city's streets and called for City Hall to do better.
Allgood parked on Southwest First Avenue between Yamhill and Taylor streets on the afternoon of Aug. 19, 2015, according to her lawsuit filed in Multnomah County Circuit Court. She paid for parking at the city meter, then walked to her driver's side door to manually lock it, states the suit.
Because the pothole was partially obscured by her car, she didn't see it next to one of her tires, says Allgood's attorney. And that's when Allgood fell in the pothole and fractured her right foot, according to the lawsuit.
Allgood's Portland attorney, Jennie L. Clark, said like any other business that charges for a service, including parking, the city had an obligation to provide Allgood with a safe atmosphere.
"Legally and morally, if the city is going to charge you for parking, the city should fill in the potholes in the vicinity of that parking," Clark said. "They should be using the revenue from parking money to fix the potholes."
At the time of the incident, the city charged $1.60 per hour for downtown street parking. The rate has since been increased to $2 an hour.
The city doesn't comment on pending litigation. Clark said that before the lawsuit was filed, the city made an offer to settle Allgood's claim for $5,000, which is the maximum amount risk managers can settle a claim without City Council approval. But Clark said her client declined the offer because it didn't cover Allgood's losses.
Allgood was working 35 hours a week as a server at Tasty n Alder restaurant. Because of her injuries, she couldn't work for nearly 12 weeks. The suit seeks about $11,000 in lost wages.
The suit also seeks about $1,300 in medical bills from Zoom+Care and what could amount to about $37,700 in noneconomic damages, commonly known as pain and suffering.
Read the lawsuit here.
-- Aimee Green
503-294-5119MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota—A search warrant related to the shooting of five Black Lives Matter protesters in Minneapolis reveals new details that may strengthen the case that the shooting was an act of self-defense by white suspects who were being assaulted by black protesters.
Three suspects, all white, have been charged in connection with the incident. No black suspects have been charged, despite the information provided to police and recorded comments from Black Lives Matter protesters stating that the white suspects were attacked after being surrounded.
Evidence suggests that the Minneapolis police were aware that the initiation of force came from the black protesters.
As Breitbart News reported earlier, two black activist witnesses said on video shortly after the incident that, “Somebody out the crowd punched one of them and they hit the gate over here. after that, one of them started reaching and backing up.”
The newly released search warrants appear to corroborate this information. The warrant states:
On November 23, 2015 there were active protests at 1925 Plymouth Ave N. This is the intersection of Morgan Ave N and Plymouth Ave N. Roughly 22:30 hours, several white males joined the protests. Numerous protestors confronted the white males and a large altercation ensued. The altercation moved northbound on Morgan Ave N according to VICTIMS and WITNESSES.
The site of the protests is a public street that Black Lives Matter protesters have occupied, with no visible police presence. Activists have blockaded both ends of the street with barricades and set up a small tent city, but the fact remains that the street is public property.
The warrant states that “protestors confronted the white males and a large altercation ensued.” It does not go into detail, but there is no legal justification for protesters to order or intimidate other people off of public property.
The warrant further reveals that one of the suspects, “Lance” Scarsella, volutarily contacted the police to report the incident. Scarsella, who was arrested the next day, contacted a police officer he went to high school with. Significantly, the call came in before news of the shooting spread.
Shortly after, a Police Officer LEVIN from the MANKATO Police Department contacted Minneapolis Police Department. The Mankato Officer Levin reports that Allen Lance Scarsellathe III DOB: 2/25/1992 contacted him and advised him that he had shot 5 people. SCARSELLA admitted this confession to Officer LEVIN twice during the five minute conversation. Officer LEVIN and Scarsella went to High School together. Officer LEVIN says that he has person knowledge that Scarsella owns a.45 caliber weapon. Officer LEVIN wrote police report and signed it Officer LEVIN received the call on 11/24 at 1 :02 am. This was prior to news reports widely reporting the number of victims and the event.
Then the warrant reveals that Scarsella said that the group had gone to record and live stream the public space occupied by Black Lives Matter activists, and that Scarsella sounded “very frightened.”
Officer LEVIN reports that Scarsella sounded very fiightened on the phone. He stated that he and an unknown number of friends had gone to the 4th Precinct BLM protest so they could live-stream it.
Facts are still coming out about the incident. But there’s no indication that Minneapolis police are pursuing any charges against the protesters who have taken over a city street and then, according to multiple witnesses, intimidated or attacked people who were exercising their First Amendment rights.
The lack of police action against protesters, and the arrests of only the white suspects, in what police call “a large altercation” is sure to have a chilling effect on coverage of Black Lives Matter protests.
Here is the full text of the search warrant, via the Star Tribune:
Follow Breitbart News investigative reporter and Citizen Journalism Boot Camp founder Lee Stranahan on Twitter at @Stranahan.Sherbrook Pool has finally reopened more than four years after an inspection prompted its sudden closure.
City and provincial dignitaries, along with other officials, opened the doors to the 86-year-old West End facility at 10 a.m. Monday.
"It is with great pleasure that we are announcing the reopening of the Kinsmen Sherbrook Pool, a staple in the community for over 80 years," said Mayor Brian Bowman.
It's been more than four years since 86-year-old Sherbrook Pool in Winnipeg's West End was 'temporarily closed' due to structural concerns. (Jaison Empson/CBC)
"Community gathering places like the Kinsmen Sherbrook Pool are an integral part of what keeps our communities strong, and it's great to finally have this resource available to community members once again."
The pool was "temporarily closed" on Nov. 29, 2012, due to structural concerns. Every time there was an anticipated date to reopen, something else came up.
This sign was posted on the door of Sherbrook Pool went it was first closed to the public at the end of November 2012.
"[I feel] very happy, relieved, excited. It's been a long haul," said Marianne Cerilli, a member of Friends of Sherbrook pool, a group which advocates for the facility's preservation and improvement.
In the end, the rehabilitation work included structural repairs to the roof, support beams and pool tank, mechanical repairs to the water service, draining, heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, electrical and fire alarm system upgrades as well as improvements to the change rooms, washrooms and shower facilities, and enhanced accessibility of the building's entrance and main floor washrooms.
As the list of repairs grew, so did the cost. That caused further delays as the city looked for funding from the province and from within its own budget.
In March 2014, Cerilli said the group was told it might reopen in January 2015.
Sherbrook Pool has finally reopened more than four years after an inspection prompted its sudden closure. 0:34
That date was later changed to May, then June, then October and, finally, to Monday.
"That's what's been kind of exhausting. We've had a couple times where we've been planning a big celebration, a pool party," Cerilli said.
"That will happen this late winter or early spring. We just put everything on hold until we actually had the pool open because we were wasting a lot of time and energy getting everything in place then only to be told that it would be delayed again."
To help cover the cost of the repairs and keep the pool operating for years to come, the Kinsman Club of Winnipeg stepped up and donated $1 million.
As a result, the facility was officially renamed the Kinsmen Sherbrook Pool.
"The Kinsmen Club of Winnipeg is thrilled to support the Kinsmen Sherbrook Pool. The benefits that a facility like this provides to the community are immeasurable in terms of not only physical wellness but also as a healthy meeting place for members of the local community," said Chris Preston, president of the Kinsmen Club of Winnipeg.
Cerilli said now that the pool is open they are excited to start bringing in new ideas for programming. On top of swimming classes Cerilli said they are looking into a floating film festival, programming for seniors and bringing back a women's-only swimming event, which was previously hosted by the Canadian Muslim Women's Institute.
However, the pool is ready to go for Winnipeggers looking to warm up.
"Sherbrook Pool is known for being balmy so we are encouraging people to escape the winter by going to the Sherbrook Pool," Cerilli said.Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told CNN in an interview Monday that she—not the White House—takes responsibility for the security situation in Benghazi, Libya, ahead of the Sept. 11 terrorist attack there that claimed the lives of four Americans, including the ambassador.
"I take responsibility," Clinton told CNN in one of a series of television interviews she gave after arriving in Peru. The comments from America's top diplomat came on the eve of President Barack Obama's second debate with Republican challenger Mitt Romney, a face-off that seemed likely to include questions about the administration's handling of the bloody assault.
"I want to avoid some kind of political gotcha" with just three weeks before the election, Clinton said, underlining that she—not Obama and Vice President Joe Biden—has the final word on security at America's diplomatic posts overseas.
The White House took heavy fire from Republicans for blaming the attack on Muslim anger at an Internet video ridiculing Islam—even though intelligence officials from the U.S., France, Britain and Italy had quickly labeled the assault an act of terrorism.
And Biden stoked the controversy when he said, in his debate with Republican rival Paul Ryan last week, that "we weren't told" of requests for more security on the ground. State Department officials had testified that such requests had been denied by Washington.
U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens was slain in the onslaught, making him the first American ambassador killed in such an attack since 1979. Romney has led Republican charges that the strike is a symptom of Obama's "unraveling" foreign policy.
In the CNN interview, Clinton blamed "confusion" after the attack for the initial focus on the video, which has fueled angry demonstrations across the Muslim world. The State Department has said it never blamed demonstrations for the bloodshed in Benghazi. The White House has said that the intelligence community initially believed that the film had played a role.
Clinton also said that while she would work to improve diplomatic security, "we cannot retreat" from the world. "We can't not engage," she said.Penalties for ACT pet sellers who break new rules
Updated
People selling pets in Canberra are now subject to tougher restrictions and penalties.
The new Animals Sales Code came into force today covering everything from pet stores to backyard dog breeders selling on the internet.
The code also includes livestock, backyard poultry and live animals sold in restaurants and markets such as fish.
Territory and Municipal Services Minister Shane Rattenbury says the new regulations are an important step forward for animal welfare.
"It will achieve this by requiring sellers to provide hygienic accommodation," he said.
"To provide adequate exercise to the animals and to provide written information about the care of the animal that is being sold.
"And it will also restrict animal sales to buyers who are under the age of 16."
The code also gives greater enforcement powers to the RSPCA, TAMS officers and police if they see a breach.
"By making it enforceable this means that we do have officers who can go out and make sure that standards are being adhered to which underlines the importance of animal welfare," Mr Rattenbury said.
"And making sure that people do get the information they need before becoming a pet owner."
It can be enforced with a written warning, on-the-spot fines or court imposed penalties of up to $14,000 for an individual.
Canberra vet Michael Archinall welcomes the new code.
"It is all about the animal welfare and it's all about looking after the animals and making sure they're cared for in the best way possible," he said.
"So if we need to have a code or an act that's enforceable, so be it.
"But it's been operating well as a volunteer code of conduct for a while."
Topics: animals, animal-welfare, canberra-2600, act
First postedBenioffs pitch in to help homeless S.F. families Housing Philanthropists, S.F. team to get schoolkids off streets
Salesforce.com founder Marc Benioff and his wife, philanthropist Lynne Benioff, served as honorary Heart of Gold gala co-chairs. Oct. 2011. By Catherine Bigelow Salesforce.com founder Marc Benioff and his wife, philanthropist Lynne Benioff, served as honorary Heart of Gold gala co-chairs. Oct. 2011. By Catherine Bigelow Photo: Catherine Bigelow, Special To The Chronicle Photo: Catherine Bigelow, Special To The Chronicle Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Benioffs pitch in to help homeless S.F. families 1 / 1 Back to Gallery
San Francisco (12-12) 17:29 PST -- Thanks to a Chronicle story and a bighearted donor, families of San Francisco schoolchildren now living on the street will have a home for the holidays.
As many as 200 families spending their nights in city shelters, sleeping in cars or on the streets will be moved into public or subsidized housing, with many of them in their new homes by Christmas, said Mayor Ed Lee. The $3 million for the program will come from city money and a $1.5 million contribution from Marc and Lynne Benioff of Salesforce.com, a fast-growing San Francisco tech company.
Lynne Benioff said as soon as she read the Dec. 4 Chronicle story about the plight of the growing number of homeless children in the city's public schools, she knew something had to be done.
"Marc and I saw this as an emergency, affecting children's health, so we reached out to the mayor's office," Lynne Benioff said. "We thought we could probably help the city do something about this."
Lee and city staffers knew all about the problem and had been working on ways to deal with it. The problem, as always, was finding the needed money.
"We got a huge bump with Lynne Benioff calling and saying she wanted to help," the mayor said. "We immediately knew that we wanted to get as many families as possible in homes before Christmas."
Lynne Benioff cheerfully admitted that she and her husband, the founder and CEO of Salesforce, challenged the city to move the people into housing for the holidays.
"What was the mayor's election slogan, 'Ed Lee Gets Things Done'?" she asked. "We thought we'd test that."
Within 24 hours, the city and the Benioffs had reached an agreement to jump-start the program to help the schoolkids.
The city and the school district have different definitions of who qualifies as homeless, which means their numbers don't always mesh. While school officials report that nearly 2,200 of their students are homeless, nearly 1,000 of them are living in single-room-occupancy hotels or other situations that don't meet the city's criteria, said Malcolm Yeung, an aide to the mayor for housing matters.
The city has 79 families in long-term city shelters and an additional 253 on the waiting list for those rooms. Because children in public schools will have priority under the new program, moving 200 of those families into regular housing will help a significant percentage of the city's homeless schoolchildren.
About 30 or 40 families will be able to immediately move into vacant public housing units, said Yeung, while an additional 160 or 165 will receive assistance finding subsidized private rental units.
The Benioffs will donate their $1.5 million to their choice of community-based organizations, which will help families find housing and provide up to 18 months of rent assistance. The organizations also will provide assistance to the families, working to help them get in a position to move into non-subsidized housing, Yeung said.
For Lee, the program is an example of how the city can work in partnership with private companies to deal with San Francisco's problems.
"Quite frankly, we want others to help, we want other companies to join in," the mayor said. "The Benioffs are part of the leadership of the new companies that are going to be our philanthropic leaders in the 21st century.
This isn't the first time the Benioffs have stepped up for children's health. Last year, the couple committed $100 million toward a new children's hospital at UCSF's new site at Mission Bay, where Salesforce will be building its corporate headquarters.
A City Hall hearing this morning, called by Supervisor John Avalos, will look at the dramatic rise of family homelessness in the city. Members of the Coalition on Homelessness and other housing advocates have called on the city to make a concerted effort to help families now in shelters and on the streets as the winter cold sets in.SAN DIEGO – The Dodgers are going back to a six-man rotation again and the sixth starter isn’t even on the roster right now.
Veteran right-hander Dan Haren will not make his scheduled start on Wednesday against the Washington Nationals. Instead, the Dodgers will push him back to Friday against the Arizona Diamondbacks after an off day Thursday.
Rookie right-hander Carlos Frias is expected to take Haren’s spot on Wednesday. Frias was optioned to Triple-A Albuquerque in order to clear a roster spot for left-hander Hyun-Jin Ryu to come off the DL and pitch Sunday.
Major-league rosters expand on Monday and Frias can (and will) be recalled as soon as the minor-league season ends. The final Pacific Coast League games are Monday.
Dodgers manager Don Mattingly said there are no physical issues forcing the move with Haren. But Wednesday’s game is a 12:10 p.m. start at Dodger Stadium and Haren just pitched Friday night.
“With Dan, we looked at that as short rest,” Mattingly said of the early start. “We know we have games the 3rd and the 10th that are a little trouble so we’re going to give Dan the extra day.”
Nonetheless, Haren pitched a day game against the Milwaukee Brewers on four days’ rest two weeks ago — albeit poorly. He lasted just three innings, giving up six runs on five hits.
The real motive might be a little farther down the road. By moving Haren back to Friday and starting him in the Sept. 10 game Mattingly referred to, the Dodgers will be able to line up the front three in their rotation for both of their three-game series against the second-place San Francisco Giants in September.
After making his next start against the Diamondbacks next Saturday on extra rest for the third consecutive start, Zack Greinke would pitch the first game in San Francisco on Sept. 12 — also with an extra day’s rest. Ryu would pitch the second game on five days’ rest. Clayton Kershaw could then move ahead of Roberto Hernandez and pitch the series finale at AT&T Park on regular rest.
If the rotation holds after that, the same trio would be on regular rest for the three-game series against the Giants at Dodger Stadium on Sept. 22-24.
And if this is just a one-time shuffle, Haren is on track to get five starts in September. He needs just 24 innings to reach 180 for the season and activate a player option in his contract that would guarantee him $10 million for the 2015 season — if he plays in 2015. Haren (who will turn 34 in September) said he remains “undecided at this point” on whether he will play next season, option or no option.
“I know it’s there,” Haren said of the clause in his contract. “When I’m on the mound, I’m not thinking about any of that stuff. It’s more between starts and when people ask me about it that I have to think about it.”
Haren has averaged 52/3 innings in his 27 starts this season and the Dodgers could easily stop him short of the 180 innings needed to activate the option by skipping him in the rotation again — perhaps starting a young pitcher like Frias in his place if the Dodgers clinch a playoff spot. Haren wouldn’t say how disappointed — or angry — he might be if that happened.
“It’s hard to say,” Haren said. “I’d like to get there but not because of the contract. If I get there, it means I’m pitching good. If I don’t get there, I probably stunk.”
NOTES
Both Ryu and third baseman Juan Uribe were activated from the DL and started Sunday. … In order to clear roster spots for both, the Dodgers optioned infielder Miguel Rojas and Frias to Triple-A Albuquerque — for one day. Both can and will be recalled after the PCL season ends. The Isotopes have one more game Monday. But Mattingly said he expects the first wave of September call-ups to join the Dodgers in Los Angeles on Monday.
Contact the writer: [email protected] for Kids Foundation, established in 2004 in Alexandria, VA has been a long time partner of Operation Warm, Inc. Founded on similar principles, both organizations have made it their mission to provide new winter coats to children in need. Our shared vision of ensuring every child wearing a new winter coat is healthy, able to attend school regularly and has a strong self-esteem is why Coats For Kids Foundation and Operation Warm, Inc. have united with a goal of serving at-risk children throughout the United States.
After distributing more than 38,000 new winter coats from 2004 to 2011, Coats for Kids Foundation founders retired. They reached out to Operation Warm so the their legacy could continue. Their profound impact on children in the Washington D.C region has been remarkable. Together, in the winter of 2014/2015, Coats for Kids Foundation and Operation Warm reached more than 5,000 children within the National Capital Area, and over 300,000 children throughout the country.A case of Zika virus infection transmitted by sex, rather than mosquito bite, was discovered in Texas on Tuesday, a development sure to complicate plans to contain a global epidemic.
The Dallas County Health and Human Services Department reported that a patient with the Zika virus was infected after having sex with someone who had returned from Venezuela, where Zika is circulating.
After the report, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention changed its advice to Americans visiting regions in which the Zika virus is spreading.
Men having sex after traveling to these areas should consider wearing condoms, officials said, although they did not indicate for how long this would be necessary. Pregnant women should avoid contact with semen from men recently exposed to the virus, federal officials also said. The agency plans to issue further guidelines soon.This is not your typical economy hatchback.
Ford said Tuesday that it will begin selling a new version of its Focus compact car, but this one will be powered by a 315 horsepower, 2.3 liter, four-cylinder, turbocharged engine. It will be built in Germany, and it will have a special high-performance all-wheel-drive system.
Complete details on the car will be released when it is officially unveiled at the Geneva Motor Show in March.
The Ford (F) Focus RS is actually the third generation of this model but it has never been made available in the United States before.
Gallery - See Ferrari's newest model
The car's hi-tech all-wheel-drive system will allow the amount of power being sent to each of the four wheels to be automatically controlled from moment to moment. For instance, during high-speed cornering, power will be sent to the outside rear wheel to help push the car into the turn. The brakes can also be automatically applied at each wheel to further enhance the car's handling.
Inside, the Focus RS will be equipped with Recaro racing seats. It will also have a two-mode adjustable suspension system that can be set for optimum track performance.
It will be equipped with a six-speed manual transmission.
The highest-powered version of the Focus available now is the 252-horsepower Focus ST which sells for prices starting at $24,370. Pricing for the Focus RS has yet been revealed.
It is designed to compete against cars like the 305 horsepower Subaru WRX STI and the 292 horsepower Volkswagen Golf R. Prices for those cars start in the $30,000 range.It could've been the latent heatstroke setting in from the three days I spent tut-tutting millennials under my breath at Coachella, or the five coffees I'd drunk to sustain some form of consciousness. But when I finished playing a demo of the new 200cc level in Mario Kart 8 with some folks from Nintendo on Monday, my eyes felt looser in their sockets and a barely containable feeling of nausea lingered in my gut for about an hour. It was as if I'd come off a roller coaster -- like one of those daring, metallic serpents from Six Flags or Busch Gardens in the '80s that jolted you just a bit too much and gave the impression you'd nearly avoided whiplash.
All of which is to say, 200cc is not for the weak. It is stupid fast and stupid good.Toronto police have released surveillance video that captured a Hamilton man's slaying as they appeal for help identifying two homicide suspects.
Det. Sgt. Joyce Schertzer told a news conference that Leonard Pinnock was sitting in his car waiting for a friend on the night of April 21 when two suspects fired multiple shots into the car.
Warning: Video contains graphic content.
Pinnock, 33, was pronounced dead at the scene and Schertzer says there's nothing in his background to suggest a motive for the shooting.
The video shows Pinnock's car in parking garage as two suspects in hooded jackets walk into the camera's view.
In a span of about 17 seconds they approach the car from the front and back and fire several shots each into the driver's window before running away.
Schertzer says the pair should be considered armed and dangerous.
"The people that I'm trying to reach are the inner circle of these two offenders — their immediate friends and family." she said. "They know who these two individuals are and I'm asking them to call police."NEW YORK—As part of the build-up to the highly anticipated matchup between the Atlanta Falcons and New England Patriots, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell announced a new contest Wednesday offering fans the chance to present the Vince Lombardi Trophy to the winning team of Super Bowl LI. “This year, for the first time ever, one lucky fan will get the opportunity to go down onto the field after the game and hand the famed Lombardi Trophy to the head coach and owner of the Super Bowl champions,” said Goodell, adding that the randomly drawn winner would get to personally congratulate the team on the trophy presentation stage in front of over 70,000 fans at NRG Stadium and an estimated 160 million people watching on television around the world. “Not only will they pose for photographs while holding the Lombardi Trophy alongside the winning team’s ownership, but they will also get to shake hands with the player selected as Super Bowl MVP. I couldn’t be more excited to make one fan’s dream come true on Super Bowl Sunday.” Goodell added that in order to provide “the ultimate Super Bowl experience,” he will generously allow the contest winner to sit in the commissioner’s seat during the game while he watches it from home.
AdvertisementBrendan Rodgers has provided further news on the club's January transfer ambitions and the condition of defender Glen Johnson, plus paid a special tribute to birthday boy Luis Suarez.
With seven days remaining to purchase new recruits this month, the Northern Irishman outlined his plans; the boss also expanded on the fitness of the Reds' No.2, who has been ruled out indefinitely.
As he celebrates his 27th birthday, Barclays Premier League top scorer Suarez was the subject of more praise from his manager, who discussed his side's next two fixtures in a chat with radio station talkSPORT too.
Read on for the highlights of Rodgers' conversation on Friday morning...
On transfers...
The club has been working hard on a number of targets. I know the club has been working very hard to get players in. I'll leave that to them and see how they can get on. This is a brilliant club and we try to get players in that fit for the club for now. We need players that can come in now and help us. January is a very difficult market. The team has improved over the last year, so it's hard to bring in players in this window that can improve the team. I'd rather wait and look at our young players than just bring in one or two squad players.
On Bournemouth...
The game against Bournemouth will be a difficult game. Eddie Howe is a terrific young manager at a club that he knows well. He has developed a team that play a really good style of football, 4-3-3 and they pass the ball with confidence in how they play. After that, we've got another big game on the Tuesday night.
On Everton...
The derby games are brilliant, they are really intense - I've been involved in a few of them now. We're really looking forward to playing at Anfield. It's an opportunity for us to go four points ahead of Everton. There are a few teams fighting to get into the top four; it gives us an opportunity to make a little bit of a gap. It's a big game. The last game was really entertaining - it was interesting that both managers prefer to impose on their opponents with a possession game. They are very tense but you've got to try to stay calm and composed. Our record at Anfield over the last year has been excellent so we hope that, along with the supporters who make a huge difference for us, we can pull through and get another vital win.
On Luis Suarez...
It's fantastic to work with a player that has the self-motivation and commitment to his work. He's a top talent but I'm very privileged to see how hard he works every day. He's a terrific player; his mentality and desire is the big attribute and facet to his game that allows him to be out there every day and every game.
Watch the video here »
On Glen Johnson's injury...
Glen has just been carrying a few niggles throughout the season. In fairness, he has put himself out there for the team and put himself on the training ground. He just felt that it has impinged on his performance level to the point where he is nowhere near 100 per cent. He has just had a couple of problems that have really impinged on his physicality. That's a big part of Glen's game - his running ability, his speed running up and down. He has been unable to be anywhere near his best. We felt that he needs a bit of time out to see if we can make it better and give him a recovery period that allows him to come back and get somewhere near the level that everyone has seen him play at. He's a great guy; since I've come into the club, he has put himself out every day to train and in games. He has played a lot of this season with injury. We're hopefully trying to clear that up.An Iraqi woman and her child who had fled the violence around the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, rest in the Debaga camp on Sept. 1, 2016. (Safin Hamed/AFP/Getty Images)
The battle for the northern city of Mosul could force a million people to flee their homes. But even before it begins, aid agencies are struggling to shelter families displaced by the conflict against the Islamic State.
The United Nations says it is nowhere near ready to deal with the fallout from the U.S.-backed offensive to retake Mosul from the militants, which could begin in less than a month.
The camps in northern Iraq are full. Debaga camp, 40 miles southeast of Mosul on the edges of the semiautonomous Kurdish region, was built a year ago for 700 families. It now houses 10 times as many people, most of whom fled fighting as Iraqi forces retook territory south of the city.
Crowds gather around reporters, hoping they are aid workers bringing humanitarian assistance. “Register me! Register me!” they shout. They complain they don’t have mattresses, medicine, milk for their children or diapers.
Many don’t have tents, with 1,100 families here waiting for shelter. They bed down in the classrooms and yard of the camp’s school and in the hall of a mosque. Some have slung tarpaulins next to walls in an attempt to shield themselves from the sun.
“It’s humiliating,” said Nahla Mohammed, 23, who fled bombing on her farm on the outskirts of Mosul five days earlier with her husband and three children and has been sleeping outside. She said she hadn’t been able to get milk for her 1½ -year-old daughter. “There we were terrified and scared, but here we are hungry and we’ve received nothing. We don’t want to be here, we were forced to come.”
When the offensive begins — the biggest yet against Islamic State militants — assistance is expected to be even more scarce. Aid organizations are strapped for resources.
[Signs of panic and rebellion in the Islamic State’s self-proclaimed caliphate]
About 3.3 million people have been displaced in Iraq over the past 2½ years, while the conflict in neighboring Syria has displaced millions more.
Iraq’s finances have been squeezed by falling oil prices and years of grinding battles to retake territory, limiting the government’s ability to respond. The United Nations put out an emergency appeal for $285 million to meet the needs of those expected to flee but says it is facing a shortfall of $165 million to provide the most basic emergency response.
“Almost every victory is accompanied by a simultaneous humanitarian crisis,” said Lise Grande, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator in Iraq. “It’s a lot. Sometimes it feels like too much.”
The United Nations is scrambling to build standard camps like the one at Debaga. But if numbers reach the highest predictions, they will be able to handle only a fraction of those fleeing. Four standard camps, with the capacity for a total of 70,000 people, are expected to be completed during October, said Peter Hawkins, the UNICEF representative in Iraq.
Iraqi men who had fled the violence around Mosul board a bus in the Debaga camp before returning to their villages on Sept. 1, 2016. (Safin Hamed/AFP/Getty Images)
However, many more could be displaced.
About 2 million people lived in Mosul before the Islamic State took over, but it is difficult to know how many remain. The United Nations estimates that between 1.2 million and 1.5 million live there now. Some Iraqi officials contend that the population is higher because of the number of people who moved into the city to escape Iraqi army offensives to the south.
Those who find no room at the new camps could turn to the U.N.’s emergency camps — where assistance will be even more basic. Some, however, may flee into the desert toward the Syrian border, making it difficult for aid agencies to reach them.
“The military campaign is going to take off soon, and on the humanitarian side we aren’t yet ready,” Grande said.
With hopes of reducing the misery, the Iraqi government has dropped leaflets over Mosul asking people to stay in their homes during the offensive. In previous battles, for Fallujah and Ramadi, the cities have been emptied.
“Our main aim will be to preserve lives while still keeping people in their homes,” said Gen. Abdul Ghani al-Asadi, head of Iraq’s special forces. That had been achieved to an extent in an offensive last month for the town of Qayyarah, he said, “but Mosul is bigger, so it’s a much more complicated task.”
[U.S. adds more troops to Iraq ahead of Mosul offensive]
Despite the leaflets, civilians are risking their lives to leave.
Umm Abbas, 40, who used a nickname because she still has family members in Mosul, fled the outskirts of the city in August. She was separated from her husband, who had gone into Mosul to sell vegetables at the time an offensive began and Kurdish forces moved toward their farm, she said. The family fled toward the Kurdish soldiers, but her 12-year-old nephew was killed by a suicide car bomber as they reached the Kurdish lines.
“Now we’ve been here for a month and a half with no tent. We live here in the yard,” she said, indicating the packed school behind her at Debaga.
On arrival at the camp, men are separated from women and children and taken to buildings in a fenced-off area for screening by Kurdish security agencies. But even if they are cleared of having associations with the Islamic State, many aren’t released because there isn’t space to house them elsewhere.
Abdullah Ahmed, 52, showed a deep hole in the sole of his foot.
“I’ll have to chop off my leg by the time I get out of here,” he said, explaining that he has diabetes but has been unable to get insulin. Others complained that they had been held for weeks without being interviewed, raising concerns about how authorities will be able to deal with screenings when waves of people are displaced from Mosul.
“We are trying our best to provide the basics of daily life,” said |
role in different periods of the revolution. And there were significant splits within their ranks, like with those who continued protesting against the MB and those that were for the MB. Again there is a very strong divide and rule that was used against the ultras. Because they were seen as a threat against the system and they needed to be disqualified. And they became strongly divided – either for or against the MB.
Is this also true for the workers?
First of all, there is no workers movement. There was a wave of workers’ strikes. I have written about this in my article '2011 is not 1968'. Tunisia, for example, has a very different historical background as far as labour organizations are concerned. In Egypt, they were very harshly suppressed. So strikes continued, but they always happened in a separate sphere from street protests. Sadly, these two processes are quite separate.
But now? Independent unions have been formed. Why does this not translate into a political dynamic?
Largely because the demands that bring the workers together are bread and butter demands. There were always attempts by various socialist groups to bring these workers into some kind of political formation. They always failed. In 2011 a workers/farmers party was formed; I don't even know if it still exists. Maybe it does, but it has no existence on the ground. Amongst workers, political groups or more politicized individuals were quickly discredited because they were seen as having other interests than just the immediate worker demands.
In my view, there wasn’t a kind of momentum of a workers’ movement. There was a very significant wave of worker actions, but it was extremely difficult to mobilize workers even to have solidarity to a nearby strike or action. Because jobs are so threatened, you do not want to lose your job. In certain periods people were willing to risk their jobs in order to improve their situation, but very rarely for political ends.
At the same time, there was never a consensus among workers that the MB or the military would have the best intentions for us. We’re far beyond the Nasser era, where there was at least a rhetoric – though a deceptive one – of pro-worker sentiment. Sisi portrays himself in the same way and I do think he gained some traction, but it is not going to last long because there is nothing on the ground. If anything, repression has gotten much worse.
When the MB won, strikes quieted down for a while because there was a broad perception that things would change. I remember having conversations where people were saying: »This age of corruption is over, privatization is over.« There had been promises that there would be no more privatization …
The MB actually promised that?
Yes. And I don't think they really managed to continue much the privatization process during the year they were in power.
I remember that one of the most important figures amongst public transport workers was a Salafi guy that everyone called Sheikh. Towards the end of the MB period he showed very strong opposition to the MB as well because didn’t want workers to be tricked that easily. When their demands are not being met, and when they are given promises and they are not being met, then workers struggle, even if they have a strong religious tendency. At the end of the day they have their demands and they want them. I visited several occupations of factories and the two or three more senior figures were very religious.
You mean senior in the union?
In this one case I visited it was not even a union, they were just the strike leaders. They were very religious younger guys. I remember the leader was at most in his early thirties. Long beard, again being called Sheikh, which means he has some religious weight within this community of workers. The military was quite soft on these workers actions compared to how they have been in the past year, where things have changed by 180 degrees. During the MB rule they were permitting unrest because it served their interests.
In the past, we largely accepted the thesis that workers‘ strongholds like the textile industry in Mahalla were much less inclined to believe in the Islamist promises.
I don’t see that as a conflict. I spent quite a bit of time in Mahalla and I didn’t come across any strong religious backing in the main figures in 2006-2007. But that is not to say that in many of the other worker groupings there is no strong religious tendency.
Let’s talk about the current situation. Repression is worse than under Mubarak. Is the movement dead?
As I mentioned earlier, the powerful players both inside and outside of Egypt have as their main interest a strong stable state. And the way the cards have been played is in the interests of this kind of stability. A very clear enemy of the state has been projected and this narrative has been accepted by a relatively broad part of the population, especially the middle and upper class who as in most places have a stronger impact on public narrative. So the excuse for increased repression and decreased rights of any kind is to stabilize and strengthen the core of the state as well as the economy. This is the basis for the anti-protest law and has given the ministry of interior a free hand to do what they want. And that kills any momentum for a possible movement in the street for the time being.
But how strong is the support for the current regime actually? The picture seems contradictory – little protest, but also little enthusiasm as the low participation in the elections show. Are people simply tired?
The situation is also very contradictory to me. The media definitely maintains its very pro-military propaganda approach. You will never hear anybody publicly criticizing the current situation. Day in and day out the media claim that things are better, things are going to get better, things are going to get stable, and that the military is doing all it can to oppose any opposition to growing stability. So there is this strong narrative of extreme patriotism.
But it is exactly amongst those people who are purposefully excluded from these media outlets, those who are never portrayed, that we find people who are becoming increasingly skeptical about the current situation. Especially from lower middle class or poor neighborhoods who do not believe in the political process. Partly because they never did – they simply don’t think their vote is going to make a difference. But there are also those who after three and a half years of extreme turmoil and unpredictability don’t see that something different is possible because there is no alternative offered. As long as you think within the statist narrative, there are no alternatives. Egypt’s partners abroad will continue to support the powerful, with zero interest to what the common person in the street needs.
Sisi spent a lot of time thinking whether he should run for the elections or not. Because once he is in the top position, he cannot forever push the responsibility for any negative consequences on somebody else. Sisi is very clear on this and I think that he is scared shitless. Because, yes, he was extremely popular for a period, but that is declining. And he is forced into a position where he has to cut subsidies, where he knows prices are going to increase, where economic reforms like in the past are not possible – he cannot portray himself the way Nasser did, as this kind of populist leader with the masses behind him, even if he wanted to.
There is very little belief in the political process; the elections speak very clearly about the situation we are in. They extended the elections by a day, popular talk shows hosts were accusing people of being non-patriotic by not participating, the public prosecutor even claimed that those who do not vote will get fines of 500 pounds – which for some people is a month’s or half a month’s wage – and up to 6 months in prison. They were literally threatening people into voting, just to legitimize the process. And people still didn't go to vote. Estimations about the actual participation range from 15 to 60 per cent, not the 95 plus per cent that the government claims. That is a very strong message. The prospects for those in power are not great.
Talking about possibilities for reform: what could capitalism in Egypt today provide?
Capitalism, here too, has nothing new to offer, only more of the same stratification that brought about the conditions for the January 25 uprising. Capitalism is not a thing, I would rather want to speak of the spirit of capitalism that in the Egyptian context has manifested itself as a convoluted oligarchy, where the power lies with those with capital, with control of militarized statist institutions. Capitalism in this form in Egypt will only drive people that are not a part of this club of rulers deeper into crisis. Prices are rising excessively as neoliberal policies are maintained by the Sisi government as they were by Morsi. Gas prices have gone up, transport and food prices are constantly going up and wages remain constant, jobs are hard to get ahold of. The more the guarantees for a decent way of life wane, the more capitalism approaches its end. The next battle will be much more violent.
A further question on the economic prospects: the general situation seems to be very shaky but there have been massive capital inflows from the Gulf states and grandiose development plans more recently.
Many people are still convinced of the good interests of the current regime. With prices going up, there is a perception of foreign funds flowing into the country as a positive thing. These grants or in most cases loans, whether they are coming from the Gulf or other banks or states, are very short term solutions. The regime wants a quick influx of money to band-aid over the short term economic turmoil, but within five to ten years Egypt will have to manage to pay back these loans and servicing debts, which is going to be horrendous in the long run. But who thinks about anything in the long run in the current situation? So if you have some Gulfie saying that they are going to build new airports to strengthen the tourist sector in some Red Sea resorts, even public sentiment won’t oppose that. People think that is exactly what we need, and only the military can provide that because they provide security.
Plans around the Suez canal are very tricky and here again, I don't know how it's playing out on the street. Nasser was really celebrated when he opposed the British and the French when he took back the Suez canal from the colonial powers of the time. This is a huge issue, in the public memory of Egyptians. But people often have short term memory. And when you have all these propaganda stations, day in and day out, talking about how the Suez canal development is going to create so many jobs and bring in new companies and bring in the funds that we now need... Why would we expect people to react differently. If the experts say that these projects are going to create jobs, then they are going to create jobs.
The Suez canal is seen as a national treasure. So we are going to make more money out of it? Great. As far as we know, all the income from the Suez canal used to go straight into Mubarak's coffers. I was part of a group that was working on debt in the past couple of years and we don't know where that money went. So if they are going to increase the profits from there, where is that going to go?
So what are the perspectives for struggles in the near future?
The prospects are not all bad. The immediate situation is extremely difficult because a lot of our friends are now in prison and there is very little that can be done compared to the past. If you protest today, you risk ending up in prison for anything between 6 months to 15 YEARS. So suddenly we are left without the tools to get very far. But, as my reading of this UPRISING has been since 2011 and prior, we – I mean the milieu that I’m in, a politicized largely middle class opposition – are not really the significant factors in this revolt.
And that's precisely where the hope for the future lies. People will not be able to remain content, and in many cases they will not be able to survive in these conditions in the near future. Prices have increased significantly, just in the past three months. Fuel subsidies were cut twice this year. That has a very strong effect on transportation, food costs, it affects everything. Life is becoming more expensive. Right now, Sisi can ride this wave of popularity, but it is not going to last forever. It was the same with Sadat: He rode a wave of popularity when he came to power, but in 1977, when he tried to cut subsidies, they had to overturn these policies immediately from one day to the next because of the fear of what would happen following people taking to the streets.
I don't think this is going to happen in the next few months, but it will come back. The conditions that brought people to the streets in 2011 are already here and so protest will return in the near future. And I think that it will be much more violent the next time, from both sides. I think you can't discredit what happened in the past three years, even though many people paid with their lives or are paying with heavy prison sentences. The kind of consciousness that has been created through these moments of revolt and the various different debates and mobilizations that have occurred, it can’t be undone. It has left a very deep impression on the population at large. We have gone through a lot of waves in the past four years. In 2011, in 2012, there were already heavy moments of depression and almost regret for what has occurred. It is far from over.
But do you have any hope that struggles could take on a new quality? Looking back on the years since the so-called revolution in 2011 one can see that people were able to topple governments, there were massive workers‘ struggles and a strong youth movement striving for freedom rights. At the same time, however, people first supported the military against Mubarak, then the MB against the military and finally the military against the MB… After the coup in July 2013, there was widespread acceptance of the military’s massacres. How could the next wave of struggles look like? Just a repetition of previous ones?
It is very hard to tell. On the one hand that is bad for us, but it is also bad for those in power because there is no back-up plan. One of the reasons why Morsi or Sisi came to power was that at the time, they were the most popular option on the streets. The next option? I can't see any that would be popular after Sisi.
I have never gone to the streets in order to change government. I think the system really needs to collapse in order for some kind of better form of society to emerge. But what that means, I have no idea. And maybe that is not such a bad thing. I think one of the important lessons to learn here is that things cannot easily happen in Egypt in a vacuum, apart from what happens elsewhere in the world. Because you constantly have this influence from the outside, whether it is from the Gulf or from the western states that are sending in at this point weapons and military training and financial support and maintain their trade agreements in order to shape the power constellation. So for things to significantly change in Egypt there needs to be a significant change in those different centers of power as well. And things will have to happen in broader circles, not just individual points of clashes. And in my view, this is something that we are steering towards. I don't know what it would look like, but I think that this is not far away.
Philip Rizk is a filmmaker and writer. He lives in Cairo. The interview was made by some friends of the classless society in autumn 2014 in Berlin.
Original article taken from kosmoprolet.org.South Australian university says it has asked for information about the $4m in funding on offer, but no firm decision has been made
The federal government has held talks with Flinders University over the possibility of establishing a research centre headed by controversial academic Bjørn Lomborg.
Flinders University said it had asked the department of education for information about Lomborg’s consensus centre but insisted it had not made a firm decision over whether it wanted to host the academic’s work.
The federal education minister, Christopher Pyne, has vowed to find another university to take on Lomborg’s centre after the University of Western Australia decided in May to hand back $4m in federal government funding for it.
Abbott government gives $4m to help climate contrarian set up Australian centre Read more
The UWA opted to take the funding for the centre, only to reverse course following a backlash from its academics. Pyne said the university had shouted down Lomborg, with the Danish academic complaining that the issue had become a political football.
Lomborg’s venture would be linked to his Copenhagen consensus centre, with a focus on aid spending and international development.
Lomborg is a controversial figure among academics, particularly in the field of climate science due to his contrarian stance on the issue. While he accepts that the world’s climate is changing, he has argued that these changes can be dealt with by technological improvements and that other issues are of more pressing concern.
It’s understood that Flinders University is gauging the opinion of its staff before committing itself to the centre, in an attempt to avoid the UWA’s situation. Academics are thought to be split on the merits of hosting Lomborg.
A spokeswoman for the university said: “Discussions have been held among groups of Flinders academics regarding the possibility of any future collaboration with the Copenhagen Consensus Centre in addressing a number of major research questions of our time.
Bjørn Lomborg university funding tied to 'rational conversation' lectures Read more
“Similar discussions have most likely occurred in other universities around the country.
“Flinders University has approached the department of education for information but the university has yet to form a position on the matter.”
Despite the offer of federal funding for the centre, many leading universities have been reluctant to put themselves forward due to the controversy over the initiative.
Labor has attacked the government for providing a $4m grant for the centre, and actively attempting to find a university to accept it, at a time when universities were facing funding cuts.
Greens senator Senator Lee Rhiannon, the party’s higher education spokesman, said it would be “extraordinary” if Flinders hosted Lomborg.
“Chancellor Stephen Gerlach, a former chairman of oil company Santos, would be wise to take note of the successful community campaign run by students, staff and the community in Western Australia and reject the Bjørn Lomborg vanity project,” she said.
“With the Abbott government still offering $4m to host Mr Lomborg, it’s clear their budget emergency doesn’t apply to their climate sceptic mates.”Organ donation? There’ll soon be an app for that, after Tim Cook cites Steve Jobs’ ‘excruciating’ wait for a liver transplant in 2009 as inspiration for Health update
Apple will give US users the ability to sign up as organ donors on their iPhones as part of its upcoming iOS 10 update.
The chief executive, Tim Cook, says he hopes the easy sign-up button in the Health app will help ease a longstanding donor shortage in the US.
He said that the problem hit home when Apple co-founder Steve Jobs endured an “excruciating” wait for a liver transplant in 2009. Jobs died of pancreatic cancer in October 2011, aged 56.
Apple is adding the option to enroll in the US national donor registry by tapping a button within the iPhone’s Health app, which can be used to manage a variety of health and fitness data. The software will come to all US-based iPhones when the company updates its mobile operating system this autumn.
The move follows action by the US government to attempt to reduce long waiting lists for organ transplants, in which someone is added to the list every 10 minutes and 22 people die while waiting for life-saving transplants every day.
One initiative will see greater automation in the donor and matching service, and increased connectivity with transplant centres, which it is hoped will speed up the matching process to get donor organs to more patients in less time. Almost $200m (£150m) has also been allocated for research into next-generation manufacturing techniques for tissue creation and repair, which could result in organ replacement.
Apple is not the only technology company that has pledged to aid in driving organ donor registration. Facebook, Google and Twitter have also pledged support to develop new tools and public advocacy campaigns.This was the most elaborate Atomic Energy educational set ever produced, but it was only only available from 1951 to 1952.
The unifying characteristic of these toy guns is that they are all identified as “Atomic.” The top two, made of tin, were manufactured in Japan, probably in the 1950s or 1960s. When the trigger is pulled, sparks appear in the window on the barrel.
Uranium Rush is a Gardner Games product from the mid 1950s. The information just to the left of the cactus on the top of the box (below) indicates that it was an “Educator Approved” Prestige Toy for 1955.
This “Atomic Geiger Counter” was produced by the Bell Products Company of 4251 Forest Park Avenue, St. Louis Missouri, probably in the 1950s. Quoting the Instructions, “The Atomic Geiger Counter is a toy, and is completely safe. It does not detect uranium or any other radioactive ore. However, it is an educational toy which familiarizes the child (and the parent) with certain basic ideas and procedures of real uranium prospecting, by simulating radioactivity detection.”
Image and Info Source
Thanks howtobearetronaut“The first sound in the mornings was the clumping of the mill-girls’ clogs down the cobbled street.” This opening line is the sound of a great writer finding his authentic voice. With absolute confidence, after several false starts, the mature George Orwell takes charge of this idiosyncratic account of working-class life from his first page.
Formerly Eric Blair, he was now writing with the urgency of a freelance with a much-needed commission, and also as a man just back from a journey through the industrial wastes of Yorkshire and Lancashire in the depths of the Great Depression.
He was honest about himself as a refugee from the middle class, via Eton, Burma and the dosshouses of Paris and London
Orwell had been signed up in the spring of 1936 for perhaps as little as £50 (plus expenses) by Victor Gollancz, the leftwing publisher who had championed Down and Out in Paris and London. Gollancz wanted a “condition of England” title to include in his Left Book Club, a bookselling experiment he had started to develop at the beginning of 1936. In fact, when Orwell delivered his manuscript at the end of the year, Gollancz was confronted with rather more than he’d bargained for, an infuriating but always compelling, personal quest by one of the strangest and most complicated figures in English literature.
The Road to Wigan Pier falls into two parts, a travelogue describing Orwell’s journey through three northern towns, and a matching, but much more contentious, quest of heart and mind. It was, declared its author, a “political book”, a mix of reportage and political commentary with a dash of autobiography. Orwell’s contemporaries such as Cyril Connolly noted that, henceforth, he would be a socialist, but a socialist with an aura of secular saintliness that some found affected, even comical. And yet, with all its weaknesses, it would prove to be a milestone in his creative development.
In the age of Corbyn, is the time right for another Road to Wigan Pier? Read more
Orwell’s long-term publisher, Fred Warburg, described it as “one of the most contradictory books ever written”, which is another way of saying that, as well as writing outstanding reportage from “Wigan Pier”, Orwell was willing to be honest about himself as a refugee from the middle class, via Eton, Burma and the dosshouses of Paris and London. In these pages, finally, he began to carve out his peculiar place as a British literary socialist, and to reconcile himself to himself.
The first half opens with a brilliant, stand-alone chapter about the Brookers’ tripe shop-cum-lodging house, No 22 Darlington Street. From the squalor of working-class Wigan, Orwell plunges into meetings with the unemployed, with slum-dwellers, with coalminers, and dockers.
Anxious to return to his future wife, Eileen O’Shaughnessy, Orwell spent just two months in the north, and finally took the train home, closing his travels with a scene glimpsed from his railway carriage, the unforgettable image of a working-class woman trying to unblock a drain:
At the back of one of the houses a young woman was kneeling on the stones, poking a stick up the leaden waste pipe which ran from the sink inside and which I suppose was blocked… She looked up as the train passed, and I was almost near enough to catch her eye … it wore the most desolate, hopeless expression I have ever seen… She knew well enough what was happening to her – understood as well as I did how dreadful a destiny it was to be there in the bitter cold, on the slimy stones of a slum backyard, poking a stick up a foul drainpipe.
The second half of Wigan Pier is much more uneven, and famously provocative. Even now, Orwell’s private encounter with English socialism can seem shocking. His determination “to see what mass unemployment is like at its worst” was principally to do with his own quest, a journey that was, he writes, “necessary to me as part of my approach to socialism”.
For before you can be sure whether you are genuinely in favour of socialism, you have got to decide whether things at present are tolerable or not tolerable, and you have got to take up a definite attitude on the terribly difficult question of class.
Orwell is never less than self-lacerating. On the class question, he eviscerates himself: “The real reason why a European of bourgeois upbringing cannot without a hard effort think of a working man as his equal is summed up in four frightful words: the lower classes smell.”
The Wigan of George Orwell – in pictures Read more
From here, an admission that continues to shock, and having described his adolescent self as “an odious little snob”, he confesses his deep sense of inadequacy: “I had not much grasp of what socialism meant, and no notion that the working class were human beings… I could agonise over their sufferings, but I hated them and despised them whenever I came anywhere near them.”
In conclusion, having fretted neurotically over the condition of domestic socialism, and his obligations towards it, he arrives at a kind of armistice in the war with himself: “To sum up – there is no chance of righting the conditions I described in the earlier chapters of this book, or of saving England from fascism, unless we can bring an effective socialist party into existence.”
Rarely, in English literature, has a writer flayed himself so mercilessly in print, or published so many hostages to fortune. But the upshot of this uniquely strange book was a kind of creative liberation: Eric Blair, who was now unequivocally George Orwell, had found his voice and his identity. For the rest of his active life – barely 10 years – he would write as a British literary socialist. From this declaration of intent come his masterpieces: Homage to Catalonia, Animal Farm and, finally, Nineteen Eighty-Four. It’s arguable that without The Road to Wigan Pier none of these would have been possible.
A signature sentence
“And then perhaps this misery of class-prejudice will fade away, and we of the sinking middle class – the private schoolmaster, the half-starved freelance journalist, the colonel’s spinster daughter with £75 a year, the jobless Cambridge graduate, the ship’s officer without a ship, the clerks, the civil servants, the commercial travellers and the thrice-bankrupt drapers in the country towns – may sink without further struggles into the working class where we belong, and probably when we get there it will not be so dreadful as we feared, for, after all, we have nothing to lose but our aitches.”
Three to compare
JB Priestley: English Journey (1934)
Robert Byron: The Road to Oxiana (1937)
Richard Hoggart: The Uses of Literacy (1957)
The Road to Wigan Pier is published by Penguin (£9.99). Click here to buy it for £8.19In spite of the over 50 years which have passed since the original experiments conducted by Stanley Milgram on obedience, these experiments are still considered a turning point in our thinking about the role of the situation in human behavior. While ethical considerations prevent a full replication of the experiments from being prepared, a certain picture of the level of obedience of participants can be drawn using the procedure proposed by Burger. In our experiment, we have expanded it by controlling for the sex of participants and of the learner. The results achieved show a level of participants’ obedience toward instructions similarly high to that of the original Milgram studies. Results regarding the influence of the sex of participants and of the “learner,” as well as of personality characteristics, do not allow us to unequivocally accept or reject the hypotheses offered.
Experiments conducted by Milgram (1963, 1965), in which the study participant is encouraged by the experimenter to administer an electric shock to another person, are generally considered to be one of the most important (if not the most important) in the field of social psychology (e.g., Benjamin & Simpson, 2009; Blass, 2004). The entire series of experiments carried out by Milgram (1974) demonstrated that under conditions of pressure from an authority, the majority of people will carry out his commands even when they are informed at the beginning that they have the right to end their participation in the experiment at any time, while the information placed on the device used in emitting electric shocks states unequivocally that it can damage the health of the “learner,” or even kill him.
Following the publishing of Milgram’s work (1963, 1965), there were discussions in the psychological literature concerning the ethical aspect of such experiments (e.g., Fischer, 1968; Kaufmann, 1967). While a few replication experiments were carried out in the 1970s in various countries (e.g., Kilham & Mann, 1974; Shanab & Yahya, 1978), further work within this paradigm was then halted.
Naturally, an attempt was made at finding various alternatives to direct replications of the original Milgram studies. For example, Slater et al. (2006) conducted an experiment in which the “electric shock” was administered not to a living human but rather a computer-generated avatar. Participants in this experiment were seated in front of a screen displaying a picture of a woman (“the learner”) reacting in real time to electric shocks. Another idea for creating an ethically acceptable procedure to examine obedience was to assign unpleasant descriptors to relatively pleasant images (Haslam, Reicher, & Birney, 2014). The researchers prepared a series of 30 pictures sorted on the basis of their attractiveness (beginning from the least pleasant to the most pleasant). The participants’ task consisted in selecting from among four negative adjectives the one which best described a given image. It should be noted that while the pictures became increasingly attractive as the study continued, the adjectives remained negative, which led to increasing discomfort on the part of the participants. In the opinion of the experiment’s designers, this procedure was to evoke a discomfort similar to that experienced by participants in the original Milgram studies. It should be noted that we may have serious doubts regarding the extent to which this procedure really reflects the realism of the Milgram experiments and whether the impact of authority on obedience is what has essentially been tested here. One thing is certain: Since the original experiments by Stanley Milgram, we have yet to find a successful way of reconciling realism with care for the well-being of study participants.
A few years ago, however, Burger (2009) noted that in the original studies by Milgram, a decisive majority of people who pressed the 10th button (33 people of 40) could then be convinced to press all of the remaining ones (26 people of 33). He thus arrived at the conclusion that conducting an experiment in which participants would be encouraged only to press 10 successive (and not 30 successive) buttons would, on the one hand, significantly reduce their level of discomfort, while on the other it would allow for a direct comparison of obedience in pressing the 10th button and, indirectly, that is through performing an appropriate estimate and comparison of total obedience. Burger asked himself the question of what level of obedience would be recorded in the United States almost a half-century after the Milgram experiments. He thus replicated Experiment No. 5 in which the alleged learner reports heart problems at the beginning of the experiment, and before the 10th shock is administered he demands the halting of the experiment, again reminding those present of his health problems. It turned out that 70% of Americans could be induced to press the 10th button, which led Burger (2009) to the conclusion that “average Americans react to this laboratory situation today much the way they did 45 years ago” (p. 9).
In our study, we decided to apply the empirical scheme of Milgram (1974), Experiment 2 with Burger’s (2009) idea of using only 10 buttons. It is worth emphasizing that Milgram noted almost identical reactions by the participants in Experiments No. 2 and No. 5 (the 10th button was pressed by 34 of 40 in Experiment 2, and 33 of 40 in Experiment 5, and while button 30 was pressed by 25 participants in Experiment 2, and 26 in Experiment 5). Experiment 5 has been more frequently replicated around the world than Experiment 2, but for the sole reason that it is more spectacular and its results are more shocking. From the perspective of estimating obedience levels, both paradigms are, however, equally valid, while ethical considerations argue for the choice of Experiment 2 in which people are not encouraged to administer an electric shock to an individual suffering from heart problems and who demands that his participation in the experiment be concluded.
Our objective was to examine how high a level of obedience we would encounter among residents of Poland. It should be emphasized that tests in the Milgram paradigm have never been conducted in Central Europe. The unique history of the countries in the region made the issue of obedience toward authority seems exceptionally interesting to us. After World War II, which began with Germany’s attack on Poland in 1939 and concluded in 1945, the countries located in Eastern Europe were made dependent on the Soviet Union, while the communist system was forced on them. One of the foundations of that system was significant curbs on democracy and the demand of strict obedience to authority. The official press used censorship to develop an impression of the authorities’ infallibility and moral legitimacy to ruling through the use of orders and decrees. The primary and secondary school curricula also marginalized the role of such ideas as individual freedom and the right to decide about one’s own affairs (Hodos, 1999; Naimark & Gibianskii, 1997). However, the year 1989 marked a sea change for the entire region. The understanding reached by the communist authorities and anticommunist opposition initiated a rapid series of changes across all of Eastern Europe. Free press, democratic elections, and free speech became the norm (Petersen, 2001; Rothschild and Wingfield, 2007). However, in recent years we have observed a surge in the popularity of the political party named “Law and Justice” [Pol.: “Prawo i Sprawiedliwość”], which won an absolute majority in the last parliamentary elections. In both the verbal arena and in its actions, this party values governing with a strong hand rather than freedom and democracy. Its efforts to limit the role of democratic institutions and eliminate pluralism in the media have met with extensive social approval (public opinion polls show this party with support remaining stable at over 30%).
This all means that both the historical experiences of Poles and the current political situation may have a complicated and opaque impact on obedience levels. By the same toke, we felt it would be interesting to replicate the Milgram experiment in this country.
Besides, we also took advantage of introducing a factor into the experimental design that had previously never been tested to a satisfactory extent.
Discussion of Milgram’s experiments in the psychological literature generally oscillates around consternation at the universal nature of people’s pliability. For example, emphasis is placed on the fact that the sex of participants in experiments on obedience is not a factor that differentiates their reactions (see Blass, 1991, for review). When considering the role of sex in experiments carried out in the Milgram paradigm, we turned our attention to something entirely different. However, before we say what that was, let us take a look at three typical descriptions of Milgram’s experiment that can be found in the psychological literature.
“Participants sat in front of an imposing shock generator and were instructed to administer an electric shocks to the learner for each incorrect answer” (Burger, 2009, p. 1). “Who among us was not surprised and sobered to learn that 65% of his subjects delivered the full series of painful and escalating shocks to an innocent partner?” (Gilbert, 1981, p. 690). “First, of course, is the unexpected enormity of the basic findings themselves—that 65% of a sample of average American adult men were willing to punish another person with increasingly higher voltages of electric shock” (Blass, 1991, p. 398).
We have no doubt that the intention of these and other authors writing about experiments on obedience toward authority is not to present a false picture of reality, but it is worth noting that the confederate is defined here using words which are devoid of biological sex (learner, “partner,” and “person”); meanwhile, in nearly all studies on obedience carried out under the Milgram paradigm the learner who was allegedly being electrified was a man.
Existing empirical data thus demonstrates that study participants are inclined to administer a shock to a man sitting behind a wall. However, it is not clear whether the behavior of participants would change in conditions in which the experimenter instructed them to give the shock to a woman. Why do we think that the sex of the learner in experiments performed in the Milgram paradigm may be significant?
Because women are physically weaker and more susceptible to physical violence than men, in accordance with cultural norms they should be treated more favorably and gently than men (Anderson, 2000; Muller-Funk, 2012). This assumption is supported in the results of meta-analyses of experiments regarding altruism, which show that women receive assistance from others more often than men (Eagly & Crowley, 1986; Piliavin & Unger, 1985), as well as meta-analyses of experiments concerning aggression, which show that it is more prevalent |
system with a clear direction for future development." They're holding open houses this week across town and online. Learn more about the project and share feedback about what Capital Metro should prioritize, at www.connections2025.org.
Austin B-cycle needs you for SXSW 2016! In past years, Austin B-cycle has broken records for ridership during SXSW, and to do it again, they need volunteers to answer questions and run bikes between stations Downtown. One four-hour shift earns you half of an annual Local365 Austin B-cycle membership, two shifts and it's free! See details at www.austinbcycle.com.The great heresy of the church today is that we think we’re in the entertainment business. A.W. Tozer believed this to be true back in the 1950s and 60s. Church members “want to be entertained while they are edified.” He said that in 1962. Tozer grieved, even then, that it was “scarcely possible in most places to get anyone to attend a meeting where the only attraction was God.”*
More recently, David Platt has asked: “What if we take away the cool music and the cushioned chairs? What if the screens are gone and the stage is no longer decorated? What if the air conditioning is off and the comforts are removed? Would His Word still be enough for his people to come together?” (Radical)
Would it be enough?
Tozer got it right: “Heresy of method may be as deadly as heresy of message.”
HALLOWEDNESS, NOT SHALLOWNESS
Like Tozer, we should be concerned that so many people in our churches want to be entertained while they worship. We should be concerned when we no longer recognize the difference between the two. And we should be concerned by the growing belief that adding more entertainment value to worship is necessary for the church to accomplish its mission.
I may stand alone, but it grieves me when I see worship services characterized more by props, performances, and pep rally atmospheres than by any sense of divine sacredness; and hallowedness giving way to shallowness.
This is not about worship styles. The issue is not traditional versus contemporary versus blended worship. It’s not about organ versus worship band. That discussion misses the point completely. This is about the heart and focus and intent of worship. The real issues, for me, are these:
1. Who or what is the spotlight really on?
If the figurative spotlight in our church services is on anyone other than God, it is not worship. If the spotlight shines brighter on human performance than on the gospel of Christ, it is not worship. If anyone other than Jesus is receiving our adulation and applause, it is not God we worship.
2. What message are we communicating?
The message of the church—the message the world needs to hear from us—is not, “Come and have a good time,” “Come and be entertained,” or “Come and find your best life now.”
Tozer said: “Christ calls men to carry a cross; we call them to have fun in His name.”
The message of the church is the message of the cross. Lest we forget, Jesus’ cross was a source of entertainment only for those who mocked Him as He hung on it.
3. How are lives changed?
“But our methods are attracting and winning people!” some will say.
Tozer addressed that sentiment: “Winning them to what? To true discipleship? To cross-carrying? To self-denial? To separation from the world? To crucifixion of the flesh? To holy living? To nobility of character? To a despising of the world’s treasures? To hard self-discipline? To love for God? To total committal to Christ?”
THE WORD DOES THE WORK
David Platt and the church he pastored, The Church at Brook Hills, decided to try to answer the question, “Is His Word still enough for His people to come together?” They stripped away the entertainment value and invited people to come simply to study God’s Word. They called it Secret Church. They set a date—on a Friday night—when they would gather from 6:00 in the evening until midnight, and for six hours they would do nothing but study God’s Word and pray. People came. A thousand people came the first time and it grew from that. Soon, they had to start taking reservations because the church was packed full. Secret Church now draws tens of thousands of people via simulcast in over 50 countries around the world—with no entertainment, no bells and whistles or smoke machines.
Why do they come? Platt explained in an interview: “People are hungry for the Word. There’s really nothing special or creative about it. It’s just the study of the Word …. The Word itself does the work!”
People are hungry. They are hungry for a diet of substance, not candy. More of the Word. Deeper into the Word. Less of what Tozer called “religious toys and trifles.”
*Tozer quotes are taken from Tozer on Worship and Entertainment by James L. Synder.
AdvertisementsEssential Phone Will have an Unlockable Bootloader
There is a lot of hype surrounding Andy Rubin’s Essential Phone. The Essential Phone is priced among the upper echelon of smartphones. It’s in the same tier as the Samsung Galaxy S8/S8+, Xiaomi Mi 6, or the Xperia XZ Premium. The Snapdragon 835 SoC or its 128 GBs of internal storage aren’t what make this phone unique — its modularity does.
The Essential Phone is one of a few devices that can be enhanced with modules. In fact, the pre-order version will ship with a 360° camera (if you want to pay an $50 extra, of course).
While we have a lot of information about the device’s hardware, we don’t learn all that much about its software. Essential’s founder, Andy Rubin, is one of the original minds behind the Android OS. He was one of the co-founders of the small company working on Android before it was acquired by Google almost a decade ago. Android started as a completely open-source project that has since evolved into the most popular mobile OS in the world. Would Rubin’s return to Android be marked by the openness that the first Google smartphones were known for?
A few days ago, the Essential team answered a question asked by an inquiring user about the status of the phone’s bootloader.
Hey there Ruvort, the Essential Phone will have an unlockable bootloader. — Essential (@essential) June 1, 2017
The Essential Phone will have an unlockable bootloader. Whether or not the phone will be unlockable like Nexus/Pixel/OnePlus devices through a single fastboot command, or unlockable through an online tool, has yet to be seen. Having an unlocked bootloader is the first step to building a healthy developer community. It opens a whole new way of customization by giving users a chance to flash custom ROMs, kernels, recoveries etc.
However, an unlocked bootloader isn’t enough to ensure adequate custom software support. We also need the kernel source to be released in a timely manner as well as support for any proprietary hardware components to function properly.
What can Essential do to bolster development? They can follow Sony’s approach and release the Apache-licensed sources to foster developer relations. They could also follow the lead of OnePlus and just release the binary blobs for some proprietary components, just as OnePlus did for Dash Charge to work on custom ROMs.
We can’t wait to finally get our hands on the Essential Phone. Although some users are skeptical of the phone’s front-facing camera placement and the lack of a headphone jack, the phone seems to be a great start for a start-up.THE leader of Britain First has said the far-right group has registered as a political party in Northern Ireland and intends to run candidates.
Paul Golding, who had led the British ultranationalist organisation since 2014, made the revelation at a ‘Northern Ireland Against Terrorism’ rally in Belfast on August 6.
Speaking outside Belfast City Hall to a 50-strong crowd of far-right supporters, Mr Golding said Britain First will be standing candidates for upcoming elections.
"In about five weeks' time we are going to hold a massive, full-on Britain First rally outside City Hall,” Mr Golding told The Belfast Telegraph.
"It will be much more organised and we will put a lot more effort into getting people along, and I think we will have a really good turnout at that.
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"The theme will basically be Britain First coming to Northern Ireland, and it will be to gain more support.
"We are set up as a formal political party now in Northern Ireland, so we are going to be standing candidates for upcoming elections.”
He added: “You will absolutely see a Britain First candidate in the next Northern Ireland election."
When you learn that Britain First confirm they are registering as a party in Northern Ireland and hope to elect Councillors, MLAs and MPs. pic.twitter.com/CRvOQeEpwh — Rachel Morgan (@RachelMorganMFL) August 6, 2017
It's a week of launches: Amazon Prime is coming to Ireland and Britain First is coming to Northern Ireland. — Johnathan Randall (@MrJRan) August 7, 2017
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What are Britain First doing in Northern Ireland? I thought they were all about Britain. — cólz (@colz) August 6, 2017
The ‘Belfast Says No To Fascism’ group have said they will oppose Britain First every step of the way and will hold a counter rally when the group returns to the streets of Belfast in September.
"If Paul Golding wants to hold another rally we will bring thousands of people on to the streets. We will show them what the anti-fascist movement is,” they said.
"As far as running candidates in local elections goes, the far-right have attempted that in Northern Ireland before and got absolutely nowhere.
They added: “They will be rejected completely by loyalists and republicans and by everyone else, and rightly so.”
Britain First was founded in 2011 by former members of the controversial British National Party (BNP).
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Its leader Paul Golding was convicted in 2015 of harassing a Muslim woman at her home.
He has also been found guilty of wearing a political uniform, an offence under the Public Order Act 1936.
He was then jailed in 2016 for eight weeks for breaching a High Court ban on him entering any mosque in England and Wales.ASP.NET vNext is a lean and composable framework for building web and cloud applications. ASP.NET vNext is fully open source and available on GitHub. ASP.NET vNext is currently in preview, and in this talk Fowler and Edwards will put it all into Context. vNext apps can use a cloud-optimized subset of the.NET framework. This subset of the framework is about 11 megabytes in size compared to 200 megabytes for the full framework, and is composed of a collection of NuGet packages. What does that mean for compatibility? When would you choose vNext and when would you not? You don't have to use Visual Studio to develop ASP.NET vNext applications. You can develop and run vNext on platforms that Visual Studio doesn't run on. But Visual Studio provides the best development experience, and we'll cover ASP.NET vNext both inside and outside the IDE.The vibrancy of London’s downtown and future of the city is on us. It’s no one else’s job. Rather than complain or pass the buck, let’s consider our advantage. Everyone seems to get defensive when our neighbour to the east, Kitchener, is discussed as a city that is successfully transitioning from a rust belt to an innovation centre.
Kitchener shares many parallels with London. It was also traditionally a manufacturing town. Its transformation was launched with a call to action in 1995 from the then Mayor’s Task Force when the recession started to decimate the manufacturing companies that were major employers in the city.
Sound familiar? Kitchener went through the same loss of manufacturing jobs that London has experienced and, because of this, in 1971, the economic balance began to tilt toward Waterloo. Then the Ontario government created one city out of Galt, Hespeler and Preston. The new city of Cambridge was bigger than Waterloo and became a third loud voice in regional politics.
Waterloo, Kitchener and Cambridge retained separate civic governments, while a regional government made up of the mayors of the cities and of rural townships, along with elected representatives, took on more functions. What a mess.
The so-called Tri Cities of Kitchener, Waterloo and Cambridge have three regional governments who are often at odds with each other on strategic direction.
Waterloo branded itself a university town and a high-tech centre.
Kitchener, by comparison at the time, was known for its crumbling industrial infrastructure. Cambridge was the new kid.
Just as London has opened a Fanshawe campus downtown, Kitchener opened the Laurier Faculty of Social Work in a deserted high school. They went further, convincing the University of Waterloo to establish a School of Pharmacy. They then got McMaster University to open a satellite of its medical school in the city. This spun off private investment and development. People moved downtown to live. Restaurants opened. Businesses thrived.
This month, the Downtown London Business Association asked the city for $540,000 of taxpayer money to offset the total cost of hiring a consulting firm that would help bring new business into the area.
LiveWorkLearnPlay is an international real estate development and advisory firm, dedicated to creating iconic and thriving mixeduse neighborhoods. Downtown London would have hired LiveWorkLearnPlay for $1.98-million to run a four-year targeted campaign.
The business association had agreed to pay $1.4-million of the hefty price tag.
Despite compromises put forth all alternatives options lost. Many councillors voiced concerns about spending more money to revamp the downtown.
When we look east, the City of Kitchener’s Report, which looks back on the effectiveness of the 1995 task force and the strategy that emerged, says, "Based on detailed analysis, city staff have concluded that without financial incentives, most major redevelopment projects would not be financially feasible to build. Thus, without these incentives, very little intensification would occur."
We are dithering on the important stuff. There are lessons to be learned from our neighbour to the East.
It would seem that those businesses have put their money where their mouths are and voted. But, the city’s attention is not downtown this week. Where is the relentless innovation we desperately need downtown? Masonville Place. The owner of Masonville is Cadillac Fairview Corp. Ltd. They run profitable and thriving businesses and perhaps said it best: "What it takes is relentless investment. You have to create modern, compelling retail spaces," said Finley McEwen, a Cadillac Fairview senior vice-president. I couldn’t have said it better myself, too bad it’s about a suburban mall and not all the badly needed downtown infrastructure.
Eric Vardon is president and chief executive of Arcane in London.(Health.com) -- Most of us already know that eating less and moving more are the keys to dropping extra pounds. But if you're already doing everything "right" and can't seem to lose weight -- or are even gaining it -- you may have a hidden health condition that's sabotaging your efforts. And the symptoms may be so subtle that even your doctor can miss them. Here, some possible weight-loss blockers -- and how to get the help you need.
A Sluggish Thyroid
Your thyroid gland makes hormones that regulate the way your body uses energy. An underactive thyroid (hypothyroidism) disrupts your metabolism, as well as many other aspects of your health. Some estimate that as many as 10 percent of adults have hypothyroidism, which is more common in women and is most often diagnosed in the 40s and 50s.
Could this be you? Besides weight gain or an inability to lose weight, you may notice fatigue, hair loss, dry skin, joint pain and muscle weakness, heavy periods, increased sensitivity to cold, even depression. Many people with low-grade hypothyroidism just feel "off," with no obvious signs of being truly sick.
How to get tested: Ask your internist to run a TSH (thyroid-stimulating hormone) screening. In general, the higher your TSH level, the slower your thyroid is. "While traditional 'normal' values are between.45 and 4.5, if your level is above 2, you might still struggle to lose weight," explains Dr. Jamie Kane, M.D., medical director of Park Avenue Medical Weight and Wellness in New York City. Your doctor may also want to check your levels of T-3 and T-4, the two main thyroid hormones. But hypothyroidism isn't always a straight numbers game; more and more doctors are now treating the symptoms, not just the blood-test results. "If a patient isn't feeling well, it's often because her thyroid isn't functioning as well as it should for her body," says Dr. Erika Schwartz, M.D., an internist in New York City.
How it's treated: Your doc will usually start by prescribing a low-dose T-4 thyroid hormone like Synthroid. If your symptoms don't improve, discuss upping your dosage or switching to a combination of T-3 and T-4.
Health.com: 25 diet-busting foods you should never eat
Out-of-Whack Hormones
As many as 1 in 10 women of childbearing age have polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), a condition in which a woman's ovaries produce an excess of male hormones. In addition to causing ovulation problems and infertility, PCOS may go hand-in-hand with insulin resistance, a glitch in the way your body processes blood sugar, which is often associated with excess fat storage, especially around the waist. Left untreated, insulin resistance can lead to type 2 diabetes.
Could this be you? You may have irregular periods, excess facial and body hair, acne, some male pattern balding, and trouble getting pregnant, along with unexplained weight gain (though not everyone with PCOS has weight issues).
Health.com: How carbs can help you lose weight
How to get tested: Your gynecologist or internist can test your levels of sex hormones for an imbalance of testosterone, progesterone, and estrogen, says Dr. David Katz, M.D., director of the Yale Prevention Research Center. She may then test your blood sugar and insulin levels or perform an ultrasound to check for cysts on your ovaries.
How it's treated: Lifestyle changes are usually the first step. If you're already eating a healthy diet and exercising regularly, you may have to kick it up another notch to see results. If you have insulin resistance, Katz says, you'll also want to cut out refined carbs and added sugars. If you've made these changes and still don't notice a difference, your doc may prescribe a drug called metformin, which is used to treat insulin resistance as well as assist with ovulation (if you're trying to get pregnant).
Health.com: America's healthiest superfoods for women
Trouble-Making Foods
Most people know if they're allergic to certain foods like nuts or shellfish, but many aren't aware of food intolerances. While a true food allergy results when your immune system mistakenly identifies a food as harmful and mounts an immediate response, food intolerances can have a variety of causes, including lack of a certain digestive enzyme (as with lactose intolerance) or sensitivity to food additives, and tend to manifest over time, says Dr. Elizabeth W. Boham, M.D., R.D., a family practitioner at The UltraWellness Center in Lenox, Massachusetts. Eating a "trouble food" -- the most common being dairy, gluten, eggs, soy, corn and nuts -- can lead to bloating and water-weight gain, among other symptoms. Experts estimate that food intolerances affect as many as 1 in 10 people.
Could this be you? You may regularly have bloating, gas, diarrhea, and constipation -- as well as seemingly unrelated symptoms like mild asthma, eczema, headaches, muscle and joint pain, and fatigue.
Health.com: The 50 fattiest foods in the states
How to get tested: An internist or gastroenterologist can help you diagnose the problem, but you can begin to figure it out for yourself through an elimination diet. Boham suggests that you start by removing gluten and dairy (these are the biggest culprits) from your diet for two to three weeks. If you don't notice a difference, also eliminate eggs, corn, soy, and nuts, and consider nixing additives such as food coloring and preservatives. After a few weeks, slowly reintroduce the possible culprits, one at a time, noting any reactions.
How it's treated: If the reaction is severe, you'll need to cut the offending food from your diet. For mild reactions, try a daily probiotic supplement, which restores the good bacteria in your gut necessary for digestion and can help prevent bloating and water weight gain. Boham recommends one with at least 10 billion live bacteria per pill.
Pills That Pack on Pounds
Weight gain can be an unwelcome side effect of some drugs, including antidepressants, steroids, and, more rarely, birth-control pills (due to a temporary increase in water retention).
Health.com: What to do when the drugs you need also put on the pounds
Could this be you? You may notice weight gain within a few weeks of starting a new medication, though it could take several months before you see any effects, Kane says.
How to get tested: No special test is needed; you know if you're gaining weight.
How it's treated: Talk to your doctor, who may be able to prescribe an alternative. In the case of anti-depressants, bupropion has been shown to cause less weight gain and possibly even lead to weight loss. With birth control pills, switching to a version with a lower dose of hormones might minimize weight gain. But remember, treating the condition you're taking the drug for is your biggest priority, so you should never go off any meds on your own.
Copyright Health Magazine 2011Tennessee guard Trae Golden smiles during the second half of the Volunteers' game against the Missouri Tigers on Saturday. Tennessee won 64-62. (Photo: Randy Sartin, USA TODAY Sports) Story Highlights Bubble teams Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Arkansas and Ole Miss all won Saturday
Virginia has lost two games in a row and a win against Maryland is crucial
Borderline team Belmont survived overtime to outlast Murray State in the Ohio Valley final
Days until Selection Sunday: 7
The big picture:
For about a week, no one from the SEC's muddled pack of borderline teams looked like it wanted to reach the NCAA tournament.
On Saturday? All of them had a change of heart.
HIGHLIGHTS: How the top 25 teams fared Saturday
KENTUCKY: NCAA committee 'better let us in'
The highest-profile victory of the lot belonged to Kentucky, and understandably so. The Wildcats turned around less than 48 hours after their most puzzling loss of the season (at Georgia) and collected their most prized triumph (at home against Florida).
But it wasn't just John Calipari's crew.
Tennessee? It dusted off Missouri.
Alabama? It needed a half-court buzzer-beater, but still defeated Georgia in Tuscaloosa.
CLOSE Alabama junior guard Trevor Releford's 50-foot shot at the buzzer gave the Crimson Tide a thrilling 61-58 SEC win against Georgia on Senior Day at Coleman Coliseum.
Long shot Arkansas? The Razorbacks beat Texas A&M at home, because they beat everybody (well, except Syracuse) at home.
And Ole Miss? The Rebels had to go on the road, but they won, too, knocking off Louisiana State.
So the SEC? Yes, it's still chaotic. But all those borderline teams that have hovered around the edge of the field are still alive entering the conference tournament in Nashville.
Words that speak volume:
"I think the job is done. Now the next phase for us is to go try and compete in a tough SEC tournament in Nashville. As far as the NCAA tournament is concerned, I feel like the work is done. I think that just solidifies it, when you look at the résumés of the other teams and look at the things we've done to put ourselves in position." — Tennessee coach Cuonzo Martin following the Vols' victory over Missouri.
Hot seat: Virginia
The Cavaliers have dropped two consecutive games, and two games in a row against teams they shouldn't have lost to.
It gets Maryland at home on Sunday, and while falling to the Terrapins wouldn't be a giant black mark, it would place the Cavaliers in a tenuous position entering the ACC tournament.
A loss would give Virginia the No. 5 seed in the league tournament, which sets up a won't-do-anything-to-help date with either Virginia Tech or Wake Forest. Then would come a likely must-win against N.C. State to harbor serious postseason hopes.
A win means the Cavaliers are the No. 4 seed, that they won't deal with the last-place team on Thursday and they might have at least a little wiggle room in Greensboro.
Or not. Virginia (20-10) possesses the quirkiest of resumes, and there's no telling just how it will be treated --- unless it happens to rip off a long winning streak or just lose out.
AUTOMATIC BIDS: NCAA TOURNAMENT TEAMS
Nightly winners:
Teams that took a step forward, however modest, on Saturday...
Belmont: The Bruins needed overtime to outlast Murray State in the Ohio Valley final, but they managed to avoid fretting for a week about their at-large fate.
Cincinnati: The Bearcats probably weren't in any serious danger, but a loss to South Florida could have made things interesting entering the Big East tournament. Cincinnati isn't playing particularly well, but it should make the tournament.
Iowa State: The Cyclones needed to follow up their victory over Oklahoma State with a road triumph at West Virginia, and earned it in circuitous fashion. Iowa State built a 25-point lead, then let most of it get away before fending off the Mountaineers. Barring bid thieves, Iowa State should be in decent shape, but a Big 12 quarterfinal victory wouldn't hurt.
Saint Mary's: The Gaels weren't great, needing overtime to dispatch San Diego in the West Coast semifinals. But they avoided the sort of crushing loss that would have inflicted serious damage on their NCAA hopes.
Nightly losers:
Teams that took a step back Saturday...
Louisiana Tech: The Bulldogs' at-large hopes effectively fell apart over a three-day stretch in the Mountain time zone. Louisiana Tech followed up a loss to New Mexico State with a 78-54 stumble at Denver to fall into a tie for the Western Athletic Conference lead. The Bulldogs' path to the NCAA tournament is now three wins in the conference tournament.
Princeton: A repeat team from Friday's losers, and for good cause. The Tigers led the Ivy League entering the weekend. Then they lost to Yale. Then they lost to Brown. And just like that, Princeton will finish second in the Ivy, regardless of how this week's game against Penn goes.
Syracuse: Was it only a few weeks ago that the Orange seemed like a viable contender for a No. 1 seed? With four losses in five games and a 39-point outing against Georgetown that ranks as the lowest-scoring performance in Jim Boeheim's lengthy tenure, Syracuse is reeling at the wrong time.
Résumé worth dissecting: Temple
The Owls have won seven of eight, which has done plenty to lift them above a scrum of teams that seems to lose at least once on a weekly basis. Temple isn't comfortably inside the field, but the Saint Louis triumph looks better by the day. Fran Dunphy's team is in solid shape to get back to the NCAA tournament, and even an inexplicable loss in the early rounds of the A-10 tournament might not be enough to keep the Owls out.
NIT-bound (unless it wins its conference tournament): Arizona State
It's not fair at this point to pin the Sun Devils' woes solely on a poor nonconference strength of schedule.
That was going to be an issue for Herb Sendek's team, but no matter. Arizona State (20-11) has dropped four consecutive games and six of eight overall down the stretch to play its way right out of NCAA tournament contention.
The sweep of Colorado is nice and so is a victory over UCLA, but the Sun Devils lost to DePaul (at home!) and Utah and have done nothing to help themselves in recent weeks. They'll need to win out in the Pac-12 tournament, an unlikely proposition for a team that's won just three games since the start of February.
On deck:
Virginia Commonwealth at Temple (Noon ET, CBS): The Owls are in solid shape for an at-large bid as it is, but a victory over the visiting conference co-leader should eliminate even the slightest remaining doubt. Illinois at Ohio State (12:30 p.m. ET, ESPN): Can the Buckeyes continue their surge after knocking off Indiana on the road last week? Creighton vs. Wichita State (2 p.m. ET, CBS): There will be no bid-snatching out of the Missouri Valley title game, just a really good game between two strong programs. It could also be Creighton's Valley swan song if it winds up joining the Catholic Seven in the revamped and basketball-centric Big East. Indiana at Michigan (4 p.m. ET, CBS): The Hoosiers look to avoid consecutive setbacks for the first time all season, while Michigan hopes to finish off a perfect record in Crisler Arena for the season. Maryland at Virginia (6 p.m. ET, ESPNU): A pair of ACC bubblers close out the regular season in Charlottesville. Regardless of the outcome, both need a conference tournament push of some kind to reach the NCAA tournament.
AQ IQ: The quick need-to-know on automatic qualifying bid teams that clinched spots in the field of 68 on Saturday
Belmont: The Bruins did the same thing in their first year in the Ohio Valley that they did in their last two in the Atlantic Sun: Win a conference tournament. Coach Rick Byrd has Belmont in the NCAA tournament for the sixth time in eight years; in five previous appearances (all one-and-dones), the Bruins have played one single-digit game (a 71-70 loss to Duke in 2008). This time, though, Belmont has a serious shot at a No. 12 seed.
Florida Gulf Coast: The Eagles are in their second year as a program eligible for the NCAA tournament. They are only in their 11th season as a program, period. Yet they ripped host Mercer to collect the Atlantic Sun title. Sure, the school's name makes it sound like a community college, but second-year coach Andy Enfield has done a stellar job; just ask Miami, which lost to the Eagles in November.
Harvard: The Crimson had played in one NCAA tournament (1946) before last season. Now, they're back-to-back Ivy League champs despite an academic scandal that led to the suspension of two senior co-captains well before the season.
Here's another wild thought: The six Ivies outside of Penn and Princeton combined for three NCAA appearances between 1963 and 2007. They (or, more specifically, Cornell and Harvard) have managed five NCAA bids in the last six years.
Stat of the day: Although it lost to Oklahoma State, Kansas State still managed to secure a share of its first regular season conference crown since 1977 when Kansas fell at Baylor. Not a bad first year for coach Bruce Weber, who was fired at Illinois after last season.
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About our bracketologist: Patrick Stevens is USA TODAY Sports' bracket/bubble specialist for the 2013 NCAA tournament. He has covered college sports and projected the NCAA tournament field for more than a decade for various publications, including The Washington Times. Don't like his projections? Tweet him @D1scourse.
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PHOTOS: ALL OF SATURDAY'S COLLEGE HOOPS ACTIONGroovy: Scientists Say They've Found The First Fluorescent Frog
Enlarge this image toggle caption Julián Faivovich and Carlos Taboada (Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales "Bernardino Rivadavia"—CONICET) Julián Faivovich and Carlos Taboada (Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales "Bernardino Rivadavia"—CONICET)
This frog really lights up a room.
The South American polka dot tree frog initially appears unremarkable. But researchers in Argentina recently got a huge surprise when they shone an ultraviolet light on it, revealing that the creature is actually fluorescent and glows bright blue-green.
The fluorescence is "unprecedented" in amphibians, the researchers said in a recent paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It means that "short-wavelength electromagnetic radiation is absorbed and then reemitted at longer wavelength."
The phenomenon had previously been documented primarily in certain fishes and sea turtles, though not in amphibians. And among land-dwelling vertebrates, according to the scientists, it had been spotted in parrots.
The frog also had a second surprise for the scientists, as co-author Norberto Peporine Lopes, a chemist at the University of Sao Paulo, tells The Two-Way. The chemical compounds causing the frog to glow are "amazing and it's a new chemistry," he says.
"Three molecules — hyloin-L1, hyloin-L2 and hyloin-G1 — in the animals' lymph tissue, skin and glandular secretions were responsible for the green fluorescence," according to an article in Nature. "The molecules contain a ring structure and a chain of hydrocarbons, and are unique among known fluorescent molecules in animals."
These frogs, Hypsiboas punctatus, emit a significant amount of light. The scientists say the fluorescence "contributes 18-29% of the total emerging light under twilight and nocturnal scenarios, largely enhancing brightness of the individuals and matching the sensitivity of night vision in amphibians."
Or as the Nature article puts it, "about 18% as much visible light as a full Moon."
The frogs might use the fluorescence for communication, Lopes says, particularly to attract a mate.
In addition to sound and smell, this would allow a male to clearly signal his location to a female frog. "It's to coordinate the attraction," he says, "because it's specific for the frog eyes."
And while further study is required on the visual perception of this species of tree frog, Lopes says he suspects the light emitted is particularly exciting to the frog's eyes. Before this discovery, fluorescence was considered "irrelevant" to frog visual perception on land, according to the paper.
Lopes says there are other frogs with similar body structures and transparent skin, and that this discovery suggests fluorescence is likely more common than scientists previously thought. They're now researching other possible candidates, he says.
Julián Faivovich, a herpetologist at the University of Buenos Aires, tells Nature he wants other researchers to pitch in: "I'm really hoping that other colleagues will be very interested in this phenomenon, and they will start carrying a UV flashlight to the field."Details Published on Tuesday, 08 July 2014 17:46
If open-carry (“OC”) is not yet in the morgue, it certainly is in the ICU on life-support. Things were looking much better for OC supporters in the 2015 Texas Legislative Session. The NRA and TSRA have been working on OC since the end of the 2013 legislative session and they had obtained preliminary commitments to file and work bills in the House and Senate. Both Greg Abbott and Wendy Davis came out in support of OC, but only Greg Abbott really meant what he said. Still, it was interesting that the Democrat candidate for the Governor’s mansion felt the need to at least claim she supported OC.
All this changed when groups supporting OC launched a campaign of demonstrations that has generated a huge political backlash. These demonstrations involve carrying long guns into stores and other private property. Some demonstrations are well-planned with prior notice to property owners and the local police or sheriff’s department, but many are impromptu with no prior notice. Still others are nothing more than one or two people choosing to carry their AR-15s into Wal-Mart and taking photos.
At best, the major media are typically lukewarm to Second Amendment issues and they are more often openly hostile to gun rights. The in-your-face style of OC demonstrations gave TV reporters and their cameramen an unprecedented opportunity to take photos and videos of people with AR-15’s and other rifles and shotguns walking into Wal-Mart, Home Depot and other stores. Of course, they then talked to anyone they could find who would express fear and anguish at having their children subjected to such dangerous conduct. Never mind that there was no danger, no one was injured and no one lost any sleep that night. The media successfully attacked the concept of OC and they were able to convince enough Texans that the in-your-face types represented the majority of Texas gun owners that OC is far less likely to pass in 2015.
One of the larger organizations supporting OC purported to abandon the tactics of carrying rifles and shotguns in demonstrations and trips to the grocery store, but other organizations and individuals continue to do so. In spite of calls by experienced legislative advocates, OC demonstrations continue in one form or another, including the carrying of black powder revolvers made prior to 1899 or replicas thereof. While this approach doesn’t seem to have generated the backlash caused by those carrying long guns, it nevertheless keeps the issue on TV news and this works to the detriment of OC.
A question often asked is “can OC still pass?” The answer is an unequivocal “who knows?” Based upon calls and emails to Senators and House Members already made by irate constituents, OC may well be dead on arrival in Austin come January 2015. If there is any chance of passing OC, then it will depend upon OC supporters and groups standing down and being as quiet as proverbial church mice so that the political dust can settle. If their prior responses to calls for a change in tactics is any indication, then there likely will not be a period of calm before the Legislature convenes in January, 2015.Grant Balfour won't be an Oriole this season, that much is certain, or at least as certain as one can be about statements from Orioles Executive Vice President Dan Duquette.
And upon a few minutes of reflection after laughing at the reaction of Grant Balfour ("You just gave up your best chance for winning!" or words to that effect), the next name that some O's fans recalled was that of Aaron Sele. And then they start cursing the "meddling" of Orioles majority owner Peter Angelos.
You may not remember Aaron Sele, but for a three-year stretch from 1998-2000, he was a pretty good pitcher. In the days before baseball-reference.com and easy access to advanced metrics, Aaron Sele looked pretty good on the back of a baseball card. He had |
Akilah (@craziforlife) August 14, 2016
Despite being a registered Democrat in a progressive state, Sheriff Clarke is known as a controversial outspoken black conservative. He spoke at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in July, and is a support the GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump.
He is viewed as an “iconoclastic sheriff” along with former Sheriff Richard Mark and Joe Arpaio in Arizona.
In 2013 Clarke ran a series of public radio ads that said citizens could no longer rely on the police for timely protection and should arm themselves which was described as irresponsible.
He's no #libertarian, but #Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke @SheriffClarke has the discipline, presence, intelligence that make a superstar. — Ilana Mercer (@IlanaMercer) August 14, 2016
“I am furious that the progressive left has put my citizens in harm’s way and that I had to send my officers into cauldrons of anarchy and hatred that were created by the left,” Sheriff Clarke wrote. “As an elected public servant, I am livid that Milwaukee’s pathetic, kowtowing city officials and alderman take this opportunity to abandon their citizens and preen before the Black Lives Matter-enabling media,” he wrote.
Sure let's blame the victim #Milwaukeesheriff — BigThick (@Honey_suckle175) August 14, 2016
Clarke is a frequent critics of the Black Lives Matter movement referring to it as Black Lie Matter and described it as a hate group. Clarke’s stance on the movement has be criticized by the Milwaukee chapter of the NAACP and other activists.
“The Milwaukee riots should be the last time the policies of liberal Democrats are held up as anything other than misery-inducing, divisive, exploitive and racist manipulation of the urban populations. Unfortunately, they won’t,” he wroteBarnes & Noble’s new Nook Glowlight Plus (yes, there is a new one!) has the same high-resolution display as the Kindle Paperwhite. Its battery lasts just as long. It weighs a little less, it costs a little more. Both hold more books than you could ever read. On paper, they’re fairly similar. In the tub or at the beach, they’re a world apart.
That’s because the new Nook Glowlight Plus is water-resistant. Specifically, it’s IP67 certified, which means that it should be able to survive up to 30 minutes of fresh water submersion down to a meter. It’s also not the first waterproof flagship ereader; that distinction goes to Kobo’s Aura H20, released last fall, which received the same certification.
Waterproofing may not be enough to convince you to buy a Glowlight Plus; that depends on where you read, how clumsy you are, and how the device actually performs. There’s no downside to it, though. It’s a built-in, invisible layer protection, whether you ever actually use it or not. To the extent that there’s an ereader arms race, water-resistance is the heaviest artillery since built-in front-lighting. A feature which, incidentally, Barnes & Noble beat Amazon to as well, with 2012’s Simple Touch with GlowLight.
“As we were thinking about continuing the same offering to our customer base, part of the process has been to reach out to the customers,” says Barnes & Noble Chief Digital Officer Fred Argir. “Customers have given us great feedback; they said they want a waterproof device.”
And not just Nook customers. There’s enough demand for water-resistant Kindles that you can pay $100 to WaterFi, or a company like it, Paperwhite, for hydrophobic aftermarket embellishments. It’s not just ereaders either; we’re at a point where even the iPhone is more waterproof than a Kindle.
BARNES & NOBLE
Amazon declined to comment on if and when a waterproof Kindle might be coming, but it doesn’t seem likely to arrive any time soon. The Paperwhite just got a refresh in June. There are rumors of an update to the high-end Voyage coming in November, but they aren’t substantiated, and even if they were, they don’t include water-resistance. Hopes for a more durable Kindle may be sunk, at least until next year.
That gives the Nook Glowlight Plus an important window as the most affordable water-resistant ereader, one that doesn’t sacrifice pixel density or design to achieve those ends.
How long that window remains open depends as much on Amazon’s response as it does the ereader industry generally. Last year, Forrester Research projected sales to fall to 7 million per year by 2017, a significant drop from the 25 million sold in 2012. That’s partly because ereaders are durable; a Kindle or Nook you bought three years ago likely works perfectly well today. But it’s also because tablets and large smartphones are obviating the need for a dedicated reading device at all. Not to mention that, as The New York Times notes, physical books are back into fashion.
Both Amazon and Barnes & Noble sell tablets and physical books in addition to ereaders; they’ll still be able to sling content, to varying degrees of success, regardless of platform. But while the ereader market may be shrinking, it still serves millions of people. It’s a category that deserves, and needs, innovation. Barnes & Noble waited two years after the previous Glowlight to deliver just that. Here's hoping it won’t take Amazon as long to respond in kind.With Serbs increasingly skeptical about the benefits of joining the EU and NATO, Belgrade is seeking closer ties with China. Beijing, for its part, needs a strong Serbia as a gateway to Europe for its Silk Road project, experts told Sputnik ahead of Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic’s visit to China.
© Sputnik / Maksim Bogovid Serbia 'Needs' Russia and China to Help Belgrade Cement Its Neutrality
During Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Belgrade in June 2016, the two countries signed a raft of economic cooperation deals, and experts believe that more such accords could be inked during the Serbian president’s current visit to Beijing.
“China is encouraging the integration processes going on in the world as it tries to strengthen its foothold in Eurasia, and even small and financially insignificant countries like Serbia are seen by Beijing as a potential element of its Great Silk Road economic project,” Alexander Larin, an expert at the Institute of the Far East in Moscow, told Sputnik China.
In 2015, China and Serbia signed a memorandum on the joint construction of an overland and maritime Silk Road, and President Nikolic is expected to reaffirm Belgrade’s decision to join the ambitious project.
“Serbia is China’s first strategic partner in Central and Eastern Europe and the centerpiece of Beijing’s infrastructural investments in the region,” Larin added.
Meanwhile, President Xi’s ambitious plan for infrastructural modernization in the very heart of Europe as part of the New Silk Road project is hitting a snag.
The much-anticipated Belgrade to Budapest high-speed railway is being probed by Brussels for potential infringements of the European Union’s requirement that public tenders are offered for such major infrastructure projects.
© AP Photo / Ambivalent No Longer: Serbia Wants Closer Partnership With Russia
In 2013, China, Serbia and Hungary signed an agreement to build a 350 kilometer high-speed rail line that would go from Belgrade to Budapest, the first stage of a project that would ultimately connect the China-run Piraeus port in Greece with the heart of Europe.
The EU probe is mainly directed at Hungary, which is a full-fledged EU member, rather than Serbia, whose “prospective member” status shields it from all of the EU’s regulations, Forbes wrote.
Georgy Engelgard, an expert at the Institute of Slavic Studies in Moscow, believes that the issue will be discussed during the Beijing talks.
“Chinese investments play a significant role in the economic life of Serbia and the other Balkan states. Brussels is making every effort to check China’s economic expansion and is bringing strong pressure to bear on Belgrade,” Engelgard told Sputnik China.
He added that China is viewed through the increasingly anti-US and anti-NATO Serbian perspective as a powerful friend and a kind of a counterbalance to EU domination.
In an interview with Sputnik, Ren Yuanzhe, an expert with the Diplomatic Academy of China, described Serbia as a driving force behind China’s current effort to bolster economic and political ties with Central and Eastern European countries.
“The countries of Central and Eastern Europe are seen by China as important cooperation partners both in the 16+1 format and as part of the ‘one Belt, one road’ concept. The two countries have no political, economic and security problems and China fully shares Belgrade’s position on Kosovo and other issues,” Ren said.
He added that President Nikolic’s current visit to China would give an additional boost to the economic cooperation agreements signed during President Xi Jinping’s visit to Belgrade in 2016.
“It will expand our strategic partnership as part of the 16+1 and the “one belt, one road” initiatives and set the stage for more mutually-beneficial cooperation between China and the Central and Eastern European countries,” Ren Yuanzhe emphasized.
Never miss a story again — sign up to our Telegram channel and we'll keep you up to speed!It's a sight familiar to every new mother – that slightly wobbly tummy and accompanying stretch marks.
While some are keen to hide the legacy of their pregnancy bump, however, mother of four Becky Vardy has proudly shown off her post-baby figure.
The wife of England footballer Jamie Vardy decided to pose for the pictures after being called ‘huge’ by Twitter trolls who targeted her after she gave birth. In Calvin Klein underwear, Mrs Vardy lifted up her three-month-old son Finley and said: ‘Women who’ve just given birth should not be made to feel ugly.
Becky Vardy with Finley: She criticised the pressure on mothers to regain their figure
‘I could have got really upset about the abuse but I have become pretty resilient over the years.
After having a baby your hormones are raging, the last thing you want to feel is pressurised and upset.’
Mrs Vardy, 34, who has had post-natal depression, told The Sun: ‘I think I look pretty good for a woman who gave birth in January and Jamie thinks so too.
'I’m proud of what my body has achieved. I carried all my children for nine months and my body changed constantly to provide for them.’
Mrs Vardy – who is also mother to Megan, 11, Taylor, six, and Sofia, two – said she was targeted when she left hospital in Leicester after giving birth to Finley.
Mrs Vardy said she was targeted when she left hospital in Leicester after giving birth to Finley
The mother-of-four pictured while pregnant with Finley in November 2016
She said: ‘People were on Twitter saying that my thighs were fat, saying they couldn’t believe Jamie was with me because I was so huge. I’d just given birth, I looked normal. And I have had lots of abuse since then.’
Some celebrities appear to slim down quickly after giving birth, but she is embracing her new shape. ‘I have a wobbly tummy, bigger legs, wrinkled skin and stretch marks, just like any woman does when she has a baby,’ she said.
‘There is so much unrealistic pressure on women to get their figures back overnight because so many women in the public eye seem to be able to do that.
Becky with her husband, Leicester and England football star, Jamie Vardy, left, and pictured last week, right
A pregnant Rebekah with Jamie at an awards show in December last year
‘I get annoyed when I hear celebrities say the weight just dropped off. Maybe for a tiny few it does, but for most of us it doesn’t.
‘You see stars with washboard stomachs just weeks after giving birth, you hear stories of women who have a caesarean and a tummy tuck at the same time. None of that is natural for most of us.
‘What is natural is doing what I do – wearing plenty of good make-up, a much bigger bra and a pair of Spanx.’
But she added: ‘Although I am in no rush, one day I would like to get back into my skinny jeans... without Spanx underneath.’Note to Jeff Fisher and select members of the football media: get over yourselves already.
Less than 24 hours after Fisher made his big decision last Friday afternoon to spurn the Miami Dolphins and take the St. Louis Rams' head-coaching position, a number of stories started popping up on the Internet, suggesting that the Dolphins were losers for once again failing to land the biggest head-coaching name on the market; losers for not giving in to Fisher's terrorist-like demands and granting him final say over all player personnel decisions; and losers for failing to be a more desirable destination than St. Louis. Adding insult to injury, a certain media outlet (heretofore known as the "Player Haters Ball") on Friday and Saturday featured several segments with under-qualified talking heads wondering why Dolphins owner Stephen Ross couldn't close the deal with Fisher.
Twelve months after Ross' failed campaign to hire Jim Harbaugh as head coach, Fisher's rejection of Miami basically put the Dolphins back in the role of NFL laughing stock--a franchise that is indeed fit for losers.
Except the Dolphins shouldn't be a laughing stock right now, and they certainly shouldn't be considered "losers" for balking at Fisher's steep demands. The way I see it, Jan. 13, 2012, will one day be looked at by Dolfans as the date when Ross finally removed his team from the path of mediocrity and committed to placing the Dolphins on the road toward becoming a successful franchise in-tune with the current pass-heavy state of the NFL. By ultimately refusing to give in to a coach who would've given the Dolphins the same things they've had for much of the post-Marino era (a conservative approach to play calling, an obnoxious mustache, etc.), Ross finally matched his actions with his rhetoric and showed that his chief priority isn't to reel in big coaching names and settle for whatever they accomplish, but to instead build a long-term winner and bring Lombardi Trophies to Miami.
Several stories published in the wake of Fisher's decision have consisted of some pretty strong myths and a lot of downright illogical reasoning. At this point, I'd like you to put on your beret (if you have one) and join me in going all Mythbusters on these shoddy columnists.
The Player Haters Ball on Friday pretty much teed off on Ross mere hours after Fisher's announcement, criticizing the Dolphins owner for "whiffing" on the coaching candidate who many (you know who you are) considered to be the best on the market. Jeff Fisher is the best available head coach? The guy who took over for fired Houston Oilers head coach Jack Pardee in 1994 and proceeded to spew out 16-and-a-half seasons of mind-numbingly-average football, including just six seasons with more than eight wins? That's your best coaching candidate... and we missed out on him?
Rats!
In all seriousness, "most well-known coach available" would've been a more accurate description of Fisher. The guy went 8-8 five times in Houston and Tennesse, and I guess I am just looking for a head coach who is more than just a slight improvement over the previous Dolphins coaches who brought Miami plenty of 6-10 and 7-9 seasons. And the Titans' drafts during the Fisher era were ultimately average, too, which brings me to my next point...
Myth No. 2: Stephen Ross should have given Fisher the power of final say over personnel decisions
It has been reported by several media outlets that Fisher, likely scarred from his time spent with Titans owner Bud Adams, wanted to have final say over all Dolphins personnel decisions (other reports suggest that Fisher simply wanted the power to veto general manager decisions). Worse yet, several pundits thought Ross actually made a mistake by not going over general manager Jeff Ireland's head and granting that level of power to Fisher (which would've resulted in Fisher essentially becoming Ireland's boss).
Um, what?
Final say over personnel matters? Our head coach would be making those decisions? No, thanks. That's the kind of power you give to Bill Belichick or Bill Cowher--guys who have proven time and time again that they have a strong understanding of front office structure and a keen eye for talent. Fisher, however, hasn't proven that he's a great talent evaluator, and it's generally a bad idea anyway to blend the coaching and front office factions in any particular regime unless you are absolutely positive a head coach can thrive in that dual-role position. And given Fisher's fondness for the "run now, ask questions later" style of offense, it's a big question mark as to whether or not he would've attempted to acquire the splash players that Dolphins fans are clamoring for right now (more on this in a moment). Consider this bullet dodged, Dolphins fans.
Anyone who disagrees with the sentiment that Fisher would've given Miami more of the same conservative and borderline generic play calling should probably consider this bit of news: The Fisher-led Rams are set to hire former New York Jets offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer. Get ready for The Greatest Show on Turf 2.0, Rams fans.
Anyway, if Fisher had wanted a legitimate say in personnel matters, perhaps that could've been negotiated. It's understandable that Fisher, coming off of his experience with Adams, didn't want to be on the outside looking in as he was while in Tennessee; however, the fact that he wanted control of the whole enchilada in Miami was an utter deal breaker. Credit Ross for not giving in to Fisher's demands on this one.
Also, when did Fisher suddenly become the next Ozzie Newsome?
Myth No. 3: The Rams' roster is superior to the Dolphins'
In what alternate universe is this claim actually true? A gun-shy quarterback, relic backfield, underachiever offensive line, wasteland receiver corps and horrific defense (led by defensive end Chris Long, middle linebacker James Laurinaitis and... well, just those two guys) surely trumps a Dolphins squad that has a capable veteran quarterback, loaded backfield, strong offensive line (with the exception of Marc Colombo, of course), physical receivers corps and a young, hot-shot defense. One article even stated that the Rams are in a better position because they have Rodger Saffold at left tackle, while the Dolphins have Jake Long, who has been battling injuries as of late. Such a great point. That's why Saffold will likely be at right tackle next season after the Rams draft a new blindside protector.Give me a wheelchair-ridden Jake Long over just about any left tackle in the NFL.
Then there's the Dolphins' quarterback issue, which was raised several times by the media during Fisher Watch 2012. Look, Sam Bradford is a gifted signal caller with tons of promise, but he was torn to bits early and often during the 2011 season... to the point where he played like he wanted no part of St. Louis' offense. Gone were the stunning accuracy and pocket poise that Bradford put on display during his 2010 rookie season, and there's no telling when his swagger will return. Bradford's a better option than Dolphins quarterback Matt Moore, but he's not necessarily blowing away the Miami signal caller at this point.
Sure, Fisher could quickly turn the Rams around with some key acquisitions, but that team went 2-14 for a reason: they're terrible. Contrast their situation with the Dolphins, who might've been a 10-6 team this year had they not shlubbed their way through the lockout last summer, and it's clear that the Dolphins, not the Rams, are the team with plenty of upside.
What's next for the Dolphins?
As fate would have it, the playoff teams currently employing Dolphins-approved coaching candidates (New Orleans, Green Bay and Denver) all lost this weekend, which means Ross and Co. can immediately move on from the Fisher fiasco and continue looking for the head-coaching candidate who is the best fit in Miami. Chicago Bears special teams coach Dave Toub, Green Bay Packers offensive coordinator Joe Philbin and Cincinnati Bengals defensive coordinator Mike Zimmer have all interviewed for the Dolphins position, and it's likely that Denver Broncos offensive coordinator Mike McCoy and New Orleans Saints offensive coordinator Pete Carmichael Jr. will join that list sometime this week. Names such as Carolina Panthers offensive coordinator Rob Chudzinski and Green Bay assistant coach Winston Moss have also been tossed around.
Regardless of who the Dolphins choose as head coach, it's a safe bet that the team won't have to wait two weeks to receive confirmation from that candidate.
--------------------------------------Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) board chief Pahlaj Nihalani says disclaimers aren't enough for scenes showing actors smoking or drinking, and he wants to scrap them away unless there's "strong provocation" for the sequence.
"Merely putting a ticker warning at some remote corner of the screen, whenever there is smoking or drinking shown, is not enough anymore. We feel the superstars who are followed by millions and who set an example in societal behaviour must not be shown drinking or smoking on screen unless the provocation for doing so is really strong," Nihlani said.
Wonder what could be "provocation" for consuming alcohol or smoking -- perhaps alcohol-related images would be allowed in a film about Prohibition like Rahul Dholakia's "Raees"?
"A film where alcohol is essential would have to go with a Adults certificate," added Nihalani.
--IANS
skj/rb/vt
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)Nvidia recently held their earnings call (via KitGuru) and the CEO Jen Hsun talked a bit about the upcoming Pascal architecture. As expected however, he didn’t reveal any new detail except rehash what is already known. He did hint that further details about the product will be “coming soon” and he can’t wait to talk about them. Pascal generation of GPUs will mark an important shift in Nvidia GPUs, shifting from GDDR5 memory to HBM2 – resulting in a huge leap in bandwidth.
A slide from Nvidia’s press deck showing Pascal being roughly 10x faster than Maxwell. @Nvidia Public
Nvidia could reveal further information on Pascal GPUs sooner than expected – CEO Jen Hsun can’t wait to talk about them
Pascal GPUs are slated to be pretty damn amazing. They will feature 4X the mixed precision performance, 2X the performance per watt, 2.7X memory capacity & 3X the bandwidth of Maxwell. Considering the fact that Nvidia’s color compression technology is already phenomenal, I am excited to see what a Pascal GPU with the same tech and massive bandwidth can offer. The PCI-E bottleneck remains as always – but that is quickly becoming irrelevant as more of the work is handled on-gpu thanks to the autonomy granted to the Graphic Processor by low level APIs such as DiretX 12.
“I cannot wait to tell you about the products that we have in the pipeline,” said Jen-Hsun Huang, chief executive officer of Nvidia, at the company’s quarterly conference call with investors and financial analysts. “There are more engineers at Nvidia building the future of GPUs than just about anywhere else in the world. We are singularly focused on visual computing, as you guys know.”
There are currently two Pascal cores that we know about – the GP104 and the GP100. The GP104 will be the GM204 successor while the GP100 will be the flagship Pascal GPU from Nvidia. Both will be manufactured on either the 14nm or 16nm node using FinFETs. Nvidia has been on the same 28nm node for around 3 years now but has managed to always deliver in terms of performance jumps per generation. Ofcourse, that will becoming exponentially difficult to maintain unless they shift to a lower process – something they plan to do with their next generation of GPUs. The use of HBM2 will let Nvidia put upto 32GB of video buffer on their GPUs and upto 1TB/s of bandwidth.
“We have found over the years to be able to focus on just one thing, which is visual computing, and be able to leverage that one thing across PC, cloud, and mobile, and be able to address four very large markets with that one thing: gaming, enterprise, cloud, and automotive,” said Mr. Huang. “We can do this one thing and now be able to enjoy all and deliver the capabilities to the market in all three major computing platforms, and gain four vertical markets that are quite frankly very exciting.” …“I cannot wait to tell you all about it, you are just going to have to wait just a little longer,” – CEO, Nvidia
We were not able to spot any new details in the Earnings Call apart from what we already know, so that was basically a little recap on Pascal GPUs. Pascal Architecture is expected to succeed Maxwell Architecture and combined with DX12 should usher in a new era of Gaming prowess. With processors consistently and comfortably ahead of the demand curve, the onslaught of high resolution standards such as 4k have increased the pressure on better GPUs. Pascal could very well be poised to offer a lineup of one of the first 4K capable single-gpu cards at the 4k@60 fps standard.Prince Harry has said he knew his bride-to-be Meghan Markle was "the one" from the moment they met, as the couple made their first public appearance since the announcement of their engagement.
The Prince, 33, declared that he is "thrilled" as he and the 36-year-old American actress posed for an open-air photocall in the Sunken Garden at Kensington Palace.
Their long-anticipated engagement was announced by the Prince of Wales on Monday morning with a statement saying the couple, who have been dating for 16 months, will marry in the spring next year.
A beaming Ms Markle, in a white belted coat, clutched Harry's hand with both of her hands as they posed briefly and showed off her diamond engagement ring - designed by the prince himself.
Harry revealed that he knew Ms Markle was "the one" from the first moment they met. "When did I know she was the one? Very first time we met," the prince said.New thoughts on the ultimate questions
The Grand Design
By Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow
Bantam Press, 2010, £10-99
Cycles of Time
By Roger Penrose
Bodley Head, 2010, £25
Reviewed by Pete Mason
STEPHEN HAWKING, one of the world’s most famous scientists, has caused quite a stir. The Grand Design: New Answers to the Ultimate Questions of Life, co-written with Leonard Mlodinow, is a sustained attack on ‘intelligent design’ – not dissimilar to the medieval Christian view that the universe is "God’s dollhouse", as Hawking expresses it.
Robin McKie’s contention in the Observer (12 September 2010) that "there is hardly a mention of a deity in The Grand Design… until we reach the last chapter" is simply wrong. On the contrary, one of the questions posed on page one is: "Did the universe need a creator?" This forms a constant theme. The penultimate chapter, The Apparent Miracle, attacks British astronomer Fred Hoyle, an opponent of the big bang theory, who concluded that the universe had been "deliberately designed" because of the large number of ‘goldilocks’ conditions: those ‘just right’ for sustaining our universe, such as the development of stars and the elements of which we are made.
"Ignorance of nature’s ways led people in ancient times to invent gods", Hawking and Mlodinow write. In 1277, following Pope John XXI’s instructions, the concept of ‘laws of nature’ was declared to be heresy because they conflict with God’s omnipotence. But "Pope John was killed by the effects of the law of gravity a few months later when the roof of his palace fell in on him".
Ancient Greek scientists, hounded as atheists, sought out natural processes. Anaximander argued that our universe arose as a seed which budded off a pre-existing unbounded chaos in a ball of fire. When, in Isaac Newton’s day, scientists discovered that there are billions of stars, it became possible to consider that pure chance had led to our star and the earth being just right for life. Yet the universe as a whole was in a ‘miraculous’ balance of forces, Newton realised, and made the Christian God the prime mover.
How could conditions turn out to be just right, for the universe not to collapse under its own gravity, for instance, and yet not to expand so quickly that stars could not form under gravity’s influence? One answer is that our universe was simply one of countless universes which seeded off from the pre-existing unbounded chaos.
Our universe happened to be just right for the development of life, while most other universe seeds would have failed to grow, or quickly burned out. In 1979, cosmologist Alan Guth argued that ‘cosmological inflation’, a furious fountain of energy, emerges from a pre-existing quantum chaos, from which universes bud off. This mainstream view was featured in a BBC Horizon programme (11 October 2010). Scientists are looking at the possibility of detecting other universes through their effects on ours. It follows, Hawking argues, that physicists will not discover their holy grail – a single formula from which all the basic laws can be deduced – and that the laws of nature of our universe are a chance combination of forces.
Socialists, particularly those new to the subject, will find Hawking’s book delightful and challenging. Delightful because Hawking’s 1988 bestseller, A Brief History of Time, appeared ambivalent about religious ideas. This allows McKie to argue, correctly, that "Hawking has never expressed a need for God in his equations and has only made previous mentions to tease his readers", while the Daily Mail claims that Hawking "had previously appeared to accept the role of God in the creation of the universe".
In 1988, Hawking concluded: "If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we should know the mind of God". The suggestion that science can achieve this – and thus make all gods redundant – angered the religious establishment.
Today, intelligent design poses important political questions, at least in the USA. Hawking argues that there is no place for a creator. But, in the US, a fierce battle is raging over the teaching of intelligent design, a method of circumventing US constitutional restrictions and inculcating school students with a right-wing, anti-science agenda. "That is not the answer of modern science", the authors write, causing howls of rage in the pages of the right-wing press.
In the US, the artful anti-science academic and preacher, William Lane Craig, correctly sees nothing new scientifically between A Brief History of Time and The Grand Design. Craig who, like Hawking, suffers from a progressive wasting disease (though less severe), asks how, if the universe can come into existence from nothing, a root beer doesn’t do the same? Craig, in fact, knows the answer. Hawking, who communicates via a muscle in his right cheek, the only muscle he can control, explains that a root beer is full of positive energy (mass-energy) while the universe has equal proportions of negative energy (gravity) and positive energy. You cannot get something from nothing and the universe’s sum total energy remains zero. In the highly unlikely event of a root beer coming into existence in your fridge, an anti-matter root beer would come into existence at the same time. They might then annihilate each other, destroying your fridge. In our universe, it is thought, this annihilation happened but left a residual amount of matter which became our universe.
Craig asks what Hawking means by ‘nothing’? Hawking means the nothing of empty space. But scientists have shown that empty space is teeming with ‘quantum fluctuations’: subatomic particles that come into being in matter and anti-mater pairs and annihilate again. The nothing from the which the universe emerged in the big bang was that kind of nothing, but without our universe’s dimensions of space and time – pretty much ‘nothing’ by any reckoning. Craig responds: why couldn’t God have created these pre-existing quantum fluctuations? Hawking answers that we do not need to invoke ‘divine beings’, quoting the 18th-century French astronomer, Pierre-Simon Laplace: "I have not needed that hypothesis".
Evangelists of intelligent design, like Craig, a fellow of the US Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture in Seattle, the hub of the intelligent design movement, are not proposing some undefined god of chaos or quantum fluctuations. Their god is the personal, omnipresent, omniscient divine being of Christianity which, as Hawking has pointed out elsewhere, demands complete authority and subservience. Craig’s ‘reasonable faith’ doctrine states that the "supreme authority of the Bible, God’s inspired Word, make the Scriptures our final rule for faith and practice... being disciples of Jesus means serving him as Lord in every sphere of our lives".
Hawking no longer believes it will be possible to assault the ‘mind of God’ because the analogy no longer holds: there is no single governing principle of nature which can be discovered. This is a development from A Brief History of Time. There is another development touched on in the book which will be more challenging to the reader, when Hawking examines the new philosophy emerging from the results of quantum physics. "Philosophy is dead", Hawking declares, philosophical questions about existence or ‘being’ are now the province of science. Philosophy has "not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics". We agree, but the path is a difficult one. (See Is Quantum Mechanics Materialist? in Socialism Today No.127, April 2009)
Hawking is sometimes too categorical, particularly over string or M-theory, which there is not space to touch on here. Inflation theory and M-theory have one significant opponent in Roger Penrose, a long time collaborator of Hawking. Penrose outlines the astonishing inspiration which led him to a cyclical theory of the universe in a new book, Cycles of Time: An Extraordinary New View of the Universe.
In the Horizon programme mentioned above, Penrose announced that he recently reversed his longstanding belief that the big bang originated in a singularity, only now, it seems, in the sense that this singularity has a ‘before’, as there is in mainstream inflation cosmology – not forgetting that this is not a ‘before’ in terms of time (or the space) of our universe! Penrose explains that a space-time singularity represents a mathematical situation where Albert Einstein’s theory "gives up", and standard physics has no solution. Penrose’s own famous work on singularities in black holes and universes, he admits, "gives us no clue" whether matter will actually reach infinite density.
Cycles of Time is a complex mathematical treatment of the second law of thermodynamics and the big bang, addressed to Penrose’s peers and which requires specialist knowledge. Completely off the beaten track, Penrose continues his study of the singularity from which the universe emerged, addressing precisely the same point as Hawking: the extraordinary balance of forces at the origins of our universe. Penrose’s complex solution is elegant and highly speculative, and quite different to that of Hawking and Mlodinow.In the absence of more federally funded research, pernicious myths about cannabis will continue to hold sway
Marijuana is one of those “hot button” issues — like abortion and immigration – that leave supporters and opponents so intensely divided that no middle ground seems possible. Currently, the federal government classifies marijuana as a “Schedule 1” substance. It’s a crime – indeed, a felony – to possess and distribute the drug, even in relatively small amounts. And half the states in the country still have harsh “pot” laws on the books.
But some 23 states including the District of Columbia have all but legalized the drug. And several have begun allowing consumers to purchase “medical” marijuana in “dispensaries,” ostensibly to treat chronic pain from diseases like cancer.
So is marijuana dangerous or not?
Well, it depends. For many adults, puffing on a joint may be no different than having a regular drink or two. Most pot smokers, according to federal statistics, are light-to-moderate users. Except among strict teetotalers and religious purists, there isn’t a terribly strong argument against adults choosing to smoke a little “grass.”
But when it comes to marijuana use by school-age youth, all agreement ends. Daily pot smoking by primary and secondary school students has been growing steadily, according to the authoritative Monitoring the Future study, an annual survey of teen lifestyle habits. Even as tobacco use has declined sharply among youth– with noticeable reductions in alcohol use, too — pot use has not.
The statistics are alarming. According to the Partnership for a Drug-free America, teen pot use has increased 80% since 2008. And the marijuana the kids are smoking – sometimes in the form of hash – is far more potent — and potentially addictive — than it used to be.
Just as anti-smoking advocates credit their well-funded and highly publicized cessation campaigns with reducing youth tobacco use dramatically, anti-drug advocates blame the marijuana legalization movement for legitimizing pot as a purely “recreational” drug, giving impressionable youth the green light to fire up at will.
Others dispute that idea. A study of marijuana smoking in Colorado found that teen use had actually declined slightly since legalization. But critics say that result is misleading: Even before legalization, Colorado’s long-standing tolerance for marijuana use had made the opinion climate there unusually favorable to teen pot smoking. Even now, the state’s use rate among teens is among the highest in the nation.
What few researchers now dispute is that heavy marijuana use by teens – especially the increasingly powerful marijuana now available compared to 20 years ago – has potentially harmful effects on their long-term mental and emotional health. Many conservatives and leading anti-drug advocates have gone further, suggesting that early marijuana use may be a “gateway” to cocaine and heroin addiction, a proposition that other researchers, as well as the marijuana lobby, fiercely dispute.
There’s no question, though, that cocaine and heroin addicts tend to abuse other drugs, including marijuana; they generally smoked marijuana when they were younger, too. But most marijuana users don’t end up as hard-core drug users, though they may be far more likely to drink alcohol. And adding alcohol can greatly increase the “high” from marijuana, making pot use considerably more debilitating, especially for youth.
The pro-marijuana lobby seems largely unfazed by these findings, in part because its chief constituency is middle-aged marijuana smokers whose use of the drug has also increased substantially in the past two decades. Many started smoking marijuana as part |
show "Ellen" in early January 2017, gospel singer Burrell says she make "no excuses or apologies" for a sermon at a Houston church where she referred to gays and lesbians as perverted. (AP Photo/Mike Segar, Pool)
Days before she’s supposed to perform on “Ellen,” gospel singer Kim Burrell is facing backlash for a sermon in which she called gay people “perverted.”
A video from the Love & Liberty Fellowship Church in Houston shows Burrell, 44, preaching about “the perverted homosexual spirit.”
“The spirit of delusion and confusion, it has deceived many men and women,” she said.
“You as a man, you open your mouth and take a man’s penis in your face, you are perverted… You are a woman and will shake your face in another woman’s breast, you are perverted.”
Michelle Obama hosts private screening of 'Hidden Figures'
On social media, critics attacked Burrell for her comments.
"Hoping folks like @KimBurrellLove & others like her finally realize that #LoveIsLove," wrote Khary Penebaker, a 2016 Congressional candidate from Wisconsin.
"Do you consider Ellen to have that 'perverted homosexual spirit' you speak of?" asked blogger Alan Ilagan on Twitter.
Amid the backlash, Burrell recorded a Facebook video to deny that she said “all gays are going to hell.”
“We’re not in a war against flesh and blood,” she said. “I came on because I care about God’s creation and every person from the LGBT and anything else, any other kind of thing that is supporting gay…I never said LGBT last night. I said S-I-N and whatever falls in the sin was preached.”
Burrell accused an “enemy” of manipulating her words to make it look like she has a “personal agenda against people.”
“I love you because God loves you, but God hates the sin,” she said, while denying that the attacks were personal.
She also called out those who claim they support her, asking where their support is since she hasn’t sold 1 million records or won a Grammy yet.
Burrell is scheduled to appear on “Ellen” with Pharrell on Thursday to perform their duet “I See Victory” from the movie “Hidden Figures.”
Ellen DeGeneres is one of Hollywood’s most outspoken pro-equality proponents.
She married longtime girlfriend Portia de Rossi in 2008 after coming out publicly as gay in 1997.
Pharrell hasn’t responded directly to the accusations, but posted a not-so-subtle message on Twitter.
“I condemn hate speech of any kind,” he wrote. “There is no room in the world for any kind of prejudice. My greatest hope is for inclusion and love for all humanity in 2017 and beyond.”
A rep for DeGeneres did not return a request for comment.A sad truth about attempting suicide is that often the only ones noticed are those who succeed. Yet every year, about a million Americans try to kill themselves, and fail.
Their stories often go unspoken due to stigma, shame and a fear of triggering dangerous ideas in others. (Talking about suicide in the context of care and empathy does not, in fact, lead to more suicide.) This silence in society has consequences—survivors frequently experience deep isolation, while family members, friends and mental health professionals are left with little insight on how they can connect with those struggling with suicidal thoughts.
Though the climate of secrecy is changing. Through online forums, peer-to-peer support groups and taboo-breaking movements such as Live Through This and Time To Change, people are talking about their attempts and finding compassion, connection and the strength to step back into their lives.
In a haunting Ask Reddit thread, three survivors wrote openly about the day they tried to end their pain. We spoke with them about the moments before, during and after their attempts, along with their reflections today.
David, 31
Age at suicide attempt: 15
What do you remember about the day?
There wasn’t a specific thing that prompted it. My life was a mess—my mom and dad had lost their parental rights when I was 13 and I was living with my grandfather, an abusive alcoholic who’d say things to me like, “You’re gonna be a drug addict just like your parents.” I had this feeling that nobody really loved me and I was never going to fit in and have a place in the world. I was just so tired of feeling this way. I liked not being awake. I didn’t think anyone would miss me.
I went to school and it was just a normal day. That evening, I grabbed two 100-count bottles of Tylenol PM and laid out all the pills in little groups of five. One bottle was partly used, so in total, there were 183 pills.
I took them five at a time, with a little break between each, over the course of an hour or two. It became this sort of a mechanical act—just something to do, like doodling with a pen. I was sitting in my room watching Walker: Texas Ranger and Kung Fu: The Legend Continues on TNT Network. My grandfather might have been home. I don’t remember. I was numb.
It didn’t hit me what I had done until I was finished.
That’s when I started thinking, “This is the end. This is the end of my story.”
I wasn’t very religious so I didn’t think there was going to be a happy afterlife or anything waiting for me. And that really freaked me out. I thought about calling somebody, but I didn’t know who to call and I thought that might make things worse. I was fighting these different urges—one to try to live and the other to just lay down and accept what I had done. In the end, I gave up. I found my cat, Minnie, who we had found in a garbage chute, and gave her a hug. I told her, “I love you, but I have to go.”
At that point, I broke down crying. I realized there were still things in the world that I cared about and that made me happy. There were still things that I wanted to hang onto, but it was too late. I cried myself to sleep.
I woke up about a day and a half later, weak and groggy and covered in crunchy greenish blue vomit. I’d puked enough to live. I was so relieved, so happy. Friends had tried calling me to ask why I didn’t go to school.
The next couple of days, I felt good again. I was seeing all the things in my life that were so good—normal things like being able to walk around and see the trees and see my pet. Even my food tasted better.
What are your thoughts now?
In the years after that day, my life actually got worse than it already was, several times over. I never tried killing myself again, though, because I remember that at that final moment, I didn’t want to die.
I’ve had so many amazing life experiences that I would have missed out on if I had died, you know? I traveled the world. I fell in love. I went to college and then law school. I’ve done all these things that back then, I never would have thought were possible. I would have missed out on the best part of my life.
It does get better. It got better for me.
Vivian, 27
Age at suicide attempt: 17
What do you remember about the day?
I spent my “last” day trying to come to peace with my decision.
I woke up at around 9 AM I had planned the entire day out in advance, and knew exactly what I would do. My parents left for work and I skipped school.
I sat on the floor of my bedroom in silence. Thinking. Trying to come to terms with the fact that I was planning to kill myself that evening. I guess it was ritualistic in a sense. The day took on a meditative, surreal quality. I made myself a light meal and a pot of tea, and sat down on the floor with my laptop and began to write my notes. I wrote a note to every person who had been influential in my life. I wrote one to my mother, my father, my brother, my teachers, my friends. It took me the entire day. Some of them were warm and beautiful; others were bitter and curt and angry. I figured it would be my final chance to tell each and every person exactly what I thought of them.
I wrote things in those notes I would’ve never said out loud. I told so many of my friends that I loved them, despite the fact that I was known in my social circle as being quite cold. I had always loved them, I’m just not a very demonstrative kind of person. But I wanted them to know, beyond a doubt, that I did. I told my mother I’m sorry I wasted 17 years of her money. I told my brother that I thought he should open his eyes and his mind. I told my abusive father to go fuck himself.
That night, when everyone was asleep, I crept down to my father’s gun cabinet at around 3 AM. It was quiet. Really, really quiet. I was strangely at peace. It was almost meditative.
I stole a bottle of whiskey from the liquor cupboard and downed half of it. I knew where my father kept his gun cabinet keys, so I had stolen them the night before. I opened the cabinet and grabbed a pistol.
I held that gun to my head for such a long, long time. I was scared and excited and angry and sad and happy and resigned and terrified.
My survival instincts kicked in and I thought about the things in my life that I’d done and hadn’t done, about the people who would be affected by this, about what my school’s reaction might be. I thought about what my funeral would look like.
I held the gun to my head, then put it down. Held it up, put it down. This went on for a very, very long time.
I finally pulled the trigger.
It didn’t fire. It wasn’t loaded.
I suddenly felt an overwhelming, immense sensation of relief. I was in tears, and giggling madly. It was absurd. I came crashing back down to reality. I thought, “What the hell am I doing?”
I went to bed. I’ve never tried it again since. Someday I think I’ll have the courage to say what I wrote down to the people in real life.
What are your thoughts now?
That day made my world a lot bigger. I started to realize that everything in my life, all my problems, were very trivial.
There’s a fellow who’s very well known for jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge and surviving. He said that just before he hit the water, he regretted letting go of the rail. That’s exactly what I was experiencing. I was sitting there with a gun to my head and that sense of ambivalence was really incredible. That contributed to the sense of relief I felt afterward.
I ended up working at a suicide hotline and that was very reflective. I got to see a lot of the commonalities among people who were suicidal—they had a sort of tunnel vision, a worldview that was so narrow. And that made me very sad because I know that a lot of the life circumstances they were in and problems they were having were overcomable. In terms of emotions, the biggest predictor of suicide is hopelessness. And these were people who were experiencing extreme hopelessness. They were very incapable of seeing past their own pain.
Deciding to kill yourself is a huge decision. It’s the most significant decision, literally, that you will make in your entire life. It warrants every shred of effort that you have before you give up. You need to reach out. You really need to reach out. There are treatments out there. I was able to see the bigger picture.
Making a suicide attempt is like having a teacher who administers the test first and then teaches the lesson afterward. Unfortunately, for a lot of people who do complete suicide, that lesson never comes.
Christina, 23
Age at suicide attempt: 18
I woke up feeling quite serene and hopeful about the future. The day before, my doctor had given me a prescription for Xanax, and I was looking forward to finally having a sense of control.
It was the most perfect day as I walked toward the bus and went to work. I was a receptionist. I started texting my boyfriend and we ended up getting into a big fight over something. The things he said to me were so horrible. He was my final support, my shelter away from my family.
I’d been feeling a real dullness. Looking at my life from the outside, I had no real reason to be unhappy. I had my health. I had a job. I didn’t know what I wanted to do for a career, but that seemed normal. I went from being such an outgoing person at school to someone who couldn’t go to a close friend’s party without completely freaking out. I didn’t know who I was anymore. I was clinging onto life for no real reason.
So I just decided this was it. I got up, walked out and caught the bus home. As soon as I stepped off the bus, I rediscovered the most divine of feelings: purpose. A purpose to die, yes, but that was so much more than no purpose at all. I watched grey-faced commuters stream past me, going to work, to the shops, to their homes. It seemed like such a life of pointless repetition. I felt so calm. Serene. For the first time in my memory the heavy dullness in the back of my head had lifted. “Ohh…” I breathed, “So this is happiness.”
I walked into the house, my childhood home.
I memorized the way the sunlight touched the furniture, and the smell of the dust, leather and carpet. I gave my dog a kiss and walked through every room, crying and saying goodbye.
I looked at photos of Christmas trees and family gatherings—happy things that no longer felt part of my life. I just remembered the yelling and the fear and the isolation in my own home. I was so desperate to go.
My mom was a nurse so we always had a pretty big first aid kit. I began systematically collecting medications: paracetemol, codeine, ibprofen, antihistamines, anti-nausea pills, everything.
I stripped down to my undies and climbed into my boyfriend’s duckie pajama pants and my favorite United Nations tee. I breathed in his smell and trembled. I turned on the CD he made for me.
I divided 49 remaining sleeping pills into two neat piles. In one swallow I took half along with the other medication. The effect was near instantaneous.
I started texting. To my mom: “I love you.” To my dad: “I wish you loved me more.” To my sisters: “I’m sorry.” And to him? “Please, tell me one more time you love me.”
For five minutes, I waited for a reply.
I got a piece of paper and scribbled a letter:
“I am so sorry. I am just so desperately unhappy. Please forgive me. Don’t let them cut me up. Love, Christina.”
I checked my phone one last time. I had a missed call from my mom, a text from my sister (“Sorry for what? RU OK? :-)”). And nothing from him.
The other half of the pills went down easily. My chest felt heavy. I stood up one last time, threw my head back and laughed manically.
I “died” to “No Sound But the Wind” by Editors.
I woke up three days later in the ICU with my dad, who hadn’t said a word to me in nine months, holding my hand.
What are your thoughts today?
When I woke up, I was very angry that it hadn’t worked, and felt extremely vulnerable. I was transferred to a mental hospital and on constant watch. It took years before I felt grateful that I am able to have a second chance.
For everything I went through, I feel that I’m a lot more resilient. I pick my battles and tell myself, ‘This is not going to upset me today.” It finally hit me as clear as day that I wanted to be a nurse. I’ve finished my first year of nursing school. I feel very in control in my life.
I have found that as my story of depression and suicide has faded more into history, it’s something I spend less and less time thinking about, which is a good thing, but also less time talking about. It can be difficult to discuss — it’s something I often just want to forget about. But I do feel a certain level of responsibility in sharing my story.
If I could give advice to my 17- or 18-year-old self, or anyone in a similar situation, it would be that it can get more than better. Life can have meaning, and you can have control. It may be a long, hard road, but it’s not one that you have to travel alone.
If you or someone you know need help, call 1-800-273-8255 for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.
All illustrations by Li-Anne Dias/UpvotedUCLA issued this statement late on Wednesday night:
"Given the array of uncertainties caused by the fire near campus, UCLA has cancelled classes on Thursday, December 7. This is a difficult decision, since final exams begin on Saturday. The university remains safe, remains outside the evacuation area, and The South Coast Air Quality Management District continues to indicate that campus air quality is in the moderate range. However, canceling Thursday classes will allow UCLA officials to assess logistical issues in advance of finals week. UCLA medical centers and clinics will be fully operational Thursday. Faculty and staff should report to work if they are able to access campus or make other arrangements with their supervisors. Campus leadership looks forward to returning to normal operations and will continue to provide regular updates via the UCLA website, Bruin Alert and social media postings."
The Skirball fire began shortly before 5 a.m. on Wednesday and rapidly spread, burning homes and brush off campus, forcing evacuations and street closures, and prompting Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti to declare a local state of emergency. At UCLA some morning classes were held as scheduled, though with the northbound 405 freeway closed for several hours, many students and faculty were not able to get to campus.
Though the campus was never in immediate danger, transportation to campus was so difficult that by 11 a.m. UCLA announced it had canceled all afternoon classes. Students were advised to check with their instructors or departments about making up class time or work.
“I know this has been a long and difficult day and I want to thank our entire campus community for their patience, poise and hard work,” UCLA Chancellor Gene Block wrote in a Wednesday evening email to the campus community. “From our students calmly continuing their studies, to our medical center team providing care and support to patients, to our countless faculty and staff who braved long commutes and uncommon challenges to keep campus operating or arranged to work from home, you have my enormous gratitude and appreciation. I also want to acknowledge all of the firefighters and emergency personnel working tirelessly across Southern California to save lives and homes.”
All hospitals in the UCLA Health System remained open and fully operational throughout the day and all employees who could safely get to campus were instructed to report to work. UCLA Health said that normal operations and scheduled procedures are expected to resume Thursday at Medical Plaza buildings following a power outage that struck parts of campus and the West Los Angeles area. In addition, the UCLA Health Ventura clinic on Telephone Road was closed.
Effects of the late-morning power outage rippled across parts of campus. In residence halls, emergency generators powered stairwell lighting and emergency lighting. The power outage caused four elevators to stop while residents were inside, and people with UCLA Housing helped everyone out within 15 minutes of the outage.
The power outage also forced the closure of two of the five residential dining halls, so lunch service was consolidated to three dining halls: De Neve, Bruin Plate and Hedrick, and one quick-service location, Bruin Café. Covel dining hall reopened at 1 p.m. and all locations were open for dinner.
“There were some long lines at lunch, but everyone got a meal and everything went smoothly,” said Charles Wilcots, associate director of UCLA Dining.
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power restored power to most of the affected parts of campus around 12:30 p.m.
Smoke from the fire was visible from campus all day on Wednesday. Campus officials decided early in the morning on Wednesday to close UCLA Early Care and Education facilities, the Geffen Academy and the UCLA Lab School for the day. Face masks were available at the UCLA Arthur Ashe Student Health and Wellness Center to anyone on campus who wanted one.
UCLA Athletics canceled Wednesday night's men's basketball game versus Montana scheduled for Pauley Pavilion. Fans who purchased single-game tickets for the basketball game will be automatically refunded. UCLA men’s basketball season ticket holders will automatically receive a credit for the cost of the game to their UCLA ticket account. Ticket purchasers with questions may contact the Central Ticket Office.
Two concerts at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music have been rescheduled. The Jazz Improvisation Concert will now be held on Monday, Dec. 11 at 7 p.m. and the location has been moved to Schoenberg Music Building, Room 1343. The UCLA Symphony: Orchestral Showcase has been rescheduled to Saturday, Dec. 9 at 1 p.m. in Schoenberg Hall.
Pools at UCLA were already covered in a layer of ash from the week's earlier Creek fire in the San Fernando Valley and the Thomas fire in Ventura County. UCLA Recreation canceled swimming and most outdoor activities for the second day in a row on Wednesday.
“As the day progressed, out of continuing concern for health and safety, indoor classes and programs were canceled, and most indoor activity spaces were limited or closed,” said Erinn McMahan, director of UCLA Recreation. “With the power outages and concerns over potentially compromised indoor air quality, several recreation facilities, including Sunset Canyon Recreation Center and BFit, were closed as well.”
Future closures will depend on air quality, campus pools’ water quality and visibility, and any new utility outages. Generators in locations like Pauley Pavilion and Wooden Center can minimize the impact of outages, but air quality concerns may continue to make even indoor exercise hazardous.CBS has six new programs starring six white male actors in the fall. So when CBS entertainment president Glenn Geller took the stage at the Television Critics Association’s press tour in Beverly Hills on Wednesday morning, it wasn’t surprising that the very first question — and the second, third and fourth — was about the network’s commitment to diversity. “What message does it send,” a reporter asked pointed, “that the leads of your shows in the fall are all heterosexual white men?”
“I’m really glad this question came up first because we’re very mindful at CBS about the importance of diversity and inclusion and I’m glad we’re having this conversation first,” Geller said. “We need to do better and we know it. In terms of leads, we are definitely less diverse this year than last year, and like I said, we need to do better. But in terms of overall diversity in our new shows, we were actually more diverse this year than last year, and I think that that’s our commitment to diversity. It is ongoing.”
Before the panel, CBS pointed out a flurry of diverse additions to shows next year, such as former Rush Hour actor Justin Hires joining MacGyver, Vanessa Ferlito joining NCIS: New Orleans, Adam Rodriguez coming on board Criminal Minds, and Aisha Tyler becoming a series regular on Criminal Minds.
“We showed you some photos of 16 new series regulars, 11 of them are diverse,” Geller continued. “I know they’re not leads, but 11 are diverse and that is our commitment to diversity and those just aren’t words. That is real action … I wouldn’t say we’re mitigating anything. Those 16 roles were added because the showrunners were adding roles. I think the fact that 11 of them were cast diversely shows our commitment … And I understand certainly the inclination to look at the screen and just look at leads and say, ‘Well, what’s going on? Why are you less diverse?’ But I do think that when we’re talking about diversity and inclusion, we have to also look behind the camera and there we are doing very well. Our writers are more diverse than last year, our directors — and we’re not finished booking every slot but we’re on track. We continue to put additional resources and financial support into our CBS Diversity Institute and that covers many different parts of diversity for us. That’s our showcase, and it’s kind of the gold standard, I think, in the industry. Many people are cast from it. It includes our writers’ program, it includes our directors’ program … I think you have to look in front of the camera and behind the camera. And I understand we need to do better with leads.”
But that wasn’t anywhere near good enough for the room, which launched into multiple follow ups pressing the executive, with one critic pointing out this is a question that comes up at every TCA conference and other networks have made rapid progress to fix their lack of diversity: “You guys have had this problem for years. You’ve had years to fix this.”
“Look, I’m acknowledging we need to do better,” Geller repeated. “In terms of directors, and this is a place I would love to talk about, we’ve been getting better and better every single year about diversity among our director ranks and we have series where over half the directors are diverse. But I hear you, I really do, and I understand that we need to do better. I do want to point out though, that in the ensemble casting, we are more diverse this year than last year, and that is forward progress.”
Overall, Geller said “we need to do better” seven times during the grilling, said “we have to do better” once, and said “we’ve been getting better” three times.
EW first pointed out In May that the network’s six fall shows had uniformly white male leads. New legal drama Bull stars Michael Weatherly in the title role; a reboot of 1980s action-hour MacGyver features Lucas Till and George Eads; medical drama Pure Genius stars Augustus Prew as a billionaire genius and Dermot Mulroney as a maverick surgeon; comedy The Great Indoors stars Joel McHale as an adventure reporter; Man with a Plan stars Matt LeBlanc in family comedy; and Kevin Can Wait stars Kevin James as a retired cop.
There is some diversity planned for 2017. The network’s new midseason legal drama Doubt starring Katherine Heigl features transgender actress and rights advocate Laverne Cox (Orange Is the New Black) in a costarring role. Another midseason drama, Training Day, includes actor Justin Cornwell, who is black, as a co-lead. Veteran actor Bill Paxton costars in that series, filling the role Denzel Washington had in the original film.
Geller was also asked about LGBT inclusion. “I think things are definitely shifting and in terms of LGBT representation,” Geller added. “We have more LGBT characters on this coming year than ever before. We have in our newer series especially, on Bull, on The Great Indoors, in the second year of Code Black. Vanessa Ferlito who we cast in NCIS: New Orleans, her character is lesbian and they’re doing a storyline a little later in the fall where the audience will understand that and see that. And Laverne Cox, in Doubt, which will be on later this season, is a historic role. She’s going to be the first transgender actress ever to play a series regular character. That is huge.”A Palestinian terrorist who was convicted of killing two university students in a Jerusalem bombing accepted a plea deal that will force her to leave the United States, her legal representatives announced Thursday.
Rasmea Odeh, who was also found guilty in 2014 of lying on her U.S. immigration form, will avoid jail time and instead be deported to Jordan.
Odeh was first tried in Israel for bombing a Jerusalem supermarket on behalf of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in 1969, killing university students Edward Joffe and Leon Kanner and injuring nine other people. She was sentenced to life in prison over that attack, as well as a bombing of the British Consulate. Exhibits presented at her trial included physical evidence such as bomb-making material that was found in her bedroom by Israeli police. Guy Wintelir, an observer from the International Red Cross who attended the trial, described it as being “fair.”
Odeh was released in a prisoner exchange between Israel and the PFLP in 1980, then immigrated to the U.S. in 1995 and applied for citizenship in 2004. She did not mention her conviction and imprisonment in Israel on her immigration forms.
Odeh was convicted of immigration fraud in 2014—though a federal judge ordered in December that she should receive a new trial. Odeh was set to argue that the confession of guilt that was used to convict her in Israel was coerced through torture, a claim disputed by Israeli authorities. The plea deal means that there will be no trial and she will be deported to Jordan.
Recently, Odeh sought to position herself as an activist for gender equality and was one of the organizers earlier this month of the International Women’s Strike, which adopted a platform calling for the “decolonization of Palestine.” She was scheduled to speak at the national convention of the group Jewish Voice for Peace, which supports the controversial Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign against Israel, later next week. It is unclear whether her acceptance of a plea deal will affect her scheduled appearance.
Although Odeh maintains that she was convicted in Israel on the basis of a confession obtained through torture, Cornell University professor William Jacobson, proprietor of the Legal Insurrection blog, compiled voluminous evidence in 2014 demonstrating Odeh’s association with the PFLP, responsibility for the bombing, and inconsistencies in her narrative—including her claim that she gave a false confession after 25 days of torture, when according to Israeli records she confessed a day after she was arrested.
In a 2014 post-trial filing opposing Odeh’s release pending sentencing over her immigration fraud conviction, the U.S. prosecution noted that her “claim that she was not involved in the bombing is demonstrably false.”
In [the 2004 documentary] Women in Struggle, Aisha Odeh, who was charged with defendant in Israel, admitted that she placed the bomb at the Supersol. In addition, she stated that her role was implementing rather than planning, and she thus was less involved than others. Aisha Odeh stated that Rasmieh Odeh and Rashidah Obedieh had gone and studied the location in advance. … That version of events is precisely what Defendant Rasmieh Odeh admitted in her statement to Israeli authorities. Interestingly, Aisha Odeh’s recent admissions of the truth are in contrast to w hat she stated in Israel. In the trial within a trial, she made the same false claims of non-involvement and torture as did Defendant Rasmieh Odeh. For instance, Aisha Odeh testified that she had nothing to do with the bombings, and that she only knew a person named Rashidah from jail. Her statement in Women in Struggle now shows the falsity of that earlier testimony, which was coordinated w ith Defendant Rasmieh Odeh’s.
The prosecution added that Rasmea “has given interviews throughout the years to various other publications in which she admitted her role” in participating in terrorist attacks on behalf of the PFLP, and noted other demonstrably false claims Rasmea has made. This included her “testimony at the instant trial, in which she claimed one of the two sisters who was arrested with her in Israel died in custody,” when in reality one of her sisters was let go after 18 days in custody, while her other sister was released after a year and a half.
Most recently, Rasmea was implicated by her co-conspirator Aisha Odeh in a 2013 interview on Palestinian Authority TV, in which Aisha admitted to participating in the Jerusalem supermarket attack and named Rasmea as one of her accomplices.
[Photo: Hamas on Campus / YouTube ]Last week, Volkswagen AG CEO Matthias Mueller said he expected to begin the repair of the 11 million diesel vehicles in January, with a goal of completing the “retrofit” by the end of 2016. Along with changing the software code on VW’s EA 189 engine, some versions, especially a smaller 1.6-liter diesel, could require revisions to the engine itself, not just an update to the engine controller’s code.
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A fix might take longer in the U.S.
For one thing, Volkswagen has to prove to the EPA that any changes will continue to meet emissions standards for 150,000 miles. And because the American standards for smog-causing oxides of nitrogen (NOx) and particulate emissions are tougher than in Europe, VW insiders have said they expect they will have to modify engine hardware, as well.
Further complicating the situation, there have been two major updates to the 2.0-liter U.S. diesel since it was introduced. Earlier models may now require the addition of a urea injection system similar to what most other automakers use on their diesel vehicles. The ammonia-like chemical helps break down NOx into harmless components.
VW Plans to Overhaul Diesel Technology in Scandal's Wake
Meanwhile, the EPA has begun examining the software used on 2016 versions of some diesels that Volkswagen use different software code also aimed at fooling emissions tests.
VW on Tuesday told the Associated Press the “auxiliary emissions control device” on 2016 models operates differently from the so-called “defeat device” used on VW diesels during the previous seven years.
But so far VW but has provided regulators with few details.
"We have a long list of questions for VW about this," Janet McCabe, acting assistant EPA administrator for air quality, said this week. "We're getting some answers from them, but we do not have all the answers yet."
As a result of the disclosure, VW has withdrawn a request for the EPA to certify some of its 2016 diesel models for sale in the U.S. Whether the new software code actually violates U.S. emissions rules is unclear, however.
Toyota to Phase Out Gas-Powered Vehicles, Doubling Down on Hydrogen
If it does violate the rules, Volkswagen’s problems could increase exponentially, some observers warn. The maker already faces potential fines from the EPA of more than $18 billion for the first software cheat. It is also facing a criminal investigation into the scandal by the U.S. Department of Justice. And at least a half-dozen class action lawsuits have now been filed on behalf of VW diesel owners.
Additional civil and criminal probes are underway abroad.
German Transport Minister Dobrindt said that while his agency had an “extraordinarily good” working relationship with VW as it continues its probe, for the moment, at least, it has "no information about who decided where, when at Volkswagen about the use of such software."
Since the diesel scam was revealed last month, VW has ousted its long-time CEO Martin Winterkorn, along with two of its top R&D executives. Meanwhile, Winfried Vahland, who was named just three weeks CEO of the new Volkswagen North America group tendered his resignation on Wednesday. The maker said that departure was “expressly not related” to the diesel scandal, but provided no other details.
Reuters contributed to this report.
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Dayz'd? This New Nissan Concept Car is Social Media on WheelsToday's lesson: read this article. [Dayton RTA driver saved by religious text | Dayton, OH News, February 24, 2014] Apparently the big story here is a bus driver was nearly killed, but a bible stopped the bullets hitting his heart. Assailants unknown. Motive unknown.
But read another source: Learn that three “teens” did it possibly as gang initiation “to join the club.”[Police: Religious book may have saved RTA bus driver, WHIO. February 24, 2014]
Finally, we learn the driver was stabbed and shot and these “teens” were “polar bear hunting,” or specifically targeting white people.
Rickey Waggoner, 49, stopped his bus in the 1900 block of Lakeview Avenue just before 5:30 a.m. to fix a mechanical problem when police said when he was confronted by the teens.
He told police he was working on the bus when they approached from behind and he heard one say, “If you want to be all the way in the club, you have to kill the polar bear.” Waggoner said he turned to see three males, one with a gun pointed at his chest. He said the gunman fired twice.
[RTA driver shot, saved by Bible, By David Robinson, WDTN, February 24, 2014]
Of course the article never describes “polar bear hunting” as hunting white people, so presumably many readers still wouldn't know the truth that three colored men were hunting a random white person to murder.
So there's the lesson. Three media sources and NONE tells the truth. NONE tells its readers that young colored men are out specifically looking for random whites to kill, OR that this is so common it even has a name in the colored community (“polar bear hunting”).
No, instead the story is just some random unknown assailants “were involved” in a shooting (and stabbing) of a random driver who was saved by his Bible.
If three white kids had gone hunting a random black, this would be the biggest story in the world for over a year. As is, it’s just another “dog bites man story” and not even worth mentioning.(CNN) -- A 12-year-old suicide bomber killed three other people, including a district council head, and armed attackers shot to death two police officers Sunday, the first day of a Taliban spring offensive.
The attacks followed a Taliban declaration Saturday that its spring military operations will focus on attacks against military bases, airbases, convoys, heads of foreign and local companies, and members of the local government.
In Shaken district of Paktika province, the 12-year-old boy detonated explosives in his vest to kill district council head Shernawaz Khan and two others, said Mukhlis Afghan, a spokesman for the Paktika provincial governor.
The blast also wounded 12 people, Afghan said, adding: "The suicide attacker's aim was to target the district council chief."
In a separate attack, armed men opened fire on police in southern Ghazni province, killing two police officers, provincial police security |
is not blogging, helping others remove blocks in their love lives, serving as a youth mentor or planning Battle of The Sexes shows, she enjoys yoga, walking her dog, dancing, and starting social media parties on Twitter & Facebook.
What is or has been your influence for your blog?
I would say that life and love influences my blog. I always tell everyone anything you want to know about me is on GoddessIntellect.com. I share my joy, my passions, my fears, insecurities as well as what makes me angry. It’s a very personal space and one of the “places” I feel most comfortable being myself.
2. You don’t just write on your blog. Explain to readers all the features your blog offers.
Through blogging I’ve had the opportunity to do many things. The one thing I’m most proud of is the fact that I am a Relationship Coach on my way to becoming certified. You don’t have to be certified to make a positive difference in other people’s lives but you must be willing to accept responsibility for another human being’s personal development which is major. I also host entertaining live events; the most popular is Battle of The Sexes Show. Battle of The Sexes Show is my response to this new millennium gender war. We’re not united like we could be and there’s no reason for it because at the end of the day we want the same damn thing. We want to feel loved, needed and appreciated for who we are, the event helps facilitates discussions that will help unite us. Even though the discussions get heated both men and women leave the event understanding more about the opposite sex than they did walking through the door.
3.You also wrote a book “friends with benefits: the grey area between”. Great topic. Can you give us a quick synopsis?
Absolutely! Friends with Benefits is a dating guide for women that gives in depth insight into relationships that often described as “It’s complicated” or “we’re just chilling”.
Learn about 3 categories men automatically place women in as well as how to move up from being “just a friend” to his girlfriend.
I take you on a journey into my heartbreaking yet humorous personal experiences as well as share ways to break past the uncertainty into a more meaningful committed relationship.
4. How challenging is it being a relationship coach?
It’s not challenging work for me, it’s fulfilling, however there are challenging aspects to it. For example I have to be a human trapper keeper so what happens in our sessions stay in our sessions. I don’t blog about anyone’s personal stories unless they ask me to. The challenging part about keeping things confidential is that sometimes I want to tell everyone how much a breakthrough a client experiences but I can’t unless the client tells me to which is never. The testimonies on my site don’t even scratch the surface.
5. When and where can we catch your radio show?
“Menage A Talks”, the Radio show currently on my site is over 3 years old. I hosted a regular online radio show in 2010-2011. I loved it but admittedly it was a lot of work to produce. Unlike many other podcasters I did extensive research on topics and had to coordinate multiple guests per show. I may return to radio soon but it has to be the right opportunity. Going back to the same format is simply not enough for me at this point. I would love to host radio on a National level with major sponsorship and access to amazing guests, now that I’ve put it out there, let’s see what happens. 🙂
For more information:
http://goddessintellect.com
http://battleofthesexesshow.com
AdvertisementsZucchini Lasagna Cups are mini portions of vegetarian lasagna. They have layers of wonton wrappers, ricotta, zucchini, pasta sauce, and mozzarella. They’re much quicker and easier to make than traditional lasagna.
It won’t be long before everyone’s home gardens are full of fruits and vegetables. It seems like the one thing that many of my gardening friends have an over abundance of is zucchini. I’ve been trying to get ahead of the game and get a few zucchini recipes published before zucchini season is in full effect.
Today I made these cute little zucchini lasagna cups. They’re extremely easy to make because nothing has to be cooked ahead of time. This also means they come together pretty quickly compared to traditional lasagna assembly.
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As with traditional lasagna, this recipe is a layering process. Start by stuffing wonton wrappers down into a muffin tin. Add a creamy ricotta cheese mixture. Lay thinly sliced zucchini on top of the ricotta and press down. Top the zucchini with a layer of pasta sauce and shredded mozzarella. Then, repeat all the layers.
These get baked until the zucchini softens, the cheese is bubbly, and the exposed wonton wrappers are golden and crisp.
Print Recipe Zucchini Lasagna Cups Zucchini Lasagna Cups are mini portions of vegetarian lasagna. They have layers of wonton wrappers, ricotta, zucchini, pasta sauce, and mozzarella. They're much quicker and easier to make than traditional lasagna. Prep Time 15 mins Cook Time 20 mins Total Time 35 mins Servings: 6 (2 cup) servings Calories: 304 kcal Author: Amanda Finks Ingredients 1 large egg
1 1/4 cups part skim ricotta
2 tbsp. grated parmesan cheese
1 tsp. dried parsley flakes
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. ground black pepper
24 wonton wrappers
1 large zucchini or 2 small
1 cup pasta sauce
1 1/2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese Instructions Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Spray a muffin tin with cooking spray.
Add the egg to a medium-size bowl and beat to scramble. Add the ricotta, parmesan, parsley, salt, and pepper. Stir until well combined.
Slice the zucchini into 24 thin slices, about 1/8 inch thick.
Put 12 of the wonton wrappers in the muffin tin. Push the center of the wrapper down into the tin, forming a cup. Spoon half of the ricotta mixture into the wonton cups. Place 12 of the zucchini slices on the ricotta and press down slightly. Top with half of the pasta sauce and half of the mozzarella.
Repeat the layers using the remaining ingredients.
Bake for 18-23 minutes. The edges of the exposed wonton wrappers should be golden brown and crisp. To ensure the zucchini softens, cook for as long as possible without burning the wontons.
Let the cups cool for 10 minutes before removing from the muffin tin and serving. Nutrition Serving: 2 lasagna cups | Calories: 304 kcal | Carbohydrates: 28 g | Protein: 18.3 g | Fat: 13.3 g | Saturated Fat: 7.2 g | Fiber: 2.1 g
This recipe was inspired by Mini Lasagna Cups by Kevin & Amanda.In the wake of Donald Trump’s election, true-blue California is talking about making a #CalExit – and that’s stirred up some buzz about a blue breakaway for Washington state and Oregon as well.
One manifestation is the renewed interest in the Republic of Cascadia, a “bioregion” that would take in sections of British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, California, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming. (Washington is the only state that’s wholly within Cascadia as it’s conceived.) The rationale is that the region is environmentally and economically distinct from its surroundings.
Ozy.com notes that the concept is picking up steam thanks to websites like Free Cascadia, CascadiaNow! and Yes Cascadia, as well as a Reddit subgroup that’s on the rise. More than 200 people already have signed up via Facebook to attend a “Cascadian People’s Assembly” in Seattle on Saturday, with follow-up meetings planned for the Sunday after Thanksgiving.
Cascadia Now’s Brandon Letsinger is managing the campaign, and he says his team is struggling to keep up with all the inquiries, donations and offers of support. The effort’s aim? “To remove ourselves from systems that are harmful and toxic, and build the systems of resilience we need to be truly independent and sustainable.”
Another upcoming event is the Cascadia Independence Party Convention in Seattle, which is scheduled to coincide with Trump’s inauguration in January.
The Seattle Times’ Ryan Blethen got in on the trend today with a column musing on the idea of Washington, Oregon and California breaking away from the United States and hooking up with Canada instead. “Is this crazy talk? Probably,” he wrote. “But residents of the Best Coast have a lot in common with our northern neighbors.”
Secession from the Union isn’t in the cards for Cascadia – or California, for that matter. The Civil War pretty much settled that issue 150 years ago. But the ties that bind Cascadia are unquestionably growing.
In September, tech leaders and politicians from Washington and British Columbia found lots of common ground at the Emerging Cascadia Innovation Corridor Conference in Vancouver. Among the commonalities: support for trade with Asia, lots of natural resources (and an strong interest in protecting them) and a love of innovation on tech frontiers ranging from biotech to big data.
Those weren’t exactly core issues for the Trump campaign. Like #CalExit, the Cascadia movement is all about protecting what the region has from what some Cascadians fear is coming.
Will the Cascadia movement pick up steam after Trump takes office? Or will the concept end up being put on the same shelf as the Dougie, Cascadia’s coin of the realm? That depends on how the next four years turn out.“Would you kindly?” On the surface, it was always a simple quandary to wrestle with. We answered the call dutifully, locking ourselves into a wicked sense of forward momentum at the whim of an omnipotent narrator, pushing ourselves ever deeper into a submerged metropolis steadily taking on more and more water. But, as BioShock players would soon discover in the autumn of 2007, the question itself was loaded. A smoke-and-mirrors tactic that has come to define a certain era of first-person shooters – particularly in the hearts and hands of console-bound gamers.
One of the greatest magic tricks game developers ever pulled off was making it feel as if you ever were free inside of their worlds. There is, in any player-driven narrative experience – be it linear or otherwise – merely the illusion of choice and control. The medium is inevitably limited by the amount of content a team is able to create and implement; making players believe that they have even the slightest amount of influence on how events and story unfolds is all a part of a good narrative. BioShock turned this on its head entirely. It turned a trusted narrator against us; it forced us to confront the relationship between the sentience of the protagonist and the invisible guiding hand of the developer.
While the late game twist forced players to consider their own agency – to weigh up the numerous violations of trust and our inherent inability to question them throughout – the world of Rapture is appropriately established to drive reactive player emotion from the moment that the bathysphere first opens its doors. It’s a beautiful, wondrous place; its rusting 1950s aesthetic inviting us to explore the chaos beneath the waves, begging you to hope that the wrench you get your hands on will one day have another use besides beating in skulls – that perhaps by the end of this you can restore Rapture to its former glory. But soon that feeling is replaced with something else entirely: oppressive, aggressive fear. As, one by one, the layers are peeled back on the city, its citizens and the dark politics fuelling the disarray, any hope you have is quickly replaced by a desire to escape it all as quickly as humanly possible.
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On your way to freedom, guided by the warring of words between Atlas and Fontaine, empathy with the citizens of Rapture is established, largely through environmental storytelling. It’s the first of many emotional tethers Irrational Games creates throughout the experience as it builds towards its twist reveal. While this manifested itself in fairly rote fashion – rooting through bins and listening to scattered audio diaries across the world – it helped the world feel real, like it had existed before you arrived and that it would continue to be after you eventually left it all behind. Forcing you to empathise with the very villains you were so intent on crushing only made the emotional moments – between deciding whether you would save the tortured Little Sisters or harvest them for resources – all the more impactful.
Deep seas, and an even deeper game
BioShock brought the immersive sim to console in a way that we hadn’t quite experienced before. The game does invariably share its DNA with the likes of System Shock and its sequel, on which director Ken Levine first cut his teeth, and that ensured that BioShock had a prociency to its core systems lost on many other genre games of the time. The feel of the weapons, their combination with the array of otherworldly Plasmids at your disposal, was a real delight.
The action was fast and kinetic, but nuanced enough to let us experiment with the tools you had found along the way – the enemy AI smart and aggressive, the depth to the combat system only expanding the further you dared push it. Seeing a Big Daddy wade into battle was forever a thrill, particularly as the various warring factions would converge as if by completely accident. BioShock offered some of the biggest thrills the infant console generation had seen, and its impact on the story-driven shooter is difficult to quantify.
Its lacklustre ending aside, BioShock was able to convincingly tell a story that any other medium would struggle to deliver. Irrational capitalised on the strength of the interactive format and delivered a narrative that is as challenging as it is unique; in playing with perception, trust and consequence, BioShock made players more aware of their agency than ever before. To be betrayed by your own actions – your own lack of awareness or perception – was startling. The action and combat sublime, the character development and world-building unrivalled.
A decade on and it’s as wonderful today as it was then; BioShock is a startling example of what can be achieved when a bold vision is achieved wholeheartedly by a group of passionate creatives.
This article originally appeared in GamesTM magazine. For more great coverage, you can subscribe here.A Florida man is accused of decapitating his mother with an ax because she had been "nagging" him about chores.
Christian Jose Gomez, 23, was arrested Wednesday night near his family's house in Oldsmar, near Tampa, according to the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office.
Gomez faces a first-degree murder charge and is being held without bond, and it was unknown if he has an attorney.
Deputies responding to a 911 call found the body of the victim, 48-year-old Maria Suarez Cassagne, outside the residence, officials said. Gomez was found and arrested a few blocks away.
Gomez hit his mother over the head with an axe then decapitated her in the garage, sheriff's office officials said. He put her head in a garbage can and tried to put the body inside, but it was too heavy, they said.
Gomez's older brother found their mother's body.
Gomez said he was angry over his mother "nagging" him to put some boxes in the attic and had been planning the murder for two days, officials said.A 1935 Datsun Type 14 has gone on display at Britain’s National Motor Museum at Beaulieu, even though that model of car never was sold in the UK.
“This example was shipped from Japan to Britain by car manufacturing magnate Sir Herbert Austin to check every detail for possible patent infringement because the car looked similar to the Austin 7 Ruby,” the museum said in a news release.
The museum notes that the Type 14 “marked the birth of the Japanese car industry. It adds that Austin Motor Company didn’t take any legal action against Datsun, nor was the Type 14 ever registered for road use in England. Instead, it went into long-term storage.
“Decades later, with the help of Nissan Europe, this historically significant but barely used car is now part of the National Motor Museum collection,” the news release reports.
“Car-building giant Nissan can trace its history right back to this extraordinary little car,” the release continues.
“Today, many of the world’s leading automotive manufacturers are Japanese and huge numbers of cars built by Nissan, Honda, Toyota, Lexus, Mazda, Suzuki and more can be found on roads across the globe.”
Nissan’s first car dates to 1914, when it produced the DAT, the initials coming from the company’s three founding investors. By 1931, a new and smaller model was unveiled as “son of DAT,” or Datson. The car went on sale a year later as the Datsun, son changed to sun in honor of the national rising sun symbol.
“The Type 14 of 1935 was the first mass-produced Datsun, starting the manufacturer on its way to producing millions of Datsuns and Nissans over the following decades,” the museum notes.
The Type 14 carried four people and its 747cc engine produced 15 horsepower, enough to reach speeds of 50 miles per hour.After a long wait, Cyan’s Obduction [Review: 8/10] finally came to the HTC Vive yesterday, complete with motion controller support. Fans had been patiently waiting for this version of the game since the Rift edition launched last year but, sadly, it appears lots of people are having issues with it.
Multiple users have taken to Reddit to report issues with the game’s performance when running inside the Vive. It appears that, across a number of PC setups, people are finding issues with reprojection, resulting in stuttering screens even when playing on the lower graphics settings.
We reached out to Cyan itself to ask about these issues. Studio CEO Rand Miller himself had this to say:
We’re reading all comments! Like we did with PC and Rift, we’ll continue to update and optimize Obduction for Vive. Being a small indie dev, we can test some combinations of hardware, but it’s not until release that some issues show up. Obduction VR definitely takes some horsepower to run, but we’ve found that adjusting settings can usually provide a satisfactory experience for most situations, and we’ll continue to optimize. (And of course make sure your drivers are the latest and greatest.) As for navigation – we realize that in these early days of VR that almost everyone has a different preference depending on their performance, comfort, and experience. We will continue to add options so that each player can get the navigation experience that suits them. Thanks for the comments and support!
Cyan also brought Oculus Touch support to Obduction with yesterday’s update, those users don’t seem to be reporting any issues on this side. The developer will also be releasing a PlayStation VR version of the game later down the line.
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Fire crews were attacked with manure when they attempted to rescue a horse stuck in a ditch in Peterstone.
The Cardiff Central crew arrived at Wentloog Road when a container full of horse manure was thrown at their appliance.
Police and fire crime investigators were called but the fire truck did not sustain any damage.
A South Wales Fire and Rescue spokesman said: “We were called at 21.55pm to Wentloog Road in Peterstone.
“It was originally for an animal rescue after a horse got stuck in the reen but the horse had left the reen by the time we arrived.
“But while crews were they someone threw a container of horse manure at the appliance.
“There’s CCTV on the appliances and the fire crime investigators will be reviewing that. We left the scene at 10.33pm.”An overwhelming body of research shows that coeducation is better for girls and boys.
Photograph by Ableimages/Thinkstock.
Feminists tend to be of two minds about single-sex schooling. One group thinks single-sex classes are wonderful (for girls) because they provide a protected environment in which girls can learn without playing dumb to attract boys, focusing on their appearance, being distracted by (hetero)sexual attraction to classmates, dealing with male classmates’ sexist behavior, or competing with males for leadership opportunities. (This camp tends to be more ambivalent about single-sex schooling for boys, given that elite all-male academies were formerly bastions of privilege.) Such advocates rattle off an impressive list of female leaders, including Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice, who attended all-female high schools or colleges.
Another group of feminists views single-sex environments as harmful because they provide an artificial world in which gender differences are reified as legitimate bases for disparate treatment, and males and females are both left unprepared to negotiate egalitarian relationships. This group points to the impressive educational gains made by women since the 1972 passage of Title IX, which outlawed sex discrimination in federally funded schools. As proof of coeducational schooling’s merits, they note that women have since advanced to the point where they now make up 57 percent of college students, 44 percent of college math majors, and 47 percent of medical students, among many other accomplishments.
Together with six co-authors, we recently published a peer-reviewed article in the journal Science, “The Pseudoscience of Single-Sex Education,” in which we align ourselves with the latter group of feminists. It’s a provocative title, but our paper supported it with three lines of evidence. Now, our challenge is to persuade the first group of feminists that the very existence of segregated academies reinforces cultural attitudes about gender differences and abilities. But before we get to that part of the case, let’s look at the three lines of research we reviewed for Science.
First, decades of research on academic outcomes from around the world has failed to demonstrate an advantage to single-sex schooling, in spite of popular belief to the contrary. Of course, there are some terrific single-sex schools out there. However, research finds that their success is not explained by gender composition, but by the characteristics of the entering students (such as economic background), by selection effects (for example, low performing students are not admitted, or are asked to leave), and by the substantial extra resources and mentoring these programs provide. When researchers control for these factors, the advantages of single-sex schooling disappear. (And in the case of boys, the research looks even more favorable for coeducation—interesting, given how much the current surge of interest in single-sex programs is directed at them.)
The second line of evidence stems from neuroscience. It has become common lore among parents and teachers that gender differences in brain function mean “boys and girls learn differently.” However, the bulk of scientific evidence demonstrates nothing of the sort. Thousands of studies comparing brain and behavioral function between adult men and women have found small to insignificant differences, and even smaller differences between boys and girls.
This is important, because much of the new single-gender K-12 pedagogy is based precisely on the idea that girls and boys need different—and often highly gender-stereotypic—learning environments to thrive. News reports describe girls’ classrooms in which the lights are low, the temperature is elevated, students are seated in small, collaborative clusters, and teachers are trained to speak gently and quietly as they conduct lessons involving fashion and wedding planning. Boys’ rooms, in some communities, are brightly lit, with the temperature turned down, the desks removed, and the boys engaged by loud, assertive teachers who keep them running relays and tossing balls during math lessons. Even preschools have followed the trend. And in spite of many feminists’ belief that single-sex instruction counters it, such sexism still lurks at all-girls’ schools, albeit in a more subtle and therefore pernicious form, according to University of Michigan professor of education Valerie Lee and her colleagues. (Such sexism was also apparent in California in the late-1990s, when a state-sponsored experimental single-sex program failed: Five of its six academies closed within three years, with researchers finding that teachers in single-sex classrooms tended to reinforce, rather than break down, traditional gender stereotypes.)
Which brings us to the third line of evidence supporting coeducation: research suggesting that single-sex schooling facilitates social stereotypes and prejudice in children. Just as racial segregation enhances racist attitudes among children, gender segregation reinforces sexist attitudes and the view that males and females have categorically different types of intellects. In dozens of studies, we have found that when teachers use group characteristics—whether familiar (“boys and girls”) or arbitrary (T-shirt color)—to label students, children develop stereotypes and biases against the “other” group. By separating the genders into different classrooms, educators lead children to view males and females as deeply different, and reinforce sexism in the culture at large.
On the flip side, other research suggests that coeducation offers boys and girls the chance to learn positive skills from each other. Mixed-sex groupings tend to buffer the bullying that often occurs in same-sex groups of adolescents. Studies of siblings, meanwhile, have found that girls with older brothers tend to be more interested in sports than girls with sisters, whereas boys with twin sisters demonstrate better verbal skills than boys with twin brothers.
Not surprisingly, our Science paper has been triggering some unhappy responses. But one group of critics stands out from our perspective: devoted feminists who believe that single-sex education is uniquely beneficial to girls’ development and who have responded to the article with stories of their own nurturing and empowering experiences at single-sex schools and colleges. We share these feminists’ desire to see every girl and woman respected and supported by her teachers and classroom peers—both as an individual and as a female. We hope to convince these critics of two final points.
First, feminists need to redouble our efforts to require gender egalitarian environments in our coeducational schools. Evidence suggests that even elementary school-age girls can learn to successfully advocate feminist goals and make allies and advocates of male peers. Whereas single-sex schools model the idea that gender exclusion is the answer to sexism, coeducational schools model the notion that the sexes must work together warmly and supportively. By working for these conditions, feminists can do more to support both girls and boys than by advocating single-sex schooling.
Second, feminists who favor girls’ schools have fallen for the myth that parents and educators can reliably identify particular girls who will benefit from an all-girls’ environment. Most proponents of single-sex schooling readily admit that it is not suitable for all, but they nonetheless believe it should be a choice for a minority of girls (and boys). What “type” of girl is that? There are vague suggestions: girls with low self-confidence who won’t compete with boys; girls with strong libidos who are distracted by boys; girls with low body satisfaction who are embarrassed to be near boys; girls who strongly dislike boys. But none of these beliefs is backed by research, and in fact, still other research tells us that the girls who are successful in single-sex settings are the same ones who would be successful in coeducational classrooms.
In any other situation, when schools offer special educational environments, it is because some diagnostic test is used to identify students (those with dyslexia, say) requiring special learning conditions. But in the absence of such measures, the decision to send a girl to an all girls’ school rests solely on parents’ judgment and is often based on precisely the kind of stereotyping they profess to be protecting their daughters from.
Instead of letting gender exclusion and essentialist attitudes back into schools, we believe feminists should celebrate girls’ dramatic educational achievements in the 40 years since Title IX became law. Hillary Clinton helped reopen the doors to single-sex public education by supporting the Deptartment of Education’s 2006 relaxed regulations of Title IX. We don’t doubt that she did, as she has said, “find her voice” as an undergraduate at Wellesley in the 1960s. But who’s to say that, if she’d gone to Stanford (like Chelsea), she would not have been equally empowered?Electronics retailer Best Buy is headed for the exits. I can’t say when exactly, but my guess is that it’s only a matter of time, maybe a few more years.
Consider a few key metrics. Despite the disappearance of competitors including Circuit City, the company is losing market share. Its last earnings announcement disappointed investors. In 2011, the company’s stock has lost 40% of its value. Forward P/E is a mere 6.23 (industry average is 10.20). Its market cap down to less than $9 billion. Its average analyst rating, according to The Street.com, is a B-.
Those are just some of the numbers, and they don’t look good. They bear out a prediction in March from the Wall Street Journal’s Heard on the Street column, which forecast “the worst is yet to come” for Best Buy investors. With the flop of 3D televisions and the expansion of Apple’s own retail locations, there was no killer product on the horizon that would lift it from the doldrums. Though the company accounts for almost a third of all U.S. consumer electronics purchases, analysts noted, the company remains a ripe target for more nimble competitors.
But the numbers only scratch the surface. To discover the real reasons behind the company's decline, just take this simple test. Walk into one of the company’s retail locations or shop online. And try, really try, not to lose your temper.
I admit. I can’t do it. A few days ago, I visited a Best Buy store in Pinole, CA with a friend. He's a devoted consumer electronics and media shopper, and wanted to buy the 3D blu ray of “How to Train Your Dragon,” which Best Buy sells exclusively. According to the company’s website, it’s backordered but available for pickup at the store we visited. The item wasn’t there, however, and the sales staff had no information.
But my friend decided to buy some other blu-ray discs. Or at least he tried to, until we were “assisted” by a young, poorly groomed sales clerk from the TV department, who wandered over to interrogate us. What kind of TV do you have? Do you have a cable service, or a satellite service? Do you have a triple play service plan?
He was clearly—and clumsily--trying to sell some alternative. (My guess is CinemaNow, Best Buy’s private label on-demand content service.) My friend politely but firmly told him he was not interested in switching his service from Comcast. I tried to change the subject by asking if there was a separate bin for 3D blu rays; he didn’t know.
The used car style questions continued. “I have just one last question for you,” he finally said to my friend. “How much do you pay Comcast every month?”
My friend is too polite. “How is that any of your business?” I asked him. “All right then,” he said, the fake smile unaffected, “You folks have a nice day.” He slinked back to his pit.
As a sometime business school professor, I could just imagine the conversation with the TV department manager the day before. “Corporate says we have to work on what’s called up-selling and cross-selling,” the clerk was informed in lieu of actual training on either the products or effective sales. “Whenever you aren’t with a customer, you need to be roaming the floor pushing our deal with CinemaNow. At the end of the day, I want to know how many people you’ve approached.”
But this is hardly customer service. It's actually getting in the way of a customer who's trying to self-service because there's no one around who can answer a basic question about the store's confusing layout. It's anti-service.
Going Bankrupt Gradually, then Suddenly
We left the store, my friend having made his purchase but both of us fuming. I was reminded of a line from Ernest Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises.” One character asks another how he went bankrupt. “Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.” Best Buy, I thought, is doing the same, just as many big box retailers have done in the last decade.
First comes the strategic bankruptcy, well in progress at Best Buy, where management’s sole focus is improving some arbitrary metric from last quarter, even when doing so actually interferes with customers trying to buy something else. The financial collapse comes later. But if history is any guide, the second part, once it starts, will be quick.
As with many large retailers unable to cope with new channels and new consumer expectations, the company will continue to sputter on fumes, slowing down bit by bit until one day it just stops moving. Think of Elek-Tek, Virgin Megastores, or KB Toys. (See a non-exhaustive, nostalgia-inducing list of recently-failed retailers over at Wikipedia.)
The new conventional wisdom says that big box retailers like Best Buy are going the way of the dinosaur. Online giants, notably Amazon, are the future. Online retailers are more efficient, because they lack physical locations, and so can offer better prices. Shopping online is also more convenient. On the web, consumers can shop anywhere they are, day or night. (Amazon has a market cap of $80 billion and a P/E of 91.)
Best Buy and other traditional retailers complain that Amazon can undercut them in prices because the site doesn’t charge sales tax, and that Amazon customers use Best Buy as their showroom, taking advantage of the extensive, well-stocked locations and knowledgeable staff to research products they actually buy from someone else online.
Online competitors are certainly part of Best Buy’s problem, but not for the reasons it thinks. What’s really going on is more basic. Best Buy just doesn’t understand its customers’ point of view.
More than a decade ago, in “Unleashing the Killer App,” I wrote that while transitioning to the Internet was revolutionary for retailers, it was merely evolutionary for customers. “Ensure continuity for the customer,” I said as one of my twelve rules for building killer apps, “not yourself.”
What I meant was that consumers easily adapt to alternative retail channels. Before the Internet, there was catalog shopping and home shopping from television. For consumers, buying online was just the next step in an obvious progression of more convenient ways to buy.
For brick-and-mortar retailers, however, the shift was jarring. Moving online required new thinking, new management structures, and new strategies. It would also require integrated front and back-end information systems. Customers would expect inventory to be transparent between the web and the stores, and that specials and “exclusives” would be consistent across all channels. Whatever attributes they associated with a retailer’s brand—whether price, quality, convenience, expertise, service—would need to be translated to the online experience and enhanced.
To compete successfully against new online retailers, traditional retailers would also need to find ways to transform the expensive liabilities of physical locations with limited hours and high labor and inventory costs into assets that complemented rather than competed with the online experience.
Best Buy's Wounds are Mostly Self-Inflicted
Many retailers have struggled to make the transition; some have fallen on their swords along the way. So far, Best Buy fails on every measure. The company has its own website, of course, and offers customers the opportunity to order online and pickup and return in-store. (At the Pinole store, there is a separate line for pickups at the customer service desk, though it is staffed by the same people who handle returns and other service problems. Lines are longer and slower than for in-store checkout.)
But the website doesn’t seem to be programmed for even basic inventory management. An article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the company’s hometown newspaper, reported a few days before Christmas that the company had only just informed some customers that online orders, some placed the day after Thanksgiving, couldn’t be filled and were being cancelled. The out of stock items included the most popular items, including TVs and iPads, “as well as other tablets, cameras, laptops, PS3 games and the Nintendo Wii.”
The company issued a statement that read: “Due to overwhelming demand of hot product offerings on BestBuy.com during the November and December time period, we have encountered a situation that has affected redemption of some of our customers' online orders.”
Let’s parse that sentence for a moment. The company “encountered a situation”—that is, it was a passive victim of an external problem it couldn’t control, in this case, customers daring to order products it acknowledges were “hot” buys. This happened, inconveniently for Best Buy, during "the November and December period," that is, the only months that matter to a retailer. For obvious reasons, the statement ties itself in knots trying to avoid mentioning that the "situation" occurred during the holidays.
The situation that Best Buy “encountered” has “affected redemption” of some orders. Best Buy doesn’t fill online orders, it seems. Rather, customers “redeem” them. So it’s the customers, not Best Buy, who have the problem. And those customers haven't been left hanging; they've only been “affected” in efforts to “redeem” their orders. It’s not as if the company did anything wrong, or, indeed, anything at all.
It’s all so passive. It’s also a transparent and truly feeble pack of lies. Here’s what the honest and appropriate release would have said: “Due to poor inventory management and sales forecasting of the most popular products during our key sales season, we can’t fill orders we promised to fill weeks ago in time for Christmas.”
There’s a little more to the Best Buy’s press release: “We are very sorry for the inconvenience this has caused, and we have notified the affected customers.”
Again, note the use of the passive voice—"this" refers to the “situation” that Best Buy “encountered.” The "situation," not Best Buy's poor operations, “has caused” inconvenience to customers. It’s not something Best Buy did wrong. It’s like they’re reporting the weather; something utterly out of their control about which the company is a mere observer. They’ve “notified the affected customers” despite, it seems, no sense of obligation to do so, let alone to find a solution to a problem entirely of the company’s own creation. How sorry are they, do you think?
Again, here’s my rewrite: “Three days before Christmas, too late for the customers to make alternative arrangements, we are just now letting our would-be customers know. We have no excuse for such amateur behavior.”
According to the article, the company refused to answer any questions beyond the release. Here are a few: How many customers were affected? What specific products were involved? How has the company failed so badly to perform to even the lowest standards imaginable for a retailer at Christmas? Did the company expect anyone would be fooled by the ridiculously obtuse statement of non-apology?
It’s Not Amazon that’s Killing Best Buy—But Best Buy Could Certainly |
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After you have updated your stylesheet, make sure you turn this module offMizzou Points To Bigger Shifts In How College Athletes See Themselves
Enlarge this image toggle caption Paul Beaty/AP Paul Beaty/AP
This summer, football players at Northwestern University came very close to successfully forming a union — not to demand that they be paid, but to demand better scholarships and safety protocols. Had their bid succeeded, it might have changed college athletics — and, indeed, higher education — in some fundamental ways.
Those changes are exactly what Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee warned against when discussing the prospect of paying college athletes last year, a conversation that has been gaining steam in recent years at colleges across the country. "Imagine a university's basketball players striking before a Sweet Sixteen game demanding shorter practices, bigger dorm rooms, better food, and no classes before 11 a.m.," he said. "This is an absurd decision that will destroy intercollegiate athletics as we know it."
Student-athletes at the University of Missouri flirted with Alexander's hypothetical doomsday scenario when they pledged to forfeit the team's remaining games this season if the university president, Tim Wolfe, did not resign. According to The New York Times, each game the team forfeit would cost the University of Missouri $1 million. Wolfe's resignation on Monday almost certainly came so swiftly because it was made by the one group of students who could most directly affect the university's bottom line.
The Missouri football team's gambit rested on an ongoing shift in the way athletes think about the relationship between themselves and their schools — not simply as amateurs who receive scholarships who should be grateful just to be there — but as laborers of enormous economic value to their colleges and universities. (Indeed, the phrase "student-athlete" was invented in the 1950s by the NCAA's then-president, Walter Byers, to shield his organization from possible legal claims by injured players for workers' compensation.)
The grumbling around college players and labor and remuneration gets louder every year, particularly in March during the NCAA men's basketball tournament, when star basketball players tend to talk candidly about not having enough money to eat while the NCAA and CBS, which broadcasts the men's basketball tournament, haul in billions of dollars. A closely watched class-action lawsuit brought in 2009 by former UCLA basketball star Ed O'Bannon against the NCAA, which licensed the likenesses of athletes in video games, could have serious ramifications for whether more student-athletes can bring antitrust lawsuits against the NCAA. That case is ongoing.
The idea that college athletes should be compensated is a deeply politicized one: 73 percent of white survey respondents told The Washington Post they didn't think student-athletes should be paid, while a majority of people of color said they should be. "People who are younger, more liberal, and less religious, were more likely to support salaries for college athletes than were their older, more conservative, more religious counterparts," Deadspin's Barry Petchesky wrote. In other words, paying college athletes is a culture war issue, even if we don't tend to speak about it in those terms.
Meanwhile, the people at the center of that debate about whether and how and why student-athletes should organize — particularly those in revenue-generating sports like football and basketball — are much more likely to be black than the student bodies of their colleges more broadly. It was hard to find the specific racial demographics of the Missouri football team, but nearly 60 percent of the players in the SEC, the conference in which Missouri plays, were black during the last academic year, per the NCAA's website. Missouri's larger student body is only 7 percent black.
"They probably have more to lose than an average college student would have to lose from this type of protest because they're on scholarships, and they potentially want to move on in their college careers, but they're public figures," Sarah Jackson, a professor at Northeastern University who teaches about social protest movements, told me. "But because of this, they also have a lot of power. There's a conundrum." Jackson said that athletes at large universities have a bunch of constraints on what they can do in their downtime and are more closely scrutinized than other students. But, she said, black athletes are often the most visible black students on their campuses; they make lots of money for their institutions, and they have regular contact with the local news media. "So in a lot of ways, they have access and privileges to public spaces that a regular student doesn't have," she said.
The unprecedented success of this stand by Missouri's football players, coupled with the gradual shift toward more organization among student-athletes and the demographics of who those athletes are, suggests the Missouri case won't be the last time we will see student athletes flexing their muscles this way.INTERESTING TIMES
Witch-hunts
Medieval barbarity continues to blight the landscape of New Nepal
MALLIKA ARYAL
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KIRAN PANDAY In November Jug Chaudhary, a 30-year-old mother of four children, was beaten up by her family members and paraded naked around a village in Kailali. They dragged her out from her home, beat her mercilessly and then forced her to eat human excreta. Her mother-in-law's brother had just passed away. She had been accused of putting a spell on him that caused his death. In November Jug Chaudhary, a 30-year-old mother of four children, was beaten up by her family members and paraded naked around a village in Kailali. They dragged her out from her home, beat her mercilessly and then forced her to eat human excreta. Her mother-in-law's brother had just passed away. She had been accused of putting a spell on him that caused his death. When Chaudhary's husband, a labourer in India, returned the couple went to the police station but could not file a complaint. "They said it was a personal matter, it should be solved in the community." Jug Chaudhary did not receive justice. She is living in the same village, in the same Dalit community as those who accused and assaulted her. Chaudhary made the journey to Kathmandu to talk at a public forum last week. It is extremely difficult for her to talk about what she went through publicly. She has to stop many times and her voice cracks when she describes how helpless she felt when she realised there was noone she could turn to. She has now decided to leave her four children in the village and move to India to look for jobs. But she has this to say: "I came all the way to Kathmandu to talk about this because I do not want other Nepali sisters to go through what I did." Five other women from Dalit and other minority communities in Lalitpur, Saptari, Siraha, Kailali, Sunsari and Makwanpur also speak at the forum. Each was branded a witch and humiliated in front of their communities. In each case the perpetrators have been let off the hook. Noone has come to apologise to the women for treating them like animals. They are awaiting justice, but living in fear of being targeted again. "I can't sleep because I am afraid they are going to come back for me," says Chaudhary. These are not the only cases. But we only hear of those cases where brave women actually talk to journalists and file cases with the police. There are thousands of Nepali women who quietly bear the ordeal of being labelled a witch. The victims mostly belong to largely illiterate, extremely poor Dalit communities, considered untouchables in Nepal. Nepal's legal system does not have provisions to punish those involved in witch-hunts. If a complaint is filed and the guilty apprehended they are imprisoned for a short duration and slapped with a fine. The Ministry of Women, Children and Social Welfare and Nepal's Women's Commission are only just recognising the legal vacuum and have drafted laws against the practice. But we are still a long way from actually having a law that fully addresses this problem. However, Nepal has been a party to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women since 1991. This international convention has clear provisions against gender violence. The state is obligated to amend domestic laws to conform to the spirit of the convention, follow the convention to the letter, or provide legal redress in cases where rights have been violated. Nepal has also signed nearly two dozen conventions on human rights, all of which touch upon gender violence. So to say we don't have laws in place is a cop-out, pure and simple. Witch-hunting is an extreme form of gender violence and the reason it is not taken seriously is because the victims are usually from marginalised communities. Nepal's gender movement has made amazing strides, but it has done little for this community of victims. Activists in Kathmandu can push for laws against witch-hunting while those in the field can work to spread awareness against the medieval superstitions that target these women. The Nepal Police, too, needs to include a chapter on how to address crimes related to superstition in their training manuals. Three years ago in June, the interim parliament declared Nepal an 'untouchability-free nation'. Such empty proclamations mean little to women like Jug Chaudhary. This year, Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal acknowledged the state's failure to deliver on its promises, saying, "it is unfortunate that we haven't been able to implement this declaration in practice." 1. Arthur
According to this article it is necessary for activists to "push for laws against witch-hunting" and "spread awareness" of international conventions in order to prevent such incidents where a woman was "beaten up by her family members and paraded naked around a village in Kailali. They dragged her out from her home, beat her mercilessly and then forced her to eat human excreta". This is very hard for a foreigner to understand. It seems to be some sort of "NGO mindset" no different from other types of feudal backwardness. To prevent such incidents it would make more sense to forget such "brave" articles promoting the NGOs and instead mobilize the YCL.
2. Sargam
If the word witch-hunt exists it is not a word invented by Nepalese. It simply drags us way back to the middle age when so called developed countries like Italy invented the astounding Catholic Church witchcraft process tainted with obscurantism. It is so sad that some official judiciary actions were not immediately set off so as to make it a telling example of new law and order. It shows how much Nepal requires a political and social aggiornamento.
3. jange
This kind of opportunistic revenge taking is bound to happen in a situation where the Maoists have not only been given free reign to murder, loot and extort but are considered revolutionary by people who should know better. It is not a coincidence that these types of events have increased since the Maoists started their murder, loot and extortion.
4. buzz
Arthur, Your opinion about mobilizing YCL is against law and democracy. YCL does not have authority. It is a job of police. YCL is criminal wing of terrorist organization Maoists involved in extortion, kidnapping, murders, smuggling etc. But your commie brain would not comprehend this.
5. Arthur
Above we see the various forms of feudal mindset at work that allow feudal practices like beating and humiliating witches to continue. First a journalist calls for the usual donor funding seeking response that achieves nothing - legislation against what is already a crime and "consciousness raising". Then Sargam fatalistically says it is "so sad" and complains, in english, that "witch hunting" is a foreign concept. Then jange repeats his usual mantra on "murder, loot and extortion" and imagines that such incidents have increased "since the Maoists" because now people actually notice them (at least the article mentions that there are thousands of such cases and we only hear of a few, from which jange could guess that this was nothing remarkable in old Nepal). Then buzz says organizing people to actually confront the witch-hunters and the police who protect them would be "against law and democracy" because that is a job for the authorities, (who are the police themselves). Nepal still has "20 layers of apartheid" with even the Dalits at the bottom oppressing each other. But the worst of these layers are the separation walls in people's minds that prevent actually seeing both the reality that exists and the reality that it can and will be changed by people's action.
6. buzz
Arthur, Your above comment proves you cannot comprehend beyond the failed philosophy of communism. Even in China capitalism rules. During Mao era, there was famine in China which killed millions because of failed policies. There is apartheid in Nepal. Maoists are not messiah to end it. PERIOD. Look at their track record. They want one party communism, a dictatorial regime. Their brutal attacks against dissenting voice is proof of that. Recent forceful bandh is another example. Arthur, why do not you tell me, whose job is to maintain law and order? One thing Nepal does not need is any foreign idiot barging in our internal affairs. What do you know about apartheid? Your Anglo name definitely makes it really funny to hear about apartheid. Peace in Nepal and my middle finger up yours Arthur
7. buzz
To add to my initial comment, if its ever get published (since this site notoriously censors) I want ask why the hell maoists do not bring any legislation in the parliament? Oh yes they are too busy keeping the parliament hostage making a mockery about democracy and rule of law.
8. jange
Mr. Arthur- It is necessary to impress upon Nepalis that violence will not lead to political, social, or economic progress. Hence the constant refrain to Maoists' murder, loot and extortion. The self styled "revolution" of the Maoists has been an unnecessary distraction that has pushed back the political, social, or economic progressof Nepal by at least a generation. It is difficult enough to work in Nepal in the best of circumstances. We really do not need a mafia organisation posing as pseudo revolutionaries murdering, looting, and extorting to make a difficult task even more difficult. However, you are right about the mantra part. I suggest that this does become a Mantra and every politician at the beginning, middle and end of his speech should say it- "political, social, or economic progress cannot be achieved by violence. Violence is detrimental to political, social, or economic progress". In the witch hunting context the witch hunters' methods and mode of thinking are no different to that of the Maoists- using violence to achieve their ends.
9. May
So, Arthur, you are always right and everyone else is wrong. And you have the answer to everything with your totalitarian commie brain.
10. ashuosh
The doctrine of development runs deep in certain circles, the nuts and bolts of the anti-politics machine.
11. Sargam
As of now a goon starts searching in the writings of others his utter deficiency in the knowledge of societal events; all of a sudden there is a tilt that occurs in his pea-brain to search in the past as to what made the fame of the historical rhetorics of Marxism and Maoism. Here we find him desperately searching to impress us with his vain try to bring us into the field of feudalism. Feudalism is dead and burried since the middle ages. We want to explore the new horizon of interests of our time that could add to the knowledge of our mind so that if possible we could extend our helping hand to improve the present situation of Nepal. Nothing but something concrete materializing, you got it? Otherwise his'master's voice' will order him to be obliged to dispense with his services. There is a saying that goes as follows (in Nepali): " Kukkurko puchar barah barsa dhungroma rakhe pani tedroko tedrai." That means the dog's tail remains always curled even if you put it for twelve years in a bottle.
12. Arthur
No May, only those who pretend that "political social and economic progress" can be achieved by donors paying people like jange to sing NGO platitudes as a mantra are wrong. buzz can now proceed with his "legislation" and jange with his mantras but women will continue to be beaten as witches until the witchunters are forcibly repressed. Study a little history and you will learn that feudalism was suppressed in the West by revolutionary violence and only then was political social and economic progress unleashed. The democratic revolutions in Britain and France were much more violent than anything Nepal has seen and the American war against the slaveowners makes Prachanda look like a disciple of gandhi.
13. jange
Thank you Mr. Arthur for your logical consistency. So, you think importing NGO platitudes (presumably from America/Britain/France) and applying them in Nepal will not work but importing revolutionary violence from those very same places will work. It looks like you have a deep knowledge of history. Surely then, the intelligent thing to do would be to learn from that history so that Nepalis don't have to repeat the same mistakes. I am sure Nepalis would appreciate the lessons that you have learned from history and advice on how to do things better. Or, do you think that the only way to achieve "political social and economic progress" is by violence?
14. Arthur
Yes jange, "the intelligent thing to do would be to learn from that history so that Nepalis don't have to repeat the same mistakes". Nepal's reactionaries were not intelligent enough to avoid repeating those mistakes once, so there was a People's War. They now have a chance to avoid repeating those mistakes a second time, by accepting civilian supremacy and carrying out the peace agreement to democratize the feudal army. If instead you cling to it as a last hope against the people, social and economic progress will still be achieved in Nepal, and women will not be beaten as witches forever, but the changes that must come will come violently.
15. rishav
Abuse and ill treatment of women is not anything new in Nepal. The difference now being that a few women have finally been able to speak about it thats all. There is no political reason why they have been able to come forward, may be the aide of womens groups and journalists have brought this issue to our attention. I have recently seen a channel 4 Uk documentary of the ill treatment of young nepali widows, very upsetting to see what these women folk have to go through. The current government policy of setting a side a few rupees for men to marry widows really tells you their mindset in dealing with the ill treatment of our women folk. I would really hate to see the fate of our women folk to be used as a political issue for our parties to gain points over each other. I feel that all parties need to sit down and realise what is happening and take the necessary steps forward.
16. buzz
Arthur, Dictatorship cannot be a substitute. Your mantra of communism will end all social evil is freaking hilarious. Whom are you kidding? Your arguments do not have substance. Show facts and logic instead of dead philosophy which has failed miserably. How does your example of US, UK and France are applicable in Nepal? They do not have communism.
17. Arthur
buzz, the article is about witch-hunting. you have nothing to say about what should be done. instead you string together phrases on your favorite topic at random and with no connection to anything anybody else has said. no wonder you are called "buzz".
18. buzz
Arthur, How convenient, isn't it? You are dragging the subject of witch hunting to communists propaganda. I went straight to the bottomline. You don't have any substance so you are going after my nick. How matured? Get a life.
19. Manfred
Sorry, witch-hunting is stone-age mentality, has nothing to do with political orientation but rather reflects the inability of society to deal with wrong-doing, which in the year 2010 can only be declared sick & barbaric!
20. Manfred
Ehmm, my comment "is waiting moderation"? - Do you mean "censorship"? - This is really stone-age journalism!
21. Satya Nepali
Jange, I'm no fan of donors and NGOs, but absolutely enjoyed your comment no. 13...Arthur, I'm really beginning to doubt your 'foreign' credentials...
22. Arthur
Re 21, being foreign means that I do not speak any languages of Nepal and therefore cannot have a deep understanding, no matter how much I read about Nepal in english. That is not a "credential" but a disability. But some things are easy to see from outside. In particular it is easy for a foreigner to see that the "democratic", "non-violent" pose of so much of Kathmandu's middle class goes together with a fatalistic toleration of medieval barbarity like witch-hunting, expressed by idle chatter about "legislation" and "consciousness raising" that only provides jobs for that class instead of actually supporting the necessary forcible suppression of witch-hunters. The Maoists look "alien" to you because you are aliens to the modern world. From a "foreign" perspective they look like fellow citizens of the 21st century who would forcibly suppress witchunting like any other modern, "foreign" person, instead of "democratically" tolerating it.
23. buzz
Arthur, You are full of it. You are hypocrite. You are talking in a way that Nepalis have never been in any foreign land. What do you say about prevailing racism in western Europe and USA. What do you say about assassination of abortion doctor of Kansas by domestic terrorist? What do you say about FOX news channel in USA? What do you say about racial riots in Australia? Whom are you kidding?
24. Arthur
buzz, we are not discussing racism in other countries but witchunting in Nepal. But certainly exactly the same tactics are used by defenders of racism in Western countries as you are using to defend witchunting in Nepal - they will point to some other problem, somewhere else, or else call for "additional legislation" instead of actual suppression. But generally speaking they are less successful than in Nepal. Racist crimes do often actually get punished instead of being treated as a "personal affair". As for Fox news it is correctly regarded as backward and reactionary in the USA, but it might be considered "extreme left" in Nepal. For example it is difficult to imagine even Fox News proposing that the response to women being beaten and humiliated should be pass new laws or "spread awareness".
25. Neil J
Forget all this pro Maoist, anti Maoist, reactionary, revolutionary, nonsense and focus on the facts. An innocent woman has been severely assaulted and forced to eat human excrement. You don't need new laws to combat witchcraft. You need to enforce your existing laws. Until you can maintain even basic law and order you country will be broken.
26. buzz
Arthur, I am not defending withchunting in Nepal. This should be dealt based on prevailing laws. If the laws are not enough, introduce it through proper channels. Make the system work. Nobody should be above system. Not even your God Maoists. You arguments do not have any substance. Your idea of maoists being messaih is a fallacy. And Fox News is a No.1 News Channel. USA elected Bush twice. Racist crime do not always get punished as you said. And I am not defending this writer either. She is idiot.
27. Arthur
The article explains clearly that the police refused to act: "They said it was a personal matter, it should be solved in the community." This means the police are protecting the witch-hunters. There is no "proper channel". Force is required to establish a system. The system required must intimidate the witch-hunters and their protectors so that they are afraid to behave this way again and the "witches" feel safe to live proudly in the village. Both the police and the witch-hunters directly responsible should be captured, paraded through the village, forced to apologize to the "witches" and required to pay compensation, if necessary through forced labour. This will be denounced as violence, looting and extortion. It will work.
28. Arthur
Elsewhere: A women is lying in Mahakali district hospital with first degree burns all over her body after her husband set her on fire for reasons unknown. In Kapilbastu, a woman was refused food for weeks and forced to toil the fields as her body withered away because her in-laws weren't impressed with the dowry they received. In Nuwakot, a man slit an 84-year old woman saying she had killed his mother using black magic. "She lived to be 84 years old because she was a witch," he told the police. http://nepalitimes.com.np/blogs/thebrief/2009/12/30/good-and-bad-treatment/
29. Anuj
I agree with Neil J..some of our commentators are missing the point and seems their arguements does not carry much substance and hey BUZZ you can't blindly say that the author of this article is "idiot" just like tat. Have some decency and this statement of your's make whole of your arguement meaningless and crap. do u realize that?? Arthur has reasonable arguement. What will each one of us do if someone near and dear to us is branded "Witch" and "paraded naked"? Just simple, i might in a blind fury do what i am supposed to do ( u can imagine!!!). However, that doesn't solve the problem so STATE has to act meaningfully and severely punish those culprits...
(11 JAN 2013 - 17 JAN 2013) LATEST ISSUE
ADVERTISEMENTSubstitute any other group, and MTV would be the first to cry foul.
MTV News just released an incredibly racist and sexist video directed at White males.
The video reduces tens of millions of people to stereotypes based on race and sex.
Substitute any other group for White males, and there is no doubt that MTV would be the first make the accusation of racism and sexism.
Here is the tweet spreading the video to MTV New’s almost million Twitter Followers:
Hey, white guys: we came up for some New Year's Resolutions for you. pic.twitter.com/C9EeIY6wig — MTV News (@MTVNews) December 19, 2016
(Update: Apparently MTV has taken down the video from YouTube and Facebook, but as of 12:50 p.m. on 12-20-2016, the tweet is still live. If the tweet is taken down, you can view the video here.)
MTV doesn’t appear to be apologizing to the flood of tweet calling it out for its racism and sexism.
(added) I just emailed MTV senior media staff with the following:
As you may be aware, MTV News Tweeted a video titled “White Guy Resolution 2017” https://twitter.com/MTVNews/status/810960588973035520 The video is being widely criticized as racist and sexist because it singles out and stereotypes a group based on race and sex, and then treats that group in a derogatory manner. I would like to add your response to our coverage of the dispute, so that our readers know MTV’s position. Does MTV have a response? Please email me as soon as possible.
I will let you know if I get any response.
In the meantime, Twitter is blowing up.
.@MTVNews Racist stereotypes are not funny, why do you think it's okay? — College Insurrection (@CollegeInsurrec) December 19, 2016
@MTVNews imagine if you changed the word white with another race. Trying to discourage racism by being racist. Good job MTV — Lou (@LouJ1612) December 19, 2016
@MTVNews Stop your race bait videos. They're awful. MTV has gone way downhill and is just pushing a race vs race narrative. Sry4Mansplaining — Nosjax (@nosjaxlol) December 19, 2016
Hey, @MTVNews, I have a New Year's resolution for you as well. It involves performing anatomically impossible acts. https://t.co/trUMiRBY7n — Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) December 19, 2016
@MTVNews by the way that "blue lives matter" joke made me cringe so hard I almost cried on the floor, because fuck innocent dead cops right? — Almeida (@alex98almeida) December 19, 2016The Rams continue what has been a brutally tough stretch to the schedule with a road trip to Seattle to take on the Seahawks in a game which will likely decide the NFC West. The Rams are going to have to play a clean, disciplined game in one of the toughest places to play in the NFL in order to return home victorious. Here are the keys to victory in Sunday’s game:
1. Stay composed
Seattle is one of, if not the, most difficult stadiums to play in. Their fans are nicknamed the ’12th man’ for a reason, the energy that they bring really is as if the Seahawks have an extra player on the field at all times. The crowd noise is so deafening that it can lead to communication issues and mental mistakes, which a young team like the Rams are especially susceptible to. In order to win, the Rams will have to stay composed and avoid getting rattled. Also, they must avoid picking up costly penalties like false starts due to the crowd noise.
2. Take advantage of all the Seahawks injuries
The Seahawks are currently one of the most banged up teams in the entire league, especially on defense. The loss of star cornerback Richard Sherman due to a torn achilles garnered most of the attention, but they’ve suffered a slew of equally devastating injuries. The loss of Kam Chancellor for the season a few weeks ago was just as big of a blow. Pro Bowl linebacker K.J. Wright is doubtful to play against the Rams and Defensive Player of the Year candidate Bobby Wagner is looking like a game-time decision. Simply put, this is a much different defense than Jared Goff and co. faced the first time around in Los Angeles. The Rams must exploit the injuries to the Seahawks secondary and linebacking corps, and it will be up to Goff to take advantage.
3. Start strong
A fast start will be key to quieting the crowd early on. Picking up some positive momentum early on is essential. If the Rams get behind early, the crowd and the Seahawks pass rush may prove to be too much and the game could slip away easily. The first time these two teams met, back in week five, LA had a golden opportunity to start strong but couldn’t finish. Early in the game, LA had the ball at the Seattle 12 yard line and Todd Gurley seemed to run it in for a touchdown. However, the touchdown was overturned on review as the ball came loose before he crossed the goal-line, giving Seattle a touchback. Certainly, the Rams can’t afford to squander such an opportunity if they get it on the road, and will need some first quarter points to get the win.
Rams outlook
Those are the Rams’ keys to victory. Playing in Seattle is never easy, but this Seahawks defense is nothing like the dominant units of years past. If there were ever a time to knock them off in Seattle and establish NFC West supremacy, it would be now. Without a doubt, if they can complete at least two of these keys to victory, they have a very good chance.
– Andrew Ortenberg is a Staff Writer for Full Press Coverage Rams. He covers the Los Angeles Rams. Like and follow on Follow @AndrewOball Follow @FPC_Rams and Facebook
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Like this: Like Loading...Mukti Bhawan tops the list (courtesy muktibhawan)
Highlights Mukti Bhawan finds its way to the top of the list Bareilly Ki Barfi ranks second Jagga Jasoos takes he third spot
It has been an intriguing year for Indian cinema. The crown jewels do not quite belong to Bombay, with the best film () coming from Malayalam cinema, and the biggest film () coming from Telugu cinema. Yet Hindi cinema has itself had quite a year, with several usual suspects failing to make a mark and, hearteningly, many a new voice breaking through. In my list of the ten best Hindi films of 2017, five are made by debutant directors. The future seems to be in good hands.Konkona Sensharma's directorial debut is set assuredly between the lines. It leaves the audience to observe the myriad gaps and fissures in the inevitably intricate dynamic shared by an extended family on vacation. The mood and atmospherics are gorgeous, as is the music. Set in 1979, the story contains everything from infidelity to insecurity, rendering the death alluded to in the title nearly irrelevant. This is a story of several chipped characters, pretending to be whole. And of the echoes they leave behind.Empowerment doesn't take place overnight. Advait Chandan's Secret Superstar is a film about a little guitar-playing girl who wants to sing for the world, but it is just as much a film about her mother trying to escape an oppressive marriage. First, however, she must accept that she even wants to get out, an unthinkable concept for so many unhappily married Indian women. The film gives both its ladies agency and allows them to make up their mind.Here's what I wrote in my review:"We do not usually see villainous parents in children's films, yet here Insia's father is a scoundrel, and the girl plots in order to free her mother from this tormented marriage. As she writes out a plan (number 29, her notebook tells us) this feels like The Parent Trap in reverse. Daughter and mother wish that the father is posted abroad so that he stays away for eleven months at a stretch. He might be back home 24 hours a day during the Ramzan period, but the two women decide they can bear him that long. It turns out they cannot - and should not - and Insia needs out."Read the full review here Vikramaditya Motwane, one of the strongest and most lyrical storytellers we have, went bare-bones to make a tiny movie on a measly budget where he took one of our best actors and locked him in a Bombay flat. From that essence, Motwane and Rajkummar Rao created a harrowing survival drama that had the audience hunkering for open air - and forHere's what I wrote in my review:"Something that blew my mind when I first moved to Bombay over a dozen years ago was the fact that alcohol is home-delivered. Everything, in fact, is delivered to the doorstep, at all times of day and night, and you can go months on end without leaving the house - if that's what you want. Man might not be an island, but this particular island city specialises in letting you create your own self-sufficient bubble. Vikramaditya Motwane's ingenious new film,, exploits this detachedness the city gets off on, simply by taking the island metaphor further. This claustrophobic little film is the story of a man realistically locked inside a high-rise apartment, and - in form and structure - this is a survivalist film, a genre primarily made up of singular protagonists marooned on deserted islands."Read the full review here Without question the most visually striking film of the year, Vishal Bhardwaj's grandiose period drama might not be the director's finest work - the climax is unforgivably tacky - but it sprawls across an immense canvas set in pre-Independent India, its characters are textured enough to belong to a memorable novel, and its history is ambitiously, optimistically revisionist. Kangana Ranaut shines as the impossibly fiery lead, and whileitself - a nuanced and naughty film - can't entirely keep up with her character, it bloody hell tries.Here's what I wrote in my review:"She doesn't want to sit on his lap. Miss Julia is enraged, and all her billionaire boyfriend Russi Billimoria does - as the man in charge, her lover, her producer - is slap the inside of his left thigh, inviting his tigress to clamber aboard so he can make it all better. She seethes while he smugly and knowingly slaps his goddamn thigh, like a particularly unctuous Krishna. Julia wants to defy him but dare not, and she cycles through her fury, before, in her own way, showing as much non-compliance as may be mustered. She does indeed go to him and allow herself to be patted down and placated, but she perches on his right thigh instead."Read the full review here What happens when a system - a creaking, broken system, a system built on compromise - runs into one man who wants to play by the rules? What happens when that man cannot be moved? What hope is there for the system, or for rules? Amit Masurkar's thoughtful and inward looking Newton is a rarely political Hindi film that poses many questions and leaves us haunted by the lack of answers. Rajkummar Rao plays the unyielding Newton Kumar while Pankaj Tripathi, in the opposing corner, plays an army officer who knows he's in charge, and the two are flat-out fantastic.Here's what I wrote in my review:"Rao and Tripathi provide terrific performances, especially when pouncing on one another - even literally. They are well complemented by Raghubir Yadav in an entertainingly loquacious role, Anjali Patil as a smartly dignified Adivasi woman and, quite memorably, Mukesh Prajapati as an election officer who doesn't have much to say but is easily, enviably content. The reason he chose this high-security posting was because he wanted to ride in a helicopter, and while the film is all about witnessing the dog of democracy |
theory of justice in property titles is deficient because in the real world most landed (and even other) property has a past history so tangled that it becomes impossible to identify who or what has committed coercion and therefore who the current just owner may be. But the point of the “homestead principle” is that if we don’t know what crimes have been committed in acquiring the property in the past, or if we don’t know the victims or their heirs, then the current owner becomes the legitimate and just owner on homestead grounds. In short, if Jones owns a piece of land at the present time, and we don’t know what crimes were committed to arrive at the current title, then Jones, as the current owner, becomes as fully legitimate a property owner of this land as he does over his own person. Overthrow of existing property title only becomes legitimate if the victims or their heirs can present an authenticated, demonstrable, and specific claim to the property. Failing such conditions, existing landowners possess a fully moral right to their property. (See my post Justice and Property Rights: Rothbard on Scarcity, Property, Contracts….)
Also, note that Johnson mentions that the Anarchists he sides with think that in a free market the “working class” would “no longer dependent on relationships with absentee owners of capital in order to make a living.” The left-libertarians variously criticize several phenomenon, sometimes lumped together. I think they should be treated separately:
Unowned land claimed by the state. Truly “unowned” land: this is land not yet really improved or homesteaded but fenced off and claimed by the state–such as the vast interior of national parks and forests and other lands controlled e.g. by the Bureau of Land Management, and other untransformed areas such as the deep sea bed (subject to the Law of the Sea Treaty), antarctica, the moon, and so on. The libertarian position here is that upon dissolution of the state these resources are subject to homesteading, as they are not yet truly owned. Property legally owned by the state. Other property that is legally owned by the state, such as roads and government buildings and military bases. It is crankish to regard these as “unowned”, as some libertarians do. This property has been homesteaded, either by the state; or by some private owner that the state either expropriated or purchased from. These should be regarded, in my view, as assets legally owned by the state but morally owned by the state’s victims and subject to claims of restitution by them. For specific pieces of property expropriated from an owner by the state, that victim ought to reclaim his property. For the rest, it should be subject to a pro-rata claim by all the various creditors of the state–e.g., auctioned off and then the proceeds split among the claimants. Consider a piece of property that the state acquire by sale: the previous owner has no specific claim since he sold his land to the state. He was already compensated. Likewise, someone who had their property taken by eminent domain but then received a payment of “fair market value” has (mostly) been compensated already–and with money stolen from taxpayers at large. Thus, for condemned or purchased property where the state paid the previous owner, this should be an asset available for restitution to the state’s victims at large. Unimproved property legally owned by a private owner. Land that is unimproved but held by a nominally private owner under color of title granted by the state. This land is arguably similar to class 1 above, and the current legal/nominal owner perhaps ought not have his state-granted title recognized. Perhaps such unimproved property should be subject to homesteading if the state were to wither away. I am not sure of this, but I grant that it is arguable. Land owned by “absentee” owners. Land that was at one point homesteaded, but which is occupied on a day to day basis by tenants or employees of an “absentee” or “distant” owner. Now the comment above implies that this is illegitimate. I disagree completely, as I argue in A Critique of Mutualist Occupancy. Contrary to the claims of some mutualists and left-libertarians, absentee ownership is not unlibertarian. It cannot be plausibly argued that the absentee owner has “abandoned” the property. In fact, even if you argue that property that is never improved, or that is not kept in a state of active use, is to be regarded as unowned, in the landlord or employer situation the property is actively used, and the tenants or employees keep the property in a state of use on behalf of the (absentee) owner, as his agent, by contract. To hold otherwise is to undercut property rights by denying the right of free individuals to enter into property contracts.
[Mises]
Like this: Like Loading...New York Times columnist and Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman believes that the policies of the current “narrow minded” Israeli government “are basically a gradual long-run form of national suicide.”
Writing in his New York Times blog “Conscience of a Liberal” about Peter Beinart’s controversial book “The Crisis of Zionism”, Krugman writes, “Like many liberal American Jews I basically avoid thinking about where Israel is going. It seems obvious from here that the narrow-minded policies of the current government are basically a gradual, long-run form of national suicide – and that’s bad for Jews everywhere, not to mention the world.”
Krugman’s unusually harsh critique of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is sure to elicit howls of protest from Israeli spokespersons and American Jewish organizations – more so, perhaps, as they come on the eve of Israel’s Independence Day. It is also sure to further inflame the continuously deteriorating relationship between the Israeli government and the New York Times, considered by many to be the most important newspaper in the world. Last December, Netanyahu declined an offer by the Times’ to pen an article for the paper’s opinion pages, citing the newspaper’s alleged anti-Israel bias.
Krugman, probably the world’s leading economic columnist, won the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences (informally the Nobel Prize in Economics) in 2008 for his contributions to the theories of free trade. Born to Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, Krugman, 59,has written only rarely about Israel. At an economic conference in Tel Aviv in 2009 he had only high praise for Israel’s economic performance.
In another controversial comment in his blog, Krugman noted that he has refrained from commenting on Israel out of fear of the potential Jewish reaction. “I have other battles to fight,” he wrote, “and to say anything to that effect [that the Israeli government is leading to national suicide] is to bring yourself under intense attack from organized groups that make any criticism of Israeli policies tantamount to anti-Semitism.”
Writing of Peter Beinart, Krugman adds: “It’s only right to say something on behalf of Beinart, who has predictably run into that buzzsaw. As I said, a brave man, and he deserves better.”
Paul Krugman addresses the World Business Forum at Radio City Music Hall in New York, October 7, 2009. BloombergFlorian Mueller, who made a name for himself during the campaign to prevent the adoption of software patents in Europe some years ago, said he had dug up a court filing that showed the payment had been made."The significance of this finding lies in how it reflects on Red Hat's credibility," Mueller wrote in his blog He said in the political and regulatory contexts, Red Hat insisted that open source licences (especially the GNU General Public Licence) were incompatible with payment of patent royalties. "...this simply depends on the specific terms and conditions of a deal," he added.Mueller said Red Hat used the GPL as a pretext for refusing to offer its customers implementations of patent-encumbered standards such as the AVC/H.264 video codec."Another important credibility issue is that the world's largest open source company actually fails to be open about its patent-related dealings and positions, a fact that others have criticized (sic) before," he said."It hides behind self-imposed confidentiality obligations and employs legalese terminology that in the eyes of many laypeople will appear far more favorable (sic) to Red Hat than a straightforward representation of the facts would."
Red Hat has been contacted for comment.
Mueller says the payment made by Red Hat was kept secret but news about it surfaced in another suit. (PDF - 450k)
According to him, FireStar Software filed a suit in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas in 2006. It was alleging that a patent related to linked databases (US Patent No. 6,101,502) was being infringed by Hibernate, a JBoss product.
At the time that FireStar first approached JBoss, the process of its acquisition by Red Hat had begun. Mueller says that FireStar may have regarded this as "a financial opportunity".
"The patent-in-suit was later assigned to a Texas company named Datatern," he said. "An investment group named Amphion Innovations US, which owns a stake in FireStar and set up its wholly-owned subsidiary DataTern as a patent licensing company (i.e., a non-practicing (sic) entity), also became a party to the suit.
Mueller says the settlement related to any patents held by companies that might be infringed by Red Hat's products."Red Hat published a redacted version of the settlement agreement and a'reader's guide' to it. the only part that had been redacted was Section 3, "PAYMENT"."There were different references to that payment in the publicly available parts of the agreement (and the parties agreed to pay their own legal fees), but the amount was not stated anywhere else. Section 7 stipulates a confidentiality obligation concerning the section on payment."Mueller said that after a while the plaintiffs sued the law firm that had represented them against Red Hat for alleged malpractice."In connection with that case (case no. 2:09-cv-00038, Eastern District of Texas), the parties initially didn't mention the amount paid by Red Hat, but then an additional group of companies came in: IP Navigation Group and affiliated entities."Those companies belong to Erich Spangenberg, who, according to law.com, runs one of the 'largest, and most litigious, patent-holding companies' and recommends a'sue first, ask questions later' approach."Citing from law.com, Mueller said it quoted patent defence company PatentFreedom, according to which "entities connected to Spangenberg have sued more than 500 [by now even more than 600] companies for patent infringement since 2005".He says Spangenberg "became involved with the FireStar/Red Hat dispute when the right holders were unhappy about the state of affairs and brought him in as additional firepower to pressure Red Hat into a settlement."On October 1, 2009, Foley & Lardner (the firm that represented FireStar), amended its 'counterclaims, third-party complaint, and cross-claims', and paragraph 11 of that document made the following revelation: 'Of the $4.2 million settlement that the Plutus Parties [Spangenberg] obtained on behalf of Plaintiffs [Amphion/Datatern], the Plutus Parties took $3.4 million'."Mueller added that statements made in such a court filing must have evidentiary support, "so we can rely on the accuracy of that information".
Mueller said that in a bid to appease the FOSS community, "in which there is a widespread belief that the GPL doesn't allow inbound patent licensing, Red Hat emphasized in its announcement that its settlement also covers 'community members' (upstream and downstream) as 'third party beneficiaries'. Indeed, Section 9.12 of the settlement agreement contained some provisions.
"In the press release announcing the deal, Red Hat's patent attorney Richard Fontana said: 'Red Hat's settlement satisfies the most stringent patent provisions in open source licenses, is consistent with the letter and spirit of all versions of the GPL and provides patent safety for developers, distributors and users of open source software'.
He said Eben Moglen of the Software Freedom Law Center reviewed the agreement and concluded that it would also be compatible with GPLv3 (although only GPLv2 was relevant to that particular deal). "He liked the fact that its terms 'provide additional protection to other members of the community upstream and downstream from Red Hat' and welcomed 'Red Hat's efforts on the community's behalf'."
Mueller added: "Considering a $4.2 million payment compatible with the GPL is, however, in contradiction with what Red Hat and its lobbying fronts claim in different political and regulatory contexts.
"For example, when the European Commission was updating its European Interoperability Framework (a set of procurement guidelines), Red Hat and its different lobby groups claimed that only royalty-free standards are compatible with the GPL and other important FOSS licenses (sic).
"I debunked that false claim and instead advocated a proper distinction between patent licensing terms and conditions that work for FOSS from those that don't. That is exactly the approach the EU took in the final version of those guidelines.
"I believe Red Hat should have told European policymakers the truth about its FireStar settlement and unknown number of other patent license (sic) deals in place instead of trying to gain a political advantage with incorrect claims that royalties are inherently GPL-incompatible."In July 2007, Pete Johnson released the first of the limited edition Verocu cigars, an extension of the Havana VI line introduced in late 2006. The Tatuaje Verocu No. 1 Lado Occidental, which translates into west side, was part of the first limited Verocu release, limited to retailers fittingly in the West coast. Alongside the No. 1 was the Verocu No. 2 Zona del Este, released only for the East cost stores.
The Verocu line was created to be slightly stronger than its Havana VI counterpart, although that was five years ago.
In total there have been five limited releases banded in Verocu style:
Tatuaje Verocu No. 1 Lado Occidental
Tatuaje Verocu No. 2 Zona del Este
Tatuaje Verocu No. 9
Tatuaje Verocu Red Tubo
Tatuaje Cigar Más Finas
Cigar Reviewed: Tatuaje Verocu No. 1 Lado Occidental
Tatuaje Verocu No. 1 Lado Occidental Country of Origin: Nicaragua
Nicaragua Factory: Tabacalera Cubana S.A.
Tabacalera Cubana S.A. Wrapper: Nicaraguan Cafe Rosado Oscuro
Nicaraguan Cafe Rosado Oscuro Binder: Nicaragua
Nicaragua Filler: Nicaragua
Nicaragua Size: 6 1/4 Inches
6 1/4 Inches Ring Gauge: 52
52 Vitola: Toro
Toro MSRP: $10 (Boxes of 50, $500)
$10 (Boxes of 50, $500) Release Date: July 2007
July 2007 Number of Cigars Released: 1,000 Boxes of 50 Cigars (50,000 Total Cigars)
1,000 Boxes of 50 Cigars (50,000 Total Cigars) Number of Cigars Smoked For Review: 1
The Verocu No. 1 has a beautifully dark brown wrapper that, despite being soft and slightly oily, only has a matte-like finish to it. There are a couple of noticeable veins, but the wrapper is otherwise well-applied and flawless. The construction is solid, the cigar is firm without any soft spots and appears to have fared well over the past five years. On the predraw I’m getting strong milk chocolate, leather, and earth notes with some minor pepper on the tip of my tongue.
The initial draw of the first third of the Tatuaje Westie is a bouquet of flavors: sweet, creamy coffee notes, chocolate, cinnamon and the signature Tatuaje pepper solely in the background. Each draw produces a great amount of white smoke. Brown stripes litter the relatively white ash, which is flaky, but holding well at the one inch mark. After about an inch the initial sweetness dies down a bit, the pepper increases slightly and some leather aromas are peaking through as well. Towards the end of the first third some nice, but not overwhelming, cedar notes have come into the picture meshing nicely with the rest of the mix.
Things slow down in the second third. Some cedar is still hanging around along with some licorice notes appearing as well. I can feel the strength of the cigar, although it’s not the upfront peppery bite on your tongue like you might be used to with other Tatuaje cigars. Eventually a bitterness takes over and leads to a more linear profile with the chocolate returning.
The final third is more of the same chocolate with some minor black pepper notes floating around in the background. With most of the final third remaining, some nice herbal aromas develop and the cedar returns playing off each other nicely. The combination isn’t necessarily complex, but it is finishing out the cigar quite nicely. The strength has built throughout and is now very noticeable, making this a strong, but smooth cigar that is definitely the step up it was meant to be from the Havana VI line.
Final Notes
I’m disappointed that this will probably be my only chance to smoke one, however New Havana Cigars did have a bandless release from Tatuaje called the ELO1 that is supposed to be the remaining Verocu No. 1s. Those of course are long sold out, but they had another batch released to them in 2011. That means the possibility of seeing them again isn’t out of the question, however waiting five years to smoke it, might be. In addition, early last year, Shiroma’s Wine and More purchased some of the remaining stock of Verocu No. 1s for their fifth anniversary.
Since this cigar was released only a couple years after I started smoking cigars and years before I even knew what a boutique brand was, I never had the chance to smoke these fresh, it would have been interesting.
This cigar has a lot of nicknames: Westie, West Coast, West Side, etc.
Both this cigar and the Verocu No. 2 in my humidor were procured from a friend who bought them both here in Texas. Technically I believe our local retailers were considered West coast, but it appears some retailers weren’t limited to just one of the two.
The original batch of releases was banded as Exclusivo Lado Occidental, the later batches are banded Verocu West Side.
Looking at Tatuaje’s website, it was interesting to see the LEs ramp up with only a few each year from 2006-2008 and then an explosion of them starting in 2009. The Verocu No. 1 and 2 were two of only three LE releases that year.
The Verocu No. 1 is actually packed in a media rueda or half wheel.
To date the Verocu releases of 2007 are the largest limited edition Tatuaje release disclosed. Both releases saw 50,000 cigars plus the aforementioned NHC and other releases.
Being five years out of production, you’re still able to find these on the secondary market occasionally. Expect to pay around $10-15.
Final smoking time for this stick was one hour and 45 minutes.
Tatuaje Verocu No. 1 Lado Occidental Brian Burt April 4, 2012 91 / 10 It was interesting going back to one of Pete’s early limited editions that I had not gotten to try before. As previously stated, I might not have gotten to smoke these fresh, but given what I know about the Verocu profile and the Tatuaje profile, the age has done this stick wonders. This cigar has a long finish and coats your mouth with the sweeter flavors up front and finishing off with a mild peppery bite. The flavor bouquet wasn’t overwhelmingly complex and the different flavors ended up playing very nicely off each other. As I guessed before I smoked the cigar, the age has mellowed out the peppery bite many Tatuaje sticks have. It was actually nice not having the pepper clog up my palate however, which allowed the other flavors to shine. Despite its age, The Verocu No. 1 still packs quite a punch. I thoroughly enjoyed this cigar and will definitely be on the look out for any rereleases of this stick in the future. April 4, 2012Hello everyone! My name is Nemanja Bojanic, but many of you may know me as “Nic” from the YouTube channel AbsoluteMTG. I have been producing Magic: The Gathering content on the internet since 2010, and have been competitively grinding events since the introduction of the Return to Ravnica block in 2012. While I enjoy maneuvering through the complex board states of just about every format except Vintage, my main format of choice is Standard. Today, I’ll be talking about the key to dominating the Aether Revolt Standard format in light of my performance at Grand Prix (GP) Pittsburgh.
First and foremost, the deck I chose to play for GP Pittsburgh was Black–Green Constrictor aggro due to its ability to answer the attrition and speed of the Mardu Vehicles deck, while also providing a solid gameplan against the rest of the field. My day one performance broke down into: 2–0 start due to byes, 5–0 vs. BG variants, 0–1 vs. Jeskai Combo-less Control, and 1–0 vs. Mardu Vehicles. Overall, my 8–1 performance put me in 15th place at the end of the day, with a collective three games lost across all matches. Day two fared a bit worse for me, with a spread of: 1–2 vs. Mardu Vehicles, 0–1 vs. 4-Color Saheeli/Aetherworks, 1–0 vs. RUG Aetherworks, and 1–0 vs. BG Constrictor. My 11–4 record placed me in 44th place and allowed me to both cash out and earn two Pro Points for the season.
Here's the deck I played:
Black/Green Constrictor
Creatures
4 Winding Constrictor
4 Sylvan Advocate
4 Walking Ballista
3 Rishkar, Peema Renegade
2 Tireless Tracker
2 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
4 Verdurous Gearhulk
Planeswalkers
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
Spells
4 Fatal Push
3 Oath of Nissa
2 Blossoming Defense
2 Grasp of Darkness
1 Ruinous Path
Lands
4 Blooming Marsh
4 Hissing Quagmire
3 Evolving Wilds
7 Swamp
6 Forest
Sideboard
1 Tireless Tracker
2 Scrapheap Scrounger
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
1 Flaying Tendrils
1 To the Slaughter
1 Ruinous Path
2 Transgress the Mind
1 Ishkanah, Grafwidow
1 Natural State
2 Lost Legacy
2 Ob Nixilis Reignited
There are quite a few things that you might notice about this list at a glance, the first being that it is very similar to Ryan Hare’s winning decklist from the very same Grand Prix. It seems as though both Ryan and I were on the same gameplan for our BG strategy: Omit cards like Grim Flayer and Glint-Sleeve Siphoner for more powerful options. Moving away from both the Delirium and Energy synergies that exist in this archetype allows us to play cards like Sylvan Advocate that function without needing to see other cards in our deck alongside it. Remarkably, one of the biggest upsides that Sylvan Advocate has outside of its late-game scaling is the fact that it does not die to the single copy of Shock that the Mardu decks will, on average, play in the mainboard.
The downside of this deck is that it is not a very simple deck to pilot and it does require some previous practice and knowledge of the format to master its intricacies. For you Hearthstone players out there, the playstyle of the deck is very similar to that of the Pirate Warrior deck post-release of “Mean Streets of Gadgetzan.” For the rest of you, the deck offers a wide decision tree of potential plays that scale in how optimal they are based on what you’re playing against. For example, you don’t want to go all-in on your Verdurous Gearhulk counter allotment on one creature when you’re playing against a deck that has the potential to play cards such as Murder or Unlicensed Disintegration that will easily kill it. However, you are sometimes able to comfortably commit all of your +1/+1 counter–producing resources on a Walking Ballista that could kill your opponent's entire board even if they threaten to kill it at any point.
The biggest synergy enabler that we have in the deck is Winding Constrictor. A turn two Constrictor into a turn three Rishkar allows you to distribute two counters on both creatures and for you to attack in for four with your snake on that turn. Placing counters on Sylvan Advocate with Rishkar allows you to be able to attack with the Advocate for the turn and then tap it in your second main phase for mana. Similarly, you can also choose to be reactive and keep your +1/+1–bearing Sylvan Advocate untapped so you can cast a Blossoming Defense in response to an opponent’s removal effect. Another vital aspect of the deck is the ease in enabling the “Revolt” clause on Fatal Push. Walking Ballista, Tireless Tracker, Evolving Wilds, and Oath of Nissa are all cards that can uniquely impact your resolution of Fatal Push to kill off one of your opponent’s important three or four–mana creatures. Tracker and Oath require a little bit more maneuvering to pull off—because you need to invest mana in cracking clues and you need to play a second Oath—but are still effective ways to trigger Revolt.
After 15 rounds of competitive play, there is very little that I want to change from this list. All of the mainboard inclusions were deliberately made in understanding that GB and Mardu would likely be the most played decks in the room after the Pro Tour results showing six Vehicle decks in the Top 8. The most underwhelming cards in the sideboard were the two Scrapheap Scroungers and the additional copy of Liliana, the Last Hope. Scrounger was in the sideboard to pound through any removal that control decks would throw my way, but I would have rather had two more copies of Transgress the Mind against Control, Aetherworks, 4-Color Saheeli, and other similar decks. I included another copy of Liliana to be able to slow down the tempo of the Vehicles decks, but I would have rather had another copy of Flaying Tendrils each time I held her in my hand. Moving forward, my sideboard would look like this:
1 Tireless Tracker
2 Flaying Tendrils
1 To the Slaughter
1 Ruinous Path
4 Transgress the Mind
1 Ishkanah, Grafwidow
1 Natural State
2 Lost Legacy
2 Ob Nixilis Reignited
Sideboarding Guide
With this sideboard guide, we’ll be discussing the three most popular decks of the format: Mardu Vehicles, BG Counters (Constrictor), and Jeskai Saheeli. You can port over the methodology of sideboarding discussed in these match-ups for other decks you might encounter that require similar maneuvering.
Mardu Vehicles
-2 Tireless Tracker
-1 Rishkar, Peema Renegade
-3 Oath of Nissa
+2 Flaying Tendrils
+1 Ishkanah, Grafwidow
+1 Natural State
+1 Ruinous Path
+1 To the Slaughter
Mardu Vehicles is probably your toughest match-up only because of how powerful their board state can become once they get rolling. Tracker and Rishkar are a bit too slow so you want to shave some copies out of the maindeck, and the removal you bring in is much more powerful than the filtering from the Oaths. The way I like to look at it is that each copy of Oath becomes one of the singleton removal spells that is being brought in from the sideboard. As long as you can clear the sky of any Heart of Kirans while killing any and all Chandras and Gideons that roam your opponent’s board, you’ll easily win the match.
B/G Counters
On the Draw:
-2 Sylvan Advocate
-2 Blossoming Defense
-2 Walking Ballista
+1 [[Ishkana, Grafwidow]]
+1 Tireless Tracker
+1 Ruinous Path
+1 To the Slaughter
+2 [[Ob Nixilis, Reignited]]
On the Play:
-2 Walking Ballista
-1 Rishkar, Peema Renegade
-1 Sylvan Advocate
-1 Blossoming Defense
+1 Tireless Tracker
+1 Ruinous Path
+1 To the Slaughter
+2 [[Ob Nixilis, Reignited]]
There is a huge shift in how you want to approach the mirror match based on whether you are on the play or on the draw. While on the draw, you want to be more reactive to an opponent’s plays, keeping removal open to answer their cards one-for-one instead of just slamming dudes on the table. Why is slamming dudes on the table bad when you’re on the draw? You’re always going to be a turn behind your opponent. If an opponent slams a Winding Constrictor onto the table turn two, not killing it and playing a creature of you own will likely result in the opponent either killing the turn two–creature and attacking directly, or worse: They could reach for insane synergies on curve like Rishkar on turn three.
While you’re on the play, the role is reversed and you get to be the aggressor. Granted, either player can disrupt these roles by having perfectly timed removal—having black mana open on turn one with a Fatal Push in hand, for example—but you’re much more likely to curve into your good stuff while on the play. If you can make your board bigger than your opponent’s, you can simply win the game with an army of +1/+1 counter–bearing dudes. Most times you can easily overwhelm your opponent because a turn three Rishkar means you’ll have two extra mana to work with on your following turn.
Jeskai Saheeli
-3 Rishkar, Peema Renegade
-2 Oath of Nissa
-1 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
-2 Walking Ballista
-1 Fatal Push
+1 Tireless Tracker
+1 To the Slaughter
+1 Ruinous Path
+2 Lost Legacy
+4 Transgress the Mind
If someone told me that I could choose any deck to play against for an entire tournament’s duration, the last thing you’d hear me reply back with is “Jeskai Saheeli.” Although I spent a fair amount of time playing the deck at the start of the Aether Revolt season, I despise playing against it for the same reason I have despised playing against Splinter Twin in both Standard and Modern: If you don’t have the answers when they go to combo, you lose the game because of a two-card strategy. Lost Legacy allows us to be able to play a fair game of Magic if it resolves. If our opponent utters the sweet words: “What are you naming?”, we get to rip all copies of Saheeli from their deck, leaving them with their subpar Felidars that will only punish us if we can’t beat them before they resolve numerous Gearhulks. One vital thing to remember is that your opponent does not get to know what your Lost Legacy choice is until the card resolves; asking you for your choice is an allowance of the resolution of the card.
Alternatively, if you’re holding cards in your hand that can answer the combo at instant speed, you can use Lost Legacy to name Fumigate so that your opponent can’t answer your developed board, Glimmer of Genius so they can’t find important cards, or Disallow so they don’t get to be the “fun police” during the game. Not being able to name Torrential Gearhulk is a bummer but you can win the majority of games against Control variants just by being the better player.
Wrap Up
I believe that BG Constrictor is the best deck in the format, and that the Delirium-less, Energy-less strategy is the most powerful one to be playing right now. If you want to invest your faith in any deck for competitive play and master it, use my GP Pittsburgh deck as a shell and make adjustments to your suiting. You will not be disappointed with your results if you invest the effort. Take your time and playtest the mirror match heavily because it’ll likely be the one that you’ll play against the most.
Until next time, thank you for reading and I wish you the best of luck in the rest of this season! If you need to find me, I’ll be in a cave playtesting the BG mirror for my Regional Pro Tour Qualifier at the beginning of March. You bring the snacks, I’ll bring the dice for our Constrictor board states.What if I told you a little spice (that’s probably sitting in your kitchen cupboard right now) could make a huge difference in your dog’s health and even his lifespan?
I know it sounds crazy, but research shows it’s true … turmeric (the spice used in curries and mustards) with over 6,000 studies to its credit, is found to trump a lot of fancy, expensive drugs.
Arthritis drugs
Steroids
Chemotherapy
Inflammatory bowel disease drugs
Anti-inflammatory drugs
These are a whole lot of reasons to give your dog turmeric! So let’s take a closer look at this handy little spice (we’ll show you how much to give and which dogs shouldn’t get turmeric in a bit).
Turmeric contains a compound called curcumin – which is essentially its active ingredient. Curcumin has antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antiviral, antibacterial, antifungal, wound healing and anticancer activities. It can help fight diseases like arthritis, diabetes, cancer, liver disease, gastrointestinal issues, Alzheimers and more.
One study at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, Texas, called it “Cure-cumin” because of its long list of amazing therapeutic and clinical uses.
So let’s look at the Top 5 Ways turmeric can help your dog (and how it compares to conventional drugs):
#1 – Turmeric Is Anti-Inflammatory
You may be thinking inflammation is only a problem for dogs with joint disease … but chronic, hidden inflammation is a silent killer. It’s the root of nearly all disease.
Cancer, arthritis, allergies, kidney disease, dental disease, digestive disease … it’s all caused by inflammation.
Not all inflammation in the body is a bad thing. If your dog is exposed to viruses or bacteria, acute inflammation will release white blood cells to the body tissues and start the healing process. But chronic inflammation – the kind of low-grade inflammation that stays for weeks, months and even years – is the real culprit behind most degenerative and inflammatory health issues in your dog.
Researchers are finding that heart disease can be linked to dental disease. Chronic bladder infections can lead to bladder cancer. And they’re finding that chronic low-grade inflammation is a major driver of joint degeneration.
A 2014 study found that the curcumin found in turmeric (its active ingredient) outperformed ibuprofen in people with arthritis. But turmeric doesn’t just control the inflammation in joint disease …
Another 2004 study in Oncogene found that curcumin (as well as resveratrol) worked just as well as anti-inflammatory drugs … and worked better than both aspirin and ibuprofen.
Inflammation is the key driver of most disease in the body … and turmeric is one of the best natural anti-inflammatories either nature or medicine has to offer. Keep this in mind as we look at the next few reasons to give your dog turmeric.
#2 – Turmeric For Dogs With Cancer
So we know that chronic inflammation can lead to cancer and turmeric is a powerful antioxidant. And a UK study showed that curcumin could stop the precancerous changes from becoming cancer. So turmeric can help prevent cancer.
But turmeric can also treat cancer naturally. Nearly 1/3 of the studies done on turmeric are cancer research … and the results are very promising. It’s been shown to kill cancer cells and prevent more from growing.
The American Cancer Society claims “Curcumin interferes with cancer development, growth, and spread. Recently, curcumin has received a great deal of focus because of it’s ability to reduce tumor size and kill cancer cells.
Half of adult dogs today will get cancer, so turmeric could be a great way to protect your dog from inflammation and cancer.
#3 – Turmeric Can Relieve Arthritis Pain
We know that arthritis is the result of inflammation and turmeric can decrease inflammation in the body. But it can also relieve the pain and stiffness in arthritis … better than conventional pain medications.
In 2014 a group of researchers in Thailand published a study comparing the effects of curcumin vs ibuprofen treatment in patients with knee osteoarthritis. They found that curcumin worked just as well as ibuprofen to reduce pain … but without the gastrointestinal side effects experienced by the patients who took ibuprofen. Which brings us to the next benefit …
#4 – Turmeric Can Treat Gastrointestinal Disorders
Turmeric’s anti-inflammatory effects can be helpful in treating Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) as well as other gastrointestinal disorders. It’s been shown in several preclinical studies and uncontrolled clinical trials as having positive effects on gut inflammation and gut permeability.
Researchers at Hamamatsu South Hospital in Japan commented that curcumin’s “inhibitory effects on major inflammatory mechanisms […] and its unrivaled safety profile suggest it has bright prospects in the treatment of IBD.”
#5 – Turmeric Can Replace Steroids
Many dogs are on steroids for allergies and joint pain – but some studies show curcumin is just as effective as steroids. And the authors note: “The lack of side effects with curcumin is its greatest advantage compared with corticosteroids.”
And a study published in the Journal of Pharmacy and Pharmacology shows that combing curcumin with a steroid reduced the side effects of this dangerous medication.
And that’s the main benefit of turmeric – not only can it work just as well as many prescription and over-the-counter drugs, it doesn’t carry the same nasty, unwanted side effects.
How To Make Turmeric Paste
So if you’re ready to give your dog turmeric |
, which focused on conservation and stricter rules on fossil fuel and mineral development.
They see an opening under Trump, who has promised to expand fossil fuel production on public lands and ease Obama-administration rules that critics call burdensome.
“We’re looking for someone who understands that there’s a balance on public lands and that the vast majority of the mineral estate is working landscapes,” Kathleen Sgamma, the president of the Western Energy Alliance industry group, said of potential appointments to public land positions.
In the last two weeks, the House has passed several Congressional Review Act resolutions undoing Obama-administration environmental regulations, including several opposed by industry groups and land reformers.
One of those resolutions ends a Bureau of Land Management rule restricting venting and flaring at natural gas drilling sites on public land. The rule would limit methane pollution, but industry groups say it would be duplicative, unnecessary and costly.
“The oil and gas industry is and should be heavily regulated, but what we saw at the end of the Obama administration was not about reasonable regulations, it was about using regs to drive companies off of public,” Sgamma said. “The GOP is moving in a different direction.”
But that’s not reformers’ only win.
Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.), Trump’s pick to lead the Interior Department, has a moderate streak on public land ownership. But he, too, has been a foe of Obama-era energy rules and seems primed to step back from an Obama administration overhaul of the coal royalty program that Democrats hoped would lead to higher fees for mining.
The House also blocked a BLM land planning rule, finalized in December, that foes said gave too much power to the federal government. Both that and the methane measure are awaiting a vote in the Senate and have the White House’s support.
House debate over the planning rule was a microcosm of the broader fight over public lands.
Public land policy — from resource regulations to federal ownership — has been a major concern for many conservatives, who want to distribute more power over lands to states and private entities.
Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), who introduced the bill undoing the planning rule, said the GOP has its chance to change the course set by Obama.
“It is hugely important for us, as we go forward here, to make sure that we have done everything we can to roll back regulations that are really killing our jobs, that are preventing people in our local communities from being able to make a living, from being able to consistently graze, for example, on these public lands,” she said during a floor debate on Tuesday.
Democrats, though, have called the GOP approach an assault on public land ownership.
“It's time to face the facts: congressional Republicans do not value our nation's public lands the way everyday Americans do,” Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) said Tuesday.
“The American public does not support erasing the planning rule and they certainly don't support the broad anti-public land agenda being pushed by Republicans.”
Environmentalists and conservation supporters oppose several of the GOP’s early moves.
“I think it’s gone pretty poorly, and it’s a question of where you draw the line,” said Chris Saeger, the director of the Western Values Project.
Activists pushing their allies to hold the line against the GOP are working to kick up grassroots opposition to public land changes, an effort that they say has had at least some success so far.
Conservationists blistered a House rule change in January that makes it easier for the government to shed its public land holdings. And, earlier this month, Rep. Jason Chaffetz Jason ChaffetzTop Utah paper knocks Chaffetz as he mulls run for governor: ‘His political career should be over’ Boehner working on memoir: report Former GOP lawmaker on death of 7-year-old migrant girl: Message should be ‘don't make this journey, it will kill you' MORE (R-Utah) was forced to rescind a bill to sell off millions of acres of federally owned land after a backlash from sportsmen’s groups.
“I’m a proud gun owner, hunter and love our public lands,” Chaffetz wrote alongside a rustic Instagram post of himself in hunting camouflage, holding a dog.
“The bill would have disposed of small parcels of lands Pres. Clinton identified as serving no public purpose but groups I support and care about fear it sends the wrong message,” he added.
Public lands advocates hope to exert similar public pressure as Trump and the GOP move forward.
“The sportsmen community has been woken up: you poked that bear and that bear came out,” said Land Tawney, the head of the Backcountry Hunters and Anglers.
“The pushback was very welcoming to see, and I hope it sets a precedent for anybody else who wants to push these bills forward.”
Environmentalists and conservationists are gearing up a Senate showdown on the methane rule, making an economic case — that methane leak restrictions lead to more gas sales and tax revenue — that they hope will attract some Republicans to support the regulation.
They’re also bracing for a broader public lands fight when the Senate confirms Zinke.
Saeger noted, for instance, that Chaffetz used a meeting with Trump this week to slam an Obama-administration designation of a national monument in his state. That means officials soon might be pushed to consider making high-profile decisions deeply opposed by conservation groups or environmentalists.
That will be a test for Zinke and Trump’s stated support for public lands.
“That is a pretty low bar to cross: to say that we are not going to sell off our public lands is not saying much,” Saeger said.
“The rubber hits the road when oil companies knock on their door and ask for permission to drill on those lands.”NEW YORK: An Indian-origin doctor in the US has implanted the first miniature-sized, leadless cardiac pacemaker directly inside a patient's heart without surgery.The leads-free pacemaker is implanted directly inside the heart during a catheter-guided procedure through the groin via the femoral artery.The device implanted by Vivek Reddy from The Mount Sinai Hospital, resembles a small metal silver tube, and is only a few centimetres in length, making it less than ten per cent the size of a traditional pacemaker.The Nanostim device, made by St Jude Medical, is being tested for safety and efficacy in an international, multicentre clinical trial called LEADLESS II, which is planning to enroll 670 patients at 50 centres across the US, Canada, and Europe."This clinical research trial will be testing the latest innovative, non-surgical pacemaker option for patients experiencing a slowed heart beat," said Reddy, the study's co-investigator."This new-age, tiny pacemaker may ultimately be safer for patients because it doesn't have leads or have to be inserted under the skin of a patient's chest, like a traditional cardiac pacemaker," Reddy said.Similar to other cardiac pacemakers, the Nanostim device treats a heart rate that is too slow called bradycardia.It works by closely monitoring the heart's electrical rhythms and if the heart beat is too slow it provides electrical stimulation therapy to regulate it.More than 4 million patients globally have a pacemaker, and 700,000 new patients receive one each year, researchers said.The possible advantages of the leadless pacemaker include the elimination of a surgical pocket and no visible pacemaker device under a patient's chest skin, no incision scar on the chest, no connector wires or leads, and no restrictions on a patient's activities.The device's benefits may also allow for less patient discomfort, infections, and device complications and dysfunction.In addition, the free-standing, battery-operated pacemaker device is designed to be fully retrievable from the heart."The same cardiac pacing results for patients may be available with this smaller leads-free device with the added benefits of a non-surgical procedure and less complication risks," said Srinivas Dukkipati, who is the study's principal investigator.QPR midfielder Frankie Sutherland pens a new one-year contract
Striker Ben Pattie signs a six-month extension at Loftus Road
Pair follow in the footsteps of fellow Under-21s to agree new deals this summer
MIDFIELDER Frankie Sutherland has put pen to paper on a new deal at Loftus Road.The 21 year-old – who has been at the club since the age of 10 – has signed a one-year extension to his current contract, which was due to expire at the end of June.Sutherland appeared 16 times for Steve Gallen’s Elite Development Squad last season either side of a successful loan spell at League Two outfit AFC Wimbledon.Young striker Ben Pattie has also signed a new deal – extending his stay with the club until the end of 2015.The pair follow fellow Under-21s team-mates Darnell Furlong, Brandon Comley, Joe Lumley, James Haran, Aaron Mitchell, Jake Mulraney and Harly Wise, who all penned new deals during May.Meanwhile, second-year scholars Andreas Komodikis, Conor Hudnott, Martin Herdman and Callum O’Sullivan are the latest Under-18s to agree one-year extensions.Next time someone tells you to "get off the PC and exercise," you can retort, "But I am exercising!"
Sitting on the couch, or in front of your computer, for hours on end playing Skyrim and wolfing down cheetos is bad for your health. This is something that we, as gamers, have simply had to accept. Just like smokers or drinkers, our habit is slowly killing us. Until now. Virtuix has designed an omni-directional treadmill called the Omni, which allows users to walk in virtual environments such as Skyrim. The treadmill hooks up to a game system and converts movement from the player into keystrokes.
The video to the right demonstrates the Omni being used in Skyrim. You can see that the player's movements in real-life are directly translated to his actions on screen. An Xbox Kinect is used to track the player's head movements. In a game like Skyrim which features copious amounts of running from area to area, I'd imagine you would get quite a workout.
Another video shows the game being used in conjunction with Crysis: Warhead. As Crysis: Warhead was a PC-exclusive, we can assume that the device will be limited to the PC, at least initially. Virtuix CEO Jan Goetgeluk says that the Omni will fit in your living room, be affordable for your average consumer, and will allow users to walk effortlessly in a VR environment thanks to its special low-friction surface.
"The Omni's strongest part is that it has no electronics and no moving parts, which keeps the cost down," says Goetgeluk. "It has a low-friction surface with grooves, and comes with a pair of low-friction shoes that have a plunger pin at the bottom that fit in the surface grooves. As such, your foot is stabilized when walking, instead of sliding left and right as if you were walking on ice. The gait feels natural and effortless," he tells us.
Goetgeluk says that the Omni is still in an early prototype stage, and at this point the company is working on refining the design so the device can be folded up and packed away when not in use. He says that the Omni in its current form doesn't need an SDK, as it simply emulates keystrokes, but Virtuix is looking in to the possibly of de-coupling the user's looking direction from their walking direction and even gun aiming direction. "Then you have true virtual reality," Goetgeluk says.
Source: BabySoft MurderHandsThe recent election defeat of Jakarta’s Christian governor, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (Ahok) raises important questions about whether the Indonesian president Joko Widodo (Jokowi) will also fall to the forces of right wing populism. Jokowi is up for reelection in 2019 and will likely face the same coalition of parties that defeated Ahok. As other scholars have noted, the same forces of class, ethnicity, religion, and their interplay will likely feature in the 2019 election.
Ahok’s opponent, Anies Baswedan and his running mate Sandiaga Uno, rallied all the forces of intolerance: mass mobilisation by the vigilante group Front Pembela Islam and the Islamist Partai Keadilan Sejahtera (PKS), a rumor campaign that millions of Chinese were coming to Indonesia illegally and that voters for Ahok would not be buried in Muslim cemeteries, bogus allegations that Ahok had committed blasphemy against Islam, and Baswedan himself comparing the election to the 624 CE Battle of Badr when the prophet Muhammad faced an army of non-Muslims. We should expect to see these tactics again in 2019, when President Jokowi will likely run against former Lieutenant General Prabowo Subianto and possibly against Baswedan himself.
There is reason to worry about the future of Indonesia’s democracy. The world is in the midst of democratic instability and decline. Military coups in Thailand and Egypt have pushed those counties firmly into authoritarianism. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Turkey is no longer a democracy. The victory of elected strongmen in the Philippines and even the United States bodes poorly for the future of democracy. Will Indonesia fall sway to the machinations of an autocrat like Prabowo?
And there are further reasons to be concerned about the future. Baswedan was once the archetype of a ‘moderate Muslim’. He wrote his PhD thesis at the University of Northern Illinois on the subject of democracy and decentralisation under the renowned political scientist Dwight King. He spent seven years as Rector of Universitas Paramadina, trying to fill the shoes of the pioneering democratic theorist Nurcholish Madjid. There is cause for alarm when a pedigreed intellectual like Baswedan deploys a craven election strategy. He knows better. Like Donald Trump and the increase in hate crimes in the US, Baswedan’s campaign rhetoric will make life more difficult for minorities in Indonesia. But Baswedan chose power over pluralism.
Even more troubling is that Baswedan won on that basis. When moderate Muslim voters reward such tactics, there is reason to ask whether the civil Islam underpinning Indonesia’s successful democracy has become prone to radicalism. Will Indonesia fall sway to the machinations of a demagogue like Baswedan?
Yet, there is reason for optimism, too. Treating Ahok and Jokowi as the same—technocratic centrists running on a coalition of non-Muslims and liberals—underemphasises their differences. Jokowi is not Ahok in three ways that matter for 2019.
First and foremost, Jokowi is a Muslim. Ahok is a Christian. Indonesian Muslim civil society leaders support democracy, pluralism, and the basic rights of non-Muslims but that has never meant they are in favor of a non-Muslim becoming president or even governor of a city like Jakarta which is overwhelmingly Muslim. Indonesia’s mass Islamic organisations are largely tolerant but they are not liberals who believe anyone should be able to hold any office anywhere, regardless of their religious affiliation. Political analysts have a hard time understanding Muslim voters that are neither liberal-secularists nor Islamists, but the overwhelming majority of Indonesian Muslim voters are neither.
Survey data that I collected among leaders of the Islamic civil society organisations Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and Muhammadiyah in 2010 demonstrates this point most clearly. 86 percent believe a Christian should be allowed to hold an unspecified government office. Such rates of tolerance are extraordinarily high for a developing country. Likewise, 77 percent believe Christians should be allowed to be mayor in Christian-majority Manado. But only 47 percent believe a Christian should be allowed to become governor in Jakarta. Only 29 percent believe a Christian should be allowed to be president of Indonesia. And only 20 percent believe a Christian should be allowed to be mayor in Banda Aceh. In other words, at most 20 percent of Islamic civil society elites hold liberal views about non-Muslim elected leaders.
If we narrow the survey sample to the leaders of NU alone, the most tolerant of the mass Islamic organisations, only 52 percent believe a Christian should be allowed to be governor in Jakarta. Surveys by Saiful Mujani and R. William Liddle, and by Robin Bush, suggest that the leaders of the mass Islamic organisations are slightly more tolerant than the members, and the members are about 10 percent more tolerant than the broader Muslim public. That means a Christian’s winning the governor’s office without Jokowi’s coattails was always a long shot. We should be cautious about drawing conclusions about Jokowi’s election prospects from Ahok’s defeat.
Second, Ahok was extremely vulnerable to Baswedan’s smear campaign. Unless Jokowi does something heroically stupid, a blasphemy campaign will not stick to Jokowi in the same way that it did Ahok. There are also strategies that Jokowi can use to defend himself that were unavailable to Ahok.
Baswedan is not the first unsavory politician to claim the mantle of ‘defending Islam’ in order to win political power. Baswedan’s predecessors include Madjelis Islam A’la Indonesia (MIAI) in the 1930s, Masyumi in the 1950s, Sukarno in the 1960s, and Amien Rais in the 1990s and 2000s, among others. In the 1930s, the MIAI was a coalition of Muslim organisations united by their shared antipathy to heterodox interpretations of Islam; in that instance, defending Islam worked. Likewise, in 1965 President Sukarno successfully mobilised support from Muslim organisations on the grounds of defending Islam against animist and mystical religious sects in Java. Defending Islam against threats of heterodoxy and blasphemy is often useful to politicians trying to transform a latent Muslim identity into one that is politically salient.
But a common tactic is not always a winning one. In the 1950s, Masyumi failed to hold together a coalition of Islamic organisations because modernist Muslims like Muhammad Natsir marginalised NU’s influence. More recently, Amien Rais deployed the politics of demagoguery in the 1990s and again in the 2014 election in support of Prabowo, but has had limited success. In both instances, NU prevented a single group from speaking on behalf of Islam. Such history provides lessons for 2019. Moderates from NU, Muhammadiyah, and other pluralist Muslim organisations will be crucial to defending Jokowi against the charge that he is a ‘threat to Islam’.
Ironically, NU and Muhammadiyah’s formal distance from electoral politics has had a paradoxical result for democracy. By adhering to the liberal prescription to formally separate religion and politics, they have weakened their ability to steer their followers in the direction of pluralism. Nonetheless, some affinity exists and it is worth Jokowi’s attempting to gain support from Islamic civil society.
Many observers would prefer that religion be ‘off the table’ of Indonesian politics, which is why they savaged Jokowi’s admission that religion is inevitably involved in politics. But Jokowi was correct. Survey data tells us that voters overwhelmingly expect their elected representatives to believe in God and to bring religious values to bear on social issues. State institutions reflect those preferences through religious education, mandatory membership in a recognised religion, limitations on inter-religious marriage, restrictions on blasphemy, restrictions on inter-religious proselytising, and other policies. Indonesian democracy is not secular in any meaningful sense of the term, which means that candidates for office often align with powerful religious movements.
Third, Jokowi is Javanese. Ahok is Chinese. Jokowi’s Javanese background is likely to be beneficial in 2019. Without more fine-grained data, is difficult to know whether Ahok’s ethnicity, religion, blunt manner, or the campaign to ‘defend Islam’ cost him the most votes. Simplistic depictions of voters as either primordialist or rational ignore the complex ways that identity influences political behavior even in industrialised democracies.
From Jacksonville to Jakarta, ethnic similarity provides a way for politicians to establish trust with voters from different religious backgrounds. In Indonesia, Muslims from religious diverse ethnic groups like Balinese, Dayak, and Javanese tend to be more religiously tolerant than Muslims from more religiously homogenous ethnicities like Sundanese, Acehnese, and Sasak. So, for example, a Javanese Christian would likely have done better among Javanese voters than a Chinese Christian. Given Baswedan’s Hadrami heritage, Jokowi may have a comparative advantage in being able to appeal to Javanese voters.
That does not mean Jokowi should play the bumiputra (son of the soil) card in the 2019 election. Again, demagoguery has no place in democratic politics. The long term health of the country depends on the leaders of the state and society promoting the values that make democracy work—tolerance, equality, liberty, and popular sovereignty—against the visions of xenophobic nationalism and strategic intolerance harnessed by demagogue and autocrats.
……………
Jeremy Menchik is Assistant Professor in the Fredrick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University. His recent book, Islam and Democracy in Indonesia: Tolerance without Liberalism (left) explains what tolerance means to the leaders of the world’s largest Islamic organisations and elucidates the implications for democracy.
You can follow him on Twitter at @jeremymenchik.
Header and article photo: jars of indelible ink at a polling booth in Indonesia’s 2009 legislative elections. Taken by the author.Gears Of War 4 is just about to go wild thanks to its release date set to October 11, 2016. While we still have a few days to spare before the final release, there some more information that The Coalition revealed to PCGamer. Technical Director, Mike Rayner revealed that the PC Version of Gears Of War 4 would have a co-op split screen mode for the campaign mode in Gears Of War 4.
Mike Rayner explains:
“From a development standpoint, it is quite difficult to support,” Rayner said, “we have to deal with multiple inputs, we have to deal with focus, we have to deal with UI placement.” That extra work—especially when having to also consider all the resolutions and aspect ratios a PC can have—may be why most big games nowadays don’t typically support split-screen co-op. Rayner continued by saying that “developers have got to put some effort into it to do it right, it’s not just something you can tack on.”
We couldn’t agree more with the facts Mike Rayner explained to PCGamer. However, regarding the crossplay between the Xbox One and PC, Xbox One and Windows 10 PC Gamers will be able to cross-play together in all modes except multi-player which was the most disturbing factor that was on my min when Microsoft announced the cross-play feature and the Xbox Play Anywhere program.
Gears Of War 4 is set to release on the 11th October, 2016 for Windows 10 Gaming PCs and Xbox One.CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police has arrested a father accused of killing his daughter’s abusive boyfriend.
Parker Bogan, 59, of Charlotte, has been charged with voluntary manslaughter following the incident.
Just before 11 p.m. Tuesday, CMPD officers were dispatched to a domestic violence call in the 6000 block of Cattail Court in east Charlotte. When they arrived, officers spoke with a female who told them that her boyfriend, identified as 26-year-old Patrick Creek, punched her shoulder during an argument. Police say the woman did not have any visible signs of injury and officers advised her how to proceed with charges against her attacker.
Hours later, just before 4 a.m. Wednesday, CMPD officers returned to the home to assist with a Medic call for service. Officers found an unconscious male in the home, who was pronounced dead on scene by paramedics. The victim was identified as Patrick Creek.
Investigators determined that Creek attempted to physically assault his girlfriend at the home when Bogan intervened and put him in a chokehold. Creek died due to injuries he sustained during the altercation, police say.
Anyone with information about this incident is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 704-334-1600.
Copyright 2016 WCNCSound pollution is known as an annoying phenomenon in modern life. Especially, development of organisms during fetal life is more sensitive to environmental tensions. To address a link between the behavioral and electrophysiological aspects of brain function with action of hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis in stressed animals, this study was carried out on the male Wistar rats prenatally exposed to sound stress. Groups of pregnant rats were exposed to noise stress for 1, 2, and 4 hour(s). The degree of anxiety and the spatial memory were evaluated by elevated plus maze and Morris water maze, respectively. Basic synaptic activity and long-term potentiation (LTP) induction were assessed in the CA3-CA1 pathway of hippocampus. The serum level of corticosterone was measured in the pregnant mothers and the offspring. The behavioral experiments appeared that the stressed animals performed considerably weaker than the control rats. The prenatal stress negatively affected the basic synaptic responses and led to a lower level of LTP. The pregnant animals showed an increased serum corticosterone in comparison with the nonpregnant females. Also the offspring exposed to the noise stress had a more elevated level of corticosterone than the control rats. Our findings indicate that the corticosterone concentration changes markedly coincides the results of behavioral and electrophysiological experiments. We conclude that, similar to other environmental stresses, the sound stress during fetal life efficiently disturbs both cognitive abilities and synaptic activities. The changes in action of HPA axis may contribute to problems of the brain function in the prenatally stress exposed animals.
© 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.The first explorers to come to Louisiana were Spanish. They came to the area in the 1500s, beginning in 1519 with Alvarez Pineda. In 1528, Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca followed.
Then, in 1541, the area was explored by Hernando de Soto. More than 100 years later, in 1682, the area was claimed for Louis XIV of France by Sieur de la Salle.
The U.S. acquired Louisiana in the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. The Territory of Orleans was created on March 26, 1804 and the State of Louisiana was created as the 18th state on April 30, 1812.
States bordering Louisiana are Arkansas, Mississippi and Texas. Louisiana’s 10 largest cities are New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Shreveport, Metairie, Lafayette, Lake Charles, Kenner, Bossier City, Monroe and Alexandria.
Most historical maps of Louisiana were published in atlases. There are large Louisiana map collections in both university libraries and public libraries.
There are also several map collections in historical and genealogical societies, as well as private collections and archives. The French Quarter is home to the Historic New Orleans Collection, which includes the d’Auberville-Bouligny Family Papers and the Bouligny Family Papers. Those collections include maps and large amounts of documentation about the Spanish and French colonial times.
There is information found in the maps that cannot be found elsewhere. For example, the Claude Perrin Victor Papers and the Pierre Clement de Laussat Papers are particularly full of useful information. Antebellum era maps can also give researchers insights into transportation methods and population growth across Louisiana.
Every piece of property in the French Quarter is listed in the Vieux Carr Survey. Photographs, drawings, and property title chains are included. The Historic New Orleans Collection also includes many of those documents.
Original survey plats, field notes, and maps of Louisiana that were made by early surveyors working for the United States can be found in Baton Rouge at the State Land Office, which is in the State Land and Natural Resources Building. The clerk of courts office in each parish courthouse may also hold plat maps, which list land ownership.Marc Guggenheim talks about the shocking final moments of the Arrow Season 3 premiere, titled The Calm.
[Beware, spoilers for the Season 3 premiere of Arrow, titled “The Calm,” are discussed within.]
Most of the Arrow audience thought they knew what to expect going into Season 3… and then it was all turned on its ear, when Sara Lance, played by Caity Lotz, was shot with arrows by an unknown assailant. Arrow’s first Canary doesn’t seem to have cheated death like she did when she went down with the Queen’s Gambit… this time it seems permanent.
We spoke with Marc Guggenheim at a press Q&A last week where he discussed how and why this happened.
“Basically, every season, we spend what really should be our hiatus and what really should be me relaxing on a beach planning out the whole season. It’s what we did in Season 1. It’s what we did in Season 2. We did the same process in Season 3,” Guggenheim said. “We just started off talking about ‘what’s the season about?’ I’ve spoken at length, at this point, about that it’s about identity. We talked about what Oliver’s journey for the year is going be. We talked about what all the other characters’ journeys for the year would be. Just in the course of those story conversations, we had this notion of starting the year off in a way that we typically end the year. It was just part and parcel of our plan for the year ever since we started. It was one of the first ideas that we kicked around,” he told us.
“It was hard. Every time we kill off a character on the show, it’s always incredibly hard. We’re not Game of Thrones. We’re not Sons of Anarchy. It’s really, really, really difficult. We’re very lucky. I really mean this. Our cast and our guest cast are always wonderful people. We’ve been very lucky. We don’t screen people for their personality, but we have this great group and a really wonderfully welcoming cast, and Caity Lotz completely fit into that family. So it’s always really hard to kill of someone who you just really enjoy working with and you really love writing for and love seeing on the screen. But as with Tommy’s death, as with Moira’s death, the story implications for this development are so far-reaching for the show and affect all of the characters. We always call it it’s the terrible story math. It kicks off, obviously, a mystery that will drive us for at least the first half of the year. It will set Laurel on a trajectory that she’s never had before on the show. It will create all these other complications and dynamics that I can’t talk about because it would spoil stuff. It buys us a lot of story, and it speaks to all the things that we wanted to do this year in terms of Laurel’s character, in terms of Oliver’s character, in terms of Felicity’s character. It’s always a hard thing to do, but it is really the engine that’s driving the whole third season,” Guggenheim explained.
Sara’s death will definitely affect how Laurel and Oliver interact, and probably not necessarily in the ways that one would expect. “I think Sara’s death probably pulls them closer together than pulls them apart,” Guggenheim said. “That’s not to say there’s not significant moments of conflict between them also. That’s one of the reasons we killed Sara off: the amount of story and richness that we get out of it. There’s a scene in episode 2 where they’re going at it and can’t stand each other. And there’s also a scene in episode 2 where they’re the closest they’ve ever been. And that’s all in the same episode. And it doesn’t feel schizophrenic, it doesn’t feel inconsistent. Every moment feels earned, because of the emotional roller coaster these people are on.” The death of Sara might also change Diggle’s decisions as far as being part of the team goes. “In episode 2, let’s say the circumstances of Sara’s death change up a lot of things for all of our characters,” Guggenheim revealed. There will also be some questions among the characters: For example, will Quentin be told? Could he handle losing his daughter a second time?
As far as relationships go, even before Sara’s death, don’t hold a funeral for “Olicity” yet. “It’s also something we’re going to be dealing with over the course of the season. The end of that hospital scene didn’t just take Oliver and Felicity and put them back in a box. The repercussions of that scene and that storyline in episode 1, that’s going to follow them over the course of season 3. It’s not over. We didn’t just hit pause or reset on their relationship. This is just a development in an ongoing relationship,” Marc promised.
Finally… what was that news about Caity Lotz signing a contract for a number of episodes in Season 2? Guggenheim insists he was not lying. “You’re going to see her in the next episode, and then you’re going to see her in at least a third episode. And the truth is we have stories that involve Caity Lotz. One of the beautiful parts of the show is we do flashbacks. We still want to tell the story of what happened when Sara washed up on the shores of Lian Yu, after the events of 223, the sinking of The Amazo, and how she met Nyssa and how she joined the League of Assassins. There’s still a lot of story left to be told with Sara. We did make a contract with Caity for three episodes. You certainly haven’t seen the last of her,” he said. Sara’s not the only one we haven’t seen the last of: Her death will bring Nyssa back to town — look for Katrina Law in the fourth episode of the new season.
Come talk about the Arrow season premiere on our forum! And if you’re looking for content related to next week’s show, appropriately titled “Sara,” come back to the GreenArrowTV home page, where we should be posting a trailer soon, if we haven’t already!Teen charged in bong attack Charges: Girls trying to steal whisky attacked Safeway guard
A Shoreline teen accused of bashing a grocery security guard with a bong now faces a felony assault charge.
King County prosecutors claim Nadeya Haile and another young woman were shoplifting Crown Royal whisky on April 19 from a Safeway store at 17202 15th Ave. N.E. when a guard spotted them.
Haile, 18, had stepped out of the store when the officer confronted her. According to charging papers, Hailie’s 17-year-old associate then sprayed the officer with pepper spray.
The guard grabbed the girl, who then tried unsuccessfully to shock him with a stun gun, a King County Sheriff’s Office detective said in charging papers. Haile is alleged to have then hit the man in the head with a blue glass bong she’d been carrying in her purse.
Overcome by the head injury and the pepper spray, the guard released the young women. When deputies arrived, the man was bleeding from a cut to his head that took three staples to close.
Investigators ultimately identified Haile and the other girl as suspects in the altercation.
According to charging papers, Haile told police she was only trying to help her friend after she was accosted by the security guard.
Described in charging papers as a Shorewood High School student, Haile has been charged with third-degree assault. She has not been jailed.
Check the Seattle 911 crime blog for more Seattle crime news. Visit seattlepi.com's home page for more Seattle news.
Seattlepi.com reporter Levi Pulkkinen can be reached at 206-448-8348 or [email protected]. Follow Levi on Twitter at twitter.com/levipulk.Getty Images
This Is What It Was Like To Be In The Studio When Drake And Future Recorded WATTBA
What was it like to be in the studio when Drake and Future recorded What A Time To Be Alive? Not many people will ever know firsthand, unfortunately. But a lucky few do.
One of those is Mali Hunter, the general manager, at Tree Sound Studios in Atlanta, where the project was recorded. A decade ago, she partnered with the studio's owner, Paul Diaz, and has been working with music's biggest artists -- from Drake and Future to Elton John and Whitney Houston -- ever since.
"It's such a fun time right now, because everybody who slept in the building -- from B.o.B and Big Sean and J. Cole, all these guys who were just sleeping there with no money -- are now, every single one of them number one artists," she says.
Earlier this week, MTV News caught up with Hunter, who is also an artist, manager and has a cooking show on Atlanta's NBC affiliate. She gave us a window into the vibes of the recording sessions, how it all came together, what she cooked for the guys, and whether or not Drake is actually a good ping pong player.
Mali Hunter
MTV: How long have you known Drake and Future?
Mali Hunter: Through [Lil] Wayne we met, and that first record, he thanked me on the back. It was a lot of fun. It was all mixed at Tree Sound.
Future's a dear friend. Last year, I was instrumental in pushing out the Monster project, we had a release party for Halloween. It was kind of his jump into really kicking it to the next level.
I got the call that they wanted to do this special project together. And I said, 'Whatever you need on my end.' We're secretive about any of my friends that come in the building. It was magical.
MTV: When did you get that call?
Hunter: It happened pretty fast. I got that call on the 13th of August, and they made it happen quick. At first I was like, 'Are these guys competing to see who can stay up the longest?' They non-stop worked and ran five rooms [in the studio], had 'em locked out [for] 24 hours [a day]. We used Groove's room and A room for them, like this is their home, where they can run back-and-forth. Future was in Groove's Room, and Drake was primarily in A, and there's this winding staircase, and they were literally up and down, up and down. Cutting vocals, talking about songs. And then we had Metro Boomin and the other producers in all the other rooms. It was like a journey. It was pretty amazing to watch.
MTV: You said they had it locked for 24-hours a day. How long was that the case?
Hunter: About a week. And then they came back and listened to the mixes during Music Midtown [September 18 and 19]. They finished it and dropped it.
MTV: Were they mostly recording at night or during the day also?
Hunter: |
Kennedy (D-R.I.). The group opposes legalizing weed, but supports arresting users and sending them to treatment rather than jail.
( Also on POLITICO: Illinois Senate OKs medical marijuana bill)
Carter’s tune was different in December, when it was widely reported he had backed Washington state and Colorado’s decision to allow residents to legally buy and grow the drug.
“I’m in favor of it. I think it’s OK,” Carter said then. “I don’t think it’s going to happen in Georgia yet, but I think we can watch and see what happens in the state of Washington for instance around Seattle and let the American government and let the American people see does it cause a serious problem or not.”
( PHOTOS: Presidents and their spouses)
In his speech Friday, Carter was more cautious about what could happen in Colorado and Washington.
“There should be no advertising for marijuana in any circumstances and no driving under the influence,” he said. “We need to avoid the use of marijuana, particularly among young people.”
One thing is clear: Carter has long favored the decriminalization of marijuana. While still in office in 1979, he called for the drug’s decriminalization. His office echoed that position in a statement to POLITICO in December.
Follow @politico
This article tagged under: Drugs
Jimmy Carter
MarijuanaDuring the Closing Ceremony of the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia decided to poke fun at an embarrassing Olympic Opening Ceremony glitch.
A group of dancers dressed in silver appeared to be arranging themselves into a formation that represented the five Olympic rings, but they instead formed four rings and left the fifth as a snowflake.
This self-deprecating gesture references the famed Opening Ceremony mishap in which a graphic malfunctioned, leaving the fifth Olympic ring looking like a snowflake.
Ceremony creative director Konstantin Ernst is also joining in on the fun. Ernst received much of the blame for the ring malfunction, but he is responding to it well. At least it seems that way judging from his new t-shirt. [tweet https://twitter.com/mail2olya/status/437579726958231552 align=’center’]
Check out the photos below of the ring graphic from the opening ceremony and the human formation from the closing ceremony.
Photo via Twitter/@ajamlive
Photo via Twitter/@NBCNewsA fresh sighting of a triangular UFO dubbed the "Dudley Dorito" racing through the skies has been reported in the Black Country - and this time it seemed to bring a friend.
Security officer Glyn Richards was having a cigarette in the garden of his home in Coppice Lane, Quarry Bank, when he saw a mysterious object with flashing lights in the sky, appearing to travel towards Dudley from Halesowen.
Moments later, he said, another UFO with a steady white light appeared and seemed to chase it off.
"I never really believed in anything like that, but it was no helicopter or plane that I've ever seen," said father-of-two Mr Richards, aged 33. "I had a perfect view of it for around 20 seconds. It had flashing red lights in the centre and white lights at the end. Then another thing with just a bright white light appeared and it looked like it scared it away as it shot off in a perfectly straight line."
It is the third reported sighting of the Dorito in as many years.
Mr Richards said he had called his nine-year-old daughter and seven-year-old son out of the house to see the objects, and following the sighting, which happened at around 7.45pm on Monday, they logged on to the internet and discovered previous sightings of the UFO on the Express & Star website — along with its own entry on Wikipedia.
"I was shocked but it was quite exciting as well — it was probably just a military plane or something but it's interesting to think it could be something else," he said.
In November, quality inspector Munesh Mistry reported seeing the triangular-shaped object in the skies near his home in Andrew Road, Tipton.
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The object has also been spotted hovering over the Merry Hill Shopping Centre in Brierley Hill — and in February last year a UFO sighting was recorded by Sean Gibbs-Percival over the skies of Oldbury. On April 16, 2009, builders working at West Midland Safari Park were shocked to see a flying saucer-shaped object soaring above them.
Watch again the Express & Star video report of the 2009 sighting
End of Brightcove PlayerEXCLUSIVE: For years last decade, miniseries were an essential part of TNT’s programming mix with such projects as Into The West, Salem’s Lot and The Company. As the genre lost popularity, TNT, like many other networks, pulled away from longform, cutting back on original movies and minis. Miniseries have enjoyed a comeback in the past couple of years, following the success of History’s Hatfields & McCoys. TNT is joining the trend with One Giant Leap, a four-hour event miniseries about the life of NASA astronaut Neil Armstrong who became the first man to walk on the moon.
The project, now in development, is based on Leon Wagener’s book. The mini will be written by Al Reinert, who co-penned the movie Apollo 13 as well as two episodes of Tom Hanks’ follow-up moon exploration HBO miniseries From The Earth To The Moon — including one about Armstrong (played by Scandal‘s Tony Goldwyn), Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins preparing for their Apollo 11 mission in 1969.
Related: R.I.P. Neil Armstrong
eOne Television is producing One Giant Leap, with the company’s John Morayniss and Michael Rosenberg serving as executive producers alongside Reinert and Kevin Cleary of Pooka Entertainment. Patti Vasquez of Pooka Entertainment and Josh Morris of Content House co-executive produce. Guy Oseary is a producer.
Related: Warner Bros Tells Space Story, From The Bra Designers Who Made Moon Mission Possible
Most recently, TNT’s Frank Darabont L.A. noir drama Mob City, which was developed as a series, going through a pilot stage, ended up being a limited series after the network opted not to do a second season.2018 NFL Draft prospect watch: Camping World Bowl
By PFF Analysis Team • Dec 27, 2017
With the 2017 college football season rapidly coming to a close, and bowl games coming in fast and furious, the PFF Draft Team is hot on the trails of all the noteworthy bowl games across the country that feature some top, next-level players.
With eyes towards the 2018 NFL Draft, here are the players to keep your eyes on in the Camping World Bowl.
Camping World Bowl
Virginia Tech vs Oklahoma State
December 28, 5:15 p.m., Camping World Stadium, Orlando, Florida
Virginia Tech wide receiver Cam Phillips
The Hokies are absolutely loaded on the defensive side of the ball, but four-year letterman Phillips had a breakout year and is as talented as they come on the offensive side of the ball. Although he won’t play in this game, he’s a prospect to remember the name as this season, he’ll finish just 36 yards away from his first 1,000-yard season and five receptions away from tying a career-high in receptions as he hauled in 71-of-109 targets this year for 964. The most promising factor from his final year in Blacksburg was his safer hands this season. He dropped only two catchable passes and did not have a fumble this year, as he had dropped eight passes over his first three years and had three fumbles heading into the year. At 6-foot, 202-pounds, he’s a legit threat to create space and make something happen with the ball in his hands, and as mentioned, will be a name to remember in April. – @PFF_Cam
Virginia Tech offensive guard Wyatt Teller
Teller was the gold standard at guard this season, in terms of pass protection. He was one of just six guards with at least 200 pass-blocking snaps to not allow a sack nor a QB hit. Teller logged 395 pass-blocking reps and allowed just three QB pressures while also grading positively in run blocking for the fourth-consecutive year. His size (6-foot-5, 315-pounds) and quickness should be highly coveted this April. – @PFF_Cam
Virginia Tech interior defender Tim Settle
A massive space-eater, Settle led the Hokies in QB pressures from his interior defensive tackle position. He was a menace in run defense as well, recording 23 total defensive stops. On the season, he’s accumulated five sacks, four QB hits and 19 QB hurries giving him 27 total, which was 18th-most among all FBS defensive tackles. – @PFF_Cam
Virginia Tech interior defender Ricky Walker
The other half of the interior duo, Walker also registered five sacks and totaled 21 QB pressures. Against the run, he totaled 20 stops and missed just two tackles on 32 tackle attempts and has graded positively in run defense in his three years of playing time for the Hokies. – @PFF_Cam
Virginia Tech linebacker Andrew Motuapuaka
Another four-year letterman for the Hokies, no linebacker was better in coverage this season than Motuapuaka. On 315 snaps in coverage, Motuapuaka allowed just five receptions, averaging 63.0 snaps in coverage per reception allowed, the next closest qualified linebacker averaged 37.6. Motuapuaka gave up just 40 yards on those receptions, averaging 0.13 yards per coverage snap, also the top mark in the nation. He brought down 19 QB pressures on just 75 pass-rush snaps and 30 stops in run defense, rounding out an impressive skillset. – @PFF_Cam
Virginia Tech linebacker Tremaine Edmunds
If Motuapuaka was Hokies best cover-backer, Edmunds was Virginia Tech’s best run-stopper. Edmunds brought down 45 run stops on 341 snaps in run defense, good enough for a 13.2 run stop percentage, or the ninth-best among draft-eligible inside linebackers. Edmunds was also a pass-rushing force, bringing home 22 total QB pressures on 76 pass-rush snaps. – @PFF_Cam
Virginia Tech cornerback Greg Stroman
The nation’s premier coverage corner in 2017, Stroman allowed a ridiculous 21.1 passer rating when targeted. On 41 targets, he allowed just nine receptions and brought down four interceptions while breaking up another 10 more. His 22.0 percent catch rate allowed was lowest among any FBS cornerback, regardless of amount of targets. Stroman’s ball skills, size (6-foot, 180-pounds) and return skills (four career return touchdowns) should have NFL scouts excited. – @PFF_Cam
Virginia Tech cornerback Brandon Facyson
A down year by his standards, Facyson was targeted 37 times this season, and only allowed 13 receptions. He did not allow a touchdown in his coverage and recorded three pass breakups, to push his career total to 21 career passes defensed. A big-bodied cornerback at 6-foot-2, 197-pounds, Facyson can match up against any wide receiver, and will be very tell to see him against the talented duo of Washington and Ateman of Oklahoma State. – @PFF_Cam
Oklahoma State quarterback Mason Rudolph
One of the more polarizing figures in college football in 2017, Rudolph was masterful with the football this year. Despite attempted a deep pass targeted 20-plus yards downfield on 17.7 percent of his attempts, Rudolph fielded the nation’s 23rd-highest adjusted completion percentage among draft-eligible quarterbacks. His poise under pressure will have him heavily talked about come April as Rudolph was pressured on 110 dropback attempts this year, in which he completed 43-of-84 attempts for 844 yards, six touchdowns against just three interceptions for the nation’s fifth-highest passer rating under duress among qualified draft-eligible quarterbacks. – @PFF_Cam
Oklahoma State wide receiver James Washington
One half of arguably the nation’s most talented 1-2 wide receiver combo, Washington hauled in 69 receptions on 110 targets for 1,418 yards to lead the nation in receiving yards. His 131.4 passer rating when targeted was 13th-best among all draft-eligible wide receivers but where he stood out was his ability on the deep ball. Washington was targeted on 35 passes at least 20 yards downfield, and he brought down 17 of them (second-most among draft-eligible WRs) for 715 yards (most) and seven touchdowns (fifth-most). – @PFF_Cam
Oklahoma State wide receiver Marcell Ateman
All Ateman did as the ‘No. 2 WR,’ was bring down 55 receptions on 84 targets for 1,053 yards, 13th among draft-eligible receivers. He bested his teammate with his 135.5 passer rating when targeted and finished with a 3.43 yards per route run average, eighth-best and just below Washington’s 3.47. The bigger of the two at 6-foot-4, Ateman’s ability to high-point the football should make him a valuable red zone asset for any NFL team. – @PFF_Cam
Oklahoma State offensive tackle Zachary Crabtree
Crabtree had a breakout season in Stillwater, allowing a career-low in QB pressures with just 10 total all season. Of his 10 pressures allowed this year, Crabtree allowed just two combined hits on his quarterback (one sack, one QB hit), tightening up his technique and improving vastly from his previous three years. In his three years prior, Crabtree had allowed at least two hits and two sacks in all three seasons. He also improved as a run blocker this season, paving the way for Justice Hill, and rounding out his game for the next level. – @PFF_Cam
Oklahoma State interior defender DeQuinton Osborne
A lesser-known prospect on the Cowboys, Osborne is the team’s leader in QB pressures, racking up 22 total this season including five sacks, seven QB hits and 10 hurries. His most-improved facet this season was his sure-tackling, as he missed just two tackles on 34 total tackle attempts this year and graded positively during both of his two seasons in Stillwater. As a JUCO-transfer, he’ll be a talented prospect to watch during the draft process as he’ll have more limited tape for NFL scouts to watch. His Alamo Bowl game tape may prove huge against a talented ACC opponent. – @PFF_Cam
Oklahoma State safety Ramon Richards
In the pass-happy Big 12, Richards was targeted a whopping 69 times this year from his strong safety position. He allowed 41 receptions but got his hands on 12 passes of his own by the way of two interceptions and 10 pass breakups. His numbers this year push him to 10 career interceptions and 19 career pass breakups. That amount of production alone should warrant a few eyes from NFL scouts. – @PFF_Cam
Oklahoma State safety Tre Flowers
Flowers patrolled the back end of the Cowboys defense with great prowess this season, allowing just 15 receptions into his coverage for just 207 yards while he intercepted two passes and broke up another seven. In all, he allowed a passer rating of just 61.8 when targeted and didn’t allow a catch of over 30 yards all season. He has 20 career plays on the ball with four interceptions and 16 pass breakups for Oklahoma State. – @PFF_CamMars Express acquires sharpest images of martian moon Phobos
Phobos is what scientists call a ‘small irregular body’. Measuring 27 km × 22 km × 19 km, it is one of the least reflective objects in the Solar System, thought to be a captured asteroid or a remnant of the material that formed the planets.
Mars Express closed in on the intriguing martian moon Phobos at 6:50 CEST on 23 July, flying past at 2.96 km/s, only 100 km from the centre of the moon. The ESA spacecraft’s fly-bys of the moon have returned its most detailed full-disc images ever, also in 3-D, using the High Resolution Stereo Camera on board.
The images obtained by several other spacecraft so far have either been of a lower resolution, or not available in 3D and have not covered the entire disc of Phobos. This is also the first time that portions of the far-side of the moon have been imaged in such high resolution (Phobos always faces Mars on the same side).
The HRSC images, which are still under processing, form a bounty for scientists studying Phobos. They are a result of observations carried out over several close fly-bys of the martian moon, performed over the past three weeks. At their best, the pictures have a resolution of 3.7 m/pixel and are taken in five channels to obtain images in 3-D and to perform analyses of the physical properties of the surface.
Scientific bounty Potential Phobos-Grunt landing site In observing Phobos, Mars Express benefits from its highly elliptical orbit which takes it from a closest distance of 270 km from the planet to a maximum of 10 000 km (from the centre of Mars), crossing the 6000 km orbit of the martian moon. Mars Express imaged the far-side of Phobos (with respect to Mars) for the first time after NASA’s Viking mission in the 1970s, by flying outside the spacecraft’s orbit around Mars. Phobos-Grunt (roughly translated as Phobos soil), a Russian sample-return mission, is due for launch in 2009. It is expected to land on the far-side of Phobos at a region between 5° south to 5° north, and 230° west to 235° west.
Phobos The HRSC observations have been awaited eagerly to better assess the choice of and characterise the landing site. The moon's remarkably grooved surface can be seen in the pictures quite clearly. The origin of these grooves is still debated. It is not known whether they are produced by ejecta thrown up from impacts on Mars, or if they result from the surface regolith, or soil, slipping into internal fissures.
Phobos In this image, at least two families of grooves with distinct orientations can be seen along with what is either a chain of pits or craters. The stereo observations (resolution 3.7 m/pixel) are important for structural analysis and they will be used to derive a digital terrain model (a 3-D map of the surface that includes elevation data). The extra photometric channels (at 7.4 m/pixel) make it possible to study the properties of the Phobos regolith at micron to millimetre scales.
An operational challenge Geometry of the Phobos fly-by Managing the close fly-bys was an operational challenge, made possible by spacecraft operations engineers and scientists who worked together to specially optimise Mars Express’s trajectory and obtain the best possible views. The observation made use of a spacecraft slew, a special manoeuvre whereby the body of the spacecraft is rotated against the direction of motion, to effectively lower the speed at which the target passes in the field of view of the camera. This makes it possible to avoid blurring of the pictures despite the high fly-by velocities, whilst maintaining acceptable exposure time.
Phobos fly-by animation The HRSC Super Resolution Channel (SRC) also observed during this close fly-by, with a nominal resolution of 90 cm/pixel. As expected, despite the slew, some residual motion blur has crept into the image, but much detail will be recovered after further processing. In the days running up to the observation, the primary star-tracker - a navigation device that helps the spacecraft point its instruments at the target accurately - experienced some temporary difficulty in recognising the star constellations in its field of view, leaving the spacecraft operating on its secondary system. Concerned that this might affect this critical observation, the team at ESA's European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany, worked intensely to recover the primary system and were able to switch back successfully two days before the fly-by.Slow Cooker Baked Beans are cooked with a little bit of a kick added. By dinner time they are perfection and ready to be served to the whole family.
Slow Cooker Baked Beans are rich and spicy all at the same time. This recipe utilizes canned beans instead of dried so the cook time is less.
That makes it nice that you don’t have to hurry in the morning to get the crockpot loaded. You can put it on a little later after the house has calmed down or you are on a lunch break.
Of course, if you want to get it set up early and have one of those programmable crockpots then you can set it to start it’s cooking any hour you want and you’ll still have a perfect hot meal.
Right on time.
I must tell you if I haven’t already, my husband has a child’s palate. Meaning he likes pretty plain stuff. He doesn’t like spicy so I leave out the Sriracha and he loves it.
You can leave it out for your kids too.
That is something you’ll have to take into consideration. Heat or no heat. Me? If I don’t get to add it into the recipe I add a little splash of Sriracha in at the table.
The chili beans are a nice addition since they are already spiced up with great ingredients.
That also makes your preparation time much easier. The beans blend great with the other flavors.
This post contains affiliate links. Read my disclosure policy here.
Beans are such a nice change from pasta or rice. I think people forget about beans when they are planning their weekly meals.
It’s easy to get stuck in a rut and even forget about those good old standards.
You could serve this up as a hearty lunch or dinner but it would make a wonderful side dish too.
Those chilly nights just got a whole lot cozier.
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Print 5 from 4 votes Slow Cooker Baked Beans Slow Cooker Baked Beans are cooked with a little bit of a kick added. Prep Time 20 minutes Cook Time 4 hours Total Time 4 hours 20 minutes Servings 6 Servings Calories 361 kcal Author Ginny McMeans Ingredients 15 ounces Chili Beans 1 can, NOT drained
15 ounces Kidney Beans 1 can, drained
15 ounces Cannellini Beans 1 can, drained
1/2 cup onion white, chopped
1 tablespoon hot sauce Sriracha
3/4 cup ketchup
3/4 cup brown sugar
4 tablespoons prepared mustard yellow
1 tablespoon dry mustard
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon Worcestershire Sauce look for vegan Instructions Another super simple dinner for the crock pot.
Put all of the ingredients in the crockpot.
Remember to use all of the liquid in the chili can and use prepared mustard, not Dijon or another substitute because you need the mustard tang to help cut the sweetness.
Cook 4 hours on low.
You can certainly double up the ingredients for larger groups and families. Nutrition Nutrition Facts Slow Cooker Baked Beans Amount Per Serving (12 ounces) Calories 361 Calories from Fat 9 % Daily Value* Total Fat 1g 2% Sodium 928mg 39% Potassium 776mg 22% Total Carbohydrates 75g 25% Dietary Fiber 12g 48% Sugars 37g Protein 14g 28% Vitamin A 3.2% Vitamin C 7.3% Calcium 12.1% Iron 30.3% * Percent Daily Values are based on a 2000 calorie diet.
Can You Freeze Slow Cooker Baked Beans?
IF FREEZING:
Let the mixture cool to room temperature and freeze in any of the ways I have described in my article Preparing Food for the Freezer
TO PREPARE AFTER FREEZING:
Take out of the freezer and put in the refrigerator a few hours (about 6 hours) before heating. Heat in a large saucepan or in the microwave. Serve hot.Michael Hausfeld, a Washington-based lawyer who is representing some former players involved in concussion-related lawsuits against the N.F.L., said he had not seen the commercial. But when told about its message, he said an attempt to artfully portray the N.F.L. as having been concerned about player safety for decades, and doing all it can now to protect players, was “obscuring the reality.”
“I’m troubled by it to the extent that it seeks to portray a position of concern when they really had none,” Hausfeld said in a telephone interview. “They shouldn’t be focused on placing ads. They should be focused on talking to those players who have suffered the concussions and the consequences. And saying, ‘What is it we can do?’
“To a lot of people, the ad will resonate that they’re trying. On the other hand, there’s a little bit too much protesting. You’re trying to put yourself in too good of a light. Why? You’re trying to deflect your exposure.”
The commercial, directed by Peter Berg — who created the TV program “Friday Night Lights” — will be shown during the final commercial break of the third quarter. It uses one long kick return as a way to take viewers through the evolution of the game’s rules and equipment, from the sport’s beginnings on a muddy field in Canton, Ohio, when players wore no helmets or pads, to the present in a brightly lighted Soldier Field.
At one point, a leather helmet peels back to reveal a more modern one made of plastic. Later, a player grabs an opponent’s face mask, a violation of current rules.
Only the most devoted fan would recognize all the references. The flying wedge, a blocking technique that is believed to have made its debut in 1892 but was banned soon after, is shown briefly in the opening seconds. Near the end, a horse-collar tackle, only recently forbidden, is featured.
But nobody, particularly the casual fan at whom the commercial is primarily aimed, will miss its closing message, delivered by Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis: “Here’s to making the next century safer and more exciting. Forever forward. Forever football.”
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The message will stand in contrast to most of the commercials seen during the game.
“If you look at what generally works in the Super Bowl, it tends to be animals, and kicking in the crotch does well,” Waller said.
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The N.F.L. is known for sensitivity about its public image. A year ago, it demanded that Toyota change a commercial highlighting the car maker’s decision to share crash research with scientists studying football concussions because the ad included footage of a helmet-to-helmet collision and a reference to a mother worried about her child’s playing football.
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But as the N.F.L. has taken steps to improve safety, not all of them have been embraced by coaches and players. Last year the league cracked down on hits to the head and neck area, threatening suspensions for repeated violators. The new collective bargaining agreement includes provisions that significantly limit the number of full-contact practices and off-season workouts.
During the regular season, after the Cleveland Browns’ medical staff missed a hit to quarterback Colt McCoy’s head and allowed him to return to a game — he was later told he had a concussion — the league put independent observers at each game to help detect questionable hits.
During the playoffs this season, the N.F.L. installed video replay systems behind each bench so medical staffs could evaluate hits they might have missed. Those systems will probably become standard by the start of next season, the league said.
According to figures compiled by team medical staffs to track injuries, the number of concussions in preseason and regular-season games dropped 12.5 percent from 2010 to 2011, from 218 concussions reported in 321 games last season to 190 concussions in 320 games this season. (By comparison, 141 concussions were reported in the 2006 season.)
At the same time, there has been a sharp jump in the number of days of practice and games missed. In 2006, the league said, the median was an average of half a day missed with a concussion. In 2009, the average was three days. This season, it was six days.
“One year is just that, it’s one year; we’re not declaring victory over concussions,” said Jeff Pash, the N.F.L.’s executive vice president and general counsel. “We still need to make sure that we don’t have underreporting. There are some players who I suspect are reluctant to report — we’ve seen statements to that effect. We want to encourage players and medical staffs to be alert to the issue. Over all, if the data continues this way, it will suggest that changes in rules enforcement have been constructive and helpful.”
The N.F.L. and the players union are considering a plan to allocate a large portion of the $100 million committed to medical research in the collective bargaining agreement to the Foundation of the National Institutes of Health, to finance research into issues like concussions and orthopedics, Pash said.
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“It’s a series of steps,” Pash said. “There’s no magic bullet. There’s no Harry Potter waving of the wand that eliminates injuries. The goal every day is to try to come up with ways to make the game safer.”
That, of course, is the message the commercial is trying to deliver. On the N.F.L.’s biggest day, the league is taking a big chance about how the message will be received.
“The one kind of black eye the N.F.L. has is probably the health of its players, and this is a great opportunity to target soccer moms who let their kids play,” said Brad Adgate, the senior vice president of research for Horizon Media. “The object of the Super Bowl ad is not only to be entertaining, it’s also to sell a product. This is a subject the N.F.L. has been very touchy about.
“Finally, they have adjusted that this is a serious issue. Maybe it’s best they adjust it on their terms rather than somebody else doing it for them.”He's probably the biggest rap artist on the planet and he owes it all to his mum. "My mother was the shit," coos Coolio. And this is a good thing. "She taught me every board game and every fucking card game you could think of. When I was ten years old, she'd invite people over to play dominoes and she was hustling `em. She let `em win, and then she'd say: "You sorry motherfuckers, you come here and me and my ten-year-old son'll whip your ass." She bet them $50. And I come in and we kicked they ass, man."
Sitting in a luxurious hotel suite, dressed in immaculate designer overalls, flicking his trademark Medusa braids, Coolio is every inch the international hip-hop star. And he has the requisite celebrity entourage. In the bedroom next door, Kylie, his PR, and the 40 Thevz, his pair of assistant rappers, are lolling on the kingsize duvet watching MTV. Coolio is a textbook ghetto-boy-made-good. "The way we was raised in our neighbourhood," he reflects, "and the things we was taught, the things that we saw, and were programmed to do... Man, I should be dead, in jail or on dope." He was a teenage gangbanger, juvenile offender and crack addict, but managed to kick the habit by becoming a volunteer firefighter and pursuing his passionate interest in hip-hop. In 1995, "Gangsta's Paradise", a melancholy reworking of a Stevie Wonder song, sold 4 million copies and earned him a mantelpiece full of awards. His latest album, My Soul, is released tomorrow, though you will already know one of the tracks, "CU When U Get There", soulful hip-hop moulded around Pachebel's "Canon in D", currently riding high in the charts.
Ironically, he's making rap a mainstream success at a time when the brutal murders of fellow artists 2Pac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G. have increased middle-class suspicion of the form. "Gangsta rap is a derogatory label," he insists. "We was rapping about our reality. They should have been calling it Reality Rap, or Street Rap, Inner City Rap. They just chose to call it gangsta rap to make people afraid of it. I don't consider myself a gangsta rapper. But I'm probably more qualified to be a gangsta rapper than people who call themselves that. I've been through that life." Some of his peers, he suggests, are being disingenuous when they brag about their supposed experience of gangs, guns and drugs. "Most of the people that do the real serious gangsta rap, they don't know shit."
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Coolio is happy to swim in the mainstream. He's even keen to follow MC Hammer's route and undergo a transformation into an animated TV character. "But," he insists, "I'd have a dope cartoon series." And the scenario? "`It'd be Coolio and the 40 Thevz in the tour bus on their way to a concert and they get ran off the road and crash into a nuclear waste dump. Instead of killing them, the nuclear waste alters their molecular structure and changes them into these super-beings that can fly and all kind of shit." Holy Sellafield. "I love cartoons," he admits. "I'm just a big kid."
Coolio was born Artis Ivey, the name by which his wife and seven children know him. "Most of my family calls me Artis," he explains. "But I've become Coolio to some of my family members and I wouldn't trust them with the shit. They don't love Artis anymore, they love Coolio. And I ain't gonna be Coolio for ever. They all caught up in the hype. I'm not. I don't believe the hype. I don't think I'm the shit. I know I'm just one man trying to do one thing, and the next day is not promised to any man. I'm very humble."
Coolio's got plenty of strong ideas about his future. He's declined numerous requests to write his autobiography. He's turned down a host of movie roles ("bullshit gangsta parts", he explains) and is about to sign a deal for a film project he's conceived himself ("I can't tell you what it's about, because it's so dope that if you print it, someone'd steal the idea"). He's also planning to open a burger restaurant, although discussing this causes a moment of consternation: when I ask if he does much cooking, he recoils in outrage, thinking I've just asked if he does much cocaine. We ride the moment and move onto his new, all-consuming passion - golf. "I used to think it was a white man's sport. I used to say, fuck that shit, until I played it one time in a celebrity tournament, and I've been going once a week ever since. I just love it, it's so relaxing, man."
Forewarned of this conversion, I've brought along a copy of Golf Monthly for him. Does he know that in Britain, it's a sport played by ageing comedians? "Well, I heard in England it's not a very big sport. But maybe I'm gonna make it cool." He's determined to find time to tour some Scottish and Irish courses. "I got a lot a lot of respect for Ireland and Scotland, because the way they've been treated over the years, they are like the niggas of England." We discuss this one for a bit, as Coolio moves from his take-away to the fruit bowl. I mention that the warning notice "No blacks, no Irish, no dogs" was not an unusual sight in Sixties London. He downs his strawberry in amazement and calls to the 40 Thevz. "You hear what brother just said?"
"What?" responds one of the Thevz. Coolio reiterates: "Homie right here just said in the Sixties, it wasn't shit to walk round and see a muthafucking sign that said `No blacks, no Irish, no dogs'." As they consider this unpalatable bit of English heritage in stunned silence, I can only sit there thinking: Wow, Coolio called me a homie. It seems a good point to give him the copy of Golf Monthly. He seems genuinely pleased, especially with the Slazenger ball taped to the cover. "I'll use this tonight,"' he promises. And he's off to play a round in Hampstead. With my golf ball. Cool...In a new report, tech industry analysts suggest that the world's major electronics retailers have contributed to slow sales of Microsoft's newest operating system (OS), Windows 8.
The problem: retailers didn't make Windows 8's changes clear to consumers or do enough to try and help those consumers understand the OS' new user interface.
"Windows 8 brought a brand new UI [user interface] that had not fundamentally changed since DOS," noted Moor Insights & Strategy analyst, Patrick Moorhead. "[So] how did big-box retail respond? The same way they have for the last 20 years."
"Massive Disconnect" Between Consumers, Retailers
Moorhead indicated that major electronics retailers in North America, of which Best Buy is the largest, failed to adapt their selling strategy for Windows 8, an operating system that radically overhauled the existing Windows formula.
"There exists a massive disconnect between what consumers want to and need to know about the latest generation of PCs" and what retailers did, and continue to do, to sell those PCs," Moor |
organise their flocks by each obeying simple, local rules.
Schooling and flocking behaviours are, of course, restricted to large groups of individuals from a single species. Might self-organising properties operate even at the level of multi-species ecosystems? There’s reason to think that they do. Vegetation on arid soils will, for example, arrange itself into groups with plain soil between them: the plants in the groups all benefit from their mutual ability to help rare rainfall penetrate the ground. And in simple experimental microbial communities (not, in fact, different species, but yeasts genetically engineered to have different metabolisms that can co-operate to use environmental nutrients), the different types of individual self-organise into mixed clusters that bring co‑operators together. Many ecologists believe that large-scale ecosystems of co‑operating organisms, for example trees and fungi, show similar self‑organising behaviour.
All of these examples, and many more like them, turn out to have something in common when analysed at the mechanistic level: in each case, what has been achieved so far by the system is used to control its current behaviour. This type of control is called feedback, and is represented by a loop feeding information from the output of a process back to its input.
In the case of the cytoskeleton, the stability of a filament depended on whether it was carrying a mechanical force, which in turn depended on whether it was in the right place to connect to cell junctions. The achievement of a filament (to be in a useful place or not) is therefore fed back to decide what it will do next (survive, or be disassembled). In the case of the blood capillaries, the extent to which present growth has been adequate to bring enough oxygen into the tissues is fed back, via VEGF, to control whether the capillaries continue to grow or remain as they are. And the same principle seemed to explain the schooling of fish: any error in an individual fish’s relative positions and direction compared to its neighbours is used to modify its swimming, to make the error smaller. Seen from the abstract perspective of feedback loops, adaptive self-organisation looks more or less the same across all scales of life, from the architecture of subcellular assemblies to the arrangements of co-operating species in ecosystems.
In this sense, the loop is a near-universal symbol of living processes.
We have, then, two very different models for understanding life. In the gene-centred model, a ‘gene for this’ and a ‘gene for that’ act deterministically to construct a cell, or a body, or an aspect of behaviour. In the loop-centred model, feedback-rich processes allow cells, bodies and ecosystems to construct themselves adaptively in response to the prevailing conditions. Can these models, which seem on the face of it very different, ever be reconciled? Yes, very easily. The feedback loops that guide self-organisation, at any scale, rely ultimately on the action of protein-based mechanisms, and proteins are encoded by genes.
genes do not make body features, they make the machines that organise body features adaptively
The role of proteins in subcellular self-organising systems such as the cytoskeleton is obvious: the cytoskeleton is made of proteins. In my account of capillary development, the proteins HIF1A and VEGF highlighted the importance of specific molecules to organisation at a larger scale. Even events at much larger scales, such as the schooling of fish, ultimately rely on protein machines. Genes are therefore essential to self-organisation at all the scales of life – just not in a deterministic way. Rather, the genes are needed to make the machines that mediate feedback-driven self-organisation: the self-organisation is a high-level property that emerges from the underlying network, not a feature of any of the individual components.
This has interesting consequences. Where any part of the mechanism is sensitive to the environment, the whole self-organising loop can be too. The number of red cells in blood, for example, is set by a feedback loop sensitive to measurements of oxygen deep in the kidneys. When someone goes to live in the thin air of a high mountain, they tend to have more blood cells. Why? Because the ‘normal’ complement of cells is not sufficient in that environment, so the kidneys sense abnormally low oxygen and signal for more blood cells to be made. The effects of environmental sensitivity at a single point percolate throughout the entire organism. If we recognise that genes do not make body features, they make the machines that organise body features adaptively, that shift in perspective does much to lay to rest the long debates about nature versus nurture.
The DNA helix is important, of course. But the most important thing it does is make proteins that can operate in regulatory loops. These loops can also operate at the molecular level: genes make proteins, but these proteins determine which genes are ‘off’ and which are ‘on’ (as HIF1A does), making a control loop at even the molecular level. Unlike the helix, loops also operate at scales far above the molecular, covering a range of sizes from bacterial colonies to the vast ecosystems of the rainforest – perhaps to the ecosystem of the entire Earth. Beyond Earth, life without DNA is just about thinkable (one can imagine alternative strategies for storing information). Life without feedback loops, though? I have never met any biologist who can imagine that.
The helix is too well-established an icon to be deposed any time soon. And yet, a simple loop would be a much more universal symbol of how life works at all of its scales and levels. Perhaps the Ouroboros, beloved of gnostics and alchemists, has been an ideal symbol waiting in the wings for centuries: there can surely be no more evocative symbol of feedback than a snake growing by devouring its own tail.ATTN: Bidders Using Snail Mail: Some of your bids have arrived THE DAY the auction closes! Please leave enough mail time: • East Coast bidders at least 4 business days. • Overseas bidders at least 10 business days.
John's 2016 Blues Calendar is STILL SHIPPING! Volume 13! Remastered using the FANTASTIC new method heard in American Epic! SOUNDS LIKE IT WAS RECORDED YESTERDAY! INCLUEDS a 20-Track CD, the BEST-SOUNDING SONGS WE'VE EVER HAD! With songs from Blind Lemon Jefferson, Blind Willie Johnson, Jim Jackson, Blind Blake, Ma Rainey, The Memphis Jug Band, Hattie Hart, Papa Charlie McCoy and many more GREAT Pre-War Blues artists!
John Tefteller Finds Another "Lost" Paramount Blues 78rpm Record!!
Legendary Blues singer J.D. Short record turns up in Tennessee!
Grants Pass, Oregon:
Eighty-four years after it was recorded and originally released, J.D. Short (incorrectly identified on the label as Jaydee Short), Paramount 13091, "Tar Road Blues"/"Flagin' [sic] It To Georgia" has been found for the very first time. Long considered lost to the ages, the record, of which there was previously no known surviving copy, surfaced recently in Tennessee.
"It turned up shoved into the back of an old Victrola record player cabinet along with a stack of other Blues records from the same time period," said long time Blues collector John Tefteller who purchased the record from "a local picker." Tefteller will make the songs available to the world again next year as part of his "Classic Blues Artwork From The 1920's" series of calendars which come with a free CD.
"The record is in decent shape with the only serious flaw being a small chip on the edge. It has seen its share of play on that old windup but still sounds great and it is an absolute two sided masterpiece," says Tefteller, who, since the mid-1970's, has been at the forefront of seeking out long missing Blues 78's and making them available to the public once again.
As he has been known to do when records of this caliber are found, Tefteller flew to Tennessee to meet with the picker who found the record and negotiate a deal to buy it. Hand carrying it back on the plane to his archives in Grants Pass, Oregon, Tefteller said "I don't trust any mailing service with something as rare, valuable and fragile as this record is."
In the world of collecting rare phonograph records, the early Blues from the late 1920's and early 1930's are some of the world's rarest and most expensive records, coveted by collectors worldwide. These early Blues 78 rpm records, especially those on the Paramount label, were made in very small quantities and sold to a mostly African American audience. Historians agree that many of the very best Blues songs ever recorded come from the period before World War II.
In addition to years of play and abuse, 80% or more were destroyed in the "scrap drives" of World War II, where the public was encouraged to turn in their old records to the government to be recycled as scrap for the war effort. (Masters of these recordings were also destroyed in the scrap drives.) To find any of them now is quite a challenge as many of them only exist in quantities of one to five copies. Some have yet to found at all. Eighty years later, the only way to hear these classic performances is to seek out a copy of the released RECORD and use modern technology to restore the sound to as listenable as possible.
J.D. Short was a hardcore Delta Blues musician born in Port Gibson, Mississippi in 1902. He made four two-sided 78's for the legendary Paramount record label of Port Washington, Wisconsin on June 1st, 1930. Until this discovery, only one of those four records was known to still exist - and only a single copy of that one exists as well -- also residing in Tefteller's collection. Short made another classic Blues record for Vocalion label, under the name of Jelly Jaw Short, as well as a few others for various labels in the 78 era. Short then briefly participated in the 1960's Blues Revival with songs released by Delmark Records of Chicago and Prestige/Bluesville of New Jersey, before his death in 1962 at the age of 60.
Tefteller has played the newly discovered record for other Blues experts and historians where the accolades for it just don't stop. Yazoo Records owner Richard Nevins put it this way: "One side is incredible and the other side is just awesome....Blues fans will have to decide for themselves which side they prefer."
Peter Whelan, now retired former publisher of 78 Quarterly and a collector since the 1940's says it is "J.D. Short's best record! Tar Road Blues is intense and filled with unrelieved tension. Flagin' It To Georgia sneaks up on you, in the same way as Mattie Delaney's 'Tallahatchie River Blues,' which is considered by many to be the best female Blues record ever recorded."
Gayle Dean Wardlow, longtime Blues historian and author says, "This is best St. Louis record ever! Even though Short was born in Mississippi, he spent much of his life in the St. Louis area. He traveled to Paramount in Wisconsin to record and took fellow St. Louis Blues legend Henry Townsend with him. Paramount was the best place in the world to record because they were so casual and unhurried about it. You could relax, have a sip of whiskey and record at your leisure, without some New York producer telling you what to do and to get it done fast because a Country act is coming in to record next and they are waiting in the halls. I liked the Flagin' It To Georgia side best because it is so slow and intense. It doesn't matter what other labels any of these guys recorded on, they always did their very best when recording at Paramount."
Paul Vernon, who heads up the Real Blues Forum on the Internet exclaims, "It is everything you would expect (from Short) and just fantastic. I am thrilled that it finally has been found after all these years. It proves the theory that great stuff like this is still out there, hiding....waiting to be discovered."
Tefteller has been collecting super rare early Blues 78's for many years and is responsible for unearthing never before heard recordings by such Blues legends as Son House, Tommy Johnson, King Solomon Hill, Blind Joe Reynolds, Blind Blake and many more. He travels the back roads of America hunting everywhere - in barns, garages, attics, basements, junk shops and flea markets - searching for super rare Blues 78 rpm records. His collection is regarded as the world's best when it comes to the combined period of Pre-War and Post-War Blues.
Tefteller made headlines again last fall when he purchased a super rare 78 rpm Blues recordby Delta Blues legend Tommy Johnson for the world record price for a 78 rpm recording of $37,100.00. The newly found J.D. Short record set him back close to that amount. "It would have been just as expensive as the Tommy Johnson, were it not for the chip on the edge of the record, which does devalue it a bit....but the performances are right up there with the very best Pre-War Delta Blues ever recorded," reveals Tefteller.
Tefteller is hoping that all the publicity from finding and purchasing these records will result in the last remaining unfound Blues records being discovered. "I encourage everyone to get out there and find them. There are still two more J.D. Short records on Paramount to find and, of course, there are still my most wanted items, the last two missing Willie Brown Paramount 78's," Tefteller pleaded.
"I have a standing offer of $25,000.00 each for any playable copy of any of those, even cracked, as long as they play - more if they are in great shape. This most recent find confirms that there are still some great Blues records hiding out there and, for history's sake and for the enjoyment of Blues fans worldwide, they must be found. Please keep looking--everywhere!"
Tefteller has been featured in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and other print media as well as in countless radio interviews and public forums. He can be reached at 541-659-7175 as well as though his two websites, www.tefteller.com and www.bluesimages.com.
Click here to listen to a 30-second sample!
Click here to listen to a 30-second sample!
John Tefteller
The World's Rarest Records
P.O. Box 1727
Grants Pass, Oregon 97528
USAMilwaukee Bucks forward Jared Dudley was a guest on a bunch of ESPN platforms Wednesday, and he did not hold back when asked for his opinion on various NBA subjects.
Dudley talked about the Cleveland Cavaliers and the impact Kevin Love‘s shoulder injury is having on their title quest; James Harden‘s reputation around the League; said that Carmelo Anthony is the most overrated NBA superstar (Zach Randolph the most underrated); and talked about why he thinks Kobe Bryant is a pain to play with.
According to Dudley, the Los Angeles Lakers superstar guard’s ball dominance turns most of his peers off.
Per SportsGrid:
“Most guys don’t want to play with Kobe. He gets in this thing where he doesn’t pass and then overpasses and then trying to get triple doubles every night, so we know you have it… “That’s why I think it will be a while for the Lakers to get good because they’ve got no stars. I would be surprised if (Kevin) Love goes there.”
You gotta love the Lakers fan! You gotta understand its goin to take a very unique Star to come FA, KD and Russ. No hate just keep in it 100 — Jared Dudley (@JaredDudley619) May 27, 2015
Ok Kobe fans listen to the interview. I said Kobe one of the greats! I'm laughing about his shot attempts. Most people not taking less $ — Jared Dudley (@JaredDudley619) May 27, 2015
—
Previously:
Shaquille O’Neal Threatened to Murder Kobe Bryant During 2004 Season
Lakers GM: Kobe Bryant ‘Indicated’ Next Season Will Be His Last
Kobe Bryant on Lakers’ Draft: ‘Don’t Pick a Player That Sucks’Unfortunately we finished 5-8th at Dreamhack Summer due to being eliminated in the decider match against NiP 16-12 on Cache, which was a game where we lost a 5v2, and in general almost all of our crucial clutch situations, which cost us the game in the end.
This is the third event where we felt like the small mistakes lost us the game, which kind of make it a bit more emotional because you feel like it's so close every time, but still so far away. It does without a doubt also give us even more motivation now where we can compete against all the best teams in the world, and afterwards blame ourselves for our losses.
We try to compare our current situation to the one TSM had, where they always would lose the close game and get knocked out of the tournament. Honestly I just believe that it is a matter of time and experience before we will start winning those games and maybe even win a few tournaments.
From my own point of view I feel like I have to step up and most importantly be more consistent in the important games and contribute more in the fragging-department, where I lately have been lacking a bit behind some of my teammates.
I will do everything I can to improve and regain some strenght for all the upcoming tournaments, so we hopefully can beat all the best teams, not just occasionally but more consistently and more convincingly.
I by the way also made a highlight against NiP on cache, which you can see below :)
Peace out! - KjaerbyeYesterday, Maryland traveled to Happy Valley to play and ultimately defeat Penn State. It was a hard-fought game that went down to the wire, but perhaps the most interesting moment came midway through the first half, when Terps senior star Dez Wells went to the foul line.
That's when the chanting started: "No means no! No means no!"
The context of the jeers is that in August 2012, Wells was kicked off of Xavier University's team and expelled from the school for "a serious violation of the Code of Student Conduct." Wells was accused of sexual assault. An Ohio grand jury, however, decided against hitting him with federal criminal charges. He walked free, transferred to Maryland, and sued Xavier, claiming that the allegations were false, and only came after consensual sex. The two parties settled late last year.
The fun and the allure of being a hardcore college sports fan is largely in being a savage who will say anything and everything to hurt opponents and/or make the people around them laugh. In that vein, this is fair game, especially since there's no real equivalence to strike between Wells's rape charge and Jerry Sandusky's. But c'mon; Penn State is relevant today for one reason.
h/t ArielFEDERAL Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg has accused WA of not doing enough to protect ocean users from shark attacks.
Mr Frydenberg levelled the claim while repeating his invitation for the WA Government to submit proposals to introduce further shark mitigation measures which would require federal approval.
“I feel the WA government could do a lot more,” Mr Frydenberg told The Australian adding the Commonwealth had already given prompt approval for the use of shark nets in New South Wales.
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The reported criticism is an escalation of Mr Frydenberg’s signalling on Wednesday that he would welcome any proposal to keep ocean users safe, including shark culls.
“In light of the recent shark attack, the Commonwealth would welcome any proposal to protect human life first and foremost,” he said.
“This could include the newest drum-line technology, shark exclusion nets, culling or other measures which WA sees fit.”
But WA Fisheries Minister Dave Kelly has appeared to dismiss the invitation to take drastic steps such as shark culling, questioning how it would make beaches safer.
Speaking on radio Wednesday morning, Mr Kelly again focused on the State Government’s policy of subsidising personal deterrent devices such as shark shields, claiming the measure would make a “genuine difference”.
He said the policy, under which the Government will set aside $200,000 for $200 rebates, would help drive down the costs of the products by increasing demand.
“The objective of a subsidy in these circumstances is two-fold,” Mr Kelly told 6PR. “By giving these products a subsidy you increase the brand awareness that they’re out there because there are lots of people out there saying they can deter sharks.
“But which ones work?
“If they then get more market awareness and the number of sales increases then, like most things, the price will come down as volumes increase.”
In rejecting Mr Frydenberg’s offer Mr Kelly described it as a “disappointing” media ploy but he would call the Federal Environment Minister to “see what his thoughts are”.
“Even if you accept that there are more great whites in the ocean than there used to be, the question is ‘what do you do about it?’
“I find it quite insulting that anyone could suggest that anyone could put human life below the value of a shark.
“That’s just a cheap political line.
“I would like to do something that actually makes a difference.
“For the Federal Environment Minister to make those comments to the media I find a little disappointing.
“He didn’t ring me. It’s easy to say ‘let’s have a cull’.
“But if you have a cull how many sharks are you going to kill in order to actually make a difference, how are you going to do it, how are you going to pay for it?
“Whether great whites are endangered or not is a decision of the Federal Government.
“It’s not a decision for the State Government.”
Camera Icon Laeticia Brouwer with her family. Picture: PerthNow
EARLIER
Shark cull on the agenda after Laeticia's death
THE Federal Government will pave the way for dramatic measures to protect West Australians from shark attacks — including a cull — after a teenage girl became the State’s 15th victim of a great white shark in less than two decades.
As the family of Laeticia Brouwer said yesterday the 17-year-old died “doing something that she loved”, Federal Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg said the protection of human life had to come “first and foremost”.
Mr Frydenberg said he would “welcome” any proposal to protect people from sharks, which included culling, new drum-line technology, shark barriers or “other measures which WA sees fit
But Canberra’s willingness to back more drastic action appears set to be dismissed by the State Government, which yesterday refused to set drum lines.
The McGowan Government also indicated the days of the previous government’s “serious threat” policy, under which sharks deemed a public risk can be caught and killed, were numbered.
Ms Brouwer had been surfing with her father Leon at a surf break east of Esperance known as Kelp Beds when she was attacked by what is believed to be a white pointer about 4pm on Monday.
The teenager died from her injuries in front of her parents and two sisters.Fresh off helping Sunderland avoid relegation, DeAndre Yedlin tells Goal USA's Ives Galarcep about his roller coaster season, and the important summer ahead.
NEW YORK — For most travelers, a six-hour layover after a transatlantic flight might be a chance to grab a nap, or for the more ambitious, maybe time to sneak in some sight-seeing in Manhattan.
DeAndre Yedlin had other plans.
While most of us were just trying to get through our typical Monday, Yedlin was flying from London to JFK Airport to take part in a video shoot for a new clothing campaign he is modeling for. The sun hadn’t even set yet before Yedlin wrapped up the shoot and hopped in an awaiting SUV to take the rush hour ride to LaGuardia Airport to reach Miami by Monday evening to join his U.S. teammates for the first part of training camp ahead of Copa America.
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The whirlwind day barely fazed Yedlin, which shouldn’t be a surprise considering he just wrapped up a season in England that was a whirlwind in its own right. Yedlin finished a one-year loan spell at Sunderland having established himself as an English Premier League starter, helped the Black Cats avoid relegation, and having set himself up for a summer that could see him be part of his second multi-million dollar transfer in two years.
Not bad for a player who was just beginning his professional career three years ago, and who two years ago went from national team novice to one of the surprises of the 2014 World Cup.
“Time has definitely flown by, especially this season has flown by so fast. It’s crazy to think about,” Yedlin told Goal USA. “There’s been ups and downs, and the whole process has helped me grow that much faster.”
As Yedlin arrives at U.S. camp ahead of Copa America, he finds himself in a considerably different position than he was in just two years ago, when he was a surprising invitee to the 2014 pre-World Cup U.S. camp, and then a shock inclusion in Klinsmann’s World Cup roster.
“I’m not a veteran by any means, but I’m definitely a lot more comfortable in the group,” Yedlin said. “I kind of know what’s expected so that’s good. You definitely can go into it feeling confident, because I know how it is as a young player going in. It’s tough because you don’t know how the guys are going to be, and you don’t know exactly what’s expected of you.”
As this summer’s Copa America approaches, Yedlin comes in experienced and considered a leading candidate to be the starting right back for the the U.S. If Yedlin does shine at Copa America, it will be due in large part to the considerable growth he experienced as a player at Sunderland, where he endured a coaching change, a benching, and doubts about his ability to compete, before eventually overcoming adversity and playing the best soccer of his young career.
In order to achieve that, Yedlin had to hit rock bottom and feel the sting of failure that tested his resolve and forced him to do some soul searching.
Rock bottom came last December, when Yedlin was pulled from Sunderland’s match against Watford after just 20 minutes. Watford gave Sunderland all sorts of problems in the early going, and Yedlin committed turnovers that put the Black Cats under pressure.
The quick hook came from Sunderland manager Sam Allardyce, and all Yedlin could do was sit on the bench briefly before heading to the locker room early and showering rather than spending the rest of the first half trying to hide the shame.
“If you get taken out after 20 minutes it’s a big blow to you. From that point I lost confidence a little bit,” Yedlin said. “It’s embarrassing, kind of humiliating a little bit, and for the next three weeks it was a period of feeling sorry for myself, that sort of thing, pouting about it.
“That’s when I said ‘Alright, you’ve got to do something about it. Nobody’s going to help you improve except yourself. If you don’t want it then nobody’s going to want it for you’.”
Yedlin spent the better part of two months on the Sunderland bench, but continued to work hard and eventually found an opportunity when then starting right back Billy Jones suffered an injury against Liverpool. Yedlin stepped into the lineup and did well.
“For me, that’s the biggest thing, if something holds me back it’s my mental game so I really tried to focus on that and just worked on that,” Yedlin said. “Mentally I was a lot stronger. I also really tried to focus on my defensive game and learn as much as I could from who was playing on the field at the time.
“Billy Jones, positionally, is unbelievable," he added. "He’s not the fastest guy but he makes up for it by being positionally sound, so I really tried to focus and absorb where he would be in certain situations and just tried to add that in my game. Obviously I have the speed to make up for it, but if I can be positionally sound then I can elevate my game on the next level."
Yedlin also credits his breakthrough, at least in part, to an unlikely source of inspiration.
“I read a book, it’s called "Maximum Achievement", and something about the book just clicked in my head," Yedlin said. “I don’t really know what it was, but it just clicked. It said to write down your goals, and as soon as I read that I wrote them down for one month, two months, three months, six months and a year.
“I literally said that after the Liverpool game that I was going to start every game for the rest of the season, I wrote that down and it happened.”
Yedlin became a mainstay for Sunderland, helping the Black Cats avoid relegation, and even helping set up the Jermain Defoe goal that ultimately secured safety.
Now with that mission accomplished, and his Sunderland loan over, Yedlin is headed to U.S. camp determined to win the starting right back spot he is considered the favorite to occupy this summer.
Yedlin isn’t about to take for granted that he will be Klinsmann’s choice to start at Copa America, but anyone who watched him at Sunderland saw a player who had improved tremendously, particularly defensively.
“Defensively I feel very comfortable, which is something that I’ve never felt before,” Yedlin said. “Obviously with the national team it’s a bit different because you’re expected to attack a little bit more than with Sunderland.
“Obviously I’m a defender first, and Jurgen’s always said that to me when I’m playing right back, you’re a defender first, but my game is obviously an attacking game,” he added. “But now that I’ve finally gotten comfortable with defending, I think that statement has finally clicked with me. There’s obviously moments in the game where you don’t need to get forward, and there’s moments in the game where defensively you have to focus a lot more than attacking.
“It’s finally clicked in my head for some reason. It seems like It’d be easy, an easy thing to get, but it’s finally clicked and things are going smoothly.”
The Copa America Centenario is a very important tournament for Yedlin. Not only because it will be played in his home country, but also because scouts from all over Europe will be watching and deciding whether he is someone worthy of a major transfer bid.
Yedlin is currently on the books at Tottenham, but a return to Spurs next season appears very unlikely. The most likely scenario will be a transfer expected to exceed the size of the deal that sent him from the Seattle Sounders to Tottenham two years ago.
Sources have told Goal USA that several Premier League clubs have already expressed interest in buying Yedlin, including Sunderland, and that list could grow longer if Yedlin shines this summer.
Yedlin is open to a return to Sunderland, though he says he won’t be focusing much on his club situation until later this summer.
“It’s definitely a door I would not close. I would not mind going back (to Sunderland)," Yedlin told Goal USA. “I had a great time there.
“I’m keeping all doors open, I don’t want to shut any right now. Any opportunity that is offered to me is a big opportunity. When you’re dealing with the Premier League, it’s still unbelievable to think that I’m playing in the Premier League.
“I don’t want to close any doors right now,” he continued. “I’ll just keep my head down and perform at Copa America. Obviously if I can have a good tournament here it’ll impress a lot more people.”
Yedlin has already impressed plenty of people with the year he just had at Sunderland, a year that saw him mature a considerable amount. Though he is still young at 22, Yedlin considers him a much, much different player now than he was even a year ago.
“Sometimes that’s all you need, is a year of playing, that little bit of confidence,” Yedlin said. “You look at Harry Kane, two years ago coming back from loan and playing, he comes back to Tottenham and absolutely kills it and is now England’s number one striker.
“Confidence is a funny thing, and sometimes that’s all you need is just that little bit to elevate you to the next level.”Whistleblower policeman Rick Flori seeks to have misconduct charge dismissed
Updated
A senior Gold Coast police officer, who was stood down for allegedly leaking CCTV footage to the media, has asked a magistrate to dismiss a misconduct charge against him.
Senior Sergeant Rick Flori does not dispute he leaked the video, which showed fellow police officers bashing a handcuffed 21-year-old man in the basement of the Surfers Paradise police station in 2012.
He was charged with misconduct in public office - dealing with information with the intention to dishonestly cause a detriment.
On Friday the Southport Magistrates Court was told Flori held a grudge against fellow officer Senior Sergeant David Joachim, who did not strike the 21-year old, but was seen in the footage cleaning the man's blood off the concrete floor.
Crown prosecutor Todd Fuller SC said there was a circumstantial case that Flori accessed the footage, distributed it to a journalist and then tried to conceal he was the source.
"There is a duty on officers not to disclose people's information," he said.
"If an officer wishes to disclose information there is a process in which they can do that."
The court heard investigators accessed Flori's emails and found an exchange with a reporter from the Courier-Mail newspaper in which the senior officer said: "Police have been getting away with this... because they lie for each other."
Mr Fuller said Flori initially denied he was the source of the leak, but later conceded he accessed the footage for "educational purposes".
"The release was a breach of the Police Service Administration Act," the prosecutor said.
Mr Fuller added the information was released due to malice Flori held towards Senior Sergeant Joachim who was promoted over him.
"There is clearly a number of factual issues that need to be resolved in front of a jury," he said.
'Completely wrong charge'
But Flori's barrister Stephen Keim SC argued the charge should be dismissed.
"This is the completely wrong charge," he said. "It's the dishonest intention that has to be established.
"Ordinary and honest people would not, and could not, see a dishonest intention."
Mr Keim argued his client was shining light on something that should be viewed by the public.
"The intention of Mr Flori was to bring transparency," he said.
Magistrate Michael Hogan reserved his decision until May 27.
Topics: courts-and-trials, police, southport-4215
First postedWhen Apple announced the new Apple TV and tvOS, development seemed like business as usual from an iOS developers perspective. Looking at the API diffs between iOS 9.1 and tvOS 9.0, it is obvious that tvOS is a stripped down version of iOS (tvOS 9.t to 9.2 diffs show that Apple is still working towards adding more iOS capabilities to tvOS). One notable addition from iOS to tvOS is TVMLKit. With TVMLKit Apple offers developers a way to leverage JavaScript and XML templates to very quickly create consistent native media experiences. In the Introduction to TVMLKit tech talk it is revealed that many of the apps that ship with the new Apple TV actually use TVMLKit, including the App Store and iTunes movies apps along with others. I decided to take a look at just how easy it is to create a catalog app that looks like the iTunes movies app. This post provides an overview of my TVMLKit first impressions. Feel free to let me know yours.
TVMLKit is able to leverage existing client-server architectures, but because I did not have one in place, the first step was to setup a simple server to host my JavaScript and media files. There are ways to set this up on the device, but for this test I started one on my Mac. Once that was setup and all my media was ready, I created the tvOS project in Xcode and headed over to the AppDelegate. To use TVMLKit you are expected to create a TVApplicationControllerContext and a TVApplicationController in application(_:didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:). This would also be the place to pass through other launch options to the TVApplicationControllerContext (think deep linking). One thing of note is that it takes very few lines of Swift/Objective-C code to get started. Once these two objects were setup, I was able to switch over to JavaScript to finish up the implementation. The TVML Catalog sample source code was a great resource for getting a head start on what the JS/XML template should look like. Here is what I ended up with:
Each of the items opens a media player with a HLS stream using the native player chrome and all. I feel the need to again emphasize this is a completely native experience written mostly in JavaScript. No web view wackiness here (there is actually no web view component even available on tvOS). Overall, I am impressed with TVMLKit and what it offers. The template I used did the heavy lifting of creating the collection views and laying them out to match the look and feel of the iTunes movies app. Implementing this experience from scratch using UIKit would indeed take more time and effort. If you have a catalog of media on a server somewhere and are looking a user experience that matches that of many of the apps on the Apple TV, TVML is a very good place to start.A lawsuit against Marvel is making its way to the Supreme Court, and the decision could change a 50-year-old rule about how inventors can profit off of their patents. The case pits Marvel against Stephen Kimble, an inventor who sold it a patent for a glove that shoots a foam string out of its palm, much like Spider-Man's web shooters. Marvel agreed to pay Kimble a percentage of product sales indefinitely, but it stopped paying him after the patent expired. It can seemingly do that because of a 1964 Supreme Court ruling, from the case Brulotte v. Thys Co., which makes it illegal to collect royalties on an expired patent, and now Kimble is heading back to that court in an attempt to overturn its ruling. The Supreme Court today agreed to hear the lawsuit, which should enter the court sometime next spring.
The Justice Department didn't want this case in the Supreme Court
The Court initially made the ruling because a patent, by itself, was considered to be fairly powerful, and allowing patent owners to make agreements extending beyond a patent's lifetime would only grant them more power. In particular, the court noted concern that a patent holder might require someone licensing a patent to also license expired patents in order to seal the deal — a bargaining power that would have undermined the intent of making patents eventually open up to the public. Effectively, it would give some |
) 131.05
(76,381 ) 142.66
Options Outstanding, June 30, 2014 432,164
$ 122.77
458,596
$ 109.59
Options Exercisable June 30, 2014 271,988
$ 118.60
458,596
$ 109.59
The Company granted 135,501 restricted stock units net of forfeitures, with an estimated aggregate compensation cost of $15,912,000, as part of its stock-based compensation plan, during the six months ended June 30, 2014. The amount of restricted stock ultimately earned is based on the total shareholder return metrics related to the Company’s common stock for 59,875 restricted units and financial metrics related to operating performance and leverage metrics of the Company for 75,626 restricted units. For the portion of the grant for which the award is determined by the total shareholder return of the Company’s common stock, the Company used a Monte Carlo model to assess the compensation cost associated with the restricted stock units. The estimated compensation cost was derived using the following assumptions: baseline share value of $128.97 ; dividend yield of approximately 3.6% ; estimated volatility figures ranging from 17.6% to 18.6% over the life of the plan for the Company using 50% historical volatility and 50% implied volatility; and risk free rates over the life of the plan ranging from 0.04% to 0.72%, resulting in an average estimated fair value per restricted stock unit of $102.86. For the portion of the grant for which the award is determined by financial metrics, the estimated compensation cost was based on the baseline share value of $128.97 and the Company's estimate of corporate achievement for the financial metrics.
During the six months ended June 30, 2014, the Company also issued 113,822 shares of restricted stock, of which 16,193 shares related to the conversion of restricted units to restricted shares, and the remaining 97,629 shares were new grants with a fair value of $12,607,000.
At June 30, 2014, the Company had 199,138 outstanding unvested restricted shares granted under the Company's equity compensation plans. Restricted stock vesting during the six months ended June 30, 2014 totaled 93,941 shares of which 4,504 shares related to the conversion of restricted stock units and 89,437 shares related to restricted stock awards which had fair values at the grant date ranging from $74.20 to $149.05 per share. The total grant date fair value of shares vested under restricted stock awards was $10,712,000 and $13,685,000 for the six months ended June 30, 2014 and 2013, respectively.
Total employee stock-based compensation cost recognized in income was $5,890,000 and $11,793,000 for the six months ended June 30, 2014 and 2013, respectively, and total capitalized stock-based compensation cost was $3,247,000 and $3,922,000 for the six months ended June 30, 2014 and 2013, respectively. At June 30, 2014, there was a total unrecognized compensation cost of $1,862,000 for unvested stock options and $27,589,000 for unvested restricted stock and restricted stock units, which does not include estimated forfeitures. The unrecognized compensation cost for unvested stock options, and restricted stock and restricted stock units is expected to be recognized over a weighted average period of 1.4 years and 4.0 years, respectively.
10. Related Party Arrangements
Unconsolidated Entities
The Company manages unconsolidated real estate entities for which it receives asset management, property management, development and redevelopment fee revenue. From these entities, the Company earned fees of $2,672,000 and $2,913,000 during the three months ended June 30, 2014 and 2013, respectively, and $5,750,000 and $5,185,000 during the six months ended June 30, 2014 and 2013, respectively. These fees are included in management, development and other fees on the accompanying Condensed Consolidated Statements of Comprehensive Income. In addition, the Company has outstanding receivables associated with its management role of $7,869,000 and $7,004,000 as of June 30, 2014 and December 31, 2013, respectively.
Director Compensation
The Company recorded non-employee director compensation expense relating to restricted stock grants and deferred stock awards in the amount of $500,000 and $493,000, in the six months ended June 30, 2014 and 2013, respectively, as a component of general and administrative expense. Deferred compensation relating to restricted stock grants and deferred stock awards to non-employee directors was $917,000 and $417,000 on June 30, 2014 and December 31, 2013, respectively.
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11. Fair Value
Financial Instruments Carried at Fair Value
Derivative Financial Instruments
Currently, the Company uses interest rate cap agreements to manage its interest rate risk. These instruments are carried at fair value in the Company’s financial statements. In adjusting the fair value of its derivative contracts for the effect of counterparty nonperformance risk, the Company has considered the impact of its net position with a given counterparty, as well as any applicable credit enhancements, such as collateral postings, thresholds, mutual puts, and guarantees. The Company minimizes its credit risk on these transactions by dealing with major, creditworthy financial institutions which have an A or better credit rating by the Standard & Poor’s Ratings Group. As part of its on-going control procedures, the Company monitors the credit ratings of counterparties and the exposure of the Company to any single entity, thus reducing credit risk concentration. The Company believes the likelihood of realizing losses from counterparty nonperformance is remote. Although the Company has determined that the majority of the inputs used to value its derivatives fall within Level 2 of the fair value hierarchy, the credit valuation adjustments associated with its derivatives use Level 3 inputs, such as estimates of current credit spreads, to evaluate the likelihood of default by itself and its counterparties. As of June 30, 2014, the Company assessed the significance of the impact of the credit valuation adjustments on the overall valuation of its derivative positions and has determined it is not significant. As a result, the Company has determined that its derivative valuations are classified in Level 2 of the fair value hierarchy.
Hedge ineffectiveness did not have a material impact on earnings of the Company for the three months ended June 30, 2014, or any prior period, and the Company does not anticipate that it will have a material effect in the future.
The following table summarizes the consolidated Hedging Derivatives at June 30, 2014, excluding derivatives executed to hedge debt on communities classified as held for sale (dollars in thousands):
Non-designated Hedges Cash Flow Hedges Notional balance $ 609,960
$ 171,691
Weighted average interest rate (1) 1.7 % 2.0 % Weighted average capped interest rate 5.9 % 5.1 % Earliest maturity date Aug 2014
Apr 2015
Latest maturity date Aug 2018
Apr 2019
____________________________________
(1) Represents the weighted average interest rate on the hedged debt.
Excluding derivatives executed to hedge secured debt on communities classified as held for sale, the Company had four derivatives designated as cash flow hedges and 14 derivatives not designated as hedges at June 30, 2014. Fair value changes for derivatives not in qualifying hedge relationships for the three and six months ended at June 30, 2014 were not material. Fair value changes for derivatives not in qualifying hedge relationships for the three and six months ended June 30, 2013 resulted in an unrecognized gain of approximately $1,069,000 and $2,484,000, respectively, in interest expense, net in the Condensed Consolidated Statements of Comprehensive Income. The Company reclassified $1,438,000 and $3,011,000 of deferred losses from accumulated other comprehensive income as a charge to earnings, for the three and six months ended June 30, 2014, respectively. The Company reclassified $1,574,000 and $2,965,000 of deferred losses from accumulated other comprehensive income as a charge to earnings, for the three and six months ended June 30, 2013, respectively. The Company anticipates reclassifying approximately $5,493,000 of hedging losses from accumulated other comprehensive income into earnings within the next 12 months to offset the variability of cash flows of the hedged items during this period.
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Redeemable Noncontrolling Interests
The Company provided redemption options (the “Puts”) that allow joint venture partners of the Company to require the Company to purchase their interests in the investment at a guaranteed minimum amount related to three ventures. The Puts are payable in cash. The Company determines the fair value of the Puts based on unobservable inputs considering the assumptions that market participants would make in pricing the obligations, applying a guaranteed rate of return to the joint venture partners’ net capital contribution balances as of period end. Given the significance of the unobservable inputs, the valuations are classified in Level 3 of the fair value hierarchy.
The Company issued units of limited partnership interest in DownREITs which provide the DownREIT limited partners the ability to present all or some of their units for redemption for cash as determined by the partnership agreement. Under the DownREIT agreements, for each limited partnership unit, the limited partner is entitled to receive cash in the amount equal to the fair value of the Company’s common stock on or about the date of redemption. In lieu of cash redemption, the Company may elect to exchange such units for an equal number of shares of the Company’s common stock. The limited partnership units in the DownREITs are valued using the market price of the Company’s common stock, a Level 1 price under the fair value hierarchy.
Financial Instruments Not Carried at Fair Value
Cash and Cash Equivalents
Cash and cash equivalent balances are held with various financial institutions within principal protected accounts. The Company monitors credit ratings of these financial institutions and the concentration of cash and cash equivalent balances with any one financial institution and believes the likelihood of realizing material losses related to cash and cash equivalent balances is remote. Cash and cash equivalents are carried at their face amounts, which reasonably approximate their fair values and are Level 1 within the fair value hierarchy.
Other Financial Instruments
The Company values its unsecured notes using quoted market prices, a Level 1 price within the fair value hierarchy. The Company values its notes payable and outstanding amounts under the Credit Facility using a discounted cash flow analysis on the expected cash flows of each instrument. This analysis reflects the contractual terms of the instrument, including the period to maturity, and uses observable market-based inputs, including interest rate curves. The process also considers credit valuation adjustments to appropriately reflect the Company’s nonperformance risk. The Company has concluded that the value of its notes payable and amounts outstanding under its Credit Facility and Term Loan are Level 2 prices as the majority of the inputs used to value its positions fall within Level 2 of the fair value hierarchy.
Financial Instruments Measured/Disclosed at Fair Value on a Recurring Basis
The following table summarizes the classification between the three levels of the fair value hierarchy of the Company’s financial instruments measured/disclosed at fair value on a recurring basis (dollars in thousands):
Total Fair Value Quoted Prices in Active Markets for Significant Other Observable Significant Unobservable Identical Assets Inputs Inputs Description 6/30/2014 (Level 1) (Level 2) (Level 3) Non-Designated Hedges Interest Rate Caps $ 14
$ —
$ 14
$ —
Cash Flow Hedges Interest Rate Caps 99
—
99
—
Puts (14,582 ) —
—
(14,582 ) DownREIT units (1,067 ) (1,067 ) —
—
Indebtedness (6,195,397 ) (3,607,341 ) (2,588,056 ) —
Total $ (6,210,933 ) $ (3,608,408 ) $ (2,587,943 ) $ (14,582 )
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12. Subsequent Events
The Company has evaluated subsequent events through the date on which this Form 10-Q was filed, the date on which these financial statements were issued, and identified the items below for discussion.
In July 2014:
• Fund I sold its final apartment community, Avalon Rutherford Station, located in East Rutherford, NJ, containing 108 apartment homes, for $34,250,000 ; and
• Fund II sold Avalon Fair Oaks, located in Fairfax, VA, containing 491 apartment homes, for $108,200,000.
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ITEM 2. MANAGEMENT’S DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS OF FINANCIAL CONDITION AND RESULTS OF OPERATIONS
Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations (“MD&A”) is intended to help provide an understanding of our business and results of operations. This MD&A should be read in conjunction with our Condensed Consolidated Financial Statements and the accompanying Notes to Condensed Consolidated Financial Statements included elsewhere in this report. This report, including the following MD&A, contains forward-looking statements regarding future events or trends that should be read in conjunction with the factors described under “Forward-Looking Statements” included in this report. Actual results or developments could differ materially from those projected in such statements as a result of the factors described under “Forward-Looking Statements” as well as the risk factors described in Item 1A, “Risk Factors,” of our Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2013 (the “Form 10-K”).
Capitalized terms have the meanings provided elsewhere in this Form 10-Q.
Executive Overview
Business Description
We are primarily engaged in developing, acquiring, owning and operating apartment communities in high barrier to entry markets of the United States. We believe that apartment communities are an attractive long-term investment opportunity compared to other real estate investments because a broad potential resident base should help reduce demand volatility over a real estate cycle. We seek to create long-term shareholder value by accessing capital on cost effective terms; deploying that capital to develop, redevelop and acquire apartment communities in high barrier to entry markets; operating apartment communities; and selling communities when they no longer meet our long-term investment strategy or when pricing is attractive. Barriers to entry in our markets generally include a difficult and lengthy entitlement process with local jurisdictions and dense urban or suburban areas where zoned and entitled land is in limited supply.
Our strategy is to be leaders in market research and capital allocation, delivering a range of multifamily offerings tailored to serve the needs of the most attractive customer segments in the best-performing submarkets of the United States. Our communities are predominately upscale, which generally command among the highest rents in their markets. However, we also pursue the ownership and operation of apartment communities that target a variety of customer segments and price points, consistent with our goal of offering a broad range of products and services.
We regularly evaluate the allocation of our investments by the amount of invested capital and by product type within our individual markets, which are primarily located in New England, the New York/New Jersey Metro area, the Mid-Atlantic, the Pacific Northwest, and the Northern and Southern California regions of the United States.
Second Quarter 2014 Highlights
We continued to experience favorable operating performance in the second quarter of 2014 :
• Net income attributable to common stockholders for the three months ended June 30, 2014 was $158,086,000 an increase of $121,868,000, or 336.5%, over the prior year period. The increase is primarily attributable to increased NOI from newly developed and acquired communities, a decrease in depreciation expense related to in-place leases acquired as part of the Archstone Acquisition and an increase in gain on sale of communities.
• For the quarter ended June 30, 2014, Established Communities NOI, which includes the impact of communities acquired as part of the Archstone Acquisition, increased by $6,314,000, or 2.8%, over the prior year period. This increase was primarily driven by an increase in rental revenue of 3.1%, partially offset by an increase in operating expenses of 3.6% as compared to the prior year period.
Our consolidated operating results for the quarter ended June 30, 2014 include operations from the communities acquired as part of the Archstone Acquisition, as described in Note 5, “Archstone Acquisition,” and reflect year-over-year revenue growth, as well as continued sequential rental revenue growth. The overall increase in revenues was driven by both favorable operating performance from our stabilized operating communities and strong leasing activity for new development, which we expect to continue for the balance of 2014.
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During the three months ended June 30, 2014, we completed the construction of three communities with an aggregate of 701 apartment homes for a total capitalized cost of $191,100,000. We also started construction of four communities expected to contain 1,080 apartment homes with an expected aggregate total capitalized cost of $421,400,000. At June 30, 2014, 32 communities were under construction with a projected total capitalized cost of approximately $3,239,200,000. In addition, as of June 30, 2014, we held a direct or indirect ownership interest in land or rights to land on which we expect to develop an additional 40 apartment communities that, if developed as expected, will contain an estimated 11,350 apartment homes, and will be developed for an aggregate total capitalized cost of $3,245,000,000, a decline of $368,000,000 from our position as of March 31, 2014.
During the three months ended June 30, 2014, we started the redevelopment of two communities containing 407 apartment homes, which are expected to be redeveloped for a total capitalized cost of $14,800,000, excluding costs incurred prior to redevelopment. At June 30, 2014, there were six communities under redevelopment, with an expected investment of approximately $80,300,000, excluding costs incurred prior to the start of redevelopment.
During the three months ended June 30, 2014, we sold two wholly-owned operating communities. Oakwood Philadelphia, acquired as part of the Archstone Acquisition and located in Philadelphia, PA containing 80 homes, was sold for $28,875,000, and Avalon Danvers, located in Danvers, MA containing 433 homes, was sold for $ 108,500,000. The Company’s aggregate gain in accordance with GAAP for the dispositions was $44,289,000, and is reported in gain on sale of communities on the accompanying Condensed Consolidated Statements of Comprehensive Income. The results of operations for these communities prior to the respective sales are included in income (loss) from continuing operations on the accompanying Condensed Consolidated Statements of Comprehensive Income.
We believe that our balance sheet strength, as measured by our current level of indebtedness, our current ability to service interest and other fixed charges, and our current moderate use of financial encumbrances (such as secured financing) provide us with adequate access to liquidity from the capital markets. We expect to be able to meet our reasonably foreseeable liquidity needs, as they arise, through a combination of one or more of the following sources: existing cash on hand, operating cash flows; borrowings under our Credit Facility; secured debt; the issuance of corporate securities (which could include unsecured debt, preferred equity and/or common equity); the sale of apartment communities; available remaining capacity under the Term Loan, or through the formation of joint ventures. See the discussion under Liquidity and Capital Resources.
Communities Overview
Our real estate investments consist primarily of current operating apartment communities, communities in various stages of development (“Development Communities”) and Development Rights (as defined below). Our current operating communities are further distinguished as Established Communities, Other Stabilized Communities, Lease-Up Communities and Redevelopment Communities, and exclude communities owned by the Residual JV. While we generally establish the classification of communities on an annual basis, we intend to update the classification of communities during the calendar year to the extent that our plans with regard to the disposition or redevelopment of a community change during the year.
Effective April 1, 2014, the Company updated its operating segments primarily to include communities acquired as part of the Archstone Acquisition in the results of operations of our Established Community portfolio for the balance of the year. For the April 1, 2014 operating segment update, we added 45 stabilized communities to the Established Communities portfolio, primarily those acquired as part of the Archstone Acquisition. In addition, we removed one community from our Established Communities portfolio effective January 1, 2014, due to a reclassification to the Redevelopment Community portfolio. We remove a community from our Established Communities portfolio if we believe that planned activity for a community will result in the community’s expected operations not being comparable to the prior year period, which is the case for communities undergoing significant redevelopment.
The following is a description of each category:
Current Communities are categorized as Established, Other Stabilized, Lease-Up, or Redevelopment according to the following attributes:
• Established Communities (also known as Same Store Communities) are consolidated communities where a comparison of operating results from the prior year to the current year is meaningful, as these communities were owned and had stabilized occupancy as of the beginning of the respective prior year period. For the six month periods ended June 30, 2014 and 2013, the Established Communities are communities that are consolidated for financial reporting purposes, had stabilized occupancy as of January 1, 2013, are not conducting or planning to conduct substantial redevelopment activities and are not held for sale or planned for disposition within the current year. For the three month periods ended June 30, 2014 and 2013, the Established Communities are communities that are consolidated for financial reporting purposes, had stabilized occupancy as of April 1, 2013, are not conducting or planning to conduct substantial redevelopment activities and are not held for sale or planned for disposition within
23
the current year. Our Established Communities for the three month periods ended June 30, 2014 and 2013 include the stabilized operating communities acquired as part of the Archstone Acquisition. A community is considered to have stabilized occupancy at the earlier of (i) attainment of 95% physical occupancy or (ii) the one -year anniversary of completion of development or redevelopment.
• Other Stabilized Communities are all other completed communities that we own or have a direct or indirect ownership interest in, and that have stabilized occupancy, as defined above. Other Stabilized Communities do not include communities that are conducting or planning to conduct substantial redevelopment activities within the current year. Our Other Stabilized Communities for the six month period ended June 30, 2014 include the stabilized operating communities acquired as part of the Archstone Acquisition.
• Lease-Up Communities are communities where construction has been complete for less than one year and where physical occupancy has not reached 95%.
• Redevelopment Communities are communities where substantial redevelopment is in progress or is planned to begin during the current year. Redevelopment is considered substantial when capital invested during the reconstruction effort is expected to exceed the lesser of $5,000,000 or 10% of the community’s pre-redevelopment basis and is expected to have a material impact on the operations of the community, including occupancy levels and future rental rates.
Development Communities are communities that are under construction and for which a final certificate of occupancy has not been received. These communities may be partially complete and operating.
Development Rights are development opportunities in the early phase of the development process for which we either have an option to acquire land or enter into a leasehold interest, for which we are the buyer under a long-term conditional contract to purchase land or where we control the land through a ground lease or own land to develop a new community. We capitalize related pre-development costs incurred in pursuit of new developments for which we currently believe future development is probable.
We currently lease our corporate headquarters located in Arlington, Virginia, as well as our other regional and administrative offices under operating leases.
As of June 30, 2014, communities that we owned or held a direct or indirect interest in were classified as follows:
24
Number of communities Number of apartment homes Current Communities
Established Communities:
New England 34
7,702
Metro NY/NJ 35
11,825
Mid-Atlantic 23
7,950
Pacific Northwest 13
3,179
Northern California 30
9,229
Southern California 42
11,639
Total Established 177
51,524
Other Stabilized Communities:
New England 10
2,780
Metro NY/NJ 11
3,026
Mid-Atlantic 12
4,532
Pacific Northwest 3
616
Northern California 5
1,377
Southern California 12
4,613
Non Core 3
1,030
Total Other Stabilized 56
17,974
Lease-Up Communities 4
1,175
Redevelopment Communities 6
2,094
Total Current Communities 243
72,767
Development Communities 32
9,581
Development Rights 40
11,350
25
Results of Operations
Our year-over-year operating performance is primarily affected by both overall and individual geographic market conditions and apartment fundamentals and is reflected in changes in NOI of our Established Communities; NOI derived from acquisitions and development completions; the loss of NOI related to disposed communities; and capital market and financing activity. A comparison of our operating results for the three and six months ended June 30, 2014 and 2013 follows (unaudited, dollars in thousands):
For the three months ended For the six months ended 6/30/2014 6/30/2013 $ Change % Change 6/30/2014 6/30/2013 $ Change % Change Revenue:
Rental and other income $ 411,134
$ 375,294
$ 35,840
9.5 % $ 808,131
$ 674,379
$ 133,752
19.8 % Management, development and other fees 2,672
2,913
(241 ) (8.3 )% 5,750
5,185
565
10.9 % Total revenue 413,806
378,207
35,599
9.4 % 813,881
679,564
134,317
19.8 % Expenses:
Direct property operating expenses, excluding property taxes 84,875
72,995
11,880
16.3 % 168,509
132,486
36,023
27.2 % Property taxes 42,439
41,011
1,428
3.5 % 86,924
72,912
14,012
19.2 % Total community operating expenses 127,314
114,006
13,308
11.7 % 255,433
205,398
50,035
24.4 % Corporate-level property management and other indirect operating expenses 15,047
13,774
1,273
9.2 % 28,976
25,096
3,880
15.5 % Investments and investment management expense 1,137
1,096
41
3.7 % 2,116
2,110
6
0.3 % Expensed acquisition, development and other pursuit costs 2,017
3,806
(1,789 ) (47.0 )% 2,732
43,865
(41,133 ) (93.8 )% Interest expense, net 43,722
43,169
553
1.3 % 86,255
81,342
4,913
6.0 % Loss on extinguishment of debt, net 412
—
412
100.0 % 412
—
412
100.0 % Depreciation expense 110,395
189,977
(79,582 ) (41.9 )% 216,762
295,536
(78,774 ) (26.7 )% General and administrative expense 10,220
11,345
(1,125 ) (9.9 )% 19,456
21,384
(1,928 ) (9.0 )% Total other expenses 182,950
263,167
(80,217 ) (30.5 )% 356,709
469,333
(112,624 ) (24.0 )% Equity in income (loss) of unconsolidated real estate entities 7,710
(940 ) 8,650
N/A (1)
12,933
(19,503 ) 32,436
N/A (1)
Gain on sale of land —
240
(240 ) (100.0 )% —
240
(240 ) (100.0 )% Gain on sale of communities 60,945
—
60,945
100.0 % 60,945
—
60,945
100.0 % Income (loss) from continuing operations 172,197
334
171,863
N/A (1)
275,617
(14,430 ) 290,047
N/A (1)
Discontinued operations:
Income from discontinued operations —
2,081
(2,081 ) (100.0 )% 310
7,827
(7,517 ) (96.0 )% Gain on sale of discontinued operations —
33,682
(33,682 ) (100.0 )% 37,869
118,173
(80,304 ) (68.0 )% Total discontinued operations —
35,763
(35,763 ) (100.0 )% 38,179
126,000
(87,821 ) (69.7 )% Net income 172,197
36,097
136,100
377.0 % 313,796
111,570
202,226
181.3 % Net (income) loss attributable to noncontrolling interests (14,111 ) 121
(14,232 ) N/A (1)
(13,971 ) 78
(14,049 ) N/A (1)
Net income attributable to common stockholders $ 158,086
$ 36,218
$ 121,868
336.5 % $ 299,825
$ 111,648
$ 188,177
168.5 %
____________________________
(1) Percentage change is not meaningful.
Net income attributable to common stockholders increased $121,868,000 or 336.5%, to $158,086,000 for the three months ended June 30, 2014 and $188,177,000 or 168.5% to $299,825,000 for the six months ended June 30, 2014 from the respective prior year periods. The increase for the three months ended June 30, 2014 is primarily due to increased revenue from newly developed communities, a decrease in depreciation expense related to in-place leases acquired as part of the Archstone Acquisition and an increase in gain on sale of communities. The increase for the six months ended June 30, 2014 is primarily due to increased revenue from communities acquired in the Archstone Acquisition and newly developed communities, a decrease in depreciation expense related to
26
in-place leases acquired as part of the Archstone Acquisition, and a decrease in expensed acquisition costs, partially offset by an increase in community operating expenses.
NOI is considered by management to be an important and appropriate supplemental performance measure to net income because it helps both investors and management to understand the core operations of a community or communities prior to the allocation of any corporate-level or financing-related costs. NOI reflects the operating performance of a community and allows for an easy comparison of the operating performance of individual assets or groups of assets. In addition, because prospective buyers of real estate have different financing and overhead structures, with varying marginal impacts to overhead as a result of acquiring real estate, NOI is considered by many in the real estate industry to be a useful measure for determining the value of a real estate asset or group of assets. We define NOI as total property revenue less direct property operating expenses, including property taxes, and excluding corporate-level income (including management, development and other fees), corporate-level property management and other indirect operating expenses, investments and investment management expenses, expensed acquisition, development and other pursuit costs, net interest expense, gain (loss) on extinguishment of debt, general and administrative expense, joint venture income (loss), depreciation expense, impairment loss on land holdings, gain on sale of real estate assets, income from discontinued operations and net operating income from real estate assets sold or held for sale, not classified as discontinued operations.
NOI does not represent cash generated from operating activities in accordance with GAAP. Therefore, NOI should not be considered an alternative to net income as an indication of our performance. NOI should also not be considered an alternative to net cash flow from operating activities, as determined by GAAP, as a measure of liquidity, nor is NOI indicative of cash available to fund cash needs. Reconciliations of NOI for the three and six months ended June 30, 2014 and 2013 to net income for each period are as follows (dollars in thousands):
For the three months ended For the six months ended 6/30/2014 6/30/2013 6/30/2014 6/30/2013 Net income $ 172,197
$ 36,097
$ 313,796
$ 111,570
Indirect operating expenses, net of corporate income 12,343
10,852
23,161
19,894
Investments and investment management expense 1,137
1,096
2,116
2,110
Expensed acquisition, development and other pursuit costs 2,017
3,806
2,732
43,865
Interest expense, net (1) 43,722
43,169
86,255
81,342
Loss on extinguishment of debt, net 412
—
412
—
General and administrative expense 10,220
11,345
19,456
21,384
Equity in (income) loss of unconsolidated real estate entities (7,710 ) 940
(12,933 ) 19,503
Depreciation expense (1) 110,395
189,977
216,762
295,536
Gain on sale of real estate assets (60,945 ) (240 ) (60,945 ) (240 ) Gain on sale of discontinued operations —
(33,682 ) (37,869 ) (118,173 ) Income from discontinued operations —
(2,081 ) (310 ) (7,827 ) Net operating income from real estate assets sold or held for sale, not classified as discontinued operations (2,030 ) (2,308 ) (4,314 ) (4,178 ) Net operating income $ 281,758
$ 258,971
$ 548,319
$ 464,786
____________________________
(1) Includes amounts associated with assets sold or held for sale, not classified as discontinued operations.
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The NOI changes for the three and six months ended June 30, 2014, as compared to the prior year periods, consist of changes in the following categories (unaudited, dollars in thousands):
For the three months ended For the six months ended 6/30/2014 (1) 6/30/2014 (2)
Established Communities $ 6,314
$ 8,230
Other Stabilized Communities 11,565
57,733
Development and Redevelopment Communities 4,908
17,570
Total $ 22,787
$ 83,533
____________________________
(1) Amounts reflect the community classification effective April 1, 2014, which includes most stabilized communities acquired as part of the Archstone Acquisition in our Established Communities portfolio.
(2) Amounts reflect the community classification effective January 1, 2014, which includes stabilized communities acquired as part of the Archstone Acquisition in our Other Stabilized Communities portfolio.
The increases in our Established Communities’ NOI for the three and six months ended June 30, 2014 are due to increased rental rates, partially offset by decreased occupancy and increased operating expenses. For the balance of 2014, we expect continued rental revenue growth over the prior year, offset partially by an expected increase in operating expenses. We expect our operating expenses will continue to increase, but at a moderating rate, resulting in a slowing of the growth in operating expenses over the prior year period during the remainder of the year.
Rental and other income increased in the three and six months ended June 30, 2014 as compared to the prior year periods due to additional rental income generated from newly developed and acquired communities and an increase in rental rates at our Established Communities.
Overall Portfolio — The weighted average number of occupied apartment homes for consolidated communities increased to 60,676 apartment homes for the six months ended June 30, 2014, as compared to 55,473 homes for the prior year period. The weighted average monthly revenue per occupied apartment home increased to $2,217 for the six months ended June 30, 2014 as compared to $2,102 in the prior year period.
Established Communities — Rental revenue increased $9,877,000, or 3.1%, for the three months ended June 30, 2014, as compared to the prior year period, due to an increase in average rental rates of 3.2% to $2,224 per apartment home, partially offset by a 0.1% decrease in economic occupancy to 96.0%. Amounts for the three months ended June 30, 2014 reflect the community classification effective April 1, 2014, which includes most of the stabilized communities acquired as part of the Archstone Acquisition in our Established Communities portfolio. Rental revenue increased $16,986,000, or 3.7%, for the six months ended June 30, 2014, as compared to the prior year period, due to an increase in average rental rates of 4.1% to $2,241 per apartment home, partially offset by a decrease in economic occupancy of 0.4% to 96.0%. Amounts for the six months ended June 30, 2014 reflect the community classification effective January 1, 2014, which excludes stabilized communities acquired as part of the Archstone Acquisition. Economic occupancy takes into account the fact that apartment homes of different sizes and locations within a community have different economic impacts on a community’s gross revenue. Economic occupancy is defined as gross potential |
right? Unlikely
Reader Bill Bousquette has a dream — that the FBI will honestly investigate Hillary Clinton’s email scandals because Director James Comey is a straight shooter.
He cites Comey’s willingness to contradict President Obama on rising murder rates, and his threat to resign from the Bush administration over what he regarded as an ethical issue.
“I agree that the Obama Justice Department will not indict Clinton even if the FBI believes a crime was committed,” Bousquette writes. “But there is more than even chance Comey would resign then. Politically, that would be almost as impactful as an indictment.”
Granted, it’s a very nice dream.
2 parties a-‘greed’
New Yorkers asked for bipartisanship in Albany, and the request has been granted.
With the former heads of both parties in both houses simultaneously on trial for corruption, the eureka moment has arrived.
One hitch — it’s only thanks to prosecutors.
Next time, voters should be more specific.
City’s study is as crazy as it $eems
When you’re a hammer, the whole world is a nail. Witness City Hall’s finding that New York is chock full of depressive types and other head cases.
The results of a Health Department study, that one in five New Yorkers have a mental health disorder, sound suspiciously convenient. First lady Chirlane McCray has made improving access to treatment a priority, and her husband is rolling out a series of programs to that end.
The timing suggests the study was crafted to support a policy decision already made.
Shouldn’t the study come before the programs are created? Do doctors first prescribe medication, then give you an exam?
McCray said she and her parents suffered from depression, and complained that she had trouble finding help for her daughter, who also had substance-abuse problems.
A year ago, McCray argued that “the mental health system is broken.” That’s liberal code signaling sweeping and expensive changes.
The idea would be admirable if it focused on the most critical problems — getting the crazies off the streets. They are a danger to others, as well as themselves.
More likely, her programs will create a new entitlement for people not in acute distress, while those on the streets will not benefit. That’s nuts.A funeral for a homeless man who died in a suspicious fire at a bus shelter in Berwick, N.S., last week will be held Wednesday in Kentville.
The funeral service for Harley Lawrence is planned for 11 a.m. at the White Family Funeral Home.
Lawrence, 62, was raised in Hantsport, according to his obituary. One of nine children, Lawrence worked in the Nova Scotia farming community in his youth and enjoyed the outdoors.
In recent years, Lawrence lived in several communities across the country. He had been living on the streets of Berwick — a town of about 2,500 in the Annapolis Valley — for about six months.
Friendly for 50 years
John Harvie remembered Lawrence as a boy he went to church with. When he returned to the Valley 50 years later, Harvie let him sleep in his sunroom.
“I left the door unlocked so he could get in and use the bathroom if he needed to. I trusted him absolutely,” Harvie said Monday.
“A lot of people were scared of him because he was such a rough-looking character, but there was nothing to be afraid of.”
Brian Bishop said Lawrence looked especially rough when he first returned to the Valley. ”He was very shabbily dressed. He was dirty, had long shaggy hair,” he said.
While Lawrence had friends, he didn’t always accept help, Bishop said. When Lawrence inherited $5,000 from his mother’s estate, Bishop tried to help him get the money.
“We were never able to get that released to Harley because Harley failed to help us by giving his social insurance number and other identification we needed.”
Community volunteer
Bishop hired him to do garden work, and Lawrence also volunteered to help repair a church and clean up a cemetery. He’ll be buried in that cemetery Wednesday.
Last week, his body was found in a burned-out bus shelter where Lawrence was known to sleep.
Police are treating Lawrence’s death as "suspicious" and are awaiting further autopsy results.
Some eyewitnesses to the fire said they saw two young men fill jugs with gasoline and move toward the shelter before the fire. Police said they have no comment on the witness reports.
Hundreds of people attended a vigil Saturday night for Lawrence, including members of his family.
Donations in memory of Lawrence may be made to the Canadian Mental Health Association.Update: WPH Tweaks version 0.6
Posted on 07-23-12 12:15 pm
Something has happened! Version 0.6 of the oh-so-loved WPH Tweaks application has been released!
Introductions aside, I've assembled a new version of the WPH Tweaks application. and if my count is right, this makes it a version 0.6. This version is actually significantly different in one way, though, so don't let the little version counter fool you. In this version come the following new tweaks:
Tango-only: Enable Static IP, export contacts to SIM options (thanks, Leapo)
As requested, an option to change the H/3G+ icon to a 4G symbol
This didn't seem like enough for a new release, though, so I cooked together something I've been meaning to build for a long time: a settings rearranger.
Simply put, the Windows Phone settings menu never made sense to me. Especially after Mango, where all these settings options seemed randomly assembled. I mean, why would I change my theme more often than I adjust my brightness? Having to scroll down to get my brightness up when I can barely see the screen was, well, irritating.
So, if it suits your fancy, you can now rearrange the settings menu using the organize settings options in the latest version of WPH Tweaks.
Have fun, give me feedback, and grab it here.
Also, if you feel so inclined, you can help support my development by donating a little. It's completely optional, but for those who have, it's greatly appreciated ;)Arizona State (6-3) at Marquette (4-4)
8 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 16
BMO Harris Bradley Center
TV: Fox Sports 1
Radio: Marquette Radio Network
MiSIX Keys to the Game
1. Ch-ch-changes.
2. Departing duo.
3. The Fischer king.
4. Deceptively good defense.
5. Three vs. free.
6. Battle of the bigs.
When Marquette takes the floor Tuesday night against visiting Arizona State, it will have been 10 days since the loss to Wisconsin — the longest time between games this season. To say we’ll see a different team against the Sun Devils would be an understatement.
For starters, there’s the development we anticipated since last December: Luke Fischer’s debut. We’ll get around to that eventually, but first we need to address the bit of unexpected news: the departures of Deonte Burton and John Dawson. Granted, it was unexpected in the way that most transfer announcements are. When looking at their respective contributions thus far, however, it was clear they hadn’t exactly jibed with the Wojo regime.
We don’t really have anything to say when it comes to Dawson because there just aren’t any numbers. Last season, he played in 24 of 32 games, including 15 of the last 17, and averaged 10.2 minutes. This season, he made one appearance that lasted four minutes, and his lone notch in the scorebook was an attempted field goal. With Burton, there’s a little more to chew on. In particular, it’s worth noting he made smaller contributions in wins and that his plus-minus was staggeringly lower in losses.
Burton's 2014-15 Splits Wins Losses Difference FGM 1.75 2.50 +0.75 FGA 3.50 5.50 +2.00 eFG% 56.65% 69.28% +12.63 Ast% 0.00% 0.50% +0.50 +/- +2.75 -14.33 -17.08
On top of that, his turnover percentage of 36.0% was almost double the team’s average of 18.8% and, predictably, the worst on the roster. On the plus side, he had a heartbeat and was capable of movement, which made him valuable to a squad that will have just nine warm bodies available against Arizona State after the additions of Fischer and walk-on Pete Thaus.
It’s a challenge to put together any quantifiable potential contributions for the duo, both of whom transferred from Indiana University. Actually, it’s impossible for Thaus because he wasn’t a member of the basketball team. But we do know he was a three-year letter winner at Hinsdale Central High School in Illinois and is an information technology major. Fischer has a slightly larger dataset to work from, having played in 13 games for the Hoosiers last season and averaging 10 minutes per outing. That sample, while admittedly small, hints at help in a handful of areas Marquette sorely lacks.
Fisher's Stats eFG% OffReb% DefReb% Blk% Height Weight Career stats 55.5% 10.4% 11.0% 8.1% 6’11” 245 lbs. 2014 MU rank 2nd 1st 3rd 1st 1st 1st
If we use his numbers at Indiana to extrapolate a per-40-minute stat line, we end up with 11.2 points, 8.4 rebounds and 3.2 blocks. Among his fellow Golden Eagles, that would put him fourth in scoring, second in rebounding and a distant first in swats. In fact, if he rejected three shots Tuesday night, that would surpass Marquette’s team totals in all but two contests this season.
The Wisconsin game was one of two this season in which the Golden Eagles failed to record a single block, but that’s a deceptive mark because of how effectively they kept their in-state rivals away from the rim. According to the official box score, the Badgers shot three layups the entire game, and 57.7% of their field-goal attempts came from three-point range. Marquette stayed in the game by pushing them to the perimeter but failed to take advantage by shooting 28.9% from the field. A similar strategy may be called for against Arizona State, which shares a few characteristics with Wisconsin.
Arizona St./Wisconsin Comparison Pts/100 eFG% Ast% OffReb% Arizona St. 109.2 56.6% 22.0% 31.2% Wisconsin 115.9 55.8% 21.6% 30.8%
There are two areas in which the Sun Devils fare much better than the Badgers: three-point shooting and free-throw rate. Arizona State ranks 19th nationally in the former (40.8%) and 29th in the latter (48.5%), which suggests a pick-your-poison scenario when it comes to employing a rim-protecting defensive approach. But despite the Sun Devils’ shooting ability, their win-loss splits indicate that letting them have the perimeter is better than putting them at the line.
Arizona St. Win/Loss Splits 3pt% 3ptM 3ptA FTRate FTM FTA Wins 39.0% 7.5 18.7 58.8% 19.3 28.2 Losses 41.2% 11.0 26.3 30.2% 10.7 16.0 Difference +2.2 +3.5 +7.6 -28.6 -8.6 -12.2
That brings us to the game’s most intriguing matchup: Fischer vs. Eric Jacobsen. Among Arizona State players averaging more than 20 minutes, the junior forward is second in scoring efficiency (124.7) and first in free-throw rate (100.0%). He also has taken as many three-pointers as the screen you’re reading this on, so stopping him on offense means stopping him near the rim.
Quite an assignment for Fischer’s first game and possibly the biggest factor determining whether the Golden Eagles can overcome our simulation, which gives them a 35.0% probability of winning with a projected losing margin of 4.0 points.The Colorado State Patrol (CSP) reports that marijuana was involved in about 12 percent of DUI citations issued by its troopers in 2014, the first year during which it was legal to sell cannabis for recreational purposes. Out of 5,546 total DUI citations, 354 (6.4 percent) involved marijuana alone, while 320 (5.8 percent) involved marijuana along with alcohol or another drug. It looks like alcohol was involved in nearly nine out of 10 DUI citations by the CSP.
You may wonder how these numbers have changed since 2013, when possession, sharing, and home cultivation of marijuana were legal but sales had not started yet; since 2012, when voters approved legalization; or since the years before then. We don't know, because the CSP started keeping track of marijuana's DUI share only last year. We also don't know how many of the 674 marijuana-related DUI citations resulted in convictions, or how many of the convictions involved drivers who were actually impaired by marijuana, since Colorado presumptively equates a blood THC concentration of five nanograms per milliliter with driving under the influence of a drug (DUID), even though many regular users can safely operate a vehicle at that level.
If there were an upward trend in marijuana-related citations, that could reflect an increase in the number of dangerously stoned drivers, the broadened definition of DUID adopted in 2013, an increase in the number of drivers who have detectable amounts of THC in their blood but are not necessarily impaired, an increase in police attention to marijuana-impaired drivers following legalization, or some combination of those four things. For what it's worth, the CSP has not released accident data for 2014 yet, but in 2013, the first full year following legalization, CSP troopers investigated 480 crashes involving alcohol- or drug-impaired drivers that resulted in death or injury, compared to an average of 531 in the previous four years.
More on stoned drivers here.Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony Batts is asking for federal help to fight an uptick in crime in his city–an increase he largely attributes to looted drugs that have made their way to the streets of Baltimore.
At least 27 pharmacies and drug clinics were looted during riots after the April death of Freddie Gray, much more than previously reported, and as much as 175,000 units of dosage narcotics are now on the street, he said.
That’s “enough narcotics on the streets of Baltimore to keep it intoxicated for a year,” he said. “That amount of drugs has thrown off the balance on the streets of Baltimore.”
{snip}
There were 42 homicides in the city in May, the deadliest month since 1972.
Authorities expect the number of doses on the streets will be higher, because not all pharmacies have accounted for the missing narcotics, according to a law enforcement official. Some of the drugs looted include fentanyl, oxycodone, amphetamines, Adderall, hydrocodone, morphine and tramadol.
“Criminals are selling those stolen drugs,” Batts said. “There are turf wars happening which are leading to violence and shootings in our city.”
{snip}
City Council member Carl Stokes said Thursday he does not entirely agree that the crime in Baltimore can be blamed on the proliferation of drug dealing.
{snip}
“There’s more opportunity for the criminals in this city to do what they’re doing because leadership is failing and, frankly, because the Fraternal Order of Police–if they didn’t order it they have given some, again, not an order, but to say to their rank and file you don’t have to work as hard as you should be working, you don’t have to live up to your oath to serve and protect.... I think we have a horrible situation going on in this town,” Stokes said.
He added that neighborhoods that are wracked with crime are now facing an even tougher situation.
“I know that the police officers have lost confidence and respect for their commander,” Stokes said, adding that he believes the majority of Baltimore residents have respect for and confidence in the police.
Stokes said he’s troubled by stories he’s heard from residents who he said have told him in the past few days that police in their neighborhoods are doing less.
{snip}
“What I would welcome is that we had a leader, a commander, who knew what the hell was going on with his troops,” said Stokes. “Because he has lost the confidence and respect of the police officers on the streets. He has lost the streets entirely in terms of the criminals out there.”
{snip}
Original Article
Share ThisAsked about Doug Hampton's tactics, John Ensign looked at a reporter, smiled and walked away. | Composite image by POLITICO One-man crusade taking toll on Ensign
Five months after Sen. John Ensign admitted to having an extramarital affair with a staffer, the scandal is still in the headlines — in large part because the husband of his onetime lover keeps making them.
Doug Hampton’s latest stop: “Nightline.”
Story Continued Below
A month after sitting down for hours of interviews with The New York Times, the former Ensign aide — and husband of Ensign’s mistress, Cynthia Hampton — has taped hours of additional interviews with the nationally televised ABC program, which will air a story based on them next week.
Republicans in Nevada and Washington say Hampton is on a crusade against Ensign — one aimed at weakening the Nevada Republican politically and ultimately forcing him out of office.
“Usually, these types of things are handled directly with the investigative body, whether it is the Ethics Committee or the Department of Justice, and the protagonists don’t speak until there’s either a court date or testimony transcripts are released,” said Eric Ueland, former chief of staff to then- Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.). “So this is certainly unprecedented.”
“He’s got a strategy on this,” said Ryan Erwin, a Las Vegas-based GOP strategist who is friends with both men. “I think every one of his moves is choreographed.”
Hampton could not be reached for comment. Asked about Hampton’s tactics, Ensign looked at a reporter, smiled and walked away.
The Senate ethics committee has launched a preliminary investigation into Ensign’s conduct. Because the committee works in secret, the scope of the probe is not yet known.
The Justice Department has not yet decided whether to launch an investigation, sources said, and it remains unclear whether the department ultimately will pursue a criminal inquiry against the senator.
Hampton’s interviews with the Times yielded a story that was full of damaging allegations about Ensign’s conduct after the affair ended. Those interviews followed an earlier public session in July, when Hampton spoke on the local Las Vegas show “Face to Face,” telling host Jon Ralston that Ensign gave Cynthia Hampton severance pay worth more than $25,000 — money that if left unreported to the Federal Election Commission could result in a felony charge for the senator.
Ensign’s aides have said the money was not severance, and they subsequently revealed that the senator’s parents gave a “gift” of $96,000 to the Hamptons once the couple left the senator’s payroll.
Republicans are clearly worried about what Hampton will say this time around — and the next.
Asked about Hampton’s anti-Ensign campaign, National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman John Cornyn (R-Texas) said: “I don’t recall ever seeing one like this.”
But even as Republicans in Nevada and Washington brace for the worst, Ensign may be able to ride out the storm, according to senior GOP officials in both states. By pressuring Ensign to resign, the GOP could face a distracting intraparty squabble just as it prepares to challenge Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) in what will very likely be the most contested race of the 2010 midterm elections.
And after seeing the media frenzy from their unsuccessful efforts to push Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) from office after he was caught in a bathroom sex sting in 2007, GOP leaders believe it’s better to avoid commenting on the matter.In this 2013 presentation, Khelsilem Rivers and April Charlo team up to deliver two illuminating discussions about colonialism and decolonization in the context of language revitalization. Their presentation and open dialogue addresses a number issues including the way that colonization affects our relationships, the concepts from which we derive meaning in the world, and the very strategies that we use to revitalize/secure our languages.
In an effort to revitalize Indigenous languages, communities may have unknowingly adopted or assimilated colonized ways of thinking as they invest interest and attempt to repair or restore ties to culture and language. Are we learning to speak Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Nēhiyawēwin, Kanien’kéha, at all with an English-mind or are we learning to speak Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Nēhiyawēwin, Kanien’kéha with a Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Nēhiyaw, Kanien’keháka mind?
Indigenous languages represent one of the darkest ways in which ethnocide and cultural genocide have occurred. It is expected in the next twenty-five years over 700 of the worlds Indigenous languages will be forgotten. In the Vancouver area alone, the two Indigenous languages are considered critical endangered; Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) language has five to seven fluent speakers and hən̓q̓əmin̓əm has one fluent speaker left.
Decolonizing Language Revitalization aims to put forward perspectives of shifting values, cultural understandings, and impacts on community. It is the stories we tell ourselves (as a people) that impacts who we believe we are, and then who we become. But if the stories — even including, or especially the Indigenous ones — are filtered through colonialism, we have become a different people because of it.
April Charlo from Bitterroot Salish people and is a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, Montana.
Khelsilem Rivers is a Sḵwx̱wú7mesh-Kwakwa̱ka̱’wakw language revitalization activist from Vancouver.38 Kids? Whiteboards to the Rescue!
My students need markers and erasers for the individual whiteboards I made them.
My Students
38 students. One teacher. A schoolwide push for all 8th graders to take advanced math. How can each pupil get the individual attention he or she needs, especially in such a difficult course?
When I was a middle school student in my district, my parents would have gone into debt to put me into private schools rather than let me go to the middle school where I now teach.
Plagued by violence and low academic expectations, it endangered the futures of the students that passed through it. Eleven years later, as I begin my first year teaching in the district where I grew up, the school has completely turned around. Although the school still serves high-need students from a wide variety of ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds, and although many students still face immense challenges in their daily lives, a new administration and faculty and an energized parent base have raised expectations and performance beyond where many thought they could go. Many of my students have low resources, and many were robbed of a high-quality elementary education, but they are all united by a belief that they go to a great school that's only getting better.
My Project
As a first-year teacher with classes going up to 38 students, I had no idea how to keep them all engaged. They have so many needs- from Special Ed to ELL to math they never had a chance to learn- and there's only one of me. I came up with the idea of individual whiteboards as a way to let me check everyone's understanding of a concept at once, so I know who needs my attention first. I went to Home Depot and convinced them to cut me whiteboards out of shower tiling. I masked the edges to prevent splinters, and made some erasers from wood blocks and felt. I also spent my last few dollars of savings (we haven't quite gotten our first paychecks yet) to buy some markers to start the year. Kids love the boards. I use them for their Do Nows, to check comprehension during my teaching, for guided practice, and even for exit assessments. If we have excellent behavior and stay really on-task, I can even give them a "mad minute" to sketch any (appropriate) thing they want.
Markers are expensive, and I'd like to secure a year's supply for my classroom.
Whiteboards have already let me catch so many areas for remediation and support that my diagnostic exam couldn't pick out– I instantly know who gets something, who doesn't, and who needs extra attention. Since I began using them, the academic gains in my classroom have accelerated, my class management has been easier, and my students happily engage in the day's lesson.A statue of Henry David Thoreau stands outside a replica of his cabin near the shores of Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer)
On a clear and seasonably cold Sunday morning in March, I made my way through the streets of an old neighborhood in Worcester, Massachusetts, and entered a large, converted brick building from some other century. Inside, in a cavernous room with worn floors and south-facing windows lit by the sun, a group of seventy or more young climate activists—mostly college students and recent graduates from the Boston area, along with a few veterans of the Occupy and global justice movements—were gathering for a full day and night of final preparations before carrying out a dramatic peaceful protest against the Keystone XL pipeline. The company building the pipeline, TransCanada Corporation, has its US Northeast office down the road in Westborough, and there, the next morning, twenty-five of these activists—accompanied by more than eighty others, young and old—would be arrested for conscientious, nonviolent civil disobedience. Ad Policy A longer version of this essay appears on the website of the Thoreau Society, which just launched the Walden Climate Change Collaborative. For more info, visit thoreausociety.org.
These people, and those like me who support them, might with some fairness be called “radical”—not just because of their willingness to go to jail to express their principles, but because what they demand lies well outside the limits of mainstream partisan politics and conventional media wisdom.
How radical are they? They insist that those in power take seriously the international scientific consensus that says global greenhouse emissions must be cut at least 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050, and that two-thirds to three-fifths of known fossil fuel reserves must stay in the ground, if today’s young people and future generations are to have any reasonable hope of a livable climate. They insist, given this reality, that President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry heed what leading scientists are telling them: that massive new long-term investments in fossil fuel infrastructure like the Keystone XL—which will only accelerate and prolong the extraction of carbon-heavy crude from the Alberta tar sands, one of the largest carbon pools on the planet—are unconscionable.
Those activists in Worcester and Westborough weren’t alone. As the battle over Keystone moves toward a climax this summer or fall, when Obama is expected to make a final decision, it has become the central rallying point for a broad and diverse climate movement at what looks like a pivotal, and “radicalizing,” moment. More and more, what Bill McKibben recently dubbed the “Fossil Fuel Resistance” is turning to nonviolent direct action and civil disobedience to make its demands seen and heard.
The resistance has spread across the country. The fights are intensifying against mountaintop-removal mining in Appalachia, coal exports from the West Coast and shale-gas fracking in the Northeast, with waves of civil disobedience actions. Most dramatically, along the Keystone’s southern leg from Oklahoma to the Gulf Coast in Texas (greenlighted by Obama last year during his re-election campaign), members of the Tar Sands Blockade—including climate activists, property owners, indigenous groups and people from frontline communities—have put their bodies in the way of the pipeline’s construction, often at great risk, both physical and legal. In early March, CREDO Action issued a call to activists to resist the pipeline, and more than 59,000 people have now pledged to engage in peaceful civil disobedience if Obama approves it. Even the Sierra Club officially decided in February to participate in civil disobedience for the first time in its 120-year history. Its executive director, Michael Brune, was among forty-eight protesters arrested at the White House on February 13, three days before some 50,000 people rallied and marched in Washington to oppose Keystone and call for serious action on climate change—the kind of action that science, and conscience, demand.
* * *
When Brune announced the Sierra Club’s decision in January, in a short, eloquent piece titled “From Walden to the White House,” he explicitly invoked the legacy of Henry David Thoreau and, of course, Thoreau’s most famous essay, “Civil Disobedience.” For Brune, as for many other activists, engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience is a sacred American tradition. “We’ll be following in the hallowed footsteps of Thoreau,” he wrote, “who first articulated the principles of civil disobedience 44 years before John Muir founded the Sierra Club.”
And yet, as the climate movement embraces the legacy of “Civil Disobedience,” perhaps it’s worth taking a step back and remembering just how radical Thoreau really was—and why. We should remember what it was, exactly, that made him so. Not his night in the Concord jail—that was the easy part—but something else: a readiness to speak the truth, forcefully and without compromise, no matter how fanciful or extreme it may have sounded to jaded ears or what risks it might have entailed. What’s more, if we’re going to invoke Thoreau, we should remember that he was less an environmentalist (a term that would have made no sense to him) than a radical abolitionist—and that the logic of “Civil Disobedience” led directly, a decade later, to “A Plea for Captain John Brown.”
If that thought doesn’t make you pause, it should. We might want to ask ourselves if we’re really ready to walk in Thoreau’s footsteps, and what it might mean, at this radical moment, if we did.
Despite its global reputation for greatness, I have to admit that I’ve never much liked “Civil Disobedience,” the essay Thoreau began drafting in his cabin at Walden Pond in the fall of 1846. The tone is a little too arch, his performance somewhat preening. “I was not born to be forced,” he writes. “I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest.” Regardless of such posturing (or perhaps because of it?), you can’t help feeling that there’s not a whole lot at stake for him personally—that he was, in a way, slumming it there in jail for a night—so that it takes on the air of a privileged intellectual exercise, a kind of abstract thought experiment to be conducted, after a good dinner, in Mr. Emerson’s parlor.
Still, for all the mannered poses, there’s a reason the essay has lasted, that its influence extends across continents and centuries. So it’s worth reminding ourselves what Thoreau is really saying in “Civil Disobedience.” From a relatively minor incident, now wrapped in legend, in the last week of July 1846—he was stopped on his way into town to get a shoe repaired and asked to pay his poll tax, which he refused to do, though it meant jail—Thoreau gets down to first principles. The country was engulfed in controversy over the Mexican War, a flagrant act of aggression to expand slave territory to the west, and there was even secession talk in the North. But why, Thoreau wants to know, should he wait for a vote in the State House? “Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then?”
The moral equation, Thoreau is saying, isn’t terribly complicated. There are expedient reasons to recognize the authority of a government, as he admits. But he insists that we recognize those situations “in which a people, as well as an individual, must do justice, cost what it may.” He goes on, in the very next lines, to offer a stark analogy: “If I have unjustly wrested a plank from a drowning man, I must restore it to him though I drown myself…. This people must cease to hold slaves, and to make war on Mexico, though it cost them their existence as a people.”
From this straight-up, no-nonsense formulation, Thoreau lays down a marker, a point from which he’ll navigate. “Action from principle,” he tells us, “the perception and the performance of right, changes things and relations; it is essentially revolutionary, and does not consist wholly with anything which was. It not only divides states and churches, it divides families; ay, it divides the individual, separating the diabolical in him from the divine.”
This is strong stuff—and prophetic, in more ways than one. What we have here is a kind of working definition of Thoreau’s radicalism: call it the willingness to face the “essential facts” (as he put it in Walden), and then to act as both facts and conscience require. Doing so, he assures us, “is essentially revolutionary”—the only real way to change the world.
* * *
Thoreau’s image as a kind of misanthropic recluse, an apolitical hermit, has always been a caricature; what we know about his active involvement in the Underground Railroad, and his resistance to the Fugitive Slave Act, puts the lie to it. Whether or not, as he hinted in Walden, Thoreau sheltered a runaway slave in his cabin at the pond—which seems unlikely, based on the evidence—we know that he helped multiple fugitives on their way to Canada, guarding over them in his family’s house (the Thoreaus were committed abolitionists, especially his mother and sisters), even escorting them onto the trains, not without personal risk.
In May of 1854, a fugitive slave named Anthony Burns was captured in Boston. Radical abolitionists made a dramatic attempt to free him from the courthouse by force, and only with the intervention of state and federal troops on the streets of Boston was Burns sent back into slavery. On July 4, Thoreau took an unprecedented personal step into activism and mounted a platform at Harmony Grove in Framingham—alongside William Lloyd Garrison, Sojourner Truth and other prominent abolitionists—to address a boisterous anti-slavery rally. The speech, known as “Slavery in Massachusetts,” is merciless in its contempt for the Commonwealth. “My thoughts are murder to the state,” he told his audience. “Nature,” he proclaimed, “has been partner to no Missouri Compromise.” The plight of Anthony Burns, and so many other fugitives, had reminded him of his own uncompromising principle. Five years later, in the fall of 1859, it would be put to the test.
Henry Thoreau met John Brown in March 1857. Already famous, or infamous, for his bloody exploits in Kansas—today we would call them war crimes—Brown came through Concord on a speaking and fundraising tour of the Northeast. Thoreau and Emerson spent hours talking with him, sizing him up, and came away greatly impressed.
But not everyone in Concord was so taken with Brown—far from it—and when the news arrived in October 1859 of Brown’s deadly raid on Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, reactions were sharply divided. The whole country was in an uproar. Even Brown’s erstwhile supporters quickly distanced themselves. Most of his co-conspirators—many with close ties to Concord—went into hiding, several fleeing to Canada. The atmosphere was tense, even dangerous, for those voicing solidarity with Brown.
Into this picture steps 42-year-old Henry Thoreau, now a leading intellectual. Incensed by the timid and hypocritical reactions of his neighbors, and of the press, Thoreau let it be known that he would speak in support of Brown at Concord’s First Church on October 30. The address he gave was “A Plea for Captain John Brown.”
That fall of 1859 was Thoreau’s most radical moment. He was the first in Concord, and among the first and most prominent in the country, to come to Brown’s defense. Within days he would repeat the speech to large audiences in Boston—where he stood in at the last moment for Frederick Douglass, who had been chased into Canada by federal marshals despite having played no part in the Harper’s Ferry raid—and in Worcester.
The speech itself is stunning. What Thoreau was saying in his “Plea” for Brown was the same thing he’d said a decade earlier in “Civil Disobedience”—“action from principle…is essentially revolutionary”—only in far stronger terms, and with real skin in the game. What was once a kind of philosophical exercise was now in deadly earnest: Brown’s raid and certain execution—not to mention the risk of publicly aligning oneself with him—made Thoreau’s night in jail look like child’s play. (The day after Brown’s hanging in early December, Thoreau became an accomplice in the escape of a desperate Harper’s Ferry conspirator, spiriting him out of Concord to a train for Canada.)
But what I find most striking about Thoreau’s “Plea” isn’t the fact that he championed the violent and fanatical Brown; it’s the rhetorical strategy he chose. Thoreau explicitly sets out to defend him not in the court of conventional opinion, nor of any state or constitution, but in the court of conscience. “I plead not for his life,” Thoreau tells his audience, “but for his character—his immortal life.” Most of all, and most profoundly, it becomes clear, this means pleading for Brown’s sanity.
Nothing offends Thoreau more than the knee-jerk reaction among his neighbors, and even many abolitionists, to write Brown off as a madman. “Even the Liberator called it ‘a misguided, wild, and apparently insane…effort,’” he writes. “Republican editors…express no admiration, nor true sorrow even |
and gain two or three big winners that would gain the fund 10 times its investment. Today the return on VCs is relatively lower, so people are looking for other avenues.”
“Angel” investors, individuals or start-up accelerators have stepped into that void, providing funding, space, equipment and professional guidance for start-ups.
One such accelerator is Tel Aviv-based Rad BioMed, which focuses on biomedical start-ups. At the end of its central hallway, above a smooth beige table surrounded by beakers, microscopes and computers, Dan Frumkin holds a test tube in his latex gloves. Frumkin, 40, hopes to improve diagnoses of bladder cancer by analyzing DNA. He is the vice president for biochemistry of Nucleix, a start-up focusing on DNA analysis that he co-founded four years ago.
Nucleix rents space from Rad BioMed, though it does not receive funding from the lab.
“It’s cheaper and easier” to work at Rad BioMed’s offices, Frumkin said. “Instead of creating a laboratory, we entered an existing one. It helps that we have a little in common with other companies.”
Incubators and accelerators have less money to invest than venture capital firms — typically in the hundreds of thousands rather than the millions. But Yoav Chelouche, managing partner of Israel’s Aviv Venture Capital, says “the cost of building a new company is dramatically lower than in the past. You don’t need to buy software and an operating system. You can use a lot of open source code programs that are available for free on the Internet,” he said
According to Chelouche’s research, venture capital firms in Israel provided about $3 billion of funding to start-ups in Israel between 2008 and 2012, versus $3.6 billion from 2004 to 2008 and $6.5 billion from 1999 to 2004. He also found, however, that Israel is on track to see about 600 new companies created in 2012, a similar number to 1999 and 2000. Chelouche says this could be a positive development for Israel’s tech sector, as it will create “a situation where companies have to do more with less, which is not necessarily a bad thing — being more frugal.”
But another investor, Roni Einav, the founder of New Dimension Software, which he sold for a record $675 million in 1999, says that companies may hit a roadblock as they seek to expand overseas.
“If the company is successful in developing and having the first three, four or five customers in Israel, they can try to go abroad, but then they need more money,” he said.
The drop in funding actually could help people like Wanono, however, as they will own a greater percentage of their own companies and thus make larger profits should they sell their companies or go public on the stock market, Einav said.
“The question is how much time the founders are ready to sacrifice with minimal salaries, or whether they successfully convince the employees to work with reasonable salaries for a year or two,” he said. “If you’re an entrepreneur and you’re not ready to sacrifice a part of your salary, it’s like you have a dream but you want someone else to finance it.”
Einav also noted that the percentage of venture capital funding of Israeli companies from the United States is growing, which he says is good “because the biggest challenge is to cross the ocean, so an American investor will give credibility to the company.”
While some areas of the start-up industry are hot targets for investment, like biomedical companies, Sivan says it’s harder now than in previous years to get major investments as a start-up. Still, he has confidence that no matter how the industry changes, start-ups will always be an attractive career option for enterprising Israelis.
“This will always be something people do,” he said. “People like to create things, to take a chance.”BOSTON — The U.S. national soccer team will take the field Tuesday night for the first time since World Cup 2010 in South Africa, and more than 50,000 fans will be at the Meadowlands for the occasion.
That a significant percentage of them will be there because of — and to cheer on — the opponent, Brazil, is of no import. The games that book-ended the World Cup — the sellout sendoff in Philly and now this Brazilian encounter — are ample evidence that soccer has finally arrived in America.
Arrived, at least, in a fashion.
There is no doubt that this country possesses the current of nationalism that can lead it to embrace the U.S. soccer team in major international competitions — especially when it fares well. That has now been demonstrated twice in South Africa, first during last year’s Confederations Cup and, more recently, with record TV ratings for the World Cup.
World Cup fever has clearly been bolstered by the coming of age of a generation that played soccer as kids and, while not necessarily fervent fans, have an innate understanding of the game. They have no reflexive need to debunk the game for what many older American sports fans have long viewed as its shortcomings, most notably the lack of scoring.
Moreover, America loves a pageant and the World Cup came through — in vivid colors and fervent emotions — as an unsurpassed sporting festival. But a sport can’t flourish on a quadrennial event alone. So what happens to soccer in this country now, in the four-year interim until the U.S. team once again takes the field in World Cup 2014 in Brazil.
If the United States were hosting an imminent World Cup, it might be able to hang the future of soccer in America on it. But the 2014 Cup is slated for Brazil and while that will mean prime-time games in this country, it is too distant to stoke any passions here during the interim years.
The United States is bidding for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, both of which will be awarded in December. Hopes for 2018 are almost certainly doomed, as the European soccer establishment will not tolerate three successive Cups on other continents. And while the United States will be a leading contender for 2022 — its huge, already existing venues are a major plus — the prospect of a home Cup a dozen years in the future can only provide the sport here with limited sustenance, at least in the near future.
As a result, Major League Soccer, while relatively stable in its 15th season now, will continue to face the same daunting problems it has from its inception. Its spring-to-fall season still forces MLS to compete against all three major American sports — football, baseball and basketball — as well as with the biggest events of other popular sports like golf, tennis, hockey and NASCAR.
While the American soccer league will certainly benefit from a larger, homegrown talent pool as well as from the fact that more foreign players are willing to ply their trade here, there is a problem that stems from American soccer success. As American talent blossoms, U.S. players have become far more welcome in — and occasionally even courted by — major and minor overseas European leagues.
When the U.S. national team began its run of six successive World Cups back in 1990, the foreign-based American player was a rarity. In more recent World Cups, MLS has contributed a healthy chunk of the U.S. World Cup lineup. But the American team for World Cup 2010 was dominated by foreign-based players. In the wake of the spirited American showing in South Africa, MLS can only point to one Cup star, Landon Donovan, in its own galaxy — and Donovan, if he had his druthers, would be playing in England this season.
The national team should certainly benefit from the schooling its players receive on the tougher, more competitive fields overseas. Donovan, for one, seemed sharper and more confident in South Africa following his successful stint with Everton in the Premier League at the conclusion of the last MLS season. But that leaves MLS with very little that is tangible to showcase out of any World Cup success.
As the American elite find their way abroad, MLS will have to rely on up-and-coming and second-tier American talent to sustain it along with some big-name foreign players, well past their playing prime, to provide the pizzazz. That formula worked when David Beckham joined the L.A. Galaxy and, to a lesser extent, with Mexican star Cuauhtemoc Blanco playing for the Chicago Fire. Though Beckham missed most of a season due to injury and was a pale shadow of the player who once captained England, his presence in MLS was a major commercial hit in terms of both attendance and merchandise sales.
The New York Red Bulls just signed French star Thierry Henry and Mexican standout Rafael Marquez, both of whom played most recently for the Spanish juggernaut Barcelona. Henry, who will turn 33 this month, is coming off a succession of down notes: a dismal season with Barca; a goal — off a deliberate handball — that put France in the World Cup, but got Henry labeled unsportsmanlike (and worse); and a French travesty in South Africa, in which Henry did not play a single minute, but was cast as a ringleader of an embarrassing player revolt against the coach.
Still, Henry, who won a World Cup with France and European championships with both Arsenal and Barcelona, is, arguably, the most accomplished player to take the field for an American pro team since Pele and Franz Beckenbauer were taking star turns with the New York Cosmos in the late ’70s and early ’80s. And the 31-year-old Marquez, with 94 caps for Mexico, should certainly help MLS take aim at the Hispanic audience it covets.
So while the national team figures to manage a slow, steady ascent toward a not-too-distant time when this country emerges as an international soccer power of at least the second rank, MLS may not see all that much fallout. Still, even if it doesn’t thrive, it will continue to slog along as an essential ingredient in the American soccer experience and even a valuable addition to the international game.
Tuesday night’s encounter with Brazil may actually be a more important game for the visitors. Though Brazil lasted one round longer than the Yanks in South Africa, Brazilian fans regard the team’s Cup performance as a flop. Disenchantment was compounded by anger that their team had abandoned “the beautiful game” for a more rugged European style. That Spain triumphed with Brazilian flair was the final, bitter irony.
With Brazil hosting the 2014 World Cup, failure and, even worse, ugly failure are not regarded as options. For his debut, Brazil’s new coach Mano Menezes has infused his roster with young talent and promised that the team will reclaim its soccer style and soul on the way back to the top. It will be a long, arduous climb toward 2014.
It is a coup for American soccer here that the critical launch will occur here on our turf.Don't be a Jerk: Write Documentation
Developers hate writing documentation. And generally, users hate developers who don't write documentation. There's a subset of users who dislike going through documentation and will prefer to go directly in the source for whatever they're doing, but they're certainly not a majority. My position is that if you do not have any kind of documentation available, you're a jerk.
I don't have the time
The classic cop out to producing documentation is not having the time. Of course, it's entirely valid and possible that more urgent things take priority over documentation. However, developers who use time as an excuse should be aware that time they do not pour into documentation is time their users instead have to invest in it. To quote Scott Berkun:
When 100 people are listening to you for an hour, that’s 100 hours of people’s time devoted to what you have to say. If you can’t spend 5 or 10 hours preparing for them, thinking about them, and refining your points to best suit their needs, what does that say about your respect for your audience’s time? It says your 5 hours are more important than 100 of theirs, which requires an ego larger than the entire solar system.
The original quote is about public speaking, but it's easy to translate in terms that are relevant to programming and software. Users give their time away to learn to use your libraries and your applications in the hopes it saves them time in the future. When they need to figure stuff out, their appreciation of your work is instantly diminished, and you'll have to take even more time for indirect support (which could frankly be easy to recycle into documentation).
Frankly, not having documentation is a net loss in terms of time for everyone involved. People will ask you questions that will be repeated dozens of times over e-mail, IRC, github issues, or in person. And every person who asks you something is likely someone who has went through all the hoops and asked other people before bothering you. You'll likely spend way more time explaining your application to many people in a one-by-one manner than you would had you just written some documentation in the first place.
Just read the source
Telling a user to "just read the source" is a very jerk-ish thing to do. It's the "Why are you bothering me? Go away!" of programming. You're basically telling the user to reverse engineer whatever pile of crap you put out there (because most code out there, including mine, is likely a pile of crap) using their own time, while you're sitting there with the knowledge they need, just not willing to distribute it.
Contributions are welcome
This one is probably the worst one. It says “My time is so much more important than yours that you should figure everything out yourself, and then reward me with the fruits of your labour while you’re at it.”
It's somewhat of a valid excuse when documentation currently exists and users are unhappy with it, but it is a jerk thing to say when nothing is available.
Doc is hard to maintain
This is a fair point. My response to this one is usually similar to the one given to "I don't have the time". Good documentation, much like good code, requires a lot of effort and takes time. The more time it takes to write decent documentation, the more time it would likely take your users to figure things out on their own, and the more frustrated they should be.
There's also an interesting question that has to be asked related to this: if code changes too much to be documented without monumental effort, does it mean that the same code changes too much to be worth using by other people?
If the answer is "no", then nothing keeps you from documenting these unchanging parts, the one users would likely care about.
Documentation is useless
Well I don't really have much to write here regarding people who think documentation is useless. The obvious thing to say is that misleading documentation can be worse than no documentation, but it's an argument that likely does not carry over with most other types of documentation.
There's a definite amount of people who care about documentation and find it generally useful (over 90% of Erlang users polled for high-level documentation -- comments in code score much lower, a bit above 75% See related poll results), and should not be entirely ignored.
A few pointers to writing minimal but helpful docs
One thing I want to mention regarding documentation is what documentation is in the first place, or what its point is. At its simplest level, documentation is being able to transfer knowledge from one person to another one (and not having one person say "just reinvent all that information yourself"). What changes is how persistent the media by which it is done are, and how accessible they are.
Talking to someone, a chat session, an e-mail conversation or mailing lists are all different ways to transfer knowledge, but they're ultimately not accessible to third parties compared to other media. They're volatile and while the information transferred there is usually very clear and well-adapted to its target audience, it's lost to the rest of the world.
README files, diagrams, examples and whatnot are more durable, can be kept within the repository, and anyone with access to the source can get to the information. Heck, tests fit this category if they're clear enough in their intent. Websites, FAQs, and Wikis can be maintained and accessed independently of the source, and managed by different people than those who care deeply about the source. Diagrams and examples can come in here too. Then you get other media such as books, talks and slides, screencasts, or even a support line by phone. They're not searchable, but they're alternative means of documentation that are usually worth their weight in gold.
I'm not advocating one type of documentation as better than any other.Such a judgment would be circumstantial at best. The thing is, most people who have shitty or no docs at all for their project, at one point or another, end up explaining it to someone directly, either over chat, face to face, or over another private channel. This explanation is documentation, and the question that person asked is an example of a need for better documentation.
Now, if you only ever explain over volatile media or formats, such questions will need to be repeated over and over by different people, and the answers will need to be repeated over and over by you (or a few dedicated users). Everybody's losing time.
Take whatever volatile format you used, and persist it over to a more stable one. It will take a bit of work, but whatever you had, if it answered your user's question, should be decent documentation. Copy/paste chat logs, shell input/output, e-mail conversations. Extract the vital aspects, explain context, why you did a given things and you have a decent base, with very little effort. Understanding your user's problem and offering a solution was the hard part.
Know your Audience
Not all documentation is equal. Not everyone seeks the same information, and catering to specific types of readers will go a long way to help make your documentation more focused and helpful. I generally categorize people into 3 groups:
Newcomers
Regular users
Contributors
They're not strict and clearly defined categories. There's a continuum between all poles and a newbie in one area is a contributor or expert in another one of your system, but I've personally found them to be useful guidelines.
Newcomers
For newcomers, the documentation needs to be similar to Journalism's five (or six) Ws and explain a few common points that everybody is going to wonder about at some point:
What does it do?
Why did you write it (or didn't use an existing solution)?
Who should be using it, and for what reasons? (this may include a license)
How should it be used (how to build it, how to configure it, how to run it and get started)?
Where can additional information be found?
NOT THE SOURCE
These are all things that will pretty much always need to be answered, and you might as well get it out of the way at first. Additional information is always nice, but if the first 4 points cannot be answered, the newcomer is missing vital information regarding whether they should use your software/library or not. Growing documentation from that point for newcomers might be simpler after this.
Regular Users
Regular users are people who probably have an idea of what they're looking for in your application or library. They've used it for a while, know or suspect some functionality exists but need more information, or are encountering problems related to using your material and want to figure out what they're doing wrong.
For them, the following can be useful:
Reference Manual
Examples (also useful to newcomers)
EDoc / JavaDoc / <language>Doc (also useful for contributors)
Wiki, Websites, etc.
API descriptions
NOT THE SOURCE
They're the usual places where people can go to look things up, maybe search for an extension to the knowledge they already have. This is the type of documentation that is the hardest to maintain, by far. It's usually fairly technical, and when it's complete, documents nearly every behaviour your code base can have.
Contributors
If you want people to give back some effort and contribute code (or documentation) back, you have to take their hand for a while. Usually, the first pull request you'll have may be worthy of comments, and will include things such as a discussion including programming style and other demands ("has it been tested?"). Documentation for contributors should predict a few of these questions and preemptively answer them. This includes:
The project structure and architecture: where should I head into the source to find about some functionality? Where should new features go?
The project's principles: there's a reason why things were written the way they were, and a contributor shouldn't break these principles inadvertently.
Tests: where to find them, how the contributor should use them to make sure nothing broke, and what do you expect for code additions.
Issues and roadmap. Some users just want to give back or are looking for a knowledge base to expand, a place to communicate with you with problems they encounter. Contributors should also be able to know whether what they're working on is going to become useless in the next iteration of your project.
The repository (THE SOURCE!)
Note that the kind of users you get (newcomers, regulars, and/or contributors) may dictate the kind of documentation you should write, but that the opposite is also true: the kind of documentation you make available may bring or guide specific types of users to your project. If you want contributors and people to try your application in production and report back, you should pave the way for them to do it. This is larger than documentation, but documentation is a definitive part of it.
Get Started
This is the part of the blog post that becomes way more anecdotal and difficult to apply to broad audiences. I'll be basing myself off personal experience here, and how I do things. I implicitly assume I'm usually writing decent documentation, but I frankly have no empirical evidence to prove I do so. If you're into cold hard facts, you may want to skip this section.
Talking to yourself
There's no perfect way to get started, and to some extent, a blank documentation page is as intimidating as a blank page for an essay, or an empty repository for a software project you don't know how to tackle.
One approach I like for documentation is to pretend I'm having a discussion with a new user. This might be similar to rubber ducking or personas in marketing and design. The user has no idea what the code does, what the project does. He or she has a given level of experience in the language(s), platforms, and problem domains the code base deals with. He or she may have a given budget, organization size, or language level that may direct where things go.
I imagine the discussion I would have with that user (and it may be different if I initiate it or they initiate it). How does the conversation go? What questions do they ask?
This procedure alone usually helps me get started. By adding different users, different scenarios, and repeating the exercise, documentation gets to expand and be more comprehensive. It may also end up being split up into different categories for different people, or distributed over different platforms and media.
Problems everywhere
Another very quick way for me to get started is to find a problem a user would have, then showing how to solve it. If the reader ends up having a similar problem, they'll possibly find that the documentation suits them perfectly at least once.
To find such problems, I ask myself what are going to be common pitfalls. It usually help to take a break from a project for a few days, come back to it (uninstall it and start from a fresh setup), and try to use it for a while. If you make a mistake, users who haven't written the code (and thus know it far less than you do) will likely have similar questions.
You can answer these questions by fixes to the program itself or documentation. When you have users, every question you get about your project becomes a potential piece of documentation.
“Just RTFM”
Informal communications you have with users, errors you encounter, or procedures you have with your application on a day-to-day basis all have the potential to become very useful documentation.
When you have a bit of documentation, you won't have any guarantee it is good documentation (you likely never will), but hey, maybe you'll have earned the smug rights to tell your users to RTFM. Then when they don't, you may have to consider writing a better FM.Gear Gods is proud to present today the exclusive debut of “Morphogenesis” by brand new band Seven Year Storm.
Seven Year Storm is drummer/composer Sean Lang’s first outing as a solo artist. And he’s stepping out with a vengeance. Playing with him on his debut EPs Aion I & II are Archspire’s Dean Lamb on lead guitar and Brent Mackenzie of Soulscar on bass. Progressive metal grooves abound, with clean jazzy breaks and odd times in equal measure.
A drummer who composes is a rare and beautiful thing – a seldom-heard perspective in music overall, and less so in metal. It guarantees an emphasis on rhythm, of course, but Seven Year Storm is not short on melody. In fact, the composition is so varied, that you’d be hard pressed to guess that it was in fact a drummer writing the tunes.
Sean had the following to say about the track:
“Morphogenesis is the opening track to Aion I, which is available Feb. 24 online. The album features Archspire’s Dean Lamb on lead guitar, whose legendary skills are showcased in this incredibly technical track. I hope you guys enjoy watching and listening to this song as much as I did composing and recording it!”
Sean plays Mapex Drums, Axis Percussion pedals, and Los Cabos drumsticks,
Pre-order Aion I on Bandcamp here, and bask in its glory on February 24th!Photograph of Hartmann from 1914 by Howard D. Beach
Carl Sadakichi Hartmann (November 8, 1867 - November 22, 1944) was an art and photography critic and poet of German and Japanese descent.
Biography [ edit ]
Hartmann, born on the artificial island of Dejima, Nagasaki to German businessman Carl Herman Oskar Hartmann and Japanese mother Osada Hartmann and raised in Germany, arrived in Philadelphia in 1882 and became an American citizen in 1894.[1] An important early participant in modernism, Hartmann was a friend of such diverse figures as Walt Whitman, Stéphane Mallarmé and Ezra Pound.
Around 1905, Hartmann was an occasional performer at the New York City Miner's Theater. His act involved a device which dispensed perfumes in a manner intended to be analogous to notes in a symphony, which was poorly received by the crowd.[2]
His poetry, deeply influenced by the Symbolists as well as orientalist literature, includes 1904's Drifting Flowers of the Sea and Other Poems, 1913's My Rubaiyat and 1915's Japanese Rhythms. His works of criticism include Shakespeare in Art (1901) and Japanese Art (1904). During the 1910s, Hartmann let himself be crowned King of the Bohemians by Guido Bruno in New York's Greenwich Village.[3] Hartmann wrote some of the earliest English language haiku.
He was one of the first critics to write about photography, with regular essays in Alfred Stieglitz's Camera Notes. Hartmann published criticism and conducted lecture tours under the pseudonym "Sidney Allen."[4]
He made a brief appearance in the Douglas Fairbanks film The Thief of Bagdad as the court magician.[3]
Later years found him living in Hollywood and, by 1942, on his daughter's ranch outside Banning, California. Due to his age and health conditions, Hartmann was one of only a few Japanese Americans on the West Coast to avoid the mass incarceration during World War II, although the FBI and local officials visited the ranch often to conduct investigations.[1] In 1944, he died while visiting another daughter in St. Petersburg, Florida. A collection of his papers is held at the University of California, Riverside, including correspondence related to his obtaining permission to remain in Banning during the war.
Bibliography [ edit ]
Christ: A Dramatic Poem in Three Acts (play, 1893)
(play, 1893) Buddha: A Drama in Twelve Scenes (play, 1897)
(play, 1897) Mohammed (play, 1899)
(play, 1899) Schopenhauer in the Air: Seven Stories (1899)
(1899) Shakespeare in Art (1900)
(1900) A History of American Art (1901)
(1901) Japanese Art (1903) [1]
(1903) [1] Drifting Flowers of the Sea and Other Poems (1904) [2]
(1904) [2] Landscape and Figure Composition (1910) [3]
(1910) [3] My Theory of Soul Atoms (1910) [4]
(1910) [4] The Whistler Book (1910) [5]
(1910) [5] My Rubaiyat (1913) [6]
(1913) [6] Permanent Peace: Is it a Dream? (1915)
(1915) Tanka and Haikai: Japanese Rhythms (1916) [7]
(1916) [7] The Last Thirty Days of Christ (1920) [8]
(1920) [8] Confucius: A Drama in Two Acts (play, 1923)
(play, 1923) Moses: A Drama in Six Episodes (play, 1934)
(play, 1934) Buddha, Confucius, Christ: Three Prophetic Plays (reprint collection, 1971)Many of the people who work where I work, for the local school district, have 2 and sometimes 3 jobs. That is because most of the jobs for the school district are part-time and the wages are low.
In addition to working for the school district, some people work at Wal-Mart stocking shelves at night, some people work in cleaning crews, and some people hold jobs that are part-time in nursing homes, hospitals, retail stores, restaurants and so forth. They somehow juggle the two or three jobs they have so that they do not conflict with each other. There are also a number of people who have small businesses to supplement their income or who do odd jobs as they can find them.
Additionally, there are people who work second jobs for cash, and so it is likely they are not included in the U.S. Bureau’s Labor Statistics. Yes, there have always been people who do this, but the point is that with the economy being so bad for many individuals and families, more people than ever are working multiple jobs, and some of those jobs are for cash, out of necessity.
If you are a person who has hardly noticed the downturn in this economy, be thankful and count your blessings. You are in the minority.
People who are holding 2 or more jobs in this economy are not unusual. In fact, according to the most recent available numbers from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, (2010 Census) in December of 2011 more than 7 million people in this country were holding 2 or more jobs. That’s 5% of the total workforce. Sometimes they are holding 2 full time jobs, sometimes one full-time and one part-time job, and sometimes it is 2 or more part-time jobs. More than half of all multiple job holders are women.
Since these statistics are several months old, it is reasonable to believe even more than 7 million workers in this country are holding 2 or more jobs because the economy has not improved appreciably since these statistics were published. In fact, the economy has gotten worse. The most recent job creation statistics from last month (July 2012) were dismal.
One reason things have not improved for people who are working full time, either at one job or several jobs combined, is that wages have not risen to keep up with higher prices for everything from rent to food to medical care, insurance, and pretty much everything.President Donald Trump disavowed the Iran nuclear deal during a speech on Friday. Drew Angerer/Getty Images President Donald Trump announced on Friday that he is decertifying, but not withdrawing from or rewriting, the Iran nuclear agreement.
While the president delivered blistering criticism of Iran's "fanatical regime" and argued the country has violated the spirit of the 2015 agreement that aims to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, he left the deal's fate up to Congress.
"We cannot and will not make this certification," Trump said during a speech at the White House. "We will not continue down a path whose predictable conclusion is more violence, more terror, and the very real threat of Iran's nuclear breakout."
Trump has effectively given Congress three options: Do not subject Iran to new sanctions and leave the agreement as is; apply sanctions and withdraw from the deal; or renegotiate the deal.
Iran has made clear that it will not take part in any renegotiation of the deal, which China, France, Russia, the UK, and Germany are all party to.
But Trump threatened to unilaterally withdraw from the agreement if Congress is unable to agree on a solution, which will require 60 votes and bipartisan support in the Senate.
"In the event we are not able to reach a solution working with Congress and our allies, then the agreement will be terminated," he said. "Our participation can be canceled by me, as president, at any time."
Trump campaigned on his promise to "rip up" the agreement, which was negotiated by the Obama administration in an effort to curb Iran's nuclear weapons program and is formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
But on July 17, the president recertified the JCPOA — which is required by Congress every 90 days — for the second time, after he was warned by his top aides and cabinet officials that withdrawing would threaten US national security interests and told that, while the deal is imperfect, it provides crucial benefits for the US and its allies.
Earlier this month, Defense Secretary James Mattis publicly broke with the president, telling Congress he believes it is in the US national security interest to remain a party to the agreement, which also involves several other nations.
"If we can confirm that Iran is living by the agreement, if we can determine that this is in our best interest, then clearly we should stay with it," Mattis said during testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on October 3. "I believe at this point in time, absent indications to the contrary, it is something the president should consider staying with."
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has also sharply disagreed with the president on his approach to the agreement.
In August, The Guardian reported that the Trump White House was pushing intelligence analysts to provide justification for declaring Iran in violation of the tenants of the deal. That pressure reportedly reminded some analysts of the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
"They told me there was a sense of revulsion. There was a sense of déjà vu," said Ned Price, a former CIA analyst who served as special adviser to former President Barack Obama. "There was a sense of, 'We've seen this movie before.'"
The deal is supported by key US allies, including the UK, whose conservative foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, reaffirmed the country's support of the agreement, arguing that it "neutralized" Iran's nuclear threat.
Experts argue that Trump's motivations for scrapping the deal are more political than strategic.
"He doesn't want to certify the Iran deal for more domestic reasons than international ones," Vali Nasr, dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, told The Washington Post. "He doesn't want to certify that any piece of the Obama strategy is working."Shantelle Hicks, a 15-year-old from Gallup, N.M., claims she was first forced to leave the Wingate Elementary School and then publicly outed as being pregnant in front of all students and employees, KOB-TV reports.
Wingate Elementary is a public boarding school for Native American children from kindergarten through 8th grade.
Now, with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, Hicks has filed suit against the school, claiming they violated her constitutional rights. According to the complaint, school officials kicked Hicks out of school after learning of her pregnancy, but readmitted her four days later when the ACLU of New Mexico informed the school that it's illegal to deny a student access to education for being pregnant.
But two weeks after her readmission, a school counselor and the director of the middle school forced the teen to stand before the middle school assembly and announced her condition -- allegedly before anyone but her sister knew.
“It was so embarrassing to have all the other kids staring at me as I walked into the gymnasium,” said Hicks, according to KOB. “I didn’t want the whole school to know I was pregnant because it’s not their business, and it wasn’t right for my teachers to single me out.”
According to the suit, school officials informed Hicks that she would be a "bad example" to other students, and requested she attend another school, a Washington Post local report states.
“It is outrageous that educators would subject a young woman in their care to such cruelty,” ACLU of New Mexico cooperating attorney Barry Klopfer said, according to the Indian Country Today Community Network.
The girl's mother, Vicky Hicks, says her daughter's public humiliation was wrong.
"[Students] shouldn't be treated differently because they're pregnant," Hicks told KOAT-TV.
The lawsuit was filed on March 6th and seeks punitive damages and declaratory relief for violation of constitutional rights to equal protection and of the Title IX prohibition against sex and pregnancy discrimination in education.We asked 12 Rugby World Cup winning All Blacks for their Kiwi sporting hero of 2015. Colin Slade selected Black Caps wunderkind Kane Williamson. James Milne looks back on his extraordinary year at the crease.
In 2015, there have, incredibly, been more words written about Kane Williamson than runs scored by Kane Williamson – i.e. a heck of a lot. This tiny freak from Otumoetai, quite the most wholesome and dull sportsperson New Zealand has ever produced – think of a small, male Irene Van Dyk (I know she’s South African) – has transformed from a clearly promising young man who most evoked the phrase ‘huge potential’, into an extraordinarily consistent and prolific run scorer who inspires a seemingly endless stream of articles in the cricket media predicting a career path ranging somewhere between those of Tendulkar and Bradman.
Such lofty praise might go to the head of a normal person, but in Kane Williamson we have a truly unusual human character, one seemingly almost entirely devoid of ego. It’s a sporting cliché to follow any personal praise with the statement “couldn’t have done it without the boys/girls”, but Williamson truly seems to embody this ideal without any sense of obligation to an imposed team code. When talking to Ian Smith after his extraordinary match-winning 242 not out against Sri Lanka – about the closest one could get in a team sport to a truly solo achievement – the speed with which he deferred praise of his innings towards his teammates was almost as fast as his reaction time at the crease. It was genuinely instinct |
�睛 yǎnjing 2 已经 yǐjing 2 早上 zǎoshang 2 左边 zuǒbian 3 耳朵 ěrduo 3 奶奶 nǎinai 3 起来 qǐlai 4 打扮 dǎban 4 好处 hǎochu 4 饺子 jiǎozi 4 马虎 mǎhu 4 母亲 mǔqin 4 暖和 nuǎnhuo 4 主意 zhǔyi 5 尺子 chǐzi 5 打听 dǎting 5 点心 diǎnxin 5 骨头 gǔtou 5 管子 guǎnzi 5 讲究 jiǎngjiu 5 老实 lǎoshi 5 姥姥 lǎolao 5 脑袋 nǎodai 5 嗓子 sǎngzi 5 舍不得 shěbude 5 尾巴 wěiba 5 委屈 wěiqu 5 显得 xiǎnde 5 影子 yǐngzi 6 把手 ba3shou 6 本事 ben3shi 6 比方 bi3fang 6 打量 da3liang 6 恶心 e3xin 6 喇叭 la3ba 6 码头 ma3tou 6 免得 mian3de 6 曲子 qu3zi 6 嫂子 sao3zi 6 妥当 tuo3dang 6 枕头 zhen3tou 6 指甲 zhi3jia 6 种子 zhong3zi
T4 + T1 HSK Word Pinyin 2 唱歌 chànggē 2 大家 dàjiā 2 第一 dìyī 2 上班 shàngbān 3 必须 bìxū 3 菜单 càidān 3 衬衫 chènshān 3 蛋糕 dàngāo 3 电梯 diàntī 3 放心 fàngxīn 3 健康 jiànkāng 3 面包 miànbāo 3 认真 rènzhēn 3 一般 yìbān 3 一边 yìbiān 4 差不多 chàbuduō 4 大约 dàyuē 4 放松 fàngsōng 4 害羞 hài xiū 4 互相 hùxiāng 4 降低 jiàngdī 4 竞争 jìngzhēng 4 客厅 kètīng 4 律师 lǜshī 4 耐心 nàixīn 4 现金 xiànjīn 4 信封 xìnfēng 4 信息 xìnxī 4 信心 xìnxīn 4 亚洲 yàzhōu 4 作家 zuòjiā 5 爱惜 àixī 5 爱心 àixīn 5 不安 bù’ān 5 刺激 cìjī 5 措施 cuòshī 5 地区 dìqū 5 对方 duìfāng 5 冠军 guànjūn 5 过期 guòqī 5 健身 jiànshēn 5 据说 jùshuō 5 客观 kèguān 5 辣椒 làjiāo 5 乐观 lèguān 5 利息 lìxī 5 列车 lièchē 5 录音 lùyīn 5 蜜蜂 mìfēng 5 面积 miànjī
T4 + T2 HSK Word Pinyin 2 面条 miàntiáo 2 去年 qùnián 2 问题 wèntí 3 地图 dìtú 3 复习 fùxí 3 后来 hòulái 3 季节 jìjié 3 客人 kèrén 3 练习 liànxí 3 热情 rèqíng 3 认为 rènwéi 3 数学 shùxué 3 太阳 tàiyáng 3 特别 tèbié 3 一直 yìzhí 4 爱情 àiqíng 4 按时 ànshí 4 报名 bào míng 4 地球 dìqiú 4 调查 diàochá 4 对于 duìyú 4 负责 fùzé 4 复杂 fùzá 4 共同 gòngtóng 4 过程 guòchéng 4 获得 huòdé 4 既然 jìrán 4 价格 jiàgé 4 进行 jìnxíng 4 竟然 jìngrán 4 拒绝 jùjué 4 距离 jùlí 4 例如 lìrú 4 内容 nèiróng 4 确实 quèshí 4 任何 rènhé 4 适合 shìhé 4 橡皮 xiàngpí 4 幸福 xìngfú 4 性别 xìngbié 4 性格 xìnggé 4 预习 yùxí 4 阅读 yuèdú 4 暂时 zànshí 4 正常 zhèngcháng 4 证明 zhèngmíng 4 著名 zhùmíng 4 自然 zìrán 5 必然 bìrán 5 病毒 bìngdú
T4 + T3 HSK Word Pinyin 1 电脑 diànnǎo 1 电影 diànyǐng 1 对不起 duìbuqǐ 1 汉语 hànyǔ 1 上午 shàngwǔ 1 下午 xiàwǔ 1 下雨 xiàyǔ 1 一点儿 yìdiǎnr 2 报纸 bàozhǐ 2 跳舞 tiàowǔ 2 一起 yìqǐ 3 办法 bànfǎ 3 地铁 dìtiě 3 或者 huòzhě 3 历史 lìshǐ 3 上网 shàngwǎng 3 校长 xiàozhǎng 3 自己 zìjǐ 4 并且 bìngqiě 4 不管 bùguǎn 4 不仅 bùjǐn 4 厕所 cèsuǒ 4 到底 dào dǐ 4 地点 dìdiǎn 4 地址 dìzhǐ 4 付款 fù kuǎn 4 号码 hàomǎ 4 后悔 hòuhuǐ 4 记者 jìzhě 4 禁止 jìnzhǐ 4 看法 kànfǎ 4 密码 mìmǎ 4 入口 rùkǒu 4 是否 shìfǒu 4 特点 tèdiǎn 4 效果 xiàoguǒ 4 正好 zhènghǎo 4 至少 zhìshǎo 4 重点 zhòngdiǎn 4 最好 zuìhǎo 4 作者 zuòzhě 5 办理 bànlǐ 5 傍晚 bàngwǎn 5 背景 bèijǐng 5 避免 bìmiǎn 5 彻底 chèdǐ 5 翅膀 chìbǎng 5 促使 cùshǐ 5 代表 dàibiǎo 5 贷款 dài kuǎn
T4 + T4 HSK Word Pinyin 1 电视 diànshì 1 饭店 fàndiàn 1 看见 kànjiàn 1 睡觉 shuìjiào 1 现在 xiànzài 1 再见 zàijiàn 2 但是 dànshì 2 教室 jiàoshì 2 介绍 jièshào 2 快乐 kuàilè 2 运动 yùndòng 2 正在 zhèngzài 3 爱好 àihào 3 变化 biànhuà 3 动物 dòngwù 3 锻炼 duànliàn 3 附近 fùjìn 3 过去 guòqù 3 害怕 hàipà 3 护照 hùzhào 3 会议 huìyì 3 见面 jiànmiàn 3 世界 shìjiè 3 忘记 wàngjì 3 遇到 yùdào 3 愿意 yuànyì 3 照片 zhàopiàn 3 重要 zhòngyào 3 注意 zhùyì 3 最后 zuìhòu 3 最近 zuìjìn 3 作业 zuòyè 4 按照 ànzhào 4 抱歉 bàoqiàn 4 毕业 bì yè 4 错误 cuòwù 4 大概 dàgài 4 到处 dàochù 4 道歉 dàoqiàn 4 动作 dòngzuò 4 对话 duìhuà 4 对面 duìmiàn 4 放弃 fàngqì 4 复印 fùyìn 4 购物 gòuwù 4 故意 gùyì 4 顾客 gùkè 4 计划 jìhuà 4 技术 jìshù 4 继续 jìxù
T4 + T0 HSK Word Pinyin 1 爸爸 bàba 1 后面 hòumian 1 漂亮 piàoliang 1 认识 rènshi 1 谢谢 xièxie 2 弟弟 dìdi 2 告诉 gàosu 2 妹妹 mèimei 2 事情 shìqing 2 意思 yìsi 2 右边 yòubian 2 丈夫 zhàngfu 3 地方 dìfang 3 个子 gèzi 3 故事 gùshi 3 记得 jìde 3 句子 jùzi 3 裤子 kùzi 3 筷子 kuàizi 3 帽子 màozi 3 为了 wèile 3 月亮 yuèliang 3 照顾 zhàogu 4 部分 bùfen 4 大夫 dàifu 4 肚子 dùzi 4 父亲 fùqin 4 护士 hùshi 4 镜子 jìngzi 4 困难 kùnnan 4 力气 lìqi 4 厉害 lìhai 4 热闹 rènao 4 任务 rènwu 4 态度 tàidu 4 袜子 wàzi 4 味道 wèidao 4 笑话 xiàohua 4 样子 yàngzi 4 要是 yàoshi 4 钥匙 yàoshi 4 叶子 yèzi 5 被子 bèizi 5 大方 dàfang 5 地道 dìdao 5 豆腐 dòufu 5 教训 jiàoxun 5 戒指 jièzhi 5 舅舅 jiùjiu 5 力量 lìliang
Sign up for a free crash course in how to learn Mandarin. You can also opt-in to my weekly newsletter if you want. For more about how your personal data is handled, please review the privacy policy. Leave this field empty if you're human:I was excited to see that just as I was getting ready to start my first networked multiplayer Unity project, Unity was releasing their new Unet networking APIs. “What great timing!”, I thought. However, I was a total noob when it comes to working with sockets and communicating over a network and after playing around with Unet’s HLAPI (High-Level API) it quickly became clear to me that I’d have to dive deeper to get the functionality that I was looking for. So I began to read the documentation for the LLAPI (Low-Level API) which was not pleasant at all. After seeking advice and guidance from everyone I found shake down I managed to get everything working, connecting, and sending messages to and fro.
So here is my tutorial on working with Unity’s Unet LLAPI in C# for networking noobs. There are 4 main parts to any socket networking setup, opening a socket, connecting to another socket, sending messages and receiving messages:
Starting a “Host” (or Opening a Socket)
First make a new Unity project, 2D or 3D, it doesn’t matter for this tutorial. Then add an Empty GameObject to the scene and name it Transport. Then add a new C# script to the object and open the script.
We’re going to setup our socket right as the application begins so let’s begin in the Start() method. First thing we want to do is call initialize on the NetworkTransport class (don’t forget to add using UnityEngine.Networking to the class):
public void Start() { NetworkTransport.Init();...
Next we just follow Unity’s documentation and add the ConnectionConfig. For most situations using the default config is fine, so let’s just go with that:
... ConnectionConfig config = new ConnectionConfig();...
Up next we need to add a channel and keep the channelId handy so we can use it later for sending/receiving. To do this we’ll add an int member variable to the class (not just the Start() method). We’ll also use the QosType of Reliable when setting up our channel. You don’t really need to know what this means right now (read: I don’t know enough about what this means and I still survive):
int myReliableChannelId; // above Start()... myReliableChannelId = config.AddChannel(QosType.Reliable); // within Start()...
This next part pretty much just sets the max number of connections allowed on your soon to exist socket:
... int maxConnections = 10; HostTopology topology = new HostTopology(config, maxConnections);...
and finally we open the socket. One of the main stumbling blocks when trying to understand the LLAPI based on Unity’s documentation is that many thing are just named poorly. For starters, there is NetworkTransport.AddHost(). This doesn’t actually add a “Host” like the HLAPI does. This command actually just starts up a socket, I’m pretty sure they should change the name of the method to AddSocket, but who am I?? When we start the socket we have to tell it which port to listen to and in this case we use port 8888. Also the AddHost() method returns an int which is the “HostID” but screw that name we’re going to call it what it is, a SocketId. This SocketId also has to be accessible from other methods in this class so let’s put it up with the channelId:
int socketId; // above Start() int socketPort = 8888; // Also a class member variable... // back in Start() socketId = NetworkTransport.AddHost(topology, socketPort); Debug.Log("Socket Open. SocketId is: " + socketId); } // closing curly for Start()
And with that we have our code which sets up a socket! It’ll run right away when you click the Play button in Unity. You should see the debug message appear in the console, probably with the socketId of 0. It’s not that cool yet but we’re getting there.
Connecting to the socket
Once our socket is open we use it to connect to another socket, typically on another device. We can worry about getting another device in the mix later. For now, let’s just write our Connect() method.
int connectionId;... public void Connect() { byte error; connectionId = NetworkTransport.Connect(socketId, "localhost", socketPort, 0, out error); Debug.Log("Connected to server. ConnectionId: " + connectionId); }
We need to keep the connectionId available to all methods because later we’ll use it to send messages. NetworkTransport.Connect() … connects us to another server (Hey! They did a proper job naming that one!). We pass in our socketId, the ip for the remote device (in this case we’re just connecting with ourselves, like a long weekend alone in the woods), the socketPort of the remote machine (same as ours in this case), 0 (I forget what this is but whatever), and if there is a problem we get an error out.
The Unity documentation mentions that we can check the error with:
if (error!= kOk) // wat?
But I have no idea what kOk is and judging by all the red squiggles it certainly isn’t a byte. If you know what kOk is please tell someone (preferably me) we need to figure this out people! Basically, I just include the out error parameter because I have to.
I used my Android phone as the remote device but you can use another computer if you have one available. But for now you can do most of your testing by connecting to your own socket (I’m sure there is a rude joke in there).
Lastly, go into Unity and add a UI button and set the OnClick event to fire off our Connect() method. If you don’t want to do that I suppose you can just call Connect() at the end of Start() after our code that adds the socket. That would be good enough for now if you don’t want to make the button.
Sending a Message!
Finally (half of) the thing we actually want to do! Here we turn a string into a stream of bytes then send those bytes out our socket connection.
public void SendSocketMessage() { byte error; byte[] buffer = new byte[1024]; Stream stream = new MemoryStream(buffer); BinaryFormatter formatter = new BinaryFormatter(); formatter.Serialize(stream, "HelloServer"); int bufferSize = 1024; NetworkTransport.Send(hostId, connectionId, myReliableChannelId, buffer, bufferSize, out error); }
Quick run down: Declare another (unused) byte variable called error. Create byte array called buffer and set it’s length to 1024 (this is the max length of our message when it is in byte form). The next 3 lines do the conversion from string to byte array. I don’t know the details about it, but it works, so it’s good enough. We also send over the size of our buffer byte array as an int (which is bufferSize). Lastly we put all the stuff together, starting with out class variables hostId, connectionId, and myReliableChannelId then adding the rest.
Now that we’ve got our SendSocketMessage() method you can go back into Unity and add a UI button to fire off the method on the buttons OnClick event.
Listening for NetworkEvents (or Receiving a Message)
Last part! We can send a message to other connected devices but now we have to make our application do something when it gets these messages. Otherwise we’re just shouting into the void. We need to always be checking for new messages coming in so this portion is added to the Update() method.
void Update() { int recHostId; int recConnectionId; int recChannelId; byte[] recBuffer = new byte[1024]; int bufferSize = 1024; int dataSize; byte error; NetworkEventType recNetworkEvent = NetworkTransport.Receive(out recHostId, out recConnectionId, out recChannelId, recBuffer, bufferSize, out dataSize, out error);...
All we’re doing is declaring all the variables we need then setting up a NetworkTransport.Receive() method. Almost all those variables are assigned as a result of a message being received (all the parameters that begin with out). The recBuffer contains the byte array message that was received, while recNetworkEvent is an enum with 4 possible event types:
Nothing – When no messages are received.
– When no messages are received. ConnectionEvent – A socket connection is made.
– A socket connection is made. DataEvent – A message is received.
– A message is received. DisconnectEvent – A device that was connected as told us it is closing the connection.
We’re going to use these event types to decide what to actually do with the messages we receive. So we’re going to continue to add on to our Update() method with a big ol’ switch statement:
... switch (recNetworkEvent) { case NetworkEventType.Nothing: break; case NetworkEventType.ConnectEvent: Debug.Log("incoming connection event received"); break; case NetworkEventType.DataEvent: Stream stream = new MemoryStream(recBuffer); BinaryFormatter formatter = new BinaryFormatter(); string message = formatter.Deserialize(stream) as string; Debug.Log("incoming message event received: " + message); break; case NetworkEventType.DisconnectEvent: Debug.Log("remote client event disconnected"); break; }
So based on the type of network event we have a few different debug messages display. With the event type Nothing we do… nothing. This message comes in every Update() that a message of some other type is not received so we can ignore it. With ConnectionEvent we just want to be notified of the connection, but in a game you might do something like load a player prefab or display some text that a new player has connected.
DataEvent is the real meat and potatoes. This is where a message is received from a connected device and our application has to do something based on that message. Since our SendSocketMessage() method currently only sends a string we’ll only include code to handle string messages received (it’ll still try to convert any bytes into a string, so if you send something other than a string you’ll get an error or a garbage string (probably? Didn’t try it.)).
You can see that in the DataEvent case we’re doing almost the same thing as we did in the SendSocketMessage() method but instead of making a string into bytes, now we’re making bytes into a string. Once the message is back in a string form we display it as part of a debug message. Bam! Message Received!
Lastly there is the DisconnectEvent type. I don’t do anything with that event type here except log it to the console but you can image using this event as the time to do things like remove a player’s prefab, or display a disconnect message on screen.
Try it out
That should be all you need to get up and running. You have an application that, on startup, makes a socket available for connections. With the press of your Connect button the application uses it’s socket to connect to another device’s socket. Pressing your Send Message button will blast a string message from your socket to the remote devices socket and the remote device will receive the message, unpack it and display it in the console.
I did my testing initially just having my computer running Unity connect to it’s own socket, just as a way to rapidly test things. Because of this I saw the connect message in the console 2x, since one event was made for each side of the connection. After I got everything working like this, I changed the “localhost” to my computer’s IP address then built the project and sent it to my Android phone. I would then run the application in the Unity editor so I could see the console and I used the app on my phone to connect and send the message. It was really rewarding to hit the Send Message button on my phone and see the message appear in Unity’s console on my PC!
Expanding
This post is already super long, but I just want to give some final thoughts and extra tips.
How do I use this to make a game?
You can have another switch statement that executes different methods or series of methods based on the message received. So getting a message like “ChangeToNight” can trigger a method that changes the time in your game environment.
Does the message have to be a string?
No! It can be any object, all you have to do is serialize the object in a similar way to how we serialized the string. For instance I have experimented with sending JSON messages so that I can transport more complex objects. Using JSON.NET for Unity made this super easy.
Where can I read more about sockets?
While trying to figure all of this out I was directed to Beej’s Guide to Network Programming. It’s pretty advanced, written for C++ and I didn’t read much of it, but the What is a socket? section helped clear up some of my confusion about sockets.
I hope this helps some people who want to dive into Unity’s new networking API but don’t know a thing about network programming prior. If you are an experienced network programmer and have noticed things that I am wrong about, or things that could be expanded upon please let me know and I’ll update this guide.The confidential US documents leaked by the WikiLeaks website have embarrassed quite a few people mentioned in the memos, mostly in a negative context. But this does not apply to former Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh, who was praised by the former American ambassador in one of the secret documents.
Sneh disappeared from the Israeli political arena after the 2009 elections, but it seems the United States has taken note of quite a few of his accomplishments. His name was mentioned in a confidential memo sent by then-US Ambassador Richard Jones to then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Leaks Scandal WikiLeaks: Israel wanted PA to take Gaza Ynet WikiLeaks document says Defense Minister Ehud Barak consulted with Fatah, Egypt, asked if they could take over control of Gaza Strip after expected Israeli victory during Operation Cast Lead, but met with refusal WikiLeaks: Israel wanted PA to take Gaza
"Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh, who will likely accompany Peretz to your meeting, has emerged as the point man for these efforts."
Jones was under the impression that "Sneh shares Peretz's conviction that Israel's security stranglehold on the Palestinians is 'winning the battle but losing the war,' but
Sneh, who in a decades-long career served as a military governor of the West Bank, commanded an elite combat unit, and took part in the famed Entebbe raid, also has both an intimate knowledge of the Palestinians and a combat commander's credibility with the IDF that Peretz sorely lacks."
Talking to Ynet on Monday after the compliments were made public, Sneh said he was not surprised by the document.
"When someone says good things about you, you shouldn't respond," he said, smiling. "We had a few meeting with Condoleezza Rice, and she expressed her appreciation. I'm glad that at least the Americans are supportive of me. When I became Peretz's deputy, I was put in charge of the territories. What the report says must be correct, but we won that praise thanks to hard work."
Sneh, who served as deputy defense minister from 2006 to 2007 and was replaced after Ehud Barak was appointed defense minister, said that "at the time there was a different reality in which I was the main address for the American administration at the government and Defense Ministry. Those who wanted to talk business in terms of the territories had to contact me."
'Diplomats will have to think twice'
The former deputy defense minister was surprised, however, by the leaked documents' confidentiality level. "We spoke with (the Americans) very openly, and as is the custom with strategic partners – on some issues we revealed our abilities. This issue casts a shadow over the contact with many countries which are the Americans' partners. No one wants to see their estimates, abilities and intelligence exposed this way."
Sneh estimated that the leaks would throw Washington into a turmoil, which would be felt for a long time. "Diplomacy is based on confidential discussions. About 95% of what is said appears in the newspaper the next day, but there is still 5% which remains confidential. This material must be protected. This is a blow to the Americans' ability to engage in discreet diplomacy."
According to Sneh, "The most serious thing happening here is that the foreign ministry of the only superpower has lost its ability to conduct a quiet, secret and discreet foreign policy. Everything that has been published and that I have read was basically known to me. Things other people said did not really come as news to me either, and yet this is a very embarrassing situation."
"Any way you look at it, this is a blow to democracy too, because once people stop trusting the acceptable channels, they will choose bypasses which are not supervised by the democratic mechanisms."Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
Sep. 17, 2014, 9:19 PM GMT / Updated Sep. 17, 2014, 10:00 PM GMT
A medical missionary being treated for Ebola virus infection in Nebraska is almost better, his doctors said Wednesday. "Based on what we're seeing know, we expect him to make a full recovery," said Dr. Angela Hewlett, associate medical director of the Biocontainment Unit at The Nebraska Medical Center. "However, we are still somewhat cautious because of the severity and unknown factors of this disease. We know from experience how other patients look as their condition improves, but since we have so little experience treating patients with Ebola, that tempers our optimism a little bit."
"He looks great in person," said Dr. Phil Smith, medical director of the unit. To be cleared for discharge, Sacra will have to test negative for Ebola twice, with tests given 24 hours apart. Medical workers are at high risk of infection from Ebola, which has sickened at least 5,000 people and killed half of them. Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF or Doctors Without Borders) says one of its medical workers has been infected and evacuated to France. An American doctor working for the World Health Organization is being treated at Emory University Hospital.
IN-DEPTH
— Maggie FoxGreen Bay Packers coach Joe Whitt Jr. knows what a good group of cornerbacks looks like, and he can see big potential in his current group of cornerbacks.
Potential being the key word.
“I’m not going to get ahead of myself, but if we play to our potential, we have a chance, with this group, to be as good as any group as we might have had here,” Whitt said during June’s minicamp.
Whitt quickly mentioned his “special” groups from 2009, 2010 and 2014, admitting how difficult it would be for this year’s group to reach the levels set by the likes of Charles Woodson, Tramon Williams, Sam Shields and Casey Hayward. The opportunity is still there for the Packers to make a big rebound at the position in 2017, especially if the quality of practices from this offseason translates to training camp and the regular season.
“I’ve seen good practices before, and good groups, and this group here has had those type of practices,” Whitt said.
Whitt and the Packers have obvious reasons to believe cornerback will be much better this season.
Veteran Davon House returned after a two-year stint in Jacksonville, Damarious Randall and Quinten Rollins are both healthy after injury-plagued seasons and rookie Kevin King should add unrivaled length and athleticism on the perimeter.
There’s also LaDarius Gunter, who was often Green Bay’s best cornerback in 2016; Herb Waters, a receiver convert who received rave reviews from Whitt this offseason; Josh Hawkins and Demetri Goodson, two veteran holdovers from last year’s roster; and four undrafted free agents, including Lenzy Pipkins, who finished minicamp with impressive performances in back-to-back practices.
Related Packers coach compares CB Herb Waters to Tramon Williams
The position is deep on options and strong in collective affection, and Whitt believes bringing back House – a former draft pick of the Packers – has only added to the camaraderie of the group.
“That’s why I think this group can be good,” Whitt said. “They genuinely like each other. And when you genuinely like each other and you’re pulling for each other, you play better. I think (House is) leading the group in the right direction.”
Whitt specifically mentioned how House’s leadership has blossomed since returning to Green Bay, noting how often he went out of his way to help the young cornerbacks during the offseason program. His leadership could assist the Packers in getting the most out of a young group that is attempting to come back from a disastrous 2016 season.
Green Bay gave up 32 touchdown passes during the regular season and later crumbled in the playoffs against the Dallas Cowboys and Atlanta Falcons. Opposing quarterbacks averaged 8.1 yards per attempt and had a passer rating of 95.9 against the Packers in 2016.
Whitt is confident he has the right pieces for a rebound, but a couple of strong practices in June won’t matter much if results don’t follow. More work is required to realize the potential.
“I’m excited about what we can be, but we have to get there,” Whitt said.Simple Vim Window Management
When I use vim I find myself constantly, opening windows, splitting them and generally putting production code next to my specs. Sometimes on a really big screen I'll manage a 5 window split. I have yet to find an editor that gives me the same power and speed in window management as vim does. But it certainly isn't due to the default key bindings.
I never got my head around <c-w><c-s>. having to translate to horizontal and vertical splits takes away from the fluidity of my intentions. I prefer to think in terms of up down left right. or in vim: kjhl
The shortcut I've come up with over time is: <leader> followed by either hjkl to move into the window above,below,left or right respectively.
What makes this particularly useful, is using these same commands to open new windows.
So if <leader>k means move to the window above, then if there isn't a window above it should mean: open a window above. This allows you to use the same muscle memory for moving and opening.
function! WinMove(key) let t:curwin = winnr() exec "wincmd ".a:key if (t:curwin == winnr()) "we havent moved if (match(a:key,'[jk]')) "were we going up/down wincmd v else wincmd s endif exec "wincmd ".a:key endif endfunction
map <leader>h :call WinMove('h')<cr> map <leader>k :call WinMove('k')<cr> map <leader>l :call WinMove('l')<cr> map <leader>j :call WinMove('j')<cr>
If anything that's the most useful portion of this post. And I'd urge your to give it a try, it's extremely intuitive. The rest of this post is mainly for completion.
closing, rotating and moving
I also use <leader>wc to close a window. The mnemonic is "window close" and <leader>wr to rotate windows or "window rotate"
map <leader>wc :wincmd q<cr> map <leader>wr <C-W>r
vim also allows you to move existing windows. I use this more than Rotate, it follows the same principle as before using hjkl, but relies on it's capital forms:
map <leader>H :wincmd H<cr> map <leader>K :wincmd K<cr> map <leader>L :wincmd L<cr> map <leader>J :wincmd J<cr>
It's kind of hard to explain how these function exactly, as it's easier to learn by example. If you find the need to move windows a lot (I typically don't) then try these out in a vim session and see how they fit.
Resizing windows
People always advise new vim users to disable the up down left right keys, and rightly so. Here is a use for them: easily resize windows.
Take note that these are sometimes inverted depending on which side your on. It's quite easy to get used to, but again hard to explain. To be honest, resizing windows is something I hardly ever do.
nmap <left> :3wincmd <<cr> nmap <right> :3wincmd ><cr> nmap <up> :3wincmd +<cr> nmap <down> :3wincmd -<cr>
That's it, hopefully you can pick up something useful here to drop in your.vimrcDuke Energy expects its 3.2 million North Carolina customers to pay the costs of closing its ash ponds, CEO Lynn Good said Friday.
Duke is preparing a response to Gov. Pat McCrory’s request last week that his former employer supply options, costs and other details for dealing with its ash ponds by March 15.
McCrory’s demand added to the pressure on Duke, after a disastrous spill last month on the Dan River, to move millions of tons of ash away from water supplies such as Charlotte’s Mountain Island Lake.
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Duke is making it just as clear that closing its ponds will be an expense – likely to run into the hundreds of millions of dollars – that customers should pay. Duke has said the company and its stockholders will pay the costs of cleaning up the Dan River.
Good, in a brief interview after receiving the BusinessWoman of the Year award at Queens University of Charlotte, gave no hint of how Duke would respond to McCrory.
Asked whether Duke expects its customers to pay for closing its ponds, including removing ash, she indicated it did.
“Ash pond closure has been a plan for a very long time,” she said. “And because that ash was created over decades for the generation of electricity, we do believe that ash pond disposal costs are ultimately a part of our cost structure.
“But the determination of payment will be up to the North Carolina Utilities Commission and how that they handle that, so I think that’s something that will unfold over time.”
Attorney General Roy Cooper, who has appealed three recent rate hikes by Duke, said he’ll also oppose attempts to bill customers for ash.
“Duke Energy should clean up the coal ash at its own expense, and we will fight for consumers if the company tries to charge them,” Cooper said in a statement.
What influences the outcome
The |
is a history of how white people have treated African-Americans since 1865 — when the 13th Amendment abolished slavery — and it roused the Lincoln Center crowd to multiple standing ovations as well as critics’ raves.
Netflix
Netflix VP Lisa Nishimura reached out to DuVernay after “Selma,” knowing that she’d begun her filmmaking career in documentaries. At a New York Film Festival press conference, the Compton-raised director said that she wanted her Netflix doc to give a wide swath of people “an understanding of what we’re seeing and why we think the way we do. How much of what we think is manufactured and given to us?”
READ MORE: How Black Lives Matter Created The Accidental Documentarians
Later on the phone, DuVernay told me she wanted to “go back and do a history lesson, to help people make associations, and grasp the system more fully, not just taken in snapshot. It’s too complicated. It would be a disservice to the tragedy that is happening not to paint a full picture.” (That said, while there was a four-hour cut, DuVernay was set on delivering a two-hour movie.)
UCLA History grad DuVernay chose to lay out her argument in chronological order, from 1865 through the Jim Crow era into the Civil Rights movement and the growth of the prison-industrial complex (a phrase coined by Angela Davis, one of 38 people DuVernay interviews at length on camera).
DuVernay began by examining prisons, but her inquiries led her down many more rabbit holes as she looked at some 1,500 hours of archival footage and tried to explain why our prisons treat so many black men like slaves. Chilling footage from the likes of Lee Atwater and John Ehrlichman reveal the lengths taken by the Nixon and Reagan administrations to keep African-American communities at bay via law-and-order policies and the war on drugs. It wasn’t just a conspiracy theory.
READ MORE: ‘Triple 9’ Director John Hillcoat Talks Great Actors, #OscarsSoWhite and the Black Lives Matter Movement
“We wanted to show the building blocks, show the progression of oppression,” DuVernay said. “It was very clear decade by decade, it was the organizing principle we embraced.”
“13th” hits theaters for an Oscar-qualifying run October 7 — the same day it begins streaming on Netflix, and 25 days before Election Day. “I felt eager to share this material before folks made their decisions to vote,” she said. “I felt I needed to get this out months in advance. The October 7 release was just in the nick of time to enter the conversation and ask people to interrogate these issues.”
And, after some internal debates, she included Donald Trump in the film. “Trump has taken this country to a place that will have repercussions past this moment… for a long time,” she told the NYFF press.
ESPN
Another doc in the New York Film Festival addresses race relations in America. “I Am Not Your Negro” (Magnolia, December 9) from 62-year-old documentarian Raoul Peck, works from an unfinished manuscript (“Remember This House”) by the late writer James Baldwin (“Another Country”) about a generation of black leaders slain in their prime: Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Medgar Evers. Samuel L. Jackson voices Baldwin as the film’s articulate narrator, describing meetings with all three men and their oversized impact on the culture before they were tragically brought down. We see clips of Baldwin giving talks, and appearing on the Dick Cavett Show describing the mythology of the negro criminal. Whites’ terror toward blacks “has made them criminals and monsters,” said Baldwin.
And just as DuVernay unpacks the powerful images in D.W. Griffith’s seminal “The Birth of a Nation” that reinvigorated a dormant Ku Klux Klan and introduced iconographic burning cross, so Baldwin explains how liberal Hollywood’s “lie of their pretended humanism” in lauded ’60s classics like “The Defiant Ones” and “In the Heat of the Night” produced images of black and white reconciliation that were designed “not to trouble but to reassure.” When Sidney Poitier jumps off a moving train to save Tony Curtis, he said, black folks wanted him to “stay on the train!”
READ MORE: Review: In Engrossing, Essential ‘The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution,’ Past Is Prologue
In theaters now is another eye-opener, Tribeca documentary-prize-winner “Do Not Resist” (Vanish Film/mTuckman Media), a first feature from cinematographer Craig Atkinson (“Detropia”) about the fraught relationship between heavily armed police and black communities around the country. The son of a white retired SWAT officer, Atkinson took his camera to Ferguson, Miss. to capture first-hand footage of the armed face-off between police in battle gear and angry citizenry. He gained access to enlightening police training sessions where top trainer David Grossman exhorted attendees to feel like superheroes in capes as they prepare for terrorist situations most will never have to face. (The officer who killed Philander Castile in Minnesota attended Grossman’s classes.)
And the film shows how the government is complicit in providing — at taxpayer expense — small towns such as Concord, Mass. with gigantic armored vehicles largely used for drug raids that, more often than not, don’t find drugs. “They’re called MRAPs, for Mining Resistant Ambush Protectant vehicle,” Atkinson told me. “They’re designed to withstand a roadside bomb exploding under the chassis, and are effective overseas. They tend to roll over.”
READ MORE: Distribution or Production/Financing? Where Does Black Cinema Need Most Help?
And capping off this must-see list is ESPN Films’ five-part, seven-hour-and-46-minute film, “OJ: Made in America,” directed by Ezra Edelman, which is coming back into theatrical release in major cities this month ahead of awards season.
Sometimes giving a director the freedom to find a movie can be the right thing. ESPN exec Connor Schell gave star “30 by 30” director Edelman (“Requiem for the Big East,” “Magic & Bird: A Courtship of Rivals”) carte blanche to provide the O.J. Simpson Trial of the Century with history and context. Raised in Washington, D.C. by children’s-rights advocate Marian Wright Edelman, the filmmaker started with a contract to deliver four hours on Simpson by 2015.
“Honestly, the whole thing was a complete cart-before-the-horse approach,” Edelman told me, “a leap of faith. We wanted to do something long before we had any idea what it was. I was on my own.”
First screened to raves at Sundance in January, the compelling narrative seamlessly takes us from Los Angeles in the ’60s, when Simpson was a star USC football player and the city faced the Watts race riots, through the aftermath of the Simpson trial. I saw things about how L.A. police treat black citizens that I had never seen before — not only the accumulated violent police attacks on the local black population during several decades of riots, but also routinely trashing people’s homes for no reason. It becomes clear why people from Watts to Compton have learned not to trust cops.
Similarly, “Do Not Resist” shows SWAT teams pulling up in armored trucks for a routine drug raid on peaceful families going about their business, using the cash from their pockets (“asset forfeiture”) to fund their operations.
READ MORE: James Baldwin Died Today in History; No Biopic Yet, Although Raoul Peck is Working on a Documentary
“Made in America” took so long to get made that FX’s Emmy-winning limited series, “The People v. O.J. Simpson,” came and went a few months before “Made in America” aired in five parts on ESPN this summer and swiftly hit multiplatform release. Having missed the Emmy window, the film’s rousing Sundance debut gave ESPN the confidence to release it in theaters for Oscar consideration.
The movie is divided into five parts of different lengths, not one-hour episodes, but the divisions are organic. Edelman said he told ESPN: “I’m not doing a mini-series, I have zero interest. I’m interested in telling a story. I don’t care how you air it.” While IMDb treats “Made in America” as episodic television and many reviewers consider it ESPN TV, Edelman says he made a long film designed to be watched by a group inside a theater. “That was the best part of the whole process,” Edelman told me at an L.A. luncheon for Academy members. “The most rewarding part of it was sitting in a theater.”
Magnolia Pictures
Thus far, movie awards groups are going along with “Made in America.” It is being considered by the Broadcast Film Critics Association and the Academy as a film, and landed on the DOC NYC shortlist of 15 along with “13th” and “I Am Not Your Negro.”
We could see all three films in the race for the final five Oscar nominees — on their way to changing the way people view the world.
Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.In his haste to build a new home and swimming pool, Greg Abbott killed a protected pecan tree in violation of Austin’s rules.
When Governor Greg Abbott called for a special session last week, his list of 20 priority issues included one item that left some observers scratching their heads. In addition to property tax reform and anti-abortion measures, Abbott said he wanted lawmakers to override cities’ regulations protecting trees.
“Some local governments, like the city of Austin, are doing everything they can to overregulate,” Abbott said at a press conference announcing the special session. “I want legislation that … prevent[s] cities from micromanaging what property owners do with trees on their private land.”
Why was the governor asking lawmakers to examine what appeared to be a non-issue?
The answer may lie in Abbott’s personal experience with Austin’s tree ordinance. In a recent radio interview, Abbott said he was upset that the city of Austin wouldn’t allow him to remove a pecan tree at the house he owned in West Austin and required him to plant new trees.
“Austin, Texas owns your trees,” Abbott said. “That’s insanity. … It’s socialistic.”
But city records tell a different story. In 2011, Abbott was looking to demolish his 4,540-square-foot home in West Austin and replace it with an even bigger two-story, four-bedroom house with a backyard pool. The construction, however, could’ve harmed two large pecan trees in his yard considered “heritage” trees by the city of Austin.
According to city records, Abbott was given a building permit but also required to protect two large pecan trees — the state tree of Texas — near his new home and swimming pool. He didn’t follow the plan and the construction crew killed one of the pecan trees. He was later allowed to remove the pecan tree and at least three other trees on his property.
Matt Hirsch, a spokesperson for Abbott, did not respond to a request for comment.
In 2010, Austin City Council adopted a heritage tree ordinance, which provides protection to certain species of trees 24 inches and greater in diameter. The Austin regulations require property owners to inform the city if they’re planning development activity that could affect a heritage tree. In May 2011, when Abbott applied for a permit to construct the new home, a city arborist inspected his property and required that the two pecan trees be protected during construction. Specifically, the arborist required that he install a fence to protect the trees, add mulch and avoid harming the critical root zones.
“No sprinkler or landscaping impacts greater than 4 inches allowed,” the city arborist wrote. “There’s critical root zones on entire lot.”
But a year later, Abbott asked for permission to remove the 24-inch pecan tree because it was dying. When the city came out to inspect, they discovered that the construction crew had damaged the roots, city arborist Keith Mars told the Observer. Two-thirds of the canopy was dead.
“Unpermitted impacts had occurred within the critical root zone,” the inspector wrote, which had led to the “poor” condition of the tree. Abbott had broken the rules. “This was to be preserved per previous tree permits,” he wrote. Nonetheless, the city let Abbott cut down the tree, only asking that he plant new trees to make up for the loss.
Since then Abbott has requested and received permission to remove three other trees from his property: a 23-inch diameter red oak, a 19-inch magnolia and the 29-inch heritage pecan.Illustration: Simon Letch In recent times, James has been in a different space, battling leukaemia and completing his poetry collection Nefertiti in the Flak Tower. Channel Nine, Leanne Edelsten and Cherry Ripes bearing down on him must have seemed like a bad acid trip. This little kiss-and-tell was broadcast in Australia, so James really can't sue for breach of privacy, as he could if the show had gone to air in Britain. In News Limited's Daily Telegraph yesterday, there was a page three story with the catchy headline ''Lara knew of nudes''. It pointed to the full report on page 23 where we could be nourished with the back story to Channel Nine's broadcast on Tuesday night of a naked Bingle. Those who missed this scoop will be keen to learn that Bingle was snapped by a lurking photographer as she stood without clothes at the window of her Bondi ''fishbowl apartment''. Apparently she was closing the curtains after stepping from the shower. All of this misfortune unfolded as the launch date looms for her reality TV show Being Lara Bingle.
Now there are allegations that Bingle's agent knew of the nude snaps before they were published. Channel Nine's justification was of its usual rigorous standard. A Current Affair's Grant Williams was quoted as saying: ''My job is to expose grubs who think it is all right to take photos of naked women through bedroom windows.'' It's as though the findings of the Finkelstein inquiry into the media, proposed statutory enforcement of journalistic standards and the agitation for an Australian law of privacy are all fantasies. In recent experience, there have been two memorably unattractive media transgressions - until Clive and Lara were added to the cocktail. We had the Sunday Telegraph's publication in 2009 of the fake Pauline Hanson photos, with the bogus former One Nation siren fetchingly clad in lingerie. One News Limited hack justified this on the grounds that ''public people are public property whether they like it or not''. Then there was the David Campbell escapade outside the men-only sauna Ken's of Kensington. Channel Seven's justifications for this exposé´ of the then NSW minister for transport were laughably lamentable, but they were rescued by the industry ''regulator'', who said that even though there was a breach of the privacy provisions of the industry code, there was a ''public interest'' in knowing why the minister resigned before this slice of life was put to air.
Since then, Finkelstein has come out with a proposal for a government-funded, statutory news media council to set standards, handle complaints and deliver enforceable remedies, such as apologies, corrections, retractions and rights of reply. In conformity with precedent, the news industry, including the publishers of this newspaper, reacted with alarm. Inevitably there are journalists who hold concerns about these proposals, but by no means all think they amount to the end of press freedom - the objections seem principally to be coming from management. Why would journalists not be keen to be part of an organisation that is accountable to its readers and part of a gold standard scheme of good housekeeping? The Convergence Review, conducted for the government by a panel of worthies and released this week, says no to statutory regulation, instead proposing an industry-led regulator and complaints handler for ''content service enterprises'', who would be obliged to take part. It would be funded largely by the publishers and broadcasters themselves, but with provision for government top-ups. Contrary to what we believed about a convergent media landscape, two regulators are proposed by this review, and the ABC and SBS would not be required to be part of the content standards body. How media organisations would be compelled to be part of a self-regulating scheme without some sort of strong-arm legislation is not readily apparent.
There is a fascinating section in the Finkelstein report giving chapter and verse on the pitiful failure of media self-regulation. One example is Britain's Press Complaints Commission, which has collapsed under the weight of its own blindness. This was the body that gave the News of the World and News International a clean bill of health on phone hacking. The PCC has been the subject of at least eight inquiries and on several occasions there were proposals to add real teeth, but each time the press barons and editors persuaded the authorities to give them one more chance. Now it has cracked completely, waiting for whatever Lord Justice Leveson suggests should replace it. Tonight the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance hosts the annual press freedom dinner - a worthy occasion to bring to the fore many of the threats to reporters and reporting. What should not be forgotten is that the media here is not free of certain dark arts. Significant bits of Australian journalism have been drinking at the last-chance saloon well beyond closing time. The self-regulated, industry-funded regime for newspapers and the partially self-regulated system for broadcasters have failed to deliver a decently accountable standard for a free media.
[email protected] Follow the National Times on Twitter: @NationalTimesAUSeven studies using experimental and naturalistic methods, reveal that upper-class individuals behave more unethically than lower-class individuals. In studies 1 and 2, upper-class individuals were more likely to break the law while driving, relative to lower-class individuals. In follow-up laboratory studies, upper-class individuals were also more likely to:
exhibit unethical decision-making tendencies (study 3),
take valued goods from others (study 4),
lie in a negotiation (study 5),
cheat to increase their chances of winning a prize (study 6),
and endorse unethical behavior at work (study 7) than were lower-class individuals.
Mediator and moderator data demonstrated that upper-class individuals’ unethical tendencies are accounted for, in part, by their more favorable attitudes toward greed.
"Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms --- greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge --- has marked the upward surge of mankind." ~ Gordon Gekko, 1987
Economics correspondent Paul Solman reports on other new research from the University of California, Berkeley collaborating this, and the impact of wealth on people’s behavior in a new 10-minute video from PBS (posted at YouTube)
This might help explain why some people like Wal-Mart's Christy Walton can rake in $1.2 million a day in unearned income with stock dividends, while at the same time, refusing to pay her employees a living wage in earned hourly income --- costing the taxpayers $6,000 per employee in government entitlements (aka "wage subsidies"). It seems that some of these people just can't help themselves...they're mentally ill!
* Download supporting information at www.pnas.org (PDF) --- "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) is one of the world's most-cited multidisciplinary scientific serials. Since its establishment in 1914, it continues to publish cutting-edge research reports, commentaries, reviews, perspectives, colloquium papers, and actions of the Academy." (* This was also posted at the www.economicpopulist.org)
Forbes: Why (Some) Psychopaths Make Great CEOs "The incidence of psychopathy among CEOs is about 4 percent, four times what it is in the population at large. They lack the things that make you human: empathy, remorse, loving kindness."
BusinessInsider: 20 Signs You are a Psychopath - After CEOs, lawyers are the second most psychopathic profession in the world.
TIME: Study: 1 in 25 Business Leaders May Be Psychopaths - "Psychopaths, who are characterized by being completely amoral and concerned only with their own power and selfish pleasures, may be over-represented in the business environment."
Forbes: The Top 10 Jobs That Attract Psychopaths - 1. CEO, 2. Lawyer, 3. Media (Television/Radio), 4. Salesperson, 5. Surgeon, 6. Journalist, 7. Police officer, 8. Clergy person 9. Chef and 10. Civil servant
Bud Meyers: STUDY: 10% on Wall Street are Psychopaths - "Studies conducted by forensic psychologist Robert Hare indicate that about 1 percent of the general population can be categorized as psychopathic, but the prevalence rate in the financial services industry is 10 percent."
Psychologist Paul Piff and related research. The strategy of psychopathy: primary psychopathic traits predict defection on low-value relationships Proc R Soc B 280 ( 1757 ) 20122773 Abstract Full Text (HTML) Full Text (PDF)Related stories:
A history of Groundbreaker
Nacchio’s trial, defense and conviction
It can be pretty hard to hear with the word “terrorism” crammed into your ears.
At least that appears to be true for many Americans these days, as evidenced by recent poll results regarding Edward Snowden and his revelations about secret government spy programs.
The polls show that most of us think that Snowden — the 29-year-old former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor who leaked documents to the Guardian newspaper, exposing the agency’s surveillance programs that monitor our phone records and email — is guilty of espionage or even treason, and should be sentenced to prison accordingly.
These same polls also reveal that the majority of U.S. citizens believe that it’s acceptable for the government to collect such data on hundreds of millions of us without warrants or probable cause as long as it uses the information only to fight terrorism.
But what if that wasn’t the whole story? What if fighting terrorism were only an afterthought in the government’s motives behind the creation of the secret spy programs exposed by Snowden? What would we do if it were discovered that this massive government intrusion into our private lives had been going on long before the first plane hit the first Trade Center tower? These are the questions we should be asking.
Edward Snowden was employed by Booze Allen Hamilton, a defense contractor that bills itself as a strategy and technology consulting firm. The company has very close ties to, and often works on projects for, the NSA. At the time of his decision to expose the NSA surveillance programs and other highly classified information, Snowden was serving as a contract systems administrator at the agency.
What Snowden has revealed so far is that at least one telecom company, Verizon, is allowing the NSA to collect its metadata to create a bank of information containing every telephone call on Verizon’s system. The NSA claims that it collects all the calls but can only use the information once it has probable cause and a court-approved warrant to do so. Based on past media reporting from 2006 that exposed similar relationships between the NSA and other phone companies, it is currently being assumed in most news reports that all or nearly all of the major telecommunication companies have similar relationships with the NSA.
Edward Snowden
Snowden also revealed the existence of an NSA program known as Prism, which allows the NSA to monitor the email of most Americans. The NSA claims that it is not violating the privacy of any U.S. citizen and that it is conducting these surveillance operations legally under the authority of the USA Patriot Act.
But there appears to be a timeline problem with the NSA’s claim.
The USA Patriot Act was signed into law by President George Bush on Oct. 26, 2001, just six weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The NSA now claims that it is the Patriot Act, which authorized warrantless surveillance and other previously illegal spying techniques, that allowed the agency to launch the mass surveillance dragnets that are currently scooping up the phone and email data of hundreds of millions of Americans. But if that is the justification, then why was the NSA already creating such intrusive domestic spy programs in early 2001, months before the 9/11 attacks or the creation of the Patriot Act?
One of the best sources proving the existence of this pre-9/11 NSA domestic spying can be found in the court proceedings of Joseph Nacchio, the former CEO of Denver-based Qwest Communications, now CenturyLink. You may recall that Nacchio was tried and convicted for insider trading in 2007. He is currently in prison, but has a chance of being released later this year.
The government’s case against Nacchio, including the Security and Exchange Commission’s investigation of Qwest’s accounting practices, was quite strong (see “Nacchio’s trial, defense and conviction,” page 14). The government contends that Qwest, under Nacchio’s leadership, was improperly accounting for one-time sales of its assets to artificially prop up its stock value. This practice was occurring between 2000 and 2002. At the same time that the Qwest stock price was reportedly being fraudulently inflated, Nacchio sold his own shares in the company in 2001, reaping more than $100 million. Eventually the truth about the company’s accounting practices became public and the stock price fell from $55 a share to $1.11 per share.
While the government’s case against Nacchio was quite strong, the same can’t be said for the CEO’s defense. That’s because the court never allowed Nacchio and his attorneys to mount the defense they wanted to present because the court determined it would be a threat to national security.
Nacchio and his attorneys wanted to explain to jurors that Qwest’s financial woes were the result of the federal government’s, particularly the NSA’s, withholding of promised, lucrative contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Nacchio wanted to present evidence to show that this pull-back of promised contracts was in retaliation for Qwest’s refusal to allow the NSA to collect its customers’ phone data on a massive scale, without court approval. And most importantly to this story, redacted documents that were only unsealed after Nacchio’s trial and conviction show that the NSA’s demand to collect Qwest’s customers’ phone information came at a meeting at the NSA’s Fort Meade, Md., headquarters on Feb. 27, 2001, more than half a year before the 9/11 attacks or the creation of the Patriot Act.
According to an unsealed document titled “Renewed objection by Joseph P. Nacchio to exclusion of classified testimony as violative of his constitutional right to mount a defense,” Nacchio and James Payne, who was in charge of garnering government business for Qwest at the time, traveled to NSA headquarters at Fort Meade to discuss Qwest getting a contract as part of an NSA program called “Groundbreaker” (see “A history of Groundbreaker,” page 13). The document also states that the court has “prohibited Mr. Nacchio from eliciting testimony as to what also occurred at the meeting.” The description of what else occurred at the meeting is redacted. The document then says, “The court has also refused to allow Mr. Nacchio to demonstrate that the agency retaliated for this refusal by denying the Groundbreaker and perhaps other work to Qwest.”
The redacted area of the unsealed documents was filled in by The New York Times on Dec. 16, 2007, when it reported that “executives at a Denver phone carrier, Qwest, refused in early 2001 to give the agency [NSA] access to their most localized communications switches, which primarily carry domestic calls, according to people aware of the request, which has not been previously reported. They say the arrangement could have permitted neighborhood-by-neighborhood surveillance of phone traffic without a court order.”
The NSA’s Groundbreaker project was no ordinary government program. It was, in fact, at the time, the largest federal outsourcing of work in history, with an overall budget estimated at between $4 billion and $5 billion. The purpose of Groundbreaker was to completely reinvent and update the NSA’s IT systems to more effectively interact with the changing digital systems that were in use at the major telecommunications companies, among other things. More than 40 companies would eventually get massive contracts from the Groundbreaker project, including Verizon. Qwest never got one dollar.
Nacchio’s defense wanted to paint the picture that at the time Nacchio sold his Qwest stock for a personal gain of more than $50 million, he was not aware that the company’s stock price was inflated and about to crash. Nacchio wanted to tell jurors that he thought the company was about to get hundreds of millions of dollars from the NSA’s Groundbreaker program, which had not been accounted for in the company’s revenue projections. In other words, according to Nacchio, at the time he sold his stock, he was actually expecting Qwest’s stock price to soon rise, on the announcement of the NSA Groundbreaker contract, not collapse, as it eventually did.
Joe Nacchio
At one point, the documents show that the court seems to agree about the significance of Nacchio’s desired defense argument. The unsealed documents state, “And the court believes that this is still relevant. If there was such a contract to be awarded during the relevant time, and as a matter of fact, that contract was not awarded because of Mr. Nacchio’s reactions [refusing to allow NSA to gather Qwest customer information without warrants], then the fact that it was not awarded and he did not learn of the reasons until after May 29, is something that certainly comes out in front of the jury and can be evaluated by the jury.”
Would this defense argument have helped Nacchio in the end? We’ll never know, because, despite its acknowledgement of the argument’s merits, the court mysteriously reversed itself and never allowed Nacchio’s attorneys to fully present the NSA retaliation argument because of the classified nature of the information.
But what the unsealed documents did do was to show that the NSA was actively engaged in gathering massive amounts of domestic phone data prior to 9/11 and the creation of the Patriot Act.
The documents also confirm that interviews conducted with James Payne collaborated Nacchio’s claims regarding what happened at the Feb. 27, 2001 meeting with the NSA, including the agency’s request to gather Qwest’s customer call data. Payne also stated that the NSA continued to request access to Qwest’s customer call data for several years, and that the agency basically suggested that if it didn’t get the access it wanted, Qwest could be jeopardizing its future contracts with all departments of the government, not just the NSA.
The documents also refer to inter views conducted with NSA counsel. A summary memorandum of those interviews was given to the Nacchio defense team. According to the unsealed documents, the summary memorandum confirmed that one reason that Nacchio and Payne were brought to the Feb. 27 meeting at NSA headquarters was to try to gain access to the company’s phone call data. The memorandum also says that “Qwest was denied any agency work as a result of Mr. Nacchio’s refusal.” The document goes on to say that when Nacchio’s attorneys “brought this admission to the court’s attention, the statement was then disavowed.”
Such is the difficulty of trying to get classified information into the public realm.
As important as the Nacchio/Qwest documents are in establishing that the NSA was actively working on gathering massive amounts of phone data without warrants in early 2001, well before the 9/11 attacks or the authorization for such covert activity through the Patriot Act, they are hardly the only evidence of such surveillance activity on the part of the NSA. There are other credible examples as well.
For instance, it’s been widely reported that the Drug Enforcement Administration has received assistance from the NSA since the 1990s in tracking records of phone calls, using mass amounts of telecommunications metadata generated by calls between the United States and Latin America, as well as other regions involved in the drug trade. The drug program collects data on all phone calls between the U.S. and other countries, and then uses computers to analyze the call data for patterns that might expose drug trafficking communications.
Also, according to a federal lawsuit filed on June 23, 2006, in New Jersey, the NSA, AT&T and IBM were working together as early as February 2001 to construct a network operations center identical to the AT&T facility in Bedminster, N.J., so that the NSA could monitor all calls and Internet traffic on the company’s network.
“The NSA program was initially conceived at least one year prior to 2001 but had been called off; it was reinstated within 11 days of the entry into office of defendant George W. Bush,” the suit claimed.
The same lawsuit also alleges that in 2003, Verizon allowed the installation of a high-speed transmission line connecting a Verizon data center to Quantico, Va., the site of a major U.S. intelligence and military base. The suit claimed that the line had no firewall, giving a government agency “unlimited, unrestricted and unfettered access to all wireless call data, information and contents” on the Verizon network.
In yet another example, a 22-year AT&T employee named Mark Klein alleged in a class-action lawsuit that in the early 2000s, he became aware of a secret room in AT&T’s San Francisco facility, used by the NSA, that received signals thanks to a “splitter cabinet” that had been installed to divert information from the company’s fiber-optic cables. Klein claimed that the pieces of equipment in the secret room included a “semantic traffic analyzer,” and that “splitter cabinets” were being installed at AT&T facilities in several other cities, including Seattle, San Jose, Los Angeles and San Diego.
Mark Klein
Finally, there are the accounts of whistleblowers William Binney, Thomas Drake, Edward Loomis and J. Kirk Wiebe, former NSA employees who have been highly critical of the agency and its mass surveillance program — both before and since 9/11 — and who have backed the Electronic Frontier Foundation in its efforts to combat NSA monitoring efforts.
According to the Government Accountability Project (GAP), the NSA could not keep up with the information and communication explosion associated with the rise of the Internet in the 1990s, so a team that included Loomis, Binney and Wiebe developed a program to analyze, streamline and isolate the growing amount of data available. That system, called ThinThread, could filter out irrelevant data, removing the need to send and store large amounts of information for later analysis. The program even had an “anonymizing” feature to protect the privacy rights of U.S. citizens, according to the GAP. The system was ready to roll in January 2001, but Binney and Wiebe say the NSA opted for a more expensive and undeveloped program, Trailblazer, whose bloated budget would benefit private contractors more than the in-house system they had developed. (Trailblazer was retired in 2006 after costing more than $1 billion and is considered by some to be one of the worst failures in U.S. intelligence history.)
Binney and Wiebe retired in October 2001, saying that they could no longer work for the agency in good conscience after the NSA used a component of their ThinThread system to spy on the private communications of U.S. citizens. They also claim that if their system had been in use, the movements of al Qaeda in the days leading up to 9/11 would have been detected.
Binney estimates that the NSA has intercepted between 15 trillion and 20 trillion information transmissions since 9/11, relying on a system called Stellar Wind, a system based on a component of ThinThread — but without the builtin privacy protections, according to the GAP.
The whistleblowers felt the repercussions of their complaints about the NSA. They were subjected to armed FBI raids on their homes and investigation as possible sources behind a New York Times story about the NSA’s domestic spying program in December 2005. In April 2010, Drake was indicted on charges related to national security, but all except one — a misdemeanor charge of misusing an NSA computer — were dropped in June 2011. Drake joins the likes of Daniel Ellsberg as being among only four individuals in the history of the U.S. who have been charged with the “willful retention” of “national defense” under the Espionage Act.
All of this documented mass surveillance activity by the NSA in 2001, prior to 9/11 and the signing of the Patriot Act, would seem to fly in the face of what we have been told — and are still being told — about such spying even today, as NSA officials testify before Congressional hearings regarding the recent NSA leaks at the hands of Edward Snowden. The NSA claims that all of its spying started as a result of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, and has always been done legally — either approved by the executive branch by way of the Patriot Act or authorized by Congress — and all the while overseen and condoned by the courts.
But as the evidence points out, such a claim simply isn’t true. The NSA was clearly working hard to create systems that would collect massive amounts of phone and Internet data in 2001, prior to the attacks. For a plausible explanation for this behavior, we have to look at one of the most important underreported stories of our time. Literally underreported.
In 1996, New Zealand based journalist Nicky Hager shocked the world with his exposé on a global surveillance system known as ECHELON. Hager wrote a book about his findings, which were controversial enough that elements within the British government wanted to ban the book from being sold in the U.K. In the U.S., a summary of Hager’s ECHELON revelations was published in the award-winning Covert Action Quarterly in its winter 1996/1997 edition. That same story went on to be named as one of Project Censored’s 25 most important underreported stories of the year in 1998.
Nicky Hager
Hager’s investigation took him years to complete and ultimately allowed him to interview more than 50 people who had worked in the intelligence community under a secret program known as the UKUSA agreement. According to Hager, the UKUSA agreement was created in 1948 and was a secret Cold Warera intelligence alliance between the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The organization spied on every country around the world that it considered a threat.
The main players in the organization were the NSA; the UK’s spy agency equivalent, the British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ); New Zealand’s Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB); and the intelligence services of Canada and Australia.
In the 1980s, the NSA introduced a new program to the UKUSA agreement that had amazing capabilities. The program was called ECHELON |
a violation of their procedures and they have asked for the certificate in question to be revoked by browsers. We updated Chrome’s revocation metadata again to implement this. This incident represents a serious breach and demonstrates why Certificate Transparency, which we developed in 2011 and have been advocating for since, is so critical.
ANSSI issued a statement (English language version here) blaming “human error" for the creation of the dodgy certificates and downplaying the significance of the issue by arguing it had "no consequences on security for [the] general public”.
As a result of a human error which was made during a process aimed at strengthening the overall IT security of the French Ministry of Finance, digital certificates related to third-party domains which do not belong to the French administration have been signed by a certification authority of the DGTrésor (Treasury) which is attached to the IGC/A. The mistake has had no consequences on the overall network security, either for the French administration or the general public. The aforementioned branch of the IGC/A has been revoked preventively. The reinforcement of the whole IGC/A process is currently under supervision to make sure no incident of this kind will ever happen again.
Security experts have raised a quizzical eyebrow to claims that the "human errors" might "accidentally" lead to spoofed digital certificates, an explanation that would have seemed a tad unlikely even before the Snowden revelations cast a harsh light on the sneaky practices of signals intelligence agencies. The incident has prompted an indignant missive to the EU Commission requesting a privacy investigation.
The incident is not without precedents. Last year SSL certificate authority Trustwave admitted it issued a digital "skeleton key" that allowed an unnamed private biz to spy on SSL-encrypted connections within its corporate network. Trustwave came clean without the need for pressure beforehand. Even so its actions have split security experts and prompted calls on Mozilla's Bugzilla security list to remove the Trustwave root certificate from Firefox. Ultimately Trustwave escaped the "death penalty" and escaped with a strong rebuke over the SSL skeleton key incident.
One difference is that Trustwave owned up voluntarily while in the latest case Google spotted something was amiss thanks to the use of pinning technology.
Back in 2011 hackers broke into the systems of Comodo and DigiNotar, granting rights to issue themselves with fake digital credentials. The fraudulent DigiNotar certificates1 were later used in a man-in-the-middle attack on ordinary internet users in Iran. Users in the Islamic Republic who thought they were talking directly to Gmail, Skype and other services were actually going through an intermediary who would have been able to read their traffic, logs at DigiNotar revealed.
Audits of DigiNotar revealed systemic security failures that prompted browser developers to revoke its trusted status, the same sanction a minority would like to see applied against Trustwave and now (to a lesser extent) ANSSI.
A technical discussion of the issue can be found on the Bugzilla mailing list here. A primer on how the chain of trust in SSL certificates works can be found in a blog post by Paul Ducklin of Sophos. ®
Rootnote
1Recent revelations from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden related to hacks against Brazilian oil company Petrobras "implies that the 2011 DigiNotar hack was either the work of the NSA, or exploited by the NSA," according to noted cryptographer Bruce Schneier. Other specialists dispute this interpretation. However what's not in dispute is that using false digital certificates to run man in the middle attacks is a common tactic of intelligence agencies and other capable attackers that underlines the fragility of system that has underpinned e-commerce and secure communication on the net.President Obama responded angrily on Saturday to the mass shooting that took three lives, including that of a police officer, at a Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado Springs over the Thanksgiving holiday, calling the country’s recurring outbreaks of gun violence “not normal.”
“We can’t let it become normal,” Mr. Obama said in a statement. “If we truly care about this — if we’re going to offer up our thoughts and prayers again, for God knows how many times, with a truly clean conscience — then we have to do something about the easy accessibility of weapons of war on our streets to people who have no business wielding them. Period. Enough is enough.”
The tragedy quickly found its way into the presidential race, with the Democratic candidates offering statements of solidarity with Planned Parenthood, which has faced intense conservative criticism this year, and the Republican hopefuls largely avoiding mention of the latest outbreak of gun violence.
Mr. Obama, who has voiced rising dismay as he has been forced to repeatedly respond to mass shootings, sounded notes of deep exasperation about yet another moment of fear and loss taking place at a time devoted to thanks and family.Ready to fight back? Sign up for Take Action Now and get three actions in your inbox every week. You will receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here. Sign up for Take Action Now and get three actions in your inbox every week.
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Civil liberties advocates on the left and the right have argued for many years—but especially in the aftermath of revelations this year by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden—that spying by the National Security Agency disregards privacy protections outlined in the Fourth Amendment and is surely unconstitutional. Indeed, as the American Civil Liberties Union has argued, the NSA’s “unconstitutional surveillance” represents “a grave danger to American democracy.” Ad Policy
Now, a federal judge has recognized the constitutional concerns.
“I cannot imagine a more ‘indiscriminate’ and ‘arbitrary invasion’ than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every single citizen for purposes of querying it and analyzing it without judicial approval,” wrote US District Judge Richard Leon.
Judge Leon’s decision, which will surely be appealed, focuses attention on legal challenges to the spying program. But it also serves as a reminder that Congress can and should act to defend privacy rights.
“The ruling underscores what I have argued for years: The bulk collection of Americans’ phone records conflicts with Americans’ privacy rights under the U.S. Constitution and has failed to make us safer,” says Senator Mark Udall, D-Colorado, a supporter of legislation to end the bulk collection program. “We can protect our national security without trampling our constitutional liberties.”
Senator Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, said: “Judge Leon’s ruling hits the nail on the head. It makes clear that bulk phone records collection is intrusive digital surveillance and not simply inoffensive data collection as some have said. The court noted that this metadata can be used for ‘repetitive, surreptitious surveillance of a citizen’s private goings on,’ that creates a mosaic of personal information and is likely unconstitutional. This ruling dismisses the use of an outdated Supreme Court decision affecting rotary phones as a defense for the technologically advanced collection of millions of Americans’ records. It clearly underscores the need to adopt meaningful surveillance reforms that prohibit the bulk collection of Americans’ records.”
The senators had reason to be enthusiastic about Judge Leon determination that legal challenges to the massive surveillance program are valid. So valid, in fact, that he issued a preliminary injunction against the program. The judge suspended the order, however, in order to allow a Justice Department appeal.
But Judge Leon was blunt regarding the strength of the challenge that was brought after Snowden revealed details of the agency’s spying in The Guardian.
"I have little doubt that the author of our Constitution, James Madison… would be aghast," the judge wrote with regard to the NSA program for surveillance of cell phone records,
“The court concludes that plaintiffs have standing to challenge the constitutionality of the government’s bulk collection and querying of phone record metadata, that they have demonstrated a substantial likelihood of success on the merits of their Fourth Amendment claim and that they will suffer irreparable harm absent…relief,” Judge Leon wrote in response to a lawsuit brought by Larry Klayman, a former Reagan administration lawyer who now leads the conservative Freedom Watch group.
The case is one of several that have been working their way through the federal courts since Snowden disclosed details of the NSA program.
Legal challenges to NSA spying are not new, and they have failed in the past.
Challenging the FISA Amendments Act (FAA)—the law that permits the government to wiretap US citizens communicating with people overseas—Amnesty International and other human rights advocates, lawyers and journalists fought a case all the way to the US Supreme Court in 2012. In February 2013, however, the Justices ruled 5-4 that the challengers lacked standing because they could not prove they had been the victims of wiretapping and other privacy violations.
The Justice Department has continued to argue that plaintiffs in lawsuits against the spying program lack standing because they cannot prove their records were examined. But Judge Leon suggested that the old calculus that afforded police agencies great leeway when it came to monitoring communications has clearly changed.
Suggesting that the NSA has relied on “almost-Orwellian technology,” wrote Judge Leon, who was appointed by former President George W. Bush to the United States District Court for the District of Columbia bench. “The relationship between the police and the phone company (as imagined by the courts decades ago)…is nothing compared to the relationship that has apparently evolved over the last seven years between the government and telecom companies.”
The judge concluded, “It’s one thing to say that people expect phone companies to occasionally provide information to law enforcement; it is quite another to suggest that our citizens expect all phone companies to operate what is effectively a joint intelligence-gathering operation with the government.”
This case will continue in the courts, as will others.
But it is also in Congress. A left-right coalition that extends from Congressmen Justin Amash, a libertarian-leaning Republican, to Congressman John Conyers, a progressive Democrat, has raised repeated challenges to the NSA spying regimen.
Now, Congress needs to step up to what Congressman Alan Grayson, D-Florida, refers to as “the spying-industrial complex.”
A number of members are ready. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders responded to Judge Leon's ruling by saying: “In my view, the NSA is out of control and operating in an unconstitutional manner. Today’s ruling is an important first step toward reining in this agency but we must go further. I will be working as hard as I can to pass the strongest legislation possible to end the abuses by the NSA and other intelligence agencies.”
The outlines for legislative action have already been presented by the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups that work on privacy issues.
“Congress should not be indifferent to the government’s accumulation of vast quantities of sensitive information about American’s lives,” Jameel Jaffer, the ACLU’s deputy legal counsel told the House Judiciary Committee in July. “This Committee in particular has a crucial role to play in ensuring that the government’s efforts to protect the country do not compromise the freedoms that make the country worth protecting.”
Jaffer told the committee,
Because the problem Congress confronts today has many roots, there is no single solution to it. But there are a number of things that Congress should do right away: • It should amend Sections 215 and 702 to expressly prohibit suspicionless or “dragnet” monitoring or tracking of Americans’ communications. • It should require the executive to release basic information about the government’s use of foreign-intelligence-surveillance authorities, including those relating to pen registers and national security letters. The executive should be required to disclose, for each year: how many times each of these provisions was used, how many individuals’ privacy was implicated by the government’s use of each provision, and, with respect to any dragnet, generalized, or bulk surveillance program, the types of information that were collected. • Congress should also require the publication of FISA court opinions that evaluate the meaning, scope, or constitutionality of the foreign-intelligence laws. The ACLU recently filed a motion before the FISA court arguing that the publication of these opinions is required by the First Amendment, but Congress need not wait for the FISA court to act. Congress has the authority and the obligation to ensure that Americans are not governed by a system of secret law. • Finally, Congress—and this Committee in particular—should hold additional hearings to consider further amendments to FISA, including amendments to make FISC proceedings more transparent.
Members of Congress, conservatives and liberals, Republicans and Democrats, have moved on a number of these fronts. Now it is time for concerted action.
The Congress does not have to wait for the legal wrangling to be resolved. It can, and should, act in defense of civil liberties.Nekst doesnt need much of an introduction. Just come to New York and surrounding areas for a day and you will quickly know and understand who he is.
I am working on a project to culminate at the end of this year on my graffiti documentary photographs with The 7th Letter Crew, MSK and AWR. These are only some of the photos from this night since I am trying to balance posting photos, while keeping the best ones on ice so they are saved “new” for the show. More info about that to come in the future…
If you steal these photos off of here, please do me the courtesy and link back to this site. Click for more
This was on the roof of a 24 hour Exxon gas station.
Since I don’t have a finished daytime photo of the piece yet, here is a photo of it from Kathernator.
This next one is a building just off the side of the Williamsburg Bridge on the Brooklyn side. Censored.
Finished.
Driving back to the city, the truck in front of us had a Nekst tag that had a weird obstruction dead center. Not really a coincidence since he is all over the city.a footnote is a "moving argument" -- it is saved up to be used elsewhere.
when this happens, the contents of the footnote expand, and alphabetical control sequences end up with a space after their text. (in other words, " \infty " ends up as " \infty ".) ordinarily, this doesn't matter. but when a term is written out for sorting into an index, the space does matter, because the index sort is simple ascii, and a string with an extra space in the middle will sort separately.
the space can be avoided by preceding the affected control sequence by \string. ( \protect doesn't work here.) so your index entries in this example can be entered (in the footnote) as
\index{$r_{\string\infty}$}\index{r@$r_{\string\infty}$}
and then they will sort together with the "normal" ones.
(i applaud your making two entries for this expression. that will ensure that someone can actually find the concept in the index.)People walk through Ann Arbor's 2012 Art Fair Angela J. Cesere | AnnArbor.com
Best place to raise a family, best place to be single, best place to retire, best college town, best main street, best foodie town....
Are you exhausted yet?
Let's admit it, Ann Arbor is a great town, but these lists are getting ridiculous.
University of Michigan's campus
Recently Ann Arbor was ranked the No. 9 college town in America by Livability.com. Oddly enough, it was named the 10th-best college town in the country by the Princeton Review less than a week earlier. U.S. News and World Report, Forbes magazine, Away.com and the American Institute for Economic Research, among other publications, have also highlighted this city as being one of the best college towns in America.
In fact, it might be hard to find something Ann Arbor has not been ranked for.
Why do we appear on these lists so often? It could be that Ann Arbor is just that awesome or that the lists work like a snowball, gathering mass as they roll steadily downhill. But I'll get to that later — first let's survey the list mania that has more or less touched on every aspect of Ann Arbor.
Let's see: Are we a happy populace? Yup, according to The Daily Beast we're the fifth-happiest city in all 50 states. Is this a good place to get a job? Heck yes. According to U.S. News, Ann Arbor is the seventh-best city for finding a job and, according to The Atlantic Cities, the eighth-best city for recent college graduates.
Okay, okay. But are we smart? Yes, of course we are. Forbes in 2011 rated us as one of the geekiest towns in the U.S. (No. 16), U.S. News in 2011 rated us as the second most-educated town in the country, Amazon this year praised us for being the fourth best-read group of literates in the nation, and the Daily Beast in 2011 said we were the fourth-smartest college town in existence.
Is your head inflating?
So we're smart. But are we fun? According to the Princeton Review's recent rankings, students love to pack Michigan Stadium. American Style Magazine in 2011 dubbed Ann Arbor the sixth-best midsize "art destination" in America and the Daily Beast in 2012 said we were the fourth most-creative city in the country. And don't forget how happy we are (No. 5) and how easy it is to be single here (Kiplinger this year ranked Ann Arbor as one of the 10 best cities for singles).
Ann Arbor's Main Street Melanie Maxwell | AnnArbor.com
Well geez, everyone must be flocking to Ann Arbor, bringing up the cost of living, right?
Wrong, and there's a ranking to prove it. MSN Real-estate ranked Ann Arbor one of the most affordable places to live (No. 6) in 2011. And you can grow old here too. The Milkin Institute recently ranked Ann Arbor the seventh-best city for successful aging and in 2011 Forbes listed this city as one of the best places to retire in the country.
If you don't want to grow old here, well, that's OK. This year Parenting Magazine ranked Ann Arbor as one of the best places to raise your family and educate your kids. Not ready to raise a family? No problem, ride a bike. Ann Arbor is ranked among the 50 most bike-friendly cities in the country (No. 39.)
Fear of bikes? Fine, take a walk. According to the Pedestrian Bicycle Information Center, Ann Arbor is a gold-level "walk friendly community."
If you don't want to live, work, raise a family, or grow old here, then visit. Travel & Leisure Magazine and Frommers, among countless others, have named Ann Arbor as a top vacation destination.
Whew. That was tiring. And I haven't even touched on how Ann Arbor is one of the gayest and dog-friendliest and sportiest towns in the U.S. (so say the rankings.).
University of Michigan director of community affairs Jim Kosteva recently joked that Ann Arbor's next ranking might possibly fall along the lines of "the seventh-best city for left-handed female entrepreneurs."
A photograph of Liberty Street in Ann Arbor showing the Michigan Theater, the State Theater and Borders Books during a winter evening. A photograph of Liberty Street in Ann Arbor showing the Michigan Theater, the State Theater and Borders Books during a winter evening. This photograph is from wikipedia commons.
Hey, it's possible.
"It seems like every day there is another one," says Ann Arbor Visitors Bureau communications director Sydney Hawkins.
Hawkins isn't complaining. The rankings give Ann Arbor visibility, and a visible town means more visitors, and more visitors mean more revenue for local businesses.
But when you look at all of the rankings compiled —family, retirees, singles, students, kids, professionals— the lists beg the question: How could one place be the best for everything and absolutely everyone?
Hawkins admits that the thought has crossed her mind: "How could that necessarily be the case?" she asks.
So how is it that Ann Arbor is constantly featured on these lists? It's probably a mix of three things.
Thing one: Ann Arbor, simply put, is a cool town.
Thing two: Product placement. Ann Arbor has been featured on Pure Michigan ads, including ones that are broadcast throughout the nation. Additionally, the Visitors Bureau keeps in contact with travel writers and many list-keepers, making sure Ann Arbor is never far from their mind.
A view of Tower Plaza. Mark Bialek | Contributor
Thing three: The snowball effect. If Ann Arbor makes it on one credible ranking, the pile on will follow soon afterward. For example, Ann Arbor recently ranked highly on the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, which studies the healthiness and lifestyle of a city's populace using scientific and measurable data. After that rating, Ann Arbor began popping up on lists all over the stratosphere.
"It kind of sparks a chain reaction," Hawkins said. "When people are looking for places to put on a list, they look a little bit harder at Ann Arbor because it's already on a list."
The exact combination of these factors, however, is unknown.
Yet the result is clear: Ann Arbor is a city plagued by lists and harassed by list-makers and just plain afflicted by being so utterly mind-blowing it can't possibly be ignored.
It might be tempting, in that case, to rank Ann Arbor as the most-ranked city in the nation. But that wouldn't get us anywhere, would it?
Kellie Woodhouse covers higher education for AnnArbor.com. Reach her at [email protected] or 734-623-4602 and follow her on twitter.COINPEDIA – AN ONLINE ENCYCLOPEDIA PLATFORM
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AdvertisementsStorm surge can be the deadliest effect of a tropical storm. The National Hurricane Center is attempting to mitigate this risk by issuing storm surge watches and warnings. (NOAA)
Tuesday afternoon was a game-changing moment in weather-threat communication when the National Weather Service issued its first storm surge watch. Fewer than 24 hours later, they did it again by upgrading it to a warning.
On Wednesday, a storm surge warning is in effect from roughly Port St. Joe, Fla., south to Tampa Bay, in anticipation of a tropical storm making landfall sometime late Thursday night or early Friday morning.
According to the National Hurricane Center, “a storm surge watch is defined as the possibility of life-threatening inundation from rising water moving inland from the shoreline somewhere within the specified area, generally within 48 hours, in association with a tropical, subtropical, or post-tropical cyclone.” A storm-surge warning means a storm surge is imminent within 36 hours.
Storm surge is not to be taken lightly. It is considered a tropical storm’s silent killer. According to survey results published in 2015, “many coastal residents lack sufficient knowledge about their vulnerability and do not comprehend the nature of storm surge.”
The first storm surge warning is in effect for the Big Bend area of Florida. (NOAA)
This is obviously a major problem for weather communicators, and that was shown in 2005 when nearly 180 people died in Mississippi from Hurricane Katrina’s storm surge. “A post-Katrina behavioral survey revealed that most of the respondents in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana could not interpret an NWS storm surge forecast correctly,” the authors of the survey concluded.
With storm-surge warnings, more lives could be saved. It’s a more advanced, but simpler to interpret, early-warning system that uses standard terminology in regards to other weather hazards such as tornadoes and flash floods.
Storm surge is generated by strong winds that push surface water toward the shoreline. But “storm surge is a very complex phenomenon because it is sensitive to the slightest changes in storm intensity, forward speed, size (radius of maximum wind), angle of approach to the coast, central pressure and the shape and characteristics of coastal features such as bays and estuaries,” the National Hurricane Center says.
The destructive power of a storm surge is also dependent on the bathymetry of the ocean, or the topography of the ocean floor. Coastlines that are close to the continental shelf and are rather steep will experience smaller storm surges than ones that are shallow and rise gradually.
The bathymetry of the Big Bend of Florida, where this week’s tropical storm is expected to make landfall, is rather shallow, so even a minor cyclone can create a rather big storm surge.
It should be noted that the storm surge watch-warning product is a prototype and will be disseminated experimentally for the 2016 hurricane season. It is expected to be fully operational for the 2017 hurricane season.Victoria Roe and Donald Hicks Jr. face drug and weapons charges after a drug raid in July. (Photo: Handout)
LANSING — Police may have threatened to call child protective services if a Lansing woman didn’t answer questions without her attorney present shortly after a drug raid in July in Lansing’s north side, according to court records.
Victoria Roe, 25, was at home with her 14-month-old child when police, acting on a search warrant, made a forced entry. Police found about 1,444 grams of cocaine, $6,960, four handguns and scales that tested positive for cocaine residue during the raid, according to testimony. The street value of 1,400 grams of cocaine is between $140,000 and $210,000. The price varies on the quantity sold.
Roe’s remarks to police cannot be used in her prosecution, 54A District Court Judge Hugh Clarke ruled Thursday. But he also ordered her and her co-defendant, Donald Hicks Jr., bound over to trial in Ingham County Circuit Court on drug and weapons charges and denied a defense motion to suppress evidence found during the search.
Ingham County Prosecuting Attorney Stuart Dunnings III said he will review the decision with his staff and make a decision on a potential appeal.
Stuart Shafer, Roe’s attorney, declined to comment.
Chris Kokkinakos, Hicks’ attorney, didn’t return a message seeking comment.
Lansing Police Chief Mike Yankowski declined to comment, citing the open case.
Two controlled drug buys by a confidential informant — for $600 and $650 worth of cocaine — led to the search warrant, according to testimony. There was also police surveillance of the home, officers testified.
Defense attorneys challenged both of those during the preliminary hearing, revealing that police didn’t keep surveillance logs and that the confidential informant, whose identify wasn’t revealed, was facing unrelated charges.
A single drug bust finding nearly 1,500 grams of cocaine is uncommon in Lansing, Capt. Daryl Green told the State Journal in August during an interview.
Police were wearing masks and carried “big” guns when they raided the home, Roe told Clarke during her testimony on the final day of a preliminary hearing last month.
She was handcuffed and taken to the home’s downstairs bathroom where she was questioned several times, with the last being recorded, according to court records.
Roe testified that she asked police if she needed an attorney and was told “if that’s the way you want to play it we can call” Child Protective Services, according to Clarke’s order. Those comments weren’t made during the recorded interview.
The police officer testified on an earlier day of the preliminary hearing that he never made the comments.
But in his order, Clarke wrote that Roe’s answers were “rapid, straightforward and did not appear to be guessing,” and that she didn’t argue with the assistant prosecutor attorney during cross examination.
“The court believes the statements made to the officer by this defendant were not voluntary and were made under a fair and legitimate threat that they would call CPS and that her child would be taken from her,” Clarke wrote. He added that he believed what Roe told the police was true.
The Lansing Police Department has a standard form that allows a defendant to waive their rights, which was signed by Hicks, but wasn’t used for Roe’s interviews, Clarke wrote.
Roe and Hicks are charged with delivering/manufacturing more than 1,000 grams of cocaine, maintaining a drug house and felony firearm. They face up to life in prison if convicted.
They live in the same house in north Lansing, according to court records.
The preliminary hearing, which was to determine if there was enough evidence for them to stand trial, spanned several days in August and included briefs and supplemental briefs from the attorneys.
Contact Matt Mencarini at (517) 267-1347 or [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @MattMencarini.
Read or Share this story: http://on.freep.com/1FzZOjcThis page will always show the latest Gigantic Tier List for competitive play. This Gigantic Tier List is designed to rank Heroes in terms of their strength in the current meta. Although some Heroes are considered niche or balanced, those that aren't Tier 1 or 2 shouldn't be considered poor. While any match can be won with any Hero, this list is designed to present you with the strongest. Updated 4 August 2017
Tier List Descriptors
Tier S+ - These Heroes are undeniably too strong and can be placed in any composition and succeed.
Tier S - Heroes which are often first pick, first ban material and are considered top tier.
Tier A+ - Above the point balance, these Heroes comprise most team compositions and should see only minor changes.
Tier A - The focal point of balance, these Heroes should see few if any changes.
Tier B+ - These Heroes are generally considered good, but require a highly skilled individual to get the most out of them and aren't viable in all situations.
Tier B - Team compositions generally need to be built around a Hero in this pool to make them viable. They are rarely, if ever, seen in competitive play.
Tier C - Very low pick rate Heroes and not considered viable.
Tier List Movement ↓ ↑
↑ Added Ramsay to A+ Tier. Very mobile, solid damage, a good Focus and a huge melee counter.
↓ Moved Xenobia to B+ Tier. Excellent sustain but lacks poke, easily focused and long cooldowns.
Please Note: We are continuing to work on updating all our guides. Expect updates over the next few days!
S+ Tier Type Role Guide Description Lord Knossos Melee Bruiser [Guide] Speed, raw damage and survivability make Knossos a powerful ally. His ability to immobilize, knock down and hold people in place - for enormous bleed damage - make him a fearsome. HK-206 Ranged Shooter [Guide] Amazing zoning potential and what he might lack in mobilty, he more than makes up for with his utility, damage and survivability; he's a valuable addition to any team.
S Tier Type Role Guide Description Beckett Ranged Shooter [Guide] Unrivalled mobility combined with huge ranged damage, she's formidable in the right hands. Her Grenade offers good AOE potential and her Grenade Launcher hits like a truck. Tripp Melee Assassin [Guide] Her burst, mobility and stealth make her an assett on many teams. She's still the queen of taking down lone targets and roaming between Control Points. Uncle Sven Ranged Healer/Utility [Guide] Providing a super jump, healing burst, armor break and burn places him above other supports due to his damage output, but also his ability to lockdown an area and survive. Wu Melee Fighter [Guide] Wu has incredible damage and is capable of traveling the map at frightening speed. His Tongue Lash is also invaluable at early pokes against the opposition, but he requires good skill.
A+ Tier Type Role Guide Description Charnok Ranged Caster [Guide] Amazing AOE potential, fantastic poke and an Ultimate ability that can comfortably clear a room. Also fairly good at evading opponents thanks to Detonate. Margrave Melee Tank [Guide] A formidable tank that has mobility, group utility and a bag of utility. His Hellburst is invaluable for Control Point pushes and he can take a considerable beating before he goes down. Ramsay Melee Assassin [Guide] With the right build choices, amazing mobility, solid damage and incredibly evasive. Vadasi Ranged Healer [Guide] Her heals are good and her damage solid. When played well she can last a long time and dish out some pain, while keeping her team and their health topped up. Zandora Melee Tank/Utility [Guide] Bags of utility and her damage is surprisingly high, especially if she's using her leap-attack. Fits comfortably into most compositions.
A Tier Type Role Guide Description Pakko Melee Bruiser/Control [Guide] Solid mobility, reasonable damage, good control and an Ultimate ability that buys your team time. Tyto Melee Assassin [Guide] His burst combined with his mobility makes him a frightening Hero to encounter. He's able to quickly get in and out of combat and although squishy, can easily evade attacks. Voden Ranged Shooter/Utility [Guide] His Hidden Spring brings value to a team and his poison can add solid group pressure. He has lots of survivability and his ranged damage is consistent.
B+ Tier Type Role Guide Description Imani Ranged Shooter [Guide] Providing covering fire from a map away, Imani is strong in the right hands at picking off weak targets or neutering an advance. Only particularly useful on specific "open" map locations. Mozu Ranged Caster [Guide] Mobile, solid escapes and some utility. She struggles to finish people off due to the wind-up time on Magic Bolt and the very small radius of Arcane Vortex. Xenobia Ranged Control [Guide] Her life drains, combined with buckets of crowd control make Xenobia a great hero. She might not get the highest kills, but her presence - in the right hands - will be felt.
B Tier Type Role Guide Description Aisling Melee Summoner/Utility [Guide] With bags of utility thanks to Cador, she's a reasonable draft. Cador can hunt players down and deals fair damage. Let down purely by the fact Caldor isn't entirely reliable. Griselma Ranged Summoner [Guide] Almost entirely reliant on Portal Beasts to deal real damage. Without them, she hits like a wet noodle and is very static, offering very little threat.
C Tier Type Role Guide Description No heroes are currently considered to be C Tier.
D Tier Type Role Guide Description No heroes are currently considered to be D Tier.
What would you change? Why? Let us know.Christchurch local and ‘punk-ass book jockey’ Moata Tamaira looks into the greatest sitcom map-related mystery of the 21st century. Why was Christchurch chosen as a mappelganger for Parks and Recreation’s Pawnee?
Once upon a time the best you could hope for in terms of pop culture references to Christchurch were some Exponents lyrics or a snarky “Crimechurch” jab during an episode of Outrageous Fortune. But no longer.
For now, thanks to the Internet and Amy Poehler, Christchurch’s claim to fame (other than earthquakes) is that we are map-twins with Pawnee, Indiana, the setting of one of the best sitcoms ever made, Parks and Recreation.
But why and how have we received this rare honour?
The first inkling that we’d achieved cartographic immortality came when a version of a Pawnee map from the season two episode, “Summer Catalog” was uploaded to the Parks and Recreation wiki in 2011, though its uncanny similarity to Christchurch seems to have gone largely unnoticed until late 2013. From then, it started getting shared around and eventually commented on by several people, including sometime Spinoff contributor James Dann. From there the story was picked up by New Zealand media.
For reasons known only to the vagaries of the Internet, the story has recently cropped up again, allowing a fresh new batch of Cantabrians to be delighted (and reminded that the most important things in life are waffles, friends and work).
Now, I love Christchurch as much as the next person but you’ve got to admit that my hometown does not seem like an obvious choice here, so I went on a hunt to find out more.
And lo, the Internet did provide in the form of Geoffrey Mandel, a graphic designer who’s worked on everything from Space: Above and Beyond (remember that? I LOVED that show) to Mad Men to Agents of SHIELD and Serenity. And he’s the man responsible for the Parks and Recreation map that was based on Christchurch.
But why us?
“I’ve been to your lovely city, in 2004 when I took a hiking vacation to the South Island. It seemed around the right size/shape for Pawnee, although there is much less vegetation in central Indiana, to say nothing of Glendale and the San Fernando Valley where the show was actually filmed.”
Ha! Christchurch is officially the loveliest of the pretend Pawnees. Suck it, Indiana! (This also explains why the Pawnee version of Christchurch features fewer green spaces.)
But as Mandel explains, other more practical reasons came into play as well.
“I used a PDF map provided online by the city of Christchurch, which allowed me to change street names very easily and quickly since I only had a day or so to come up with the map.”
Take heed, New Plymouth, Levin, and Gore. Your moment of televisual fame may be only an easily downloadable vector file away |
her the most right now. The next steps, she figured, would come naturally afterwards.
Which led to number four. Aside from reconciling with her sister, the most important thing in her life right now was Anna. As cheesy as that probably sounded. Anna was really the first person to fully pull her out of the rut she was in, to show her that same amount of adoration and affection she hadn't seen in awhile. So tonight would be more than just her seeing her girlfriend do what she did best. It would be her first real step to break away from that shadow born a few months ago that started to loom over her once more.
She patted the pocket on her shirt, the small black paper bag nestled right inside. Hopefully it would make up for the lack of flowers.Florida Sen. Marco Rubio believes Democrats have to support the enforcement of current immigration laws before any reform effort can successfully move through Congress.
Speaking on Fox News Wednesday, Rubio said Democrats are aghast at current efforts by the Trump administration to deport illegal immigrants. But he said that attitude is going to hurt any effort by the federal government to crack down on illegal immigration and pass reform that can help the country.
"If you're not enforcing the laws you have now, why are people going to believe you're going to enforce the laws you have in the future?" Rubio asked.
In order to get reform done, the first step must be modernizing the immigration system to a merit-based system that prioritizes immigrants based on what they can add to the economy, Rubio said. After that comes figuring out a way to keep illegal immigrants who are not running afoul of the law.
"It has to happen in those steps, and if Democrats are willing to accept that order and in those steps, and if Democrats are willing to accept that direction, then we can get something done," he said.
The progressive left's influence on Democratic lawmakers is going to end up costing them a chance at reform and leave an untenable status quo in place, he said.
"If they continue to fight for the unrealistic, let's give everybody blanket amnesty or let's give everybody citizenship or let's do it backwards or let's be against any effort to enforce the law beyond symbolic things, then I think we're going to be stuck in the cycle we're in," Rubio said.China has built the world's largest database of deep-sea bacteria amid the country's increasing efforts to promote oceanic study and conservation.
China has successfully split nearly 10,000 microbes and built the country's first collection of deep-sea bacteria, which carries 22,000 microbes and covers more than 3,400 species, Sun Shuxian, deputy director of the State Oceanic Administration (SOA), said at a Saturday press conference, the Xinhua News Agency reported.
It is also the world's largest collection of deep-sea bacteria, Bai Shan, an official from the China Ocean Mineral Resource R&D Association, organizer of the press conference, told the Global Times on Sunday.
The government attaches great importance to deep-sea exploration, which is also receiving more and more attention from the general public, Bai added.
The collection provides a database for scientific research, primarily in marine biodiversity and evolution, and can also assist with the search for new compounds, which can be used in medical research, said Shao Zongze, director of SOA's Laboratory of Marine Genetic Resources.
However, it may still take 10 to 15 years for these deep-sea resources to be used in actual production of medicine, Shao noted.
According to Shao, the collection has been accumulated since 2003 and new bacteria have been added to the collection over time.
China is now among the leading countries in deep-sea exploration, especially in the collection of bacteria and the building of deep-sea research submersibles, Wang Yamin, an associate professor at the School of Ocean Biology of Shandong University, told the Global Times.
The progress China has made in the exploration and preservation of deep-sea biological resources has changed China's position in international research and development of the seafloor genetic resources, said Sun.
In the research on deep-sea organisms, the SOA has completed the species classification and evolution research of more than 100 marine microbes, marking important progress in the research on the functions and metabolic mechanisms of deep-sea microbes, Sun noted.
According to Sun, the SOA has also evaluated the potential value of more than 4,000 microbes in areas including marine medicine, biopesticide, environmental protection, biotechnologies and industrial enzyme, and has applied for more than 200 patents at home and abroad.
In oceanic expedition, China has formed a squad of submersibles: Jiaolong, Hailong and Qianlong. The manned submersible Jiaolong completed its 150th dive in June in the Yap Trench, Xinhua reported.
China is making progress in becoming a global maritime power, pushing forward technology and research on all fronts.
Haiyang Dizhi 10, or Ocean Geology 10, China's new domestically built marine geological survey vessel, made its debut on June 28, meaning that China has built a three-dimensional system for deep-sea exploration, Xinhua reported.SEATTLE -- Several Seahawks teammates stood by Blair Walsh after the kicker missed all three of his field goal attempts in the team's 17-14 loss to the Washington Redskins on Sunday.
"It's just part of the game," defensive lineman Michael Bennett said.
Running back Thomas Rawls added: "Nobody's perfect."
Walsh had been in the midst of a bounce-back season with Seattle before Sunday.
"Not good," he said when asked postgame how he's feeling. "I didn't help my team today, that's for sure. The thing is, though, is that this is the first time this year where I haven't really come through, and I've got to remember that. As much as it sucks, and as much as I want to be there for my teammates and help us win, I've got to remember that I'm capable of doing good things here."
Walsh didn't blame the wet conditions at CenturyLink Field when asked about his misses, which came from 44, 39 and 49 yards and were all wide left. He said the second and third kicks felt fine leaving his foot.
"Those kicks were all me," he said.
The Seahawks signed Walsh to a one-year deal last offseason and allowed Stephen Hauschka to leave in free agency. Walsh was released midway through last season by the Minnesota Vikings, who had lost confidence in him after some well-documented accuracy issues that included an infamous miss of a chip-shot field goal that would have given Minnesota a win over Seattle in the wild-card round of the playoffs after the 2015 season.
Walsh made 12 of his 13 attempts before Sunday's game.
"You don't want to be a finger-pointer," Bennett said when asked about Walsh. "Every point in the game, somebody could have made a better play and did something better, so you don't want to point fingers. You want to always be able to always be behind your teammates, whether they played good or played bad. They're still your teammates, and Blair is a great kicker. Sometimes things happen, and you want to be able to constantly believe in him, and I believe in him in every facet of the game."
The Seahawks made plenty of mistakes Sunday. They committed 16 penalties, dropped two interceptions and threw two of them, and allowed Washington to drive 70 yards in the final minutes for the game-winning touchdown.
When Seattle took over for a final possession, Russell Wilson's Hail Mary from Washington's 46-yard line fell incomplete in the end zone. Coach Pete Carroll said he would've attempted a field goal had Seattle gotten in range.
"I'm disappointed for him," Carroll said. "He had trouble in the pregame, when [the wind] was blowing. The weather was kind of nasty early on. I'm disappointed for him. If we had a shot, I was totally counting on him to kick the game winner. I wasn't thinking anything but that."
The Seahawks (5-3) play the Arizona Cardinals (4-4) on Thursday night.
"I wanted the last chance that we had there, but obviously, it didn't work out that way," Walsh said. "But for me, it's just go on to the next game. Thursday comes up quick, and I'll be ready to go."Emre Can says he believes the achievements made by Liverpool’s young squad show the club have a good future ahead.
The 21-year-old came to Anfield from Bayer Leverkusen last summer and has made a great impact so far, mainly as part of a three-man defence.
Although Liverpool go into the current international break off the back of Sunday’s disappointing 2-1 defeat to Manchester United, Can believes brighter days are ahead.
“I definitely feel we’re at the start of a new era,” he told the club’s official website. “It’s a very, very young team with Philippe Coutinho, Jordan Henderson and Lazar Markovic.
“But I think the team needs to keep improving, and continue doing what we’re doing at the moment to get to these years. But I believe there are good years ahead.”
Liverpool next face a tricky trip to in-form Arsenal on Saturday, 4th April and operators like Matchbook are already speculating about the outcome of this encounter. The team are hoping to secure a victory which would give them a much-needed boost in their campaign to finish in the Premier League‘s top four.
The Reds currently sit fifth in the league table, a point ahead of Southampton, but five points behind fourth placed United with eight games of the season left to play.
Despite the pressure of the end of season run-in ahead, Can feels he is settling into life on Merseyside well.
“I feel very good at the moment,” Can added. “I feel the trust of the manager and I feel I’m doing a good job, that’s why I’m playing – so I’m happy.
“I’m proud that a manager of the status of Brendan Rodgers said something like that about me in this way but I know it’s a long way to go and I need to keep giving my best to get there one day, I have to keep on working.”
Responding to being described as a “Rolls-Royce” type player in the build-up to February’s Merseyside derby, in which Liverpool drew 0-0 with Everton, the expression left the German a little bemused.
“Rolls-Royce footballer? I know what it means but we would not use that expression in Germany at all. I’d never heard it before. I obviously thought it’s a big, luxurious car so I just associated positive things with it.”
Can could feature for Germany Under-21s when they face Italy U21s on Friday night.Well, that was fast.
A few hours after the release of Tweetbot 4.0.1 with 3D Touch, Tapbots has released version 4.0.2 of the app, which adds a swipeable Safari View Controller.
Thanks to a workaround by Paul Haddad, you can now dismiss Safari View Controller with swipe from anywhere along the left edge of the screen – on both the iPhone and iPad. The gesture works surprisingly well despite its non-standard behavior, and it fixes one major annoyance of Safari View Controller on iOS 9.
I hope that more apps consider this, as it combines the comfort of Tweetbot's old web view with the benefits of Safari View Controller.
Update: Also in this release, you can set Safari View Controller to open in Safari Reader mode automatically for every webpage (if Reader is available). I previously wrote about the feature here, and it works well for Tweetbot if you primarily open articles to read in-app. Very nice.Harry Kane’s stint as captain of England is not yet finished. According to the Standard, England manager Gareth Southgate has now confirmed that Kane is set to retain the captain’s armband at least through tomorrow’s friendly between England and France in Paris.
Kane overcame a bunkered Scotland defense on Saturday, scoring a 93rd minute last-gasp goal that earned England a 2-2 draw in Glasgow in World Cup 2018 qualifying. It was the first time Kane had captained England at the senior level. Southgate tapped Kane over Gary Cahill, who was assumed to be the logical person to assume the captaincy after Wayne Rooney.
In fact, this decision has now led many to speculate that Kane might be the player to succeed Rooney as overall England captain in the long term. Rooney was not selected by Southgate for this particular international break, and there are questions as to how long before Rooney decides to hang up his England boots for good.
In tomorrow’s friendly, Kane will be playing against his teammate Hugo Lloris, who is both France’s and Tottenham Hotspur’s captain. The match kicks off at 8:00 pm in the UK and 3:00 pm ET — winner take Spurs’ armband for 2017-18?Diplo’s Major Lazer cartoon will premiere April 16th on FXX
Set to join FXX’s Animation Domination lineup, Diplo’s Major Lazer cartoon was devoid of a release date; until now. Midnight on April 16th will mark the date Diplo’s newest venture will join FXX, which is also set to bring a long list of celebrities to the program. The cartoon will follow a Rasta commando in a dystopian Jamaica, who fights crime and also DJs. Featuring the voices of Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, J.K. Simmons, Aziz Ansari, Andy Samberg, Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig, Charli XCX, and RiFF RAFF, the cartoon, appropriately titled “Major Lazer,” adds another notch on the belt for one of electronic music’s most diverse stars.
Via: Paste Magazine
Read More:
DA Premiere: Major Lazer – Get Free (Jerome Price Remix) [Free Download]
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Reverend William Owens of the Coalition of African-American Pastors (CAAP) and the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), is planning a shindig with the Heritage Foundation in October, where bigots can “work together to stop this nonsense.”
“This nonsense” being equal standing before the law for gay and lesbian couples.
“The adults are confused and they’re confusing the children,” he said, echoing Pat Robertson, who claims there are no gay people, just confused straight people.
Owens asked, “how can two men rear a child? How can a man be a mother? Tell me that.”
Owens has been told that, but he, like Justice Scalia, who claims same-sex parents are not as good as “traditional” parents, simply refuses to listen.
A report published by the American Academy of Pediatrics fund that,
Many studies have demonstrated that children’s well-being is affected much more by their relationships with their parents, their parents’ sense of competence and security, and the presence of social and economic support for the family than by the gender or the sexual orientation of their parents.
And that’s not all. The authors of the report point to the National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study, which began in 1986. “The NLLFS examines the social, psychological, and emotional development of the children as well as the dynamics of planned lesbian families.”
It turns out, based on the NLLFS, that the children of lesbian mothers,
indicated that they had high levels of social, school/academic, and total competence and fewer social problems, rule-breaking, and aggressive and externalizing behavior compared with their age-matched counterparts.
There are Owens’ answers but he will not acknowledge them because they violate his prior beliefs. Neither will Scalia nor Robertson acknowledge these studies or any study that does not tell them what they want to hear.
So what Owens wants to do, based on belief and pseudoscience of his own, is start a new Civil Rights Movement, one based not on a call for equality but a call for inequality.
You think we did something during the Civil Rights Movement? This is our Civil Rights Movement…We are going to fight to the end, we are not going to give up, we are going to fight like we fought and get civil rights, like we marched for miles and miles and miles, we took the heat, whatever it took, we are going to stand for the family.
But for Owens’ analogy to work, the Civil Rights Movement would have had to have been composed not of African-Americans seeking equality but of whites seeking to keep them from ever obtaining equal rights.
Anti-gay prejudice is not about championing civil rights; therefore there can be no valid comparison of the two. Nobody is seeking to eliminate the family, or to say that opposite sex couples cannot have families. What Owens is talking about is the antithesis of a civil rights movement.
A more apt comparison would be between CAAP and the NSDAP (the National Socialist German Workers Party), otherwise known as the Nazi Party, with gays and lesbians standing in for the Jews, and a gay problem replacing the “Jewish problem.” And like a famous bigot before him, Julius Streicher, Owens is a race-baiter.
The obscenity Owens’ speaks of is based on lies. A lie that gay and lesbian couples are unfit parents; a lie that heterosexuals are better than gays and lesbians; a lie that gays and lesbians can be “reformed”; a lie that gays and lesbians are just confused straight people.
After all, as Pat Robertson deviously argued, you can’t be anti-gay (and therefore a despicable bigot) if there is no such thing as a gay person.
Turns out there is also no such thing as Owens’ so-called movement. As EqualityMatters points out,
1. CAAP Doesn’t Represent The African-American Community
2. CAAP Is A NOM Front Group
3. Owens Is Central To NOM’s Race-Baiting Strategy
You cannot redefine reality to match your prior beliefs and that is at the heart of the Religious Right’s continuing war on Marriage Equality. The Church got away with that in the fourth century when the emperor Constantine mistakenly gave them power. The coercive powers of the state and state-sponsored religion, created a multi-century reign of terror that was ended only by the European Enlightenment.
That’s what Owens’ so-called civil rights movement is all about. Bringing the full and coercive powers of the state, guided by hateful bigots like himself, to bear on the “gay problem.” It has nothing to do with civil rights and everything to do with fascist suppression of the constructed other.
And if the long history of the Church has shown us anything, it won’t end with gays and lesbians. It will not end until all dissenting voices have been silenced and what reigns is not the open debate of Jefferson’s freed minds but the charnel silence of the tomb.
If you’re ready to read more from the unbossed and unbought Politicus team, sign up for our newsletter here! Email address: Leave this field empty if you're human:He confirmed that there had been some differences with the midfielder
Spain's national football coach, Vicente Del Bosque talked about the statements made by his number two, Toni Grande, in which he spoke about some differences with Barcelona and Spain playmaker Xavi Hernández.
"We've spoken with Xavi and we've had our differences, but we never discussed anybody in particular. The man in charge has to have the humility to listen", he said on Onda Cero Radio's programme, 'Radioestadio'.
He also commented on the protests taking place in Brazil: "We know that Brazil is going to host both the Olympic Games and the World Cup and it's normal for people with problems to demonstrate on the streets. I don't think it's going to have an influence on football. In any case, football is a worldwide sport and I'm sure it will be respected."
The strikers are focused: "It isn't a bad thing to have so many forwards. We'll try and find the best combination. It's good to have such depth."The November/December issue of acmqueue is out now
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December 20, 2016
Volume 14, issue 6
Everything Sysadmin: Are You Load Balancing Wrong?
Anyone can use a load balancer. Using them properly is much more difficult.
Thomas A. Limoncelli
A reader contacted me recently to ask if it is better to use a load balancer to add capacity or to make a service more resilient to failure. The answer is: both are appropriate uses of a load balancer. The problem, however, is that most people who use load balancers are doing it wrong.
In today's web-centric, service-centric environments the use of load balancers is widespread. I assert, however, that most of the time they are used incorrectly. To understand the problem, we first need to discuss a little about load balancers in general. Then we can look at the problem and solutions.
A load balancer receives requests and distributes them to two or more machines. These machines are called replicas, as they provide the same service. For the sake of simplicity, assume these are HTTP requests from web browsers, but load balancers can also be used with HTTPS requests, DNS queries, SMTP (email) connections, and many other protocols. Most modern applications are engineered to work behind a load balancer.
Load Balancing for Capacity versus Resilience
There are two primary ways to use load balancers: to increase capacity and to improve resiliency.
Using a load balancer to increase capacity is very simple. If one replica is not powerful enough to handle the entire incoming workload, a load balancer can be used to distribute the workload among multiple replicas.
Suppose a single replica can handle 100 QPS (queries per second). As long as fewer than 100 QPS are arriving, it should run fine. If more than 100 QPS arrive, then the replica becomes overloaded, rejects requests, or crashes. None of these is a happy situation.
If there are two machines behind a load balancer configured as replicas, then capacity is 200 QPS; three replicas would provide 300 QPS of capacity, and so on. As more capacity is needed, more replicas can be added. This is horizontal scaling.
Load balancers can also be used to improve resiliency. Resilience means the ability to survive a failure. Individual machines fail, but the system should continue to provide service. All machines eventually fail—that's physics. Even if a replica had near-perfect uptime, you would still need resiliency mechanisms because of other externalities such as software upgrades or the need to physically move a machine.
A load balancer can be used to achieve resiliency by leaving enough spare capacity that a single replica can fail and the remaining replicas can handle the incoming requests.
Continuing the example, suppose four replicas have been deployed to achieve 400 QPS of capacity. If you are currently receiving 300 QPS, each replica will receive approximately 75 QPS (one-quarter of the workload). What will happen if a single replica fails? The load balancer will quickly see the outage and shift traffic such that each replica receives about 100 QPS. That means each replica is running at maximum capacity. That's cutting it close, but it is acceptable.
What if the system had been receiving 400 QPS? Under normal operation, each of the four replicas would receive approximately 100 QPS. If a single replica died, however, the remaining replicas would receive approximately 133 QPS each. Since each replica can process about 100 QPS, this means each one of them is overloaded by a third. The system might slow to a crawl and become unusable. It might crash.
The determining factor in how the load balancer was used is whether or not the arriving workload was above or below 300 QPS. If 300 or fewer QPS were arriving, this would be a load balancer used for resiliency. If 301 or more QPS were arriving, this would be a load balancer for increased capacity.
The difference between using a load balancer to increase capacity or improve resiliency is an operational difference, not a configuration difference. Both use cases configure the hardware and network (or virtual hardware and virtual network) the same, and configure the load balancer with the same settings.
The term N+1 redundancy refers to a system that is configured such that if a single replica dies, enough capacity is left over in the remaining N replicas for the system to work properly. A system is N+0 if there is no spare capacity. A system can also be designed to be N+2 redundant, which would permit the system to survive two dead replicas, and so on.
Three Ways To Do It Wrong
Now that we understand the two different ways a load balancer can be used, let's examine how most teams fail.
Level 1: The Team Disagrees
Ask members of the team whether the load balancer is being used to add capacity or improve resiliency. If different people on the team give different answers, you're load balancing wrong.
If the team disagrees, then different members of the team will be making different engineering decisions. At best, this leads to confusion. At worst, it leads to suffering.
You would be surprised at how many teams are at this level.
Level 2: Capacity Undefined
Another likely mistake is not agreeing how to measure the capacity of the system. Without this definition, you do not know if this system is N+0 or N+1. In other words, you might have agreement that the load balancing is for capacity or resilience, but you do not know whether or not you are using it that way.
To know for sure, you have to know the actual capacity of each replica. In an ideal world, you would know how many QPS each replica can handle. The math to calculate the N+1 threshold (or high-water mark) would be simple arithmetic. Sadly, the world is not so simple.
You can't simply look at the source code and know how much time and resources each request will require and determine the capacity of a replica. Even if you did know the theoretical capacity of a replica, you would need to verify it experimentally. We're scientists, not barbarians!
Capacity is best determined by benchmarks. Queries are generated and sent to the system at different rates, with the response times measured. Suppose you consider a 200-ms response time to be sufficient. You can start by generating queries at 50 per second and slowly increase the rate until the system is overloaded and responds slower than 200 ms. The last QPS rate that resulted in sufficiently fast response times determines the capacity of the replica.
How do you quantify response time when measuring thousands or millions of queries? Not all queries run in the same amount of time. You can't take the average, as a single long-running request could result in a misleading statistic. Averages also obscure bimodal distributions. (For more on this, see chapter 17, Monitoring Architecture and Practice, of The Practice of Cloud System Administration, Volume 2, by Thomas Limoncelli, Strata R. Chalup, and Christina J. Hogan; Addison-Wesley, 2015).
Since a simple average is insufficient, most sites use a percentile. For example, the requirement might be that the 90th percentile response time must be 200 ms or better. This is a very easy way to toss out the most extreme outliers. Many sites are starting to use MAD (median absolute deviation), which is explained in a 2015 paper by David Goldberg and Yinan Shan, The Importance of Features for Statistical Anomaly Detection (https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/hotcloud15/hotcloud15-goldberg.pdf).
Generating synthetic queries to use in such benchmarks is another challenge. Not all queries take the same amount of time. There are short and long requests. A replica that can handle 100 QPS might actually handle 80 long queries and 120 short queries. The benchmark must use a mix that reflects the real world.
If all queries are read-only or do not mutate the system, you can simply record an hour's worth of actual queries and replay them during the benchmark. At a previous employer, we had a data set of 11 billion search queries used for benchmarking our service. We would send the first 1 billion queries to the system to warm up the cache. We recorded measurements during the remaining queries to gauge performance.
Not all workloads are read-only. If a mixture of read and write queries is required, the benchmark data set and process is much more complex. It is important that the mixture of read and write queries reflects real-world scenarios.
Sadly, the mix of query types can change over time as a result of the introduction of new features or unanticipated changes in user-access patterns. A system that was capable of 200 QPS today may be rated at 50 QPS tomorrow when an old feature gains new popularity.
Software performance can change with every release. Each release should be benchmarked to verify that capacity assumptions haven't changed.
If this benchmarking is done manually, there's a good chance it will be done only on major releases or rarely. If the benchmarking is automated, then it can be integrated into your CI (continuous integration) system. It should fail any release that is significantly slower than the release running in production. Such automation not only improves engineering productivity because it eliminates the manual task, but also boosts engineering productivity because you immediately know the exact change that caused the regression. If the benchmarks are done occasionally, then finding a performance regression involves hours or days of searching for which change caused the problem.
Ideally, the benchmarks are validated by also measuring live performance in production. The two statistics should match up. If they don't, you must true-up the benchmarks.
Another reason why benchmarks are so complicated is caches. Caches have unexpected side effects. For example, intuitively you would expect that a system should get faster as replicas are added. Many hands make light work. Some applications get slower with more replicas, however, because cache utilization goes down. If a replica has a local cache, it is more likely to have a cache hit if the replica is highly utilized.
Level 3: Definition but no Monitoring
Another mistake a team is likely to make is to have all these definitions agreed upon, but no monitoring to detect whether or not you are in compliance.
Suppose the team has determined that the load balancer is for improving both capacity and resilience, they have defined an algorithm for measuring the capacity of a replica, and they have done the benchmarks to ascertain the capacity of each replica.
The next step is to monitor the system to determine whether the system is N+1 or whatever the desired state is.
The system should not only monitor the utilization and alert the operations team when the system is out of compliance, but also alert the team when the system is nearing that state. Ideally, if it takes T minutes to add capacity, the system needs to send the alert at least T minutes before that capacity is needed.
Cloud-computing systems such as AWS (Amazon Web Services) have systems that can add more capacity on demand. If you run your own hardware, provisioning new capacity may take weeks or months. If adding capacity always requires a visit to the CFO to sign a purchase order, you are not living in the dynamic, fast-paced, high-tech world you think you are.
Summary
Anyone can use a load balancer. Using it properly is much more difficult. Some questions to ask:
1. Is this load balancer used to increase capacity (N+0) or to improve resiliency (N+1)?
2. How do you measure the capacity of each replica? How do you create benchmark input? How do you process the benchmark results to arrive at the threshold between good and bad?
3. Are you monitoring whether you are compliant with your N+M configuration? Are you alerting in a way that provides enough time to add capacity so that you stay compliant?
If the answer to any of these questions is "I don't know" or "No," then you're doing it wrong.
Thomas A. Limoncelli is a site reliability engineer at Stack Overflow Inc. in New York City. His books include The Practice of Cloud Administration (http://the-cloud-book.com), The Practice of System and Network Administration (http://the-sysadmin-book.com), and Time Management for System Administrators. He blogs at EverythingSysadmin.com and tweets at @YesThatTom. He holds a B.A. in computer science from Drew University.
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Software techniques that tolerate latency variability are vital to building responsive large-scale Web services.
Communications of the ACM 56(2): 74-80
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Resilience Engineering: Learning to Embrace Failure
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http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2371297
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Scale up your datasets enough and all your apps will come undone. What are the typical problems and where do the bottlenecks generally surface?
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Copyright © 2016 held by owner/author. Publication rights licensed to ACM.
Originally published in Queue vol. 14, no. 6—
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As Manchester United’s Champions League hopes hang in the balance, M.E.N Sport looks at five things that will help Louis van Gaal secure his minimum target of a top four finish.
Play Rooney up front
Van Gaal has restored the England captain to his favoured position in recent weeks, but the suspicion is that he will be dropped back into midfield - especially for the big games.
United’s manager claims he has to sacrifice Rooney for the sake of balance. But for the sake of goals, the 29-year-old must be given the freedom to attack.
Rooney’s best seasons have come when played as an out and out striker. Given the struggles of Robin van Persie and Radamel Falcao, it’s baffling that Rooney has been played in midfield so often.
Get over your travel sickness
United have won three games away from home all season in the Premier League. If not for their home form, their Champions League hopes would be as good as dead already.
The games at Liverpool and Chelsea look like they could be key, while trips to Newcastle and Everton won’t be ‘gimmes’ - particulary given United’s form on the road.
Make the most of Di Maria
The Argentine looked every bit the most expensive player in English football when he first arrived at Old Trafford.
His stunning goal against Leicester was a highlight. But that seems like a long time ago now. Since then Van Gaal has played the Argentine in a host of roles - out wide, up front and in midfield - without getting the best out of him.
So far he’s looked most effective in wide positions, so perhaps it’s time to give him an extended run on the wings.
Decide on your best formation
Van Gaal’s tinkering has been a theme of his first season at United.
Three at the back, 4-4-2 or a diamond, the Dutchman has flip-flopped throughout the campaign.
He admits he still doesn’t know his best system. Well it’s high time he did.
Help Falcao find his scoring boots
Somewhere along the line the Colombian seems to have forgotten that he’s supposed to be one of the deadliest finishers in world football.
His loan move to United has been nothing short of miserable. The goal he scored with his first touch on his first day of training at Carrington is in danger of being the highlight of his season.
You don’t become a bad player over night and there is the sense that Falcao just needs a break to get back to his devastating best. And how United could do with it.Transparent gadgets and creative concept designs from all over the world.
Transparent Nikon D80
Transparent model of Nikon D80 DSLR camera.
Transparent Refrigerator and Clothes Dryer
Transparent household electronics from Japan. The dryer uses natural dry air instead of loads of energy to do its job, and the fridge has a special “low waist line” to facilitate the transport of heavy items.
Transparent Chair
Calligaris Irony chair with structure in metal and transparent plastic.
Transparent Mirror
The series of “fiction” mirrors designed by Jean-Marie Massaud are made in extralight glass with degrading shaded silvering.
Transparent iPod Case
Getting sick of your black or white color iPod? Get this iVue Crystal case, it is a transparent casing for your iPod.
This hard shell transparent canoe provides 100% visability. It weighs only 40 lbs and is lighter than most aluminum or wood canoes.
Transparent Xbox 360 Case
Swap that eyesore Xbox 360 white case for a Clear Ghost Case. This is the only case in the world that comes with a clear DVD drive lid, which actually lets you see the DVD game disc spinning while you play.
Transparent PSTwo Slim Case
Transparent Iron
The transparent B-IRON 725 iron allows you to see the clothes that you are ironing. The soleplate is made out of tempered glass and heat conduction works via a network of electro-thermal wires.
Creative concept design of a transparent toaster lets you see the bread while it is toasting.
Transparent Chess Set
A Chess Set inspired by the novel ‘Alice through the Looking Glass’ where the pieces magically turn transparent when they touch the board.
Transparent Concrete
Translucent concrete blocks – the future of architecture?
Transparent Dice
Transparent Bath
The transparent bath displays the number of drinkable water bottles you are using when taking a bath. It is just a concept right now, but a sobering idea none the less.
Also check out: Transparent Glass BridgeAbout
This is the old version of the campaign. We will be re-launching in July 2012! Look for the newly launched version by searching for "The Hostage Trials" in |
attling on Iran is increasing the chance of the United States going to war against Syria, which in turn would increase his ability to sell a future U.S. war against Iran. That game works well for Netanyahu. It is an awful game for the United States.
Paul R. Pillar, in his 28 years at the Central Intelligence Agency, rose to be one of the agency’s top analysts. He is now a visiting professor at Georgetown University for security studies. (This article first appeared as a blog post at The National Interest’s Web site. Reprinted with author’s permission.)In his sublime definition of love, playwright Tom Stoppard painted the grand achievement of our emotional lives as “knowledge of each other, not of the flesh but through the flesh, knowledge of self, the real him, the real her, in extremis, the mask slipped from the face.” But only in fairy tales and Hollywood movies does the mask slip off to reveal a perfect other. So how do we learn to discern between a love that is imperfect, as all meaningful real relationships are, and one that is insufficient, the price of which is repeated disappointment and inevitable heartbreak? Making this distinction is one of the greatest and most difficult arts of the human experience — and, it turns out, it can be greatly enhanced with a little bit of science.
That’s what mathematician Hannah Fry suggests in The Mathematics of Love: Patterns, Proofs, and the Search for the Ultimate Equation (public library) — a slim but potent volume from TED Books, featuring gorgeous illustrations by German artist Christine Rösch. From the odds of finding your soul mate to how game theory reveals the best strategy for picking up a stranger in a bar to the equation that explains the conversation patterns of lasting relationships, Fry combines a humanist’s sensitivity to this universal longing with a scientist’s rigor to shed light, with neither sap nor cynicism, on the complex dynamics of romance and the besotting beauty of math itself.
She writes in the introduction:
Mathematics is ultimately the study of patterns — predicting phenomena from the weather to the growth of cities, revealing everything from the laws of the universe to the behavior of subatomic particles… Love — [like] most of life — is full of patterns: from the number of sexual partners we have in our lifetime to how we choose who to message on an internet dating website. These patterns twist and turn and warp and evolve just as love does, and are all patterns which mathematics is uniquely placed to describe. […] Mathematics is the language of nature. It is the foundation stone upon which every major scientific and technological achievement of the modern era has been built. It is alive, and it is thriving.
In the first chapter, Fry explores the mathematical odds of finding your ideal mate — with far more heartening results than more jaundiced estimations have yielded. She points to a famous 2010 paper by mathematician and longtime singleton Peter Backus, who calculated that there are more intelligent extraterrestrial civilizations than eligible women for him on earth. Backus enlisted a formula known as the Drake equation — named after its creator, Frank Drake — which breaks down the question of how many possible alien civilizations there are into sub-estimates based on components like the average rate of star formation in our galaxy, the number of those stars with orbiting planets, the fraction of those planets capable of supporting life, and so forth. Fry explains:
Drake exploited a trick well known to scientists of breaking down the estimation by making lots of little educated guesses rather than one big one. The result of this trick is an estimate likely to be surprisingly close to the true answer, because the errors in each calculation tend to balance each other out along the way.
Scientists’ current estimate is that our galaxy contains around 10,000 intelligent alien civilizations — something we owe in large part to astronomer Jill Tarter’s decades-long dedication. Returning to Backus’s calculation, which yielded 26 eligible women on all of Earth, Fry notes that “being able to estimate quantities that you have no hope of verifying is an important skill for any scientist” — a technique known as a Fermi estimation, which is used in everything from job interviews to quantum mechanics — but suggests that his criteria might have been unreasonably stringent. (Backus based his formula, for instance, on the assumption that he’d find only 10% of the women he meets agreeable and only 5% attractive.)
In fact, this “price of admission” problem is also at the heart of a chapter probing the question of how you know your partner is “The One.” Fry writes:
As any mathematically minded person will tell you, it’s a fine balance between having the patience to wait for the right person and the foresight to cash in before all the good ones are taken.
Indeed, some such mathematically minded people have applied an area of mathematics known as “optimal stopping theory” to derive an actual equation that tells you precisely how many potential mates to reject before finding the perfect partner and helps you discern when it’s time to actually stop your looking and settle down with that person (P):
Fry explains:
It tells you that if you are destined to date ten people in your lifetime, you have the highest probability of finding The One when you reject your first four lovers (where you’d find them 39.87 percent of the time). If you are destined to date twenty people, you should reject the first eight (where Mister or Miz Right would be waiting for you 38.42 percent of the time). And, if you are destined to date an infinite number of partners, you should reject the first 37 percent, giving you just over a one in three chance of success. […] Say you start dating when you are fifteen years old and would ideally like to settle down by the time you’re forty. In the first 37 percent of your dating window (until just after your twenty-fourth birthday), you should reject everyone; use this time to get a feel for the market and a realistic expectation of what you can expect in a life partner. Once this rejection phase has passed, pick the next person who comes along who is better than everyone who you have met before. Following this strategy will definitely give you the best possible chance of finding the number one partner on your imaginary list.
This formula, it turns out, is a cross-purpose antidote to FOMO, applicable to various situations when you need to know when to stop looking for a better option:
Have three months to find somewhere to live? Reject everything in the first month and then pick the next house that comes along that is your favorite so far. Hiring an assistant? Reject the first 37 percent of candidates and then give the job to the next one who you prefer above all others. In fact, the search for an assistant is the most famous formulation of this theory, and the method is often known as the “secretary problem.”
But the most interesting and pause-giving chapter is the final one, which brings modern lucidity to the fairy-tale myth that “happily ever after” ensues unabated after you’ve identified “The One,” stopped your search, and settled down him or her. Most of us don’t need a scientist to tell us that “happily ever after” is not a destination or a final outcome but a journey and an active process in any healthy relationship. Fry, however, offers some enormously heartening and assuring empirical findings, based on a fascinating collaboration between mathematicians and psychologists, confirming this life-tested and often hard-earned intuitive understanding.
Fry examines what psychologists studying longtime couples have found about the key to successful relationships:
Every relationship will have conflict, but most psychologists now agree that the way couples argue can differ substantially, and can work as a useful predictor of longer-term happiness within a couple. In relationships where both partners consider themselves as happy, bad behavior is dismissed as unusual: “He’s under a lot of stress at the moment,” or “No wonder she’s grumpy, she hasn’t had a lot of sleep lately.” Couples in this enviable state will have a deep-seated positive view of their partner, which is only reinforced by any positive behavior: “These flowers are lovely. He’s always so nice to me,” or “She’s just such a nice person, no wonder she did that.” In negative relationships, however, the situation is reversed. Bad behavior is considered the norm: “He’s always like that,” or “Yet again. She’s just showing how selfish she is.” Instead, it’s the positive behavior that is considered unusual: “He’s only showing off because he got a pay raise at work. It won’t last,” or “Typical. She’s doing this because she wants something.
She cites the work of psychologist John Gottman, who studies why marriages succeed or fail. He spent decades observing how couples interact, coding and measuring everything from their skin conductivity to their facial expressions, and eventually developed the Specific Affect Coding System — a method of scoring how positive or negative the exchanges are. But it wasn’t until Gottman met mathematician James Murray and integrated his mathematical models into the system that he began to crack the code of why these toxic negativity spirals develop. (Curiously, these equations have also been used to understand what happens between two countries during war — a fact on which Fry remarks that “an arguing couple spiraling into negativity and teetering on the brink of divorce is actually mathematically equivalent to the beginning of a nuclear war.”)
Fry presents the elegant formulae the researchers developed for explaining these patterns of human behavior. (Although the symbols stand for “wife” and “husband,” Fry notes that Murray’s models don’t factor in any stereotypes and are thus equally applicable to relationships across all orientations and gender identities.)
She breaks down the equations:
The left-hand side of the equation is simply how positive or negative the wife will be in the next thing that she says. Her reaction will depend on her mood in general (w), her mood when she’s with her husband (r w W t ), and, crucially, the influence that her husband’s actions will have on her (I HM ). The Ht in parentheses at the end of the equation is mathematical shorthand for saying that this influence depends on what the husband has just done. The equations for the husband follow the same pattern: h, r H H t, and I HM are his mood when he’s on his own, his mood when he’s with his wife, and the influence his wife has on his next reaction, respectively.
The researchers then plotted the effects the two partners have on each other — empirical evidence for Leo Buscaglia’s timelessly beautiful notion that love is a “dynamic interaction”:
In this version of the graph, the dotted line indicates that the husband is having a positive impact on his wife. If it dips below zero, the wife is more likely to be negative in her next turn in the conversation.
What all of this translates into is actually strikingly similar to Lewis Carroll’s advice on resolving conflict in correspondence. “If your friend makes a severe remark, either leave it unnoticed, or make your reply distinctly less severe,” Carroll counseled, adding “and if he makes a friendly remark, tending towards ‘making up’ the little difference that has arisen between you, let your reply be distinctly more friendly.” Carroll was a man of great psychological prescience in many ways, and this particular insight is paralleled by Gottman and Murray’s findings, which Fry summarizes elegantly:
Imagine that the husband does something that is a little bit positive: He could agree with her last point, or inject a little humor into their conversation. This action will have a small positive impact on the wife and make her more likely to respond with something positive, too… [But] if the husband is a little bit negative — like interrupting her while she is speaking — he will have a fixed and negative impact on his partner. It’s worth noting that the magnitude of this negative influence is bigger than the equivalent positive jump if he’s just a tiny bit positive. Gottman and his team deliberately built in this asymmetry after observing it in couples in their study.
And here is the crucial finding — T- is the point known as a negativity threshold, at which the husband’s negative effect becomes so great that it renders the wife unwilling to diffuse the situation with positivity and she instead responds with more negativity. This is how the negativity spirals are set off. But the most revelatory part is what this suggests about the myth of compromise.
As Fry points out, it makes sense to suppose that the best strategy is to aim for a high negativity threshold — “a relationship where you give your partner room to be themselves and only bring up an issue if it becomes a really big deal.” And yet the researchers found the opposite was true:
The most successful relationships are the ones with a really low negativity threshold. In those relationships, couples allow each other to complain, and work together to constantly repair the tiny issues between them. In such a case, couples don’t bottle up their feelings, and little things don’t end up being blown completely out of proportion.
She adds the important caveat that a healthy relationship isn’t merely one in which both partners are comfortable complaining but also one in which the language of those complaints doesn’t cast the complainer as a victim of the other person’s behavior.
In the remainder of The Mathematics of Love, Fry goes on to explore everything from the falsehoods behind the standard ideals of beauty to the science of why continually risking rejection is a sounder strategy for success in love (as in life) than waiting for a guaranteed outcome before trying, illustrating how math’s power to abstract reality invites greater understanding of our most concrete human complexities and our deepest yearnings.
Complement it with a fascinating look at what troves of online dating data reveal about being extraordinary, Dan Savage on the myth of “The One,” and Adrienne Rich on how relationships define our truths.For the first time, eight NFL teams were dropped this season by commercial airline carriers that offered chartered flights, according to league sources.
American Airlines dropped the Miami Dolphins, Pittsburgh Steelers, Arizona Cardinals, Baltimore Ravens, Indianapolis Colts and Jacksonville Jaguars while United Airlines dropped the Bills and Lions. The airlines dropped the teams because they can make more money flying those planes commercially.
Teams have been forced to scramble to secure charters with other smaller companies that don't have as many planes. The move has teams concerned about potential issues getting to games if there are any mechanical issues with their primary aircraft. The NFL lets each team handle its travel arrangements individually.
Smaller companies can't subservice nearly as quickly as the bigger commercial airline carriers. Two of the airlines that teams now are using are Atlas and Omni Air International, which give priority to military charters.
The Bills actually flew to Atlanta this weekend on two NBA-owned planes operated by Delta Airlines, per league sources. The NBA signed off on Delta's request to allow it to use the league's aircraft for NFL teams -- at least until they are needed.
The decision by the commercial airline carriers to drop charter service for NFL teams is not related to players' protest during the national anthem and predates the controversy.Video
Donald J. Trump unleashed a torrent of insults on Thursday against his main rival, Ben Carson, comparing him to a child molester in a television interview and suggesting that the people of Iowa are “stupid” if they believe Mr. Carson’s claim that he tried to stab a close relative during his childhood.
The twin tirades came two days after the fourth Republican presidential debate, and as Mr. Carson has moved ahead of Mr. Trump in recent polls of Republican voters in Iowa, and in some national polls as well.
In an appearance in Fort Dodge, Iowa, Mr. Trump repeatedly laced into Mr. Carson and ranted that he was the lone seer who could solve what was wrong in the country.
His plan for the Islamic State? Mr. Trump said he would aggressively bomb the region, using a barnyard epithet to describe just how aggressively he would act and getting some applause from the crowd. “I would just bomb those suckers.”
It was a vastly different version of Mr. Trump than the one who seemed to be consciously trying to be more presidential on the debate stage. And it came as the debate over immigration, which has been his signature issue, was dominated by Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, threatening to crowd him out of the news media coverage that helped vault him to first place in the polls.
Mr. Carson has found himself under scrutiny over the veracity of some of the details of his life story, an inspirational tale of redemption that was the subject of his book, “Gifted Hands,” and which he has put at the forefront of his candidacy. During the debate this week, he faced one question from a moderator about the recent attention to his personal story, suggesting that people had “lied about” him and that he was the victim of a voracious press corps.
But Mr. Trump has been the only Republican in the large field of candidates to repeatedly criticize Mr. Carson and bring attention to the questions about his life. Yet at the debate, even as Mr. Carson stood a few feet away, Mr. Trump did not raise the issue. His attacks on Thursday, however, took on a new dimension.
In an interview with Erin Burnett on CNN, Mr. Trump repeated a previous criticism, saying that in “Gifted Hands,” Mr. Carson wrote that “he’s got a pathological temper. That’s a big problem, because you don’t cure that.”
He went on and suggested that some things cannot be cured. “As an example,” he said, “child molesting. You don’t cure these people. You don’t cure a child molester. There’s no cure for it. Pathological, there’s no cure for that.”
But, Mr. Trump insisted, he was simply bringing up what Mr. Carson himself had written.
“I’m not bringing up anything that’s not in his book,” he said. “You know, when he says he went after his mother and wanted to hit her in the head with a hammer, that bothers me. I mean, that’s pretty bad. When he says he’s pathological — and he says that in the book, I don’t say that — and again, I’m not saying anything, I’m not saying anything other than pathological is a very serious disease. And he said he’s pathological, somebody said he has pathological disease.”
Later, at the rally in Iowa, Mr. Trump, his voice dripping with disdain, mocked Mr. Carson’s claim about the attempted stabbing. In his telling, Mr. Carson says the knife struck the person’s belt buckle, sparing him a wound. Mr. Carson has previously described the person as a friend, but recently said it was a “close relative.”
With the crowd as quiet as a church congregation, Mr. Trump, on stage, acted out why he believed the story was not true.
“He took a knife and he went after a friend,” Mr. Trump said. “He lunged — he lunged that knife into the stomach of his friend. But, lo and behold, it hit the belt. It hit the belt, and the knife broke. Give me a break.”
Mr. Trump stepped away from the lectern to demonstrate why he said that scenario would not work, contorting his own belt buckle into different positions to show what would happen if someone had struck it with a sharp instrument.
“It ain’t going to be successful,” he said.
He called into the crowd, “Anybody have a knife, you want to try it on me?”
Yet in the case of Mr. Carson, he said, “amazingly, the belt stayed totally flat.”
“How stupid are the people of Iowa? How stupid are the people of the country to believe this crap?” he said.
An aide to Mr. Carson did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
Mr. Carson, a retired neurosurgeon, has forged a connection with evangelical voters, who make up a chunk of the Iowa caucus-going Republican electorate. Many have said they find his story of personal redemption through God inspiring, and his soft-spoken style appealing.
Mr. Trump, who has made his own success in opinion polls the crux of his campaign message, has sounded at times bewildered that Mr. Carson has moved ahead of him in the polls. “I don’t get it,” he said bluntly when Mr. Carson first overtook him, noting that his opponent does not travel to Iowa that frequently.An interview with author Jonathan Safran Foer about factory farms, vegetarianism, and Eating Animals.
design mind on GOOD is a series exploring the power of design by the editors of design mind magazine. This is the third installment in a miniseries within that blog that will explore the theme of work-life. The work-life series will run each Thursday for the next four weeks.
Shortly before Thanksgiving last year, I took a deep breath and called my mother and sister in successive order to tell them that I would not be eating turkey for the holiday. “Or any other meat for that matter,” I declared. “Ever.” I had just finished reading Jonathan Safran Foer’s book, Eating Animals, and it cinched my decision to go veggie.
My sister’s first reaction was to say that she could not cheat her 3-year old son out of the tradition of having a roast beast on the table. My mother, playing Switzerland, announced that everyone was entitled to their own opinion. I think my announcement surprised them. My subsequent conversations with family, friends, and co-workers certainly surprised me. With so much cultural attention paid over the past several years to slow food and eating locally, I could not get over how little most people knew (myself included) about the factory farm system in the United States.
Choosing not to eat meat is a surprisingly impactful decision. Before reading Foer’s book—his first nonfiction work since writing the novels Everything Is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close—I’d been a self-proclaimed “part-time vegetarian,” mostly because of stomach issues. I was unaware of the facts that factory-farmed meat is the leading cause of global warming in the world and that these places are incubators for some of the planet’s most potent and potentially disastrous diseases, such as the H1N1 virus. I did not realize that small family farms, the self-sustaining kind with chickens and goats and pigs and tractors‚ are nearly extinct. I certainly did not consider how horribly the animals are treated.
For me, and many people like me, I believed those concerns were reserved for the fringes of society. I was wrong, and the facts prove it. There is no greater mainstream issue than what we eat and where our food comes from. Right now, our current system is an environmental, biological, and ethical disaster. I recently asked Foer what, if anything, we can do about it.
SAM MARTIN: Not everyone is going to pick up a book called Eating Animals. What’s the best way to let people know about the damaging effects of factory farms without scaring them off?
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER: It’s difficult. We’re so used to thinking of this as a divisive, accusatory, fight-inspiring conversation. And it’s a shame. Because I really do think that, if we had full access to what’s going on in factory farms, everyone would agree—and by agree, I don't mean that we all become vegetarians—that factory farming is a broken system that doesn't reflect our values. Who would want a farm system that is the leading cause of global warming? Or one of the two or three most damaging things to the environment? And who would want to treat animals in this way?
So the problem has been that it’s all been framed as this divisive, black-and-white issue. You’re either a vegetarian or you’re not. You either care or don’t. And that can put people who care in an exasperating place. I hope this book will allow us to think about food in the way we think about the environment. We can do things better than we’ve done them in the past.
SM: After reading about how entrenched, widespread, and damaging U.S. factory farming is—to the health of humans, animals, and the planet—changing the system seems like an insurmountable goal. Is it?
JSF: No. First of all, there are a number of things to remember. One is, it’s new. It’s only 50 years old. People have been farming in a different way for the past 10,000 years. The fact that it rose this quickly almost holds the promise that it can be dismantled just as quickly. Consumers have so much power in this situation. It’s rare that consumers have this much power. Farmers grow and produce what people ask for. As we ask for different things, they will farm different things. Finally, the demographics are compelling and promising in terms of who cares and who doesn’t. Eighteen percent of university students are now vegetarian. When that 18 percent starts to become the next generation of writers and doctors and farmers and other professionals, the conversation will feel very different than it might feel now.
SM: Eating locally farmed meat seems to be attracting a growing number of people. Is this a good alternative to eating factory farmed animals, or is it still a questionable practice?
JSF: I think there are two questions: “Is it good?” and “Is it perfect?” Local farming isn’t perfect, but it is so much better than what’s available in the mainstream. And it’s better in every single way—for humans, animals, the environment, global warming, and so on. Is it the answer? It’s part of the answer. Personally, I don’t get terribly excited about [locally farmed meat]. And I don’t eat it. I don’t believe it can be scaled. So to endorse it would be for personal reasons only. But most Americans fundamentally agree on the goals, which is to have farms that are better for human health. Some people have this belief that people are never going to move away from meat so they say, “Let’s have a decent farm system.” Other people say, “Let’s stop eating meat because we’re never going to have a good farming system.” I’m more in the second category. I think there are things we ought to agree on. We have to stop giving antibiotics to farm animals. We have to stop fishing the way we’re fishing. It won’t last. And I think we can all agree we shouldn’t keep pregnant pigs in cages so small they can’t turn around in them. That’s wrong. You don’t have to like pigs at all to know that. There comes a point when we have to decide what’s right and wrong.
SM: Even using the most humane animal slaughtering practices, farmers are still, in the end, killing. Can you explain why we ought to consider animal welfare in this debate?
JSF: I think we can’t help but consider it. If you saw someone kicking a dog, you might not intervene, but can you say you would be indifferent to it? Caring is a human instinct, and it goes against our nature not to care. I don’t love animals. I don’t think they should be treated as humans. There are irrational places that one can take one’s concern for animals, and I won’t go there. But it defies our human instincts to treat them as if they had no feeling‚ or as if that feeling had no effect. Killing animals is, in a way, the least bad thing that we do to them. If you ask the American public if it’s okay to kill animals for food, most would say yes. But if you ask them if it’s okay to remove appendages from an animal while it’s still alive or keep a pregnant pig in a cage that it can’t turn around in—are there really people who think that’s okay?
SM: One recurring subject in Eating Animals is the notion that people are nostalgic for food traditions (the Thanksgiving turkey is the most obvious example). This seems to be a big reason why many people are reluctant to give these foods up, even to the detriment of their health and the health of the planet. Why is it that virtually everything about storybook farms and the production of traditional foods has changed, yet the sentiment attached in consuming these foods has remained, even when people are educated about the horrors of modern animal agriculture? Why is there a disconnect?
JSF: I don’t think it’s a disconnect. Let’s give people the benefit of the doubt. They’re making a rational decision. They’re saying, “I know the process is not good, but I don’t care.” I would say, “Fine. Keep your barbecue on the Fourth of July, your Christmas ham, and your Thanksgiving turkey. But get rid of the meat that you don’t care about—the fast-food hamburger or the Chinese restaurant chicken." Nine-tenths of meat consumed is meat we don’t care about. What happens is that people take the exceptions to get them off the hook for the everyday. That’s where these conversations get skewed. When people talk about these exceptional uses of food, that’s right. They are exceptions. Let’s talk about the normal.
SM: You write a lot about traditions surrounding food in your own family. Since simultaneously becoming a father and a vegetarian, are there any new or modified food traditions you have started?
JSF: The only tradition we’ve started, I would say, is having a conversation around food. We hadn’t been doing that. We hadn’t been thinking about it. The fact that food now has a story served with it is different and good. It enhances the cultural value of food. All the good things we would miss [by not eating meat], we more than make up for with stories about why and what we don’t eat.
SM: For someone just being introduced to the factory-farm system in the United States, it can be hard to feel any hope that things will change. What are you excited about, and where do you find hope? What keeps you going?
JSF: I just read a recent poll that 70 percent of Americans are willing to spend more money for more ethically produced food. This isn’t San Francisco or New York; it’s the whole country. That’s an amazing number. People care about this stuff. Even if you don’t care, you have to care, because you have these annoying instincts. I think as our lines of sight are opened up, more people will think, “Hey, this is something we really want to know about.” And behavior changes will follow. And the 18 percent [in college right now] are tastemakers. As they get older, we will see vegetarianism in a new light.
A version of this piece appeared in the April 2010 issue of design mind magazine.
Photography by Gianluca Gentilini319
I have to echo all the other reviews, and say that this recipe is wonderful! The sauce was runny when I first took it out of the oven, but it thickened while it cooled. I used plain water inst...
The taste of the pie was delicious, no complaints there! The sauce was pretty thick when I made it, but when I put the pie together and cooked it the following day (after refrigerating it) it t...
PEACEFULMOLLY 53 2
I have to echo all the other reviews, and say that this recipe is wonderful! The sauce was runny when I first took it out of the oven, but it thickened while it cooled. I used plain water inst... Read more
kdeeryhays 5 5
This recipe is delicious. I would give it more than 5 stars if possible. As a vegetarian who lives in a house full of meat eaters, this recipe was a definite winner with everyone. In addition... Read more
Amanda Y 117 57
Really good, but the next time I make it, I would make the following changes: 1) cook the pie crust a little first, then add veggies and cook again so that the crust is really done. 2) drain mos... Read more
RobinMD 26 9
I don't often write reviews, but this one deserved looking up my password to log on! My picky 3 y/o asked for more!! I did add 1-2 tbl spoons of cornstarch for a thicker sauce as recommended b... Read more
APRILMILLER 67 48
A really tasty and filling recipe--we didn't miss having meat in it. I omitted the cauliflower and used about 1 TBS more cornstarch, because the sauce was not thick enough. You also need two 9"... Read more
Michelle S 102 25
Really good! I made this into 6 mini-pies (see picture) and did use more cornstarch (5 tablespoons). I don't like mushrooms so I substituted with frozen peas which turned out fantastic. I'll def... Read more
NESSITA 479 47
I made individual pot-pies by pressing the crust into a big muffin cups tin. The veggies had really good flavor (I added garlic and onion powder, and a little cilantro). Read more
Valasca 276 59
I was looking for some hearty comfort food on a cold autumn evening, and this pot pie was exactly what I was craving. The veggies I used were red skinned potatoes, parsnips, green beans, carrots... Read moreTwo students have been shot at the Deer Creek Middle School this afternoon and the suspected shooter – an adult male – is in custody, according to the Jefferson County Sheriff’s department.
Mark Techmeyer, spokesman for the sheriff’s department, said the two juveniles have been transported to a hospital where they are in stable condition.
He said both victims were outside the school.
The shooting was reported at 3:14 p.m., according to Techmeyer. The students were identified as Reagan Weber and Matt Thieu. Both 8th graders were initially treated at Littleton Adventist Hospital, but Matt was transferred to Children’s Hospital where he was listed in critical condition tonight. Reagan was treated in the emergency room at Adventist, then released.
Techmeyer said earlier Tuesday that the children’s wounds are not thought to be life-threatening although the 32-year-old man, identified tonight as Bruco Strong Eagle Eastwood, was using a “high-powered rifle.”
Eastwood has prior arrests for menacing and domestic violence, according to computerized court records.
Jared Nelson, 13, was on a bus when he saw the gunman round a corner on the north side of the school, pull a rifle off his shoulder, fire a round into the air and then shoot a student.
“It was kind of shocking when I saw it happening,” he said.
Several people said that math teacher David Benke then charged and tackled the gunman as he got off a second shot.
Sean Ahearn, 13, saw the same scene unfold, dropped his cello, and jumped in a stranger’s car. Then he called his mother, Colleen, with chilling words: “Don’t come and get me. Somebody’s shooting in the school. I’m in a lady’s car.”
Luke Myrant, 14, says an older guy came in the front door and fired one shot into the air and then reloaded.
“He didn’t look happy at all,” Luke said.
The kids scattered.
“I was scared to death for my life,” Luke said. “My body was shaking and my lip was quivering like I was cold.”
“I’ve never been so scared in my life.”
Teachers were telling kids to get down and not make any noise. The kids were scattered and began texting one another.
Techmeyer said the gun used was a high-powered rifle.
Techmeyer said the man launched his attack as the kids were leaving school and boarding school buses.
Outside, monitoring the school bus boarding, were several staff, said the sheriff’s spokesman.
He said that two staff members saw the shooter and simultaneously tackled him. He said a third staff member rushed to their aid and all three were able to disarm the man.
“There were some true heroes here today,” said the Techmeyer.
By the time deputies arrived the man was being held by school staff and had been disarmed, he added.
Techmeyer said he did not know the relationship, if any, between the shooter and the two children.
Peyton Pritekel, 13, said one of the victims, a girl was brought into the school after the shooting and was bleeding. The girl told them that this guy walked up and asked if they went to Deer Creek. They said yes and he fired twice.
“He was just some random guy,” Pritekel said, describing him as in his late teens or twenties. “God was looking down on us. I mean amen.”
Bruco Strongeagle Eastwood heard voices and had bills he couldn’t pay, his father said minutes after the shooting suspect’s name was released by Jefferson County authorities this evening.
His son is a drifter “who has always had problems,” Bruco War Eagle Eastwood said.
“He’s been troubled,” he said. “He hasn’t had a job in five years and he’s got all these bills he can’t pay.
“He’s tried to get help, but he doesn’t have any money and can’t pay the cost.”
When he worked, he did odd jobs, and sometime recently broke up with a girlfrield.
The elder Eastwood said his son lived in Littleton for a few years, but nowhere near the school, and he has no connections there.
“I don’t know why he did this, but he’s always had problems. I don’t know why, though,” his father said. “He’s different, just different.”
The rifle authorities said was used by Eastwood, a.30-06 rifle, belonged to his father, the elder Eastwood said.
Although Eastwood is believed to have acted alone, at 5:45 p.m. officers were still carefully checking the school “to make sure we have this under control,” said Techmeyer.
Deer Creek Middle School, 9201 W. Columbine Drive, is in the Jefferson County School District.
Students from the school were taken from Deer Creek Middle to nearby Stony Creek Elementary school. Parents were asked to go to Stony Creek to pick up their children.
Both schools will be closed on Wednesday. Counselors will be at Stony Creek Elementary at 7:30 a.m. to talk with any students who would like their services.
Techmeyer said that he “expects a long, long investigation” and that interviews with students and staff will be “non-stop” beginning today and lasting several weeks.
He said that as far as he knows Eastwood was armed with only the rifle. He said the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department will attempt to trace the origins of the rifle but may ask for the assistance of the ATF.
Techmeyer said that authorities are hoping to let students and staff back into the school early this evening to collect their belongings.
Howard Pankratz: 303-954-1939 or [email protected], N.J. – The New York Red Bulls managed their first win of 2016 on Saturday night, but they aren’t about to take a moment to admire their work.
The 4-3 triumph over the Houston Dynamo sent the Red Bull Arena crowd into a frenzy in what was a highly entertaining affair, but it also marked the eighth time that the Red Bulls have conceded in their opening three matches.
“The first two goals, we felt, were self-inflicted,” he said |
a man. I have seen the stockins of those that have gone through the woods covered with them."[208]
This is also confirmed by the writings of Peter Kalm, a Swedish botanist who was sent to America by Linnaeus, and who found the forests of New York "abound" with ticks when he visited in 1749. When Kalm's journey was retraced 100 years later, the forests were gone and the Lyme bacterium had probably become isolated to a few pockets along the northeast coast, Wisconsin, and Minnesota.[209]
Perhaps the first detailed description of what is now known as Lyme disease appeared in the writings of Reverend Dr. John Walker after a visit to the Island of Jura (Deer Island) off the west coast of Scotland in 1764.[210] He gives a good description both of the symptoms of Lyme disease (with "exquisite pain [in] the interior parts of the limbs") and of the tick vector itself, which he describes as a "worm" with a body which is "of a reddish colour and of a compressed shape with a row of feet on each side" that "penetrates the skin". Many people from this area of Great Britain emigrated to North America between 1717 and the end of the 18th century.
The examination of preserved museum specimens has found Borrelia DNA in an infected Ixodes ricinus tick from Germany that dates back to 1884, and from an infected mouse from Cape Cod that died in 1894.[209] The 2010 autopsy of Ötzi the Iceman, a 5,300-year-old mummy, revealed the presence of the DNA sequence of Borrelia burgdorferi making him the earliest known human with Lyme disease.[211]
The early European studies of what is now known as Lyme disease described its skin manifestations. The first study dates to 1883 in Breslau, Germany (now Wrocław, Poland), where physician Alfred Buchwald described a man who had suffered for 16 years with a degenerative skin disorder now known as acrodermatitis chronica atrophicans.[212]
At a 1909 research conference, Swedish dermatologist Arvid Afzelius presented a study about an expanding, ring-like lesion he had observed in an older woman following the bite of a sheep tick. He named the lesion erythema migrans.[212] The skin condition now known as borrelial lymphocytoma was first described in 1911.[213]
The modern history of medical understanding of the disease, including its cause, diagnosis, and treatment, has been difficult.[214]
Neurological problems following tick bites were recognized starting in the 1920s. French physicians Garin and Bujadoux described a farmer with a painful sensory radiculitis accompanied by mild meningitis following a tick bite. A large, ring-shaped rash was also noted, although the doctors did not relate it to the meningoradiculitis. In 1930, the Swedish dermatologist Sven Hellerström was the first to propose EM and neurological symptoms following a tick bite were related.[215] In the 1940s, German neurologist Alfred Bannwarth described several cases of chronic lymphocytic meningitis and polyradiculoneuritis, some of which were accompanied by erythematous skin lesions.
Carl Lennhoff, who worked at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, believed many skin conditions were caused by spirochetes. In 1948, he used a special stain to microscopically observe what he believed were spirochetes in various types of skin lesions, including EM.[216] Although his conclusions were later shown to be erroneous, interest in the study of spirochetes was sparked. In 1949, Nils Thyresson, who also worked at the Karolinska Institute, was the first to treat ACA with penicillin.[217] In the 1950s, the relationship among tick bite, lymphocytoma, EM and Bannwarth's syndrome was recognized throughout Europe leading to the widespread use of penicillin for treatment in Europe.[218][219]
In 1970, a dermatologist in Wisconsin named Rudolph Scrimenti recognized an EM lesion in a patient after recalling a paper by Hellerström that had been reprinted in an American science journal in 1950. This was the first documented case of EM in the United States. Based on the European literature, he treated the patient with penicillin.[220]
The full syndrome now known as Lyme disease was not recognized until a cluster of cases originally thought to be juvenile rheumatoid arthritis was identified in three towns in southeastern Connecticut in 1975, including the towns Lyme and Old Lyme, which gave the disease its popular name.[221] This was investigated by physicians David Snydman and Allen Steere of the Epidemic Intelligence Service, and by others from Yale University, including Dr. Stephen Malawista, who is credited as a co-discover of the disease.[222] The recognition that the patients in the United States had EM led to the recognition that "Lyme arthritis" was one manifestation of the same tick-borne condition known in Europe.[223]
Before 1976, the elements of B. burgdorferi sensu lato infection were called or known as tick-borne meningopolyneuritis, Garin-Bujadoux syndrome, Bannwarth syndrome, Afzelius's disease,[224] Montauk Knee or sheep tick fever. Since 1976 the disease is most often referred to as Lyme disease,[225][226] Lyme borreliosis or simply borreliosis.[citation needed]
In 1980, Steere, et al., began to test antibiotic regimens in adult patients with Lyme disease.[227] In the same year, New York State Health Dept. epidemiologist Jorge Benach provided Willy Burgdorfer, a researcher at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory, with collections of I. dammini [scapularis] from Shelter Island, NY, a known Lyme-endemic area as part of an ongoing investigation of Rocky Mountain spotted fever. In examining the ticks for rickettsiae, Burgdorfer noticed "poorly stained, rather long, irregularly coiled spirochetes." Further examination revealed spirochetes in 60% of the ticks. Burgdorfer credited his familiarity with the European literature for his realization that the spirochetes might be the "long-sought cause of ECM and Lyme disease." Benach supplied him with more ticks from Shelter Island and sera from patients diagnosed with Lyme disease. University of Texas Health Science Center researcher Alan Barbour "offered his expertise to culture and immunochemically characterize the organism." Burgdorfer subsequently confirmed his discovery by isolating, from patients with Lyme disease, spirochetes identical to those found in ticks.[228] In June 1982, he published his findings in Science, and the spirochete was named Borrelia burgdorferi in his honor.[229]
After the identification of B. burgdorferi as the causative agent of Lyme disease, antibiotics were selected for testing, guided by in vitro antibiotic sensitivities, including tetracycline antibiotics, amoxicillin, cefuroxime axetil, intravenous and intramuscular penicillin and intravenous ceftriaxone.[230][231] The mechanism of tick transmission was also the subject of much discussion. B. burgdorferi spirochetes were identified in tick saliva in 1987, confirming the hypothesis that transmission occurred via tick salivary glands.[232]
Society and culture
Urbanization and other anthropogenic factors can be implicated in the spread of Lyme disease to humans. In many areas, expansion of suburban neighborhoods has led to gradual deforestation of surrounding wooded areas and increased border contact between humans and tick-dense areas. Human expansion has also resulted in a reduction of predators that hunt deer as well as mice, chipmunks and other small rodents—the primary reservoirs for Lyme disease. As a consequence of increased human contact with host and vector, the likelihood of transmission of the disease has greatly increased.[233][234] Researchers are investigating possible links between global warming and the spread of vector-borne diseases, including Lyme disease.[235]
Controversy
The term "chronic Lyme disease" is controversial and not recognized in the medical literature,[236] and most medical authorities advise against long-term antibiotic treatment for Lyme disease.[98][237][238] Studies have shown that most people diagnosed with "chronic Lyme disease" either have no objective evidence of previous or current infection with B. burgdorferi or are people who should be classified as having post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome (PTLDS), which is defined as continuing or relapsing non-specific symptoms (such as fatigue, musculoskeletal pain, and cognitive complaints) in a person previously treated for Lyme disease.[239]
Other animals
Prevention of Lyme disease is an important step in keeping dogs safe in endemic areas. Prevention education and a number of preventative measures are available. First, for dog owners who live near or who often frequent tick-infested areas, routine vaccinations of their dogs is an important step.[240]
Another crucial preventive measure is the use of persistent acaricides, such as topical repellents or pesticides that contain triazapentadienes (Amitraz), phenylpyrazoles (Fipronil), or permethrin (pyrethroids).[241] These acaricides target primarily the adult stages of Lyme-carrying ticks and reduce the number of reproductively active ticks in the environment.[240] Formulations of these ingredients are available in a variety of topical forms, including spot-ons, sprays, powders, impregnated collars, solutions, and shampoos.[241]
Examination of a dog for ticks after being in a tick-infested area is an important precautionary measure to take in the prevention of Lyme disease. Key spots to examine include the head, neck, and ears.[242]
Research
The National Institutes of Health have supported research into bacterial persistence.[243]
References
This article incorporates public domain material from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention document "Post-Treatment Lyme Disease Syndrome".The repeal proposal, which will be filed in the Federal Register on Tuesday, fulfills a promise President Trump made to eradicate his predecessor’s environmental legacy. Eliminating the Clean Power Plan makes it less likely that the United States can fulfill its promise as part of the Paris climate agreement to ratchet down emissions that are warming the planet and contributing to heat waves and sea-level rise. Mr. Trump has vowed to abandon that international accord.
It also is a personal triumph for Mr. Pruitt, who as Oklahoma attorney general helped lead more than two dozen states in challenging the rule in the courts. In announcing the repeal, Mr. Pruitt made many of the same arguments that he had made for years to Congress and in lawsuits: that the Obama administration exceeded its legal authority in an effort to limit greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. (Last year, the Supreme Court blocked the rule from taking effect while courts assessed those lawsuits.) A leaked draft of the repeal proposal asserts that the country would save $33 billion by not complying with the regulation and rejects the health benefits the Obama administration had calculated from the original rule.
Coal- and natural-gas-fired power plants are responsible for about one-third of America’s carbon dioxide emissions. When the Clean Power Plan was unveiled in 2015, it was expected to cut power sector emissions 32 percent by 2030, relative to 2005. While many states are already shifting away from coal power for economic reasons, experts say scrapping the rule could slow that transition.
Environmental groups and several states plan to challenge the repeal proposal in federal courts, arguing against Mr. Pruitt’s move on both scientific and economic grounds.
Industry groups cheered the announcement, but have also indicated that they would prefer that Mr. Pruitt replace the Clean Power Plan with a new, more modest regulation on power plants in order to blunt any court challenges. The E.P.A. is still required to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions because of a 2009 legal opinion known as the endangerment finding.
“We have always believed that there is a better way to approach greenhouse gas emissions reductions,” Karen A. Harbert, the president of the Chamber of Commerce’s Global Energy Institute, said in a statement. “We welcome the opportunity for business to be at the table with the E.P.A. and other stakeholders to develop an approach that lowers emissions, preserves America’s energy advantage and respects the bounds of the Clean Air Act.”Armenia-Israeli relations have been somewhat distant, complicated by the latter's strong ties with Yerevan's two biggest foes, Azerbaijan and Turkey. But a senior Israeli official has visited Yerevan amid signs that the politics of the Caucasus in Jerusalem may be shifting.
Tsachi Hanegbi, Israel's Minister for Regional Cooperation, visited Armenia on July 25-26, for talks with senior Armenian officials. Hanegbi is a key figure in prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party and has held various ministerial positions for the past two decades. Hanegbi said that his visit was intended as a “breakthrough” in relations to make Armenia-Israeli “friendship mutually beneficial in many fields.” It was the first visit by a senior Israeli official to Armenia since 2012.
Relations with Israel have remained distant since Armenia gained independence in 1991, as Jerusalem has prioritized its ties to Turkey and, more recently, Azerbaijan. As early as the 1990s, pro-Israel groups in Washington aided Turkish and Azerbaijani governments in lobbying battles with the Armenian American community, just as Ankara and Baku reached out to Israel for security cooperation. And although Israeli-Turkish relations have soured somewhat under the rule of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Azerbaijan has become the main supplier of crude oil to Israel and has spent billions on Israeli weaponry.
Israeli-supplied arms played a critical role in last year's “April war” between Armenia and Azerbaijan. After Azerbaijan took several frontline posts in a surprise attack on April 2, 2016, Armenian forces undertook a counteroffensive. But Israeli-supplied Harop suicide drones and Spike anti-tank missiles helped Azerbaijani forces thwart that counterattack. As it happened, an Israeli parliamentary delegation was in Yerevan that same day. Knesset deputy speaker Tali Ploskov, who headed the delegation, reportedly “strongly condemned” the Azerbaijani attack in Karabakh and called for return to the ceasefire.
In subsequent days, Armenian ambassador Armen Melkonyan delivered a formal protest to Israel over the weapons. Another Knesset member, Zehava Gal-On from the opposition Meretz party, called for a halt to Israeli weapons sales to Azerbaijan. Gal-On also claimed that a key proponent of relations with Azerbaijani, current defense minister Avigdor Lieberman, acted as a “foreign agent” on Baku’s behalf and benefited financially from the relationship.
While Israeli leftists, particularly the late Meretz leader Yossi Sarid, have long sympathized with Armenians, centrist and right-wing politicians have been more distant. That has been changing somewhat. Since 2013, the speaker of the Knesset has been Likud’s Yuli Edelstein, who supports recognition of the Armenian genocide. Since 2015, Ze’ev Elkin, who also supported Armenian issues in the Knesset, has emerged as a key figure in the Netanyahu cabinet. In April of that year, the Likud delegated Knesset member Anat Berko to events marking the genocide centenary in Yerevan. And this year, a controversial right-wing figure Avigdor Eskin, who had previously been sympathetic to Azerbaijan, made a surprise visit to Nagorno Karabakh.
Hanegbi also has been a key Israeli interlocutor in contacts with Azerbaijan, meeting Azerbaijan’s deputy foreign minister and a delegation of parliament members on their visits to Israel last year. While in Yerevan he refused to answer questions about weapons sales to Azerbaijan, saying that his “trip is concentrated on positive sides of enhancing the relationship between our countries.”
It remains to be seen if Israel is in fact seeking to strike a more balanced relationship with Armenia or if the talks were merely damage control. According to the Armenian government’s press release, in a meeting with Hanegbi Prime Minister Karen Karapetyan identified information technology, agriculture, healthcare and science as areas where Armenia was eager to study Israel’s experience and find areas of cooperation.
Following Hanegbi’s meeting with foreign minister Eduard Nalbandyan, the latter’s deputy Shavarsh Kocharyan said that “real steps” were being taken to establish closer ties. Asked about Israel’s weapons sales to Azerbaijan, Kocharyan suggested that Israel was ready to sell weapons to Armenia as well.“Every aspect of my life has been revolutionized through plant-based living,” Dead Prez rapper Khnum Ibomu, a.k.a. STIC, says in the new documentary series The Veg Effect.
Just call it the Chef’s Table of the vegetarian world. The beautifully filmed series, directed by Alison Klayman (director of the award-winning documentary feature Ai WeiWei: Never Sorry), hones its cinematographic laser beam on five unusual stories based on eating less meat: Ibomu and his wife, a beer brewer, two tap dancers, a stuntwoman, and of all things, two butchers. Cooking healthy foods at home, the subjects of the series have brought diverse vegetarian — or, at times, simply less-meatcentric — styles into their lives.
MorningStar Farms, the company that sponsored the series, makes vegetarian foods filled with plant protein: veggie burgers, vegetarian sausage, and the like. In my opinion, their products are very tasty—and I say this as a “mostly vegetarian” (more on that later) who has eaten quite a few unfortunate veggie burgers in her life.
But they perceived an issue in reaching those who regularly and readily eat meat. “We felt those people didn’t see [plant-based food] as a space for them,” says company Director of Brand and Innovation Marketing Todd Smith. “We wanted to find a way to show them that it is.”
So they steered away from some more traditional, and intense, “Meat is murder” arguments in favor of a flexible and inclusive approach to eating a more plant-based diet—and made a documentary series, featuring five stories illustrating how reducing meat consumption can be beneficial on personal-health, environmental, and of course animal rights fronts.
“I work with people where they’re at. And I get it,” says nutritionist Afya Ibomu, of guiding her clients toward healthier diets, in the series.
“This isn’t some scare-you-into-a-rage film about the food industry,” the film’s website says, “or about regretting yesterday. This is a documentary series about how we can change the world by answering one simple question: What are we going to eat today?”
The stories are diverse, from formerly hard-partying Ibomu in Atlanta to butchers Trey Nichols and James Holtslag in San Diego. Stic was brought into vegetarianism by his wife Afya and found the new diet radically improved his health, even helping him recover fully from a case of gout. His belief in the benefits of a vegetarian diet is strong; he states in the film that the black urban community “loses more lives to burgers than to bullets.” Nichols and Holtslag, understandably, support some degree of meat consumption but speak of the environmental benefits of eating less meat—and urge those who purchase it to be aware of its origins and quality. They also close their shop for Meatless Mondays.
It’s exactly this kind of flexibility of approach that series director Klayman was looking for. “The labels have become more complicated” in regard to defining diets, she says (Freegan, anyone?), “and people are invited to connect without labels.” Klayman grew up in a kosher home—and, she said, ate her mother’s beef brisket on a recent visit home. She eats fish more regularly and meat only occasionally. “We make choices based on people,” she says (and indeed the topic of a person who doesn’t usually eat meat doing so as a guest in someone’s home is discussed in the series). “It’s social, as well as intellectual, religious, etc. It’s super intimate.” She summed things up well during a Q&A after a screening for the series: “The question ‘Are you a vegetarian?’ is a lot to talk about!”
Dave Thibodeau, who heads up Ska Brewery in Durango, Colorado, eats no meat and boasts in the film about his surprise win of a local chili contest with vegetarian chili. “There are a lot of farmers and cowboys in Durango—but it’s also a pretty conscious community, including them,” he says. Meanwhile, stunt woman Danielle Burgio thought she needed animal protein to keep up her strength as an athlete—and then found she could consume far less and still excel.
After the screening, Baredu Ahmed, also featured, the Assistant Director of and teacher at the American Embassy of Dance, in Washington, D.C., talked about her meat-eating Ethiopian roots—and how her parents are gradually changing their diets. “My mom is being more mindful,” she said “She’s aware of the cultural climate. Her friends are eating less meat.” But her parents do eat meat sometimes, and she will eat it when sharing meals at their home, just as they eat her vegetarian dishes.
As for me: I will generally eat meat if it is plated and served by hosts who don’t know my eating habits, though I don’t buy it, order it, or cook it for myself. I might also eat it if it’s leftovers and will likely otherwise be trashed—I see no virtue in having meat get thrown away. These choices and the ways to make them are, absolutely, a lot to talk about. The Veg Effect is one great way of beginning those conversations.
Pamela Rafalow Grossman’s articles and essays have appeared in the Village Voice, Time.com, Ms. and Salon.com, among other outlets. She is slowly but steadily overcoming her fear of the kitchen.A new study reports that amyloid — a protein that signifies Alzheimer’s disease — can start building up in people as young as 20.
Researchers say this is the first study to show the development in young humans.
Changiz Geula, research professor at the Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer's Disease Center at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, said the discovery is “unprecedented.”
“This is very significant,” Geula said. “We know that amyloid, when present for long periods of time, is bad for you.”
His study in Brain details how researchers evaluated basal forebrain cholinergic neurons.
They wanted to see how the neurons were impacted at an early age. The scientists also wanted to know why the neurons are among the first to die. The neurons are linked to memory and attention.
The team looked at the neurons from brains of deceased people in three groups.
The first group consisted of 13 cognitively normal young people ranging in age from 20 to 66. The second group had 16 nondemented older individuals who were 70 to 99 years old. The third group was comprised of 21 people with Alzheimer’s who ranged in age from 60 to 95.
The scientists found that amyloid molecules started to accumulate inside the neurons in young adulthood. The molecules created small toxic clumps called amyloid oligomers. The clumps were larger in older people with and without Alzheimer’s disease. Nerve cells in other areas of the brain did not have as much buildup.
Get the Facts: What Is Alzheimer’s Disease? »
Scientists already know that the clumps can cause calcium to leak into the cell and destroy it. Geula believes the accumulation of amyloid probably makes the cells vulnerable, damaging and eventually killing the neurons.
Geula said it’s also possible the clumps grow to a certain size and clog the cell. The clumps could also damage cells by secreting amyloid outside the cell, which leads to the large amyloid plaques seen in people with Alzheimer’s.
What’s Next in the Study of Amyloids?
In the future, Geula’s team wants to look at how amyloid damages the neurons.
Dr. Raj C. Shah, an associate professor at the Rush Alzheimer's Disease Center in Chicago, said that if the findings can be replicated, it leads him to consider two options.
“First, we need to explore if amyloid accumulation has a normal function in humans,” he said.
Second, if they find that amyloid accumulation is not a normal function in humans, Alzheimer's disease may need to be viewed as a lifelong condition — not just something that happens when we are older.
Related News: A Caregiver’s Guide to Alzheimer’s»
“General knowledge about the timing of exposure to a risk factor opens the window for exploring lifelong approaches to try to prevent the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease … symptoms that may occur many decades from the time of initial amyloid accumulation,” Shah said.
Dr. Richard Isaacson, director of the Alzheimer's Prevention Clinic within the Weill Cornell Memory Disorders Program, said that many people do not know that Alzheimer's disease starts in the brain decades before memory loss symptoms start.
“This study is interesting as it provides strikingly early evidence of amyloid accumulation in the brain,” Isaacson added.We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men, women, and transgendered—and any other human who is able to elude the tyranny of work for a couple of weeks—are created equal. We gather to be free not of tyranny, but of responsibility and college tuitions. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that a government long established and a nation long prosperous be changed for light and transient causes. So let our demands* be submitted to a candid world.
First, we are imbued with as many inalienable rights as a few thousand college kids and a gaggle of borderline celebrities can concoct, among them a guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment and immediate across-the-board debt forgiveness—even if that debt was acquired taking on a mortgage with a 4.1 percent interest rate and no money down, which, we admit, is a pretty sweet deal in historical context...
...but down with the modern gilded age!
We demand that a Master of Fine Arts in musical theater writing, with a minor in German, become an immutable human right, because education is crucial and rich people can afford to fund unemployment checks until we find jobs or in perpetuity, whichever comes first.
We demand a minimum wage of $10, no... make it $20. We earned it. And we demand the end of "profiteering," because there is no better way to end joblessness than stopping the growth of capital. We also demand a maximum wage law, because selfish American dreams need a firm ceiling.
We demand the institution of direct democracy, because if a bunch of people say it's OK, it's OK. And everyone deserves to have his or her voice heard. Except Mr. Moneybags, who we demand stop contributing his own money to candidates we disagree with, to issue groups we loathe, and to lobbyists who do not work for organizations featuring "Service," "Employees," "International" and/or "Union" in their title.
We demand the end to bailouts and corporate subsidies, unless we're talking about companies that feature sunflowers or sun rays in their logos, because that's the kind of morally gratifying institution we approve of, and thus, they should totally be fast-tracked and bailed out with your money to bring the fossil fuel economy ("the economy") to an end.
We demand the end to a corrupt Wall Street ("Apple" "your 401(k)") because banks hold too much power. We demand that government consolidate authority so that elected officials can make prudent choices for us. All that cash in banks was printed by the war god Mars and has nothing to do with the voluntary deposits by ordinary Americans, so we do not consider this theft.
We demand the end to corporate censorship, because if we can't force private news organizations to run the types of stories with which we agree, there can't be a healthy democracy. So actually, we demand the end of all corporate news organizations in the name of free speech.
We demand the end to health profiteering, because everyone knows that all the wondrous and lifesaving advances in modern medicine were invented in the People's Democratic Republic of Laos. Smart people work for the good of humanity, not because they're greedy.
We demand these rights because of the mass injustice of being able to freely protest against racism and corporatism without any real fear of imprisonment in the most diverse city on earth. And to the wiseguy who walked by the other day and claimed that I'd be writing this manifesto with a quill pen on parchment paper if it weren't for capitalism, we have two words for you: Koch brothers. Think about it.
This is the fifth communiqué from the 99.9 percent. We are occupying Wall Street, and we're not going home until it gets really cold.
*These grievances are not all-inclusive.
David Harsanyi is a columnist at The Blaze. Follow him on Twitter @davidharsanyi.
COPYRIGHT 2011 CREATORS.COMIn September, Mercedes-Benz scored a YouTube hit with a commercial in which chickens, held up by people, dance while their heads remain still.
It was a great way to promote the automaker's "Magic Body Control" technology. The car scans the road surface ahead and adjusts the suspension to keep the occupants' ride level stable — the body moves, the head doesn't.
Prompted by the success of the Mercedes ad, Jaguar Land Rover has responded with a parody version: A man makes a chicken dance, saying "See, it's just like a Mercedes." Then the chicken is promptly eaten by a Jaguar.
Text appears: "Magic Body Control? We prefer cat-like reflexes."
In an email, a Jaguar rep gave credit to the creative team at Mercedes, and describes its own video as "an alternate, Jaguar, point of view."
Here's the Jaguar version:
And the original Mercedes ad:“In the background, you see the whole entire city, and he’s just quietly sitting on the water,” Mr. Polanco said. “It puts some perspective on things.”
As a public park run by a nonprofit corporation, the Socrates Sculpture Park regularly hosts playful, provocative outdoor art displays that change with the seasons. “Floating Echo,” by Chang-Jin Lee, a Korean-born visual artist who lives in New York City, is part of an exhibition by emerging artists. The show’s debut was on Sept. 9, and it will remain, if it survives the weather, until March.
Religion is often, like economics or culture, a subject of the public art at the park, said John Hatfield, the park’s executive director. A short walk from the Buddha, for example, was a statue of the Virgin Mary made of birdseed; it changes each day with the pecks of twittering sparrows. “Religion is a part of our lives, and therefore it’s a part of what artists are sometimes interested in exploring, philosophically, politically, spiritually,” Mr. Hatfield said.
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“Floating Echo” works on several levels, he said. It invites reflection on Buddhist ideas of tranquillity and detachment, as it comes alive on the waves, while remaining in balance. Yet on another level, it is a kitsch object. “After all, it is an inflated, plastic balloon,” he said. The Buddha as kitsch is everywhere, he added — in bodegas, in garden ornaments. “Why is that O.K.?” he said. Is there something about Buddhist philosophy, he wondered, that makes that “perfectly fine”?
Because the sculpture has not gotten much notice, most people who come to the small park are not expecting, when they come down a gentle slope toward the river, to see it there. Many react by taking photos, which they promptly post to Instagram or Twitter. Some try to adjust their own pace to try to be like the sculpture itself, going with the flow amid the chaos of the city.
Taeko Shioiri, 37, a Buddhist from Japan who was flying kites in the park with her two sons, said that while she saw “Floating Echo” as an artistic object, “for really religious people, maybe it could be a little bit provocative.”
But for Kissor Sherpa, 50, a Buddhist from Nepal, it seemed to bring personal delight. He had dropped by the park on Saturday afternoon carrying a heavy bag from his shift working at a local gym. While other visitors snapped photographs, he stood reverentially for several minutes, surprised to see the Buddha there, and smiled deeply when asked for his opinion. Buddhist temples are often in remote areas, he noted. “So this place is good.”
Religious or not, people did find themselves reflecting on spiritual themes as they watched the Buddha. Haesang Cho, 26, a graphic designer who identified herself as Catholic, said she found herself wondering if her God and the Buddha were one. She spent several moments in dialogue with the sculpture, she said. “I was asking, ‘What kind of message do you want to give me?’ ”
Nina Svensen, 31, brought her parents, who were visiting from Denmark, to see the sculpture — and she was simply glad it was still intact.
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“We didn’t think it would survive this long,” she said. “We were here on the 9th of September, and we thought for sure someone would have punctured it by now.”Multiple studies show they put their patients’, and their own, lives at risk — with increased chances of medical mistakes, car crashes and surgical injuries. (Source: Express Graphic by Pradeep Yadav)
One demand of doctors who went on strike in Delhi last week was for shorter duty hours. They are unregulated currently, and resident doctors in the capital’s public hospitals easily end up working 36-48-hour shifts. (See the Page 1 report in this paper’s July 7 edition.) In Emergency wards of private hospitals by contrast, doctors work, at the most, 8-10 hours at a stretch — and treat, by conservative estimates, about a tenth the number of patients at a government hospital Emergency.
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READ: Doctor’s 35-hr shift on 8 bananas, a toilet in nearby cafe
Senior consultants or teaching professors are usually never on duty during Emergency hours in government hospitals. After 5 or 6 pm, Emergencies, Emergency operation theatres, and wards — often with two of three patients sharing a bed — and ICUs are left entirely to the resident doctors.
READ: Neither gloves nor saline drip, patients given just half a dose
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Rules say consultants must report to hospitals in grave emergencies, but rare is the day when a senior consultant is seen in a hospital after midnight. In private hospitals, consultants are on duty in ICUs and surgical wards through the night.
Residents also juggle what should ideally be discrete duties. So, a resident in Anaesthesia posted at an ICU may have to handle emergency surgery, leaving the ICU to juniors or interns. And if a patient in a ward starts to collapse, the same resident may be asked to rush there.
What is the impact of putting in insanely long hours in a high-pressure environment on the resident doctors and their patients? While Indian research is scant, a landmark study published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) in 2005 produced alarming findings.
The study by the Harvard Work Hours, Health and Safety Group found that resident doctors made 35.9 per cent more serious errors when working 24 hours-or-more schedules, compared to “every third night” call schedules.
The study, based on 17,000 Internet questionnaires answered by over 2,700 doctors in their first year of post-graduate residency, also found that every time their work shifts overshot stipulated hours in a month, their risk of suffering a motor vehicle crash increased by 9.1 per cent, and the monthly risk of a crash during the commute from work to home by 16.2 per cent.
In months with five or more extended shifts, “the risk that they would fall asleep while driving or while stopped in traffic was significantly increased” — by ratios of 2.39 and 3.69 respectively, the study found.
Another 2006 multi-institutional study published in the Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA) by the Harvard Medical School and Vancouver General Hospital, found accidental percutaneous injuries — needlestick or laceration injuries — common in residents who worked 24 hours.
“Lapse in concentration and fatigue were the two most commonly reported contributing factors (64% and 31% of injuries, respectively),” the study noted. Needlestick pricks expose doctors to blood infections, which may be life-threatening, like HIV and HCV.
A third multi-institutional study, by the Kansas City School of Medicine, published in the journal Academic Emergency Medicine in 2008, found 8 per cent resident doctors posted in Trauma or Emergencies saw 96 motor vehicle crashes, and 58 per cent doctors reported 1,446 near crash injuries after duty hours. Nearly three-fourths of motor vehicle crashes and 80 per cent of near-crashes followed the night shift, according to the study.
In 2006, a study of gynaecology residents by Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, found 89.8 per cent “showed evidence of moderate burnout” and 34.2 per cent were “considered depressed”.
In the West, rules regulating work hours of junior doctors have been in place for the last 10-15 years. Studies in the United States have already quantified improvements in patient care, including significant reductions in mortality.
In the UK, working hours for junior doctors are limited by the European Working Time Directive. A doctor can now work an average 48 hours per week (from the earlier 56 hours), calculated over 26 weeks. After continuous duty of 11 hours, a rest day is prescribed. A day off is mandated every week, and a 20-minute rest every 6 hours.
Dr Soumyadeep Bhaumik, Executive Editor, Journal of Family Medicine & Primary Care, says the US-based Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education has recognised long work hours as a safety hazard for interns. “The nation simply cannot afford to lose young doctors due to faulty regulations in place. The results of these studies have implications for medical residency programmes, which routinely schedule physicians to work more than 24 consecutive hours,” Dr Bhaumik said.
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of the Confederate flag The second National Flag of the Confederacy was issued by the Confederate Congress on May 1, 1863. This flag was designed to have a distinct difference from the Union's Stars and Stripes. Hide Caption 3 of 6 Photos: Evolution of the Confederate flag The third National Flag of the Confederacy was the final flag of the Confederate government and was adopted on March 4, 1865. The flag was not used long before the Confederacy surrendered. Hide Caption 4 of 6 Photos: Evolution of the Confederate flag The Confederate Battle flag known as the "Southern Cross" has 13 stars to represent the defeated Confederate States of America. Hide Caption 5 of 6 Photos: Evolution of the Confederate flag Dixiecrats resurrected the "Southern Cross" flag as a political symbol around the time President Harry Truman supported efforts to end lynchings and desegregate the military in 1948. During that same period, the Ku Klux Klan began using the flag more widely. Hide Caption 6 of 6
Politicians in other states have taken swift and uncomplicated action to banish it.
On Wednesday, Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley directed that four Confederate flags be taken down permanently from a Confederate memorial at the State Capitol building. The Mississippi state flag, which contains the battle emblem as a prominent element, was removed from a display of state flags outside City Hall in Boise, Idaho, at the mayor's request.
Also, the National Park Service announced that it is discontinuing items bearing the flag in its souvenir shops. Walmart, eBay and Amazon have announced they would stop selling it, and an array of other corporate giants have supported its removal.
Presidential eulogy
South Carolina legislators are taking steps in the direction of removing the battle flag that flies at a Confederate memorial on the State House grounds, but the process appears complicated and slow.
A law protecting it and other Civil War symbols requires a two-thirds supermajority vote in each chamber of the legislature to take it down. But critics say it could go much faster if lawmakers would just strike down that law with a simple majority vote.
The flag was still flying Wednesday when Pinckney's body went on public view in the State House.People claim the line between genius and insanity is a very thin line. Some of the greatest minds in history would also be deemed as eccentric as well. We have all heard stories of both in reference to Vince McMahon. His wrestling persona that he has developed as the evil owner Vincent Kennedy McMahon can certainly be labeled as both. He once decided to create his own religion that he called McMahonism. He was also the guy who had his own kiss my ass club quite literally. He has had an affair that produced a bastard child named Hornswaggle. We could keep this list going all day long with all the evidence of how crazy Vince McMahon is which would include getting in the ring and challenging top stars like Hulk Hogan, Shawn Michaels, Triple H and most famously Stone Cold Steve Austin. He even booked himself in a match with his own daughter a week before her legitimate wedding to Paul Lévesque (Triple H) to the dismay of his family.The real Vince if we actually can tell the difference has a long list of stories that have been just as insane. In many ways, Vince McMahon is similar to comedian Steven Colbert in where the line between the characters both play and the actual real person can become very blurred. Like for example Vince McMahon once had a verbal battle with Bob Costas. It got so heated many felt McMahon might actually get into a fistfight with him on his HBO show years ago. The stories you hear from former WWE staff are legendary. It is widely known that Vince actually sees sneezing as a sign of weakness. He is a noted insomniac that sees sleep as the enemy. He has had legendary screaming matches with Paul Heyman and many others that would have been worthy of pay-per-views when you hear them described by people that were there.The most recent event happened yesterday where McMahon during a Smackdown taping on of the breaks to insert a commercial into the taped program came out to address the audience. This was not part of the show as would be made pretty clear in his rant. He basically cut a promo on the Liverpool crowd for their lack of enthusiasm claiming his paying audience was sitting on their hands. He made some strange reference about the crowd compared to a skin disease of some sort. In short, Vince pretty much lost it on WWE fans, that in the case of where they were rarely get the chance to see the product live. Add in the fact these same fans have been screwed out of the WWE Network to this point. Having the rug pulled out from under them at the very last possible moment with no info on when they would get the network going forward.The point this might not have been the people to take your anger and frustration out on. Which given how things have gone with the WWE Network Vince McMahon would not be human if he was not totally frustrated with how things have gone with it. Business wise 2014 will not be going down as a banner year for WWE there is no question about that. Add in the injuries and C.M Punk’s sudden departure at the beginning of the year it just adds to the frustration.I guess it was around the time the Performance Center first opened I wondered if Vince McMahon was healthy. His lack of appearance at the opening I found puzzling. This was the first major project of his son-in-law Paul Lévesque’s transition into an executive in the company. Something that McMahon was a driving force in having him take on for years. He even had Paul being part of creative for WWE prior to marrying his daughter Stephanie. I just assumed he wanted to let Paul have his day and allow both him and Stephanie have a more active role in the public eye as executives in the company. The fact he never stepped foot in the Performance Center until months after though caused me to raise my eyebrows.There is no evidence to suggest that Vince is not of sound mind and body that should be clearly stated. It does make logical sense that he has stepped out of the picture and faded to behind the scenes to allow Stephanie and Paul to be the faces of this company with in storyline and outside of it. In fact, many say at first it took a lot of convincing if you will pardon the pun to get Vince to be an active character in storylines. He clearly enjoyed it, but for years he had been content to just have the audience believe he was simply an announcer and not the owner of the company.Vince will always be the most compelling character in the WWE. He for whatever good or bad you might have to say about him is always interesting in life or in his WWE Universe. One thing that his detractors and supporters seem to be in full agreement of is that there will never be another Vince McMahon.While people wonder loudly if he has lost touch with his audience and question if he is truly playing with a full deck at this stage. It goes back to that line we started this article with about that line between genius and insanity being a thin line. Alex Greenfield a former head writer of Smackdown talked about how Vince already was seeing the direction of things moving to online back in around 2007 when Greenfield was part of the company. He was already starting to think about the idea of WWE Network back then. While some would consider Vince McMahon, a guy out of touch with these modern times is that really true. The WWE has been a company at the forefront of embracing social media and this network is honestly considered by many with no connection to wrestling a glimpse into the future of how content will be distributed.Sure Vince is getting older and he may not understand his audience as well as he once did. He might need to be more accepting of the ideas of the people around him especially his own son-in-law Paul Lévesque. Most would agree the one show WWE is producing every week that is connecting with fans is NXT. This is a show NXT in which Paul has 100% control of and basically plays the role of Vince. Vince has a lot on his plate and perhaps letting go of the reigns of creative some would be to use the term “Best for Business” in reality.Wrestling often imitates life and this angle with Vince testing the authority might not be far off the reality of things with WWE behind the scenes. It might be time for Vince McMahon to let his daughter and son-in-law have the actual power to have the final say on story lines every week on WWE television. Lord knows there are many business concerns starting with revitalizing of this network to keep Vince very busy.Most conclude Vince will never give up control until he is dead or just physically unable to continue. As father time works a program with Vince McMahon, clearly he knows that is not one where Vince McMahon can come out on top. It is Vince, so maybe he thinks he is immortal like the Hulkster who really knows.Still it is interesting to see what happens as Vince really seemed to enjoy suddenly being back in the mix on T.V at Raw in Buffalo. Did that play any role in his unscheduled rant in Liverpool? On the other hand, is it simply a guy blowing off steam? Who has been having a rough year business wise at an advanced age? Only one guy knows that answer and it is Vince McMahon.Georgia has vowed to act "aggressively" on reports that claim its former territory of Abkhazia has struck a joint defense agreement with Russia, the nation's defense and foreign policy chiefs said in a statement Saturday.
TBILISI, October 19 (RIA Novosti) - Georgia has vowed to act "aggressively" on reports that claim its former territory of Abkhazia has struck a joint defense agreement with Russia, the nation's defense and foreign policy chiefs said in a statement Saturday.
Georgia's defense and crisis management council held talks on Saturday to look into the situation in Abkhazia, an area Tbilisi considers to be an occupied territory. A separate meeting on foreign policy took place in the Defense Ministry. Following the talks, Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili ordered to draw up a plan on the country's policy toward Russia.
"All state departments will work on this plan, which will give start to aggressive foreign policy steps," Georgian Defense Minister Irakly Alasania told reporters after the two meetings.
Reports transpired earlier that Russia and Georgia's breakaway republic of Abkhazia had mapped out a defense strategy that allegedly includes the creation of a joint military force "to repel foreign aggression and act together to patrol the border."
In the wake of the reports, Georgian President Giorgi Margvelashvili scheduled the National Security Council to convene on October 28 to address the new challenges.
Abkhazia broke away from Georgia following an ethnically tinged war in 1992-1993, just after the Soviet Union collapsed. In response to Russia's decision to recognize the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Georgia severed diplomatic relations with Moscow and declared the two Caucasian republics occupied territories.
Early in September Georgian President Giorgi Margvelashvili said Georgia plans to return the territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia by peaceful means.Fox News revealed that its former CEO Roger Ailes had died on Thursday during a somber breaking news segment on its morning show.
"Fox & Friends" co-hosts Ainsley Earhardt and Steve Doocy read a statement from Ailes' wife Elizabeth in which she said Roger was "a loving husband" and "a patriot."
Ailes, who died at 77, transformed cable news and American politics by building Fox News into a ratings powerhouse, but he was fired from the network last summer amid several sexual harassment allegations against him, which he denied. In its coverage of his death Thursday morning, Fox referred only obliquely to the scandal, and did not mention the federal investigation of the network that has come out of it.
During the morning show, Earhardt, who appeared choked up, said Ailes' wife and "beautiful son" were in their thoughts and prayers and told him to rest in peace.
"He went out in such a sad way, but who doesn't have sins," Earhardt said. "We all have our sins and cross to bear and Roger, I will love you forever. You gave me an opportunity and I will forever be grateful and know that I would not have this job if it was weren't for you. You rest in peace Roger and I hope that you are at peace."
Co-host Brian Kilmeade also shared his feelings, saying Ailes considered himself a "lunch pail guy" and that he was a "blue collar guy in a white collar position."
Related: Roger Ailes, who built Fox News into a powerhouse, dies at 77
Fox News meteorologist Janice Dean was also on the show when the news broke and seemed very emotional.
"I wouldn't be here without that man," she said. "When I was diagnosed with MS he got on the phone and said, 'Whatever we can do for your family because we are a family.'"
The news about Ailes' death came as "Fox & Friends" was ending but Bill Hemmer and Shannon Bream continued to discuss it during their show, "America's Newsroom."
Bream said that Ailes created a space for Americans who felt their views weren't represented by other media outlets and Hemmer said few people realized just how funny Ailes was.
Hemmer said that whenever he visited Ailes at his home, they'd start the evening by saying the Pledge of Allegiance.
He also repeatedly called Ailes' wife "an angel on Earth" and said any man would be proud to call Ailes' son their own.
Hemmer then shared a public statement from Fox News host Sean Hannity, who said America had just lost "one of its great patriotic warriors."
"Few people in this life will ever reach the profound level of impact that Roger Ailes had on the country every single day," Hannity said. "As his opponents played checkers in life, Roger was always the strategist, playing Chess, 5 steps ahead at a whole other level."
Hannity also said Ailes was like a second father to him after his father died shortly after he joined Fox News.This mix of confidence, creativity, and business moxie is all part of the real-world education that students gain at HSRA. A project-based urban high school started by rapper David "TC" Ellis, HSRA is a launching pad for the innovative thinking that Seidel describes in vivid detail in Hip Hop Genius: Remixing High School Education.
Author and educator Sam Seidel recalls meeting a student during a tour of the High School for the Recording Arts (HSRA) in St. Paul, Minn. When Seidel asked if he could buy one of the student's instrumentals, the young man told him no, but maybe they could work out a licensing arrangement. Then the student whipped out a contract.
Hip Hop Genius: Remixing High School Education from sam seidel on Vimeo
Seidel will be one of three keynoters at PBL World, an upcoming gathering of educators focused on empowering students through project-based learning. PBL World takes place June 18-22 in Napa, Calif., and is a partnership of the Buck Institute for Education and Napa Valley Unified School District. Along with Seidel, keynoters include global education expert Yong Zhao, author of Catching Up or Leading the Way, and Cindy Johanson, executive director of the George Lucas Educational Foundation.
I caught up with Sam Seidel by phone recently to talk about Hip Hop Genius and the power of real-world projects.
In your book, you define "hip hop genius" as the creative resourcefulness found in the face of limited resources. Hip hop artists are expert at what you call flipping somethin' outta nothin'. They reuse cardboard boxes as dance floors, turn tin cans into TV satellite dishes, and remix music tracks to make new sounds. Do you see opportunities to bring this kind of thinking into education?
Resourcefulness is the key. On a global level, we all need to learn to use resources more wisely. How do you take what some consider trash and turn it into amazing things? There are incredible examples of students doing that through project-based learning. A lot of times, it's happening outside of school. But there's no reason it can't happen inside school.
At PBL World, your audience will be teachers and school leaders who already are advocates of project-based learning. How might you challenge them to take PBL in new directions?
PBL can be perceived to be something that's successful for a more affluent, more privileged population. In urban education reform, you see a push for more regimented, more drill-and-kill learning to get kids ready to pass tests. PBL is important for students in all contexts. There are some kids in the 'hood who need and can thrive in regimented situations. They can put on the uniform and do well if they get into a charter or public version of a prep school. But for other kids, it's not going to work -- and we know that it's not working. (Nationally, more than a million high school students are projected to leave high school this year without a diploma.) For some of these students, a project-based learning environment can be a path to success.
In Hip Hop Genius, you emphasize the value of authentic projects that grow out of student interests. These aren't cookie-cutter projects that teachers can dust off and reuse each year. Why is it worth the effort to bring student voice into the design of projects?
If we can give students the skills and confidence to conceive of, design, and complete a project, that is a huge gift. If someone can say, I'd like to be able to do this in my personal life or create that product, and then they know how to go about doing the research, learning, putting in the work to complete it -- this is what will allow them to succeed in life. It might be in an entrepreneurial sense or in more traditional academics, but they know how to build, design, write, or perform something. That's huge.
How can teachers help students identify project-worthy ideas?
It's difficult. I've spent time watching advisers asking students, what do you want to do? What are you passionate about? Some students will answer point-blank: I want to publish a book of poetry, or, I want to create a new flavor of soda. But for students who were never asked that before, it can be very difficult to answer. Once they've hit on an idea, then it means designing your own project instead of somebody giving you worksheets that you fill out. As a student, you're learning life skills. You have to figure out backward planning. You know the product you want to create. Now, what are the things you need to learn, what are the materials you need to gather, who will you need on your team? Then you set mini-deadlines, checkpoints. If want to get to that end point, what has to happen along the way? Those are huge skills and highly employable skills.
Your book describes students working alongside experts and mentors. Why is working with adults something students need to practice?
In the book, I describe a student named Lil C. She's working on a book and asks a lawyer to help her draft a release form for people to sign when she interviews them. She knows how to reach out to a professional to get advice. I realized as I spoke with her, here I was, working on my own book, and I hadn't done that! These are real-world skills that she's gaining as a high school student, and they're skills that are sorely missing in almost every school in this country.
These are challenging times for public schools. Does the story you share in Hip Hop Genius give us reason to hope about the future of education?
I do derive hope from the metaphor of hip hop. In the '70s, young people in the Bronx came out of a situation that was ripe with inequality. They took their skills and figured out new ways to communicate. It makes me think about the current state of our educational system. There are a lot of young people today still in similar situations. How can we help them be creative and resourceful, take what's there, flip it, and create something better? How can we create the best possible conditions for them to be supported in doing that kind of work? And how can we work in partnership with them rather than in opposition?
To learn more about Seidel's upcoming visit to PBL World, visit the conference website. Follow Seidel on Twitter @husslington.Gary Becker, the Nobel Laureate in economics, developed an elegant model of tax evasion based on economic factors. He contended that tax evasion was determined by the tradeoff between tax rates and the cost of punishment for noncompliance. Higher tax rates increase the incentive to cheat as one saves more money from evasion, while the cost of noncompliance deters avoidance. However, both these factors differ dramatically across countries. For example, in the United States cheating on taxes is a criminal offence and many famous personalities have been imprisoned as a consequence. In Switzerland, it is a civil offense: they levy a fine, then send you back to work, in order to earn and pay.
My argument here is that economic factors are not sufficient to explain tax evasion. Some Scandinavian countries with high tax rates and comfortable prisons have low tax evasion. Something else must be at work. My thesis is that the psychological factor of "citizen trust" is an important determinant in explaining the pervasiveness of tax evasion in countries such as India.
With respect to taxation, citizens need to sense three types of trust:
The taxes levied will be used to pay for valued services. Their fellow citizens will pay their due share. There is a fair process for revenue collection.
Low tax base
The problem in India, where estimates show only 1% of the population pays income tax, is that the trust of citizens on all these three dimensions is low. India compares poorly from this standpoint with the United States, the United Kingdom and Switzerland, three other countries that I have lived in.
Providing services that individuals cannot procure for themselves – infrastructure, law and order, and the like – is a fundamental duty of governments. Taxes are necessary for this. While governments will always be inefficient, because they are spending someone else’s money rather their own, it is a question of how inefficient they are.
In the Indian context, we see a crisis in trust between citizens and the government. While total revenue collection in the country over the past decade has grown by leaps and bounds, citizens do not see any tangible effects on their lives. For example, roads are worse, public transportation is broken, the police are viewed as widely corrupt, and government schools and hospitals are always the last resort. Consequently, Indians do not see their taxes being used efficiently.
The second dimension of trust is the belief that your fellow citizens will pay their due share. In India the perception is that the largest tax offenders go scot free, while the more honest or compliant individuals and enterprises are pursued aggressively. To many, it seems there is a penalty for being honest. This is a problem of enforcement.
The third trust factor is about there being a fair process of revenue collection. What I have found in my research is that trust is determined by perceptions of "outcome fairness" and "procedural fairness". More interestingly, my research indicates that outcome fairness (e.g., tax rates) will be less of a determinant of citizens’ trust than procedural fairness.
Plan for change
A fair process incorporates six dimensions. To improve these should be the agenda for tax authorities.
Bilateral Communication: Power over others often means that we listen less to them and our communication becomes one-sided. Two-way communication that engages citizens and allows them to give suggestions and complaints helps build trust. Impartiality: This has to do with consistency of policies and their application over time. While everyone cannot be treated identically, the system can be more equitable. A lot of the taxation issues that multinationals are facing in India are linked to this aspect of justice. It is impossible to plan without consistent policies. Refutability: The ability to appeal against tax decisions and have them resolved in a fast and cost-efficient manner is crucial. This is a huge problem in India, where the legal system is painfully slow in resolving disputes. Explanation: That means providing citizens with a coherent rationale for decisions and policies, and it calls for greater transparency. The more power we have, the less we feel the need to explain our decisions. But research indicates that the same decision with an explanation attached is seen as fairer than one without. Familiarity: An understanding of the local conditions under which businesses operate is necessary. Think of service tax and the small business unit where both husband and wife work punishing hours. Perhaps they have a turnover of Rs 10 million and a profit of Rs 1 million. Now, with the service tax implication, they have to hire a new person and do lots of paperwork. The system must have empathy for such folks, which is why small business owners in countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom are exempted from many regulations and taxes, or have to comply with a simple process that dramatically reduces filing requirements. Interactional Justice: You have to treat people with courtesy and respect. For example, in Singapore you can pay customs duty on wine by presenting your credit card and filling out a form on an automated machine. Often, collections increase if the process is easier, faster and respectful.
These six principles are the levers to help improve the citizen’s trust in the tax system. Public trust is one of the most precious assets that a country can have. It is the cornerstone of effective governance, the main ingredient to promote economic growth and social progress.
As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Our distrust is very expensive.”
Nirmalya Kumar is a visiting professor of marketing and London Business School and distinguished Fellow at INSEAD Emerging Markets Institute"We are pleased to confirm our participation in the open ledger project as we recognise that there is currently no industry accepted, enterprise-grade blockchain framework today that is fit for purpose for our industry," said ANZ chief technology officer Patrick Maes in a statement.
Most large institutions are focusing on the blockchain network, rather than the Bitcoin currency itself, attempting to separate the two, which have been intrinsically linked. Bitcoin is currently the main incentive for so-called miners to carry on supporting the blockchain network, but there are many projects looking to transfer many other types of assets.
Earlier in the year, another set of financial institutions announced a collaboration to research and develop technology stemming from Bitcoin. Since the establishment of that "R3" project, more and more financial institutions have joined including The Commonwealth Bank of Australia, National Australia Bank and Macquarie Bank.
Earlier this week, Reserve Bank of Australia Governor Glenn Stevens described the blockchain as the "really clever" bit of Bitcoin and outlined how it could benefit the global banking system.
"It is basically a distributed ledger as opposed to a centralised one, so in areas where you have no ledger it may be a cost-effective way of having one... In areas where you've got a centralised ledger, the question is whether the distributed way of doing it will end up being more efficient and cheaper," he said.Hello everyone,
It’s summer and that means one thing—it’ time to make crisps and crumbles full of unique flavors! I recently visited my local farmers market and was so happy to find rhubarb! Most people mix rhubarb with strawberry, but I like to let the rhubarb flavor shine on its own. I updated my old recipe and perfected a new and improved vegan basil rhubarb crisp.
The basil adds a savory twist which helps tone down the natural acidity from the rhubarb. The result is a sugary, but not too sweet, dessert that pairs perfectly with vegan whipped cream or ice cream. This crisp is sure to please everyone at your next summer potluck, plus it’s so easy to make! It requires only eight ingredients and takes under an hour to complete. Head to your local farmers market and pick up some beautiful red-green stalks today!
Cheers!
Jocelyn
* Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. As always, all opinions are my own!
Vegan Basil Rhubarb Crumble
***Please feel free to share widely, just give me some credit or a link back
Prep Time: ~10 minutes; Cook Time: ~35-45 minutes; Yield: ~6×9 Pyrex
Cookware
1 non-stick spatula
Pyrex Glass Baking Dish
Ingredients
Filling 4 cups chopped rhubarb, cut into 3/4″ pieces 1 cup vegan sugar ¼ cup flour 1 tsp Organic Ground Cinnamon 2 tbs finely chopped fresh basil
Crumble 1 cup all purpose flour ½ cup, Earth Balance, melted 1 cup packed brown sugar ½ cup rolled oats
Instructions Preheat the oven to 375 F. Chop the rhubarb and gather the remaining ingredients. Combine the rhubarb, sugar, flour and cinnamon. Add the finely chopped basil. Mix together the flour, melted Earth Balance, brown sugar, and rolled oats. Spread the filling mixture into a pyrex pan. Cover the mixture evenly with the crumble topping. Bake for 35-45 minutes until golden brown. The filling should be bubbling. Remove to cool. Dust with vegan powdered sugar or raw sugar. Serve with vegan whipped cream or ice cream and enjoy!Chris Herhalt, CP24.com
Toronto police have offered a $50,000 reward for information that leads to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for shooting and killing 18-year-old Yusuf Ali in a Regent Park alleyway one year ago Tuesday.
At a news conference at 51 Division Tuesday, Det. Sgt. Tam Bui said Ali was walking with two of his friends near Queen and Parliament streets at 2:45 p.m. on Oct. 6, 2014, when he was shot in the back multiple times in an alleyway.
The exact point where he was shot is located near Creemore Avenue and Sydenham Street, Bui said. Several individuals have come forward, but others have not.
“There are other witnesses who were in the area who we believe have material information about the shooting, who left the area before police could speak to them,” Bui said.
He added that police chief Mark Saunders has authorized the $50,000 reward, since all other police leads have failed to identify the shooter.
Bui said the suspect followed Ali “through several different laneways” for at least five minutes, in a “very determined” fashion, before opening fire. He added the firearm used in the killing is linked to one other offence that occurred somewhere in Toronto.
The suspect is described as a man in his 20s with light brown skin, standing more than six feet tall with a lean build, Bui said. The suspect was wearing gloves, a hood and some sort of mask over his face when he opened fire on Ali.
Witnesses and surveillance camera footage suggest the suspect was dropped off on Parliament Street, south of where the shooting occurred, in a newer-model silver car and driven by an unknown person.
“People in this community of Regent Park have information that is material to identifying and apprehending the person who is responsible for this,” Bui said.
Despite the determined behavior of the suspect, Bui said investigators aren’t certain what motivated the killing and are “being open minded about” whether the killing was related to any gang activity.
Bui said he was willing to accept information anonymously and through Crime Stoppers. The reward will be paid to a source willing to testify at trial, Bui said.
“To shoot (Ali) in the back multiple times, kill him in front of witnesses around the corner from a school in broad daylight, that individual is a danger to the public, a danger to this community of Regent Park,” Bui said. “The family deserves some justice, the community deserves some closure.”How Can Ryan Get Away With Such Blatant Lies? Easy. The Corporate Media Such As NBC News Lets Him
August 30, 2012
By Joe Rothstein
Editor, EINNEWS.com
We are about to head into the closing weeks of a pivotal national election facing stark choices that could determine the nation’s future for decades to come. Yet the sense you get from TV coverage is that their real goal is to beat opposition networks in the ratings game. From newspapers you get mostly spoon-fed, lightly moderated talking points from writers and editors either too timid to call lies, “lies,” or too shallow to process the importance of the content they’re covering.
Most Americans get their news from just a few corporate media outlets. And when you test what people think they “know” about the news you see how miserably the media are informing the public.
How do voters make reasoned judgments if all they have to go on is distorted and incomplete information? This is a formula ready made for political demagogues who think nothing of lying through their teeth to gain political advantage.
That’s what we’re seeing in Tampa, and Paul Ryan's convention speech was the most egregious so far of a long parade of speakers trying to create a "reality" from imagination.
Case in point:
Campaigning in Jamestown, Wisconsin, in January 2008, then candidate Barack Obama told workers at the town’s General Motors plant, “I believe that if our government is there to support you this plant will be here for another hundred years.” In December, 2008, before Obama took office, the plant closed.
Wednesday night, in his acceptance speech as the GOP’s vice presidential nominee, Paul Ryan framed that episode like this:
“Right there at that plant, candidate Obama said: ‘I believe that if our government is there to support you this plant will be here for another hundred years.’ That’s what he said in 2008. Well, as it turned out, that plant didn’t last another year. It is locked up and empty to this day.”
Obviously, Ryan’s spin, that the plant’s closing was President Obama’s fault, is simply not true. The facts are clear and known by the workers who were laid off, the people who live in Ryan’s home town, and anyone else who has checked out the charge.
This breathtaking disregard for truth is probably the main story line of the Republican convention. It’s of a piece with entire Republican nominating process that began when Mitt Romney published his campaign kickoff book, “No Apologies,” and then endlessly repeated his baseless charge that President Obama goes around the world apologizing for America.
The sad fact is that in politics, with enough money, enough repetition and a media largely too spineless or clueless to challenge bald face lies, truth becomes a severely disfigured casualty.
Take a public opinion survey and you will find large swaths of the American public believing total falsehoods about death panels, socialized medicine, secret plans to take away people’s guns, and doctored birth certificates.
This nonsense gets currency from those supposedly in the know, and hyped by right wing media. There’s little challenge from the mainstream media, which seems content to report lies as if they were legitimate beliefs in a political debate.
In his speech, Ryan falsely accused President Obama of cutting Medicare by $716 billion. That $716 billion actually cuts waste, fraud and abuse from the Medicare system and extends its life. It’s Ryan himself who has offered a budget that cuts nearly the identical amount, and from benefits themselves.
Ryan accused President Obama of ignoring a presidential commission’s recommendations for cutting the national debt. Ryan slid past the very pertinent fact the he himself had served on that commission and voted against its recommendations.
How many front page accounts of the Ryan speech will point out all of this? These are not just policy points, they are lies and misrepresentations so breathtaking you’re in awe of the chutzpah of Ryan and the GOP brain trust for making them. They have to have made those decisions confident that the media won’t effectively convey the truth.
Convention speaker after convention speaker has railed against President Obama for supposedly making it easier for welfare recipients to get checks without seeking jobs. Every independent fact checking organization that has examined this charge has come to the same conclusion: What the White House has done is cut red tape to make it easier for welfare recipients in many states to get jobs. That has not stopped the Romney campaign from saturating paid media with false charges. Neither has it prompted most journalists to call the Republicans out on this lie each time it’s repeated.
Today's NBC News website carries this headline, "Ryan revs up GOP crowd with conservative call to action." (www.nbcnews.com) The story uncritically reports Ryan's words just as a paid stenographer might.
Dan Balz, in the Wednesday Washington Post, gushed over keynote speaker Chris Christie and his ability to fill a room with his stage presence. In his coverage Balz focused on style points, not content. Balz is the senior political reporter of one of the nation's most influential newspapers.
Meanwhile, here’s what Wednesday’s New York Times editorial said about Christie.
“Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, in the keynote speech, angrily demanded that the American people learn the hard truths about the two parties, but like most of those at the microphones, he failed to supply any. He said his state needed his austere discipline of slashed budgets, canceled public projects and broken public unions, but did not mention that New Jersey now has a higher unemployment rate than when he took over, and never had the revenue boom promised from tax cuts.”
The New York Times editorial began its critique like this: “It was a day late, but the Republicans’ parade of truth-twisting, distortions and plain falsehoods arrived on the podium of their national convention on Tuesday. Following on the footsteps of Mitt Romney’s campaign, rarely have so many convention speeches been based on such shaky foundation.”
I was startled this morning to hear Mara Liasson on NPR actually place Ryan’s lies and misrepresentations in context while reporting on his speech. It’s one of the first instances I’ve experienced this year when a news person gave prominence to distortions. Normally it’s the editorial writers, read by far fewer people, who sometimes call lies what they are.
In Tampa, Republicans unequivocally are writing into their DNA the extreme right wing politics that long ago infiltrated the personhood of their party. As it turns out, that's not the most important story coming out of Tampa.
The most important story is that one of the two major parties has decided to campaign against an Obama, his policies, actions and words that exist only as figments of their own imagination. They have made a calculated choice that a less than critical media will let them get away with it.
They may be right.
(Joe Rothstein can be contacted at [email protected])Arnold Schwarzenegger has California's economy terminated
Iconic bodybuilder, actor and politician Arnold Schwarzenegger is having really bad times now. The population of California rejected his package to balance the budget in the economically stricken state. A huge ‘black hole’ - $15 billion - appeared in the budget of California. The Californian electorate is seriously concerned about their governor.
Arnold Schwarzenegger has California's economy terminated
Over 60 percent of the voters rejected five of the six budget proposals on the ballot as a result of the special election held on May 20. A sixth proposal, which bars pay increases for state officials, received the support of 74 percent of the voters |
. McCollum, Lehigh (2012)
Tournament statistics: 22.0 points, 7.0 rebounds, 30.4% shooting (two games)
Recap: The Mountain Hawks only won one game in the 2012 tournament, but it was the first — and the biggest — tournament win in program history. Matching up against the second-seeded Duke Blue Devils in the first round, McCollum scored a game-high 30 points, including a clutch late-game three-pointer, en route to a 75-70 victory. Lehigh lost their next game to Xavier by 12 points, but the damage — beating a Duke squad in Greensboro, N.C., some 50 miles from Durham — was already done.
Cleanthony Early, Wichita State (2013)
Tournament statistics: 16.2 points, 7.6 rebounds, 50% shooting (five games)
Recap: The year the Wichita State Shockers shocked the basketball world and advanced to the Final Four as a No. 9 seed, Early was at the heart of the history. He started off the tournament with 21 points and seven rebounds in a win over Pittsburgh, followed by 16 points and seven rebounds in an upset win over No. 1 Gonzaga. His best performance of the tournament (24 points and 10 rebounds) was his last, though the Shockers fell to the eventual champion Louisville Cardinals, 72-68. A year later, Early impressed on the national stage again in the second round against Kentucky. He scored a game-high 31 points, grabbed seven rebounds and threw down a monster dunk over Kentucky's Willie Cauley-Stein.
Deron Williams, Illinois (2005)
Tournament statistics: 14.7 points, 8.3 assists, 47.1% shooting (six games)
Recap: Williams, along with Luther Head and Dee Brown, led the Fighting Illini to the national championship game, where they lost to Sean May, Raymond Felton and the North Carolina Tar Heels by five points. But that wasn't the story. The story was how they got there. In the Elite Eight against Arizona, Williams helped orchestrate one of the most historic comebacks in tournament history. Down by 14 points with just over three minutes left, Illinois fought back, Williams hit a game-tying three-pointer in the final minute, and the game went to overtime, where the Fighting Illini held off the Wildcats.
Derrick Rose, Memphis (2008)
Tournament statistics: 20.8 points, 6.5 rebounds, 6.0 assists, 51.8% shooting (six games)
Recap: During his lone collegiate season, Rose and the first-seeded Memphis Tigers, led by coach John Calipari, escaped a near upset in the Round of 32 against Mississippi State, pushed past No. 2 Texas and No. 1 UCLA, and advanced to the national championship game. Rose, who finished the game with 18 points and eight assists, caught fire in the second half, scoring 14 of his team's 16 points during one stretch. But Rose and guard Chris Douglas-Roberts missed a handful of key free throws down the stretch, and the Tigers fell to Mario Chalmers and the Kansas Jayhawks in overtime, 75-68. A little over a year later, Memphis was forced to vacate its 38-win season and serve three years probation due to an NCAA rules violation.
Derrick Williams, Arizona (2011)
Arizona Wildcats forward Derrick Williams (23) reacts after scoring a basket against the Duke Blue Devils. (Photo: Gary A. Vasquez, US Presswire)
Tournament statistics: 22.8 points, 9.3 rebounds, 47.3% shooting (four games)
Recap: In his sophomore season, Williams carried the fifth-seeded Wildcats to the Elite Eight, where they fell to the eventual champion Uconn Huskies. He scored 20 points and five rebounds in the loss, but his best performance came in the Sweet 16 against Kyrie Irving and the first-seeded Duke Blue Devils. In a 93-77 rout, Williams dropped 32 points, made five of his six three-point attempts and grabbed 13 rebounds. Now, six years and four NBA teams later, Williams plays alongside Irving, looking to find his niche with the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Dwyane Wade, Marquette (2003)
Tournament statistics: 21.8 points, 6.6 rebounds, 6.0 assists, 48.8% shooting (five games)
Recap: In his second and final year at Marquette, Wade carried the Golden Eagles to the program’s first Final Four trip since 1977. He was phenomenal throughout, but his most memorable performance came in the Elite Eight against No. 1 Kentucky, when he put together a 29-point, 11-rebound, 11-assist performance — just the fourth triple-double in NCAA tournament history. Marquette's run came to an end a game later against the second-seeded Kansas Jayhawks, but Wade had already captivated the nation.
Gordon Hayward, Butler (2010)
Tournament statistics: 15.8 points, 7.0 rebounds, 37.3% shooting (six games)
Recap: Hayward and the fifth-seeded Butler Bulldogs, led by current Boston Celtics head coach Brad Stevens, passed through No. 1 Syracuse in the Sweet 16 (Hayward: 17 points, five rebounds), No. 2 Kansas State in the Elite Eight (22 points, nine rebounds) and No. 5 Michigan State in the Final Four (19 points, nine rebounds) to set up a matchup with Duke in the final. Hayward had a shot to win the championship at the buzzer, but his halfcourt heave just missed, and the Bulldogs fell, 61-59.
Jameer Nelson, St. Joseph's (2004)
Tournament statistics: 24.5 points, 5.0 assists, 43.8% shooting (four games)
Recap: As a senior, Nelson — the AP Player of the Year — led the Hawks to a perfect regular-season record and the first No. 1 seed in school history. Nelson started off the tournament on the right foot, with a 33-point (on 11-of-17 shooting) performance in an 82-63 rout of Liberty. The Hawks advanced to the Elite Eight, but Nelson's 17 points, eight rebounds, eight assists and four steals were't enough, and they fell to Oklahoma State, 64-62.
Joakim Noah, Florida (2006)
Florida's Joakim Noah celebrates in the 2007 national championship game. (Photo: Michael A. Schwarz, USAT)
Tournament statistics: 16.2 points, 9.5 rebounds, 4.8 blocks, 55% shooting (six games)
Recap: Florida’s frontcourt of Noah, Al Horford and Corey Brewer was one of the most talented in tournament history, leading the Gators to consecutive championships for the first time since Duke went back-to-back in 1991 and '92. During Florida's first championship run in 2006, Noah — who had emerged as one of the most dominant bigs in the country — put together a 15-point, 10-rebound, five-block performance in the Sweet 16 over Georgetown, followed by a 21-point, 15-rebound, five-block outing in the Elite Eight against No. 1 Villanova. From there, the Gators rolled past George Mason and UCLA, and Noah was named the tournament's Most Outstanding Player.
Kemba Walker, Connecticut (2011)
Tournament statistics: 23.5 points, 5.7 assists, 40.2% shooting (six games)
Recap: As a junior, Walker — who also led Uconn to the Big East tournament title — orchestrated one of the most improbable March Madness runs in NCAA history. He started off the tournament with 18 points, 12 assists and eight rebounds in a rout of Bucknell, scored 33 points in the Huskies' Round of 32 matchup with Cincinnati and 36 points a round later against San Diego State and current San Antonio Spurs superstar Kawhi Leonard. When it was all said and done, the Huskies — who finished ninth in the Big East regular-season standings — won 11 straight from the start of the Big East tournament to the end of the Big Dance, where they beat Butler, 53-41, in a knock-down, drag-out final, and Walker was named the tournament's Most Outstanding Player.
Kevin Love, UCLA (2008)
Tournament statistics: 19.8 points, 10.6 rebounds, 4.0 blocks, 57.1% shooting (five games)
Recap: Love and the first-seeded Bruins — a team with loaded with NBA talent — advanced to the Final Four, where they fell to Derrick Rose and coach John Calipari's Memphis Tigers, 78-63. Love stuffed the stat sheet in UCLA's five games, highlighted by his 29-point (on 10-of-14 shooting), 14-rebound, four-assist, four-block outing in the Bruins' 10-point win over Western Kentucky in the Sweet 16. He also tallied 19 points, 11 rebounds and seven blocks in the Bruins' second-round win over Texas A&M.
Kyle O'Quinn, Norfolk State (2012)
Norfolk State players Kyle O'Quinn, Brandon Wheeless and Chris McEachin celebrate their 86-84 win against Missouri. (Photo: Nati Harnik, AP)
Tournament statistics: 15.0 points, 8.5 rebounds, 44% shooting (two games)
Recap: O'Quinn may not be the sexiest name on this list, and the Norfolk State Spartans may not be the sexiest team. But just hours before C.J. McCollum and No. 15 Lehigh knocked off No. 2 Duke as mentioned above, the 15th-seeded Spartans pulled off an 86-84 upset over No. 2 Missouri, becoming just the fifth 15-seed to beat a two-seed in tournament history. O'Quinn finished the game with 26 points (on 10-of-16 shooting), 14 rebounds and converted a huge and-one in the final 40 seconds. With their spot in history secured, the Spartans went on to lose to Florida by 34 points in the next round.
Kyle Singler, Duke (2010)
Tournament statistics: 18.0 points, 7.3 rebounds, 44.3% shooting (six games)
Recap: After two consecutive years of early NCAA tournament exits, Singler's Blue Devils finally cut down the nets in 2010. Singler, who was named the tournament's Most Outstanding Player, tallied 19 points (on 7-of-13 shooting) and nine rebounds in the win over Butler, but his best performance came in the Final Four against West Virginia (who upset the Blue Devils in the Round of 32 when Singler was a freshman). He scored 21 points (on 8-of-16 shooting), grabbed nine rebounds and dished out five assists to give Duke a commanding 78-57 win over the Mountaineers.
Nick Collison, Kansas (2003)
Tournament statistics: 18.7 points, 13.5 rebounds, 2.5 blocks, 65.9% shooting (six games)
Recap: After losing to Maryland in the Final Four a year before, Collison and the Jayhawks advanced to the national championship, where they fell short again, this time to Carmelo Anthony and Syracuse. Collison, a senior, scored 19 points and grabbed 21 rebounds in the loss. The game before that, he put up 12 points, 15 rebounds and five assists in a 94-61 win over Dwyane Wade and Marquette. But his most dominant game of the tournament came in a 69-65 Sweet 16 win over Duke — 33 points, 19 rebounds, four assists and three blocks.
Randy Foye, Villanova (2006)
Tournament statistics: 23.8 points, 7.3 rebounds, 2.8 steals, 38.8% shooting (four games)
Recap: Alongside current Toronto Raptors All-Star Kyle Lowry, Foye led the Wildcats to the Elite Eight, where they fell to Florida, 75-62, but his most memorable performance came in the Sweet 16 against Boston College. The Wildcats won the game, 60-59 in overtime, on a goaltending call, but it was Foye who carried the team to victory. He was the only Villanova player to reach double figures, scoring 29 points, and he hit a pair of late-game free throws and a clutch jumper with under a minute left in regulation.
Shabazz Napier, Connecticut (2014)
Connecticut Huskies guard Shabazz Napier celebrate after defeating the Kentucky Wildcats 60-54 in the championship game of the Final Four. (Photo: Bob Donnan, USA TODAY Sports)
Tournament statistics: 21.2 points, 4.5 assists, 46.3% shooting (six games)
Recap: A senior with one national championship (2011) already under his belt, Napier led the seventh-seeded Huskies through the gauntlet — past No. 2 Villanova (Napier: 25 points, five rebounds), No. 3 Iowa State (19 points, five assists), No. 4 Michigan State (25 points, six rebounds, four assists) and No. 1 Florida (12 points, six assists, four steals). In his final collegiate game, Napier put together a 22-point, six-rebound, three-steal performance against Kentucky, leading the Wildcats to their second title in four years and earning the tournament's Most Outstanding Player award.
Shelvin Mack, Butler (2011)
Tournament statistics: 20.3 points, 43.8% shooting (six games)
Recap: A year after losing to Duke in the national championship game, Butler made it back to the final game of the Big Dance. Only this time, there was no Gordon Hayward. Mack led the eight-seeded Bulldogs past No. 1 Pittsburgh, No. 4 Wisconsin and No. 2 Florida, setting up a meeting with Kemba Walker and No. 3 Connecticut. Mack struggled and the Bulldogs lost again, but the run — which was highlighted by Mack's late-game heroics against Florida — added Butler to the list of college basketball's biggest Cinderella stories. Again.
Stephen Curry, Davidson (2008)
Tournament statistics: 32.0 points, 3.3 steals, 46.7% shooting, 44.2% three-point shooting (four games)
Recap: Before he was the two-time MVP, NBA champion, best three-point shooter in NBA history Stephen Curry, he was a small, lightly-recruited sharpshooter who thrust himself into the national spotlight with mid-major Davidson. In 2008, Curry, a sophomore, carried the 10th-seeded Wildcats to the Elite Eight. He started off the tournament with a bang, erupting for 40 points (24 of which came from beyond the arc) on 14-of-22 shooting to beat Gonzaga. Next: 30 points and five assists to beat No. 2 Georgetown. After that: 33 points and four steals to beat No. 3 Wisconsin. Curry's Wildcats eventually fell to the Kansas team that would go on to win the national championship. But Curry's reign as one of the most prolific scoring point guards in college basketball history was well underway.
Ty Lawson, UNC (2009)
Tournament statistics: 20.8 points, 6.8 assists, 3.9 steals, 50% shooting (six games)
Recap: In his third and final season in Chapel Hill, Lawson helped lead a Tar Heel squad of Ed Davis, Wayne Ellington, Danny Green, Tyler Hansbrough and Tyler Zeller to the program's fifth NCAA championship. North Carolina rolled through the field, winning each game by double digits, en route to an 89-72 win over Michigan State in the final. Lawson finished the game with 21 points, six assists and a championship-game record eight steals.
Tyus Jones, Duke (2015)
Tournament statistics: 13.0 points, 4.5 assists, 42.4% shooting (six games)
Recap: Jones entered the NCAA tournament as the fourth-leading scorer on a Duke team led by Jahlil Okafor, Quinn Cook and Justise Winslow. He left as the tournament's Most Outstanding Player. The Blue Devils didn't have much trouble getting to the national championship game, where they went up against Frank Kaminsky and the Wisconsin Badgers. Jones scored a game-high 23 points and hit a dagger three-pointer with just over a minute left, and Duke went on to win, 68-63.
Trey Burke, Michigan (2013)
Tournament statistics: 15.5 points, 6.3 assists, 36.6% shooting (six games)
Recap: The Wolverines would have been eliminated in the Sweet 16 against Kansas had it not been for Burke, who hit a deep three-pointer in the final seconds to send the game to overtime. They followed up the win with victories over No. 3 Florida in the Elite Eight (Burke: 15 points, eight rebounds, seven assists) and No. 4 Syracuse in the Final Four (seven points, five rebounds, four assists) before falling to No. 1 Louisville by six in the title game despite Burke's game-high 24 points (on 7-of-11 shooting).
Follow AJ Neuharth-Keusch on Twitter @tweetAJNKIn this post I will speak about how one can implement ( or the integers modulo n) using fake dependent types in Haskell. What I want to do is to represent the modulus that characterizes the ring we are working over at the type level. To do this I use the type-level library which contains an implementation of tons of type level numbers and operations on them. The type of can be represented using a phantom type which denote the modulus:
newtype Zn n = Zn Integer deriving (Eq,Ord)
It is easy to implement a Show instance:
instance Pos n => Show (Zn n) where show (Zn n) = show n
Here Pos denote positive natural numbers. The Num instance is a bit more interesting:
instance Pos n => Num (Zn n) where Zn x + Zn y = Zn $ (x+y) `mod` toNum (undefined :: n) Zn x * Zn y = Zn $ (x*y) `mod` toNum (undefined :: n) negate (Zn x) = Zn $ negate x `mod` toNum (undefined :: n) fromInteger x = Zn $ fromInteger $ x `mod` toNum (undefined :: n)
I have left abs and signum out since I don’t know what they mean in this setting (does anyone have an idea?). Anyway, toNum is a function that only depend on its type. What I mean is that toNum for D3 (digit 3) always return 3 regardless of input, so all computations are done modulo the number encoded in the type. fromInteger is quite interesting also, it is the canonical homomorphism or natural map which takes an element and send it to its congruence class modulo n.
In fact this fit very well in the algebraic hierarchy that I discussed in my previous post.
instance Pos n => Ring (Zn n) where (<+>) = (+) (<*>) = (*) zero = Zn 0 one = Zn 1 neg = negate instance Pos n => CommutativeRing (Zn n) where
We can now check that we haven’t done anything stupid so far.
type Z6 = Zn D6 test = quickCheck (propCommutativeRing :: Z6 -> Z6 -> Z6 -> Property) *Algebra.Zn> test +++ OK, passed 100 tests. *Algebra.Zn> 2 + 2 * 4 :: Z6 4
So is a commutative ring and the basic operations seem to be working fine. But what about making it an instance of integral domain? This should not be possible since 2*3=0 in and thus it has zero divisors. In fact is an integral domain only if n is prime, but how do we test this on the type level? There is no type level primality test in the library, so I decided to hack one up myself. The only problem was that I don’t really know functional dependencies that well, but I looked at the code in the library and read some tutorials and this is what I came up with:
class (Pos x, Pos sqrt) => Sqrt x sqrt | x -> sqrt instance (Pos x, Pos sqrt, Sqrt' x D1 GT sqrt) => Sqrt x sqrt class Sqrt' x y r sqrt | x y r -> sqrt instance Sub y D2 y' => Sqrt' x y LT y' instance Pred y y' => Sqrt' x y EQ y' instance (ExpBase y D2 square, Succ y y', Trich x square r, Sqrt' x y' r sqrt) => Sqrt' x y GT sqrt sqrt :: Sqrt x sqrt => x -> sqrt sqrt = undefined class (Pos x, Data.TypeLevel.Bool b) => Prime x b | x -> b instance (Sqrt x y, Trich y D1 r, Prime' x y r b) => Prime x b class Data.TypeLevel.Bool b => Prime' x y r b | x y r -> b instance Prime' x D1 EQ True instance (Pred y z, Trich z D1 r1, Mod x y rest, IsZero rest b1, Not b1 b', Prime' x z r1 b2, And b' b2 b3) => Prime' x y GT b3 prime :: Prime x b => x -> b prime = undefined
It looks like a lot of mumbo jumbo and maybe it is, but it seems to work. The main problem though is that it is horribly slow and that it believes that 1 is a prime number… If anyone know fundeps (or type families) and sees how this can be improved, please let me know. Anyway, now I can implement the integral domain instance for.
instance (Prime n True, Pos n) => IntegralDomain (Zn n) where
So if n is a prime number then is an integral domain. Using this we can try to make ghc believe that an integral domain:
*Algebra.Zn> quickCheck (propIntegralDomain :: Z6 -> Z6 -> Z6 -> Property) Top level: Couldn't match expected type `True' against inferred type `False'...
Woho, ghc can correct us automagically! What about giving a field instance? To do it we need to be able to compute the inverse of any nonzero element. Here Fermat’s little theorem comes in handy, it says that for any prime p and natural number x coprime to p (which in our case is any element of ) we have that. So by computing we find an element y such that xy = 1 in.
instance (Prime n True, Pos n) => Field (Zn n) where inv (Zn x) | x == 1 = Zn 1 | p `mod` x == 0 = error "Can't invert zero!" | otherwise = Zn $ x <^> (p-2) `mod` p where p = toNum (undefined :: n)
Now we can try this out on a prime number, for instance 17.
type Z17 = Zn D17 *Algebra.Zn> inv 13 :: Z17 4 *Algebra.Zn> 13 * 4 :: Z17 1 *Algebra.Zn> quickCheck (propField :: Z17 -> Z17 -> Z17 -> Property) +++ OK, passed 100 tests.
Everything seem to be working fine, but sadly it is not useful for something “real” since the typechecking is so slow for primality testing. But I think it is quite cool that you can do these things in Haskell, but of course it would be even nicer to do it in a language with real dependent types.
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Like this: Like Loading...by Betsy Scapicchio and Linda Brennan
Did you ever wonder why some people can train their dogs very successfully using food while other trainers’ dogs fall apart in the ring when the food is gone? Sometimes training with food gets a bad rap, but there are reasons why people get into trouble. Food is a useful tool when it’s used right.
Food Lures
Having a food lure can give you a false sense of security, because it can make you and the dog look great. Have you ever seen a dog heeling outside the ring at a show and thought “Wow, they look really good. I’m going to watch them in the ring.” Then you watch them compete and you wonder what happened? Think back—was there a cookie in the handler’s hand? Often that is the case. There is something that was different between outside the ring and inside the ring. That is the handler’s fault. It is not the dog being bad or ring-wise or only willing to work for food. Without the food, the dog literally doesn’t know how to do the behavior.
When we are teaching a new behavior, such as heeling, we often use food as a lure. However, if we don’t fade the lure and create other cues for the behavior, the dog cannot do it without the food lure. Often people think that the dog is just choosing to do it only when the food is there, but the truth is that you only taught the dog how to do it when the food is present. Removing the food lure without having paired it with other cues, results in a dog who cannot perform the behavior.
Heeling is a prime example of the need to fade the food lure. When we use the food lure in heeling, the dog is looking at the treat in our hand, but also looking up at the handler’s face (or hand for a small dog). Then the treat is moved up to our mouth and is visible there. Gradually the treat becomes less visible. Eventually the treat is hidden in the handler’s mouth and the dog is focused only on the handler’s face. For small dogs, the food lure slowly shrinks up into the handler’s hand until it is no longer visible to the dog, who is now focused on the hand. Unfortunately, many trainers continue to use the food lure without any other focal point for the dog. Then when the food is removed, the dog isn’t sure what to look at! Worse still, when the dog struggles, the handler then brings the food lure back out and the dog is now correct. However, this hasn’t helped the dog to figure out how to do it without the food.
Another example of faulty food lure training often happens on fronts. When people lure their dogs into front position with food in their hand, the dog learns to follow the food into position but does not learn how to get into front position with the handler standing as they must stand in the ring. Then the dog ends up looking at the handler’s hands and doesn’t know how to get into the correct position. When we teach fronts, we quickly move the food lure from our hands to our mouth (or to a lower focal point for small dogs). Then we make the lure less and less visible until the dog is fronting to the same picture as in the ring.
Relying for too long on a food lure for attention is particularly dangerous. If the food is the dog’s only focus, then removing it will be confusing and demotivating. If bringing back the food lure is the only way to get the dog’s attention back from distractions, then the dog will be clueless about how to handle distractions in the ring where there is no food. We are careful to fade the lure and to teach the dog about distractions. We also teach a correction so that we can make the dog responsible for paying attention and avoiding distractions. (See our previous Blog on Corrections.)
Food = Right
One of the traps that people fall into is letting the dog think that the food means that he is right. This is a problem if it is the ONLY way the dog knows that he is right. People often think that the dogs work only because they are getting the food reward, but it is not just the food that the dog wants. The dog wants to know that he is right!
For example, if the dog gets a cookie for bringing back the correct article each time, when he doesn’t get a cookie on the first article in the ring, he may think that he’s done it wrong and then have trouble doing the second article. If we have other ways of telling the dog that he is right, especially things that we can do in the ring, we can be sure that the dog will still know he is right even when we can’t give him a treat. We like to be sure that our praise and interactions with the dog are also part of the dog’s reward. Give your praise, then pet the dog, and THEN give your food! That way the first two rewards will be the same in the ring and it will only be the third thing in the sequence that we are eliminating. Remember YOU must be the primary motivator, not the food!
On heeling, if the dog only gets a cookie when you halt, but gets no other information, how bright is his heeling going to be? It is important to add praise and other interactions, like a jump up release, at various times during the heeling, so that we can let the dog know that we like each part of the exercise. Again, it is especially helpful to use thing that we can do in the ring, for example, having the dog jump up on the handler, tugging on the dumbbell, or petting and praising him. There is nothing better than when the dog really knows that you like what he has done and you didn’t need a cookie!
Are you being a lazy trainer? It is much easier to hand the dog a cookie than to take the time to play and interact with him. If you feel like you need a cookie to motivate your dog, stop! Think of some other ways that you can show him how much you like it when he does things right. Take the time and make the effort to play and have fun with your dog. Dogs are so honest. They will tell you what they like.
Randomizing the Reward
As humans, we aren’t very good at being random. Just as our dogs do, we like to fall into patterns. However, if we reward in a very predictable pattern, then when the pattern changes, the dog is left wondering what went wrong. Once the dog learns the exercise, we need to make getting the reward more like playing the slot machine and less like having a Pez dispenser. Often people say that their dog is ring-wise. But if we don’t randomize the reward in training, of course it will be different when the dog is in the ring and the food rewards don’t appear. By randomizing the reward in training, the dog learns to keep working even when the reward doesn’t come right away. The dog perseveres because he knows that the reward will come eventually.
For example, if we reward every other front in training, how many fronts will the dog do in the ring before he starts to question why he isn’t getting the cookie like he does in training. On the other hand, if we reward him only occasionally in training, the dog will do many more fronts in the ring because he will keep trying even when the cookies don’t come right away. In fact, the dog may even try harder because he is trying to earn the cookie. When we randomize the food reward, we can choose to reward the dog’s very best efforts. It almost goes without saying that when you reward, be sure you are rewarding the right behavior. We had a student who spit her dog cookies on fronts whether the dog straight or crooked. How can the dog know what you want if you reward the dog no matter what?
Sometimes in an effort to address problems with food training, people resort to taking it away completely. But that is not the answer either. We do like to use food as part of the way that we keep the dogs motivated to work. In our “Are We Having Fun Yet?” DVD program, there are many examples of how we use food to motivate the dogs in all different exercises. We don’t need to discard such a useful tool if we just use it correctly! However, it is helpful to have an occasional training session where it is just you and the dog and nothing else. This will force you to make yourself the primary motivator for your dog and to discover what the dog likes, not what you like. For example, does your dog like to be petted or to jump up on you or to speak or do other tricks? If you feel panic at the thought of training your dog without food, that is probably an indication that you are relying on it too much.
We use food in our training throughout our dog’s lives. We don’t ever take the food away completely. However, we are very thoughtful about how we use it. Make sure that the food isn’t the cue for your dog’s behavior and that it’s not the only reason for him to perform. Know how to tell your dog that he’s right without needing to give him a cookie. Pay attention to how often you are rewarding him. Used correctly food has been a great addition to dog training. We would never go back to the way it was when we first started when using food in training was frowned upon. But we put so much of ourselves into our training that we develop such a strong relationship with the dog that we don’t NEED the food because we have become more rewarding than the cookies.
Please remember that these Blogs are copyrighted by Betsy Scapicchio and Linda Brennan. If you wish to reprint them, please contact us for permission.Example One: Alex has a PhD in Subjectology. Jamie knows that Alex has a PhD in Subjectology, yet, during a discussion of Subject, Jamie, who has an interest in and is reasonably knowledgeable about Subject, condescendingly explains basics of Subject to Alex without regard for Alex's demonstrable proficiency. Alex expresses that Jamie's insistence on explaining basics makes Alex feel as though Jamie does not respect Alex's competency or intellectual capacity. Jamie, whose intent was actually to impress Alex, insists that hir intent was not to make Alex feel that way. Alex makes a valiant attempt to explain why Jamie behaving as though Alex doesn't know the basics of Alex's professional field is disrespectful, at which point Jamie gets miffed, reiterates that the intent was not to make Alex feel bad, accuses Alex of looking for things to get mad about, and misrepresents Alex's good faith attempt to address demeaning language as a personal attack on Jamie.
Thus, what had started out as an inadvertent slight becomes a harmful exchange, as Jamie refuses to acknowledge that the effect of the action irrespective of its intent was hurtful to Alex, and deflects accountability by casting Alex as unreasonable.
Example Two: Kelly and Terry are friends. Kelly is fat; Terry is thin. Terry routinely expresses disgust with hir body by saying things like, "I am so fat" and "This cellulite is disgusting." Kelly tells Terry that such expressions are hurtful and make hir wonder what Terry must think of hir, since zie is much fatter than Terry. Terry, whose intent was actually to solicit support and validation from Kelly, insists that hir intent was not to make Kelly feel that way. Kelly makes a valiant attempt to point out that even if it was not intended to make hir feel bad about hir body, it does, because Terry is associating fatness with something bad. Terry reacts defensively, reiterating that the intent was not to make Kelly feel bad and accusing Kelly of being jealous and oversensitive.
Thus, what had started out as a misguided attempt to connect becomes a harmful exchange, as Terry refuses to acknowledge that, despite a lack of intention to be hurtful, zie was hurtful nonetheless, and deflects accountability by projecting hir void of sensitivity onto Kelly as an abundance of oversensitivity.
Example Three: Jesse has a habit of casually using the rhetoric of sexual violence ("I got raped by that ATM fee"), even around hir friend Jordan, who was raped. Jordan has asked Jesse not to use those phrases around hir, explaining that they are triggering and make hir feel unsafe, to which Jesse agreed. Jesse nonetheless slipped up, and Jordan expressed hurt both over the use of the phrase and also over the disregard for hir previous request. Jesse, whose intent was not to hurt Jordan, responds belligerently and insists zie just forgot and hir intent wasn't to hurt Jordan and doesn't Jordan know that? Jordan says zie does know that, or else they would not still be friends, but adds that it was hurtful all the same. Jesse storms off in a huff, but not before hurling another accusation of bad faith at Jordan.
Thus, what had started out as a hurtful mistake becomes a harmful exchange, as Jesse refuses to own hir mistake or acknowledge that the effect was to disregard the feelings of an ostensibly valued friend, then further escalates the situation by attributing to Jordan accusations of ill will that Jordan did not make.
In the first example, Jamie's implicit intent was to shape Alex's perception of hir, but Jamie's explicit communication was a display of hir knowledge of Subject. In the second example, Terry's implicit intent was to elicit validation and fish for a compliment from Kelly to assuage Terry's anxiety about hir body, but Terry's explicit communication was a negative expression about fat. In the third example, Jesse's implicit intent was merely to communicate a frustration about something, but hir explicit communication went beyond that to include triggering language that broke an existing friendship agreement with Jordan.
In all three cases, there was a significant gap between intended communication and actual communication, leaving room for a grave misunderstanding.
Now, mismatches between intended communication and actual communication happen all the time, even when one endeavors to communicate as straightforwardly as possible, and it's not always a problem. (Sometimes, in fact, it is a source of great humor.) But a harmful exchange is most likely when the discord arises from seeking something for oneself without empathizing with how it's being received by the person from whom one is seeking it.
That's the danger in trying to communicate need in indirect ways. It's easy to lose sight of what you're conveying tangentially, because you're so focused on accessing approbation, reassurance, validation, support, the placation of internal distress because you know you've fucked up, or whatever else for which you're searching.
And in instances where it begets an unintentional offense, the worst possible response is to try to shift accountability to the recipient of the communication.
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speak in duckspeak. Up is Up AND Down, and it only counts if you are a Republican, unless it doesn't count because you are a Republican. So suck on that, hippy, cause I will just invent my own reality. USA! USA! USA!
You can follow me on Twitter @JesseLaGreca
Peace and love to one and allShare
The Bristol producer explores a range of tempos and textures.
Pinch is among a core of dubstep figureheads who have helped define the very meaning of the term. From his Bristol base the producer, real name Rob Ellis, has headed up the highly respected Tectonic label and Subloaded parties since the mid-'00s, releasing groundbreaking bass weight from Loefah, Skream and 2562, while engraining dubstep in the psyche of the city's club goers. In terms of his own productions, Ellis has often played away from home—Planet Mu, Soul Jazz, Punch Drunk and Swamp 81 have all welcomed his deeply meditative music down the years—while tracks like "Midnight Oil" and "Qawwali" could rightly be termed as classics. Ellis' deep-seated appreciation of dub's origins was formalized late last year as he enlisted pioneering producer and engineer Scientist to rework a collection of new music from some of dubstep's biggest players.
House, techno and a bit of Brian Eno inform the first half of Ellis' mix, before the screw is turned and the tempo raised for a rousing and bass-heavy finale.
What have you been up to recently?
Aside for the usual fare of running the labels and gigging on weekends, I've been busy with a bunch of collaborative production projects. Out soon is a 12-inch on Tectonic featuring one by myself and Loefah (my knackered dubplate crackling away in the mix here!), on the flip will be one I've done with UK funky producer Roska (though the track we made together is at the 140 BPM tempo of dubstep rather than funky). I also have an ongoing project with Distance under the alias of Deleted Scenes—expect to see some more 12-inches this year finally(!) and I've also been working a lot with Shackleton, working on a project that hopefully we'll finish up this year and will see light of day as an album of sorts. I'm also hoping to get stuck into a full length LP this year of my own to follow up on 2007s Underwater Dancehall. Also gearing up for a full weekend at BLOC; once again I'm pleased to say that Subloaded is hosting a room there on the Friday, with a totally killer lineup to boot!
How and where was the mix recorded?
I used two turntables and a cheap two channel Gemini mixer—basic ingredients—and I played all vinyl or acetate as I usually do. I then put the mix into Logic and laid down some subtle atmospherics and short film samples to add to the texture of it. It's generally quite subtle but you can pick out bits and pieces easily if you're listening for it.
Can you tell us a little bit more about the idea behind the mix?
I guess I took the opportunity to do something a little different here than people may expect of me—I usually have stuck to the dubstep tempo (around 140 BPM) in the past, however, I wanted to play a mix of tracks I'm mostly feeling at the moment so the first half is at the slower tempo of around 128 BPM and the latter half at around 140 BPM. I wanted to give the mix a bit of a journey vibe rather than a straight up dancefloor selection. I decided to layer some additional samples to give the mix a bit more a unique 'Pinch' flavour (i.e. dark with lots of strange reverb!). Some of the mixing isn't exactly perfect but I like the idea that these imperfections give it a bit of 'life'—something I personally find a little lacking when DJs seamlessly mix with CDs/Ableton or whatever. [But it's] just a personal preference really.
How did the hook-up with Scientist come about for the compilation?
I got his phone number from George who co-runs the BLOC festival, late 2009, called him up at his home in California and just took it from there really! He's been great to work with and over the course of 2010 I got to know him fairly well just from regular long phone calls and later in the year a two week tour in support of the release. He might come across a serious guy but he's got a really good sense of humour about him too!
Do you feel like there's been an under appreciation of dub in the narrative of modern dance music?
Yes and no. I think if pushed any half-decent electronic producer will happily give a nod to the golden era of dub music and will concur that it's had a huge influence on dance and electronic music. In terms of the space dub creates—use of reverb and delay/FX to create soundscape spaces as part of a subtractive process rather than an additive one—along with a general mindset of the originators of the sound, who favoured experimentation and progression over "playing it safe"—no one can really deny that dub flipped the script completely. Overnight it turned a mixing desk into an instrument and that helped massively to break away from the tried and tested 'band' format of music making and open up a path for manipulating sound itself as a means of creating music.
On the other hand, we don't have any commercial representation for this music. Not even BBC1Xtra has a dub show—there's absolutely nothing on commercial radio dedicated to support this end of reggae music. Dub is real underground music. It's had a huge influence yet gets little overt recognition or support and despite this there are still dances every weekend in the UK and across Europe in particular, there are pirate radio shows—people working hard to keep the music alive for no real profit of their own—some 35-40 years after its initial impact on the world. Do your bit: go buy a 7-inch from your local record shop today, check out a dance if you see a flyer for a soundsystem night—it's the original immersion music!
What are you up to next?
Cup of tea and watch the news. Might have a biscuit too...Do tech manufactures think we’re magpies? Phones, tablets, laptops, cameras – their screens are buffed up to shine like the sun. But when will they learn that we don’t want our own grisly reflections staring back at us?
Think of the last gadget you bought – a sexy new smartphone, a lovely little laptop, a delightful digital camera?
I’ll bet you that its screen is as black and shiny as an ant’s abdomen that’s recently been put through a car wash and then rubbed in shoe polish.
Manipulating these gadgets in bright sunlight is thus almost impossible. And though Britain’s weather doesn’t make this as problematic as if you were on the French Riviera, even the dimmest light can lead to our eyes gawking back.
Shimmering thingamajigs
Shiny screens are so frustrating that it’s one of the inspirations for our digital camera viewfinders campaign. Of the 1,667 people we asked, 70% said they struggled to use an LCD camera screen in bright daylight.
My beloved, but burnished, Panasonix Lumix TZ7 camera looks like it wants to be the centrepiece of a sparse and mirrored post-modern flat. This made it almost impossible to see the photos I was trying to take of the strangely clean streets of Singapore.
Its LCD screen is so shiny that if I were to be stranded on a deserted island I’d be able to use its reflectiveness to send Morse code SOS messages to ensure my rescue.
Then there’s my Sony Vaio laptop. Its paltry two-hour battery life already makes handling it outside a grim experience. But add its shining beacon of a 15-inch screen and it’s not too long until I have to trudge back inside.
Shiny, shiny iPhone
And who could forget Apple? Steve Jobs is the gate keeper to the world of shiny, as commenter Dragilex mused over in our iPad 2 Conversation:
‘Humans like shiny stuff, simple as. iPad 2 – definitely shinier than the iPad and possibly the shiniest thing available today. What does it cost? Who cares, did I not mention how super shiny and slick it is?’
Now, although his comment was more about metaphorical shininess, it wasn’t long until someone picked up on the literal glossiness of Apple’s wares:
‘For me the iPad is too shiny! Slightest bit of light overhead […] and you can’t read the flipping screen! That’s why I bought a Kindle to read ebooks on, rather than an iPad,’ complained Ruth.
Ruth is quite right to mention ebook readers – they’re one of the only gadgets to utilise matte screens. Not only is this wise, it’s essential, as people like to read while they’re lying on the beach. Yet, why is it presumed that all our other gadgets will be used on a cloudy day?
Do you prefer matte or glossy screens?
But perhaps we only have ourselves to blame? Maybe matte gadgets won’t sell like hotcakes? As Charlie Brooker alleged in his recent How TV Ruined Your Life series:
‘Having been conditioned to surrender our attention to the lone glowing screen, suddenly we’re surrounded by thousands of the shimmering f***s. It’s like invasion of the gleaming rectangles. Pop a screen in our eye line and, no matter what we’re doing, we’re hopelessly drawn to the light. Never mind apes, we must be descended from moths.’
Magpies, moths, whatever obsessed creature we’ve mutated into, it’s about time that manufacturers forced us to go cold turkey and made our gadgets less shiny.
What type of screen do you prefer? Matte (89%, 1,491 Votes) Glossy (11%, 178 Votes) Total Voters: 1,667Eijiro Miyako
A drone that can pollinate flowers may one day work side by side with bees to improve crop yields.
About three-quarters of global crop species, from apples to almonds, rely on pollination by bees and other insects. But pesticides, land clearing and climate change have caused declines in many of these creatures, creating problems for farmers.
Pollination is needed for reproduction in flowering plants. Male flower parts, or stamens, produce pollen that fertilises female parts, known as pistils, to make seeds. In self-pollinating flowers, the stamen sheds pollen directly onto the pistil.
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Cross-pollination, however, requires the transfer of pollen from one plant to another. This mostly relies on pollen becoming stuck to the bodies of bees and other insects when they feed on flowers, and then being deposited on the next plant they visit. It has advantages over self-pollination, in that it increases genetic diversity and improves the quantity and quality of crops.
Eijiro Miyako at Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, and his colleagues have used the principle of cross-pollination in bees to make a drone that transports pollen between flowers.
The manually controlled drone is 4 centimetres wide and weighs 15 grams. The bottom is covered in horsehair coated in a special sticky gel. When the drone flies onto a flower, pollen grains stick lightly to the gel, then rub off on the next flower visited.
In experiments, the drone was able to cross-pollinate Japanese lilies (Lilium japonicum). Moreover, the soft, flexible animal hairs did not damage the stamens or pistils when the drone landed on the flowers.
Flying free
Miyako says the team is now working on developing autonomous drones that could help farmers to pollinate their crops. GPS, high-resolution cameras and artificial intelligence will be required for the drones to independently track their way between flowers and land on them correctly, though it will be some time before all that is in place.
“We hope this will help to counter the problem of bee declines,” says Miyako. “But importantly, bees and drones should be used together.”
Eijiro Miyako
Saul Cunningham at the Australian National University in Canberra says that using drones to pollinate flowers is an intriguing idea but may not be economically feasible. “If you think about the almond industry, for example, you have orchards that stretch for kilometres and each individual tree can support 50,000 flowers,” he says. “So the scale on which you would have to operate your robotic pollinators is mind-boggling.”
Several more financially viable strategies for tackling the bee decline are currently being pursued, says Cunningham. These include better management of bees through the use of fewer pesticides, breeding crop varieties that can self-pollinate instead of relying on cross-pollination, and the use of machines to spray pollen over crops.
Journal reference: Chem, DOI: 10.1016/j.chempr.2017.01.008In October 2015, Robert Redford played Dan Rather in the cinematic retelling of those phony 2004 memos about George W. Bush’s National Guard service during the Vietnam War. The movie was titled, paradoxically enough, Truth.
Here’s now interested the public was in Rather’s Truth:
Not very. Did the movie bomb so atrociously because Redford isn’t the box-office draw he used to be? Or was it because people saw the words “Dan Rather” and “truth” and just started laughing? Probably neither.
In any case, Rather’s ceaseless quest for the truth continues! He’s now teaching an online journalism course at Udemy called “Finding The Truth In the News,” and here’s a bit of the course description:
Whether you’re an avid consumer of the news or just beginning your journalism career, renowned news anchor Dan Rather shares his first-hand experiences to guide you through the 21st century state of journalism.
In this course, Dan teaches invaluable foundations on great writing, the essentials of telling a good story, and how to remain calm and captivating on camera — useful skills for anyone fascinated by the power of the news or anyone who wants to contribute to serious journalism. Dan’s rich history and extensive knowledge of journalism, paired with practical, hands-on exercises, creates a unique learning opportunity and rare insight from an American legend.
“Legend” seems a bit modest, doesn’t it? Try “icon”!
There’s also a terrific promotional video with Rather, looking back at all the U.S. presidents whose lives he touched: Bill Clinton, Richard Nixon, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush– Oh, wait. Dubya isn’t in there. Weird! Wonder why not? That’s the president everybody thinks of whenever they hear Dan’s name.
Dan Rather’s lifetime of journalistic wisdom is priceless, of course. But for a limited time, you can get it for a song:
A free press isn’t free, but that’s pretty close! Go ahead, it’s your money. And it’ll help fund Dan’s ongoing search for Lucy Ramirez.
(Hat tip: Brian Maloney)This past week saw the release of three tracks from the 2 Million Facebook “Likes” promotion, and for those keeping track at home, we are still awaiting the release of Stevie Wonder and Dream Theater DLC. Could this week see either (or both) of those artists? Lets find out!
UPDATE: Harmonix has acknowledged that they originally announced earlier this year that the eventual DLC counterpart of the Country Track Pack 2 would only have Rock Band 2 features, and at the time had no plans to release the DLC with Rock Band 3 features. With the DLC coming out on 11/8, it is clear that this is not the case, and the DLC will now include Rock Band 3 features (mainly adding Keys and Pro-Keys charts to 19 out of 21 of the songs). Because many of the early adopters feel slighted, @HMXHenry is attempting to “make good” by attempting to provide DLC codes to those who purchased the track pack. From RockBand.com:
We’re waiting on approval from Microsoft for several hundred codes for the 21 song Country Mega Pack of DLC. I’m hoping we receive these codes before the end of day tomorrow. When we have them in hand I’ll be PMing them to people that have posted about being early adopters of the Country Track Pack 2.
There’s no elegant way for us to track ownership in game (or making the connection between hundreds of in game scores to gamertags to email addresses to forum profiles) and licensing would prevent us from gifting this DLC pack to everyone that bought CTP2 even if there was a technical solution. But I know a lot of people on the forums, in this thread in particular, feel like we could have handled this release better so we wanted to do something.
There is no guarantee that everyone will get a code. It’s all on the honor system and it’s all based off of forum feedback in posts over the last week. Keep an eye on your inboxes, but I’ll post an update when I have codes in hand so we can try to get them to people before DLC goes on sale tomorrow.
Going Country Pack 05 ($8.49 / 680 MSP)
Chely Wright – Single White Female
Laura Bell Bundy – Giddy On Up
Reba McEntire – The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia
Shania Twain – Party for Two (with Billy Currington)
Sugarland – Settlin’
Going Country Pack 06 ($9.99 / 800 MSP)
Billy Currington – That’s How Country Boys Roll
Darryl Worley – Awful, Beautiful Life
Gary Allan – Man of Me
George Straight – TWANG
Johnny Cash – Ring of Fire
Justin Moore – Backwoods
Going Country Pack 07 ($10.99 / 880 MSP)
Darius Rucker – Alright
Dierks Bentley – Sideways
Keith Urban – Kiss a Girl
Lady Antebellum – Perfect Day
Luke Bryan – Rain Is a Good Thing
Merle Haggard – Mama Tried
Trace Adkins – Ride *
Going Country Pack 08 ($5.49 / 440 MSP)
Dwight Yoakam – International Heartache
Jason Aldean – Crazy Town
Rascal Flatts – Summer Nights
Country Mega Pack ($19.99 / 1600 MSP)
ALL OF THE ABOVE SONGS
* Denotes Pro-Guitar/Bass chart availability for $.99.
[Official announcement]PCB Executive Committee chairman says players can celebrate any way they want
Hours after a parliamentary committee on Wednesday expressed reservations over cricket players doing push-ups to celebrate victories during matches, chairman of PCB’s Executive Committee chairman Najam Sethi clarified that the celebrations were done at the discretion of players.
Clarifying media reports, Sethi further said there was no ban on performing celebratory push-ups.
Oh for God's sake, there is no ban on pushups! In fact I think players should do 100 pushups when they score a century!! — Najam Sethi (@najamsethi) October 26, 2016
1/2 Sajda/pushups etc done @ discretion of players. PCB highly appreciates fitness training facilities of PakArmy, utilised thrice in 6 yrs — Najam Sethi (@najamsethi) October 26, 2016
#2/2 Media should refrain from politicising Pak cricket team! — Najam Sethi (@najamsethi) October 26, 2016
However, the statement contradicts Sethi’s reported assurances to the parliamentary committee in which he said the practice was limited to the England tour and would not happen again.
How do you think cricket players should celebrate victories? Push-ups
Pray Nafls
Sajdas
All of the above View Results
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Sethi also went on to add that the media should refrain from politicising the country’s national cricket team. He also appreciated the Pakistan Army for providing fitness training facilities to the PCB.
Earlier, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz MNA Rana Afzal raised the issue, saying players should perform nafl prayers or do sajdas rather than push-ups. Push-ups became a popular mode of celebrating personal feats among Pakistani players during their tour of England following their training camp with the Pakistan Army.
However, the PML-N MNA said cricket is “a gentleman’s game” and the act of doing push-ups does not reflect the calibre of the sport. “Push-up celebration promotes a negative image of Pakistan and needs to be revisited,” Khan said.
Sindh sports minister does 50 push-ups, challenges Punjab counterpart
To this, PCB official Sethi assured that players no longer celebrate victories with push-ups. “It only happened during the England tour and won’t happen again,” Sethi said.
The trend was started by Test captain Misbahul Haq, who performed push-ups at Lord’s after his first ton of English soil.
Dear Sindh sports minister, that’s not a push-up
Misbah later said: “The celebrations were nothing to do with England, only a gesture for those we worked with.”
After Lord’s victory, members of the national side also performed push-ups to celebrate.
And the exercise was again performed later in the series by Azhar Ali for his century and by Sohail Khan for his five-for.
Read full storySitting in front of her PC, the phone in her hand connected to a tech support company half a world away, Sheryl Novick was about to get scammed.
The company she had reached, PCCare247, was based in India but had built a lucrative business advertising over the Internet to Americans, encouraging them to call for tech support. After glimpsing something odd on her computer, Novick did so.
“I saw some sort of pop-up and I don’t know if there’s a problem,” she told a PCCare247 tech named Yakeen. He offered to check the “management part” of her computer for possible problems.
“This is very, very important part of the computer and it work like the human brain, all the major decision, all the action, all the result is taken by this management part,” Yakeen said in a strong accent relayed over a poor-quality phone line that sometimes made comprehension difficult. All he needed to run his test was total control of Novick's Windows computer.
She agreed, downloading and installing a remote access tool. When it was in place, Yakeen reached out through the Internet, took control of Novick’s mouse cursor, and opened a program called Event Viewer. The scam was about to begin.
Event Viewer is a built-in Windows tool designed to make visible the millions of mostly unimportant background activities running beneath the hood of a modern computer. Few mainstream computer users have even heard of it, much less run Event Viewer of their own volition—which explains why few mainstream users would know that, in a system as complex as Windows, Event Viewer will always display errors, most of them trivial. Thus, should someone want to convince mainstream users that their computers are riddled with problems, Event Viewer is a reliable combination of the inscrutable and the terrifying.
Yakeen showed Novick a series of bright red warning messages in her Event Viewer logs.
“It has 30 errors,” he told her, while a separate subsection of Event Viewer showed 43 more. Based on these 73 problems, Yakeen formulated a quick and utterly improbable diagnosis for Novick’s problems.
“Your computer is hacked by someone,” he said. “They are using your name and your ID, your computer to do some cyber fraud and cyber terrorism.”
Leaving no time for Novick to raise questions about how obscure Windows errors might indicate the presence of terrorist hackers, Yakeen opened a command prompt on Novick’s machine and ran a text-based tool called “netstat.” Netstat shows all of a computer’s network connections, both inbound and outgoing, and in this case it showed a single established link—one that pointed outside the US.
“I’m 100 percent sure and I strongly believe that you have some hacking issue working in your computer,” Yakeen said as he pointed this out to Novick. “Your computer is being hacked by someone. And they are doing some criminal activity using your name, your computer, your computer address.”
This was a brazen lie; forensic examination would later conclude that the single connection displayed by netstat was in fact the remote access tool that Yakeen was using at that moment to control Novick’s machine.
To complete his examination, Yakeen then told Novick that he would scan her computer for viruses. To do so, he ran a command called “tree.” Filenames immediately filled the screen, scrolling away in a blur as hundreds of new names took their place. When the list stopped moving, the command prompt read:
C:\509 virus found
“Now can you see the number of virus found in your computer?” Yakeen asked.
“509 viruses?” Novick asked.
“Yeah, 509 virus working your computer. And they are—the hacker are directing your information and your—it might be possible your e-mail account and your Facebook account is also hacked by the hacker because hacker are using your name and your password. All the data, photographs, radio, and your e-mail are already hacked by the hackers, so we have tried to recover all the data from the hackers and install an anti-hacking tool in your computer, okay?”
The situation sounded bad—unless you knew that the tree command used by Yakeen has nothing to do with viruses. It merely lists all files within a directory, showing them in a hierarchical “tree” arrangement of folders, subfolders, and files. The scrolling list had been entirely ordinary files on Novick’s machine; it had stopped only because Yakeen had canceled its run. As for the words “509 virus found”—Yakeen had simply typed them out himself at the command prompt, hoping that Novick would believe them to be output from the “virus scanner.”
PCCare247 said it was ready to "despise every technical folly ready to play mess with the lives of naïve techno greenhorns."
Yakeen didn’t give Novick much time to think about the diagnosis; with the problem identified, he barreled into his sales pitch for a 45-minute cleaning of her computer. By the end of this process, Yakeen promised that he could “remove all the hackers, remove all the errors and 509 virus from the computer and recover all the data, okay?”
All Novick needed was $400.
“Is there any way to do it cheaper?” she asked.
“Cheaper?” said Yakeen. “Okay, please hold the line because I am just discussing this issue with my accounts department and definitely I will give you a discount, okay?”
After a brief pause, the “accounts department” reduced the price to $360 and threw in three years of future tech support.
“$360 is a lot,” Novick responded, still haggling. “Is there any way you could do it for like $300?”
Yakeen transferred her to the floor “accounts manager,” who offered a $300 plan that included two years of future tech support. Novick agreed and provided her credit card. She thanked PCCare247 for helping her out.
“That’s our pleasure, ma’am, and because, you know, PCCare247 just focuses on the customer satisfaction,” a company rep told her when the work was done. “Our main aim is to satisfy the customer needs, right?”
“A massive scheme”
What Yakeen didn’t know was that Novick was actually a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) investigator who had been assigned to global “tech support scams.” She had recorded the entire encounter, which had been conducted using a clean PC located within an FTC lab.
After the call, the FTC sent Civil Investigative Demands—requests for information—to just about every US company that had done any sort of business with PCCare247: banks, credit card processors, domain registrars, telephone companies, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft. In October 2012, after months of work, agency lawyers had finally assembled their case into a 15-page complaint against PCCare247 and its owner, Vikas Agrawal (sometimes spelled Agarwal).
“The Defendants operate a massive scheme that tricks consumers into spending approximately $139-$360 to fix non-existent problems with their computers,” the complaint alleged.
Those fees added up to serious revenue for PCCare247. In just one year, from October 2010 to September 2011, $4 million had been deposited in the two main PCCare247 bank accounts—and that was just from US residents.
The company used this cash to build more business, spending more than $1 million through at least seven separate advertising accounts with Google. The money bought “sponsored search results” that appeared when users searched for terms, including “virus removal.”
But PCCare247 went further, taking out ads on search terms like “mcafee phone number usa,” “norton customer service,” and “dell number for help.” The ads themselves said things like “McAfee Support - Call +1-855-[redacted US phone number]” and pointed to domains like mcafee-support.pccare247.com. As numerous complaints attest, less savvy computer users searching the Internet for specific tech support phone numbers would see PCCare247’s number near the top of their screens and assume that this was an official line.
The tactic reached huge numbers of people. One PCCare247 ad account with Google produced 71.7 million impressions; another generated 12.4 million more. According to records obtained by the FTC, these combined campaigns generated 1.5 million clicks—a 1.8 percent clickthrough rate. Rather than cold-calling people—a preferred tactic of many tech support scammers—PCCare247 instead placed its ads and waited for the calls for help to roll in. The calls were forwarded to PCCare247’s operations in India, where people like Yakeen took over. Some may well have offered legitimate tech support, but even PCCare247 admits that not all did.
Not surprisingly, this business model produced complaints. In New York, the state in which PCCare247 lists its US headquarters (in a virtual office), the Better Business Bureau gave the company an "F" after receiving 27 complaints.
A typical complaint runs like this: a woman begins having computer issues late one night. She Googles “Norton” and, instead of calling Norton tech support, ends up dialing a PCCare247-linked company. The technician “told her that her computer was corrupted and being hacked and she had security issues and if it spread to other computers he would have to notify the FBI.” The woman wakes her husband, who is agitated that she already provided her credit card number. He calls PCCare247 to demand they not charge his card but the tech “kept talking about hackers and wouldn’t shut up.” PCCare247 then charges the couple three times at $150 each. When the man calls back later, enraged at the charges, the company promises a refund and asks him “not to contact the State Police or anyone else.”
Over at the FTC, 300 complaints poured in to the agency’s Sentinel database. Reading through them serves as a reminder that most mainstream users have absolutely no idea how their computers work and that they will in fact seek out technical support when their speakers are on mute or when they can’t eject a CD from the drive.
As one senior citizen, who thought he was calling Dell tech support, recounted: “described my problem to the man (heavy Indian accent) and he told me he needed to access my computer to see what the problem was. He took me to the site where he could access my computer using a specific code. After accessing my Dell computer, he said Oh My God. Your computer has been infected by dozens of viruses. There is a hacker in your computer accessing all your personal and banking information right now… I was scared at that time. I do a lot of shopping on the computer and have my banking and retirement information on it.”
The companies processing financial transactions for PCCare247 were also unhappy with the constant stream of chargebacks and complaints. Vikas Agrawal had created many separate PayPal accounts, for instance, but at least three of them had been frozen and set to “Limited-High” status due to security concerns.
PCCare247 faced a constant battle to accept payments, especially credit cards. The company eventually went to a US resident named Navin Pasari, who applied for at least 13 merchant accounts—many of which were declined upfront or cancelled later due to excessive chargebacks.
Given this history, it wasn’t difficult for the FTC to obtain a temporary restraining order (TRO) against PCCare247, an order that made it all but impossible to do business in the US. Most of the company’s cash had already been transferred to Indian banks (only $1,700 was left in US accounts), where it would prove hard to reach, but the TRO did shut down the company’s domain name, local phone numbers, and credit card processing. New money would not be flowing.
“The FTC litigation has effectively shut down the [PCCare247] business,” the company complained to the federal judge overseeing its case. It admitted to “some improper conduct” but attributed this only to “some overzealous sales personnel [who] crossed the line” and said that “they will be dismissed or retrained.”
In PCCare247’s view, it was simply a third-party tech support company that advertised on Google—and what was wrong with that? In a separate declaration, Vikas Agrawal added, “PCCare247 wants to be a good corporate citizen.”Carl Benjamin, known online by his popular persona “Sargon of Akkad,” expressed his sympathies with the racist alt-right movement this week, including perpetuating alt-right propaganda that Heather Heyer was not killed by a car attack at the Unite the Right earlier this year, but instead suffered a heart attack due to poor health.
Benjamin joined Colin Robertson, known online as “Millennial Woes,” in the first installment of Robertson’s “Millenniyule 2017” interview series on Sunday, to discuss the future of the alt-right. As first pointed out by leftist twitter personality “Tom Bloke,” an early part of the discussion included Benjamin echoing white nationalist propaganda surrounding the murder of Heyer, a liberal counter-protester at the racist Unite the Right rally earlier this year in Charlottesville, Virginia.
“As I understand it, I thought Heather Hayes or Heyer or whatever her name was, I thought she died of a heart attack,” Benjamin said.
“Yes. It looks like what happened is that she was shocked by seeing the car crash happening and had a heart attack,” Robertson said.
Benjamin laughed and when Robertson remarked Heyer’s alleged heart attacked seemed “a bit dramatic,” Benjamin said, “It’s more that the alt-right being blamed for someone having a heart attack, someone in tremendously bad physical condition has a heart attack, and suddenly the alt-right has murdered someone.”
Bloke mocked Benjamin, who has often presented himself as a “classical liberal” or “rational skeptic” who despises the alt-right, and others like him for sourcing information from white supremacist propaganda farms and conspiracy hotbeds like 4chan and 8chan:
i’m a rational skeptic. get my info from all the good skeptic sources. armoured skeptic, sargon of akkad, infowars, dailystormer, anders breivik’s manifesto. all the good ones — Tom Bloke (@21logician) December 13, 2017
Later in the interview, Benjamin pushed another alt-right conspiracy theory that National Policy Institute white nationalist Richard Spencer was “controlled opposition,” meaning that he was a government agent embedded in the movement to give the alt-right a bad public image.
“The mainstream media could just have a policy of non-engagement and that would be more successful for kettling the alt-right than it would be promoting them. But I mean Richard Spencer is only a household name because of the media. Is Richard Spencer controlled opposition? I’m genuinely curious,” Benjamin asked Robertson.
As the interview began to wrap up, Benjamin gave parting advice to Robertson about successfully advancing the alt-right agenda because he believes that social justice advocates are “a fucking massive problem”
“You’ve got diversity in everything—everything,” Benjamin said.
“I know. I know, it’s terrible,” Robertson said.
“Yeah, it’s terrifying, isn’t it? But like [social justice warriors are] not just a loud fringe. They’re not. This what people have to—say ‘Oh, SJWs, they’re not a big problem’—no, they’re a fucking massive problem. I mean holy fuck, the reason thousands of young girls are getting raped is not because the police didn’t want to do something or couldn’t do something. It was because they were afraid of social justice warriors calling them racist,” Benjamin explained.
Benjamin later went on to conclude that “worst case scenario for the alt-right’s success in this endeavor,” referring to racial segregation, “is less intolerable to me and my family than the SJW success. So from a tactical evaluation, I have to choose this angle. I have to try and explain to the alt-right that they can get what they want and they should take this gambit, even if it means the end of liberal democracy.”
Both personalities criticized Right Wing Watch for including them in our report earlier this year that detailed how racist ideologies have found a home on YouTube.
The video above is a compilation of clips from the original broadcast.I swear, ever since they added the "more like this" feature, deviantArt has become a black hole, on the level of TVTropes. I set out to close down those couple dA tabs I have left open, and while I'm deciding whether to save one picture, I see some cool thumbs in the corner...3 hours later, I have 72 dA tabs open, a dozen more Celestias in my favorites list, and it's friggin' 2AM. It's downright dangerous!So, having been freed from the intense gravitational pull of deviantArt by Firefox crashing, (surprise) I go to bed and watch the newest Lindsey Stirling video. (yeah, going to bed doesn't mean cessation of web browsing when you have a tablet) Having spent the last several hours inundating myself with Celestia pictures, I get the idea that it be really cool to show her in a desert for some reason. All that bright washed out desert footage getting to me I guess. I also figure it'd be neatly ironic for her to be shielding her eyes from the bright sun. Finally, I noticed that most pictures of Celestia out on dA make kind of a big deal out of her mane. In my previous depictions of her it was just kinda athat had to be there for there to bein the picture. Anyway, I figure this is a good opportunity to indulge my complete lack of hair-rendering ability, and try |
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